In the Necromancer Empire, which calls itself the Caliphate of Azathan, there is freedom of worship.
The Faithful receive flour when they attend services. Fifty cups of flour. More than enough for a person to live for a week.
Anyone may join the services; to be a citizen is to participate in service. The services are what gives the clerics their power over the undead.
Most untrained labor is done by lifeless undead. Wizards and clerics and others strive to create new types of undead, whether that is to farmer or mine salt or clean the streets. Lifeless are owned by the church, rent-able to private citizens to use.
Towns will usually center around a town, with a priest. These are government centers, flour silos, and religious centers. Priests are elected by their community, and priests elect both members of parliament and local govenors.
Ask question, and I shall answer them. World building is sometimes fun.
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What currency are the lifeless rent-able in? Flour?
ReplyDeleteDoes this society realize they are idealic because it relies on slave labor?
ReplyDeleteWhose dead are used? Are citizens exempt from having their corpses raised? Symbolically, since the undead are slave labor I would expect the elite to find find ways to avoid being enslaved, true? What animates the corpses? Souls? Who's? If it's instead raw magic, can other things be animated? Are corpses used only because it's convenient to have already articulated bodies shaped to use existing tools rather than having to make them (constructs)?. Are there segments of society that refuse to use animated corpses and so insist on only constructs? What superstitions / traditions have developed around meeting the corpse of a loved one?
ReplyDeleteGreat questions! As a note, i want the caliphate to be objectionable and to raise questions about our own society, without being so objectionable as to be the bad guys. In particular, I'm playing one of two PCs from the caliphate. A good aligned wizard.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch Sort of! The currency is backed by zombie labor. The church keeps track of what it owes and what is owed to it, like churches always have. You can use anything to rent zombies, and exchange rates are complicated.
David Rothfeder slaves? Where? I say this a little sarcastically, but I mean: Who do you think are slaves?
Ralph Mazza Excellent questions! Hard ones, too.
The last duty of a citizen is to become raised. Whether that is as regular lifeless or something cooler, yes, has to do with class and other issues. For example: members of the House of Lords are reserected as talking skulls or other cool-ass items. This means the caliphate has the Ancient Masters of Necromancy, hanging out and giving suggestions.
People are used for reasons of religion: the First Cleric declared it apostate to make lifeless from other creatures. Wizards sometimes do it, but the Paladins deal with them. The paladins are scary. It is also aopstate to bind both the spirit and the body into one creature; liches and vampires are right out.
There probably are segments of society who do not use lifeless labor, but they still benefit from the roads, baths, and toilets. The roads are paved by the lifeless, water pumped by them, and remove the waste.
Magic animates them, not souls. The mainstay of the magic -- the clerical rather than arcane -- is generated by the actions of the faithful at church.
The questions of slaves is a hard one: are the lifeless slaves? Are t-shirts made by slaves? Are computers slaves? How about shovels?
ReplyDeleteThe lifeless look like people, and use bodies where people used to be in. But, there's nobody home. Is that a slave?
Follow-up: To what extent can people successfully boot-strap their basic income of flour into something more? I am thinking of the possibility of renting zombie labor for a measure of flour, in order to create something that society consistently values at more than one measure of flour, but maybe that's bourgeois of me.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch With a single day a week of easy labor providing sufficient flour, there's enough time and attention remaining to do other things. Whether that's doing nothing (hooray!), joining a guild, or entrepreneurship, you can do it without concern for bankrupcy.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Okay, so what form does entrepreneurship take?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch I'm not sure I understand the question! Do you mean what does an entrepreneur create, or how do you get the wealth to start a business?
ReplyDeleteA little of both ... like, how do you act as an entrepreneur with only the basic income? Which, in turn, would help build the wealth that you can leverage to expand your business.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch one idea: go to church more often. Or, take out a loan. Either from the church or rich people.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Would it be fair to say "The basic income can be applied to attending to your basic needs, but because of the structure of the economy it is impossible for somebody to take advantage of the basic income to rise in social station"?
ReplyDeleteEDIT: Social/economic. Often tied together, but not necessarily.
Tony Lower-Basch I think so, yes. The Flour isn';t enough in itself to change your circumstances.
ReplyDeleteWell basically slavery works under the assumption that the labor used is somehow less than those benifitting. Domesticated animal labor is a form of slavery. At the same time, slavery can be benifical to a slave. A horse receives food, care, and security it would not in the wild. It still doesn't have a choice in the matter, it is broken, trained, caged, and denied choice, even of when to live or die. Despite this, most horses appear happy with the arrangement so long as they have a benevolent owner.
ReplyDeleteThis of course sounds odd with the way we think of slavery because our culture still bears the mark of chatel slavery, which was flat out an atrocity.
So yeah, the undead are slaves in this society. Are they on the level of automated factories, animal labor, or the victims of a depraved system, that's up to you, but whether the citizens realize they are profiting heavily off the work of others is a cool question about the citizens.
David Rothfeder For there to be a slave, there needs to be someone who is the slave. Right?
ReplyDeleteThat is, shovels aren't slaves. Right?
What are the church's teachings (if any) about the afterlife of the soul?
ReplyDeleteDepends on how you view people versus objects. We can argue that a shovel is a thing. It doesn't live and it doesn't have feelings. It won't care if it's used or not used. Seems reasonable that if you own the shovel you can use it however you like.
ReplyDeleteLet's try this statement again replacing the word shovel with Dan Watson.
We can argue that a Dan Watson. is a thing. It doesn't live and it doesn't have feelings. It won't care if it's used or not used. Seems reasonable that if you own the Dan Watson. you can use it however you like.
All the sudden it sounds pretty monstrous because we assumed that a person is not one. It makes it likely that if Dan tries to speak out he will be ignored because society knows objects don't talk. We make assumptions as to what levels of sentience things have, but can we really prove a thing isn't sentient in a way we don't understand? Are people willing to consider the possibility of something we think to be an object is actually a person?
Tony Lower-Basch While I want the religion to be more about participating in life rather than seeking a positive afterlife, wizards and clerics can speak to the spirits of the deceased.
ReplyDeleteWhich gets weird; you could have a discussion with your long-gone grand mother about things were like, while the lifeless made from her body helps with the dishes.
So, the clerics of the caliphate know what happens when you die. They can have chats with the departed.
David Rothfeder That's right, and the lifeless don't speak up. The lifeless don't have sufficient cognition to care about freedom.
ReplyDeleteThe philosophers of the church argue about this, for sure. And that debate remains alive.
And if I'm not mistaken they have explicit laws in place that say (for various reasons) "do not make a lifeless being that does have sufficient cognition to care about freedom," right?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch Damn right. Like, vampires and liches are verboten.
ReplyDeleteSo what games do the undead play when the living are not looking?
ReplyDeleteDavid Rothfeder When the living are not looking, the lifeless follow either their last given order, or whatever their standard order is. A cleaner cleans, a worker works. The pesky generalist ones are pesky, as they exhibit some degree of interpretation. Be careful about having them do any one thing.
ReplyDeleteSubbed for hella interest. Questions to come.
ReplyDeleteWilliam, can you give an example of somebody founding a fortune? What does it take?
ReplyDelete(If it's "inherit the fortune" then just knock that buck back a generation until somebody makes something that they didn't inherit)
Tony Lower-Basch Sure!
ReplyDeleteI'm not totally sure I understand the impetus; how does anyone generate a fortune? How did Caesar? How does the presence of a minimum basic impact that? There is free wealth that is not generated directly by the church.
The Bakers guild sells bread, and a variety of other things. They have invented a variety of new breads. These breads can maybe be patented, but can definitely be a trade secret. If nothing else, this can be kept secret within the guild. So, let's say the invention of brioche. Of adding egg to bread. Let's say it was named for the baker, whose name is Brioche.
Baker Brioche started by selling his brioche, and no one else could sell it. Brioche eventually teaches others, and makes enough money to buy a seat on the Bakers Council. With a seat on the Bakers Council, Brioche not only made money off brioche but also a small portion of all bread sold by the Bakers guild.
Does that answer the question? Or, is it a question of "Where does money come from?"
Gary Montgomery Any formed questions?
ReplyDeleteWilliam: I suspect you are vastly underestimating the impact of rent-taking by those who connected laborers with markets, particularly in this sort of medieval economy. You've made it pretty clear that the church has a monopoly on that particular sort of rent-taking ... there is no way to buy labor (i.e. rent zombies) from the church and profit off of that labor.
ReplyDeleteSo where the heck does profit come from? Intellectual property rights on a special sort of Brioche does not convince me. Is the Baker's Guild simply an organization that takes grain (a post-scarcity good in this setting), converts it to bread using rented labor, and then somehow convinces people to buy that bread for more than the (commodity) cost of the labor involved?
Did not mean to imply that you cannot make money from renting lifeless. You assuredly can, if you use them in a clever way.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, lifeless can't make brioche. Or most breads. This is too complicated.
For example: The person who made the mill stone, powered by a lifeless pushing? That dude made a crap load of cash, because he made the process of creating flour cheaper and better.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying "The person who made the idea of the mill-stone" or "The person who made this individual mill-stone, right here"?
ReplyDeleteBoth.
ReplyDeleteThat is: the original miller figured out an improved mill. Miller then built a new mill, which did not need to be on the river. It could be anywhere. This radically changed how cheap it was to make flour.
ReplyDeleteMiller did a couple of really smart things:
1. Moved to the capital, and started creating Mills. Building the mills takes human labor, but turning the grindstone only takes lifeless.
2. Miller sold the wheat to the church at lower prices, because its the church.
3. Because Miller played ball, the Church made sure there were only a few unregistered Mills.
4. Outside of the capital, Miller licensed the technology to others who wanted to be Millers. Let's call them Millerson.
The Millersons made money. They licensed the technology and used it to make some wealth. They made a lot more money than they would have with just the MBI.
Miller made bank. Heck, he joined the House of Lords. After his death, the mills became a mostly state technology. This is why the state can give out so much flour; this was such an important technology that it became seen as a public good.
Millers skull and spirit are still there, providing advice. The Miller estate is one of the largest non-magical estates in the Caliphate.
Make any sense?
It makes a certain amount of sense. When you talk about licensing the technology ... how is that enforced?
ReplyDeleteMedieval guilds actually kept this stuff (even really basic stuff about, for instance, carpentry) as closely guarded secrets. Do the Millers keep armed guards to prevent spies from entering their mills?
Probably don't need to be armed, but guards, probably. And because it requires real judgement, that means human labor.
ReplyDeleteAnd, since the Church granted a monopoly, the Church can help enforce. Whether that's lawsuits (modern), or a squad of paladins (Medieval) depends on a bunch of factors.
Carpentry is another great example of a guild that requires human labor, rather than lifeless.
Several questions, ad few are sort of rhetorical:
ReplyDelete1) I get where David Rothfeder is going. If I say, "Clean my room."
A thing that has no mind, no memories would not be able to do that.
Zero cognition means zero compliance.
Am I to take it that magic is the "computer" that processes those requests? If so, could it not be said that the magic has a sort of consciousness, and may therefore be submitting to the will of human beings?
2) What general state are the lifeless in? Are they preserved in anyway, or just left to decay? Is the preservation alchemical, arcane, or both? Are there organisms, or magical entities that prey upon the lifeless in material, or ethereal ways?
3) It sounds like barter is the form of trade, and excess flour might be traded to others. The rate of services held seems important. If they pay 50 cups a day, and an adult is able to survive a full week on that, attending services on a daily basis, or even multiple times a day could end up yielding quite a surplus of flour. So, how often are services?
4) Are all people permitted to attend the services, and at the same rate? I am thinking it might be interesting if the church held services according to rank. So, clergy could get more, because there would be services held only for them, and even within their ranks, their might be stratification, thus more, or less access to services.
Also, there might be restrictions upon people who are non-local, from different genders, lineages, or ethnic traditions (and may not even speak the language). Is that so?
5) What happens if a person declines to become lifeless upon their death? What if they make that choice right off, and what happens if they have a deathbed conversion?
"I changed my mind guys, burn my body before they get their mitts on me."
6) How does the church view other religious beliefs, and organizations?
7) Priests are elected... are all clerics, and wizards priests as well?
Fascinating! Let's figure it out.
ReplyDelete1) So, its not zero cognition. There's got to be some, yes. Like horses or dogs or cats. Maybe chimps. But, an ability to process does not necessitate self-awareness. The magic may even keep the consciousness limited, though probably nobody knows that.
2) Preserved. The lifeless don't heal from noticeable injuries, and the role of surgeon becomes important to keep them viable. They'll last a while with no preservation, but will last longer with preservation fluid.
3) Sure, barter. But, then, the pound sterling was a pound of silver. Similarly, an hour of lifeless time is a particular price for a particular type of lifeless. There are a bunch of different types of services. The most obvious is the weekly service. Remember, the church wants people to go to service because the church gets something out of it; literal clerical power. So, go to as many as you want!
Services are ... maybe 4 hours? You need a priest to run them, and they probably put on 8 shows a week. At most. So, you could get 50* 8 = 400 cups of flour a week? Right. A person need ~28 a week to live, so that leaves quite a bit of surplus for rent, other family members, etc. You'd also be spending quite a lot of time doing nothing but going to church.
There are convents. With constant singing, with participants joining and leaving as needed.
4) That is interesting! Worse yet, the priests are probably paid a lot more per hour for the priest-only services. The ones where, say, the priests get communion (or whatever) from the bishops. It may not generate more divine energy, but they probably are paid more. Because classism is classism.
Or, even worse, don't pay more to rich people. That way, the rich have less incentive to go to services. Which could be fun. Maybe they pay more to higher members of the church, but not to high ranking members of the Guilds. That puts the Guilds at odds with the church, and gives the church a predictable and acceptable level of graft.
Genders and ethnic traditions I want to avoid. This is for Dungeon World, so keeping some things simplified is a positive. But, yeah, if you don't speak the Language of the Church, then you can't do the services.
So long as there is a need for additional people to do the Prayers, then the Church also teaches Language.
5) Apostate? Denying the Church? That sure sounds like a capital crime, and we'll get your body anyway. That is, if you are convicted of a capital crime, the church turns you into a lifeless. Let you redeem yourself through service.
6) The Church is remarkably tolerant. But, if you die within The Empire, the Church gets the body. There are laws that are the laws of the church and an expectation for non-church goers to follow these, but they are not horrible laws. Only a little bit of something like Sharia law, mostly related to how the dead are treated.
7) This gets complicated, and I'm about to run out of words for holy person. The following are all people who have gone to Divinity school:
a) Local leaders of parishes, who are elected or chosen by delegate democracy. Authority is based on number of followers.
b) Bureaucrats
c) Failed priests. They who have gone to divinity school, but who do not have a flock.
d) Delegates -- elected by the priests, make up a House of Commons
e) Bishops -- elected by the priests, govern locally.
f) Paladins, who also go to graduate school in kicking ass and seeking out apostates.
The following do not need to be priests:
g) Wizards
h) Members of the House of Lords
i) Ancient Masters
The original political power was with the Caliph. Then he died, and became the first Ancient Master. Then, the House of Lords ruled. Once it was discovered that worship gives powers to clerics, the House of Commons became more and more important. Now, the HoC is the real political power, derived from the priests. And therefore, from the people.
ReplyDeleteThere are many ways to get into the HoL, but being able to create lifeless is absolutely one. The HoL doesn't do legislation or much governing, but does provide advice to the HoC. It is meant to be made up of experts, and, legit, the HoC has most of the political power.
George Recommends Outside Works? (1)Vincent Baker's weird ideas about how magic works (Plasms, Plasmic Entities, etc.) from The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions might help with coming up with a model of lifeless cognition that you find satisfying. (Though I see you got more into how the "programming" works in the other thread)
ReplyDelete(2)Ken and Robin spitball a setting with slightly differing but similar assumptions in a segment here: http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-165-if-you-violate-a-ghosts-trade-policy/
George Asks Questions
What are the church/nation's attitudes toward its neighbors? Toward the dangerous regions uncivilize-able because of magic and monsters from the old empire? Toward non-human creatures and, more importantly, non-humanoid sapients?
A foreigner's body is smuggled out of the empire so that the burial traditions of the body's homeland can be conducted. Is there something akin to Westphalian Sovereignty (yada yada yada, the smugglers and maybe the family of the smuggled dead aren't allowed back in the Caliphate under pain of death), or is this a potential causus belli as Paladins pursue the body and the perpetrators across the border?
George: "Look, your country owes us a corpse. But never let it be said we're unreasonable about substitutions."
ReplyDeleteOn non-humans: While I suffer from some default-ism, I think the Empire is by default non-racist. Elves, dwarves, halfings and humans are all fine!
ReplyDeleteAs for the monster races, such as kobolds? Raising them and making them useful is a matter of course, though probably with a lot fewer of the practices designed to keep a lifeless in business. The useful time span is much shorter -- a matter of months or a year, rather than a decade. If a Paladin has to be dispatched to deal with you, or if you are a menace to a town that is dealt with by adventurers, then you lose any sovereignty over your corpse.
As for foreigners, I think it depends on how useful corpses are. Because people respond to incentives: if the corpses are valuable, then the Empire will go after them. As they become less so, the Empire will expend fewer resources getting them. Granted, this is also a matter of religion, and not merely an economic matter. That is, yeah, a religious edict could readily be issued and a bond posted for those who would flout the law.
Though, I'm slowly thinking that maybe you don't raise all the foreigners and other people living in the country. That may be past the moral event horizon.
And it wouldn't just be pain of death: it'd be pain of death and lifeless service in the salt mines.
I was thinking weirder and rarer D&D staples if present. The only confirmed thing in the setting so far is dragons (and some kinds of orc-y thing that's easily retconned), but I was leaning more toward blink dogs, unicorns, and mind flayers than kobolds.
ReplyDeleteOhhhhhhhhhhh. I'll have to think about those, George. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to consider that people are afraid of certain types of being, and not others, and how that would play into the representation, and use of the lifeless.
ReplyDeleteSo, imagine this:
There is a human serial killer, and he is put to death, then raised. He just looks like what people are used to, so he might be employed as a butler of sorts, or doing manual labor, or hell, if it's the magic doing the work, why not have him busting up numbers instead of rocks. Dude's an accountant.
I a Bugbear was slain, and brought back, raised, it is unlikely they'd be used so, even if in their own community the role they served was quite mundane.
Since people of the town are probably afraid of Bugbears, posting them as guards would be an effective deterrent, even if in life those Bugbears simply gathered roots, moss, and insect larva for their village's food stores.
T to the E to the O Yeah. Fguring out the psychology of both the lifeless and how people respond to them is delightful. I'll put it on the list.
ReplyDeleteNewest: https://plus.google.com/+WilliamNichols/posts/LdA5pQx8iMh
ReplyDelete