The Second Apocalypse

Miscellaneous Chatter => Writing => Topic started by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:04 am

Title: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:04 am
Quote from: Madness
"Across the plains surrounding the city of Invishi, the ruling caste-nobles are very remote, very effete. The narcotics they cultivate assure them of the obedience of their populations. Over the centuries, they have elaborated jnan to the point where it has eclipsed their old faiths. Entire lives are spent in what we would call gossip. But viramsata is far different from the rumours of the court or the clucking of harem-eunuchs - far more. The players of viramsata have made games of truth. They tell lies about who said what to whom, about who makes love to whomever, and so on. They do this continually, and what is more, they are at pains to act out the lies told my others, especially when they are elegant, so they might make them true. And so it goes from tongue to lip to tongue, until no distinction remains between what is a lie and what is true.

In the end, at a great ceremony, it is the most compelling tale that is declared Pirvirsut, a word that means 'this beathe is ground' in ancient Vaparsi. The weak, the inelegant, have died, while others grow strong, yielding only to the Pirvitsut, the Breath-that-is-Ground.

Do you see? The viramsata, they become living things, and we are their battle plain" (TTT, p451).

Original italics. Group writing has come up a couple times in the forum so far and an idea has come to me in reviewing my writing stuffs - class related and otherwise.

Not only is the above simply an apt and beautiful metaphor for the emerging study of memetics but it gives us an interesting starting place for another skill-building opportunity.

I'm not big on roleplaying and have little interest in dice roles but I do have an interest in furthering my writing technique by helping to write the most elegant and compelling narratives. The weak, the inelegant, will die, while others will grow strong, yielding only to the Narrative-that-is-Ground.

I'm suggesting a no holds barred viramsata, with, perhaps, a simple maximum of two perspectives per player.

Thoughts?
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:11 am
Quote from: Swense
Well, this drew me out of lurking and reading other people's theories about Bakker's work. :D

What exactly is this proposal? A story contest? A collaborative story with some sort of competitive element? A Second Apocalpyse-themed collaborative story? What would the setting/theme be, or is that effectively determined by whatever the first post is?

Or something entirely different? I don't consider myself an effete caste noble, would I still be able to compete/participate?
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:21 am
Quote from: Callan S.
I think if you had a structue where people have seperate stories, but each person in their own story can write about the characters someone else raises in their story and propose what happened to those characters or what they did, by making it happen in their own story. Then the other writer might take those events and include them, or twist them further and include them.

Otherwise I'm not sure about compelling - I think it requires secrets and many authors writing one story requires co-operation and without some sort of RPG like ruleset in between, either cooperation cancels out secrets, or secrets cancels out cooperation.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:28 am
Quote from: Swense
As long as there is no true competitive aspect, then I think a cooperative story would be very doable - basically narrating the same events from a multitude of perspectives. Not necessarily a game of lies, but a game of wildly different interpretations of the same event, perhaps so much so that the other perspectives would consider each other liars.

Edit: the difference between this and roleplaying is that roleplaying is invested in the victory of the characters and their achievements, this is invested in the success of the story and the achievements of the writers.

But I may be interpreting Madness entire wrong.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:35 am
Quote from: Madness
Quote from: Swense
A collaborative story with some sort of competitive element?

...

is that effectively determined by whatever the first post is?

...

I think a cooperative story would be very doable - basically narrating the same events from a multitude of perspectives. Not necessarily a game of lies, but a game of wildly different interpretations of the same event, perhaps so much so that the other perspectives would consider each other liars.

Edit: the difference between this and roleplaying is that roleplaying is invested in the victory of the characters and their achievements, this is invested in the success of the story and the achievements of the writers.

Quote from: Callan S.
Then the other writer might take those events and include them, or twist them further and include them.

You two are onto it. I'm not sure about a competitive element but it will appear of its own nature: "They do this continually, and what is more, they are at pains to act out the lies told my others, especially when they are elegant, so they might make them true."

Say Callan begins with a perspective that includes something as incidental as a rose in his description. But that is the idea that holds me so I use my character perspectives to explore the rose. However, then Swense liked something else within my own or Callan's perspectives, and he decides to focus on that. So the ideas that are more elegant, more captivating, become our Narrative-that-is-Ground, our Pirvirsut.

It even reflects benjuka ;).

We're limited only by say a maximum of perspectives, or not at all, and by the ideas that take collective hold of our imaginations as we practice our craft.

We must only concede embellish the ideas of others - even if it tests our usual loci of writing.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:46 am
Quote from: Swense
Hmm. Sounds interesting, I'd certainly be willing to give it a go.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:41:54 am
Quote from: Callan S.
I was actually thinking of seperate stories and authors cherry pick from others stories*.

So you describe from a perspective, with a bit of extra detail all around (don't keep it too tight to the subject the character is focusing on), then others might pick up from some part of that extra detail and extend it under another perspective?


* And for anyone who says this is similar to a perspective, stop being so clever! ;)
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:42:00 am
Quote from: Madness
You could have it right tight on the character, Callan. Then I might simply decide that the actions or words or allusions by that character are what I'd like to explore - your perspective mentions an event or city, etc.

I suggest drawing the line at writing the deaths of other perspectives (use this word rather than character because I can see the bowl of petunias making an appearance).

Also, no limit in time or space, though our ideas do not have to roam such edges if they don't.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:42:09 am
Quote from: Madness
Today it was the theater.

The actors paced on the stage. It was an antique piece, something performed in wordless song. At peace with the fallen.

Projecting meaning was a practice Azrael thoroughly enjoyed. He'd found in his lifetime that attributing meaning was far more pleasing than having intent spelled out for him.

They wore uniforms hundreds years old. Preserved originals if Azrael gauged right. He inhaled at the smell of smoke. Saw as much as felt the creased and cracked leather.

A historical performance...

And Azrael would know.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:42:16 am
Quote from: Camlost
Marden glided across the stage with the grace of smoke on a battlefield. She had performed the steps so many times before that she could get lost in their silent rhythm, letting her thoughts wander to the audience.

What was this performance to them, this dirge for the vanquished? Was it history, was it art, was it simply wealthy posturing?

She caught glimpses of rapt faces in the crowd as she drifted across the stage, the stage lights reflecting in the eyes of the dimly lit crowd. Except for one. As she spun, her eyes caught his, dark, hoary and immeasurable.

And she staggered in her dance..
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:42:29 am
Quote from: Callan S.
That they'd both gone to such pains with the audience, so much ensurance of uniformity in every identical expression! That one could be out of place, an other expression, twisted the role of audience and show back, jarringly, to its original position. The order of watcher and watched snapped back to it's origen by a single compromised face. What was this blasphemy?
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:42:42 am
Quote from: Madness
The actress, stunning motion, stumbled... stumbled.

He felt it, before he heard it, the dance of sorcery, magic, soma. It never remained the same, strange synestrous, sensual in matters of degree.

Azrael's soul aflame, he felt frantic in this skin. Another trapped animal...

His perception depended always on the caster, on the wielder, creature or kreten.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:42:56 am
Quote from: sciborg2
This good stuff guys!
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:43:11 am
Quote from: Camlost
Anjiera shifted agitatedly in his seat. His pulse raced to the war drum vibrations of tragic resignation. His blood felt hot in his veins, his muscles tensely poised, and he was surprised to look down at his white-knuckled grasp on the arm rests of his chair.

He released his grip and raised his gaze back to the stage, the inexplicable fervour fading. The actress had regained her step, again moving effortlessly about the stage, but that intangible thing that had held him so enthralled was no longer there
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:43:20 am
Quote from: Madness
Azrael remained motionless in his seat.

The actresses' eyes unchained from his own and she continued her next, perfect, step. He knew there would be others. Strangers like himself, looking upon the stage. Staring in full, white-eyed, knowledge... that here, now... something had happened.

And Azrael was so ready to escape...

That nothing had happened, could only mean that one of the sensual among them made some more personal play at preservation.

Azrael raised pressed palms to grinning face. Someone needed his gratitude.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:43:27 am
Quote from: Camlost
Marden completed her performance but knew she had lost the lethal fluidity it required.

Standing in the shadows off stage, Marden's anger began to rise as she searched the crowd for those unfathomable eyes. The eyes that had interrupted her choreographed pacing. She had danced the Fall of Idrius for a hundred years, never missing a step; it was sacred to her, for she had stood upon the walls of this fallen city to the very last!

Mine is the fury that moves armies, is the clamour of sword on shield, the cries of blood shed! How dare..

A sickening chill came over Marden as she fought to quell her rage. A paralyzing revelation. The dread recognition that someone in that faceless crowd had disrupted her ritual..

(sorry, performed a minor edit, unless of course no one noticed)
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:43:35 am
Quote from: Madness
As the performance drew to a close, Azrael remained seated, waiting. He had nothing but time to contemplate; after all, novelty remained the only true digression from his mortality.

Had anyone noticed?

There were individuals among every crowd, those who could sense exercises of... power. He wondered if those attentive had caught the timing of exercise, marked only by a seamless gaff of the dancer as it had entered her perception - a step she'd never missed, as Azrael had occasioned these performances often.

These days marked the Weeks of Remembrance...

The memory of Civilization's greatest fall.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:43:42 am
Quote from: Madness
Gwennie awoke to sounds of chaos... discordant, disruptive... she knew not what they meant - she was forever hearing words and using them the way adults did - except they seemed to describe her feelings this...

She looked down the alley to sate her curiosity. It was early evening and the Sun's fiery ball lowered into the bowl of the earth. Shadows grew from shadows and sprang stretching around her. She remembered being terrified of them at some point, more so even than her first Blooding... But she was braver now and had seen three brothers and sisters go to dirt, as they said. Whoever they were.

Then she heard the sounds again. They had faded like a dream... but then...

Where were they coming from?
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:43:48 am
Quote from: Camlost
The theater was near empty when Anjiera stood to leave. While others had filed out discussing the evening's performances in ecstatic exclamations, he had taken a moment to contemplate an illusion. A memory that did not belong to him. Weeks of Remembrance indeed..

As Anjiera rose and made his way down the aisle towards the performer's exit he recognized a blond haired man still seated, staring absently at the stage, "Azrael, my friend! I had feared you would miss the evening's celebrations when you did not reply to my invitations."

After a brief exchange of social formalities, their conversation quickly shifted to the evening's performance, particularly concerning one wild-haired young woman that each admitted to having found quite captivating, which prompted Anjiera to invite Azrael to join him backstage and meet the troupe.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:43:57 am
Quote from: Camlost
Oslow was the troupe manager. He negotiated payments and performances, directed travels, managed costumes and makeup, but his greatest asset as manager was an impeccable judge of character. Oslow could size up an audience, a man, a horse, or a whore, all with a swift and penetrating gaze that left them bare to his scrutiny.  He was about to rudely redirect two men who had found their way backstage when he recognized one of them as the troupe's patron, Anjiera Lathwin.

The two had come to meet the newest addition to the troupe: a beautiful, young auburn haired woman who could dance like the wind. But Oslow had come to recognize her as something all together different. On several occasions since she had joined the troupe, he had taken the time to look at her long and hard, searching her to the pith, yet he could never glean anything beyond what she seemed. There had been a few rare instances during which Oslow would have sworn he had caught sight of something in her, but it was only ever fragmented and fleeting. Even with his unique gift she still remained impossibly unrecognizable. And now, before him stood another...

Oslow felt gooseflesh prickle his arms as he escorted the two of them to Marden's dressing room, where he quickly disengaged himself and fled into the alley backing the theater.

The setting sun had cast the city in a reddish hue and Oslow could feel the day's heating seeping into his sweaty forearms as he leaned against the wall to steady himself. He shuddered as he considered Anjiera's companion, the golden ringlets that framed a mask of bemused irony, and wretched at the thought of another..
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:44:06 am
Quote from: Madness
They talked in hushed tones for a moment before Anjiera knocked softly - it had been a number of seasons since Azrael had last seen his former comrade-in-arms, Swordbrothers of a far different battlefield.

The door swung open and the dancer stood before them. A form so precise, belying a submerged strength. Unbridled passion. Relentless focus. Eyes that burned Azrael's own anew.

In the crowd of the theater, in the haze of experience, Azrael's had thoughts only for the exercise of power. Yet regarding this woman, this Marden, before him, Azrael understood that while the unknown had been wild with excess, Marden fairly radiated, seethed something... more.

Yet I know those capricious creatures called gods... for they punish me so.

And she was not of them.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:44:16 am
Quote from: Madness
She followed someone... no, maybe something. She'd heard talk of creatures beyond the Pale, things beyond the City. Or the very World. Adults were always talking about things she couldn't see or understand.

It was like a shadow and moved from place to place where only shadow's were cast. Was this fantastic play of sight responsible for the strangeness she was hearing? What was this thing before her?

She felt quiet as a mouse, bravely following some cat in tenacious revolt. Tenacious... She wondered at the word, rolling it around in her mouth. It sounded right. She would follow this Shadow Cat like a mouse, never considering the momentary madness of such thoughts - weren't mice eaten by cats?

Yet she knew without knowing that this Shadow Cat was indeed a predator... and it wasn't hunting little mice like her.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: Camlost on March 05, 2015, 08:30:26 pm
The shadows grew long and the sun fled the sky, but Oslow's thoughts were elsewhere, retracing all the fears and concerns he'd had of his dancer—and now Anjeira's companion.

His absent gaze hadn't registered the towering shadow until it had separated itself from the greater darkness. A wraith from legend, from tales told before cities and walls. Oslow knew pleading was useless, and an icy grip about his throat assured him.

A dry and rasping voiced echoed from the darkness. The language was ancient in its inflection, yet meaning penetrated. A deal was struck and a debt is owed. No one escapes the Pale One's grasp, yet you have helped her elude me..

Oslow might have felt a moment of vindication if not for the finality with which each phrase was uttered. An antiquated bone knife slipped between his ribs, punctuating his final thoughts. A deal, with the Pale One..

His body slipped from the blade to lay cold and stiff in the dirt. It's empty gaze coming to rest on a filth-covered girl spying from the shadows.
Title: Re: Viramsata: Battle of the Authors
Post by: Camlost on March 05, 2015, 08:32:21 pm
Marden sat postured across from them, indulging their flattery, when a chill ran down her neck, nearly breaking her poise. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a cold had crept into the room, and with it the sickly scent of decay. Marden watched both her guests closely, her patron's cavernous-eyed companion particularly, but if either of them noticed the change they showed no sign of it.

The aura continued to invade the room. One she had felt long, long ago and was still all too familiar.

But she was no longer a lonely battle maiden, wedded to the sword, staring out at annihilation come. She had made her bargain—her soul for countless thousands, to be repaid one for every hearth outside Idruis' walls.

And she had paid. All but the last. For now she was something greater than she had been, something far more. She was a bloodletting storm, a whirlwind of sharp edges and deadly intent, and she would not have ruin heaped upon her again.

She bandied words with the men and she waited. Ready.