#ppilli

oh, the red city (iridarra) has possibly the worst form of government: it is ruled by the university's faculty senate. it is so, so stupid. half sumer, half medieval paris. getting anything done depends entirely on the whims of one or more of the dozens of faculty committees and subcommittees. imagine the venetian senate but with snide academic bickering. it is ridiculous. a city the size and population of the bay area, surviving solely on literal millennia of institutional inertia.

such a system naturally presents many opportunities for the manipulative and ambitious. some faculty (magic) are centuries old, and are formidable political forces whether through their resulting experience, connections, or sheer cussedness. ofc there's also a hierarchy to the senate, from ignored undergraduate interns, adjuncts, lecturers, junior faculty, faculty, senior faculty, etc., all the way up to the illustrious archchancellor; the full franchise is probably limited to faculty and above, though the untenured probably get to vote on some (less important) questions now and then. the archchancellor is probably the closest single thing to an iridarran head of state.

the current incumbent, of course, is a recurring presence in meyeqitš' no good awful very bad time at uni. he's the first human archchancellor in many years, so out of necessity he plays the political game very sharply. he immediately identifies meyeqitš' potential (as both a powerful magic user and one he wants to have in his pocket) and so greases many wheels for them, but he makes no pretenses about expecting their fealty in return, which immediately and deeply disingratiates him. but he's not the only faculty meyeqitš gets involved with—the other, namely, being their sponsor, the mysterious eyreth. how did a completely unmagical lede become tenured senior chair of esoterics? what are they playing at, poaching meyeqitš—a completely untrained, unlaureated postdoc, a white elephant preschooler with the power of a god—from the archchancellor himself? and how on earth are they going to teach meyeqitš alchemy?? (why, via their lost-and-found red uni princelings protege club, duh.)

but eyreth too has their deep political secrets. :3c they're not who (or what) they seem to be, though the truth of their intentions is probably more of a shock than the discovery they were hiding something in the first place. i think meyeqitš will still be glad to have sided with them in the end, but let's see if i can write something that far first.

…unless you meant ppilli! which is a (medieval-style) commune.

so. the problem with figuring out fantasy pseudoscience. is. that it's kind of underpinned by fantasy actual science, right. after spending entirely too long playing around with astronomical software, it seems meyeqitš would be… (tiny fanfare) a sagittarius? probably? tentatively. at least if they'd been born on earth.

excitingly, however, we're not on earth! the night sky is indeed essentially the same, but ppillisi astrology consists heavily of specific horoscopy, i.e. it seeks to predict the outcome, implications, or general vibes of a given event based on the relative positions of various heavenly bodies. these include not only the wandering stars (the sun, moons, and five additional planets visible to the naked eye), but also certain "fixed" constellations, including those of the ecliptic (the bull, the spindle, the guardsmen, etc.) but also others along the road of heaven, some of which can be as or more influential than those of the ecliptic.

horoscopes are reasonably common in ppilli (courtesy of a small but respectable guild of astrologers) and largely…well, "not regarded as pseudoscience," i guess? they're admonitory—astra inclinant, non obligant—but while the heavens never lie, mortal interpretation is easy to fool. at least 20% of the reason astrology exists is to fuel the ppillisi market in "vintage 90s gold and navy sun-and-moon print shit," but the job of "astrologer" also frequently overlaps with positions like "life coach," "medieval physician's assistant" (though they don't actually perform bloodletting, they'd just write the referral), pretty much anything that can be prefixed with the word "wellness," and of course, the endlessly meaningless "consultant." most are very well educated (you have to be, to write birth charts without computers) so once you "graduate" to a full astrologer you'll usually have a particular field of specialization.

but most of what they do with that specialization is horoscopes. horoscopes are mainly taken for specific events as opposed to "something generic you read over breakfast in the morning paper." they're very important for personal events—births, marriages, building a new house—but also for certain public undertakings, too: construction of public works, diplomatic exchanges (including declarations of war). if you're really concerned about it you could probably do them for something smaller like starting an apprenticeship, changing a career, serious illness, (long) journeys, etc. but shorter-term events and conditions are usually inquired about via other divinatory means. ornithomancy and haruspicy are ofc The Classics but i feel like ppilli is so old and weird its various irrational superstitiones should also be old, weird, and perhaps vaguely offputting.

@niemalsetwas both! my ppilli moodboard currently consists of roughly 50/50 real world places (keet seel, montezuma castle, petra, and ofc reconstructions of çatalhöyük):

and screenshots of the sauro and nimue levels of the pathless, a game about which i am fundamentally unwell:

ah hello! i've been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately by the thought of/attempting to do An Entire Planet, so currently i've been playing around with ppilli as a sort of…representative thumbnail? meyeqitš is from there; bellroc was profoundly shaped by the place of their birth, even long after their city had died, and i enjoy imagining hapless baby god failing around their end-of-nowhere town, even occasionally accompanied by nature. but which kind(s)? how? in what contexts? ppilli lies at the end of a massive and ancient river canyon; the river itself is long since extinct, but the canyon is by no means "dead." i'm currently trying to justify a mix of biomes, mostly consisting of the grand canyon (for "realism") with a healthy dose of "how much can i make a near-equatorial canyon at the edge of a vast and trackless desert resemble 8000 BP central anatolian steppe" plus a whimsical dash of "early cretaceous yellow cat formation (where convenient), for Reasons." i'd like not to segue entirely into rebranding as a biologist, but i would like to figure out just how unrealistic my NYC sewer arapaima/giant rideable draft varanids/utahraptors actually are.

the problem is all the cool fantasy fauna i want are huge, which means they require a shit ton of food. worse, they're all carnivores! i already used my one (1) "get out of realism free" card to handwave a magical well system, so at least the arapaima have somewhere to live. but what are they eating?! and what about those? (if you've been playing along at home, you know such rabbitholes are typical of my creative process, haha.)