Place and Mood

Ben-Thisse was a meeting place and trading post for the Begn, a small group of local warlords and agrarian landlords that over time became convinced of the need to reorganise and combine their power to control the region, and desired a neutral space to conduct this through. As this relationship settled, their meetings took an increasingly economic and trade focused bent, although trade was usually a euphemism for mercantile strong-arming of captive markets. Due to the Begn's self-interest, Ben-Thisse found itself increasingly influentual as its refining and route-finding expertise grew.

However, the Begn were not stupid - they were aware of the threat that an independant and powerful territory could be to their own local power, and so made a concerted effort to kneecap the burgeoning power-center. As a result, Ben-Thisse has a byzantine chain of command, with the nominal heads of the organisation (called Clerks) kept low via strategically overlapping domains, extreme tax burdens, and the enshrined demand to never field any force or pursue military action. The location of Ben-Thisse has helped keep it in check too - although central, the meeting-place was purposefully chosen to be nigh-incapable of being defended, with the original Begn seeing to it that no one leader could initiate a power-grab and expect to keep hold of it. Further, the city is heavily dependent on outside assistance for even basic needs, with all raw material having to be imported. The areas available for cultivation or grazing are severely limited.

All of these factors has meant that Ben-Thisse is defined by its hunger: for self-determination, for self-sufficiency, for relationships that could benefit its people and position itself as the new seat of real power. Ben-Thisse is known for its rapacious employment of Cartographers, since it is eagar to discover and utilise any advantage it can get, be it over the Begn, places that it can expand into to develop its own agrarian capabilities, or allies or puppets it can leverage to break its position as subordinate. It is a place of deep, almost insolvable contradictions - at once powerful and powerless, influential and a mere pawn, internally divided yet motivated with a singular drive to enact its will on the external.

Nature as we understand it is extremely scarce. But life, as in sentience, intelligence, consciousness, is overflowing, bursting from every seam. Thus, the question of "where do children come from?" can be answered with a rueful: "Where don't they come from?" People in the new world will not be shocked by pregnancy as we understand it, although they might quibble about the mechanics: "The stomach? Why, I was born out of my father's arm and I turned out alright! Kids these days...".

Sexual dimorphism is more akin to an ill-fitting coat, or perhaps a stage-name. Intimacy is still sought after, although the causal link with children is no longer a straight line. Children are more likely to wander in from the cold one night, rubbing their eyes, and the adults will sigh and lay another place at the table. The nuclear family is rare. Most places do have some notion of family structure, and most people usually have one or two people at most that they can most immediately trace back their looks, mannerisms, and their way of speaking to.

Age hierarchy is common, as is the idea of a threshold of autonomy, since children remain children in the new world. But there those that were simply found one morning under a bridge, or those that swear their co-worker had never been seen before, or those who know with absolute certainty that they are twins, despite living on opposite sides of an island.

Your relation to those that came before can be analogized thusly - you are an ant, within the gently decaying remains of a crashed luxury sportscar. The affordances and utilities of the car are of no great interest to you, and their various purposes can only be dimly guessed, even if you could identify where and what is designed, so toally hve you naturalised and internalised your surroundings. Your world is all design. It is not malevolent, although it will shape your entire life. The sugary drink in the cupholder may entice you, although the drowned corpses of other ants floating calmy within belie its quiet danger to your kind. The leather seats were presumably comfortable, although you much prefer the warrens being excavated within its foam. The corpse of the driver is recognised only as landscape, and of sensory delights. The engine may no longer run, but its battery can still wink out your existence with latent electricity, the oil can coat your antennae, and the curve of its container will always dictate the shape of your explorations.

In short, every part of your world exists with either purposeless function or functionless purpose. The chief difference is that unlike the ant, the gulf between the old world and yours is not dictated by scale - for, those that came before were most likely mostly the same size and proportions - nor can it even be said that the physical needs of the ones that came before differ greatly to your own. It is that their world was completely and utterly molded by their desires for luxury, of providing a realm that could enact the full extent of their beliefs; their feelings, reasonings, hopes and fears writ large with concrete and plastic, steel and cells. You encounter these luxuries and utilities as one largely removed from understanding, but also removed from the desires they were created for. They will either ignore you entirely as you crawl through, over, inside, and under them, or, they will use you as the car uses asphalt, they will change you, they will casually remake your body to serve the ghosts of the whims of ghosts.

Of course, the alien nature of the world is further complicated by the passage of time. Buildings have sunk, waterlogged, collapsing together like two sleeping strangers on a subway, the thin life of heather and lichen creating the speckled first steps of an ecosystem on top of the equivalent lanscape alteration that volcanoes used to cause. Colossal megastructures are gamely limping on, scarred by time, folded in on themselves, twisted up by pressures and failures measured in scales previously reserved for geology. However, like the ant in the car, who feels most comforted and rewarded by errant leaf litter decomposing after blowing through an open window, or is satiated by the collecting damp along the bottom of the seat and the mold that it sustains, these complications, by undercutting the unfamiliar and self-confidant totality and vision of the ones that came before, often become the most familiar and comforting pockets for you as well.

The old world has been colonised by the new. Ants now dig out tunnels in the semi-digested space. The driver watches without watching, their body still perfectly supported by the luxurious, perfect seats, seats that the ants have found an oblique, perverse use for.

There has in recent times begun a concerted effort to map the known world. Gatherings, settlements, local lords, the passageways that can connect. Those with resources wish to know where threats may be, where allies could be created, and to create surplus. The latter is achieved chiefly by two means - subjugation of the locality, be it 'natural' resources, routes and roadways, and most importantly, the people; and the second mean, carrying trade, the act of not only transporting resources to others, but maintaining a network of those who depend on your resources, and are helpless in the face of your offerings. Those in power will map to bring order. Their order. The map becomes reality through their force, or at least, it would, were it not for the ceaseless remaking that occurs at all parts and on all levels of this world. The new world is built atop multiple layers of the old rationalities What this means is that the neat grid lines that allowed for the orderly plunder and control of created surplus are long gone, replaced by the chaos and complexity of a carcass. The attempts to map out the world are as fruitless as a pack of vultures trying to convince the maggots and insects to eat through the flesh in right angles.

Still, practically, there is a pressure from the center to connect dots, for the powerful to pay for first-hand accounts and put up with hearsay and rumour. They'll want to know Who, and Where, and What they have, what can be taken. The periphery frequently has other ideas. Some will welcome the attention, and eagerly barter, explain their corner, dob in their neighbour. When you show up next time, they might even be foolish enough to still be there. Others will seek assurances, promises, make threats. They might genuinely think that their representation on the map can be negotiated, or they are simply getting as much as they can before they are swallowed or spat out. Others still will resist on principle. Maybe not with fists, maybe without even speaking, without looking at your face even once. Regardless of how they act, those on the margins and the lightly sketched parts of the map will invariably regard a stranger showing up as the first, thin note on a clarinet, the band waiting to strike up behind it.

What does it mean to be a stranger in this way? You will be sold a complete vision of the local, even if you aren't interested in selling it on to the highest bidder. So you might as well. Or, you could try and help. What does it mean to help the local? Is it faithfully relaying what they say is the local? Is it finding out the truth, or a truth, or the truth blinkered by your outlook, and then passing that on? Is it doing that, then saying nothing, or something else? Is it interacting with the truth to change it to your liking, or the liking of the mapmakers? That is frowned upon by them, although they do something similar. Can you meaningfully find truth without changing it? Can you do so at all? Will your help be accepted? Will you try anyway, clumsy and corrupting as you may be?

This question hangs leaden and heavy over any and all interaction. Trust is irrelevant, friendliness or material support are perpendicular. An itinerant sailor may arrive with the tide, amicably chat with a fisherman, show off some curio and trade for it, clink tankards at the pub, and leave in the night to hearty goodbyes, and throughout the sailor will be assumed to be gathering scraps for a narrative. Still, don't underestimate the power of an observer. Disputes will be brought to the inspection of the sailor, conclusions of squabbles more easily stomached if meted out by a stranger. The outside can help the local, it just always, always takes something in return. Thus, the desperate, the ego-driven who think they can get a good deal, those that are looking to slip away - these will be your friends, the ones who will seek out your ear, will buy the round at the pub, will loudly thank you, and, as you sail off, will chew their lip and wonder if you bought what they were selling.