The Shivering Circle: Setting Materials, Updates

It's been months since I posted up a set of playtest rules for my attempt at a folk horror role-playing game (which you can find here), and if I've been quiet the last few weeks, it's partly because I've been working on We Don't Go Back, but also partly because I've been trying to get this written up into a small yet perfectly formed book. I thought I'd give an update about what I'm doing with it, and supply some excerpts from the setting material I've written...

He leaves behind his sweetheart, to fight

Stel, a woman of Kudra.

I count the time in years before you came
And time since I have left you;
And in between is gain, and loss.
I grieve for you; I dread that I might see you,
Wonder if you're happy where you are, I
Dream of you as if you were forgiving,
Graceful, kind, the traits that I imposed on you
Because I loved you.

I don't love you anymore.

Like one told she is an addict when the
Question of her drinking is suggested,
You took upon yourself the name of monster;
Yes, you'd kill a child, you say, in order
To protect your own and yet you'd call
Me less than decent, less than good
For standing by a bias for the weak.
I couldn't stay here.

I don't love you anymore.

-- Lament of Gideon, Prince of Exiles,  addressed to his Kudrahite Sweetheart

Qeraf, The Seven Cities and One

The inevitable Crowdfunder update: Having sailed gently and gracefully past the £1000 mark like one of the aerial yachts of Caiphul, I'm pleased to say that I am able to pay Malcolm Sheppard money (and good, proper money, or something more approaching good proper money than the RPG industry usually offers) to write a chunk of material for the game, 10,000 words of it.

There are two days to go!  Please, even if you don't want to give us your money, share it on the usual social media, like Chariot on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and check out the Indiegogo campaign. Everyone who contributes more than a pound gets to see all the drafts.

OK, done. On to today's extract. 

I'm in an ebullient mood. So, one of the more fanciful, romantic corners of the setting today. Who doesn't love a flying island?

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.

What Magic Can't Do

Seven of Wands

An excerpt from Chariot's magic section. It might seem unduly negative, but the way that the magic of Chariot works, it's actually easier to define what magic can't do rather than what it can. These limits on magic, by the way, are the ones codified by early Theosophist William Quan Judge in Occult Arts, which you can read here, here and here. Judge was responsible for the US branch of the Theosophical Society, still based in Pasadena, making a decisive break with the Indian/UK branch shortly after Madame Blavatsky's death, leading to there being, now, two Theosophical Societies. Why? Leadbeater, basically. 

And don't forget: I'm still funding! Help us get to our stretch goals at http://igg.me/at/ChariotRoleplay
  VII.CHA.BE.CHA

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.

Chalidocean, City of the Golden Gates, Dream of Empire

XVI. The Tower

Important piece of lore today. Today's post isn't in the current draft but will be in the new version I'm uploading Friday, which you can get hold of early if you support Chariot at http://igg.me/at/ChariotRoleplay.VII.CHA.BE.CHA

Why the Black Sun is Winning

XVII. The Star.

The Chariot Crowdfunder continues apace and would love you to support it.

In the meantime, here is an assessment of where Atlantis is going at its end.

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

The Cities of Atlantis

Eight of Pentacles: a Noble of Leagh.

The rules section of Chariot is done, and is out with some of my friends for Alpha Playtest; the Beta Playtest will have a wider audience. Now, well. Now I am writing about the world. My son David, a pretty gifted cartographer, made me an amazing map, that I'm working with. Everything has a place. It is the fun part. So Here's the introduction to the section on Atlantis.

The Catastrophe List

Some time ago, It struck me that a game about the run up to a terrible world-breaking disaster needed some structured sense of urgency. So I came up with this.

Fated

In Chariot, you play the role of one of the twenty individuals in the world whose destiny is to carry the psychic weight of the human race on your shoulders. 

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.

The Long Before

Six of Wands.

Time only began with consciousness, and memory, and in the Long Before, the forebears of humanity – mindless, formless, swam in the Astral Sea, the First Root of the Human Race. We evolved; we gave birth to elongated, weightless beings of light-bearing ether, and as the Second Root, we drifted through the ages of the seas and the time of the Greatest Beasts. We learned to dream, unbound by the shackles of time and consciousness and thought, and our dreams shaped the evolution of the world around us.

A Blessing for the Rmoahals

Kyngon the Rmoahal

Remember that I built this city, but in this you were my hands;
Your toil brings my profit, and not one of you is less
For the chains which are the links that bind my lands.
Your loyalty, sweat, blood and pains I bless.
— Rai Gwauxin XVIII's Benefice to the Rmoahals

It's easy to be loyal to someone who can have you burnt to ashes for refusing a command. 
— Kyngon, a Rmoahal 

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.