PmWiki | Madlands / CulturalNotes

The New Army.

They operate in a manner similar to the Roman legions, but with pike-and-shot technology. They have a limited amount of heavy cavalry, and simple morse-code radios. Like the Romans, they excel at holding territory and quickly building fortifications, but are less adept at offense. For offensive actions, the New Army tends to hire mercenaries to take the brunt of the losses.

Before the New State had shown up, there was an equilibrium to the Madlands. In general, most peasants and townsfolks are content or happy -- war is a somewhat ritualized affair, like in the time of the condottieri, and those who sign up to be soldiers know the risks. Collateral damage is usually limited to armies "foraging". Magic and supertech make it easy to patch people up, too -- if you get a leg cut off you might have one reattached a week later, if you can find one and don't mind the skin tone looking different.

The New State's initial rapid expansion was partially due to the fact that none of the rulers in the Madlands expected this sort of organized effort; when they began to expect it, expansion slowed, with the Western Trade Baronies the last major conquest.

A problem is that the Madlands rulers are so used to their way of squabbling that any sort of alliance between them would be very fragile as a matter of course, with New State agents having to do relatively little work to make sure on collapses quickly if it forms.

Enough of the petty rulers have a blind spot in that sense that wiser ones can't really organize.

The Seamstress, incidentally, is not one of the wiser ones; she figures that all she has to do is talk to the current Chairperson and make them an offer tempting enough. She's wrong.

From gender transition to being given super-strength or super-agility or extra arms to fight with, to being turned into a beautiful or mighty chimera, they all chose their fate; some live within the Seamstress' realm and serve her willingly, others live in nearby realms and buy the serum from the Seamstress as one might buy a drug for a chronic illness. The Seamstress forgives the occasional late payment because she finds it handy to have people in other realms owing her a favor.

In the Madlands, just as there are transgender individuals, there are those who simply wish they'd been born a different type of humanoid or human. Things like this are routine, and the Seamstress leaves them to her apprentices. If an apprentices messes up, the new subject will get a revision courtesy of the Seamstress herself, which will fix the issue... but won't be able to change their minds and back out of the deal.

Let's look at geopolitics. Everyone in the Madlands is trying to pretend that it's business as usual, only with the Western Baronies having been taken over by the Lighthouse Colony. Trying a little too hard. Under the surface, some rulers try to get a favorable trade deal with the New State, others are trying to at least work out a defensive alliance with their immediate neighbors or mutual aid with more distant neighbors with no history of petty vendettas, and everyone is trying -- and failing -- to send scouts into the tunnel or across the Mountain Wall. It's as if a rich jock ended up at a LAN party and now all the geeks are being awkward about it.

Let's look at some other rivalries in the Madlands. Notably, the Tungsten Knights have none; they're all business, their "fight" is usually against genuine monsters or radioactive artifact gone out of control. They are sometimes called in to help when a steam titan, arcanodigitizer, or summoned hydra goes out of control of its master and starts burninating the countryside.

Let's look at broader implications, not only of the Seamstress but also other weirdo rulers. For example, the "ritualized war" that has become common in the Madlands is in part a result of the Tungsten Knights taking the most dangerous artifacts or superweapons out of circulation after they learn of them. Or, grains used to be somewhat rare across the Madlands, but the swamp-draining in the Kingdom of Rice changed this, and now that the New State is exporting wheat, pasta has made a comeback. And so on. Small things can have ripple effects.

Let's look at things from the perspective of an ordinary citizen. In general, a farmer in the New State will see fewer wonders than one in the Madlands, but have a slightly higher quality of life due to, at least, the lack of mad-science accidents or magical mishaps.

Let's look at how townsfolk might fare differently. For a baseline, we can use Napoleonic-era Europe.

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