Several interesting things are happening in Mephoria at the moment. What with the random Frog Combustion up in the Hyellia Lowlands, the mass Elven bread fight in the Ciphia Swamps, and the fact that Ian The Sharp-Eyed tripped over a rake and fell into a ravine on Tuesday, Mephoria has been a busy place. Its denizens have lots to consider, it seems.
Primarily, where exactly their loyalties lie. Mephoria has a plethora of Gods, and an even larger plethora of people wearing sheets and claiming to be Gods. But it is the creation of those Gods that has always been of interest to the people who end up killing the sheep that go on the sacrificial altar.
Lots of people believe in positive and negative energy. The idea goes that if you believe something will happen, it will, because you believed in it. It’s usually a good idea to make sure your belief is strong enough to make it happen before testing it out, though. It’s no good believing there is a large pile of mattresses at the bottom of the mountain you just fell off if you can’t even conjure up enough faith to make a spoon grow a beard if you run backwards around the dinner table three times.
These things are truer than many of the inhabitants like to believe. The thing is, if enough people start to believe something, it becomes true. The universe begins to think it is the odd one out for not knowing that a pig coated in toffee can run through fire without being harmed on a Thursday and so rearranges the laws it knows in order to make this new and strange belief real. It works the other way around too, which is why when people stopped believing in Thron the Invulnerable, he died last Wednesday when a cow looked at him severely.
The problem is, the universe has had enough, and has spoken through its conduit, the Temple of Thranaira. In the ancient structure the universe is given a voice, and it tells its disciples, The Bearers of The Way, what it is currently thinking. And the universe has spoken. Change is afoot.
What the universe has a problem with is the fact that whilst a certain amount of people have to believe in the powers of a person before they become real and a new God is created, it is by no means a majority of all the people who will then become affected by the jurisdiction of this new God. For example, only thirty per cent of the people in the village of Uck actually believed that salmon have an immense understanding of manners coupled with a thirst for revenge, yet suddenly all of the villagers found themselves having to tip their hat to the river as they crossed Uck bridge, or they find themselves slapped half to death by pink, watery ninjas.
The universe has proposed a change. It thinks that creating Gods all over the place is fine, but the system should be fairer. No more minority Gods, the universe has ruled. If someone wants to be a God, then most of the population of the area their influence would grow to affect must also agree. Not everyone needs to, of course, for there is always one person who, upon stumbling into paradise will find the most uncomfortable patch of ground to sit on and complain that the Angels are too nice and the clouds too fluffy.
The universe is presenting the people of Mephoria with a new way of choosing their deities. They must get together as villages, towns, cities or even nations and decide if Barry the Soothsayer really has enough Sooth worth hearing. If most of them agree, the universe will grant him the power to become Barry; Creator Of Sooth. If not, then he won’t. Simple.
Mephoria is heading for a new age of fairness and prosperity, one in which its Gods are fairly elected. Should they choose the new deity selection system, people will no longer have to suffer nipping out for cheese and coming back to find their chickens have been anointed.
There are of course those who oppose, and claim the system is flawed. Which way Mephoria will go remains to be seen…
Wednesday 6 April 2011
Monday 4 April 2011
Get That Brick Off My Head
Bander Tirrion may be rethinking the plans to expand his latest architectural masterpiece following recent events that have left him more than a little red-faced. Anyone who lives in his iconic Tower Complex will certainly be looking to get their money back, and may have already taken more pointy methods of getting even.
The Tower Complex is a network of large, vertical homes, built into Towers. Where the genius, and appeal, for the wealthy and slightly black-hearted that choose these towers as their homes is from Bander Tirrion’s unique method of building, a method that reduces costs. Bander had started to think in recent years that whilst bricks are all right, especially for weighing things down, or hitting people with, they’re actually quite expensive. This has something to do with the fact that Bander operates within a small cluster of Kingdoms known as the Withering Sands, in a place where stone is about as abundant as a giggling blue Llama. Very rare, then, especially now that the giggling blue Llamas have all moved up North.
So bricks have to be outsourced, and most people tend to think that lugging a thousand bricks eight hundred miles is too much of a favour to ask, and as such, Bander Tirrion has found himself in the annoying position of having to buy in bricks. It was whilst pondering this problem that the solution hit him like, well, a brick.
Poor people are quite sturdy, Bander realised. After all, winter is quite harsh, what with the annual appearance of the Slap In The Face Every Tuesday Ghost, an event that the poor seem to take in their strides. Include the rise in recent Hay prices, forcing many families to sell their horses, or at least downgrade, and the fact that over fifty per cent of the region’s main food source – pineapples – has run away, and it could definitely be said that the people who endure such problems are indeed very strong and sturdy.
Bricks are also strong and sturdy, which is probably one of the (major) reasons why they are often chosen over jelly when it comes to making things that need to be resilient and last a long time. If bricks are sturdy, and peasants are sturdy – why not just build things out of peasants?
The pros of the situation were abundant. Peasants don’t need to be made to order (although that was another project Bander considered, involving many hooks and pulley systems and a how-to guide involving cartoon rabbits) and can transport themselves to the dig site. Plus, peasants are much cheaper. All Bander needed to do was lure in enough peasants with the promise of great wealth, and several weeks later, when they finally realised that the building they were holding up was a very permanent structure, they couldn’t do anything about it, and Bander would never have paid them any of the promised money.
The top of the towers still needed to be made of bricks; no self-respecting nobleman or woman would want to live in a tower built of people. No wants to scratch their chin and ask aloud to themselves ‘What shall I have for breakfast?’ and have the walls answer ‘Bacon and eggs.’ So the peasants would be used only as foundations.
The plan was successful, and dozens of towers were erected. On their own, a tower was simply a tower, so Bander made them in close proximity – a field of towers for the rich. For a couple of decades, the plan was perfect. The peasants at the bottom grumbled, complained, and sometimes whined, but no one paid any attention. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ was the mantra the nobles adopted, and they found that occasionally brushing some grated cheese out of the window kept the foundations quiet.
But recently, Lord Ebrick’s foundations decided that this sort of thing wasn’t on. Someone consulted a passing lawyer, who read many long books and talked to many people (including one very wise owl he met whilst camping one summer) and came back with the conclusion that, no, it’s not ok to build a giant stone tower on the back of people. With or without their permission.
And with that, the peasants at the base of Lord Ebrick’s tower took action. Angry at having been manipulated and tricked, they rose up. Quite literally in fact. With much grunting and struggling, as one single organism those unfortunate people upon whom Lord Ebrick’s tower had been built, stood up. Lord Ebrick noticed something was amiss when he was in the bath and the water started moving to one end of the tub.
With much pushing and shoving, the peasants lifted the tower from their shoulders and let it topple to one side. Lord Ebrick was certainly surprised. So were his neighbours. Not just because their friend’s tower was falling, because it was falling towards them. When the foundations of the towers next to Lord Ebrick’s saw what was happening ,they realised that they did not have to put up with having a building on their heads either.
And so it was that the people of the Withering Sands, who for too long had had to rest bricks on their heads and listen through the floor to posh dinner parties and hope that none of the guests suggested a jumping up and down competition, rose up. One by one, all across the field of buildings, Towers began to topple. Brick structures fell to one side, smashing into their neighbours. Soon, half of the field was a pile of bricks, peasants jumping and cheering amidst a cloud of mortar dust, ghostly revellers hugging and clapping.
But it’s not over. There are many more towers left, and their inhabitants are starting to wonder if they should have treated their foundations a little better. Suddenly, a handful of grated cheese every half a week isn’t seeming to be enough. Now there’s bread, ham, and in some extreme cases where the peasants have given an experimental wobble just to test their owners, a pickled egg twice a month on a Sunday.
Fear is ripe in the air, as the nobles look to one another and try to work out who will be next. Will it be them?
Of course it’s not all good news for the peasants. Thanks to them, there are a lot of bricks lying around. The Withering Sands is in a right mess, and who do you think is going to have to clean that up?
The Tower Complex is a network of large, vertical homes, built into Towers. Where the genius, and appeal, for the wealthy and slightly black-hearted that choose these towers as their homes is from Bander Tirrion’s unique method of building, a method that reduces costs. Bander had started to think in recent years that whilst bricks are all right, especially for weighing things down, or hitting people with, they’re actually quite expensive. This has something to do with the fact that Bander operates within a small cluster of Kingdoms known as the Withering Sands, in a place where stone is about as abundant as a giggling blue Llama. Very rare, then, especially now that the giggling blue Llamas have all moved up North.
So bricks have to be outsourced, and most people tend to think that lugging a thousand bricks eight hundred miles is too much of a favour to ask, and as such, Bander Tirrion has found himself in the annoying position of having to buy in bricks. It was whilst pondering this problem that the solution hit him like, well, a brick.
Poor people are quite sturdy, Bander realised. After all, winter is quite harsh, what with the annual appearance of the Slap In The Face Every Tuesday Ghost, an event that the poor seem to take in their strides. Include the rise in recent Hay prices, forcing many families to sell their horses, or at least downgrade, and the fact that over fifty per cent of the region’s main food source – pineapples – has run away, and it could definitely be said that the people who endure such problems are indeed very strong and sturdy.
Bricks are also strong and sturdy, which is probably one of the (major) reasons why they are often chosen over jelly when it comes to making things that need to be resilient and last a long time. If bricks are sturdy, and peasants are sturdy – why not just build things out of peasants?
The pros of the situation were abundant. Peasants don’t need to be made to order (although that was another project Bander considered, involving many hooks and pulley systems and a how-to guide involving cartoon rabbits) and can transport themselves to the dig site. Plus, peasants are much cheaper. All Bander needed to do was lure in enough peasants with the promise of great wealth, and several weeks later, when they finally realised that the building they were holding up was a very permanent structure, they couldn’t do anything about it, and Bander would never have paid them any of the promised money.
The top of the towers still needed to be made of bricks; no self-respecting nobleman or woman would want to live in a tower built of people. No wants to scratch their chin and ask aloud to themselves ‘What shall I have for breakfast?’ and have the walls answer ‘Bacon and eggs.’ So the peasants would be used only as foundations.
The plan was successful, and dozens of towers were erected. On their own, a tower was simply a tower, so Bander made them in close proximity – a field of towers for the rich. For a couple of decades, the plan was perfect. The peasants at the bottom grumbled, complained, and sometimes whined, but no one paid any attention. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ was the mantra the nobles adopted, and they found that occasionally brushing some grated cheese out of the window kept the foundations quiet.
But recently, Lord Ebrick’s foundations decided that this sort of thing wasn’t on. Someone consulted a passing lawyer, who read many long books and talked to many people (including one very wise owl he met whilst camping one summer) and came back with the conclusion that, no, it’s not ok to build a giant stone tower on the back of people. With or without their permission.
And with that, the peasants at the base of Lord Ebrick’s tower took action. Angry at having been manipulated and tricked, they rose up. Quite literally in fact. With much grunting and struggling, as one single organism those unfortunate people upon whom Lord Ebrick’s tower had been built, stood up. Lord Ebrick noticed something was amiss when he was in the bath and the water started moving to one end of the tub.
With much pushing and shoving, the peasants lifted the tower from their shoulders and let it topple to one side. Lord Ebrick was certainly surprised. So were his neighbours. Not just because their friend’s tower was falling, because it was falling towards them. When the foundations of the towers next to Lord Ebrick’s saw what was happening ,they realised that they did not have to put up with having a building on their heads either.
And so it was that the people of the Withering Sands, who for too long had had to rest bricks on their heads and listen through the floor to posh dinner parties and hope that none of the guests suggested a jumping up and down competition, rose up. One by one, all across the field of buildings, Towers began to topple. Brick structures fell to one side, smashing into their neighbours. Soon, half of the field was a pile of bricks, peasants jumping and cheering amidst a cloud of mortar dust, ghostly revellers hugging and clapping.
But it’s not over. There are many more towers left, and their inhabitants are starting to wonder if they should have treated their foundations a little better. Suddenly, a handful of grated cheese every half a week isn’t seeming to be enough. Now there’s bread, ham, and in some extreme cases where the peasants have given an experimental wobble just to test their owners, a pickled egg twice a month on a Sunday.
Fear is ripe in the air, as the nobles look to one another and try to work out who will be next. Will it be them?
Of course it’s not all good news for the peasants. Thanks to them, there are a lot of bricks lying around. The Withering Sands is in a right mess, and who do you think is going to have to clean that up?
Monday 7 March 2011
Hay-Day
Ask anyone who owns one, and they will tell you that horses run on hay. Even that wizard who tried to make his survive on old soap and odd socks. Horses have to eat hay, and without hay, they don’t do much and eventually lie down in a very permanent sort of way.
This means that because such a large proportion of the nobles and tradesmen on the Crescent Continent require horses, for pulling carts, taking them places they need to go, or dressing up in ruffs and having pictures painted on top of, the people who make the hay can charge whatever they like. The people who make the hay are the farmers in the Phelta Plains, a huge expanse of lowlands and plains in the centre of the Crescent Continent. Almost all of the continent’s food and hay supplies come from here, and now there is a problem.
In the capital city of Skyth, some people have been saying for a long time that the city should have its own supply of hay, to regulate and control itself. These are usually people who have a lot of money, yet regret having to spend it all on someone else’s goods. They are the kind of people who could buy and elephant and still manage to make a profit, or have a castle built and at the end the builder will write them a cheque. Suddenly, these people have been proved right by some very unfortunate incidents.
The problem with the Phelta plains is that being in the middle of the Crescent Continent, technically no one owns it. Seven kingdoms find it lying within their borders, but ancient laws set down by ancient kings decree that no kingdom or man may ever own the Phelta Plains. A lot of people seem to think that now that marrying sheep is banned, some of the other old customs should be looked at as well. But mostly the people know that a war over hay is something that would not end well, or quickly.
What is currently happening in Phelta is not a war over the plains, but another general, miscellaneous war about something else. The problem is when the field he’s meant to be harvesting is full of armoured people trying to smack each other in the kidneys, giving a farmer a wheelbarrow and scythe and saying ‘off you go’ tends to produce a response with only two fingers. No one wants to be shuffling through the melee just to get some hay; ‘Excuse me… sorry, excuse me, I always hate it when people turn up late… is that your arm there, sir? Excuse me.’
Which means hay reserves are running low. Naturally, this has caused the price of hay to rise. The hay dealers have realised they can make a lot of money, and also that if the crisis in Phelta isn’t resolved soon, there won’t be any hay to make money off. Naturally, it was the dealers with eye patches, cigars, big dogs and other such signs of unscrupulous behaviour that thought up a price hike first.
The poor, of course, are being hit hardest. The rich can afford to reach into their silk lined pockets, bring out a polar bear-fur purse and throw another few gold coins at the servant who comes in with the bill. If the peasants dig any deeper into their pockets they are in danger of having their hands bitten by the mice that live there. It’s getting to the point where those peasant or trader families who have two horses are having to get rid of one, trading in their fast, flashy racing horse for one with an extra long back that they can all fit on. Many have given up using the horse at all, and thousands more people across the continent have started using the dragon transportation system to get in to work every morning.
The people of the Crescent Continent have two options. First, try and invest a lot of time and resources into getting horses to work just as well on a diet of fresh grass and other green foods. The second, and more likely as it requires a lot less effort and a lot more moaning, is to sit and wait it out. Wars can’t last forever, and as soon as the problems in and around Phelta end, it will be safe for the hay convoys to begin leaving the region again, and everyone’s problems will be solved. Everyone is confident – one of the armies is clearly on top. They went in strong, drove back all resistance and have only got to find the enemy general and things will be over for good. It’ll all happen very soon…
This means that because such a large proportion of the nobles and tradesmen on the Crescent Continent require horses, for pulling carts, taking them places they need to go, or dressing up in ruffs and having pictures painted on top of, the people who make the hay can charge whatever they like. The people who make the hay are the farmers in the Phelta Plains, a huge expanse of lowlands and plains in the centre of the Crescent Continent. Almost all of the continent’s food and hay supplies come from here, and now there is a problem.
In the capital city of Skyth, some people have been saying for a long time that the city should have its own supply of hay, to regulate and control itself. These are usually people who have a lot of money, yet regret having to spend it all on someone else’s goods. They are the kind of people who could buy and elephant and still manage to make a profit, or have a castle built and at the end the builder will write them a cheque. Suddenly, these people have been proved right by some very unfortunate incidents.
The problem with the Phelta plains is that being in the middle of the Crescent Continent, technically no one owns it. Seven kingdoms find it lying within their borders, but ancient laws set down by ancient kings decree that no kingdom or man may ever own the Phelta Plains. A lot of people seem to think that now that marrying sheep is banned, some of the other old customs should be looked at as well. But mostly the people know that a war over hay is something that would not end well, or quickly.
What is currently happening in Phelta is not a war over the plains, but another general, miscellaneous war about something else. The problem is when the field he’s meant to be harvesting is full of armoured people trying to smack each other in the kidneys, giving a farmer a wheelbarrow and scythe and saying ‘off you go’ tends to produce a response with only two fingers. No one wants to be shuffling through the melee just to get some hay; ‘Excuse me… sorry, excuse me, I always hate it when people turn up late… is that your arm there, sir? Excuse me.’
Which means hay reserves are running low. Naturally, this has caused the price of hay to rise. The hay dealers have realised they can make a lot of money, and also that if the crisis in Phelta isn’t resolved soon, there won’t be any hay to make money off. Naturally, it was the dealers with eye patches, cigars, big dogs and other such signs of unscrupulous behaviour that thought up a price hike first.
The poor, of course, are being hit hardest. The rich can afford to reach into their silk lined pockets, bring out a polar bear-fur purse and throw another few gold coins at the servant who comes in with the bill. If the peasants dig any deeper into their pockets they are in danger of having their hands bitten by the mice that live there. It’s getting to the point where those peasant or trader families who have two horses are having to get rid of one, trading in their fast, flashy racing horse for one with an extra long back that they can all fit on. Many have given up using the horse at all, and thousands more people across the continent have started using the dragon transportation system to get in to work every morning.
The people of the Crescent Continent have two options. First, try and invest a lot of time and resources into getting horses to work just as well on a diet of fresh grass and other green foods. The second, and more likely as it requires a lot less effort and a lot more moaning, is to sit and wait it out. Wars can’t last forever, and as soon as the problems in and around Phelta end, it will be safe for the hay convoys to begin leaving the region again, and everyone’s problems will be solved. Everyone is confident – one of the armies is clearly on top. They went in strong, drove back all resistance and have only got to find the enemy general and things will be over for good. It’ll all happen very soon…
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