Night Magic in Thraya

It's called the Spell Corpus, even though Latin is not spoken on Tekumel. This week I converted 25 spells from Swords & Glory Vol 2 for use in Fate of Tekumel. The approach I took with the conversions was inspired by the Fate Freeport Companion, an implementation of Fate that enables the creation of discrete, specific magical spells. My focus in the last few days was on converting Tekumel's "universal" spells to Fate. Universal spells are the 25 most common spells that anyone in the Five Empires - regardless of temple - could be expected to learn.

My next step will be to convert Swords & Glory's "generic" spells: those specific spells shared by a group of temples with common thematic interests (e.g., both the temple of Vimuhla and the temple of Karakan have an interest on spells that wreak destruction on an enemy). The last step will be converting "temple" spells: those spells which are the proprietary secrets of one specific temple.    

Now of course with all these great spell conversions, we needed to do another Fate of Tekumel playtest. So we did one on Thursday night, set in the city of Thraya. Each of the PCs chose to create a sorcerer-priest so we could test the magic system. 

But who were the PCs? Well, Lord Máyu hiTunkesh of the Blue Shadow Clan is the Governor of Thraya. He's a Wuru worshiper in a city dedicated to Lord Belkhanu and the other Lords of Stability. His family has controlled the city for hundreds of years. And the clan's not getting any smaller: Lord Máyu has 510 children, 32 wives, and 251 concubines.

Our players decided to create the siblings of one of the Governor's high status concubines. The PCs had been summoned back to the clanhouse Governor's Palace for unknown reasons. But they soon learned that they had been summoned there because their mother had recently died.

Soon the PCs were in the midst of a murder investigation involving poisons derived from Underworld creatures, and following the trail of fungal bread crumbs that led to the ritual festivities being carried out by followers of Hru'u at a wealthy clanhouse in the city. Everyone had some spells to cast, and the finale was both... terrifying and out-of-this-world!

Literally: Phantasms, Terrorization, and The Labyrinth of Elongated Shadows all cast simultaneously at the group of Hru'u worshipers summoning a demon.

Because of some of my custom game aids, the joke name for this session was "Laminations of the Flame Princess."

We'll be continuing to playtest these magic rules at U-Con next week! 

The Grammar of Sunuz

There are four major published works for Tekumel that deal with magic:

• Mitlanyal, Vols. 1-2 - A series of essays describing Pavar's pantheon including the five Gods of Stability, the five Gods of Change, and their respective Cohorts and demons. Mitlanyal also includes information on the Planes, Tsolyani astrology and descriptions of specific spells used by the priests of the various gods.
• Swords & Glory, Vol. 2 - The ultimate simulationist spell-list for magic in Tekumel. This is the most comprehensive spell corpus for modern Tsolyanu.
• The Book of Ebon Bindings - Tekumel's notorious book of demonology; since demons come from elsewhere and must be summoned, this book also discusses magic and the Planes.
• The Tongue of Those Who Journey Beyond: Sunuz (also known as The Grammar of Sunuz) - This text describes what is perhaps the oldest language still spoken on Tekumel: Sunuz, the language of the worshipers of the Pariah Deities. The very script of this language (which includes letters and numbers) is magical, and an understanding of this language and its script still influences magical practice on Tekumel today.      

I've read most of the Mitlanyal, and this weekend I read The Grammar of Sunuz. The Grammar sheds light on many aspects of magic on Tekumel. The text begins strangely enough with an essay on scrying. Its core argument bears a family resemblance to Mao's 1963 essay "Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?" in the sense that it attempts to outline different sources of knowledge. It's an odd introduction, but its placement is important since Sunuz is the language used by worshipers of the three Pariah Deities: She Who is Not To be Named (the Goddess of the Pale Bone), the One Who Is, and the One Other. 

Whereas Tekumel's gods are manifest and imminent, the Pariah Deities dwell in the Planes Beyond. They seek to consume this and other Planes. In this sense their interests and orientations are quite alien to those of the deities of Tekumel, who for the most part are involved in the affairs of this Plane and arguably "care" to greater and lesser degrees about what happens to their worshipers. None of this is the case with the Pariah Deities, however much they reward their worshipers. 

One has to look far (i.e., far into the Planes Beyond) in order to reach, see, and communicate with these inimical deities. The letters and numbers of the script of Sunuz give you the tools for doing that, as well as for protecting oneself from the Pariah Deities' deadly influence. Just ask the tattooed Livyani.

Fate of Tekumel Playtest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Durian_with_sharp_thorns.jpg

Saturday I ran a small playtest for Fate of Tekumel, this time using a variant of the character generation and magic rules from the Fate Freeport Companion. They worked pretty well!

I had two players, Marc and Rob, and Chirine ba Kal as an observer. Chirine wrote a blog post about the session here. Marc and Rob created characters who belong to the same clan and lineage. While they share the same heritage, they have embarked on very different walks of life.

Marc created Tlamal, a spy with experience in the Legions; his character is a master of disguise, and always has a knife handy when he needs it. Rob chose to play Niko, a priest of Qon. For this playtest, he selected six spells from Guardians of Order's Tekumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, and I translated them into Fate Freeport Companion's spell mechanics. This was really great, because I really wanted to start testing out spell mechanics.

As a brief aside, during the character generation process Chirine showed us Professor Barker's own illustration of a priest of Lord Qon, a Stability deity and the Cohort of Lord Belkhanu, Lord of the Excellent Dead. Qon's priests wear a beast mask; the mask has a long toothy snout and is similar in appearance to that of a jackal. Think Anubis and you have an idea where Professor Barker was coming from with the regalia of Lord Qon's priests.

The adventure had the two PCs heading from the city out to the countryside to collect past due rent from a set of villages that were part of the clan's fiefdom. The tribute had not been paid for several years, so our PCs hired some enforcers. They also hired a guide. This is particularly important since maps are not that common in Tsolyanu. Experience and local know-how really matter if you are trying to get somewhere.

After paying the requisite bribes to the Captain of a Sakbe road guard tower, they headed for the distant forest. On the other side of that small forest were the villages that owed them tribute. The PCs and their retinue made camp just before reaching the forest. They set a watch, but in the morning they discovered their cash box was missing. A number of the guards were also missing various shiny items.

The PCs could hear giggling from the edge of the Seyukh Forest. Our heroes realized that they had been victimized by one or more of the creatures known as Kuruku, "The Small Giggler"! Marc's character Tlamal gave chase with a few men-at-arms. They entered the forest, hot on the trail of the creatures. Soon they heard other, more chilling sounds: the whooping laughter of a pack of the spiny-backed Hyahyu'u beasts, who soon had them surrounded.

Tlamal parkoured up a tree; his troops tried to do the same, but lacked his athleticism. They settled for using their spears to hold back the Huahyu'u. A bit later Tlamal took a one-two action: he feinted and distracted a beast by dropping a spiky Durian-like fruit down near it, and then dispatched the distracted beast with a carefully hurled knife.

Seeing the battle from afar, priest Niko cast the spell Acceleration on himself and raced into the forest. His retainers struggled to catch up. After a few moments, Niko was on the scene, and cast Hands of Kra the Mighty, crushing the windpipe of another beast.  The third turned tail and ran.

***

I learned a few things from the playtest:

• Rob, who was new to Fate, got a handle on the system very quickly - although I completely forgot to introduce the concept of declarations
• Marc made use of the Succeed at a Cost rule - the first time ever that someone has in one of my Fate Core games
• Rob chose to take a shift of Mental Stress rather than spend FPs to cast his spells. That was a prudent expenditure and he was still very effective in the fight - even though he took a bunch of stress in the combat
• Marc underscored the importance of creating text boxes in the eventual published game to explain various aspects of Tsolyani culture. One quick example of this is the importance and ubiquity of discrete bribes to make things happen. The social game in Tekumel.
• The spells in T:EPT worked well enough, but we'll be going back to War of Wizards, and Swords & Glory, Vol. 2 before the next game. I want to try building some spells based on the descriptions in those two games.

Sourcebook: Hokun Trouble

Tekumel has no shortage of insects, arthropods, and intelligent bug races. Some are indigenous to to Tekumel; others are interlopers there, just as the humans are. The Hokun - "The Glass-Monsters" - are one of this latter type.

The Tekumel Bestiary says that the Hokun "resemble eight-foot-tall sculptures of cloudy green-grey glass." They have six limbs, the front two of which are used for manipulation of tools, while the middle set can be used for "heavy work, grasping, and balance." Their exoskeleton ranges from transparent to translucent. Many participate in a group-mind.

I've seen a couple of illustrations of the Hokun in Tekumel products; they look like a combination of a Grey alien and an ant. Sinister ant-taurs, perhaps. If you've seen ghost ants, you'll get the general idea. 

The Hokun inhabit Southern islands as well as areas of the Northern continent on the opposite side of the planet; I have read on the Blue Room archive that the Urunen of the far south are at war with some Hokun groups, while having friendly relations with others. Professor Barker also indicated that they are not particularly gifted with other-planar abilities, and have only maintained a little of the technology from their starfaring period.

Here's what the Tekumel Source Book tells us quite early on: 

• The Hokun were starfarers from the Markab star system
• During the catastrophic Time of Darkness, when Tekumel was cast into a pocket universe or Bethorm, "The translucent, insect-like Hokun pretended to cooperate with mankind for a time, warred with him, enslaved him, ruled him as gods, and were eventually defeated by him. Sulking and filled with hate, the Hokun retreated to their great island in the southern seas, and no man (or any other of his allies) dares now to land upon those shores."  

This is suggestive. They once ruled men as gods. According to The Tekumel Bestiary, they still hunt men for food in some places, while enslaving them and ruling them in others. The Bestiary says they "are perhaps the greatest threat to human hegemony over Tekumel."

It's easy to imagine ways that characters might stumble upon the Hokun in an adventure. While the Hokun are likely to be found only in very small numbers throughout the Five Empires, one might readily imagine them emerging from a tubecar station in a remote rural area of Tsolyanu (or another  of the Five Empires). 

The Hokun are living in long-forgotten ruins adjacent to a living village; they live off the meat-sacrifices of the human villagers who now worship them as gods. Perhaps the PCs were dispatched to this remote village by an absentee landlord in Jakalla. The landlord seeks to squeeze a bit more surplus out of their long-neglected peasants.

In Fate Core terms, you'd have a scenario issue something like this:

A remote village behind on tribute 

Possibly there'd also be the hidden aspect:

Tubecars bring trouble

The latter is almost a permanent aspect for tubecar systems on Tekumel.

Of course, the Hokun are also perfect for the kind of tubecar hexcrawl scenarios that Brett Slocum has run, such as the adventure "Where in Sarku's cold wormy hell are we?"  The PCs might emerge from a tubecar system almost anywhere on the planet. They might arrive in the middle of one of the Hokun states: perhaps one in which humans are hunted for food, or one where humans continue to worship the Hokun as gods.

Even more unsettling, the PCs might discover a symbiotic human-Hokun culture in which both species share a group mind. Maybe the Hokun have begun breeding experiments with humans, producing a number of specialized types - or strange genetic hybrids, such as humans with exoskeletons, humans with translucent skin, etc.

The possibilities seem endless.

The Sourcebook

One of the feature series we'll be running at Fate of Tekumel is called Sourcebook. Usually referred to by Tekumel fans simply as "The Sourcebook," its proper name is actually Swords & Glory Volume 1: Tekumel Source Book. At 135 pages of text, by contemporary standards the Sourcebook is a very lean presentation of a game setting. But the Sourcebook is still the most complete summary of Tekumel as a setting, and I am constantly discovering new things every time I open it.

In posts with the Label "Sourcebook", I will highlight some of my own discoveries and speculations about Tekumel, inspired by this source. We'll be reading it cover to cover, but posts may jump around a bit through the Sourcebook's content. Stay tuned for the first post which will be headed your way shortly.