Worldbuilding

In many ways the world of Muzhchina LA Mushina is about domination and subservience, both on a national level and on a gender level. But what I haven't talked about a lot here is the interpersonal level and the lives of those who inhabit this world.

Helene Batova is a slightly above average Burgunian who suffers under their political system. She's obviously very proud, but also cold to those around her. She thinks of herself as very mature yet often acts rashly, like when Pierre was grating on her with his enthusiasm for aviation. Deep down she did not really believe Andre's accusations against him, yet she cut off all contacts with him anyways. As she matures she constantly believes herself to have finally become a responsible adult, yet constantly learns that she's still far from grown.

In what has to be one of the least kinky aspects of MLM she eventually keeps Andre, now her lover, on a leash, as if to secure her control over him. She is only fooling herself and doing a poor job of it; Andre's power over her and the abuse he inflicts gradually breaks her in the years following her disconnection with Pierre. She could move to the Orenland occupation areas to find a life where she would be respected for her sex, yet her blind nationalism without being able to see through class relations chains her to Burgune. Even so she eventually manages to build her prototype of an aircraft, but ends up crushing both of her legs on her test flight due to sabotage that was aimed at Pierre, no less. Even when he takes care of her during her recovery, she can't find it within herself to love him because of what she's driven between them herself.

In contrast Zhigao is a much happier woman, from Xibei, which is basically China. While her entire family is dead, and she's heavily injured when she barely escapes to Burgune with the skin on her back, she's happy. According to her philosophy, as long as she's done the best she could, then there's no reason for her to lament her fate. And she still has plenty of loved ones to cling to: Fang Zheng (her boyfriend, still in Xibei and alive due to smoothened relations between the NPA and monarchy), and Pierre as well as his friends. Of course, she's a very sloppy person in her daily life, though determined (seen through the handkerchief she sewed with Zheng's name that Pierre finds while she's semi-conscious off the train), and she semi-secretly desires to be taken care of. And the young men and women she organizes with are truly her friends who would (and did, when she first was ordered to escape to Burgune due to her age) die for her, while many of Helene's 'friends' are quick to abandon her, if not outright manipulative.

At least during the first half of MLM, the culture within the NPA is much more open, with outright revolutionary factors flourishing, while Burgune is a typical conservative monarchy with a heavily oppressive society, weak to outsiders but harsh to its own citizens. Just through these two women alone, it's easy to see how big of an influence where you've grown affects the characters.

The living memory of Saerdastia is one of war and revolution, cataclysm and plague and famine, great upheavals, genocide, unrest, and incredible wonders unlike any seen by prior generations. The youth of today, those born after the establishment of the Age of Peace, do not recall the cruelty and folly of the nobles, their short-sighted and petty ambitions, the horrors of the great wars that followed, the hunger, the chaos, the rage, the despair. They are told to remember those who paid the price of mortal ambition, and who paved the way for the time of plenty and stability they know now, but it's different, remembering, rather than simply seeing it in a mirror.

The simple times before, messy though they were, were slow-paced and predictable. The rich hoarded their riches, wars were waged, crops were grown, trade and commerce flowed, all the various mortal races found ways to coexist even as they clashed. All know the legends of the ancient times, the elves who enslaved everyone with their ordered magics and machines that performed wonders on command. They're told of the rebellion, when the primitives rose up as one and chased the elves into their cities, who hid behind their glowing shields and never came out again. The elves are gone, and so are their glowing shields, but their cities remain, and the wreckage of their machines besides. It was a humble alchemist's assistant who first saw the potential in something as simple as a child's toy, a floating pentad of crystal spheres arranged within the empty space of a simple wire cradle. A curiosity his master had acquired in a card game. The balls would clack together, the force of the first transferring to the last, setting up a physical chain reaction that reversed this and then repeated it, all without the spheres losing their levitational force.

His master disregarded this, the story goes; he was in pursuit of the philosopher's stone, after all. A much more noble pursuit. The apprentice grew frustrated, and fled in the night, stealing the cradle toy and a number of other elven artifacts and lab equipment besides. He studied the crystals, made of aerynite, a curious alchemical substance known for its odd magical storage properties, but it was, like the toy, largely seen as a curiosity, too fickle for much practical use.

The elves clearly knew better. He studied its properties, figured out how to align their structures in the way the elves had, and eventually, he found a way to control the storage, release, and transformation of the essences within. Inside of a year he had a functional levitation engine, and knew how to build more. Knowledge of his devices spread, and he grew rich, and richer still selling his findings to others, allowing this technology to proliferate. Other techniques arose from experimenting with the crystal's properties, and those of the elven machines.

Alchemists and magi were able to reverse engineer many of the elves' incredible wonders: crystalline aerynite-infused "sprites" that levitated matter and manipulated essence to perform a variety of tasks, programmed by elven command glyphs; humanoid golems and flying mechanical scarab spies they could slot into to manipulate from afar; magic mirrors capable of showing flat images and eventually three-dimensional illusions near-indistinguishable from the real thing, and crystal needles that stored these images and sounds; greater and more powerful levitation engines capable of carrying massive airships; scrying devices that could see through solid matter; speaking stones that carried voices instantaneously over great distances; energetic shrouds like bubbles that could be adjusted to hinder or halt light, sound, or matter; weapons like lightning casters and fire sprayers, ice bombs, gravitational reversers, flensing rays that strip away matter layer by layer, cutting beams, and other horrible things barely understood but all-too-eagerly wielded by would-be conquerers and religious crusaders.

The result was predictable: widespread war and upheaval. Kingdoms smashed into each other, consolidated, slaughtered one another, and eventually the noble class started to shrink. Knights were torn to shreds by new weaponry, and martial prowess gave way to conscripted peasants with lightning scepters and flensing cannons in hand, often as dangerous to themselves as the enemy.

Society rapidly evolved in its wake. Mages grew wise to the rules of science and experimentation, constantly seeking an edge over enemy kingdoms. New theories of economic function and development, ways to exploit natural resources, manufacturing, labor exploitation, and exciting new social theories to justify slavery and ethnic cleansing. The most notorious innovator was a necromancer lord so vile his name was struck from history books, and all needle recordings of his experiments on living prisoners, corpses, and undead (mindless and otherwise) are classified and kept out of circulation. Still, he revolutionized medicine, introduced cell theory and germ theory, and discovered methods of limb replacement and rapid healing that are still used to this day. He also developed the method of breaking the Holy Church's anti-undeath protection that they bestowed upon their loyal soldiers, which was instrumental in shattering the loyalty of their ranks and ending their multi-front genocidal holy war. Too late to save the hobgoblins, or most of the orcs and goblins, but it was enough for the dwarven corporate lord to sweep in and wipe them out to seize their mines and treasuries.

The abuses heaped upon the lower classes reached a breaking point. Bit by bit, a revolutionary coalition formed among defectors from various armies. Conditions deteriorated for decades before finally, those who would eventually become known as the Keepers of the Peace gained a pivotal edge when they seized control of the Thunderhead fleet of ships; nightmarish iron-clad flying vessels covered in rods and prongs that manipulate lightning, mobile hurricanes capable of leveling cities with enough concentrated power. This gave them the edge needed for lesser cells to successfully revolt and begin the Great Purge, hunting down any of noble blood and those who served them willingly, eventually fully wiping out all the nobles. Victory was bittersweet; the continent lie in ruins. Farmland was destroyed and unusable far and wide. The druids had gathered their strength and summoned a massive intelligent bed of brambles, which strangled the city of a king who had cut down a sacred forest, tearing out and devouring the minds of those who choked to death on its thorns. The brambles grew massive and they remained hostile to any who would approach, blaming all for the horrors inflicted on nature. A massive maelstrom of never-ending lightning tore apart anything that tried to approach the northern sea. The Necromancer left behind the Deadlands, a peninsula that is all that remains of his self-destructed kingdom. Anything dead there rises up and tries to kill the closest living thing it can sense. The walls keep people out and the land and skies are regularly cleansed, but most people don't want to think about how the borders are still growing by a half-inch or so every year. Nomadic peoples fled to the cities; races that once had bitter blood feuds were forced into close quarters, the peace kept by the revolutionaries who'd killed the nobles and now struggled to keep order in the wake of the wars.

The wars wiped out half the population. Famine and plague and banditry wiped out half of those who remained. In the end, it was the magi who saved everyone, and thus bought their absolution for their part in destroying the known world. Time manipulation was another weapon that had been used in the war, but they created a system of machinery that was able to simulate a closed loop of cultivation at rapid speeds. In this way they were able to rapidly grow at first only mushrooms, but soon enough actual staple crops and eventually even fruit and spices and simple, small animals for meat. The famine was done with practically overnight, and rebuilding began. The Maelstrom and Deadlands are being contained, the repopulation and rebuilding efforts have been ongoing for several decades now. Various societies are adjusting to the aftermath.

The Demodocians (bat people) who fled underground are emerging again, the Dzeturi (bug people) have ceased their extreme isolationism and settled their own internal turmoil enough to function, trade, and slowly restart immigration. The orcs and goblins have joined together as a single nation with widespread and disparate holdings, and pride themselves on having many children. But many orcs and goblins live among the humans and dwarves and halflings and kobolds, who tend to keep to the walled city-states, working in factories or time farms. The druids expand the brambles and accept refugees, and maintain an easy truce with the Keepers by securing lands to restore to their natural state, a process that will take centuries. The Keepers recruit from all walks of life but tend to draw heavily from orcish, human, and dwarven stock. Orcs, humans, goblins, and halflings regularly mix families together, something almost unheard of in prior generations. But nowadays, everyone knows all too well that everyone is simply a Mortal; everyone dies. They've seen it. And they try to impress this upon their children and grandchildren, but among Mortals, old habits die hard. Wealth begins to accumulate, cruelties are tolerated, racial divisions fettered with sputtering feuds over wealth ignite despite laws mandating an end to racial war. The world is messy, as it always was, but at least there's no nobles now. It's a brave new world, there's capital to be made and opportunities to seize. There's no way people will repeat old mistakes.

so i had a dream where a group and i were magically summoning like, liquid stone and by-hand forming it into walls--this is clearly half-baked and inefficient--so how would YOU make or enhance construction processes using magic, sci-fi technology, or fictional materials?

Once you learn how to understand and apply historical materialism and break out of capitalist canards like the myth of barter, it becomes much easier to come up with the things that make societies feel evolving, nuanced, and alive: internal struggles, subcultures and countercultures, political movements, economic bases, social mores and customs. That, plus having a variety of real-world examples to draw from to avoid falling into the trap of capitalist realism.

This one takes place in Burgune, which I don't think I've written about here, but you'll enjoy the expanded lore and story (I hope) anyways.

Pavel Arkhangelsky was born on February 13, 2006 in a hospital somewhere in Japan. His parents lived in the Soviet Union before its collapse. Afterwards, they moved to Japan due to programs that paid relatively well for their technical expertise in engineering. He was enrolled in a local high school, where he met Sayori, who was somewhat sympathetic to his cause. Indoctrination was wasted on him as he had learned Soviet patriotism from his parents from a young age.

Despite his best efforts, Pavel was never more than an average student, in part due to his alienation from his classmates who were complete slaves to capitalist ideology. For his first year, Sayori was his only friend. Though he attempted to join a socialist club, it was full of demsocs and he left angrily.

The following year he was invited by Sayori into the newly-formed literature club, which, under his guidance, became a sort of hub for socialist activities. This culminated in his invitation to Hope's Peak Academy as the Ultimate Marxist Leninist.

Unaware of what was going on at the time, he was thrust into the Killing Game. Though thrown off his footing at first, he was able to gain the trust of the remaining students and used his limited knowledge to construct simple devices such as molotovs and even a rudimentary cannon. Eventually, he was able to escape Hope's Peak Academy.

In March of 2029, when the duties of reorganizing post-verzwieflungkrieg society was at last completed, he married Sayori in Leningrad. Three years following, they had their eldest child, Kiril. Seven years following, another child, again a son named Milorad.

In terms of personality, on the chart thingy I made the fuck up, he can best be described as warm/passion. He obviously cares about his friends, and also excels at political agitation.

After watching the darwin 4 documentary over the weekend I decided skewers were cool and decided to add a variant of them to my story.

So, canonically, the entirety of Silen (the continent Lindsen is located on) was created by Komi(me), and humans were later introduced. Thus, the animals that live there have quite different anatomies from what we're used to. These include the massive flying organisms known as 1/1/17/4. Now this family is quite diverse, and actually consists of two major lineages, 1/1/17/4/1 and its derivatives, as well as 1/1/17/4/2.

1/1/17/4/1 is the older of the two. Organisms of this group have two large jet pods on their backs, while their bodies are torpedo-shaped, with a large mouth that can expand to swallow prey. Teeth are present inside the throat, to aid in crushing it. Juices are digested in the stomach. Most waste is immediately expelled to reduce weight, while nutrients enter the blood. Several large blood vessels flow past the jet pods to cool off, also heating the air inside slightly.

In two organs beneath the jet pods, glucose and fat are metabolized into methane. Upon entering the jet pods, air first goes through several tightly compacted swirls to increase pressure, then into a combustion chamber which expanding muscles can compress. Methane is added here, and electrical pulses from ignition nerves ignite the mixture. A sphincter opens shortly following a compression to allow the heated air to release.

Most members of the 1/1/17/4/1 family have not lost their hind fins. They have instead evolved into two triangular fins that sit directly behind the jet pods, possible directing the flow of air. A single large tail that resembles a boat's rudder is located at the end of the organism and has colorful patterns that may aid it in finding mates. The two wings resemble elongated triangles. The eyes sit close to the lower jaw, and transparent eyelids can cover them when prey is being attacked.

While superficially similar, 1/1/17/4/2 is quite a different family. For one, its jet pods are located at the base of the wings. It lacks stabilizers, as its fins have migrated to where its lower jaw once was to form a sharp, flexible organ resembling a limb crossed with a jaw that can impale prey. It is smaller and faster than its cousins in 1/1/17/4/1, as its smaller size (though it's still very big, it has a wingspan of 6 meters and a length of roughly 3) ensures it can have a faster metabolism.

These two species have been regarded as pests due to their hunting of herds of livestock. In the past, little could be done about them due to the lacking of any weapons that would be effective against their speed. However, developments in firearms have caused a considerable decline in their numbers. If the living jets are to remain in Silen's skies, action must be taken to protect them.

Although, frankly, given all the shit that's going on in Silen, I wouldn't blame them if preserving these species are pretty low on their list of priorities.

Me and my friends have a huge world building project, the whole scope of it would be impossible to explain without several hundred screenshots of discord convos and pictures of notebooks. To summarize everyone is responsible for a fictional country and can make stories about it and how the nations interact with each other. Obviously my country was communist, I called it 'Antegria' (before playing Papers, Please and being like ). I was getting bored of being a good country, so I had my country get couped and became a theocratic empire, and transition to a capitalist economy. This had pretty devastating effects on the people, and very many became poor. One bit of the story I wanted to make is a majority of class-conscious communists in the government, military, and general population fleeing persecution (the junta was killing suspected communists) to another communist country, the Communist Union of Benteria (which is kinda like if west germany and the DDR were both communist, and then unified). The government were very sympathetic to the fleeing communists and gave them a large empty bit of land to make a semi-autonomous commune. Over time, the commune grew enough to the point where 15-16,000 people occupied it, and they started to make a plan to take over the empire in a cuban revolution-esque plan. So a large force travels to a very rural part of the old country, and brings food and healthcare to the farmers and miners, who desperately need it as the austerity and privatisation had put a lot of them out of jobs (many had jobs in nearby cities, as the gov. ran high-speed trains between cities, but when the new government privatised the rail industries, it became prohibitively expensive to travel by train). By doing this across many rural areas they grow slightly in numbers and declare a few rural towns to be Antegria proper, and the junta's new government to be fraudulent. Is this in any way realistic or practical? Or really a way that a revolution could even happen?

This is something tangential I've developed for my science-fantasy world with intelligent animals. For context: In this world, different taxonomic governments represent groups of related species. You have the Felines, Vulpines, Rodents, Avians, etc. Each of them technically belong to a different State but frequently intermingle and live in the same area, and taxonomic governments tend to also have territory/land associated with them where they primarily control the area, but other animals can and very much do still live there. Taxonomic governments have jurisdiction of the species within their scope no matter where they live, and are the ones responsible for having an ID system that works both within their own taxon and with other taxonomic governments and other official organizations.

Instead of making everyone carry ID cards or passports, which would be cumbersome for four-legged or winged animals to use, I envisioned a DNA-based ID system. The tech for this is definitely in the Star Trek levels of sci-fi, but it's basically a flat surface that you press your paw, wing, or other body part firmly onto, and a mechanism below produces a mild energy beam through your fur and skin which interacts with DNA in your cells and gives returns based on the specific sequence, and it's a safe, non-invasive DNA sequencer that can get a full read of your genetic code in seconds. The DNA scanner also checks for things like active metabolism and DNA synthesis and are generally configured to not even attempt to scan non-living cells, so you can't do something like use someone else's severed paw to make the system think you're them.

But since your full DNA sequences can be, for one, several gigabytes long and not conducive to things like printing onto certificates and migration papers or even just sending over the network to other agencies, and also contain actual information about things like your species, sex, family history and a bunch of sensitive stuff that you wouldn't want just anyone having access to, they typically take a cryptographic hash of the DNA and use that as an identifier for an individual animal. Kind of like how humans might have something like a social security number, animals in this world have a DNA Hash that governments use to identify them. Whenever a government agency in our world asks you to show some kind of ID like a driver's license, passport, health card, etc, they just have to scan their DNA and their information is automatically pulled from the right agency, using the hash to look it up. Even things like crossing international borders (of friendly nations) can be done with just a single biometric scan with no passport or ID card required. Basically, if you're animal in this world, the various government agencies around you refer to you as something like "8ed254569e8ddccea1784f569609aa32ced2691e2d22e99583ebd426cac76bd8" which is derived from your DNA sequence, and since you can't change your DNA, the same hash algorithm will always produce the same identifier, but better for privacy since it's impossible to reverse the algorithm and derive the original DNA sequence from the hash, and in theory only your own taxonomic government would have your full DNA sequence stored away on a server somewhere. Also extremely hard to falsify since it's literally identifying your body and not a card or anything that can be replaced.

What do you think? Does a system like this make sense? Are there glaring logistical or security issues that I'm not seeing? (Beyond just having a non-invasive and rapid DNA sequencing system in the first place, but that's what sci-fi handwaving is for.) Do you think a system like this is actually superior compared to physical ID media?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1575977

A well-done article. I never knew about this writer. More research should be done on him.

I should also check out his work sometime.

For context, I have a science-fantasy world with intelligent, non-anthro animals trying to live in peace with each other. A major problem is of course what the carnivores eat, and their solution is something called Dietary Enzyme Supplements, which carnivores take in order to supply artificial, carefully engineered digestive enzymes that allow them to digest plant matter and directly synthesize essential nutrients that would otherwise only be found in meat inside their own digestive tracts. It's something that works really well for its intended purpose and that they're really proud of, and I talk more about their history with solving the predation problem here if you're interested.

For the species, taxa, and factions that have committed to banning predation and having predator and prey live in harmony, dietary enzyme supplements are typically freely available and a guaranteed right under their constitution, along with plant based food in general. Dietary enzymes are ubiquitous and work really well for their intended purpose, and represent the very bleeding edge of their chemistry and nutrition science prowess.

The most advanced dietary enzymes, those intended for obligate carnivores like cats, contain trace amounts of a special quasi-element called Intium as part of how they work, which is also a really powerful substance that power most of their super advanced sci-fi tech. However, due to how versatile and powerful it is, Intium is also extremely dangerous if misused, so it is heavily regulated by the government, and the only real "consumer" product that contains it are those obligate carnivore dietary enzymes. The next most accessible source is hovercraft fuel and the internal components of hovercraft engines, both of which are prohibitively expensive and require an aviation related license to purchase, while dietary enzymes are both free at the point of access and anyone can just go into a grocery store and take them without anyone else batting an eye.

The vast majority of animals that need dietary enzymes do not abuse their free access to them, since there's no benefit in taking more than the required dose and they're just flavourless pills that most animals don't just stuff their faces with. However, this is where amateur chemistry enthusiasts come in, after a post on a science forum showing how to extract Intium from ATDP, which are the dietary enzyme supplements most commonly used by Felines. The process is pretty simple, basically just burn the pills at a very high temperature and in a high oxygen environment to convert the proteins and other support chemicals into carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc, and you're left with a solid residue of mostly Intium oxide, which can then be further processed into pure Intium. This is technically legal since the government doesn't regulate what exactly you do with dietary enzymes once you have it, but the problem is that ATDP, while free to use, still has a high production cost, and only contain minuscule amounts of Intium. A domestic cat for example typically takes one pill of ATDP per week, with the enzymes attaching to the lining of their digestive tracts to prevent the still perfectly functional enzymes from being expelled out the other end after one cycle of digestion and being wasted. However, an unlicensed chemist smelting pills to extract Intium can go through literally thousands of pills in a few hours, and those pills are paid for almost entirely by Feline tax revenue so neither the Feline government nor the Feline population in general are happy about this. Of course the safety risks of working with Intium apply as well, including pretty severe explosion risks, but the amounts they extract are so small that it's hardly a public safety hazard so much as a public burden as they destroy tens of thousands dollars worth of dietary enzymes just to extract ten dollars worth of Intium. The Intium is not the expensive part of those pills, the expensive parts are the carefully engineered and synthesized proteins that surround the Intium. After a few incidents of particularly brazen and entitled animals (who notably weren't even carnivores and had no biological need for dietary enzymes, certainly not the super advanced obligate carnivore versions that contain Intium) cleared out multiple grocery store shelves for their Intium extraction hustle and went viral on their internet, attracting intense public shaming with both predator and prey calling them selfish and misusing public resources, they realized that it was a massive problem and a policy change was needed to ensure fair access to this extremely important resource.

The most obvious and immediately effective solution is just to implement some kind of rationing system, where instead of a shelf filled with boxes of dietary enzymes that any animal can take, they move them behind the pharmacy counter and require ID to obtain, where they'll check both whether you're actually a species that requires the enzyme and also use a centralized database that tracks how much you're taking per month. However, again, only a tiny minority of animals abuse the free access to dietary enzymes to do things they really shouldn't be doing anyway, so it would feel like a massive burden for the rest of the carnivore populations who literally depend on access to dietary enzymes to survive in a society where predation is banned. It would also preclude things like animals who don't need dietary enzymes getting them for their carnivore friends since they were going to the store anyway, or even things like losing your box of dietary enzymes and potentially getting denied replacements if they only allow animals to obtain them at the specific dosages they need, nor would they be able to stock up some dietary enzymes in their own nests and dens in case of supply chain issues. Not to mention the costs associated with implementing and maintaining such a rationing system which will also be passed onto the general public, potentially siphoning funds away from other public projects like housing and transportation, or just having less money to make more dietary enzymes. Free and easy access to both plant based food and dietary enzymes have been such staples in their society that they really don't to abandon it just because a few animals don't follow the rules, so they're looking for an alternative that lets them have their dietary enzymes and eat it too.

What do you think? Is their only hope to just start rationing dietary enzymes? If you were a policy maker in this world, how would you address this issue? This world is supposed to be socialist so I'd love a socialist (or leftist in general) perspective on this!

Unlike Lindsen, the southern Menora kingdoms were never whole. Wedged between the southern coast and the Raimat river, they have historically been separate, albeit sharing cultures. However, an Orenland state has established a Commission in its southeast peninsula, and although it expands less aggressively than the analogous Lindsen Commission, it is still a threat to the unity of the nation.

In the eastern area between the two forks of the Raimat river is eastern Menora, which has modernized in part due to influence from the Menora Commission, with beret hats becoming a staple of the local industrialist leaders, be they populist or centralist. To the west, more traditional rulers guard their kingdoms from dangerous and radical schools of thought that may bring upheaval to their feudal orders.

In the southwest, Emilio Colella rules in the Sidenian Kingdom, occupying roughly a third of western Menora. His coastal kingdom holds significant economical influence as well as having access to plentiful resources.

Rocco Pignatoro is slightly further north, with his Subaldena bordering Lindsen's Aldenland, being only a river apart. A rather traditional though large kingdom slightly smaller than the Sidenian Kingdom. It is more technologically backwards due to being essentially locked from the outside world. But will the turmoil in the continent force it to embrace change?

Matteo Landolfi rules the Dosenti State in the eastern portion of Menora, in the middle of the section with a small port. It borders the Menora Commission directly and as a result has greatly benefited from the technology leaking from the advanced Commission. But will Melinda Whitfield tolerate this one-sided flow of precious Orenland advantage?

Salvatore Scanga is in even more dire straights, with most of his republic close to the Commission border. He clings on for now, intensifying construction of fortifications he hopes will delay the inevitable onslaught, but is he only erecting dirt walls in the unstoppable path of fate?

Melinda Whitfield controls the Merona Commission, where lighter policy has resulted in significantly less unrest than her Lindsen counterparts. But this has resulted in less progress towards true matriarchy than her superiors would desire, and as the years drag on they may lose their patience entirely.

Finally, the industrial populist state of the Vensorian Council, a small and often overlooked country in the north of eastern Menora, is ruled precariously by Belani Insoro, with power split between the two main industrial populist parties, the VRC and the VRGP. But the industrial centralist VNPA lurks in the shadows as promised reforms fail to bring about substantial improvements in life, even as various proletarian populist movements hinder various projects. Most disturbing of all, the establishment of Albert Stahler's Worker's State in the northern border has resulted in a diffusion of proletarian centralist thought. Who knows what the future will entail...

All of these countries may have never been a part of something greater, yet advances in communication and nationalism has created something new in the people. And perhaps someday, their dream will be fulfilled, and all of Menora will be one.

If you asked any soldier or student in any warlord state in Lindsen what the cause of the Orenland invasion, you would get different answers. From a citizen of the state of Aldenburg, that they come to upend Lindsen's traditions and impose unnatural matriarchy upon its citizens. From the Worker's State, that they are capitalists seeking resources to exploit, no longer satisfied with what they can find on their own soil. From a businessman in Gorsenya, they are here to rob Lindsen of economic activity.. All these answers are true to an extent.

Due to sea monsters, the two continents only connected very recently, when an Orenland steamship fitted with a reinforced hull reached the eastern coast of the southern Lohne strip, belonging to Lindsen at the time. From the point of view of the invaders, this was an excellent opportunity to expand its raw resource base, as well as to relieve social tensions. At home, despite numerous attempts at suppression, strikes and other such disloyal behaviors were rising, while others complained that even in industrialized times men were still legally property, and even going to suggest that industrial populism was not very populist after all.

The invasion was over in months. Superior artillery as well as tanks and aircraft, which were nonexistent in the backwards states of Lindsen, Burgune, and the fragmented southern kingdoms, easily destroyed their armies. Peace was made with Burgune, while an uneasy stalemate was achieved with the southern Menora kingdoms. No such luck in Lindsen, which was defeated thoroughly and turned into a puppet. For a year or so, things were looking up, with a large region to extract resources and more jobs to soothe unruly elements at home.

Unfortunately, the people of Lindsen did not make things easy for the invaders. In two years the Commission's territory was history and it only retained a fertile but small section of the Lohne strip. Masses were angry as austerity measures had come down to nothing, with none of the promised riches from war going into the pockets of working women. Industrialists were similarly angered by the lack of promised profit.

With this background as well as the spread of proletarianism, both centralist and populist, across all the nations of Orenland, several massive civil wars broke out in which various smaller states were seized by proletarian forces around eight years after initial invasion. The governments of several larger states, including Orenland proper, hastily mobilized to combat the red menace. While they were successful in containing the proletarian revolutions, it left them militarily and economically hollowed, and allowed for the Lindsen states to develop without fragmentation intervention. While the two federations were defeated two years later, it was a half-measure at best and little measures were imposed to contain them.

Thirteen years after the initial invasion, the situation had stabilized somewhat, with the propaganda machine working to indoctrinate a new generation against dangerous proletarian sentiments that would snuff out, it was hoped, the revolutionary flame once and for all. But Albert Stahler of the South Lindsen Worker's State and his growing country seem to think otherwise, and the time may come again where a second conflict with Lindsen will leave Orenland too weakened to fight, even against threats within its own borders. The fate of a continent and the entire matriarchy painstakingly built in the Commission, as well as its Menora section, lies on the actions of these warlords with their own dreams for their nation.

May the One save Orenland, for no one else can.

So while I've done some detailed worldbuilding for Lindsen and its surrounding nations, I haven't even drawn a map for the Orenland yet, and all I know is that it's slightly more advanced and it's supposed to be matriarchal. But how might it have become so even with agriculture being developed?

I contemplated having the entire continent or at least the part where humans originated be rainforest with plentiful fruits to make gathering more viable, while dangerous animals meant men were needed for defense and therefore more expendable. However, this is immensely stupid for obvious reasons. Does anybody have better ideas I can steal?

Two years after the Orenland invasion, the former Lindsen Commission collapsed. Brandon Holstein, a member of the old nobility, led his chunk of the Southern Raimat.

The initial threat of an invasion from the remains of the Commission subsided when many fragmented warlord states arose between it and Holstein's domain. The ambitious Holstein took it upon himself to reunify the nation, trusting that the Commission would be too weakened to notice his expansion.

For a while this strategy was effective. Holstein was able to federate with many larger closer states over the next seven years, while also annexing surrounding microstates. He also attempted to industrialize his country to compete in productions with the Commission. While he was able to establish a formidable industry, this also led to the quiet strengthening of industrialists, which he tried his best to suppress. For most of the first ten years after the invasion he was successful at keeping a lid over industrialist power.

Eventually, Johannes Heydritch's North Lindsen Federation had also become sufficiently powerful, so Holstein proposed a federation that would then lead to only west Lindsen being incomplete, by which point the weak warlords there could be easily defeated. However, the Commission had grown westward in the decade after its initial collapse and was now almost bordering the two federations. The day before the federation would've occured, the commission invaded the two federations and crushed both of them. The treaty of East Lindsen was signed, forcing the two federations to split apart into their constituitent states.

The remaining rump state of South Lindsen lost much of its authority. Holstein became closer to Albert Stahler in this period of time as the industrialists gained more and more power over the nation's affairs. He entrusted Stahler with his ultimate plan: seeing as retaining his nobilibty was no longer possible, he hoped to instead pursue one of his long-lost dreams of utopianism, when he was just an aspiring prince in a Lindsen that was still complete.

Two years after the federation's defeat, Holstein died. On the same day, Stahler became the Regent of the South Lindsen Federation, and disbanded the army with the pretext of reorganizing. He quickly mobilized the masses as all industrial output stalled for the day. The private police of the Industrialists retaliated but was quickly crushed by the sheer number of workers Stahler had organized, combined with the weapons confiscated from the former army. Within a week the industrialists were crushed and the workers had siezed power.

Soon afterwards, Stahler revoked his position of regent and declared himself the chairman of the South Lindsen Worker's State under the governing principles of Proletarian Centralism, a jump from the previous Feudal Centralism. While the new state faced challenges, most neighboring states were too weak to intervene. In addition, there were none of the problems with production the later matriarchal and patriarchal post-Commission states had, due to workers being familiar with production already.

The Commission invaded two years later, taking the eastern half of the Worker's State. But despite this massive setback, it retains the industrial base to expand and strengthen for possible unification. What does the future hold for the South Lindsen Worker's State?

The Lindsen Commission can and will collapse. This unstable Orenland puppet, no matter what actions it takes, will eventually implode. Whether Frederick Olsten reclaims the throne, or Maria remains and unifies Lindsen, it will fall apart to countless rebels.

In the former commission's northern areas, near the border between the commission and the northern, mostly independent states of the Lohne strip, there is the Muzhinen Iron State, ruled by Franz Scholl. He is part of the younger generation of commission men, who dream of a restored patriarchy but can only construct a broken vision of one, having spent fifteen years under Commission oppression. To further complicate matters, Commission policy resulted in most technical knowledge being concentrated in the hands of women. The Iron State rests in a precarious situation, with patriarchy being barely maintained with Scholl's Iron Armoe. Any imbalances in the situation could throw it into further instability, or worse, the complete collapse of the male dominance that Scholl has worked so hard to maintain...

The Iron State's neighbors are not to be trusted. To the east, the Orenlanders have grown tired of proxies and have directly established a presence in Lindsen, intending to annex the entire nation once more. The technologically inferior Iron State will have to expand westward to the even more backwards western states if it wishes to survive the onslaught. To the south, Klara Clausewitz's ineffective but large Governate of East Lindsen is also a threat, albeit a lesser one that must constantly combat internal strife.

In terms of international relations, both forward and guard nations of the Lindsen Warlords view it as an illegitimate state at best. The forward nation of Stahler's Worker's State views it as a twisted and hauntingly pathless but nonetheless oppressive patriarchy, while most other guard nations view its version of Commission-warped masculinity as a perversion of what they view as the glorious tradition of Lindsen soldier men.

The uniform of the Iron Armoe soldier is, of course, the traditional Lindsen maid dress, in part due to its role in the Iron State's patriarchal system. The major factor, however, is the Iron State's internal strife. With a barely functional industrial system stacked with severe development output and cost debuffs, it can do little more than maintain its rusting production lines left by the invaders, using whatever is on hand.

Scholl has never considered peaceful unification as an option. In his view, a whole Lindsen will either be ruled by him, or will never manifest at all.

The interdimensional Christmas bug is coming to town, and every world needs their own Santa. Doesn't matter if they have no idea what Santa or Christmas is, participation is mandatory and they need to use whatever exist in-universe to replicate Santa's flying sleigh as best as they can.

The following are some guidelines for what a prototypical Santa and sleigh would entail, your world needs to try and replicate as many of these elements as possible.

1. A fat bearded man or similar species dressed in all red.

2. A huge sack of toys or whatever the kids in your universe like.

3. A sleigh or another vehicle modified to resemble the classic shape of a sleigh, one that is capable of flight.

4. Eight flying reindeer or similar species strapped to the front of the sleigh.

5. One more flying reindeer or similar species up front with a glowing red nose.

Note that the reindeer don't actually have to be the ones pulling the sleigh through the air, you can choose any propulsion system you want as long as it looks like the reindeer are pulling it.

How does your world pull it off? Who would need to be called in and what kind of equipment acquired to do this? What unique conflicts does Santa face in your world that the "real" Santa wouldn't?

If your world is also conducive to other Christmas characters like Krampus, the Grinch, Frosty, Jesus, etc and you want to replicate them as well, we'd love to hear it!

Context: This is a world inhabited by intelligent, non-anthro animals, some of which have decided to outlaw hunting and eating prey in favour of living in harmony and cooperating.

They have a zero tolerance policy for predation and it is criminalized extremely heavily. Depending on what species or taxon you are (all animals have the right to be tried by members of their own species and taxa, and they are responsible for carrying out sentences of their own kind too), First Degree Predation, where you personally kill then eat an animal, is the only crime that formally carries the death penalty. Regular first degree murder where you "merely" kill an animal without intent to eat them only has a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. Second Degree Predation (aka Simple Predation) is where you obtain meat with the intention of eating it without personally killing anything, carries only a mandatory fixed term prison sentence in addition to losing certain freedoms post release.

However, their laws on the issue is very much based on intent as that is their philosophy, that because they are all sapient and no longer bound by their natural hunter instincts, they are responsible for their own actions. You don't have to actually eat the prey you killed to have committed First Degree Predation, and the inverse is technically true as well, where if you kill an animal for some other reason and only after they're dead do you decide to eat them, then you're technically only guilty of murder and Second Degree Predation instead of First Degree Predation. There are also legal ways that certain animals can obtain animal tissue, for example, as skin grafts and organ transplants, autopsy and forensic investigations, or for general research. Because animals handling tissue in these cases don't intend to eat it, it does not fall under Second Degree Predation. However, if you buy animal meat and later decide not to eat it, that's still considered predation.

Especially with the nature of eating and digesting food, law enforcement only has a very small time window to order a suspect to undergo lab testing of what's in their belly where it will actually show a positive hit for animal tissue, so my original thought is that the intent clause is meant to make prosecuting predation easier, since they wouldn't need to actually prove that the accused has animal tissue in their digestive tract at any point, just that they wanted at some point for some form of animal tissue to end up inside them.

I know there are many real life laws that use intent in a similar way, but I don't know how courts actually prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt. Can anyone who's delved more into the legal side of worldbuilding comment on how the courts in my world might prove (or disprove) that someone intended to eat another animal when they do not have direct evidence that the animal was indeed eaten?

I typed up a huge essay before but then my idiot brother pressed some shit on the wireless keyboard and deleted it all. I don't know if I still have the energy to type all of it out, but here goes.

Lindsen has not been whole for fifteen years. Fifteens years ago the invaders from matriarchal Orenland destroyed the modernizing nation and established a puppet state, which soon collapsed, leaving dozens of warlord states in its wake.

Maria Olsten's LINDSEN COMMISSION is all that remains of the former puppet of the Orenlanders. Despite its reduced state and instability, it is still formidable due to its vast technological superiority. But Maria Olsten must be wary; her husband Frederick, once the emperor of Lindsen but now little more than a figurehead, wields influence even he is not aware of in the populace. The slightest spark may send the Commission up in flames.

Five years ago Johannes Heydrich was the leader of the North Lindsen Federation, of which only the state of Nordland remains after it was crushed by Commission forces a day before it would have unified peacefully with the south. Bitterness aside, Heydrich, known widely as the Lion of the North, is the only force standing between Burgune in the north, left relatively intact by the Orenlanders due to its compliance, and the Commission in the east which seeks to expand its influence over Lindsen's remains.

The South Lindsen Federation was also destroyed five years ago, and soon afterwards the country was essentially taken over by wealthy industrialists created by modernization programs. The former monarch, Brandon Holstein, entrusted his protege Albert Stahler with a mission: to disband the army, crush the industrialists, and establish the SOUTH LINDSEN WORKER'S STATE. He succeeded. His proletarian army will take some time to become a truly formidable fighting force, but this will not deter him from fulfilling his dream of a reunified Southern Federation, and possibly even Lindsen as a whole.

Fritz Zimmerman rules Aldenburg, another piece of the former South Lindsen Federation. He took a radically different approach than Stahler towards the industrialists: He saw the expansion of industrialist power as a result of the slipping of traditional values that he espouses in his state. But in a modernizing and gray world, will his vision for a pastoral and virtuous Lindsen fade further and further into the past?

Markus Spiedel may be a warlord, but he rules his GORSENYA like the weaselly businessman he is. Despite its high level of development, most government and military functions are sourced to private groups while corruption runs rampant. Even if Spiedel wished to become a true contender for unification, the industrialists would not allow trivial things like 'national unity' to get in the way of profit.

Time is running out. As the once united Lindsen fades from memory with the replacements of generations, it may not be long before unification as a prospect is no longer remembered or desired by the peoples across these little states. Perhaps one unifier will outshine the rest and finally expel the invaders and make Lindsen whole once more, from the Raimat to the Lohne......

For context, this takes place in my world with intelligent, non-anthro animals trying to live in harmony. This is part of the backstory of my main character and why she's where she is currently.

The Felines had recently underwent a bloody and violent revolution, replacing their monarchist empire that is very pro-predation (Trophist) with a democratic republic that is very anti-predation (Unitist). Shortly afterward, they signed the Interspecies Peace Agreement and committed to banning predation by all Felines forever, to overwhelming support by the Feline public. Signing of the ISPA not only bans predation but also allows other ISPA members to engage in trade, travel, and exchange of knowledge and technology with the Felines, which is a big deal because the Felines are considered the most technologically advanced taxon, being the first taxon in history to surpass even the humans that lived before all of them millions of years ago.

The Unified Territories, which is an alliance of Unitist small and medium sized animals, including the Felines' former prey like Avians and Rodents and is considered the second most advanced, took the opportunity to call up the Feline government to ask for a favour. Basically, the Unified Territories Ministry of Science called up the Feline Science Institute (both are government research institutions), and asked if they can have Yvonne Dandelionpaw transferred to one of their labs in the UT. Yvonne Dandelionpaw is a domestic cat who played a major role in recent Feline history: She co-developed something called ATDP, a dietary enzyme supplement that allows obligate carnivores like cats to subsist on plant based alternatives (where the "DP" part is named after her); she participated in the Feline revolution fighting for the Unitist side; and perhaps most importantly, she is one of the main scientists working on something called a quantum interface, which is one of the next frontiers of science that the Felines are actively pursuing. They basically wanted her to come over and work with their own scientists that are also trying to develop a quantum interface, and essentially spun it as "hey, let's work on this together since you're an ISPA member now!"

The Feline Science Institute felt rather pressured by the Unified Territories, and responded with something along the lines of "We're just about okay with that, but you need to ask Yvonne directly. We're not going to force a Feline to relocate and take a job outside Feline territory." So they call up Yvonne initially refuses, saying "Well, it's a interesting offer, but I'd rather stay here and work with my own taxon as we rebuild after the war." But then the Unified Territories spun it in a different way to her, trying to convince her that a cat coming over to work in a UT government lab would be a great diplomatic opportunity for the two governments, and controversially, basically told her that there are researchers in the UT who are the Felines' former prey, and "wouldn't you want to be the one to reconcile with them so they realize how nice modern cats are and ditch that old stereotype of cats being pricks?" At which point she finally agreed to the transfer, on the condition that she remains employed by the Feline Science Institute and basically serves as a liason and diplomatic representative in addition to being a researcher, which the FSI was understandably also very adamant about.

She is now working at a lab in the UT capital city, but the decision to have her there is very controversial on both sides. Many Felines accuse the Unified Territories of using their position among ISPA members to basically poach Feline talent, while many UT citizens accuse Yvonne of being a Feline spy, considering that she is a high ranking member of the Feline government who is working in a classified UT lab.

What are your thoughts on this progression? Is it something that can reasonably happen when two governments are first establishing diplomatic ties? Do you think the way they spun it to Yvonne counted as coercion or guilt tripping? Any other opinions you have I would love to hear that as well!

I think I'd like to see what people would do in their leisure time or domestic work . You see so many stories about travel and war, but you rarely see people interact outside of that. And if you do, it's usually not made unique for a setting that isn't Earth.

What cutlery do they use? What does a morning routine look like? In a world where fire magic is commonplace, how do they cook? How would those things evolve over centuries?

Fantasy especially feels stagnant for this, but I think sci-fi is guilty of this too. Are there things in specific works where an innocuous detail made you wonder more about how a setting worked?

I'm joking with the meme, but it's an interesting how plot armor unintentionally places value on people's lives in fiction.

It's telling that censorship laws decide who it is and isn't acceptable to kill. Just thinking about violence against sentient robots and how that's normalized in things like Samurai Jack.

Like we know the robot has thoughts and feelings, like they'll try to run to save themselves or plead for mercy, but a character can still heroic after essentially killing a non-human who's acting like how we understand humans.

I feel like there's something dangerous in how easily we can depict appropriate targets of violence. Not just robots, but anybody deemed as less than human are allowed to be more put at risk.

Unnamed people are killed in superhero fights all the time. But unless they are of a class of characters like protagonists, they are collateral damage at best.

I think Plot Armor as a trope needs more class consciousness and awareness around how deciding who gets to be protected is often an unconscious political belief.

What about you though? Any tropes in media you'd like to see explored more or written with a leftist understanding?

Callrd that world building ba""sed"