Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

And we laughed like thirteen year olds at the fact that Kaing is the word for "standard" (as in a legion's standard) and "qeng" is the word for "penis," and with a little slurring you can pronounce them very similarly.

(Whispers at the staff officer:
"Was it "Kaings up" or "qengs up"? I tend to mistake them, and shouting the wrong one at the troops as we leave the city would be...embarrassing. Especially if they try to comply!")

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

From AsenRG:
Yeah. like the time somebody tried to sell me a legion's worth of cheap and mostly defective swords.

I guess that didn't end well for him...

Had a look at the Kobold Press website. Interesting look into 'gamer culture', but as you say, a very good text for new people.

That's what it's meant to be. Your stories just make me think we should recommend it more.
(I bought it because a certain Rory Miller has penned one of the articles in it. I guess I'm something of a fan).

I can agree with that; while very effective, it's not very satisfying somehow. Yeah, it won the fight for me, but it made for what I would have to say was one of the least exciting games I'd ever played - no fault of Gronan's, I got the feeling at the time that he was just as disappointed as I was over the opposing side's performance. I mean, he coulda just phoned it in, to use a theatrical phrase.

Best kind of win: guaranteed.
Just not very entertaining to watch.

I read the article; and I think you're right. Not people I'd like to game with, though.

Well, these are gamer types, not people - depending on how they approach mechanics. They just gave them names for ease of reference.
Of course, we don't know how any of these people would approach the roleplaying aspect. There's no such thing in M:tG, as it's a card game, after all. All we know is that Spike would pull a boxed barrage whenever he could...

No idea; this was the 1990s crowd, and they didn't publish much on their adventures. I'd suggest contacting them directly; they're the Tekumel Foundation, and I think you can reach them through their website. Sorry; just no specific data on this in my archives.

Ah well - I might do that when I get more time.
It's not urgent, these things just sounded funny.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

There is no 'map' of the place; nobody is really quite sure what's located where, and you wind up using 'local guides' to navigate inside, and you get handed off from guide to guide as you go from section to section.

Hats off to Phil's skill at world-building stuff GMs can use!

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Thank you Uncle!!! You have opened up a golden can of worms for me...!!! What do I want to know? Everything!!! Haha, but I will do some research first. However, can you describe the "Watergate" a bit more in detail? Thanks. One other quick question, the outer layers where one would find canversarai, outside or inside the mountain? Are they run by certain clans?

Gosh, I can't resist, Lord could you describe your trip up the mountain for us? Thank you!!!

You're very welcome! One problem with me is that with more general questions I tend to refer people to the various publications - which, I keep forgetting, are largely so far out of print they might as well be on the far side of the moon. I dunno; I'll think of something, I guess...

The watergate is on the west face of the sheer cliff at the base of the mountain, and you take one of the navy galleys to get there. They have a number of dispatch boats that run a daily service from Bey Su to Avanthar, and passengers with business get transported by these. There are merchant ships that deliver supplies to the mountain, but these are very off-limits to passengers and get searched really carefully by the OAL guards - who don't bother with all that arresting stuff, and simply enslave or execute any unauthorized persons that they find. They also control the great portcullis that blocks the passage, as well as the inner defenses that protect the access to the mountain proper. The passage leads to a small lake / pond / harbor inside the base of the mountain, and there are a number of docks where the ships load and unload; it's a little cramped, so there are rowed 'tugboats' to move the ships around - the ships on this service also unship their masts, which I forgot to mention. They get turned around and back out as quickly as is possible, so as not to clog up the limited room in the harbor chamber. There's three or four levels here, mostly warehouses and barracks, and a very strong garrison. Avanthar has been besieged in the past, most lately during the 2020 AS War, but it's always a waste of time. The place is just too strong and supplied.

The climb up take forever; at least, it feels that way. There are several set of stairways; you can hire porters and palanquins, if you have the money and status, but otherwise it's just a long slog. As you go higher, the facilities do get better; the 'inns' are run by hereditary contractors, families and clans, and there are also clanhouses, temples, and barracks where the traveller can find someplace to eat and sleep. Everything is run by the Imperium through the contractors, and everything is supervised by the OAL at every stage. Security is polite, but very tight and very no nonsense; there's always visible guards and hidden watchers - "You learn to whisper in Avanthar, if you want to live out your Skein of Destiny", as the old proverb goes. Normally, a visitor would climb up to the level appropriate to their rank and status, and make their 'base camp' with their clan, temple, legion, whatever as appropriate.

You observe the protocols; you are polite to people both higher and lower then you are, and you always defer to the OAL and the Imperial officers. Think of it as combination of the Pentagon and a grand luxury hotel, and you get the idea. Move to the back of the elevator, please; or, always give way to your betters / seniors on the stairways.

Have you read the "Quarmall" short story by Fritz Leiber, Jr.? Or seen the etchings by Pirenesi?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swords_Against_Wizardry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi

Phil said he'd read "Lords of Quarmell" when he was young; and it showed; he also used to love to dust off his copy of the book of etchings to show us what he thought his underworlds - especially the Tolek Kana Prison - would look like.

Something seems off in your Piranesi link. When I click I get an error.

This might work better.

http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/arti...iranesi/page-1

So, in keeping with the Avanthar theme, is there evidence that there was an occupied settlement at Avanthar throughout the various epochs of Tekumel? Could we say travel back to Llyan's Empire, or to the Time of the Dragon Warriors, or Nayari's court and find someone living in Avanthar?

Shemek.

From AsenRG:
(Whispers at the staff officer:"Was it "Kaings up" or "qengs up"? I tend to mistake them, and shouting the wrong one at the troops as we leave the city would be...embarrassing. Especially if they try to comply!")
Not if it's Kaikama of Bey Su or Translucent Emerald; both are Dlamelish legions, and so this kind of thing wouldn't surprise anybody.

That's what it's meant to be. Your stories just make me think we should recommend it more.
(I bought it because a certain Rory Miller has penned one of the articles in it. I guess I'm something of a fan).
They look good, I thought. I can see where they'd be very handy for people.

Best kind of win: guaranteed.
Just not very entertaining to watch.
Very true; I much prefer a hard-fought and challenging game. Sure things are just not entertaining...

Well, these are gamer types, not people - depending on how they approach mechanics. They just gave them names for ease of reference.
Of course, we don't know how any of these people would approach the roleplaying aspect. There's no such thing in M:tG, as it's a card game, after all. All we know is that Spike would pull a boxed barrage whenever he could...
Understood; it's just that I've met so many people who are like this in gaming...

Ah well - I might do that when I get more time.
It's not urgent, these things just sounded funny.
They are, from what little we know of them. The 1990s-on group didn't do the kind of record-keeping that we did, so while we know a lot about what happened in the OTNG from 1976 to 1988 we have very little hard data from the Monday and later Thursday groups. What we do know is mostly in the Blue Room Archives.

Hats off to Phil's skill at world-building stuff GMs can use!
Oh, very much so! He applied a lot of what was being done in 'wargame' campaigns to 'rpg' campaigns, and it seemed to work fine fo him. I still use a lot of the same tools, and they do work for me. I was talking to a crowd of gamers on Saturday, and I happened to mention that I am still running the meta-game in my campaign - there was much oooh! and ahhh! from them.

Originally Posted by Bren

Something seems off in your Piranesi link. When I click I get an error.

This might work better.

http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/arti...iranesi/page-1

Huh! All I did was a cut and paste from the header, so thanks for the help!!!

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

So, in keeping with the Avanthar theme, is there evidence that there was an occupied settlement at Avanthar throughout the various epochs of Tekumel? Could we say travel back to Llyan's Empire, or to the Time of the Dragon Warriors, or Nayari's court and find someone living in Avanthar?

Shemek.

Yes, and from the time of the Lords of Humanspace. Somebody carved the mountain off the range it's nominally part of, to create the great fosse that makes the place unapproachable from the landward side; we don't have access to that kind of sheer power, and I doubt anyone but the First Founder and his terraformers did.

Avanthar is, has always been, and will always be. It has seen empires come and go, and has always been a fortress and refuge for whomever controls it. On Phil's 1950s maps, it's called 'Seal's Fort', and is one of the very few places marked with a gold dot on this and his high school maps of Tsolyanu. Nayari lived in Purdanim, the Bednjallans in Bey Su, the Engsvanyali in Ganga; but there has always been a garrison in Avanthar. Think of Table Mountain in South Africa, which guards Cape Town, or Herod the Great's refuge on top of Masada. Avanthar seems to be a fixed point in the Planes of Reality, always there and always occupied by somebody or something.

"Avanthar the Mighty". We're just transient guests, for the brief time we'll be here...

Originally Posted by Hrugga

PS Happy 4th of July to you and all the Patriots here on the board!!!

Thank you! I had a great time Saturday, with a bunch of the kind of intelligent and educated people that it's fun to game with or just be with. I had a not so fun time Sunday, when I dropped by my favorite FLGS to pick up the new working portcullis kit from TRE Games; a bunch of people from the huge F/SF convention were in the back game area pontificating about how important they are in local gaming, and it got very tiresome to listen to. I made my purchase, and got the heck out of Dodge. Today has been fun; hoisted out the Bennington flag on the household flagstaff - I have a little flag locker by the front door, and we have a custom of hoisting out the appropriate flag for various holidays, like St. Davy's Day or my (Norwegian) Missus' birthday. I have the next three days off on vacation, one day at work, then the weekend before I start the new schedule and job.

It is a good holiday, if I may say so...

Originally Posted by Bren

Something seems off in your Piranesi link. When I click I get an error.

This might work better.

http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/arti...iranesi/page-1

I think I found and fixed the problem. Thanks for catching this!!!

Oh, and happy holiday to everyone in the USA!
(I'm not from the USA, but me can be polite, right?)

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

From AsenRG:
(Whispers at the staff officer:"Was it "Kaings up" or "qengs up"? I tend to mistake them, and shouting the wrong one at the troops as we leave the city would be...embarrassing. Especially if they try to comply!")
Not if it's Kaikama of Bey Su or Translucent Emerald; both are Dlamelish legions, and so this kind of thing wouldn't surprise anybody.

OK, but then it might be a Legion of Sarku, too...

Best kind of win: guaranteed.
Just not very entertaining to watch.
Very true; I much prefer a hard-fought and challenging game. Sure things are just not entertaining...

That's true in games, yes.

Well, these are gamer types, not people - depending on how they approach mechanics. They just gave them names for ease of reference.
Of course, we don't know how any of these people would approach the roleplaying aspect. There's no such thing in M:tG, as it's a card game, after all. All we know is that Spike would pull a boxed barrage whenever he could...
Understood; it's just that I've met so many people who are like this in gaming...

Oh, I've met them, too. But then, Chirine has pulled a Timmy in his big battle when he held the centre. And he pulled a Spike on quite a few people - including on a certain nest ship...

Hats off to Phil's skill at world-building stuff GMs can use!
Oh, very much so! He applied a lot of what was being done in 'wargame' campaigns to 'rpg' campaigns, and it seemed to work fine fo him. I still use a lot of the same tools, and they do work for me. I was talking to a crowd of gamers on Saturday, and I happened to mention that I am still running the meta-game in my campaign - there was much oooh! and ahhh! from them.

Yes, but what I was talking about was the lack of maps and the changing place. This meant he can just give you whatever he scratched from inspiration 5 minutes before the campaign, and I'm all for reducing the amount of minimum GM prep!

As for the meta-game, they call this a Relationship map today, because it's usually centered on the PCs. But I've noticed that many GMs just make relationship maps that aren't centered on the PCs, but on the main actors in the setting - and that's, more or less, the meta-game...
In 2012, I had a notebook for one of my campaigns where every page detailed 1 or 2 movers and shakers of the game world. Lately, I've been using Excel for that, but I'm not sure it's all that better than the notebook...
Anyway, that's similar to the meta-game. I just have to include the ships on the searoads now, and more detailed notes on the legions!