#Shora'adi

[jjeinn-tae]

I had my first shift back at work yesterday, video most of the way done. I agreed to pick up a shift today (in exchange for a different off day that is going to be a guaranteed day off from now on), but I wasn't nearly as much better as I'd thought. So, here I am at home.

It's kind of weird being officially disabled now. Like, I've known for years that I technically am, but like it being official is a different thing. Also, I really expected it to be about my joints that got me there, but apparently lungs first.

As a world-building exercise, a few days ago I started throwing together a magic the gathering set for J'ard. Basically just throwing things together for the cultures I have thought a lot on. So, the Dwürm, Lohr, Shora'adi, Domeri, Elves (YoShin, I'm unsure if I've ever said that) Yurchans and Yanjurians at the moment. I'm partially doing this to kind of force me to think up like, more actual individuals, because the amount of named characters that aren't from one mythology or another is exceedingly few. Although I'm talking about this because I've done two legendary creatures so far, and just find it hilarious that these two most prominent "named" characters literally do not have a name as a point. We have "The White Lady, Queen of Storms" and "The Unshackled One" so 3 epithets for 2 characters even! I hadn't realized it yet, but I've named absolutely no one relevant, beyond some (presumeably) dwarf guy named Kalbèn who founded a town and named it after himself.

Who are the Emperors of the Domeri, Yanju and Lohr? No idea, beyond Yanju is a neat guy. How about any of the royals in the elven dual-monarchy? No idea, despite probably being the culture with the most developed legal system at the moment.

I mean, part of it is that only the Dwürm really have a language far enough along to actually do significant amounts of naming, but I have sound inventories for every group I've mentioned at least. So the people who have "names" are just the people who can't be named. The Queen of Storms is basically a messianic figure for the Shora'adi and just never ended up getting a name. I mentioned it in the Shora'adi post, but since that was a long while ago that I've posted about J'ard... Humans in the setting when born on a leyline become imbued with that leyline's energies. The Shora'adi have two passing through their territory, and she was the exceedingly rare twice-imbued leychild. Immediately taken from her peasant parents by the cult that sprung up around her, which ended up usurping the previous monarchy.

And then the Unshackled One... I've not written on the Unshackled One yet. They had a name, a lifetime ago. They might remember it, but no one else does, surely. Also a religious leader (among the elves) although I'd compare them more to Buddha. You know, I'm going to do some more J'ard lore posts.

#World of J'ard #magic the gathering #mse #custom magic card #Shora'adi

[jjeinn-tae]

Shora’ad

You know that “Ah-ah-ah, No!” sort of sound?  That’s what the a’a is.  Also, if you’ve been following along, you might have noticed I keep referring to these guys interchangeably between “The Shora’adi” and “Shora’ad.”  Partially it’s because that’s like the difference of saying “The Germans” and “Berlin, but referring to the German government” as I have a capitol for this nation, but no name currently.  Back in the D&D days this was the “Shora’adi Reach” though.

As previous post, this is an old map that needs redrawing, but it’s standing in for now.  You also hopefully see two hastily-drawn lines!  The blue travelling mostly east-west is the Leyline of Water, and the yellow traveling mostly north-south is the Leyline of Lightning (the south pole is like, right in the dwarves’ territory).  These are important to us here as the Shora’adi are a human civilization, and humans in J’ard, if born along a leyline become infused with the element of that leyline, usually only one, but the current queen (epithet “The White Lady”) is one of those 1-in-a-billion that got both, and got installed via coup as sort of a prophet queen.  She is rapidly changing things among the Shora’adi.  Some for the better, but she has a primary historical inspiration of Queen Isabella I of Spain, and thus we have our other colonizer, and one that brings “the true faith.”

Bullet points!

·         Races: Humans and Leyfolk.  There are smatterings of the “halflings” and Dwürm races (dwarves, goblins and orcs).  Then there are a variety of races in their colonies as well, but they’re considered “below” the Shora’adi.

·         Religion: The Shora’adi worship the native Rùa and lingta (Dragon Turtles and Great Toads) as ancient guardians of wisdom.  Through these they were taught the words of creation, and their queen is seen as an avatar of sorts for the words.

·         Magic: Through the words of creation, all is possible.  Speak and so it shall be.

·         Inspiration: Culturally, the Shora’adi were initially thought of as a “mix of Vietnam, the Middle East and Spain” as my stand-in before they evolved, and in D&D they were where the spirit folk were, but I’ve since just decided to make them human with the Leyfolk mechanic that I’d thought of for Domer.  I mention this though, as they have not had the time to flourish as their own culture nearly as much as the Dwürm yet.  I mean, currently J’ardscape is set in the FDB so it’s been my focus.

So now, I want to talk about one of the most fun cultural tangents that I’ve had in world building, not a happy one in-universe, but it was fun to just follow this train of thought as it happened.  Most of this continent is asian-themed, even the Dwürm in their isolation has a bit of that influence, particularly notable in their music currently.  I decided I wanted to have cultural dress for the cultures here inspired by Asia, so like qipao and áo dài inspired.  But, despite being vaguely medieval Vietnam in initial inspiration, the intent was always to be its own distinct culture as it evolved, so I didn’t want to just use an áo dài.  And thus, my idea not only started one of the big pillars of their culture (their service culture) it also created one of the major points of contention between the Shora’adi and  Dwürm!

I went “What if they had like a furisode sort of thing (those long dangly sleeves on kimono) but both sleeves were the same piece of fabric.”  So they’d have this neat and elegant loop in front of them.  But, I immediately get to thinking about “OK, so how long would they need that loop to be.” and *boom* service culture.  Because what does shortening that loop restricting your movement imply?  You are rich enough that you don’t need to do it yourself.  Thus, the shorter your little furisode loop, the higher your status is implied to be, and you can make an especially big showing of your status by having your loop be behind your back.  The rich employ many “servants” and are almost always attended by them.  The servants themselves are...  Um, kind of slaves?  Like, not in the American-style chattel slavery, but like more Roman style I guess?  They have rights, can own things and have days off, but typically they aren’t free to leave, and even if the initial agreement didn’t preclude leaving whenever, typically they get paid in “living necessities” and don’t really have an option anyways.

So yeah, the Dwürm don’t exactly like them either.  Not only for the slavery thing, but like, they preach being a meritocracy, and the Shora’adi are all about being lazy as far as they’re concerned.

But this also lead to one of the cute things about the culture, I think.  While the poor need to do things themselves, sometimes as a romantic gesture, one person will have their partner wear a restricted robe, and just treat them to a nice night like a rich person gets.  Not that it’s like, worth the slavery, but..  Again, I’m going to say that this setting doesn’t have utopias, though this is probably one of the more dystopian civilizations.

To her credit though, “The White Lady” (she’s also, like, literally white, like not real person white, she is white, like a whiteboard.)  personally doesn’t do the servant thing.  She at least publicly wears a robe with the loop burnt off.  But with her little holy order protecting her since she was an infant, how much of that is a publicity stunt or not is definitely a question I haven’t answered.

And that’s how a pretty loop in a robe lead to slavery.  Next one is going to be a lighter mood guys, I promise!

#J'ard #World of J'ard #worldbuilding #fictional world #Shora'adi

[jjeinn-tae]

Worldbuilding!

So, I’m working on editing that video.  I have decided that I don’t like video editing.  Xp  I’m also working on Lock-On mechanics as the video will show, combat *really* doesn’t function without them!  Also the AI get very confused about not being able to back up without running away.

But, I just love how sometimes I’ll realize something about my world (or a language in it!) that I didn’t realize before. Like, yeah, I write things, but sometimes it’s just “Ohh!  That’s neat, I didn’t know that!” when I just idly think of how things I’ve already done interact.  Be prepared for loose, vaguely coherent ramblings as most of my lore posts.

So, my discovery of the day is a deep cultural conflict between the Dwürm, (The dwarves, orcs and goblins, like the only one that I’ve publicly said anything about here) and the Shora’adi (The other major colonizer of the world, a human nation vaguely bordering the Dwürm but really there’s a few countries in between).  So, the Dwürm have a big deal about hygiene, especially when it comes to hair (on top of the head, facial, body).  Like, they don’t really care *how* you do it, just that it is clean, tidy and *intentional*.  Like, clean shaven face?  Yeah awesome.  Huge beard that goes past your ankles?  As long as you keep it like trim and not different lengths in random spots that’s great!  They *do* have a different idea of clean than us, as there are microbiome things going on there.  But showing you have time for that is a good showing of status, being and upstanding member of society, caring about the community, and other things that just get further and further away from really making sense to us.

The Dwürm wouldn’t dream of letting someone else manage their hair unless it’s like a very close relationship.  Barbers don’t *really* exist outside of like, medical fields for people who can’t do that.

The Shora’adi however are almost on the opposite side of things.  As the continent is vaguely Asian themed (as in, 3 of the 4 major cultures are loosely inspired by various Asian cultures in real life) I wanted to give every culture their own formal traditional dress, although no one directly has a qi pao or kimono or anything, they have their own.  So, the Shora’adi have a showing of status in that the more well off you are, the more you have “people to do that for you.”  Their dress (unnamed currently, I haven’t developed their language enough yet) has the ends of their sleeves by their hands, both being made from the same bolt of fabric, linking their wrists together.  The vast majority of the population are able to function just fine in it, they have enough room that it essentially doesn’t hamper you unless you’re doing some really weird motion, but the wealthier you are, the the shorter that length of fabric between your wrists, and especially wearing it so your hands are behind your back is really showing that “I have so much status, I don’t need to do *anything* my servants will feed me.”  Either that or you really trust your spouse to take care of you, as some less well-off people might represent by also doing a shorter link.

*So,* that diametric opposition of idea definitely manifests in the Dwürm finding the Shora’adi very lazy, and the Shora’adi finding the Dwürm to be pointlessly hoarding their wealth for wealth’s sake.  They already didn’t get along particularly well, but it’s neat to see how these animosities can appear organically, if just thinking about things.  There’s also the meltingpot nation of Vishtallar between the two (although definitely more aligned to the Shora’adi) that I *might* have mentioned here before.  I think there’s definitely going to be barbers there, keeping dwarven beards entirely immaculate, much to the chagrin of the “Dwürm proper.”

#J'ard #J'ardscape #devblog #indy games #indy dev #game development #game design #gamedev #game dev #game dev update #worldbuilding #fictional world #background lore #Dwürm #Shora'adi #Vishtallar