Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Uncle,

Could you say a bit more about "licensed" and "unlicensed" brigands and how they may relate to local clans...As far as tower guards go, I could imagine all sorts of adventures. A warrior trying to escape his/her past and somehow being thrust back into the thick of things(old West style)!!! As Someone dear loves to say,"Mayhem ensues...!!!".

Thanks,

H:0)

The 'licensed bandits' are the local clans, usually. The usual thing is for a clan to hire out their people as 'guides' to travelers, and in return for a small fee they make sure that one does not get robbed or bothered. (I had to explain this concept in detail in the TFT campaign I'm in, playing a 'bandit chieftain'.) It's what I think would be described as a 'protection racket', in 1920s Chicago. The clans also serve as informal police, as they like to either co-opt or exterminate interlopers - 'unlicensed' bandits and brigands - as these are bad for business and cut into the profits. They all have working agreements with the road guards, to whom they pay a percentage in return for getting a segment of the road to work on; in return, the guards refer travelers to them as guides as the locals will know where to stay, where to get supplies, get the cart wheel fixed, and where to buy things. The local clans are also the vendors of all these things, so for them it's vital to get the customers to their wares with their money pouches intact. Lots of robberies are bad publicity, and so are dealt with promptly. The guards will help with this, as the local clans are all taxpayers, and so can call on 'the cops' if there's a problem. The clans all have districts where they are active, and will pass travelers along from one to the other in order to make sure that everybody gets a chance at the money.

Think of a combination of Stuckey's, the mob, Border reivers, Howard Johnson's (shows how old I am!), and the auto club all rolled into one. The Holiday Inn courtesy van, full of armed commandos...

'Unlicensed bandits' may very well be down-on-their luck poor people, or equally desperate player-characters. Either way, if they don't have the local connections they will be hunted down and wiped out - if they don't pay their fees, that is...

I would indeed think that one could run all sorts of fun adventures based on the roads; see also Sergio Leone. (Watched "A Fistful of Kaitars", last night.) Or Morse might pull up in his maroon and black palanquin, for that matter...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I'd think it would be a pretty good chance; the cataclysm was pretty sudden, so I'd think that the more remote villas, settlements, and garrisons would tend to hold on for as long as they could. It'd be a long, slow decline over time, I would think, based on what Phil said about this.

One of the factors in this was - and still is, for that matter - just how 'survivable' the technology of the Ancients can be. A lot of it is still working today, so it must have stayed working for them then. Phil remarked that the biggest problem was preserving the knowledge of how things worked; I see this myself, every day, where people retire or pass away and their knowledge of how a particular machine works is lost. Even if the information is preserved in some form, how does one access that information? (The 5.5" floppy drive we had to get to read his old floppies is an example of this.) Oral traditions are useful, but you do get a lot of 'drift' over time, and Phil was very aware of this from his own field work - and I thought that it was sad that nobody wanted to deal with his huge archive of audio tapes that he made in South Asia in the early 1950s, which meant that all that information on how things had worked for generations has gotten lost. The flashlight may still work, but nobody may know how to change the focus...

For written documentation about this, I'd suggest the Blue Room, as Phil didn't write much about it in the time we were with him. We did talk a lot about this kind of thing in our 'after-game' conversations, and there might be something on this in the audio-taped interviews I have of him. My advice would be to follow his practice, and go in the direction of having adventures - as he put it, "it's the whole purpose of the thing..."

Thank you for the info! This is exactly what I suspected, and I'll continue along this path for my current campaign. The Blue Room has some stuff. Although Phil's posts regarding the LotLT are mostly focused on Ru'un, Yeleth, Qon, etc there are some very useful kernels that I've managed to find and incorporate into my game narrative. As an aside, I found this while on the Blue Room, and thought it quite interesting. What a great adventure one could have by using elements of this story, in another location (or time) on Tekumel.

"I played in Craig Smith's (the artist from Swords and Glory as well
as other publications) semi-official offshoot of the Professor's
campaign in the 70's. On one adventure at sea, we ran into an island
that had once been an R&R facility for the military during the Latter
Times (or some such ancient period). There was a class of Ru'un
there that was much more intelligent than the run-of-the-mill
tomb guardian type (yes, I know they really aren't run-of-the-mill).
These had some kind of energy blaster instead of the usual bolt
caster, and seemed better armored as well (drawing in Tekumel Journal
#1, p. 17). They thought we were soldiers on R&R and treated us
accordingly. They could interact, answer questions, etc. They knew
Tsolyani, which was remarkable in its own sense. The problem was
that we didn't have any orders that said we could leave, so they
attempted to prevent our departure in a rather non-violent manner, at
least at first (they didn't want us to go AWOL). We did manage to
escape (with three energy pistols) and only losing one party member.
(We later lost the energy pistols to the Vru'uneb in Tsamra, but
that's another story.) An Imperial Dispatch in The Imperial Military
Journal (Vol. II, #5, Winter 2360 - mislabelled #4) appeared
describing these events."

Phil's response to the initial post

"Craig Smith took some of his campaign
ideas directly from mine, and the "lost islands: in the southern seas
was one of them. The Ru'un there are much more sophisticated than
the run-of-the-mill storeroom guard or or service robot. The problem
is that the R-n-R base is absolutely unalterable and fixed by any
methods the Tsolyani have today (think of Amazonian jungle tribesmen
in an American underground missile base for a comparison). The R-n-R
Ru'un are programmed to serve, entertain, and help soldiers and space
pilots relax. They cannot provide information (that a Tsolyani could
understoand), and they do NOT offer technology, weapons, or the like.
As for the language, Craig neglected to mention to Brett and his
party that the Ru'uns' lips do not move in sync with the Tsolyani
words they seem to be uttering. They use a form of "technological
telepathy." The base dates not from the Latter Times (it was known
but not used -- after all nobody who got there could get off without
identification and authorisation, and few of the ancient military ID
cards were available -- and they had the wrong pictures, dates,
eye-prints, etc. The Lords of the Latter Times at first tried to
move a couple of the sophisticated pleasure robots to their own
installations, but this kind of meddling is resisted with force by
the island "brain centre," and these attempts failed or led to disaster.

By the bye, do most of you know about the "little golden translation
balls?" These are highly treasured by players in my games. They are
creations of the early (and more technological Latter Times) and are
found here and there in ancient installations. They are about the
size of a small marble and are made of golden metal. Put one inside
your cheek, and it connects with your brain waves to translate
audible foreign speech into your own tongue -- and your words into
something understandable by your hearers. They won't work on Ru'un,
Yeleth, or the nonhuman languages, but they are very useful for most
modern human languages. You can thus "speak" to a person whose
language you don't know at all. They work by some sort of gimmicky
computer chip circuitry, I suppose. They do short out or go dead --
rarely harming the user -- but they are extremely useful for long
distance travellers. They are bulky in one's cheek, however, and I
have known persons to swallow one accidently -- and then have to wait
for its eventual emergence..."


Did you ever get a chance to travel to these islands, or to a similar R&R facility. while adventuring?

Shemek

Originally Posted by Greentongue

So, it would not be unthinkable for them to be in cahoots with a local organization.
Like say the locals needed some warm bodies to feed a Saturday Night Special.
The guards would not "remember" that the group had come that way.
Maybe even prefer it was strangers from the road and not locals.
=

Oh, yes, I think this to be quite possible! Tekumel is full of little pockets of odd things, and locals feeding the unwary to Something would not be unknown - remember Phil's mantra about having adventures.

Eventually, somebody would get suspicious about the non-arrivals, and send out a party of player-characters to investigate. Mayhem ensues.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Thank you for the info! This is exactly what I suspected, and I'll continue along this path for my current campaign. The Blue Room has some stuff. Although Phil's posts regarding the LotLT are mostly focused on Ru'un, Yeleth, Qon, etc there are some very useful kernels that I've managed to find and incorporate into my game narrative. As an aside, I found this while on the Blue Room, and thought it quite interesting. What a great adventure one could have by using elements of this story, in another location (or time) on Tekumel.

[snipped for space]

Did you ever get a chance to travel to these islands, or to a similar R&R facility. while adventuring?

Shemek

Yes. We eventually worked out that this base is in the south polar area, and went there several times with varying degrees of success. You get there by tubeway car, and this was the first time we saw the large stations that will dock the large pill-shaped cars. The 'greeters' at the station are Yeleth, both 'male' and 'female', and the powerful Ru'un are the Military Police who keep things on the base down to a dull roar.

The place is one of the ten to twelve 'tourist traps' on the tubeway system, and sooner or later any users of the system wind up there. (My players finally worked how to get in and out about a decade ago.) It's a lot of fun - I caused a panic amongst the PCs with the medical facility, as they thought that one of the PCs was about to be drowned in a tube full of liquid, and it's just chock full of useful 1940s 'hard SF' tropes all just waiting to befuddle the players. Star Wars fans seem to get particularly confused, for some reason, as nothing is like what they expect the future to be like.

Trylon and Perisphere, anyone?

The little translator marbles are a plot device of Phil's, just like Nexus points and tubeway cars, to speed up the action. See also Phil's excellent little article on "The Language Problem", from many, many years ago.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

The 'licensed bandits' are the local clans, usually. The usual thing is for a clan to hire out their people as 'guides' to travelers, and in return for a small fee they make sure that one does not get robbed or bothered. (I had to explain this concept in detail in the TFT campaign I'm in, playing a 'bandit chieftain'.) It's what I think would be described as a 'protection racket', in 1920s Chicago. The clans also serve as informal police, as they like to either co-opt or exterminate interlopers - 'unlicensed' bandits and brigands - as these are bad for business and cut into the profits.

This model would also be thoroughly familiar to Merovingian-era Franks (500 - 750 AD in round numbers) when the lord was known as "magnus" - "big man" and referred to his retainers as "mis puerii" - "my boys". Bernie Bachrach read us a small chunk translated this way; some monk complaining "the Big Man and his boys came into town today" and the monk didn't approve of their behavior. It casts a whole different light on the age of pre-feudalism.

I tried to explain to the same folks about John Hawkwood and how if an armed force controlled a castle in unclaimed land you now had a new king/duke/baron/whatever, but I didn't do as good a job.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

This model would also be thoroughly familiar to Merovingian-era Franks (500 - 750 AD in round numbers) when the lord was known as "magnus" - "big man" and referred to his retainers as "mis puerii" - "my boys". Bernie Bachrach read us a small chunk translated this way; some monk complaining "the Big Man and his boys came into town today" and the monk didn't approve of their behavior. It casts a whole different light on the age of pre-feudalism.

I tried to explain to the same folks about John Hawkwood and how if an armed force controlled a castle in unclaimed land you now had a new king/duke/baron/whatever, but I didn't do as good a job.

Well, yes, this. I had gotten the idea that this kind of thing was what the 'domain game' was all about, way back when, which is why in Phil's campaign he was so big on players getting the little two-hex fiefs in his games. (Not that it worked out very well; the problem was keeping the players on the fiefs and not gallivanting off on adventures.)

Great minds, same gutters. I used Sir John and his merry men quite a bit, that day, and it did seem to help once I went through all the accountants, clerks, and lawyers that the fearsome White Company has on the payroll. It's a business, purveying the threat of mayhem in return for social order.

For Big Andy...

DSC00137.jpg

Chirine,

Was Captain Harchar a Tsolyani, or a barbarian in a boat who landed in Jakalla from some unknown land?

Shemek.