Sythyry placement and displacement

[sythyry]

Sythyry is not quite canonical World Tree! Canonical World Tree is defined by the RPG sourcebook. I've generally been trying to keep quite close to canonical. But I have drifted away from it in a few respects. Here's what I can think of just now:

1. Transaffection is far more despised in Sythyry's version of World Tree than in the canonical one.
2. Vae is far more dangerous and brainwarped than the baseline nendrai in the rulebook, though that is explained in-story.
3. Sythyry is using some as-yet-unpublished rules to enchant things fast.
4. Sythyry is not perfectly reliable on some topics, like how well Cani read emotions -- they read them far better than a human (or Zi Ri) does, but not the near-mindreading that Sythyry sometimes seems to think.
5. Oh, and not many people but Sythyry, Kantele, and Inconnu actually agreed with Sythyry's previously-held, now-abandoned theory of transaffection.

[Poll #1593581]

Comments

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

"Occasionally titillating" is about the strongest I'd describe Sythyry's journal, honestly. It touches on sexual matters, but usually not to any degree you can't find in mainstream media. It certainly doesn't go into as much detail as romance novels, and much less often; often the sexual relevance is theoretical rather than practical(that is, there may be discussion of sexuality, but it is often not in any way a portrayal of sex).

The only differences I could think of offhand that weren't noted already are tthree:

First, shifter hybrids got their adult lifespan drastically reduced. Lithia's projected adult life(that is, not counting the roughly 30-year period of infancy, childhood, and adolescence) is ten years. Compare forty as the average cited in book, with the main complications starting up some 10 years before; also, Lithia shifts more frequently and rigidly than is portrayed in the book(pretty much universally hourly, rather than "an hour or two but I can hold out for a bit longer if it's more important to stay in one shape than to avoid the pain").

Second, certain of the species have never been encountered in variant forms. While this makes sense for Gormoror(there aren't many of them to begin with, thus not many have been met, and they tend to live in bands according to breed), it's almost surprising that variant Orren haven't drifted by. This is a very mild and even nitpicky point, though - Cani and Herethroy have been properly variable, there's been some varied Rassimel(including skunk and squirrel styling), and Zi Ri, well, see the rarity thing above with Gormoror. The even-more-scarcity of Zi Ri being balanced by family ties - and even within that, there's been variance. Sleeth have been different colours, and Khtsoyis... well, Khtsoyis.

Third, there has been next to no sign of cordial dealings with nonprimes, Vae(and her doom) notwithstanding. As an example: wherriwheffle herders are alluded to as a major source of livestock - most primes don't want to live outside the city; of those that do, Herethroy deal with plants, and neither the Gormoror nor the Sleeth seem particularly inclined toward farming of any sort. In contrast, the herdsman's greatest boon is a spell that most primes wouldn't want to admit knowing(involving Mentador), is originally a wherriwheffle spell, and is a spell that they can cast for free. Sure, fewer cities might let a wherriwheffle in than, say, a mherobump or taptet or even greft, because wherriwheffle are nuisances that like to pilfer shiny(read: Durudor; read: expensive) objects - but there'd at least be some commerce, maybe with some of their more stable representatives bringing a livestock train to the city gates every week or so. In a way, those philosophers on the inistella exemplified this point - first off, most of the beings encountered were rather scary(nycathath, perdithorne, the inistella itself, and to a degree the norren); second, the position of harmony, while extreme, was much more vilified than I might expect. It shouldn't be that much of a surprise to find a similar commune on-branch involving primes and the less threatening nonprimes; if you omit the perdithorne(who have an active dislike for Cani) and the inistella(for more practical reasons), there doesn't seem to be any reason the others couldn't live a quite happy life, including the nycathath defending them.

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I hadn't thought of the species-variations point. For decidedly obvious reasons, I'm rather fond of mouse-styled Orren (the obvious reason being the first NPC my players met was one; she's become a GMPC ^^), and they've been decidedly underrepresented. Of course, mouse-styled Orren may be considered ugly; feline Rassimel are often looked at as ugly for being Sleeth-like, so when an Orren can be described as akin to certain annoying nonprimes...