Sol Zagato
Well-known member
This is set in a very alternate matriarchal late copper/early bronze age.
Mother (capitalized): The mother goddess. Last seen on earth several thousand years ago. Opinions vary on just how divine she is. Literal or metaphorical ancestor of just about everyone.
mother (non-capitalized): someone's actual mother.
Character creation is the remainder of the setting introduction. Deal with it.
[ ] Man
-Why the hell would anyone want to be a man? They're irresponsible creatures living for today, for that's all they'll ever see. None of them useful unless they're taught to obey. My sister said the oldest man ever lived to one-hundred and five, and was practically a walking corpse by that age! The only things they're good for is dying and a good time at night, and the second is debatable.
-SUM: You're a man. You're fucked. At least you weren't born a dog. I guess. You feel like a slave, a decoration, or a piece of meat, just trying to get though the day.
[ ]Scum
-You were raised by your father, a migrant worker. You have no lineage. The arms and armor you inherited from your mother, along with the fact you don't know her name, hint strongly that she was one of the defiled. Even among the scrawny dirt-caked peasants, you are something of an outcast. Your features are pleasing to men; as if their opinions matter! In the eyes of the great, you are everything they hate about peasants; weak, short, deformed, and without family. But just because he never told you her name doesn't mean your father never told you about your mother. Her bravery, her audacity, her quick wit, strong will, and how much alike her you are. Your father is dead now, and the world is against you. Spit on them, and spit on the gods. You'll shine brighter.
-Starting age:16.
-Traits: food tolerant, strong immune system, puny, weak, tough, beautiful, no family, social penalties, large social penalties vs upper class, clever, iron will, ignorant, favored by fate.
-SUM: You've got a body that would be considered that of a normal human female, if short, from OTL Earth. To bad you exist in this fresh hell instead of Earth, where you're David surrounded by Goliaths. You'll need that luck. You feel like a rebellious hero.
[ ]Peasant
-The priests tell you there was a time before farming. It was when the world was green, life was easy, and everyone was perfectly filial, all tracing their lines to the mother goddess. Your family has no memory of such a time- your lineage does not extend far back enough. The farming clans make up the vast majority of the population. Suffering from malnutrition and famine, looked down on by the townspeople and herders, hated by the nobility, and hunted for sport by the Wild People, their lot is tough, their options in life straightjacketed. The vast majority of women take the slow path; serve your family and city faithfully, survive half a thousand years, and birth a clan strong enough that the nobles have to take you in. Very few succeed. The fast path is war, where a girl can rise up or be cast down in an instant.
-Starting age: 20
-Traits: food tolerant, strong immune system, short, weak, attractive, social penalties vs higher classes, lucky.
-SUM: Peasant! You've been toughened by labor but debilitated by generations of chronic disease and malnutrition. Even given your terrible conditions, you seem a little stronger and tougher than an OTL Earth female. You feel like a damn dirty peasant, but ready to rise above it.
[ ]Urban
- The cities are a mannish thing, even newer than farming. Places of administration, creation and trade, your own mother is bewildered by how fast your city has grown and changed. The stone-hard peasant and noble clans dissolve here into transactional relations, and reward is based on ability as much as loyalty or lineage. Even men can find themselves in positions of power and respect. The old nobles shun the cities; they say the spirits of disease are too strong there, and they don't trust anything new. More the better for your family, that gives you more independence.
-Starting age: 25
-Traits: strong immune system, clever, weak, no particular social penalties except nobility, small family, literate, bonus in productive skills.
SUM: Skilled labor or administrator. There's good food, but as much as they obsess over it, disease control is still an issue here. You feel like an important woman, doing new things.
[ ]Soldier
-Your family are army going generations back. Short generations, but you're lucky to live more than a century in this occupation.
Army lifers are kind of middle class, on par with the urbanites. They make up the bulk of the middle ranks; the equivalent of noncommissioned and junior officers. They hope to rise higher, and sometimes do. The army is another area where men can rise high, war being bloody and them, on average, having an edge in strength. The military as a whole, however, is firmly controlled by the nobility; nobles and noblemen make up the bulk of officers.
-Starting age: 20
-Traits: strong immune system, tough, friendly with nobility, small family, bonus in combat.
SUM: You're a no-shit soldier, far stronger and tougher than the vast majority of women in OTL Earth. You feel like a gambler, risking your life for fame, fortune and honor.
[ ] New Blood 1
-Your mother was born a peasant. A prosperous peasant from a strong clan, but a peasant nonetheless. She is old, likely to die in the next century, but she is now ennobled. You are the symbol of her achievement; her first daughter sired by a noble husband. You have many surviving older sisters, many whom are respected and accomplished. But you are noble, and they are not. It is a curious position; tradition dictates that you would be subsurvient to them, but that's flipped on its head. Like all nobles, you will be expected to fight if there is war, and you've been raised with this in mind. You've learned to ape upper class morality, but you care more about the standing of your family.
-Starting age: 25
-Traits: social penalty vs old nobility, large family, conniving sisters, trained in combat, social intrigue, wilderness skills, ecology, literate.
-SUM: The new girl. Time to get picked on. You feel like a striver, having to be twice as good as everyone around you to get anywhere.
[ ] New Blood 2
-War has been good to your mother. Slaves, gold, men, respect and ennoblement have come her way, all because she commands soldiers and wins. It's intimidating to be the daughter of a prodigy, everyone has high expectations of you. Unlike your mother, you were raised with a noble education, further separating you from her. -Starting age: 30
-Traits: one of (strong or large or coordinated), tough, small family, badass mother, social bonus with soldiers and nobility, bonus in combat, trained in wilderness skills, ecology, literate.
-SUM: The -respectable- new girl. But you've got a hell of a family image to live up to. You feel almost physical weight from the expectations of your peers and your mother. Will you rebel or will you live up to the challenge?
[ ] Noble
-The wage of sin is death. It's not just religion, it is verifiable knowledge. The degeneracy of the peasants, their cursed bodies and short lives, are all linked. Their sins against the land, their sin of living in one place. Their sins of eating wrongly, cleaning wrongly, excreting wrongly, marrying wrongly, and not controlling their men. All these sins stir the spirits of disease that plague them. Your strength and health is proof of your righteousness. The same with the land. Balance not obeyed, the land is ripped and torn millenium after millenium to support numberless hordes. Despite constant measures life declines. Correct actions would mean living in balance as Mother ran things, with not even a hundredth of the population density. But that would mean giving up your station. To be noble is to profit from the murder of the world, to know it, and to fight to take a bigger piece for yourself anyway. You take great pride in having memorized your line to Mother.
-Starting age: 40
-Traits: food intolerant, pick three of (large, strong, coordinated, tough), noble mother, feuding family, social penalties vs peasants and urban, trained in wilderness skills, medicine and ecology, bonus to combat, social intrigue, literate.
-SUM: You come from a long line of incredibly intolerant, conceited bitches who own the place You're also very well educated, likely to be six foot plus and built like an olympic sprinter. You're very obedient to your mother, and suspicious of your sisters. You idolize wilderness, war and the hunt, and hate the actual source of your luxuries. You fully expect, not entirely unrealistically, to see your 700th birthday. You feel like you were born old, decadent and trapped, looking for a way out.
[ ]Blood of the Old Queens
-Your family has always been powerful, above the fray of the lesser noble clans. The accepted religion is just a story your family composed, but it's a mostly true story of your family history. A mere 5,000 years ago the population was strictly controlled. All people lived in Balance, no one farmed, and all the clans gathered periodically to meet Mother. Then Mother hid herself, the long peace ended, and animals and plants were domesticated. Great wars were fought between those who abhorred farming, and those who had to choose between farming and starvation. The farmers weren't stupid; they could see what farming was doing to their bodies, so left the harmful work and monotonous food to their younger sisters. It's a sick joke, idolizing the wild women who openly desire your death, while brutalizing your own distant cousins for being what you made them. But there is some hope. Writing and cities have been a great boon to analyzing ecological data, and mannish innovations seem constant now. Perhaps civilization can be made sustainable before it expands to eat the world. You memorized your family line to Mother by the age of four.
-Starting age: 50. You are no longer a child, but it will be decades, or great achievements, before your mother arranges a marraige for you.
-Traits: food intolerant, weak immune system, large, strong, coordinated, tough, good memory, powerful mother, powerful family, bonus in religious tests, social penalties vs peasants, social bonus vs nobility, can actually talk to the Wild People, reknowned, trained in social intrigue, bonus to wilderness skills, medicine, ecology and combat, literate.
-Sum: Semiresponsible old money, still conceited as hell. You're good breeding and it shows, your body probably a cut above your peers. You had an extremely late puberty, and maybe still haven't had it. You're very obedient to your mother though, there would be extreme consequences to starting a family without authorization. You feel like you're part of a plan to save everyone.
[ ]Ancient and True
-Your family is not of civilization, they merely tolerate its existence to harvest the fruits. Just a few centuries ago, your mother came in screaming from the mountains to seize her fortune with a battle axe. Your foremothers had stayed faithful to the old ways. Perhaps too faithful. Out in the deep wilderness Balance is life. The lives of males are nothing, population is strictly controlled, agriculture is a mortal sin and herding is morally suspect. Your folk memory extends before Mother- to your family, she was a great matriarch who was more than human, but not divine. You reserve most of your respect for your own mother; you do everything she tells you without question. The rhythms of life and the planet were your bedtime stories, and every (surviving) sibling a product of ruthless culling of the bloodlines. Even your enemies cannot suppress their religious awe at your appearance; everything about you marks you their superior, born to kill and dominate. When you recite your lineage of only seven women between you and Mother, and then go further back, they believe it. Who cares that you don't look particularly different from a (brawny) shaved man? Breasts are for nursing mothers, and when your time comes, your chosen man will obey you unconditionally.
-Starting age: 80. Your long tutelage is at an end, and you have risen to a position of trust in your mother's eyes, if not adulthood.
-Traits: Inbred, food intolerant, weak immune system, huge, mighty, coordinated, tough, handsome, perfect memory, inflexible mind, powerful mother, strict family, bonus in religious tests, bonus to intimidate, social penalties vs urban and peasants, has contact with the Wild People, notorious, bonus to medicine, large bonuses to wilderness skills and ecology, bonus in combat, large penalties to anything to do with civilization.
SUM: You are a huge barbarian princeling, born to rage, wreck and destroy, at home with the open sky above your head and slaves to torment. You're also a prepubescent autistic girl who adores her mother, has never had a sexual feeling in her life, and has a moderate Habsburg jaw. You're a goddamn abomination, the crown jewel of an extremely twisted paleolithic eugenics project that's been running since before Mother hid from the world. You feel like you're in your rightful place, mother always has a plan, after all. You don't doubt anything, but that could change.
[ ] Seminomadic herder
-Your family is in between settled land and the Wild People, so they satisfy the dictates of both. You keep to Balance, of a sort. Anyone who willfully exceeds what the land will carry dies, just like in the old times. This goes for numbers of people as well as the size of the herds. You pass intelligence and food to the Wild People, and hide none of your ecological data from them. To do otherwise would be suicide, it's why they suffer you to live. You also obey the nobles of the settled lands, paying them tithes of animals and soldiers, and trading with them. This isn't to say there's no room to grow. There are rumours of Wild People domesticating strange beasts to restart the war to exterminate civilization, the herder clans fight each other all the time, and more than a few herders have moved in on a city in its moment of weakness to put themselves in charge. As a herder, no one trusts you exactly, but no one hates you either, and your Balance is envied. All herders can recite their line to Mother, though more lines came through adoption than they care to admit.
-Starting age: 50
-Traits: Food intolerant, lactose tolerant, large, strong, coordinated, tough, conniving mother, stable family, mild social penalties vs civilizaiton, has contact with the Wild People, bonus to wilderness skills, medicine and ecology.
SUM: Your family name may as well be Tratorius, patient opportunists to the last. Your phenotype is pretty close to that of the Wild People, among whom the women average about as big and strong as the men. You feel like you're part of a long and clever game for your own enrichment.
There will be further creation steps. Generally, the weaker the starting position, the more hidden bonuses and character customization you'll get.
Mother (capitalized): The mother goddess. Last seen on earth several thousand years ago. Opinions vary on just how divine she is. Literal or metaphorical ancestor of just about everyone.
mother (non-capitalized): someone's actual mother.
Character creation is the remainder of the setting introduction. Deal with it.
[ ] Man
-Why the hell would anyone want to be a man? They're irresponsible creatures living for today, for that's all they'll ever see. None of them useful unless they're taught to obey. My sister said the oldest man ever lived to one-hundred and five, and was practically a walking corpse by that age! The only things they're good for is dying and a good time at night, and the second is debatable.
-SUM: You're a man. You're fucked. At least you weren't born a dog. I guess. You feel like a slave, a decoration, or a piece of meat, just trying to get though the day.
[ ]Scum
-You were raised by your father, a migrant worker. You have no lineage. The arms and armor you inherited from your mother, along with the fact you don't know her name, hint strongly that she was one of the defiled. Even among the scrawny dirt-caked peasants, you are something of an outcast. Your features are pleasing to men; as if their opinions matter! In the eyes of the great, you are everything they hate about peasants; weak, short, deformed, and without family. But just because he never told you her name doesn't mean your father never told you about your mother. Her bravery, her audacity, her quick wit, strong will, and how much alike her you are. Your father is dead now, and the world is against you. Spit on them, and spit on the gods. You'll shine brighter.
-Starting age:16.
-Traits: food tolerant, strong immune system, puny, weak, tough, beautiful, no family, social penalties, large social penalties vs upper class, clever, iron will, ignorant, favored by fate.
-SUM: You've got a body that would be considered that of a normal human female, if short, from OTL Earth. To bad you exist in this fresh hell instead of Earth, where you're David surrounded by Goliaths. You'll need that luck. You feel like a rebellious hero.
[ ]Peasant
-The priests tell you there was a time before farming. It was when the world was green, life was easy, and everyone was perfectly filial, all tracing their lines to the mother goddess. Your family has no memory of such a time- your lineage does not extend far back enough. The farming clans make up the vast majority of the population. Suffering from malnutrition and famine, looked down on by the townspeople and herders, hated by the nobility, and hunted for sport by the Wild People, their lot is tough, their options in life straightjacketed. The vast majority of women take the slow path; serve your family and city faithfully, survive half a thousand years, and birth a clan strong enough that the nobles have to take you in. Very few succeed. The fast path is war, where a girl can rise up or be cast down in an instant.
-Starting age: 20
-Traits: food tolerant, strong immune system, short, weak, attractive, social penalties vs higher classes, lucky.
-SUM: Peasant! You've been toughened by labor but debilitated by generations of chronic disease and malnutrition. Even given your terrible conditions, you seem a little stronger and tougher than an OTL Earth female. You feel like a damn dirty peasant, but ready to rise above it.
[ ]Urban
- The cities are a mannish thing, even newer than farming. Places of administration, creation and trade, your own mother is bewildered by how fast your city has grown and changed. The stone-hard peasant and noble clans dissolve here into transactional relations, and reward is based on ability as much as loyalty or lineage. Even men can find themselves in positions of power and respect. The old nobles shun the cities; they say the spirits of disease are too strong there, and they don't trust anything new. More the better for your family, that gives you more independence.
-Starting age: 25
-Traits: strong immune system, clever, weak, no particular social penalties except nobility, small family, literate, bonus in productive skills.
SUM: Skilled labor or administrator. There's good food, but as much as they obsess over it, disease control is still an issue here. You feel like an important woman, doing new things.
[ ]Soldier
-Your family are army going generations back. Short generations, but you're lucky to live more than a century in this occupation.
Army lifers are kind of middle class, on par with the urbanites. They make up the bulk of the middle ranks; the equivalent of noncommissioned and junior officers. They hope to rise higher, and sometimes do. The army is another area where men can rise high, war being bloody and them, on average, having an edge in strength. The military as a whole, however, is firmly controlled by the nobility; nobles and noblemen make up the bulk of officers.
-Starting age: 20
-Traits: strong immune system, tough, friendly with nobility, small family, bonus in combat.
SUM: You're a no-shit soldier, far stronger and tougher than the vast majority of women in OTL Earth. You feel like a gambler, risking your life for fame, fortune and honor.
[ ] New Blood 1
-Your mother was born a peasant. A prosperous peasant from a strong clan, but a peasant nonetheless. She is old, likely to die in the next century, but she is now ennobled. You are the symbol of her achievement; her first daughter sired by a noble husband. You have many surviving older sisters, many whom are respected and accomplished. But you are noble, and they are not. It is a curious position; tradition dictates that you would be subsurvient to them, but that's flipped on its head. Like all nobles, you will be expected to fight if there is war, and you've been raised with this in mind. You've learned to ape upper class morality, but you care more about the standing of your family.
-Starting age: 25
-Traits: social penalty vs old nobility, large family, conniving sisters, trained in combat, social intrigue, wilderness skills, ecology, literate.
-SUM: The new girl. Time to get picked on. You feel like a striver, having to be twice as good as everyone around you to get anywhere.
[ ] New Blood 2
-War has been good to your mother. Slaves, gold, men, respect and ennoblement have come her way, all because she commands soldiers and wins. It's intimidating to be the daughter of a prodigy, everyone has high expectations of you. Unlike your mother, you were raised with a noble education, further separating you from her. -Starting age: 30
-Traits: one of (strong or large or coordinated), tough, small family, badass mother, social bonus with soldiers and nobility, bonus in combat, trained in wilderness skills, ecology, literate.
-SUM: The -respectable- new girl. But you've got a hell of a family image to live up to. You feel almost physical weight from the expectations of your peers and your mother. Will you rebel or will you live up to the challenge?
[ ] Noble
-The wage of sin is death. It's not just religion, it is verifiable knowledge. The degeneracy of the peasants, their cursed bodies and short lives, are all linked. Their sins against the land, their sin of living in one place. Their sins of eating wrongly, cleaning wrongly, excreting wrongly, marrying wrongly, and not controlling their men. All these sins stir the spirits of disease that plague them. Your strength and health is proof of your righteousness. The same with the land. Balance not obeyed, the land is ripped and torn millenium after millenium to support numberless hordes. Despite constant measures life declines. Correct actions would mean living in balance as Mother ran things, with not even a hundredth of the population density. But that would mean giving up your station. To be noble is to profit from the murder of the world, to know it, and to fight to take a bigger piece for yourself anyway. You take great pride in having memorized your line to Mother.
-Starting age: 40
-Traits: food intolerant, pick three of (large, strong, coordinated, tough), noble mother, feuding family, social penalties vs peasants and urban, trained in wilderness skills, medicine and ecology, bonus to combat, social intrigue, literate.
-SUM: You come from a long line of incredibly intolerant, conceited bitches who own the place You're also very well educated, likely to be six foot plus and built like an olympic sprinter. You're very obedient to your mother, and suspicious of your sisters. You idolize wilderness, war and the hunt, and hate the actual source of your luxuries. You fully expect, not entirely unrealistically, to see your 700th birthday. You feel like you were born old, decadent and trapped, looking for a way out.
[ ]Blood of the Old Queens
-Your family has always been powerful, above the fray of the lesser noble clans. The accepted religion is just a story your family composed, but it's a mostly true story of your family history. A mere 5,000 years ago the population was strictly controlled. All people lived in Balance, no one farmed, and all the clans gathered periodically to meet Mother. Then Mother hid herself, the long peace ended, and animals and plants were domesticated. Great wars were fought between those who abhorred farming, and those who had to choose between farming and starvation. The farmers weren't stupid; they could see what farming was doing to their bodies, so left the harmful work and monotonous food to their younger sisters. It's a sick joke, idolizing the wild women who openly desire your death, while brutalizing your own distant cousins for being what you made them. But there is some hope. Writing and cities have been a great boon to analyzing ecological data, and mannish innovations seem constant now. Perhaps civilization can be made sustainable before it expands to eat the world. You memorized your family line to Mother by the age of four.
-Starting age: 50. You are no longer a child, but it will be decades, or great achievements, before your mother arranges a marraige for you.
-Traits: food intolerant, weak immune system, large, strong, coordinated, tough, good memory, powerful mother, powerful family, bonus in religious tests, social penalties vs peasants, social bonus vs nobility, can actually talk to the Wild People, reknowned, trained in social intrigue, bonus to wilderness skills, medicine, ecology and combat, literate.
-Sum: Semiresponsible old money, still conceited as hell. You're good breeding and it shows, your body probably a cut above your peers. You had an extremely late puberty, and maybe still haven't had it. You're very obedient to your mother though, there would be extreme consequences to starting a family without authorization. You feel like you're part of a plan to save everyone.
[ ]Ancient and True
-Your family is not of civilization, they merely tolerate its existence to harvest the fruits. Just a few centuries ago, your mother came in screaming from the mountains to seize her fortune with a battle axe. Your foremothers had stayed faithful to the old ways. Perhaps too faithful. Out in the deep wilderness Balance is life. The lives of males are nothing, population is strictly controlled, agriculture is a mortal sin and herding is morally suspect. Your folk memory extends before Mother- to your family, she was a great matriarch who was more than human, but not divine. You reserve most of your respect for your own mother; you do everything she tells you without question. The rhythms of life and the planet were your bedtime stories, and every (surviving) sibling a product of ruthless culling of the bloodlines. Even your enemies cannot suppress their religious awe at your appearance; everything about you marks you their superior, born to kill and dominate. When you recite your lineage of only seven women between you and Mother, and then go further back, they believe it. Who cares that you don't look particularly different from a (brawny) shaved man? Breasts are for nursing mothers, and when your time comes, your chosen man will obey you unconditionally.
-Starting age: 80. Your long tutelage is at an end, and you have risen to a position of trust in your mother's eyes, if not adulthood.
-Traits: Inbred, food intolerant, weak immune system, huge, mighty, coordinated, tough, handsome, perfect memory, inflexible mind, powerful mother, strict family, bonus in religious tests, bonus to intimidate, social penalties vs urban and peasants, has contact with the Wild People, notorious, bonus to medicine, large bonuses to wilderness skills and ecology, bonus in combat, large penalties to anything to do with civilization.
SUM: You are a huge barbarian princeling, born to rage, wreck and destroy, at home with the open sky above your head and slaves to torment. You're also a prepubescent autistic girl who adores her mother, has never had a sexual feeling in her life, and has a moderate Habsburg jaw. You're a goddamn abomination, the crown jewel of an extremely twisted paleolithic eugenics project that's been running since before Mother hid from the world. You feel like you're in your rightful place, mother always has a plan, after all. You don't doubt anything, but that could change.
[ ] Seminomadic herder
-Your family is in between settled land and the Wild People, so they satisfy the dictates of both. You keep to Balance, of a sort. Anyone who willfully exceeds what the land will carry dies, just like in the old times. This goes for numbers of people as well as the size of the herds. You pass intelligence and food to the Wild People, and hide none of your ecological data from them. To do otherwise would be suicide, it's why they suffer you to live. You also obey the nobles of the settled lands, paying them tithes of animals and soldiers, and trading with them. This isn't to say there's no room to grow. There are rumours of Wild People domesticating strange beasts to restart the war to exterminate civilization, the herder clans fight each other all the time, and more than a few herders have moved in on a city in its moment of weakness to put themselves in charge. As a herder, no one trusts you exactly, but no one hates you either, and your Balance is envied. All herders can recite their line to Mother, though more lines came through adoption than they care to admit.
-Starting age: 50
-Traits: Food intolerant, lactose tolerant, large, strong, coordinated, tough, conniving mother, stable family, mild social penalties vs civilizaiton, has contact with the Wild People, bonus to wilderness skills, medicine and ecology.
SUM: Your family name may as well be Tratorius, patient opportunists to the last. Your phenotype is pretty close to that of the Wild People, among whom the women average about as big and strong as the men. You feel like you're part of a long and clever game for your own enrichment.
There will be further creation steps. Generally, the weaker the starting position, the more hidden bonuses and character customization you'll get.
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