12. Culture and civilisation
Built, with gaps Culture Module – Specification; Culture Module – Lore Specification.
The core of version 1 stands: ways of life, 144 technologies (was 138), deposits, competence and corruption, the strains of decline, fortification, states, rulers and ruled, rivers as frontiers, the focus state. New, all built:
| Area | What it does |
|---|---|
| Calamities | a wandering climate anomaly; failed harvests and famine; plague that spreads by land and sea; eruptions, earthquakes, floods and storms by the ground; each wears down the states it strikes |
| The present rule | until: { techs, species? } stops the history when a people (of those species, if given) knows them all. The Creation stops when the Humans reach iron, writing and the castle (at most 20 000 years; Decisions Log §28). It also stops when every culture of those species is gone, once they have come (Decisions Log §40, built 21 October); CultureWorld.ending says which end it was: the present, the extinction (and of whom), or the years running out |
| Religion | domains weighted by way of life, land, sky, learning and what befell the people; forms from animism to monotheism and philosophy; organisation; described gods; cosmology, afterlife, rites; a role for each moon; calendars; state cults; faiths descend, reform, blend and convert with the cultures |
| Magic | off by default (none, low, medium, high); a source, cost, limit, schools, hot spots; gifted shares by species (mana_sensitive ×4); each culture’s tradition and attitude. Decided (Decisions Log §30): Eventide’s magic is Cosmic (light, shadow, space, time) and Elemental (fire, earth, water, air), mostly ritual (mathematics, alignment, shifting energy), with prepared items and divine favour; the default leans towards learnt, ritual magic. Beneath it (§31): aether, a purer elemental energy, mostly imbalanced (towards an element, or light and dark), pure along ley lines where a stable system’s balance lets it gather; a person works it through a chakra-like energy system of five centres (Basal–Earth, Abdominal–Water, Heart–Fire, Throat–Air, Crown–Aether), in ripples from the soul. Light and dark are aspects, space and time context. Aether is weak and elemental on young, lifeless or chaotic worlds and grows with stability and the complexity of life; it crystallises on old moons and barren worlds. The default fantasy shares the system (§32). Built in v2.5 (below): the hot spots are now the nodes of ley lines |
| Myth and mythic history | each culture’s myths, saying what they rest on; BWM’s five eras (Cosmic, Ordering, Ancient Civilisation, Cataclysm, Age of Peoples) as told (cultural frame) or as the setting’s own history (divine frame) |
| The lost civilisation | emergent (fallen states, with ruins by the durability of their material, lost technology, a cataclysm) or ancient (an invented precursor people and cataclysm), or both |
| Titles and law | government styles (including clan-hold for dwarves, court for elves, warband for orcs), titles written into the realms, succession, law, justice, property, bondage, taxes |
| Cities and routes | towns, cities, great cities, metropolises with roles; routes between the 160 biggest cities with flow, goods and chokepoints |
| Wars | each run of conquests as a war with battles, sieges, fronts, outcome and cause; the changing map over time |
| The defence of a state | a state’s soldiers (its strength) and fortifications (the fort of its technology) make its guard, which defends the regions it holds against other states (conquest) and against peoples that come to eat its people (it stops up to 90 % of what would be eaten, and the predators lose some); data/culture/defence.json, every number a proposal (Decisions Log §42) |
| Diets | six peoples never farm (only Orcs and Trolls may herd); they eat the other eaters in famine, Trolls, Ogres and Giants prefer the free peoples, Goblins and Fishmen eat anything; the eaten are lost, and the record says who ate whom (section 11.1) |
| Blocs and alliances | in the default, the free peoples and the other side: states of one bloc ally, are less likely to attack one another and likelier to attack the other bloc, and come to one another’s defence; alliances fade with distance and without a common enemy; the record names alliances formed and broken and each state’s allies in the present (section 11.1) |
| The present age | the largest states with government, faith, learning, wars, rivals and trade; the learning of the world by field; the open struggles; the state of magic |
Eventide’s magic and the default’s, built (Decisions Log §30–34; data/magic/system.json, src/magic-system.ts, src/aether.ts, src/balance.ts, src/culture/ley.ts, src/culture/alignments.ts). One data file serves Eventide and the default, and a variant may lay its own over it. Its numbers are decisions or proposals (marked, and checked by a test).
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| The system | the two branches (Cosmic: light and dark, with space and time as context; Elemental: fire, earth, water, air), the opposed pairs, the five centres (Basal–Earth, Abdominal–Water, Heart–Fire, Throat–Air, Crown–Aether), Energy as the cost (Sanity for the eldritch, left out). Learnt, ritual magic is the favoured source; the schools of learnt magic are the aspects |
| The aether of a world | (1 − e^(−age / 1.5 Gyr)) × (0.3 stability + 0.7 complexity) × (what chaos leaves). Stability: the climate, a near-circular orbit, a large moon, an orderly system. Complexity: lineages, the depth of the webs, minds. Chaos: mass extinctions, sterilisations, near supernovae, impacts, glaciations, fading with age. Below 0.3 elemental, below 0.55 stirring, above aether |
| Ley lines | replace the hot spots: the nodes are chosen as the hot spots were (high, volcanic, remote ground), a richer aether gives more of them, and a line joins each node to its nearest over the cheapest ground; the crossings are nodes too |
| Aether crystals | a resource: slow deposits in quiet ground (more in a barren world), rapid fields at the nodes after a supernova’s echo or coinciding alignments, and crystals made at the colleges; the moons' are old and rich and out of reach; a trade good in the routes |
| Alignments | from the sky: moons full together, all moons full, a solstice full moon, lunar and total solar eclipses, with dates; which serve which great working (summoning, portals, apotheosis, advanced blessings, seeing along time) is a proposal in the data |
| The elemental balance | every living thing carries four shares (each 24–26 %, summing to 100) with a leaning by species; an individual is drawn about it; it nudges temperament and gives the readier centre; it is on every character sheet, race sheet and mob |
Still to build Magic acting on the history, the skill tree, trade through time, names for the lore
- Magic is a tradition and a set of places. It does not yet change population, war or technology.
- Of Eventide’s magic, not built: the skill tree (grades, the centres opened one by one, techniques, balance first, miscasts: Magic – Skill Tree (Draft)), a ritual’s length by its complexity, how strongly opposites resist each other, the mark an elemental age leaves on the land, the character’s energy system as a record (centres open), and eldritch magic.
- Trade routes are built from the end state. Goods and prices do not move through time.
- Calamities leave no ruins unless they destroyed the seat of a fallen state.
- Gods, titles, ruins and peoples are described and numbered, not yet named.