Tag Archive | febcreate

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty-Three: Tír na Cali

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twenty-third question comes from cluudle and is for Tir na Cali.

Is there a stereotype for who the slavers take? Is it the young, the handsome, the pretty, or do you have to worry about your children, worry about your grandparents, worry about your spouse and boss and lawyer?


The stereotype from the American point of view, which is generally accurate to the Cali slavers’ point of view, is that the slavers tend to take those who are older than puberty but younger than grey hair – generally between sixteen and thirty years of age. They appear to tend towards the attractive, although that is not always the case (at least not for American standards of beauty), the healthy, and the unwise.

It is common knowledge in America that going out to a bar without a group of people can get you “disappeared;” that taking a drink from a stranger is a good way to wake up somewhere unpleasant, that going home with the wrong person can mean you never actually see home again.

But of course, kids will be kids, and college boys and girls continue to go out to bars and take drinks from strangers and, even in prudish America, sometimes sneak out with a stranger. And if they’re lucky, their parents will get a polite note from the police department that got a polite note from a slave raider.

That’s the American story.

The Californian raiders, if asked, might say things a bit differently: they look for people who are alone, who will be missed but not quickly. They look for the unmarried, and do not take those wearing wedding bands; the Californians hold marriage in very high estimation. They don’t always pick up in bars, not by far – they prefer joggers running alone, shoppers in a dark corner of the mall, smokers out alone in the parking lot – people who aren’t surrounded by other people, people who are a lower risk. They like the young and healthy, of course, but minor ailments can be cured, and attractiveness can be fixed to whatever the buyer finds prettiest.

Very few people in the Tír na Cali-verse America worry about their lawyer or spouse or boss being taken, but every once in a while, the raiders will take some sort of brain trust specialist – scientist, engineer – regardless of other qualifications. And even more rarely, they’ll snatch a politician’s kid for leverage.

This started out as a hostage-taking situation, after all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676883.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month: Need questions for 24-28, please

February is World-Building Month!

I have been answering world-building questions all month; you can find the answers at the febcreate tag.

But, after today’s question and yesterday’s, I don’t have any more questions!

I need 5 more questions about any of my universes,here.

Thanks!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676839.html. You can comment there.

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty One – Vas’ World

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twenty-first question comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly and is for Vas’ World

Well, you could tell me more about how the lost colony got there and came to be lost… 😀

Hattip and thanks to [personal profile] thnidu for this comment from which I got much of the answer.


This was first detailed in The Sea And Sky: …when a computer failure (meters and yards were not the same thing, and why had it taken this long for someone to notice the problem?) had sent it off course… Which isn’t so much “detailed” as “handwaved.”

The surviving members of the ship’s crew and colony ship definitely thought that the computer had malfunctioned, and, in the moments between it finding the planet later known as Vas’ World/MacAllister-5 and it crashing, it certainly did.

But why?

It will take longer than the story has reached yet to determine the potential causes of the malfunction, but what Vas’ team can guess at, given the information they have, is something like the following:

There are areas in space which are fairly “clean;” that is, they are safe to use sub-light or FTL travel in with no ill effects; you generally go from point A to point B with no interruptions, as long as your plot doesn’t take you too close to a sun, a planet, an asteroid belt, etc.

And then they are places – the first “discovered” was en route to the planet the team was actually trying to colonize – where naturally occurring “flash warp” nexuses act as pivot points, altering the velocity of a ship in as-of-yet unpredictable ways.

The ship that accidentally colonized MacAllister-5 was not the only ship to go missing; it was simply the first one to be found. Until it was discovered (and until Vas et al realize the MacAliens’ origins), the main population’s assumption is that all those ships lost to the flash warp nodes were destroyed.

It’ll be interesting to find out exactly how wrong they were.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676581.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty (Yesterday): Dragons Next Door

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twentieth question comes from Kelkyag and is for Dragons Next Door

How did a magic-ignorant to magic-averse race of technology users wind up the clueless dominant race in a world full of magic, some of it not at all subtle?


Nobody is quite sure! This goes well with How do dweomers originate?.

The problem is, humans showed up. As far as anyone can tell, they showed up already knowing how to hurt dragons and ogres and centaurs, how to fight against spellcasters, how to do more damage than anything that small and seemingly-helpless ought to be able to manage. They showed up already deadly.

Well, that’s one theory.

Another theory is that the humans, by their sheer mundanity, seemed to hold off the other races, who didn’t know what to do with something that small and that helpless and still determined to push on.

Another theory is that they’re the pet project of some ancient spellcaster of one form or another, and that they are protected from being overrun by said spellcaster’s, well, spells.

What is true is that humans aren’t entirely clueless. They’re just used to living in their areas, while the magic things live in theirs. They’re used to thinking of many of the magic races as lesser, smaller – in terms of, ah, enlightenment, they’re back at least fifty years from IRL, possibly closer to a hundred and fifty. Dweomers, of course, and in other ways tinies and pixies, have always existed alongside humans when they chose to – and, indeed, dweomers don’t even have their own cities (Unless you count the region in which the Black Tower resides, but that’s a story for another day). But most of the strangest races have lived in their own places and only within the last fifty years begun co-existing with humans in the same cities.

After all, the tiny fragile things have such interesting toys.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675937.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Nineteen: Fae Apoc

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The ninteenth question comes from [personal profile] rix_scaedu and is for the Faerie Apocalypse

What happens to someone who’s Changed and cannot find or persuade an adult to Mentor them?


I… do not know. I honestly don’t.

There are certainly kids like Reegan in these two stories:
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/411653.html
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/588052.html
who have trouble finding a Mentor – because their family or they themselves are disliked, because there are no older fae in the area, because they Change out of a line that hasn’t had a Change in long enough that nobody knows what to do, or because they Change away from anyone or everyone.

And I suppose it’s possible, especially a couple centuries pre-apocalypse or immediately post-apoc, when the human population and thus the fae population are so thinly spread, that a fae child thus Changed could go unnoticed.

If so, it is almost impossible (unless they are sequestered in a tower full of fae books) that they will develop any use of Words – and that is for the better, because without guidance, Workings can quickly become disastrous.

Without a Mentor to guide them into learning to Mask, they are likely to stick out like a sore thumb. They will either become a mythic figure, a monster, a freak (assuming enough of a Change to stick out, of course) – or they will be locked up, studied, stared at.

Their innate, if mild, will probably be entirely usable and controllable with practice. If they have a more excessive power – pyrokinesis, for instance, or storm-calling – they are likely to come back to “strange Change” above, to bringing way too much attention to themselves.

It’s likely, pre- or post-apoc, that they will eventually bring enough attention to themselves inadvertently, one way or another, and some fae will find them.

Then the question becomes: what are the intentions of that fae?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/672382.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Day 18: Fairy Town

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.
Every day in February (or most days), I will answer one question about any one of my settings.
The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!
The eighteenth question comes from Kelkyag and is for Fairy Town

What made Fairy Town different?


Nobody knows!

Okay, that’s cheating, and also a lie.

Long before Fairy Town was Fairy Town (and, really, it is only Fairy Town to those in the know), it was a holy place; deep in the crossroads park that was, once, the center of a small town, there is a shrine.

There is, if you ask the right people, some disagreement as to who the shrine is to; there has always been disagreement over it, and if you dig into the dirt anywhere in that park, you will find bones, many of them humanoid.

What nobody argues about is that the shrine is a place of power.

It is not the only one in this variant of the world; indeed, when mankind first came here, there were many, like springs.

But, for as powerful as they are, there are many ways a place of power can be desecrated, blocked off, broken. And many of them were.

Others had cities grow up around them, as Fairy Town did. And in the cities growing up, some places locked the power into place with ancient and sometimes horrible magics, and some people bound the fae from entering with blood rituals and complex prayers, or, at least, things they thought were prayers.

(In a couple places, this was tried and did not succeed. In those cities, only those completely fae-blind and the nastiest of fae live, and those are not nice places at all).

In Fairy Town, the rituals did not take hold, and the place of power acted, as they all did, as a magnet for those who were fae, for those who had Faith, for those who were Strange and Wyrd. And without the rituals and call-them-prayers to hold the fae out… they just kept coming, and they settled.

And there they have been ever since.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/672076.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Sventeen (Catching up): Aunt Family

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February (or most days), I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The seventeenth question comes from Kelkyag and is for The Aunt Family

What actually happens when someone becomes The Aunt?


It differs for every Aunt and differs with every branch of the family, but the basics of it remain more or less the same.

The entire family, out to the rare person the family has lost touch with who might not even know what an Aunt is, and right in to the sisters and mother of the Aunt (if they are still alive; the Aunts are often very long-lived), feels a snap of loss when the Aunt dies, no matter how far away they are; depending on the power of the Aunt, other branches of the family may feel it as well.

At that moment, the Aunt needs to have chosen a successor. If she has not – and that does happen on occasion – the power chooses someone itself. This can lead to… issues.

Assuming the Aunt has chosen a successor, the power does the psychic equivalent of knocking on said successor’s door; she has some sort of sensation, often likened to a very very large dog waiting patiently or, in more rare cases, to suddenly being under the crest of a wave about to fall.

It is always a question, however, always an invitation. The power does not invade without the soon-to-be Aunt’s consent.

But, again, if she says no – and a few have – the power chooses someone else. And, again, this can lead to problems.

Almost all members of the extended bloodline of the Aunt Family have some psychic power; the successor to the Aunt line usually has more than her fair share of what is called the Sight, the Skill, and the Spark.

This has been described as dialing that all up to eleven.

The power overwhelms the new Aunt for a moment – longer if she is not particularly strong, shorter if she is very strong – and then settles in. With it comes not so much memories as vague feelings accumulated through the years – there is no trace of the former Aunts in this, but there is, instead, memories the power has of the Aunts it has served.

And then it is hers, until she dies and the process begins again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/671806.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day 16: Space Accountant

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The sixteenth question comes from [personal profile] kelkyag and is for Space Accountant ‘verse.

What do the external economics and logistics of the pirate ship Genique is stuck on look like? Do they actually make most of their money on ransoms? How do they make contact to make those exchange without getting caught? Are they being grossly overcharged by their suppliers, and/or have wonky and unexpected expenses? Are they a one-of operation, or part of a larger organization??


This plays in well with the earlier question on What do the pirates pirate? here.

The ransom rates have been carefully calculated to maximize income: they are set at a rate that most families (of cruise-ship travelers) will be both willing and able to pay, but high enough that they bring in about fifty percent of the ship’s income.

If they plan and train properly, they can actually make more money off of a kidnapee either in free labor “working off their ransom” or in straight slave sales on one of the luxury slave markets; the slave sales make up about 25% of their income.

As for their suppliers: there are a couple suppliers who overcharge, thinking that they can get away with it because, really, who’s a pirate ship going to complain to? Of course, that comes with its own inherent problems like, when you piss off pirates, what do they do to you? Mmm?

The vast majority of the ship’s financial problems, however, come not from their suppliers, but from graft, as Genique is beginning to find out. At almost every level of accounting on the ship, someone is skimming from the till. After all, they are pirates.

I believe the ship is a one-off organization, although they sometimes work with other pirates in a very loose confederation, and they do have “sister organizations” – a couple land-bound fences and a couple of ship-based traders who push the pirate ship’s merchandise.

As for making contacts on the ransoms, the pirate ship works through a Bonded Drop Person/Ship. There are many of these throughout the galaxy; they serve as “international waters” sorts of people and are used by the law-abiding and the law-ignoring alike when they need to make deals. The Bonded Persons are universally discreet, free from subpoena or prosecution for their Bonded actions on almost all planets (and do not do business on or with those where they are not), and known for their reliability.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/671203.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Fifteen: Worldbuilding Meta

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The fifteenth question comes from [personal profile] kelkyag and is a meta-question

How do you-the-author develop the rules of magic in the various ‘verses that have magic? (Or Mad Science, in the worlds that have that.)


Badly?

To be honest, T. came up with the magic system for Addergoole/Faerie Apocalypse. I wanted something powerful, teachable, and with limits; he offered a modification of an already-extant roleplaying system and we kept modifying until it was our own thing.

For Tír na Cali, I started with a single character – Lady Tekenna, who has the power to command minds – and extrapolated from there, mostly via roleplaying, until I had a general idea of the powers the world could have.

Dragons Next Door, for instance, and Fairy Town are completely story-based: when I need something to happen, there’s a magical way for it to happen if a mundane way won’t work. Ditto science in Science! and superheroes verse, as well as in the space-colony stuff.

For Reiassan, T. and I sat down with a large piece of paper and plotted out a lot of what we wanted, because they have an actual, limited magic system. Then again, very little of that came up, and it was already working around things Rin had done way back in the first story.

Short answer: I’m not very good at coming up with magic systems; I generally “pants” it based on something I want to happen in the world. When I need a system – for a world that’s going to be more complex, for instance – I tap the Spousal Unit, and we start using role-playing mechanics to figure things out.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/670891.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day 14: Space Accountant

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The fourteenth question comes from [personal profile] moonwolf and is for Space Accountant ‘verse.

What do the pirates actually pirate?


The pirates’ primary and first trade is people, at least this particular ship (or possibly a small fleet, but I think it’s one independent ship). Space cruises are notoriously easy to board, because they are built for beauty and smooth sailing, not for security. Once on ship, more than fifty percent of the time, the pirates manage to take a few people without ever being noticed, slip back to their ship, get out of dodge, and then demand ransom.

About seventy-five percent of the time ransom is paid; the rest of the time, they train and sell their captives on the extensive black market, or employ them as cheap labor (as discussed in one of Genique’s first stories).

As a side effect of hitting primarily luxury cruises, the pirates do a brisk trade in fine gems and fakes thereof, often pried from jewelry pieces, drugs, both legal and not, and fancy clothing, often cut down or otherwise altered from those things confiscated from prisoners.

When, as it occasionally does, the atmosphere in space gets a little to hot to handle around the cruise ships (after, say, they accidentally kidnap someone who is a little too famous, or accidentally steal a president’s narcotics), the pirates “winter” on trade routes, picking off luxury shipments or, sometimes, even other pirates, liberating slaves from other traders only to turn around and resell them to different markets.

In short, Genique’s new employers make a lot of money skimming off of people who have lots and lots of money.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/670533.html. You can comment here or there.