Five Facts Concerning Mu, Built on Hope and Blood

XX. Judgement

Next time, I'll delve into the magic system and some examples of what one can do with it, but first another extract from the world section, this time about the land of Mu. Chariot's crowdfunder is healthy but has but a short time left. The price of the game will be higher when it goes on general sale, so please do consider helping or sharing.

In Lemuria

9 of Wands

The section on Atlantis is now 100% written. Lemuria, though, is dreamlike, and its inhabitants think in songs and verse and dance. I decided to do something different with Lemuria. Lemuria's section is written as a poem. Here's some of it.

Cercenes, City of the Vine

Five of Cups, Five of Wounds: A Cercenian citizen.

We still have over seven weeks left in the Chariot funding campaign and we're still reaching, straining towards our stretch goals, the first of which is a suite of supporting cast as written by the inestimable Malcolm Sheppard.

Tomorrow, I'm going to talk about why the Black Sun is winning, but for now, here is another of the stranger creations of my private Atlantis, the city of Cercenes.

Numea by the Inland Sea

A story: so my son Dave, ten years old, is talented as hell and politically engaged, and he draws maps. He's really good at it. I asked him to draw me a map. I said, two continents joined by a land bridge, five big islands. The rest, all yours.

So he drew me a beautiful map. He's the reason Mentis is an island rather than, as I originally imagined, coastal. And he drew me an inland sea. And it's thanks to him that I put this story to one of the Atlantea cities I had names for. This one I wrote for Dave, passionate for Wales and its hopes for independence, for the Welsh language, and for justice. I'm proud of that kid.

Menocea, City of the Mirrored Spires

Trump X. The Wheel.

Chariot's crowdfunder at the end of its third day stands at 96% of its admittedly modest goal. Let's see if we can fund today.

In the meantime, another creation of my boyhood imagination that I inserted into Atlantis because, well, I don't know. I just did.

The City of the Blue Women

With the Chariot crowdfunding campaign closing in on its target in its third day, it's time to share some more excerpts. Here's Mentis, City of the Blue Women.

I created the Blue Women as part of my Atlantis when I was maybe twelve or thirteen, because when you are that age amphibious blue punk rock cyborg amazons who ride robo-sea dinosaurs sounds like a good idea. I still think it's a pretty good idea.

I wish I still had what I had written about them. I made them anew from memory for Chariot. 

If you like my work, please consider supporting Chariot: http://igg.me/at/ChariotRoleplay

Gods of Atlantis

Six of Pentacles: A Black Atlantean Ritual to Akhantuih.

The Atlantean body politic and the religious establishment are one and the same.

Lemurian bodies

Pren

They tower even over the Rmoahals, a full seven cubits high, broad shouldered, narrow-hipped, their long arms and short, bandy legs, neither of which ever fully straighten giving them an immediately recognisable profile. Atlanteans find it hard to tell them apart. Male, female, and the dual-sexed third gender that constitutes a good quarter of Lemurian society, all look very similar to the smaller peoples, with their shallow jaws and flat, wide-mouthed faces and their golden-brown or deep yellow skin. The Lemurians can tell. It amuses them that other peoples can't, and have you heard a Lemurian laugh? It is like huge stones grinding.

Small, sharp, widely spaced eyes in black, deep blue or violet stare out from under a heavy, fleshy brow. Coarse brown or sometimes white hair sits on the tops of their head, but doesn't grow over the back, where, in those Lemurians who are exceptionally talented psychically, there sits a third eye. Draped in skins dyed in bright shades of red, blue and green, carrying wooden or stone spears, the Lemurians have not taken on the technologies of the younger races. And why should they? They sing the Akâsha. It gives them all they need. Lemurian songs aid in the hunt, calm beasts, heal wounds, and lift and and move colossal stones.

The beasts they herd, the earth reptiles and the mammoths, serve as riding beasts, beasts of burden, and sources of food, clothing, ropes, bone bows and arrows, dyes and paints; no part of them goes to waste. 

Teeth made for chewing eat barely cooked steaks; huge gnarled hands work on intricate weaving projects and finely pulled thongs. 

They smell of blood and earth and the sweat of beasts. They rarely speak, but often sing in voices so deep and rich that a choir of Lemurians can stop a charging army in its tracks, no exagerration. Once, a few thousand years ago, an army of the White Sun with its land chariots and sky chariots came to take the City of Conical Stones. The Lemurians sang the army to stillness, and sang the flying monoliths that yet fill the skies of the South East down on their heads, and all were destroyed, and the stones serve as their graveyard still. 

Rmoahal Bodies

Ghenim

So large, and yet so ignored, so silent. The shackled giants who stand in the corners and alcoves of every Atlantean city, who toil in the fields, mines and factories, who fight in the slave battalions, who huddle in the shanty towns that the Atlanteans insist so hard do not exist.

Muvian Bodies

Page of Cups

They look like Atlanteans, the Muvians; at least at first glance.

Tlavatli Bodies

Queen of Wands

The Atlanteans are, although they would deny it openly, always somewhat afraid of the Tlavatlis. Part of that must be because of their size which, unlike the generally cowed Rmoahals, couples itself with a restless energy.

Atlantean Bodies

Knight of Wands

It can only make sense that the Atlanteans, rich, widespread and populous, display more variation in their appearance than any of the other cultures of the Twin Continents.

Atlanteans, the Third People

Kuiorih ka Akhantuih, Black Atlantean priest

What is there to say? The Atlanteans, for good and ill, are arbiters of all there is. They are the explorers, scientists,  philosopher, discoverers. No one is close to them in wealth and achievement.

Clean water. Healthy people who can read and write. Lights on the streets at night. Peace, for the Atlanteans at any rate.

Muvians, the Fourth People

Pharomenes, a Muvian Captain.

According to the diplomats and travellers of the Atlanteans, no culture offers as much threat to the rest of the world as the Justified Children of Mu, the Fourth People.

Tlavatlis, the Second People

Svaathë, a Tlavatli.

Among the children of the Rmoahals,  some travelled north, and there they settled, and there they learned selfishness. There they learned ambition.

Lemurians

The Lemurian from my dad's book. The one that started all of this.

Lemuria is old, older than thought, older than memory, and its original inhabitants are barely recognisable as people at all, or so say the treatises and gazetteers of the Atlanteans.

Rmoahals, the First People

Lemurian, Rmoahal, Atlantean 

The Rmoahals, First of the Four Peoples, are no better or worse than any other people, but none of the cultures of the Twin Continents are so thoroughly, so entirely oppressed.

The more benevolent and progressive of the Atlanteans, those who would consider themselves "good", think of these melancholy blue giants as ennobled by their suffering, but it's the dream of a guilty oppressor: suffering doesn't make you better. You just suffer.