Topic: Dawn of Worlds: Tabula Rasa

[Krakow Sam]

Ok, I've amended the houserules. A race now gets either a square of territory OR a free city on creation.

[PatMan33]

That seems like a good compromise since it's a turn-based game and lacks the fluidity of a real-time game.

[Krakow Sam]

Ok guys its been two days since the new turn post went up and only two of us have taken our turns. Could we maybe pick up the pace?

The longer you all individually take to make your turns the more everyone gets bored with the game and the more likely it will just fizzle out without anything cool happening.

[Josasa]

Sorry about that. Consider my turned skip this time. Too much stuff is coming up for me to take a turn.

[emmet]

I'm dropping out. April fools. That was a good one.

I'll take my turn in a bit.

[emmet]

THE MEMAI
PHYSIOLOGY
The Memai, also known as Mockingmen or Mimeoforms, are a subrace of the Korpi. They stand at an average height of 8 feet, with jet black skin and white eyes. They have perpetual hunchbacks and a visibly protruding spine. Their arms reach to almost their toes.

The Memai are not born, they do not reproduce, they do not have genders, and they do not die. It makes more sense to think of them as a special type of spirit rather than as a true race. What's interesting about the Memai is their innate, psychic, subconscious ability to copy the traits of other beings. A Memai living among any other race will, over a period of months, learn their language, their culture, their idiosyncrasies, without even trying. Over a period of years, it will even begin to resemble them, until eventually it is for all intents and purposes a member of their species. This transition also applies in reverse to other races living amongst them. The transformation is, unsurprisingly, known to some as a means to immortality, although it's not without its caveats.

Memai do not retain their memories for very long - most can only remember about 20 years into the past. In particular, any race will very quickly lose any memory of their former life after a transition. This is the only way Memai can be "born" - by other individuals joining them.

Memai eat and drink whatever their hosts eat and drink. At home, they drink only the water of the sea in which they live.

PSYCHOLOGY
The Memai are true neutral. They very rarely go out of their way to do much of anything. It is somewhat apparent that Memai enjoy the addition of new members, but the extent of this is not well known. However they are clearly very welcoming.

It is rare, but not unheard of, for a Memai to voluntarily leave its home to wander the continent. These lost souls gravitate towards large settlements where they can blend in and acquire a normal life. What's far more common is for Memai to be taken, either by force or simply by request. They are extremely submissive and eager to please.

At home, Memai live in small lazily constructed towns which are clearly bad copies cities long past, presumably based on deeply buried memories of past lives.

HABITAT
The Memai live under the waters of the Korpi's sacred sea. They walk about and breathe in this water as if it were air. Any other race will drown as normal, but the Memai live live in apparently terrestrial towns on the seabed. Other races may enter this water if explicitly given permission, and this is often considered the first step of a willful transition. This habitat has given the Memai a false reputation as "swamp monsters" - beings who lurk in shallow water, waiting to pull unsuspecting children down into the murky depths.

CULTURE
To other races, Memai are typically seen as a sign of ill fortune. Unsurprising given their terrifying appearance. They are also perceived by some as symbols of purity, of asceticism, or of community with the divine. The most common place to find a Memai in the continent is in a secluded religious commune, or hidden behind locked doors in a temple.

The Memai have a special relationship with the Korpi. A Korpi funeral takes place before death. The dying Korpi's life is celebrated in a great party on the shore of their sea. At dusk, when the Godheart swells and beats, a single Memai rises from the waves to take the Korpi's hand, and escorts them to join their transformed ancestors.

[Inkling]

It's turned into a busy week.  Skip my turn if I'm the last one.

[martyk]

Something that crossed my mind that I think we should address now that we've got races running into eachother.  How are we handling language and communication between species?

[Krakow Sam]

Whatever makes sense?

Subraces will presumably share languages with their parent race but some races, like the schemata don't really have language at all and would probably find it near impossible to communicate with others.

[emmet]

Yeah it wouldn't make sense if every encounter happened the same way.

The point of me making a "plain" race, the Korpi, was to use them as a sort of story medium. Obviously it's more late game as they have yet to meet anyone, but the point of me making a language (and I think Brandon's doing a script) was so it could act as a sort of lingua franca, or common language.

[Krakow Sam]

Oh Marty you sly dog 

Edit: Guys when numbering your turns can you do it by the actual turn number of the game, the total turns that have elapsed since the start? Its pretty irrelevant how many turns you skipped and it will make things sort of confusing if anyone goes back and tries to make sense of everything (Mostly for the purposes or ARCS).

[Krakow Sam]

The Doxura

The doxura are an offshoot of the anura with an unusual life-cycle and incredible mental and physical power at the beginning and end of their life-cycle respectively.

Eggs
A short time after doxura eggs are fertilised they play host to a reincarnated doxura soul and become fully aware, not only of their present life, but also of their previous lifetimes, in the form of dreamlike recollections. The eggs perceive their surroundings by a mystical sixth sense, and are able to wield powerful magics. The most common magical effects employed by the eggs involve the psychic influence and control of other beings, especially the weak-witted adult doxura, though they are also able to read omens of the future, and to cast terrible curses onto their foes.

Hundreds of lifetimes of experience have made the eggs incredibly wise, but also ruthless and cruel, and they will not tolerate a threat to their position. When a clutch of eggs is laid by an adult a ruthless competition between them begins to magically dominate as many tadpoles, adults and even other eggs as possible and take control of the settlement they were born in. Losers must make do with what few minions they can manage. As powerful as the eggs are, without older doxura to serve them they have limited mobility and must expend great magical effort to survive in the wild. If given the chance an egg will not hesitate to destroy any other eggs which it feels might be threatening its hegemony. Usually one egg is dominant in a settlement, although sometimes enough of a balance of power emerges that a ruling council of eggs reach decisions by committee.

Eggs are usually content to guide their servants and slaves from the comfort and safety of a warm and well-defended pool, but when the need arises they travel in large water-filled palanquins carried by burly adult attendants. An egg incubates for a period between three and five years before hatching into a tadpole, towards the end of its lifetime an egg will begin to lose its memories of previous lives and its magical powers will begin to wane.

Tadpoles
The tadpoles of the doxura generally attend to mundane day to day planning, and make any tools and crafts the settlement might need, being quick-witted and possessing nimble fingers. Tadpoles do not retain any memories of their previous lives and gradually lose the memories of when they were eggs as they grow into dim-witted adults. What memories they do retain of their lives as eggs usually makes them sneaky and power-hungry, but in their diminished intermediate state they have little ability to act on their avaricious impulses and usually end up forming small alliances which compete amongst themselves and attempt to take whatever power the tyrannical eggs allow them. Tadpoles can breathe on land but must remain moist, and their preferred mode of transport outside of water is to be carried around by an adult attendant. Though they work hard making crafts, tadpoles can't stand brute labour, and will command adults to do brutish tasks like chopping wood or digging paddy-fields. Tadpoles take between 15 and 20 years to mature into adults.

Adults
Adult doxura are incredibly strong, but dull-witted and barely possessed of free will. They will often endure hardship or discomfort to carry out the orders of tadpoles or the psychic commands of eggs. Continuing the process of memory loss which afflicts doxura for their whole lives, the adults often barely even remember their own lives or identities, and are treated like interchangeable faceless minions by their younger masters. Every year a proportion of adults in a community will become sexually active, their throats turning bright red. They will take to any nearby bodies of water to mate and lay eggs, being almost immediately psychically enslaved as the clutch they just laid begins to fight amongst itself for dominance. Adults have a natural lifespan of 30 to 50 years before they succumb to old age, though some perish in accidents or are killed in inter-tribal warfare.

Settlements
Doxura settlements are always built near water sources. The water is filled with a complex tangle of structures made from clay and woven reeds, which the eggs and tadpoles inhabit. The land surrounding the water sources consists of paddy fields tended by adults under the supervision of tadpoles, and the crude, lumpen clay and wood shelters of the adults. Settlements are usually ringed by a wall of piled up earth or stones.

[Inkling]

I hate to do this, but there's a lot of writing required to properly burn through 24 points.  If I stay up any later I'm going to fall asleep at work in the morning.  I'll fill everything out tomorrow.

EDIT:  Well at least the post is now done, I'll work on the ARCS stuff and maybe throw in some explanatory lore in here at some point this week.

I tried to take the suggestion that tools be a bit more unusual.  In this case it's a word or thought that exists independently of anyone thinking it, sort of like Plato's Forms, maybe.  So this word took a physical form when it ended up in the world, and once someone had thought it that physical form faded away.  If there was no one left thinking that word, it might return to physical form?

[Josasa]

I have to say that I'm backing out of the game. I thought I would have more free time than I do, and this is before things are supposed to get busy...

[Inkling]

I hereby claim all of Josasa's points.  I brought him into this world, and I can take him out.