Worldbuilding is hard when it feels like you’re trying to turn yourself inside out and create a whole world from what you know. Just to get me out of my own head I like to use Wikipedia’s random page function, and see if I can write my own version of what turns up. Today I got:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnapee_Brewery
It’s a brewhouse that spent some time as a net factory during prohibition. That makes me think about how laws affect businesses and real estate. For instance, in Orchalannon there is a law against the use of magic which has existed for several hundred years in order to suppress certain state secrets. Maybe there is a building that used to be a magical institution, which has now been repurposed…
Bartolo Mews
Once a country club for gentleman sorcerers, Bartolo was a genteel resort for a particular sort of leisurely scholarship. Though no formal schooling took place, it hosted the leading exponents of magical thought in the country during a time of expansion and wealth. It was unseemly to appear to seek riches or political power overtly, so these distinguished men and women affected the practice of magic as a hobby, though they did so at a professional level. The cellar was filled with unmarked potions, the stableyard hosted a rotating menagerie of wild chimerae, and the parlours were abuzz with smoke, brandy, and vituperous yet exacting theoretical debates.
When the Department of Occult Licensure came into effect following the Squash Plague of RP 124, Bartolo was decommissioned after so many of its patrons declined to seek licensure. Maerlyn D’Ambrosio knew that merely requiring an official application from such august personages would be too much for their dignity to bear, and the open study of magic largely went out of fashion in the years that followed.
The stables remained however, as some of the phasic abominations that lived there had certain abilities that made it impractical to force eviction; the stables would occasionally blink in and out of existence. Twice the landlord felt sure that the stables were gone for good after months and years of their absence, but both times proved catastrophic, resulting in the loss of a brewery and a net factory. Nowadays the stables are used as a sort of absentee oubliette, a long-term storage unit that is infrequently accessible. In vaults that were installed there during a ‘blink-in’, the crown has stored some of its gold reserves. Whenever Bartolo Mews is blinked in, it is guarded. When it is blinked out, long expiry treasury bills are sold against the value of the bullion within.
I had never thought of that, I’ll have to give it a shot after work, I’ll post my findings. Clever prompt generator for sure!
I especially like that you incorporated the brewery/net factory into the fantasy concept anyhow.
A question, as I have some similar areas in my world: after the DOL was started in Orchalannon, how were their rules applied to the magic using populace? While it is fairly easy (in a way) to govern the upper classes, were the common people harder to shut down? Or was it really only nobles that used magic in the first place?
The magic of commoners tends to be very practical and unremarkable stuff, and since they can’t afford rare theoretical texts or closely guarded magical energy sources (usually mined) their practice is mostly a rural affair. The most spectacular thing a village wise woman is likely to do is forge a pact with local nature spirits, or create a wildformed spell (costs XP to do, spell effects are random - see my post on one roll spells).
The other odd thing about the DOL is that its leader is a very strong precognitive, and can foresee with good detail any magic users who will “be a problem” - i.e. do anything high-profile enough to publicly stamp out.
Nobles still get awarded magic items for leal service to the crown, and have some leeway to practice if they insist (under license - think UK gun laws where basically only wealthy folks can afford to follow the rules for using a limited version of it). Common folk can get away with it if they are discreet - and even then, not always if it serves the purposes of the court sorceress.
I see. Damn high entry barriers just to have a little ease! Always cool to see some mined magic sources, one of my main magic sources is mines as well! Also, again with the politics involved in this world, so well enmeshed with the basic principles of the land.
Concerning the precognitive: is this consider magic, or something else entirely? Only makes sense they would be in charge of a government org dedicated to stamping out (unlicensed) magic use.
Magic isn’t illegal elsewhere, just in this country. There are great reasons that they don’t want the general populace to know how to dispel or detect illusions; many of the crown’s largest monuments and castles happen to be permanent solid-light illusions made by a secret holy order of sunlight priests… and I can give that secret away because nobody will believe you… Deep lore is where I like to go hard. Players will generally start out thinking they’re in a fairly bog standard DnD heartbreaker setting.
Maerlyn D’Ambrosio is a very direct feminine aspect of Merlin Ambrosius (written early on before scope creep set in and I didn’t feel the need to be properly original). Both are cambions (half human offspring of incubus), both are blessed/cursed with foresight, and both have entanglements with water fey who will eventually doom them. Maerlyn has the kind of intense precog powers that let her send party invites “hidden in dusty old books untouched for decades, falling from the sky or fluttering down through lit hearths, even arriving to captains at sea in the bellies of monsters”.
While not attending to the small affairs of a kingdom’s sovereign intrigues, she occupies herself with a cosmic game of cat and mouse with moon-dwelling demons who once sent a kingdom back in time to crash into itself. Why? Because if you’re a demon on the moon and zealous crusaders build a spaceship, you drop the hammer on them. Moon’s haunted…
If you like worldbuilding with tightly-knit sociomagical knock-on effects, check out my notes on thaumographic finance.
Wow, you’ve got a lot going on over at Kanka, I’m gonna be diving in deep. Very cool stuff you’ve been posting, look forward to reading more!
Megustalations. I’ve basically been hammering away at this world like it looked at me funny, for the past five or six years. Share some of yours too though! I’m just here to help where I may.