Captios — Roleplayer Guild

Tabula Rasa MkI, the Quintessential Geopolitical Experiment

This is a map. Isn’t it interesting?

Drab, maybe, I'd agree, but it has potential. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that it has immense potential. I’m biased, of course, because it is my map. That is to say, while I did not create this map (because the great flyingchicken did, and I am not flyingchicken), I own this iteration-to-be of this map. In other words, it’s mine and not yours.

Which is sad. All the other maps I’ve made were mine and only mine. That’s sad. I love sharing. I love maps. This map should be yours. It should be shared. But it’s not.

Not yet.

We can share this map. I can make this yours. You can make this yours. You can make part of this map yours.

But not right now. Right now, this map is nobody’s. Well, it’s mine, but when I say nobody’s, I mean that there’s nobody on it.

No nations, no peoples, no colored blobs, nothing.

Zip. Nada. Zero. Erased. Blank. Blank Slate. Tabula Rasa.

But now I’m going to say something. Let there be people on this map. People everywhere. But still no nations. Still no civilizations in the most primitive sense of the term. But that will change in due time.

Speaking of time, this map needs a time. Let’s give it a time. A map is no good without a setting, a time and place. If I were me, I’d call it a map of our world, 4000 BCE. If I were a tiny speck of a human on this map, I wouldn’t call the date anything, because I would have no preconception of time.

But we have a time, so that’s good. Now for the place.

Here’s the same map, but not the same map. As you can see, there are areas of the map that are coloured in. If you can’t see that, there are areas of the map that are coloured in. Three of them. One in what I would call the Middle East, one in what I would call the Indus River Valley, and one in what I would call China. But I want to discourage calling these places these names. The people there obviously don’t call these places the same things.

So what do those very people call these places? That’s up to you. But for now, let’s call them, from west to east respectively, Cradle West, Cradle Centre, and Cradle East.

Isn't that nice?

I want you to build these cradles up from the ground, up from this blank slate I’ve provided. I want you to create beautiful cultures, magnificent nations, and a stunning narrative. You can do this. I can too, but it's more fun if we all do it together.

How can you participate? Right. Here's something to fill out. Think carefully. Write carefully. Imagine carefully. Not really the last one, actually. Let your imagination run free. But do fill it out with care and love:

Culture Template said Culture Name: Self-explanatory; Culture name, Cradle, Map of general culture location
Mythos: Proto-religion, I want to know how your culture originated, how it sees its people and its world around it, what kind of rituals and beliefs pervade its everyday existence. [400 words min]
Basic History: Give me a backstory to your peoples. Give me the transition from their mythos to their tangible, documentable history, give me the names of your culture’s greatest rulers, its grandest cities, its most magnificent victories. [600 words min]
Material Culture: Architecture, dress, culinary culture, art, symbolism, the glorious and delicious flavour that makes every culture unique. [300 words min]
Society: The social organization, class structure, subcultures, power and wealth localisation and disparity, give me all of it. [300 words min]
Geographic Nomenclature: What your culture calls the local geographic errata surrounding them. [100 words min]
Local Influences [Can be edited in regarding accepted or prospective neighbor cultures]: What does your culture call its neighbors? What kind of sociopolitical or linguistic influences do these neighbors have on your cultures. This really paves the way for some sweet collaboration, so pay special attention to this.

Now for the more bureaucratic style shenanigans:

Regarding Space:

Cradle West shall hold approximately 6-8 individual cultures.
Cradle Centre shall hold approximately 2-4 individual cultures.
Cradle East shall hold approximately 2-4 individual cultures.

Be considerate for your potential neighbors, and be mindful of the minute sizes of the very first polities on earth.

Regarding Language:

If you are in Cradle West, please use a Proto-Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic source for deriving your words, terms, and culture names. Some language isolates may be permitted.
In Cradle Centre, Dravidian or Proto-Indo-European derivatives are preferred.
In Cradle East, Sino-Tibetic derivatives are preferred.

Nonetheless, I don’t want anything in this world to sound precisely like what it would in our world. This is a new world, a blank slate, and having the Kingdom of China pop up would frankly be boring, not to mention the fact that it would be instantly rejected.

Regarding Time:

This NRP will operate, due to the grand timescale, with turns, demarcated by updates. The temporal length of a turn shall be determined the turn prior, and all posts made betwixt two turn updates will be considered to occur during the time determined by the interval of those two turn years.

Regarding Technology:

Every so often, when I deem the time to be proper, I shall PM a culture with a certain technology which will subsequently arise in their culture. It is entirely your jurisdiction what to do with this information. Whether you write on it or not, it will appear in the update immediately following the PM.

Conversely, if you have an idea, feel free to PM it to me, and I will decide whether or not it flies, and thus whether or not you may write on it in further detail.

Regarding Expansion:

I dictate it. You may suggest through posts in which direction your culture will expand, but in the end, I will exercise moderator fiat to prevent overly rapid extension.

Regarding Map Size:

Right click, open image in new tab, and you have a wonderfully large map.

Regarding Posting Procedures and Standards:

Upon having your application accepted, you may post immediately.

Posts do not have to be in chronological order, however they must respect the time frame allotted by the update. Double posting is discouraged, but excepting this, feel free to post as much and as often as you want.

Regarding Updates:

Updates do not have a set schedule, but expect them once approximately every two weeks.

Regarding Transience

None of your cultures will survive intact throughout the course of this NRP. That is a sad, but obvious fact. You are always free to submit a new application for a new area should you lose sufficient interest or should your culture be pleasantly annihilated.

Regarding Collaboration:

By all means do so. Such an NRP will turn so awfully boring if it's segregated merely among cultures. Messy spilling of civilizations' lifeblood and cultures are the most interesting part of history, after all.

Regarding Application Acceptance/Rejection:

Spots in cradles are not determined by first come first serve but rather by quality of your submission as determined by myself.

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