Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Bren

I�m convinced that most of the people in Europe who were embarrassed by sex emigrated to America.

Sapphic poetry just isn't as popular as it used to be. Personally, I blame HBO.

They were, actually; you have the historical record and their own writings on the subject on your side. And we're still paying for it today...

Yep. The number of people who think that HBO and Starz are reliable historical references scares me. My perception is that people don't read books, any more; if it ain't on the telly or the 'net, it ain't.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Too bad it wasn't ever finished. And well, games like Pathfinder are 900 pages in print, for much less bang per page if you ask me.

Well, I remember him having existed, but I don't remember Arneson himself.
And my point was simply that if Gary Gygax, who proved himself to be the better businessman, had favoured a different approach to systems, both Tekumel and D&D would have had a different system. If it had been Marc Miller instead, Tekumel would have been heavily career-based.
Whether such a change would have impacted D&D's popularity is up for speculation. Tekumel would have been about as popular as it is now, I'd think.


I wonder why. Even in Rome freed slaves were considered clients.

Re the page count, back in those days 100 pages of book was considered excessive.

Gary, according to himself, was a terrible businessman; he was simply much better at selling himself and his product.

And I do agree about the influences on Phil, by the way.

Slavery on Tekumel is viewed very differently then it is now or in Ancient Rome. It's very 'ignoble', and slaves are almost an 'untouchable' caste in society. You don't see them in all the occupations you'd have seen them in Rome, or anywhere nearly as well-treated. Slave-dealers are very socially unacceptable, too.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

I'm trying a reboot of an EPT game on RPoL. In the thread where I am reporting it's progress...
http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/11...jakalla-harbor
=== gronan of simmerya posted:
"Ohe, Chirine, ten Kaitars says the fat overseer tries to enslave the fishermen."

"No dice, Glorious General, that's a sucker bet."
===

This made me wonder how that would work out.
The characters are "Country Bumpkins" but are not "clanless" so, I was wondering if their clan would take exception to having their "out of town" members enslaved.
=

Well, the overseer might very well try it, if he thinks that the clan hasn't got the power or influence to stop him, but the clan will react very badly when they find out that the 'country cousins' have gotten kidnapped. If the clan itself doesn't have the ability to rescue them, they will call on their network of connections and favors with more powerful clans to get their help. This, in turn, may mean that player-character's get hired to form a rescue party, and turned loose on the overseer. The overseer's clan would get about a dozen heartbeats formal notice of impending action before the rescue party hit, and the clan doing the rescue would have made sure to inform the Imperium about what they planned and gotten a 'permit' for the rescue. More influence and favors at work here, of course.

Which might result in the city guards standing around and watching - keeping the curious crowd of spectators out of the way - while the PCs did their thing. "You missed a spot, there, Noble Lord." "Why, thank you (tipping the guard a coin), you're right!" Kicks the overseer in the ribs. "Much better, there, Noble Lord." Do the paperwork, and line up your support, and the guards will cover for you. Did this kind of thing a few times in my career, having to rescue a few people once in a while...

Lots of adventure potential, here!

Oh, I somehow thought those in the boat were Southern barbarians.

Yeah, even a low status clan would make unholy hell if you tried to enslave a Tsolyani citizen by main force rather than legally.

"Dibs on the overseer's sandals" says a heavily accented voice from the third boat down the line.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

My perception is that people don't read books, any more; if it ain't on the telly or the 'net, it ain't.

Outside of people in school during the current brief historical blip of mandatory education, most people never did read books.

Re: Roman slavery wasn't untouchable status exactly, but being enslaved was a big loss of social status for people in the Greco Roman world, especially for a Roman citizen. Lots of inhabitants weren't citizens though. And Rome allowed for manumission, slaves earning money, and for social mobility based on wealth so it was possible for some slaves to leave their status.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yep; I don;t think the player - Gary Rudolph - ever really 'got' why the slaves didn't love and adore him. Phil had ample historical precedent to back himself up, though...

He ( Gary Rudolph ) was great at essentially missing the concept of the game. IN my D&D world, he decided that since XP came from gold, investing in caravans and sea voyages would make him a more powerful wizard.

I don't think he expected to level up to second-level merchant.

Also, it's a game about adventuring and gaining power; it seems like he wanted both in Ram's Horn and Tekumel to skip the adventuring and just gain power.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

This discussion with chirine ba kal pointed out that even as "Southern barbarians" they have clan associations.
Maybe I'm completely confused? That is why I'm asking these questions here (and pleased the answers have been Sword & Planet oriented.)

I'm assuming that "Emerald Fishers" are a clan of those that seek out and retrieve valuable things for patrons.
That there would be at least a small group of them somewhere in the boats outside of Jakalla?
=

I don't think you're confused - what we're running into is a matter of nuance, more then anything else.

if your fishermen are native Tsolyani, then they are going to be part of a clan and registered as Imperial citizens for tax purposes. They can't be casually enslaved; they have to be sentenced by a court, and the clan will normally try very hard to prevent that from happening.

If your fishermen are the proverbial 'Southern barbarians' (and it should be mentioned that the Glorious General was one of these - and see where he's managed to get to! - so he's got some perspective, here), then they will have connections to a local clan of some sort - see also my example of Cousin Woofel, their local clan-cousin. Woofel will still be one of their fellow clan-members 'from the old country', but he may also may have - probably will have, actually - gotten himself into one of the local clans and gotten his citizenship papers.

The new immigrants will not have their papers, unless somebody has a lot of money, so they have much less in the way of legal protections; if they were enslaved by somebody - and I can think of several people who's try this on them - they would have to get word to Cousin Woofel; he, in turn, would let his local contacts know what's happened to his kinfolk, and they, in turn, would send a little 'delegation' down to the docks to 'negotiate' the fishermen's release from bondage. My guess is that they would stop by the overseer's clan house to register their unhappiness with the situation, and then it would be a foot race to see who got to the overseer first. Woofel and his clan to simply stage a rescue and a thrashing, or the overseer's clan to stage a thrashing and a rescue.

Either way, the overly clever / greedy overseer is in for a rough time, and will likely have to pay shamtla to the fishermen.

Yes, you would find Emerald Fishers on the waterfront. Keep in mind that in Jakalla, 'Emerald' being used in a clan name usually denotes a strong Dlamelish preference in the clan; The Emerald Lady is Jakalla's patron deity.

I'd not be surprised if that have a nice side business in the lost-and-found trade, either. Due to the large amounts of water traffic on the river, people are always losing things. You might also want to note that they may be in some conflict with a guy by the name of Jajal, who's the Harbor Master in Jakalla and has been trying to dredge the harbor for whatever treasure he can find. This is considered an affront to the traditional way of doing things, where the fisher clans find the stuff and pay the Harbor Master a percentage.

Harchar is also on the side of the fisher clans, and is not find of Jajal and manages to find ways to make him look bad in high society - Jajal has pretensions to class, but is considered pretty 'new rich' by all the right sort of folks.

Does any of this help? Phil really loved to set things up so as to give himself lots of opportunities for staging adventures, so if you 'err on the side of...' in this direction, you really can't go wrong in my experience with him.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes, you would find Emerald Fishers on the waterfront. Keep in mind that in Jakalla, 'Emerald' being used in a clan name usually denotes a strong Dlamelish preference in the clan; The Emerald Lady is Jakalla's patron deity.

I either didn't know that about the clan name or I forgot it. That's the kind of setting element I really like.