Commonweal Thread: Goddammit, Sorry Graydon(s)

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Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

I feel like a good comparison is China Mieville's Bas Lag series, in the sense of "fantasy that actually goes to the effort of thinking about the sociopolitical consequences of magic, as written by someone with a solid foundation in modern history".

OK, so I've read The March North, and it was great. What I'm wondering is whether there is a fan-created map and/or lexicon? I feel like I could mostly follow what was going on, but I'm at the point where I'd rather just have at least some reference information to hand rather than the whole "figure it out from primary sources" vibe.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2023 23:33

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 21:25

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

habeasdorkus posted:

I'm re-reading The March North for what must be the fourth time, because there's really nothing else quite like these books, and noticed something that I'm not sure I had grasped on prior re-reads. After the first encounter with the Road of Concentrated Despair there's a discussion between the Captain, Blossom, and Halt about how long ago Reems started using the physical embodiment of despair from millions of people (or hundreds of thousands, made to feel utter despair multiple times). They're sure it's taken well longer than the six years since Rust comprehensively crushed the Archon at Meadows Pass. They guess that Reems is under threat from something even further north, and thus being pushed towards the Commonweal at Meadow's Peak and across the sentient terrain. They consider the possibility of a major summoning having gotten out of Reems control/turning against Reems and that being a cause for Reems moving south (and creating a ready source of despair).

The last part gets pretty unambiguously confirmed by the Reems survivors. They say that the the despair was harvested from people Reems conquered, and that was used to bind demons, but now the demons are loose and angry and brought their friends, so "Reems is no more".

habeasdorkus posted:

Also, did we ever conclude how Wapentake is pronounced? In my head it's Wah-pen-tah-kay, but I know it's of Anglo-Saxon origin and not east coast Native American.

OED gives four options. Take your pick!

Brit. /ˈwɒp(ə)nteɪk/, /ˈwap(ə)nteɪk/, U.S. /ˈw�pənˌteɪk/, /ˈwɑpənˌteɪk/

I kinda like the first one -- it's like how you pronounce Wapping.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2023 23:49

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Hyphen-ated posted:

there's a map here https://www.deviantart.com/cultureulterior/art/Line-military-overview-map-548623672
(i have to click the image and then additionally do "open image in new tab" in order to actually see any of it though, because of the transparent background)

but the person who made this is confused about the difference between east and west. so it's not really a very good reference

Yeah I'd found that one, and the person is also confused about the direction of the Folded Hills, which are described as running from WNW to ESE, not NNW to SSE as in that map.

LLSix posted:

Almost none of that map matches my mental map. I'd have to go back and check the books to be sure which of us is wrong though and

Lol yep, see above.

cultureulterior posted:

Yeah I really have to redo that.

Oh hey! Yeah it'd be great if you felt up to it. I also feel like the Northern Hills should be deeper than that? The March North spanned about 200km of ground, and the climactic events still happened some indefinite but long distance from the Archonate proper.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2023 01:35

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

But I'd put the simple list of geo-facts in a Google Doc, and move it to the whiteboard/map/whatever as a second pass.

(Also interested, unsure of my actual time availability, but interested.)

# ¿ Jan 17, 2023 20:18

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Google Jeb Bush posted:

diog feels a chill run down his spine at the idea of us being encouraged in this sort of nonsense

Lol I've definitely had a few moments of "could they be the same person?"

(But I'm fairly sure they're not.)

# ¿ Jan 18, 2023 01:58

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

habeasdorkus posted:

I've completed my re-read of A Succession of Bad Days, and in doing so added everything I could find about places to the google doc notepad. I'm very confused on precisely how many canals there are in the Creeks. The joke about their being a parliamentary riding called the Western West West-East Canal was good, though.

Yeah I'm reading for the first time, and I think the implication is that while the Creeks themselves run roughly north to south, there's a giant network of canals linking them east to west.

habeasdorkus posted:

Book 2 also started with Kynefrid in the class, who was a bit weaker than Zora. Kynefrid dropped out of the program because he couldn't get himself to believe that it could actually work and it wouldn't just end up killing him. So he left to try to succeed as a traditional student.

Was Kynefrid ever gendered? I don't think I ever saw them referred to with anything but gender-neutral pronouns.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2023 21:06

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

D-Pad posted:

Ok so if any of these answers will be spoilers for later books or even just lessen the impact of a cool lightbulb moment in the later books I don't want to know. I am going to spoiler the whole thing in case anybody wonders in here that hasn't read the first book yet.

1. The standard.

It allows lesser talent folks to combine like Voltron so their magical abilities are on par with the strongest independents? But it also seems to have it's own pocket dimension that can be used to store stuff (the battalion records are mentioned) and to go into for meetings and also for the dead to stay in before they move on to the afterlife? Why did they have wagons and such for the ammunition if they can store things in the standard? But it also is a physical thing? Like a big pole with a flag or something? When they talk about going in and out of it are they physically going in and out of this pocket dimension or is it like an out of body thing? It also has a focus which is like a force field that can be shaped to push and pull and do all kinds of things? Also, a person (Blossom) can be a standard? Also does the standard-captain get full control or otherwise have special abilities?

2. Road building/marching

Didn't really quite understand this. When they march it's like a haste spell so they are going super fast, but they also talk about like not being able to see outside (the drovers in particular who aren't part of the standard can't see what is around them as they march if I remember correctly). Are they inside the standard during marching and there is just a big flagpole rushing down the countryside? Is it actually just a time warp thing? Why do they have to build a road everywhere as they go? That seemed very important but I couldn't understand why because even the Reems guys built the despair road but they weren't traveling down it at the time so why build the road?

3. Why do they need a second commonweal?

I couldn't get whether it was because the creatures out of the paingyre are definitely (or already had) going to beat the rest of the first commonweal or if they are just going to cleave the creeks from the commonweal? It sounded like cleaving but why does that require setting up a second commonweal exactly? Why couldn't they still communicate via magic or why do they not expect the first commonweal will attack and reestablish communication?

4. Shape of Peace

So this seems to be basically the constitution of the commonweal but it's also a magic binding that means the people bound to it literally cannot break any of it's rules without dying on the spot?

5. What are signas pennons and gesiths?

6. The captain is a graul which seems to be a species created by magic? Is that right? What exactly are their powers? They can see a little way into the future but the captain can apparently change his mind in the past to negate the ability of another graul?

7. How exactly does the artillery work? Is it basically what we have except instead of gunpowder shells it's just shells with a certain kind of magic or spell in them? Like red-red-black and red-red-red are just designations for what exactly it does when it explodes?

8. The battles could be a bit confusing. What was actually killing people? Was it spells/magic Reems launched that made it through the focus/shield? It seemed like maybe in certain instances they actually got into them in melee and cut down people with swords or whatever but I don't remember a single description of anybody in the Line actually physically fighting with handheld weaponry.

That's all I can think of now. I really enjoy his prose but it is also incredibly frustrating and I have never had to re-read passages as much as I have had reading this book to understand exactly what is going on or being said.

Re 4. It's more that it's used for attestations under oath, ie there are consequences to defying it. Not necessarily death -- see the part at the end of book 1 where a parliamentarian tests out the "no lies in parliament" functionality and ends up with his pants on fire -- but definite, strong consequences. There's also a bunch of stuff that's gotten into in book 2 about magical protections provided by the Peace, most notably that it keeps everyone's true names within it. This both gives the Peace power over people, but protects them from being magicked against using their true names. There are more complex rules for keeping Independent sorcerers in line, which are hinted at in book 1, and are gone into in a lot of detail in book 2.

7. The shells are pre-created by enchantment (all except the black, which are just slugs). The artillery use a standard to magically propel the shells to the enemy, potentially using weird paths, homing logic, etc.

8. In the first battle, the most casualties were taken mainly from the solid despair evaporating all over them like a chemical weapon. Otherwise, sorcerers, the swords of berserkers, etc. The Captain single-handedly slices up 220-some dudes with a sword in the first battle. A bunch of the weapons of the main Wapentake/short company are melee weapons, they just have some ranged weapons they use first. (Also, from the Captain's POV, the last battle involved a lot more magic/demons/ichor, whereas Blossoms end of things probably got a lot messier once the enemy were inside arty range.)

Edit: Also re 1, the standards are actual, very enchanted, objects. They have the pocket dimension, the dead storage capability, and the ability to act as a focus for collective mystical effort. It's mentioned in book 1 that a Standard Captain is bound to their standard, such that they die if they go further than a few kilometres from it. The pocket dimension is a courtesy so they have a portable place to live. Book 1 also mentions that the Standards for the Second Commonweal had to be made out of wood as a temporary measure. They go into this a bit more in book 2. "The focus" is I think the state of joining together, while the standard is the object that facilitates that. There are also other standards than battle standards, for various industrial purposes, but the battle Standards are the most important.

Really, book 2 goes into a lot of exposition, in a way that's somehow not annoying? It's less exciting than the fighting of the first book, but Graydon manages to make mundane slice-of-life tasks be extremely metal.

Lead out in cuffs fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jan 24, 2023

# ¿ Jan 24, 2023 02:06

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

grassy gnoll posted:

You will need a tolerance for commas, however.

Lol. Having just finished it, I definitely did not find Edgar's stream-of-consciousness narration anywhere near as annoying as some in this thread.

Although I think my favourite part was when he tried weeding, and every way he could think of to kill the weeds was so filled with cosmic horror even Wake was traumatized.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2023 06:20

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

habeasdorkus posted:

Ed does tend to wrap themself up in side thoughts and digressions within the same sentence. Zora isn't as bad when we get their perspective in Safely You Deliver, and Grue is downright straightforward.

As for Ed and weeding, well... Ed does figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't terrify most people, but is fundamentally similar to what Laurel did to Wake and Halt and the rest of the 12, so that definitely puts Wake off his whole 'benevolent bricklayer' equilibrium for a bit. It's a very good bit.

Lol yep.

habeasdorkus posted:

Realized in my reread of Safely You Deliver that the Standard also compresses the space being travelled so it's not just being able to move more quickly.

Yeah there's an offhand comment near the end of the book.

quote:

Spoilers for The March North only:
I think the despair didn't necessarily kill them, so much as make it impossible for them to fight back. They lost their latch on the platoon focus, so they were a couple hundred soldiers stuck just fighting a few thousand berserkers (who, being berserkers, were insulated from the despair) instead of being able to use the tricks the Standard offers. The March North does detail how many die at each point, though. Less than half the Wapentake and Experimental Battery make it back to Headwaters, 278 hale or wounded versus 297 dead. Something like 200 of those deaths happen when the Despair pops off. Most of the troopers who went with the Captain into the fortress made it back, but the Experimental Battery and Dove's Third Platoon had ~60 more dead after that fight and took most of their casualties from the spine beasts.

Ah yes that makes sense.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2023 17:06

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Yeah same. I liked Edgar and the Captain best so far for narrative voice.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2023 04:08

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Ruud Hoenkloewen posted:

I just finished the second book. At first I bounced off it hard, because I really wanted more of the Captain's bizarre, ultra-terse narration. But by the end it grew on me substantially -- Edgar's relationship with Dove somehow, for all its weirdness, felt more intimate and tender than most relationships I've seen in other of media. What a *weird* series of books this is.

Personal highlight: the scene where Edgar has learned shapeshifting and considers giving himself a bigger dick, only for Dove to say that she prefers them *prehensile*.

And now I'm ten pages into the third book, and there's a unicorn! Yay!

Yeah one of the funniest parts about the series is that the author only slowly lets on that "humans" are no longer actually even remotely the same species, and only interbreed across races via fancy life magic. It's also one of the testaments to the strength of the Commonweal that they're able to be actively inclusive of everyone. Wait until the later books with Graul sex.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2023 21:59

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Every narrator has a distinct voice - diction, register, the whole lot, and there are no slips in that.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 09:28

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

So what's the deal with the whole forum thing of there being multiple Graydons? Like I'm not gonna doxx him here, but the guy isn't hard to find, and what I can gather about him tracks pretty well with the politics and overall content of the Commonweal books.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2023 20:42

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Oh loving lol.

Like, AFAICT Graydon is pretty goony, and I would not be surprised if he had a mostly-inactive forums account from the early 2000s, but just lol at Cardiac's post.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2023 00:27

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

ulmont posted:

I dunno exactly where Graydon went after r.a.sf.w, but it includes a lot of comments in Brad DeLong's blog.

Here's one DeLong hoisted, talking about David Drake's writing in the context of the Odyssey: https://braddelong.substack.com/p/hoisted-from-e-archives-homer-odysseus

Lol at the jam comment -- I'm re-reading A Series of Bad Days, and hit a part where it's explained (very indirectly) that anybody making jam had better be able to do enough necromancy to fully inert it, since boiling just isn't enough in post-apocalyptic wizard-world.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2023 01:22

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

habeasdorkus posted:

Spoilers for Book 4:
One: The Reems folk who are able to summon the Thing That Ate Reems are two armies large, and about 50,000 people. They're chasing 30,000 or so refugees, and the Last Archon escaped inot the swamps below the Edge in the Commonweal. How did that conflict end up happening? DId someone summon the bigger-than-a-Marid as part of the power struggle after the death of the Archon at the hands of Rust in The March North? Did they do it while fighting the Sea People who landed to the north? Did it happen much earlier than that and that's part of why they had so much despair they could make a magical road out of it?

Two: If they have this beast that was an actual threat to Blossom, who's got so much natural talent she disproved long held theories about how strong a single person could be and who is as strong now as people who in the past set up global imperium, why aren't they currently ruling over Reems instead of chasing after some foot-sore refugees? Does the pact with the Thing require them to summon it regularly and feed it entire cities at a time? Is the Thing still not enough to beat whatever the Sea People landed up north?

I am pretty sure the Reems-bigger-than-a-marid thing was already eating Reems some time in the past -- likely before the death of the first Archon at the hands of Rust even before The March North. I think it's implied that it was a summons gone out of control, which might match with it needing to be summoned, but maybe still controlling/compelling its servants while unsummoned?

Where was the reference to the Sea People landing up north? I think I forgot about that part.

habeasdorkus posted:

Three: Crow got sent to the Second Commonweal by the First Commonweal to give the Second Commonweal a heads up that the Line of the First Commonweal was gearing up to try to solve the Paingyre problem. Shimmer successfully cast Confuse on the Paingyre monsters, but the attack never happened, and the question that both I and the leaders o the Second Commonweal have is "did the First Commonweal get attacked by the Sea People?"

So I think the ocean, and the Sea People, came from the east more broadly, and mainly from the southeast relative to the Second Commonweal. The First Commonweal is to the northwest, ie in the opposite direction. I suppose it's not impossible that there's geography on the other side of the First Commonweal that would allow the Sea People to invade, but it seems unlikely to me?

Still, we have a couple of books to go, so maybe we'll find out...

Just a reminder of the semi-dormant mapping project:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/122q3T5_dvDPmjUlRs0VUUEBpohe-3rFcpCdhka3b87c/edit

habeasdorkus posted:

Two: Shortly before the big battle, Chert says they'd been thinking about how they'd report to the First Commonweal and its Line. The way it sounds, Chert doesn't believe the Second Commonweal abides by the Peace and says "Too much economy gone to militant purposes." Am I reading that right? And is the Second Commonweal's economy really that stressed by raising 7000 or so soldiers out of a population of 600k in the Creeks?

Yeah it sounds like a lot of this is production of materiel too. I was looking up some historical numbers for armies. The British Army during the Napoleonic Wars peaked at 250K soldiers, from a population of about 10 million (1:40 ratio). But that was from a major colonial power that was harvesting resources from all over the world. Also, while I think that's a good time period for comparable modern technology to the magical technology of the Commonweal world, this doesn't factor in the additional resource strain and inefficiency introduced from having to deal with weeds and critters. Also also, that was a peak during an active continental-scale war. The standing army during the 1800s was more like 90K, which is pretty close to the 7000 Commonweal soldiers out of 600K people.

Finally, I am 100% sure Graydon did a ton of research into this, and about 95% certain he has spreadsheets calculating all the army logistics...

# ¿ Apr 1, 2023 18:05

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

grassy gnoll posted:

I'm gonna read the poo poo out of adventures in Halt's cannery.

This actually sounds like a good basis for a video game.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2023 03:17

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Demon_Corsair posted:

I can't tell if I don't understand the scale of everything in these books or if the author doesn't understand metric.

Are creeks supposed to be 10-15 feet tall? He describes at 7 meter canoe being able to be used as a roof to comfortably sleep two, and 7 meters is about 21 ft.

All the wildlife seems to be gigantic as well. A 10 foot long duck would be terrifying even if it's not on fire.

There's a line in book two or three about someone trying to farm ducks, with the correction that it would be more accurately described as ranching.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2023 22:20

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

To be fair 1 benefits from (re-)reading after having read the others. It's fun the first time through, but you have a much better idea what's going on after having read the rest.

Yeah I'd say let your friend loose on 2.

Anyone know how Graydon's going on further books? It's been a few years now since the last one. I'll be sad if he abandons the series. But also I get how much work went into it, so wouldn't blame him if it's become too much.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2023 17:28

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

So ... Laurel. I think someone in the sci fi thread described them as having performed an experiment to knock down the local wizard lords. But it seems like they had a much bigger design in mind. Did they create the Shape? They must have, to have bound the defeated sorcerers as Independents. So they quite intentionally set up the Commonweal, and likely just as intentionally recognized that they would represent an existential threat to that system if they hung around. If they could make the Shape, they might be able to break or subvert it.

So they headed off into the world, with a horde of Graul, but there's no indication of their activities outside the Commonweal, which you might expect if they were stomping around with a wizard-destroying army.

But we know Laurel is happy to sit on a mountain for hundreds of years in contemplation. And the Graul can hide and go dormant.

Is Laurel hanging out somewhere nearby, waiting for a moment to reappear if necessary?

I feel like the narrative so far has set things up for a reappearance.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2023 03:12

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Also, what was the wizard Laurel? "There wasn't much [they] didn't know about necromancy", but they also used Ed's entelech-style weeding trick of time-slicing to defeat The Twelve, but they were also a master enchanter. In the world's magical system, individual wizards only get one, maybe two flavours of Talent. Was Laurel a hive-mind like the polycule? Some sort of god?

# ¿ Aug 25, 2023 04:09

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Benagain posted:

Do it you coward

Also make sure to link the thread here so we know to follow it

# ¿ Nov 13, 2023 04:53

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

I think it's best to think of entelechs as Lovecraftian Horrors Out of Time and Space. The idea is basically a trope in fantasy, which Graydon is playing with.

What is interesting about them in this world, though, is that pretty well everything else supernatural can be attributed to 100,000 years of super-powerful magicians loving around around. Like it could easily be the modern world, except magic appears and magicians gently caress everything up, creating demons etc in the process. Whereas entelechs seem to be very much Other. (I guess fire elementals too. Although I wonder whether those also might be the result of past magical fuckery.

All that said, what the gently caress is a tagmat?

# ¿ Dec 22, 2023 05:02

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 21:25

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Right, sort of like how some weeds, demons, and creatures like Eustace have minds but no nervous system. A coercer couldn't affect them, but a tagmat could.

I'm kinda curious what it's an abbreviation of, though. It sounds a bit like tagmentation, but I'm sure it's not related to that.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2023 08:04

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Commonweal Thread: Goddammit, Sorry Graydon(s)