Tékumel Sourcebook Chiaroscuro

I just completed a read-through of Swords & Glory Volume 1: The Tékumel Sourcebook.  This reading spanned several years, from before my mom's passing through to breakfast this morning. I read intermittently, sometimes taking a break for several months. Quite a bit of the reading was done during travel - either by air, or as the dachshund-tending passenger on a road trip.

This is not the first time that I have read the Sourcebook, but it IS the first time I have read the entire Sourcebook.  I believe in the past I had read both volumes of the Sourcebook that saw print in the very readable Different Worlds imprint, and I know I read chunks of its original Gamescience edition.

In fact, I was about to read the Sourcebook in its entirety when the binding on my Gamescience edition suddenly failed! We are very fortunate to have this book now available from DriveThru in both POD and PDF formats, with the wonderful, ever-so detailed index and glossary prepared by Krista Donnelly. They are quite remarkable, and improve the usability of the product quite significantly.

As I noted above, I had previously read parts of the Gamescience edition, as well as the Different Worlds editions cover-to-cover. But the last third or so of the Sourcebook was never published in the Different Worlds edition. This was the first time I had read the final Sourcebook sections on arms and armor, military units, assassins' weapons and the assassins' clans, and the arts and sciences. There is a LOT of great content packed into the last third of the Sourcebook; that's for sure!

A friend once said that Tékumel is the only world he needs for gaming, and there is a lot of truth to that.

So what's next? I really need to read Swords & Glory Vol. 2. But I need to wait until I have a sturdy POD edition of that in-hand. In the meantime, I am going to read this one cover to cover, as preparation for running Empire of the Petal Throne at Con of the North in February. I have played
EPT several times, and I have certainly used it as a reference for Fate of Tékumel, but this will be my first time running it!

Happy Sourcebook Day!

One of the challenges with diabetes and astigmatism is that you can't always tell from a PDF whether text and images are sharp. My hard copy of the republication of the Tekumel Source Book arrived today, and I am happy to report that The Tekumel Foundation's new edition reproduces the sharp, small text of the original. It is very readable. 

The original edition of the Sourcebook came out in 1983, the year I graduated from College. It is the most important text for understanding the world of Tekumel. It is a source of constant inspiration for me. In fact, as I travelled this summer, I marked up a spiral bound photocopy of the Sourcebook with all sorts of notes about possible adventure ideas I might run. Even a couple of sentences in the Sourcebook can plant those seeds; Professor Barker's writing is just that good.

In a few weeks, I will be running one of those adventures at U-Con in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Just scroll down in the Tekumel Track for the Sunday, 9 AM event!

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.