Re: Faeriespace - Was: Fairyspace Expansion

From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Faeriespace - Was: Fairyspace Expansion


> --- David Shepheard <david_shepheard@???????.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Sorry for the delay with this. I've been busy at
>> work.
>
> Same here :p
>
>
>> I think you should stick with the original idea that
>> there is no government.
>
> Hmmm, I personally like the idea of small kingdoms and
> courts scattered throughout the sphere.  Fits the mold
> of fairies in tales and such.

Lots of courts rather than the two courts that Charles proposed?

OK, then. Sell me on this.

How would this fit in with the concept of Aelivere as "One-King of 
Faeriespace"? Would you need to dump this original canon or could you twist 
it to create things like kingdoms or courts that don't claim to be kingdoms 
or courts.

The canon specifically says: "Faeriespace has none of the common tools of 
state that other forms of government possess." Could you come up with new 
"tools" that have the same functions as government bodies, but perform them 
in a way more in keeping with fairy tales?

The canon says: "Never has a council meeting been called." So, could you 
have local rulership done by some form of representative of Aelivere? Could 
you find a way to put paladins, clerics, bards or knights (or some other 
type of representitive) in charge of local areas? (Could you have those 
representatives listen to the problems of the people, solve the easy ones 
and travel to Armon to deal with the problems they can't solve?) I could buy 
a native having a one-to-one chat with a paladin and then a paladin having a 
one-to-one chat with Aelivere as "not being a council meeting".

The canon says: "No ambassadors exist in Faeriespace." I can see how that 
could be bypassed. When the British Empire existed the UK put *its* 
representatives into the countries it ruled. So you could argue that 
"ambassadors" would only apply to external governments from other crystal 
spheres. (So I could easily accept this sentence being tweaked into "there 
are no ambassadors of the Shoe Lung Empire or the elven navy in 
Faeriespace.)

The canon says: "No war-councils, parliaments, congresses, or other form of 
government exists in this magical solar system. All things simply become so 
through the will of Aelivere." That says that Aelivere is in charge, but we 
already know from Crystal Spheres, that he is willing to hire a bunch of 
visitors to deal with the Isopterite Lair. So you could argue that he could 
appoint any internal or external NPC to carry out any other mission within 
Faeriespace. (So I could easily accept someone telling me that he calls a 
paladin to his side and then tells him to gather 100 men on Genla and build 
a new town to the north of a small lake.)

I could be sold on Aelivere as a figure that is similar in many ways to 
Astinus of Palanthus (from Beyond the Moons and Dragonlance novels). Only 
I'd want him to be sold as someone who sees everything and tinkers with it, 
instead of someone who sees everything and avoids tinkering. If Aelivere 
"sees" a war happening over control of a river in 100 years, but then orders 
one of "his" people to build a dam that ensures everyone has enough water, I 
can buy the fact that he keeps the peace.

Anyway, going back to government (and if possible government *without* a 
government), I'd be interested in how you think we could go from the small 
community, to the "fairy tale thing" that could replace the role of a 
kingdom, to the individual planets to Upgood or Vastdarken to Aelivere.

>> The worlds grow on the (unnamed) tree. I think they
>> should all be gigantic apples, or some other fruit.
>> In fact, I think there is a case to be made
>> that the entire system (tree, planets and suns) is
>> one liveworld.
>
> I like this idea, making planets fruit.  Hmmm, then
> could the planets of Vastdarken be fruit that dropped
> from the tree and is now rotting?  Perhaps Vastdarken
> is litered with the remains of innumerable worlds.
> Interesting idea there...

Have you ever seen the Logan's Run? I'm not sure if it was the film or the 
TV show, but they had a big computer centre with some dead areas. And the 
real world regions connected to those dead areas were beyond the control of 
the computer.

If worlds fall off of the tree, I'd like to see them fall out of the 
influence of Aelivere. I would like Aelivere to have a true neutral 
alignment and I'd like him to carry out individual actions that keep all 
other alignments in balance. So, I'd prefer to see Vastdarken apples remain 
on the tree. However, if you want to create "windfalls" on the bottom of the 
crystal sphere* you could introduce a new bunch of "invisible" societies 
that are not under Aelivere's control.

* = Or have them falling at a slow speed like 1 mile per hour.

>> > Aelivere appears to be a local god-like power, and
>> > could be considered to be equivalent to Oberon,
>> > which begs the question, if he's Oberon, who's
>> > Titania?
>
> Maybe he's their son, and hasn't yet taken a wife? :)

The more I look at what everyone has said, the more I think that Aelivere 
should be a dryad - *the* dryad - from within the great tree. This would 
give him the ability to be anywhere on the tree. (The smaller dryads 
mentioned for Upgood, should be dryads who live within the normal sized 
trees on the surface of the "apples" of Upgood.)

>> The dwarves mine an "almost endless supply of
>> precious metals and stones". I would suggest that
>> this supply should be built into the sphere-sized-
>> tree.
>
> Another interesting idea.  I like it :)

If we tie this sort of thing in with your windfall idea, we could have a 
"cycle of life". So far we have:

1) The great tree (The Shrakma Tree) create everything lesser plants need to 
live,
2) Lesser plants creating food for plant eating animals and
3) Plant eating animals creating food for preditors.

With intellegent people/monsters using all of these resources as food or raw 
materials.

To get this "energy" back into the tree, maybe we could have soil where the 
windfalls can rot and turn back into nutrients that feed the tree. So rather 
than put Vastdarken on the "floor" of the crystal sphere, it might be better 
to put a gigantic "swamp" there and have former Upgood worlds, former 
Vastdarken worlds, former suns and dead leaves slowly sink below the surface 
and get eaten by worms and bugs that have a similar role to starbeasts.

(I haven't decided yet if Aelivere would want his people to leave a world 
before it drops, of if it would be good to continue stealing ideas from 
Logan's Run and give an *entire* world a "Last Day" party that ended with 
them dropping to their doom and being replaced by a new planet with new 
people.)

>> Ships
>
> I just had a thought...maybe instead of building
> ships, the natives bribe gigantic animals and birds to
> carry them from world to world, such as eagles,
> squirrils, dragons, songbirds, and butterflies.  Some
> of these animals are easily on the scale of a ship,
> and could carry hundreds of people.  And because of
> the time distorting effects, a ride on their backs
> would last only hours, not days or weeks.

While I don't like the time-distortion idea, I do like the idea of creating 
creatures of starbeast size and having people fly from branch to branch.

Actually, maybe starbeasts are *too* large, but I'd be happy to see the 
elves of Faeriespace tame titanic butterflies that have a displacement of 1 
or more "spacial tons" and therefore can work as a living spelljamming ship. 
I'd  want to give these creatures a natural spelljamming ability that was 
tied into the tree or the power of Shrakma*. I'd want these creatures to 
decide for themselves where they want to go, so that travel would involve 
communication and negotiation**.

* = This is mainly to stop people taking them elsewhere and filling the 
universe up with them.

** = This would mean that if someone was following the principle of 
"shrakma" they could get some form of creature to take them where they 
wanted to go, but if the Scro or EIN tried to do the same thing they would 
find it hard to get the creatures to cooperate.

> Anyways, just some thoughts.  Good ideas all around,
> definately! :)

Keep your ideas coming in.

"Pay no attention to the kender behind the curtain."
David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/