Friday, October 11, 2013

[Dreaming Stars] A Sample World, Part 3

Continued from part 2...

Major Products and Exports

Let's pick a few interesting items from the list the generator has provides us:
Yes, I went with a food theme. Which makes sense, if you think about it. The dominant religion believes that negative emotions and bad thoughts should be banished into artwork and safely stored forever so that the emotions can't escape again - while artwork of positive emotions should be destroyed so that the emotion can become free again and spread to more people.

Thus, food can be seen as the ultimate "positive" artwork, since it is designed to be consumed! Cooks and food artisans are, according to religious doctrine, pouring their good emotions into their creations which are then released upon consumption. The world is likely extremely famous for its food, and it may see exporting food to other worlds as spreading good emotions around the cosmos. Donating food is likely a popular form of charity - and the donated food will likely be of high quality, too.

Now we come to the religious aspects of our world - which are especially important for our theocracy:

Forms of Worship

Anchorites are monks who are locked away from the world and live in cells. How do they fit into our themes? Well, maybe some especially devout artists lock themselves away so that they can work at their art without interruption. And they create art not just based on their own dark emotions, but those of others - people who are too feeble or otherwise disabled to create their own artwork, or perhaps the thoughts of unrepentant criminals or madmen who cannot be convinced to create their own art. In this way, the "Anchorites" take on the "sins" and bad thoughts of others and banish them into art - and with the stars opening up again, maybe they also add the dark emotions of unbelievers to their workload.

The original Venerable Man is a "sacred pole" - one could also say a piece of art. But why would a religion which holds that artwork is only intended for banishing negative emotions worship a piece of art? Maybe it's not "worshiping" as such but nevertheless has special significance - perhaps they consider it to be "the first work of art" and thus holding especially powerful negative emotions imprisoned...

"Dualism" in this context would likely mean the opposition of "good" versus "bad" emotions. Perhaps they believe that they can split off the bad emotions into their own separate universe. Or maybe they believe that over time the "good" and "bad" emotions will each form their own gestalt entities - effectively deities - and that by imprisoning the bad emotions they will make sure that the evil deity will be weakened.

Worshiped Entities

The Artifact of Doom is, of course, the First Artwork. Presumably it can only be handled safely by the Veiled Prophet, and once every year or so he parades it around the Holy City of the Faith so that the faithful are reminded what they are fighting against. The item has an extremely powerful negative aura obvious to anyone with psychic senses, though that also might have come from many generations of people actively believing that the item is evil...

Culsans is a "two-headed god of doorways". Perhaps the psychic gestalt god hasn't been split in two yet? Perhaps it is still a single entity with a "good" and a "bad" aspect which sometimes operate independently - the two heads. The goal of the faith is to complete the transformation and help the good side become a powerful entity of its own while weaken the bad side so that it won't be able to hurt the faithful.

Gog and Magog also represent a duality - but they are both evil. Perhaps they are leftovers from an earlier universe where the bad side won and corrupted the good side - and now they try to influence our universe so that the bad side wins again? Perhaps this time, if the good side wins, it can cure the bad side - once they split into distinct entities they will battle with each other and whoever wins will change the nature of the loser.


To be continued...

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