Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Ba Dwai La and the Cat's Bowl

Ba Dwai La

A bilocational city, existing on both the moon and Langa (in Centerra) at the same time.  It has jurisdiction over the Cat's Bowl and Jian Ven Dha.

Oona Druha

The rulers of right-handed Ba Dwai La, their authority is established by the ruling family, which is destined to birth the God-Child several generations hence.  Their breeding program is enforced by Intercessors.  As a result, the ruling family gets smaller every year.  Eventually, it will just be the Father, the Mother, and their Nurses.

Members of Oona Druha use their small gods to learn when they have met their soul mate.

Intercessors

A race of aliens who conquered the planet long ago, and stripped anything of value from it.  They dwell in mirrors and resemble pelagic nudibranchs.

Despite the name, they are from a place much farther away than the moon.

Zala Korvina

The rulers of left-handed Ba Dwai La, their authority is established by their displays of strength, scholarship, and the celebration of the self.  They oppose Oona Druha, and confer with the the glorgs.

Members of Zala Korvina use their small gods to learn what is holding them back.

The Glorgs

A trio of massive slugs that lives beneath Ba Dwai La, eating garbage.  They are advisors to Zala Korvina, but many whisper that the Glorgs are servants of the Oona Druha, and that their rebellion is merely a sham.  Regardless, their gifts of strength and knowledge are genuine.

They have grown too large to ever join their siblings, and have alloyed their fate to Ba Dwai La.  They still maintain correspondence with their siblings, and trusted orbitals who visit Ba Dwai La are often given missives before they depart through the Cat's Bowl.

The Small God

The graft that identifies a citizen as a member of either left- or right-handed Ba Dwai La, and indicates which set of laws they must follow.  Right-handed citizens enjoy and suffer the full power of the city's laws, and are treated much like other civilized peoples.  However, left-handed citizens cannot vote, call for a trial, or own property.  However, left-handed citizens cannot be jailed or executed (only beaten and fined), do not have to pay taxes, are not not legally bound by contract.

The small god is actually an eye on the back of the hand.

The Harmonium

The grove of sacred jendai trees grows here.  With careful pruning, they can become spaceships.  The trees are considered to be first-class citizens (everyone else is second-class).  Only the grove can sell a jendai tree, but since this is considered to be a form of slavery, the trees rarely deign to sell one of their own, and the ones that are sold are always the most wicked trees in their (admittedly small) society.

The harmonium is also home to the last breeding population of true humans; over two dozen enjoy captivity here.

 Jian Ven Dha

The mismera that surrounds the Cat's Bowl, but also the rivers that flow beneath it.  Movement is impossible above ground (as it is haunted by achelornises and other dread fowl) but navigation is impossible below ground (as there are no landmarks, and the currents shift constantly).

The Cat's Bowl

A crater lake on the far side of the moon, it is used to catch incoming spaceships, refuel them, and then launch them.

The Cat's Bowl is also an adjacent town of the same name.

The Calicalion

The tower that serves the Cat's Bowl.  All of the greatest sorcerers in the world are brought here, but especially clairvoyants, telekineticists, teleportationists, and calculators.  Their immense talents are leveraged to communicate with their counterparts on distant stars, detect incoming ships, use teleportation and telekinetics to adjust their location and velocity, and then bring them down for a landing in the Cat's Bowl.

Lunar people will tell you that this is the entire purpose of the moon, Centerra, and the rest of the planet.  If the Cat's Bowl ever failed to perform this reasonable duty, they would be burned off the surface of the moon, and a successor race would be installed that was capable of it.

The Generations

The jellied grist that flows in the veins of the Calicalion, the generations are composed of elder sorcerers that have aged past their prime.  They are barely-conscious ocean of latent power that suffuses the Calicalion and the Cat's Bowl.  While the sorcerers of the Calicalion are powerful in their own right it is the unbordered minds of the generations that give the tower the horsepower needed to perform their mind-bending exertions.

The process of joining the generations is a honorable tradition, but is never approached without some reluctance by the sorcerers of the tower.  They know exactly what the generations are--a beast without borders, words, or intentions. 

The vudra are refugees from this place.

8 comments:

  1. Jiminy H. Christmas this is a raw 1-hit KO of a post.

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  2. Excellent. Is part of this a remix of The City and The City?

    What buildings are in Right Side and what are in Left Side? Is the Right Side or the Left Side on the moon?

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    1. Dammit, that's where it was from. I was trying to remember. I'll change it to something more novel.

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    2. The City in the City is a great concept and adding a supernatural element to it makes it pop doubly. Your nations are also more explicitly hostile/manuvering around each other, which allows for a lot of cool new explorations of the concept!

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  3. Lovely! It's nice to read you again.

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  4. The esteemed spammer's bark of "spleen industry manufacture of a transmission line towers" comes eerily close to describing your mismera...

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  5. I'm just curious, one of your old posts mentions "Man Chiur La" as a name for the Lunar version of Ba Dwai La.

    You probably hate people scouring through 7 year old material, but I'm very keen on using some of this setting in a game soon and want to make sure I haven't missed anything.

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  6. 👀 "Zala Korvina"

    but what could be the linguistic relation to "Zala Vacha"?????

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