Wardian

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

So is there more to this microscope thing than just creating a timeline? Also, I can help with the chronology.

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

I was actually already looking at the history of this world as progressing from submission to domination of the ruse, so its a great fit. I suggest the startpoint is specifically the birth of the first cities.

I also am game for using microscope rules. There are a few things I don't like about our existing content, mainly that some of it is disconnected from everything else and it lacks thematic unity. I don't think we should just wipe it all away though. Maybe one thing we can do is require that people go heavy on the whimsical/folklore aspect of their contributions going forward?

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

I wrote an article on the Null Empire since it is the most central topic and it looks like the person who originally came up with the idea isn't ever going to post it.

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

The Null Empire

The first and largest empire to have ever existed, the Null empire stretched from the shores of the Central Ocean to the craggy cliffs of the Great Rift. Yet for such a large empire, very little is known about it, including even its name. Scholars choose to call it the Null Empire to distinguish it from the First, Restored, Second, and Third Empires. For a long time the Null Empire was considered nothing more than a myth invented by the Restored Empire to lend legitimacy to its claims outside its de facto borders.

According to the histories of the Restored Empire, the Null empire was the direct descendant of Elohim, the First City founded by the creator god Del. The city made the transition to an empire when it was decided to spread the light of civilization across all the world. But civilization also changed the way people thought, and what they believed. The harsh realities of city life gave birth to legions of malevolent spirits, and nascent gods tore the empire asunder as they battled for divine hegemony. To save civilization, the last followers of Del gathered in the heart of the First City and invoked their god, who then translated them and the city into the realm of the gods where it could be preserved for all time.

Dreams of restoring the empire to its former glory have burned brightly ever since. And in none did it burn brighter than in Darian the Saviour, one of the acolytes of Del who was translated along with the city. He stole knowledge of the ways of the gods and ruse from Del, and returned with it to the world of the living where he shared it with the desperate survivors of the remaining cities. They used this knowledge to construct a network of towers that repelled the Ruse and saved civilization. The method for creating these towers was soon lost, and many were destroyed by the barkolupus swarms. But a select few still stand to this day, their workings baffling even the most learned scholars. The influence of the towers was nevertheless longlasting, with most of the successor states in the core regions of the Null Empire (the lands between the hills of Cansma and the Central Ocean) harboring a deep suspicion of gods and a fear of even the most benign ruse.

While the cities were saved, the empire was not. Without the First City no contender could claim sovereignty over the others. What followed were several centuries of independent city-states and ever-shifting small kingdoms, until the establishment of the First Empire. But no empire since can lay claim to as vast a territory as that of the original Null empire.

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

The Pocket Principalities of the Three Rivers

At the South end of Cansma, where the famous rolling hills grow into precipitous peaks nestled between porcupine tree forests, one will find a most peculiar political arrangement. The region, once a small border province of the Null Empire, now houses no less than a thousand independent principalities. In the typical river town of Ochamire, every lane is under the domain of a separate prince. Even out in the mountainous backwoods, a single village often has more than one sovereign.

This situation came about when Timitubo the Just, the nineteenth son of the lecherous King Phrasgeri of the Three Rivers, raised an army of peasants and merchants fed up with the long, bloody war of succession between King Phrasgeri's first four sons. Timitubo's mob routed his brothers' forces across several consecutive decisive battles. Yet his brothers still held sway over the hill fortresses. Rather than suffer through years of prolonged sieges to reunify the kingdom, the wise Timitubo decreed that the kingdom should be divided up equally among all of King Phrasgeri's heirs, both male and female. A special court system, whose judges would be appointed jointly by the new principalities and the region's council of merchants, was established to handle disputes between the new principalities but had no power to govern any territory of their own. In addition, every eight years all of the judges would come together and hold an assembly where the entire region would be redistricted equally between all living and capable descendants of King Phrasgeri, thus avoiding any need at all for further wars of succession.

The system worked well enough for many decades, but eventually one of the judges managed to amass enough power to proclaim herself the High Judge of the Three Rivers. Her dictatorial Krytocracy saw the first expansion of the lands of the Three Rivers since the days of King Phrasgeri's grandfather, but it also saw widespread, punitive enforcement of every law on the books. Fifty-three persons were hanged for not properly trimming their hedges, one hundred and fifty-two had an ear cut off for exceeding the noise limits at night, and ninety persons were fined a year's wages for leaving unsightly wheelbarrows in front of their homes. Her reign of terror only ended when an all-star team of lawyers successfully sued for her to be impeached on some obscure legal technicality. After this unpleasant incident, changes were made to the system to further limit the power of the judges. But the concept of a high law that transcended the individual principalities remained, albeit in greatly limited ways.

Some time after the High Judge's downfall, the same all-star team of lawyers found a loophole in the high law that allowed–no, required–each of the principalities to be constantly at war with at least one other kingdom in order to assert their independence. A few ambitious pocket princes used this as an excuse to invade their neighbors across the street. The battles that followed were a thing of legend: Prince Arwin even managed to raise an army of seventy-eight men-at-arms! Houses were burned, taverns ransacked, and innocent civilians-turned-refugees forced to flee a dozen kingdoms away to the other side of town. However, these wars quickly fell out of favor when it was realized that the princes would always have to fight on the front lines and would lose any territorial gains once the assembly of judges met again. So the all-star team of lawyers was summoned to save the day yet again, this time by finding a ridiculously lax minimum set of actions that must be taken for a principality to be considered to be at war. Basically, challenging your rival prince to a daily drinking contest and reading a hurtful poem lambasting them for their perceived faults is enough to meet these requirements. But the occasional actual spat does still ensue.

Travelers to the Three Rivers are strongly advised to employ a lawyer-guide during their stay to avoid being immediately fined and/or imprisoned for some obscure violation of the law multiple times in one day across several dozen principalities.

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

I like the idea of not having a defined "present" time. My two posts each took place at different times. That said, there would still be different areas with different kinds of technologies and magic present at once, just like there is in the real world.

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

Added Hybris, God of Arrogance and Proving Others Wrong to the characters tab.

I connected it to the god Del and the Barkolopus. I am envisioning the Restored Empire to be more or less a restoration of the Null Empire, although that hasn't been written yet.

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

Hybris, God of Arrogance and Proving Others Wrong

Most gods kowtow to their believers. They may put on a scary face in public, but the fact is that the gods need followers to exist, whereas their followers generally have the much envied power of existing regardless of whether anyone believes in them or not. Among the pantheon, it is considered common wisdom that the best way to gain more followers is to do whatever your followers want, no matter how embarrassing. However, there are a select few gods that manage to exist despite being absolute jerks. Hybris was one of them. Such gods were much more common in ancient times, feeding off primal urges like love, fear, and hatred rather than belief like the later gods. Some even say that Del, the creator god, derived its power from a source other than belief. But even among this select group of gods, Hybris' story remains unique.

Hybris was created by atheist philosophers. The triumph of the Restored Empire's tactics, strategy, and good supply chain management over the powerful gods of the seven kingdoms sparked a rationalist renaissance. But not everyone liked it. Civil war broke out amid the academies and imperial bureaucracies. But, as it was a civil war, the fighting was limited to impassioned philosophical sophistry and purposefully misleading rhetoric. A favorite tactic of the rationalists was to posit the existence of an omnipotent god, and then show that this lead to logical contradictions. This was a dumb, invalid argument for many reasons, but most importantly because before this point nobody had ever even suggested the existence of an omnipotent god. The war grew more and more heated, with both sides continually throwing up the same exact arguments over and over again like a chant. A chant that summoned the god of omnipotence into existence.

Except, nobody actually believed in the god of omnipotence. What everyone on both sides of the debate passionately believed in was that they were right and the other side was wrong. And so the actual god that was created was not the god of omnipotence, but Hybris, god of Arrogance and Proving Others Wrong.

The appearance of this new god turned the civil war into a very uncivil, violent, and bloody war. Ordinarily the death of so many of a god's believers would reduce that god's powers. But Hybris, being the god of Arrogance, believed in its own superiority so much that it managed to sustain its power largely with its own thoughts. As an added bonus, this proved the majority of the nascent Ruse theorists completely wrong.

Free from the humdrum obligations of attending to a flock of needy followers, or even the primal gods' obligations of stirring up strong emotions, Hybris declared itself ruler of the cosmos. It tore up the grand capital of the newly Restored Empire and turned it into a massive throne. It rearranged the nearby mountains into a great wall around the throne, and created the central ocean to be the moat. The other gods, being extremely jealous of such power, joined with what remained of the Restored Empire's army for the greatest siege in history. For seven years, comets and lightning bolts rained down from the heavens even as earthquakes and volcanoes shook forth from below. Witches and wizards shot forth magical beams and fireballs. A swarm of the titanic centipede-like barkolopus even joined in the siege, attracted by the aetherial residues of the divine war. And even the rationalists and wizards put aside their differences to create a magic-powered cannon capable of firing a hundred ton rock, each shot creating its own miniature earthquake. This was all the more impressive considering cannons hadn't even been invented yet. In the end, though, it was not really force that brought down Hybris; It was an idiot.

The idiot's name has been most unjustly lost to history. But what we do know is that this idiot suggested that they give up fighting and start worshiping Hybris instead. Then Hybris would have a large flock of followers just like any other god and would stop being so difficult. The idiot was immediately killed for saying such a thing, but the god of wisdom happened to overhear the conversation and realized just how good of an idea it actually was. When the siege stopped, Hybris came out to investigate, only to be met with a throng of cheering worshipers. At this point, Hybris finally felt that special connection that had been missing since its creation. And then immediately began arguing with its new followers about the proper way to worship it. At this moment, seventy-eight gods of war and other associated concepts sprang out from hiding and totally beat the shit out of Hybris.

Arrogance and the desire to prove others wrong being among the most popular personal qualities, it is widely assumed that Hybris still exists in some fashion although there have been no verifiable sightings since then. Its fortress of geological proportions certainly still remains, located in the eastern reaches of the hills of Cansma, where the mighty barkolopus continue to siege it in vain. Perhaps, as many believe, the god of arrogance lies imprisoned behind those impenetrable walls. Fears that philosophical bickering may awaken Hybris and start another devastating war have prompted no less than thirteen kingdoms to sign the Philosophical Nonproliferation Treaty and have made many philosophers consider switching to a less controversial field such as necromancy to avoid persecution.

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

Edited Darian Dangerfinger to include a gutterfolk sighting. :3

YOWL: a worldbuild collaboration

The Expedition of Darian Dangerfinger

"Roarank Ankar, Khazi of the lands of honey, descendant of Earth Mother Sinnoar, dedicate my glorious victory over the Krull to the Mother. Three hundred and forty-three sphinxwood spears, forty-nine newly made widows, and seven bound Krull were here sacrificed to the Mother on the third night of the Twilight Lord's Hunt, thirty-three years after the Bubbling."

These words, etched into a toppled granite stele using a long forgotten script, are the only memories of Roarank Ankar and the Earth Mother that live on. But who, or perhaps even what, they were is a question that occupies many minds. For in these lands, Death wears a mask called the Krull. They do not march across the land in a great show of force, nor have they any imposing fortresses. Yet no army would dare challenge them. The Krull are the terrors that arise when shadows walk on their own accord. They are the whispers you hear when no one is around, and they are the unnerving silence before a predator swoops in for the kill. Before the recent discovery and subsequent translation of the pillar, no one had even believed it possible to harm them. But now, from the Dead Horse Bog up to the Black Cap Hill, hope shined brightly into even the most boarded-up bunker hovel.

Darian Dangerfinger, a dirty little man who made a fortune foraging the deadlands for rare magical mushrooms (but mostly less rare mushrooms that he could fool people into buying for exorbitant prices), was seated atop a grand stallion that made him seem even more diminutive than usual. Alongside him were a small detachment of the Red Flag Mercenary Company who, despite the name, were actually nothing more than a band of unglorified bandits with decently sized bounties on their heads. Behind them was a ragtag band of self-styled adventurers Darian had coaxed into tagging along at bargain prices with vague promises of glory and questing. He snorted. Those fools would surely be dead before nightfall. Taking the rear was a large caravan of laborers and supplies.

Although Darian had done well by the mushroom trade, the reward for finding a single stele with clues about how to stop the Krull would be enough for him to retire to a palace. That is, assuming he was the first to find it. And made it back alive.

Hiding his worries with an outward show of bravado, the little man signaled the beginning of the expedition by lifting his grand plumed hat as high above his head as his short arms could reach. But instead of being answered by the thud of marching feet and overeager adventurers' squeals, he heard only a spontaneous chorus of laughter. Darian looked around, both puzzled and enraged by the response. He angrily put his hat back on... which is when he realized why they were laughing.

"After that thief!"

A little gutterfolk with a nice new hat and a toothy grin could be seen skipping off into the bushes. When they finally caught up with the critter half an hour later, it was nothing more than a lacerated, bloated corpse with gouged out eyes. An ominous reminder of the lethal enemy they faced.

Fortunately, the hat was still in perfect condition.