Arachnia Turn # 0

Arachnia Turn #0
This sheet records important details about your Deity.

Corruption
Energies like order, chaos, or primal are terribly alien to the gods nature and swallowing them can alter the deities makeup. We call this sort of permanent alteration corruption, and if a player ever has 100 points of corruption, in a single energy type, his deity becomes an entity controlled by the game's staff. Over time deities who drink a lot of these types of energy can also gain tolerance allowing them to handle more and more energy with less and less risk of corruption.

------------	...	Soul	Order	Chaos	Primal	Border	Cosmic
Corruption		0	0	0	0	0	0
Tolerance		50	0	0	0	0	0
Max Drank		100	10	10	10	10	10

Deals
This segment is meant to hold links to any active deals effecting your deity. All deals are subject to review once every five turns and may be altered at some later date, in the meantime they give you benefits and problems outside the purview of the normal game rules.

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Thaumatic Energy Stored & Total Upkeep
This section shows your current amount of stored thaumatic energy

[Hope, Fear, and acceptance will start arriving on turn one]

1 COMMUNICATION ACTION

Dedicated Banks
This entry is meant to hold ritual points that have been dedicated to specific tasks. Points in these banks can only be used for those tasks.

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Links
This contains links to the other posts listed within this turn so that you can easily navigate between them using the forward and back buttons on their browser rather than needing separate tabs open at all times. Player actions should always start below this post.

Turn #0 Demographics
Turn #0 Narraratives

Summary
We don't know anything much about Arachnia yet. The Game has just begun and we are eager to meet this player.

I'm planning my communication action, I need some info. What sort of things do my forest peoples feel they need? What do they think is lacking in their lives? I think I know what I'm going to do for my Sahel peoples, but I want to bless both roughly evenly. Neither one is more my children than the other.

The forest people are doing fairly well at the moment. One problem some clans have is a lack of weeping wheat trees in which to build their homes, another problem is that it is often cold at night and you can't really have a fire up in the forest canopy without endangering the entire clan.

A third problem is, as always, predators, especially the giant snakes that eat way too many of their children and old folks.

Communication is also an issue, the people are held together by a series of community parties but they have a very simple and non-sophisticated social structure, especially when parents disagree on what to do. That's not an issue now because there is plenty of space for dissenting parents to move off and form their own lineage, but as time goes on that could cause strife, and eventually as their numbers grow a lack of space within the territory, and a lack of overall coordination will probably tear that society apart in bloodshed and warfare. Depending on what happens it could be lineage vs lineage, or clan vs clan.

Protein is also lacking in their diet due to their slings not being the best tools for taking down larger animals like tigers, the bigger monkeys, etc . . . so most of their protein comes from small game, scavenged kills of other animals, and raw eggs. They do take on larger animals when they can, but often this leads to them getting injured, or even killed since small rocks aren't good at killing everything, people also often die on the ground, victims of wild boar attacks while trying to get stones, reach a party, or get a drink from a river or stream down below.

Overall these people are at a transition point right now, they are perfectly suited for their current population, or quite a bit more, but as numbers grow they'll need better social institutions, more organization, and better technology to continue thriving. You could probably get away with leaving them mostly unchanged for the next number of turns but there is plenty of room for you to provide them with gifts of technology, and start one lineage of one clan towards changing everything.

Which is another thing to remember, communication and cooperation between clans is very minimal, and even between family lineages there is no formal structure to spread ideas around, things just sort of spread via marriages, or gossip at parties, where family feuds (such as might split a lineage) don't lead to different parts of the same clan not talking to each other.

I'd make suggestions but I think I've said enough to get you thinking, and I'd rather see what you come up with than an idea of mine sent back to me. Can't wait to see what you do!

THank you! I'm still smoothing it out in my head, but for the sake of my own memory:
Sahel- 1, concept/ image of a simple chimney. 4, sanitation (dealing with human and food wastes)
Forest- 1, better cooking skill (hope this also adds to fire handling a touch). 4, bows and arrows (how to make and use)

I'll work on language another turn.

I'm going to darken the skin of the people I appear to (from both groups) to Black with red markings. This trait is not genetic, but is permanent to these individuals.

How are my forest peoples sleeping? Do they have furs or skins to lay on/ under? Do they sleep together by families, or more individually/ mated couples?

The forest people are sleeping on thick woven mats laid down on the wooden floors of their structures, and in nuclear family groupings, each wig-wham only has one room so everyone ends up sleeping fairly close together which helps with the cold a bit since the structures don't allow for an interior fire, or even a fire anywhere close to where the people are living. No blankets as yet, leather comes from animals and they use those small skins to weatherproof and insulate the walls and roof of the structure so rain doesn't seep in and drip onto their heads.

I'm going to appear the same way to both groups, everything will be the same except the gifts I give them.

For both people i will show up when the most leaders will be gathered together. If there are less than 25 leaders and some other people are around, then those others will complete the 25. Otherwise I will appear to the 25 YOUNGEST OF THE LEADERS presesnt. (I want them to live long enough to follow my will)

There will be a swirling of black and red mist that will matterialize into my form- a vision of female perfection of their traits in black skin with red markings (there will be a light scent of berries and gentle woodflute music). 

*I want the people I appear to, to have clearer thought processes while I'm there, if it can last afterwards that would be awesome. If I can't get this, it's okay, just a nice bonus I'm hoping for*


"greetings my Orempyk, my children!! You have done well for yourselves through times of great trial! I've searched the earth and few creatures thrive as well, in as many varied environments, as the spider; thus I have granted some of their strengths to you, my chosen people.

There will still be many challenges that must be faced, but I will improve your lives and those of your children through the ages! I have a task for you to begin this process. To the youngest here I will give special knowledge which the 5 youngest of you must travel throughout your peoples to spread word of, teaching better ways to your cousins'cousins as well as your siblings. I choose the youngest among you that they may live long enough to spread my gift.

These 5 shall be marked as my emissary and shall -carry the special staves (forest) / be accompanied by an elder (Sahel)- recognised as a symbol of peace and trade throughout our lands as they travel, as a group, teaching and further developing the knowledge I give the youngest. In 100 years I shall return and see what has been done with this knowledge gift and I shall then bless the children of your childrens' children accordingly.

Fare well my children, and speak of this day/ night often to those you meet!"


Big, warm smile, and loveing gaze as I fade back into red and black mist which then dispates, along with the flute music but the scent of berries lingers till dawn.


The 5 youngest in each group shall have their grey skin darkened to black and the red markings change to hold a spiral on their chest, triangular shapes on their head, and bands that circle around all their arms. This is NOT genetic, but IS permanent to these, my emissaries.

To the youngest of the Sahel peoples I will give:
1 tech pt- the idea/ image of a simple chimney in use
4 tech pts- sanitation (dealing with human and food wastes)

To the youngest of the forest peoples I will give:
2 tech pt- better cooking skill (hope this also adds to fire handling a touch)
 3 tech pts- bows and arrows (how to make and use)

I like this, it was especially wise to warn them that there would be challenges ahead for them to face. I can guarantee you this is a true statement for at least one of the two groups. Also there will definitely be trials associated with new technologies that have such low values which will have to be overcome by the people so everyone has something to look at and work on; teaching and learning as time goes by.

Yeah, it's not gonna be utopia, I don't want that and don't want them to expect it. I also don't want to get stuck in the loophole of HAVING to give them their tech, so I'm more giving them the rough idea of something that will be better and letting them work on it so they are all set to continue improving it over time.

(where as just giving them a "finished" tech idea they might decide that's what goddess gave so it must be the best it gets, when it actually needs lots of work.) :-)

Very shrewd, that's a trap you fell into last game with your culture. Things worked easily and well and every turn there were improvements from the goddess that refined things by adding genetic changes to the people or animals, but their own human tech stagnated.

It worked very well, you had the highest population of any player in the game simply BECAUSE the people took the time living in villages to spread out while a lot of other players made the mistake of concentrating large populations in small areas (cities) and thus needed a lot of tech just to keep the population from dying of sickness, or starving due to an inability to support people on such a tiny amount of land. That is something that I implemented from my gut last game, but which becomes starkly clear in the "people per square mile" calculations we are doing now, especially when combined with our new "Mortality rate" tracking system where we actually make notes about what we think are the main factors causing the population level to go up or down from whatever last turns "base level" was. Cities early on now are . . . more problematic than last game. Players are faced head on with the "people per square miles" limits that effected tom so badly last game, and also with sanitation and housing problems, the use of "farm" land for housing people degrading the area around the city, pollution, and a lot of other factors that previously were fairly nebulous.

But you certainly could have had better villages and even more people if your people had developed better farming and housing methods, wells, better sewers than having the pigs/goats eat everything, etc . . . Better roads and wheeled carts for travel between the villages would have been nice, or maybe something similar to a bicycle cross bred with a cart since I don't see the cheetahs having become willing horse substitutes.

This new set of cultures has a lot of possibilities for you. I'm really liking how everyone has multiple groups of people who generally aren't in contact with one another to play with or ignore this game. It's really opened up a lot more strategic options and opportunities for fun.

Yeay for growth as player!! I suspect I'll be facing a people/mile issue in my forests soon, because (in my understanding) they are sort of in apartments within the trees. Gotta get them a way to hunt bigger food, and there by access to bigger skins. Hence bows and arrows.

I have lots of loose plans for both groups. :-)