Living Land Revision

Living Land Revision

The Axioms

Tech

6: The Living Land would, in theory, be at the beginning of the Bronze Age, except for the fact that the natives reject the use of Dead Things and thus exploit virtually none of the technological potential of the shadow, except through miracles which let them construct living, spiritually powered tools. Kaah maintains the axiom at this level, even though he could afford to let the tech axiom plummet all the way to one or two, in order to facilitate the survival of members of the cosms he invades, so that they can live long enough to yield up all of their possibilities to him.

Members of the resistance communities struggle to exploit whatever they can from the Tech Axiom so long as they can hold onto things. The invention of pottery makes it possible to begin to smelt metal. Metal now begins to be smelted and tools made out of soft metals. The first alloys are created and bronze is invented. More sophisticated weaponry now develops: swords, daggers, improved spears with metal tips, and the first bows. Oil lamps are invented. Fermentation is discovered, enabling the making of wine and beer. The invention of the plow triggers an agricultural revolution by lowering the mobility of the populace but increasing its agricultural productivity. Increased food productivity may (with an appropriate social axiom) encourages the beginning of the development of specialists, because now it begins to be possible to produce a sufficient food surplus to allow some people to devote their lives to something besides avoiding starvation. Cloth now begins to be created.

Animal herding is very popular among resistance communities, as the world laws do not cause living creatures to get lost the way it does to tools; as a result, it is much easier to herd animals and gather fruit than it is to try to conduct agriculture, though the resistance communities try anyway.

Magic

0: There is no magic whatsoever; sentients must manipulate the world entirely through their bodies, technology or miracles.

Spirit

27: There is no goddess but Lanala and the Saar is her prophet. All other faiths but Lanala worship lose power in the Living Land, becoming contradictory. The cult of Stalek is an unusual case. While Stalek is rejected by all faithful Edeinos, at the same time, the cult of Lanala effectively acknowledges his existence by their very fervent rejection of him. Everyone is born with faith in Lanala, but it is possible to reject that faith and turn to Stalek. His miracles are not inherently contradictory, but the use of Dead Things which he urges to his followers and those miracles relating to Dead Things are contradictory.

Every living thing is seen as being a creature of Lanala. While some have a hard time communicating, others may be quite talkative and powerful with strength granted by Lanala. This is the form which spiritual entities take on in the living land, for Keta Kalles sees the Body and the Soul as one. Everything that lives has spiritual power.

Everyone is born with an add of Faith and is born with access to every miracle they're aware of. Focus can be used unskilled; those who buy the Focus skill are known as Optants and are listened to because they are wise in the ways of Lanala and will bring you many good experiences.

The plentiful spiritual energy of the world reduces the difficulty of all miracles of Axiom level 20 or less by 7. Possibility energy can be spent on miracles which suppress the power of enemy mythos in an area, rendering them impotent even if a contradiction could normally be created in the area. Miracles can bear messages between cosms or even open portals between them. Aspects of other axioms can be suppressed with miracles (such as Kaah rendering magnetic devices impotent in the living land), effecting even attempts to make contradictions, unless said attempt overcomes the miracle's strength. Divine invocations can create items similar to eternity shards, though it requires a superior or better success to have much effect.

It is possible for believers to travel to the Lands of the Seasons, where many new challenges and experiences await them. Every believer visits all four at least once if he manages to live a full life, and many go more than once. This will be described in more detail, later.

Social

7: It is possible to form permanent villages with a refined conception of land ownership and specialization of social roles at this axiom level. Kings may exist, usually either elected or holding their position by sheer strength. Slavery is also now possible, along with peaceful trade, poetry, and sports. Travelling storytellers exist who can spread glory sparks among an entire region, if that region shares a common culture.

The Living Land is divided between nomad tribes of Jakatts and humans and small resistance communities who try to live by farming. Hunter-gathering, nomad pastoralism, and agriculture are all supported by the social axiom, although the world laws bias things towards the former two.

It is important to note how incredibly crippling this lowered social axiom is to Core Earthers. Measurement of time beyond morning, noon, afternoon, and night become impossible. Unit discipline collapses, causing soldiers to fight like a bunch of heroes who happen to be at the same place. Subunits become impossible and the chain of command evaporates. It is not possible to successfully lead more than a few hundred people at a time. While maps can exist, abstract writing systems like the Roman Alphabet don't work; no one can abstract enough to understand them. The result is that books are useless. Cooperation between groups is limited to the occasional short-term alliance. Sophisticated theological systems become incomprehensible. Science is forgotten.

World Laws:

A brief guide to terms:

Everything in the Living Land fits into three categories. The living are things which are alive, from plants to Edeinos. The dead are things which used to be alive, or things which were made from something alive. Roadkill, a plucked fruit, a cotton shirt, and a plastic bowl (made from oil, which came from dead dinosaurs) are all examples of dead things. The unliving are things which were never alive—rocks, the metal frame of an automobile, liquid mercury, and so forth. Edeinos tend to refer to both the dead and the unliving as 'dead things', but this is because their social axiom is too low to make a distinction. The dead and the unliving are treated differently by the World Laws in some cases.

The Cycle of Life:

Time is a circle, and so is life. All living things are born, grow, flourish, grow old, then die and become the stuff from which new life springs. Death is not a permanent condition, for new life always springs forth from the remains of the old. The result of this world law is that nothing stays dead for very long; the dead quickly becomes the seedbed of new life.

Anything which dies within the Living Land quickly rots away, becoming the seedbed for new life, or is eaten by some passerby, thus re-entering the cycle of life. Things which die in the Living Land will either be eaten by something or will rot and become a seedbed for new life within twenty four hours. Things which have been dead longer than a day (which were brought into the living land from outside it, or which were protected from the world laws by being carried by someone of a contradictory reality) rot away or are eaten within a span of time equal to (25 – Torg value of days it was dead) in Torg units.

For example, Joe has disconnected. Joe has an Armani shirt which is six months old. That's a Torg value of 12 in days. The shirt will rot away in an amount of time with value 13, which is six minutes. Joe is carrying a six-pack of Coke. It was bottled three months ago. That's a Torg value of 10 in days. The Coke will go bad within a Torg Time Value of 15, which means it will last 15 minutes. Joe's beloved slacks are a good two years old and have always brought him luck. That's a Torg value of 15 in days. They will rot away in a Torg Time Value of 10, which means 1.5 minutes. Joe is carrying his family's bible, which has been passed down through the generations since it was bought by a distant ancestor in 1861 on his way to serve in the Civil War. This is a Torg value of 24 in days. This means it rots in a Torg Time Value of 1, which is 1.5 seconds.

Some quick guidelines:

Dead 27 or more years: Rots within one combat round (10 seconds)

Dead 4 to 26 years: Rots within a minute.

Dead between 25 days to 3 years: Rots within an hour.

Dead between 6 days to 24 days: Rots within four hours

Died between 36 hours and 5 days: Rots within half a day.

Died a day or ago or less: Rots within a day of its time of death.

Anything derived from an organic base (cloth, paper, plastics, processed food, fermented beverages) is subject to the Cycle of Life. Many synthetics will be effected, if they are primarily based on organic substances (such as being made from oil). Things made from never living materials (stone, metals, ordinary water, many chemical concoctions) do not rot, but are instead affected by Lanala's Love of Life.

The Cycle of Life is not an invasive world law; as a result, anything dead which is being carried by a living creature of another reality will not rot so long as it remains in physical contact with that being and the being does not disconnect. Thus it is possible to transport canned goods or a loaf of bread in your backpack and have them stay good for your entire visit to the Living Land so long as you never disconnect and never put your backpack down, ever. If you either eat the food right out of the can or maintain a long-distance connection while you are cooking it, it won't rot on you once opened, either.

Items inside sealed, air-tight opaque cannisters and other containers or otherwise somehow concealed from being seen will also not rot, because the Cycle of Life does not see them; instead, Lanala's Love of Life will try to separate the container from its owners. Once opened, the contents are noticed and will quickly rot unless consumed or kept constantly in contact with someone of another reality. This makes canning a viable way to preserve food, if you can manage to hold onto your cans. (This also means that outer layers of clothing rot before inner layers, since the inner layers are concealed from sight). This makes Realm Runners very valuable for resistance communities, as a fair sized truck can haul huge amounts of canned goods to the community, which then doesn't have to worry about the food going bad. Many communities also import empty cans if they can, in order to can their own harvests.

Outside the Living Land, the Cycle of Life only applies to things which a person of Living Land Reaity is touching or which he is exerting a long-range contradiction over. Possibility-rated Jakkats can invoke the Cycle of Life in order to make dead things rot at a distance, and ord Jakkats can do it by touch if they haven't disconnected, although it requires prolonged concentration and is a contradiction outside the Living Land. The difficulty of the effect is the Torg value of the weight of the dead thing or things being effected. Affecting more than one dead thing at a time requires use of the one on many rules.

Example: Jarara is stalking through the ruins of Gaithersburg, Maryland. He finds himself confronted by a Civil War era church which is inside a hardpoint (generated by the statue of the Infant Jesus and Mary inside it) and is now home to a small resistance community, which tries to shoot him. He decides that it is time to introduce the wooden church to the Cycle of Life. After much arguing with the GM, they finally decide the building weighs a ton (Torg Value 17), so the difficulty for his long-range contradiction to force the Cycle of Life on the Church is 17. The church is 142 years old, and so he can rot the church in 1.5 seconds. It swiftly collapses around its inhabitants if he succeeds.

Jarara could also have touched the building and exerted his reality over it, which would require a contradiction check, but not a reality skill check.

Items carried by a person of Living Land reality outside the Living Land will automatically come under the law whether they want them to or not; objects simply touched by such a person must be brought under their reality by deliberate choice. Thus, a Jakatt could ride in a wooden boat without causing it to rot, but if he took up an oar and tried to help paddle, the rotting clock would begin.

One final note: Rather than rotting, anything which is a 'seed' will germinate instead of rotting if it is still fairly intact (things which rot also have new life germinate in them, but it is often different kinds of life). Many forms of vegetable food are effectively seeds and seed delivery systems (apples, pears, melons, etc). They will simply sprout, unless processed to the point where their structural integrity has been destroyed. (Pumpkin pie will rot, a pumpkin will sprout new vines and try to produce new pumpkins).

Lanala's Hatred of Death

Lanala made the world for the living, not the dead. A certain amount of unliving material is necessary to form an arena on which life plays out, but the living are meant to interact with the living, not to pile up unliving posessions. Lanala takes action to remove the temptation to use dead things by quickly removing them from the presence of the living.

Any unliving tool or raw material brought into the Living Land will quickly be separated from its owners. Those who are of Living Land reality (or who have disconnected within it) will find themselves tending to discard dead things, especially if they aren't actively using them. Even if an item is not discarded, events will conspire to separate it from its ower.

Those who are not of Living Land Reality only lose things by outside intervention, rather than losing track of them; however, it means that holding onto any dead or unliving thing for more than twenty four hours is a contradiction; anyone who has a dead or unliving thing on their person that they have possessed more than twenty four hours must make a contradiction check at the beginning of every scene to see if they disconnect due to this contradiction.

Picking up unliving things (but not dead things) is a contradiction in the living land, requiring an immediate contradiction check. (Picking up dead things is not a contradiction because this would prevent the living from eating the dead, which would hamper the survival of the living).

The Eyes of Lanala

Lanala gave up her senses so that living things could experience the world she made for them; in return, they give her the sensations they experience that she might live through them. This has three major effects.

First of all, everything experienced inside the Livng Land by a creature native to it is experienced by Lanala. This means that Lanala is constantly aware of everything in the Living Land which can be sensed by any of its inhabitants. Lanala never forgets, either, which means that everything which has ever been sensed by any Jakatt or other living creature of the Living Land ever, is now stored in Lanala's memories.

Secondly, Lanala shares those memories of experiences with her faithful. Divine invocations and miracles can tap into Lanala's experiences of sensations, including Lanala's 'sensory map' of the Living Land. Lanala is the collective memory of all living things, and as such and because she is in constant contact with all living things, she can use her spiritual might to transcend the Living Land's social axiom, allowing certain kinds of miracles which exceed its normal limitations. Jakatts outside the Living Land who remain connected to it continue to feed these experiences into Lanala, though her bank of experiences outside the Living Land is much sparser than her bank of experiences inside it. But by travelling beyond its boundaries, they bring her new experiences, for which she rewards them.

Thirdly, Lanala rewards everyone in the Living Land for bringing her new experiences. This has several effects:

The first twenty four hours that you spend in a new place, you gain a +1 bonus to all actions. If the place is outside the Living Land, you gain a +2 bonus, because it is a fresher experience for Lanala. (Lanala has seen everything in the Living Land, but she hasn't experienced how you experience those places for the first time. Outside the Living Land, it is usually a completely new experience for her.)