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Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Against Chaos

When the City was only a Dwergen fort on a swampy island, religious separatists from Grand Lludd were founding their own states some leagues to the north. These groups were sometimes derisively called “Sticklers” in their native country, but they called themselves the Lawful. Though their religion has disappeared in the centuries since, they left their mark on the New Lludd colonies they founded.

The Lawful took their name from their belief that existence was a struggle between the forces of Law (the living spirit of the commandments of God) and Chaos (everything non-godly). They opposed what they believed to be the excesses and superstitious ritual of Oecumenical Hierarchate, but also its softer stance on the practice of magic. They also rejected the worldliness of their homeland--the imbibing of strong drink, dancing, and merriment in general. The situation became intolerable when Gloriana became queen, and begin patronizing the thaumaturgical arts. It was even rumored that she was of fae-blood---a race inherently aligned with Chaos, and thus the Devil!

Their witch-hunting and monster-slaying was not as much appreciated as it had been in this new more permissive era. The Lawful sought a way to leave corrupt Grand Lludd behind and start afresh in the New World, where they hoped to build the perfect society.

Their first task was girding themselves for war. They had heard stories of the the New World, and knew it to be as infected by magic and godlessness as their homeland. And so, lead by their greatest holy warriors--their paladins--they set sail to bring the dominion of Law to the Chaos of the wilderness.

Things didn’t go exactly as they planned. They built settlements, slayed monsters and cleared ancient ruins, true, but the Strange New World infected them as well. Witches and warlocks (their terms for sorcerers) emerged among them, and they couldn’t ferret them all out. Contact with the Natives, Black folk, and other Ealderdish colonists softened their strict ways.

Today, the Lawful are mostly seen as just as quaint part of New Lludd’s past. Still, there are rumors of some families--and perhaps even whole villages--that keep to the hold ways. Stern folk living almost monastic lives, who believe they’re still in a holy war against Chaos, and so train their children generation after generation to take up arms against monsters and magic.

9 comments:

  1. As always, very interesting group. A puritan crusader sect. How many pages is Weird Tales going to be? Seems like you have a ton of stuff to fit in there.

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  2. Thanks, Tim. A lot of the stuff I've blogged about is tangential and "fills out" Weird Adventures material rather than replicating it. WA is an overview, whereas the blog is more granular--except when it comes to the City itself, which is going to get a much more detailed treatment there than it has here.

    So yeah, the blog and the book will supplement each other.

    Page count is still uncertain. I'll know more as i get closer to finished writing it.

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  3. I got some interesting inspiration for a character out of this: A fae-blood assassin that hunts down the adults from those families before they can train their children

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  4. It's perhaps not a big surprise that I really dig this post. A bit of historical grounding goes a long way to make a setting more real, imo.

    I kinda picture the "modern-day" Lawfuls as semi-militant Amish.

    Q: What's the take on industrialism in Grand Lludd?

    Also, "Sticklers" is a brilliant name. I wish I'd thought of it first ;)

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  5. @C'nor - Good thought!

    @Harald - I agree. The trick is not to do too much so that it becomes "real history with the serial numbers filed off." The weird must be balanced with the concrete.

    I think that conception of the modern Lawful is brilliant.

    A: No real difference with most of Ealderde, except maybe the nobility is a little more down on it. The Lludd referenced here is the legendary king of Britain and character in Welsh myth, not Ned.

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  6. Hmm... I might need to do some light research on that Lludd. I seem to vaguely remember a character by that name, but apparently not enough to take the reference.

    Still, if you go with an Amish vibe on the modern Lawfuls, the Ned-reference isn't too far off the mark ;)

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  7. I liked that, just enough information, I liked Haralds comment of semi-militant amish.Very interesting.

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  8. Was there a Jamestown or Roanoke sort of colony that 'disappeared' or 'went native'? There could be some interesting complications down the road if some of those supposedly 'lost' descendents started showing up as witches, conjure-folk, etc. Nice bit of historical symmetry there...maybe...

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  9. There is (or was) an ancient demon or god-thing in the northern South, sometimes associated with the octagrammaton CROATOAN. No disappearing colonies I'm aware of...but the influence of this being was associated with a strange appearance. Perhaps more on that at some point.

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