Group/Character Planning

Excellent!

1st of all; my apologies for the silence. I've been having the week from hell with my neighbor and a "tree company" they hired to cut a tree down at the edge of our properties. I've been trying to keep an eye on the initial forum we started in games tavern but didn't see that a new forum popped up here.

2nd: I'm loving seeing these characters together! When I first read Hubs & Spokes my initial character idea was an artisan or merchant who has been wronged/scapegoated for some reason and while he/she hasn't officially dropped from their caste, their name has been smeared to the point where it's getting pretty hard for them to make a living. I'm still working on how my character fits into the dynamics going on between everyone else or how my story relates to the temple project, but I'm gonna let it stew in the back of my brain for a day or two and I should come up with something more concrete. Or I may come up with something completely different :)

What about being branded an elf sympathizer? That might help tie you to kobold's character. I feel like WarDomo's and my character have some interesting ties already.

Or what if you just sell shady stuff? Like poisons for young clerks to kill their rivals for acolyteship with?

Maybe you used to own WarDomo's character but whatever happened to muddy your name ruined your finances and you ended up having to sell him and your other slaves?

Just some spitball ideas.

I was trying to think of something to tie together with kobold's character, I like elf sympathizer. Maybe my character owns a fairly successful mill and I always try and buy my grain from kobold and the elves because I always felt sorry for them. Once flood season comes and there is no flood, kobold's people are suffering because they are in danger of losing out on an entire growing season. When I try to investigate and ask questions it comes out that I buy exclusively from elves and my name starts to get tarnished. Realizing I now have nowhere else to get grain since no one wants to deal with an elf-lover, I go to my grain contact (kobold's character) and he tells me about this little excursion to investigate the temple disappearances that may be tied to the absence of the flood.

Thoughts?

Re-reading the artisan caste Shark_Bone put up:

"Artisans create the fine things that make life beautiful. They are free people and their wares are available for sale, as well. They pay tax to the God-Empress in coin or in items to decorate the buildings and temples commissioned by the God-Empress."

What if in addition to the above my Mill donated some hand-made grain wreaths to the temple consecration and as a result the other Millers are using this as an excuse to further smear my name. Along with being an elf-sympathizer, my wreaths caused the disappearance of the slaves.

Sounds cool. So why would you leave the mill?

Are you out of business because all the elves' grain is being snapped up by the Empress as a reserve for the humans because of the coming danger of famine? Do you have an assistant you can leave in charge? Did it get burned down by anti-elf vigilantes?

Oooh, yeah. Your filthy contaminated elf-grown wreaths must have been what caused this... :)

Totally not the shady rituals Adom has been doing...

Maybe there's like a whole Sons of Man organization or something.

Adom is going to love being lumped in with an elf and a social pariah (the slave doesn't count since he owns him now).

Meanwhile, in the halls of the Sons of Man, I'm gald we sent those pariahs into the tomb as a sacrifice. Hopefully once those Jonahs are gone, the floods will return.

Exactly, if that works for Kobold it makes total sense that the Empress would tax the elven farmers really heavily before anyone else to make up for the upcoming food shortages. Conequently, my character (female human named Ipwet I'm thinking) who always assumed the elves depended on her for business is just now discovering that she is equally dependent on them because no one else will sell to an elf-lover like her. With no other options available to her, Ipwet turns to kobold's character for help (they are good friends maybe?) and sees this mission as an opportunity to clear her name. She temporarily shuts down the mill and leaves her group of apprentices (former street-fighting urchins like herself whom she is sheltering and rehabilitating) to care for the building while she is away.

Lol, of course there are all kinds of rumors going around about the cause of this whole debacle and different castes would grab on to the ones that make sense to them :)

We could totally have a conspiracy theory that the elf-hating assholes are behind it all to break the elves completely. Starve them, steal their food, and when they inevitably rebel, exterminate them.

Maybe Amenset (Adom's former lover, the priestess Next Big Thing in the sun god's priesthood) is one of them. Are there half-breeds running around? Maybe Adom has a family secret that somewhere in the past one of his forbears got down got funky with one of the pointy-eared bastards?

Question for Shark_Bone or maybe everyone to discuss; are the gods actually present in everyday life taking a direct role in mortal events? Or are they more just prayed to and blamed for things with no real evidence of their existence?

Faith magic (praying for miracles) is an integral part of my character, so there's at least some precedent for supernatural beings taking an interest.

Ahh, right. But maybe not so much for lower castes? I'm thinking Ipwet might not take much stock in the whole "religion" thing. Growing up on the streets and fighting for scraps hasn't instilled a great sense of piety in her and she hasn't witnessed any great miracles. I kind of feel like she is going to be a scrappy hard-ass bitch, my mind keeps coming back to Jack from Mass Effect. But she is fiercely loyal to those she sees as down-trodden like she was.

Ipwet's Lifepaths:
1) Grew up as an orphan in a a gang of street-fighting urchins, Ipwet learned life's lessons the hard way developing a knack for martial arts to defend herself and a jaded world-view.
2) She was taken in by Tuya, a kindly old miller's widow who patiently helped Ipwet to turn her life around. She acted as Tuya's apprentice for a few years before Tuya's death and the entire mill was left to her.
3) During Ipwet's initial time to keep the mill running she came across (Kobold's character) and the elven people. She felt a strange kinship towards these disposed people, both of them have been dealt harsh hands by life's misfortunes and are struggling just to survive.
4) Recently, Ipwet has been receiving harassment due to her preferential treatment of the elven farmers. This boiled over into a full on boycot of her wares when the temple consecration went awry and she was blamed by the other millers due to her donation of grain-wreaths. Her old fighting tendencies have resurfaced and she wants redemption, so she joins up with the expedition into the temple to find the real cause of the disappearances.

Beliefs:
1) "I believe society preys on the weak. If I don't continue to fight for myself and others like me we will be taken advantage of."
2) "I don’t believe the temple is cursed. There is a practical reason for the disappearance of the slaves and the flood; I will help to find it."
3) "I will do whatever it takes to restore the good name of my mill and exact economic revenge on my racist competitors."

Instincts:
1) "I always take the side of the oppressed and disparaged."
2) "I always follow through on my threats."
3) "If I feel myself or my friends are in danger, I will be the first to strike out at our enemies."

Traits:
1) Hard-ass
2) Self-taught
3) Intolerant of intolerance

Oh man, that's fantastic.

I dig it. Everything that's been discussed here is Gold.

It's funny, because when I first conceived of this game, I thought the God-Empress herself was Elf. But, if everyone hates elves and they are a "low" people, she is most definitely not. And that's totally cool.

Most people believe the gods exist and there is enough supernatural power on display that everyone feels that belief is justified. However, if you choose not to follow them, it's not like the gods will go out of their way to punish you. Belief has its own rewards.

Phantasmoron, your BITs look good to me.

Thanks! This is what I've been doing at work instead of working this afternoon :)

Shark_Bone, I only have Hubs & Spokes so feel free to burn Ipwet whenever.

What if there's a distinct separation of low elves and high elves? Something like noble elves have certain distinct features and skin tones (which if we're making racism and bigotry a major seeing element feels appropriate). There could be a divide in the ranks of the Sons of Man where it's socially acceptable to hate the low elves but only the True Believers acknowledge that high elves are just as much of a stain on creation.

That opens up possibilities for different groups within the Sons of Man to have different agendas regarding the Empress.

EDIT: but that might be getting to convoluted *¯\_(ツ)_/¯*