The long awaited sequel.

It turns out the True Riddle was “How do you build a child’s confidence?”

As the New Sphynx grew, so did her love for those who were paitent, thoughtful, and kind. She began accepting a diversity of answers to her riddles, and would let a traveler pass if they could explain their reasoning without becoming rude or aggressive.

So did her hatred for the unkind, the selfish, and the self important. Even if they gave the right answer, she’d eat them anyway as not to make Her People Suffer Fools.

Its not the way her momma did it, but that doesn’t stop Granny Sphynx from beaming with pride.

So the “So old its beginnings have been lost to time” governence of Jiaal and the wider Empire grew organically out of the temple system. Before the First Era is Pre-history, people exist However They Can in both nomadic groups and settled villages with stone grain storage. Travel is the most life threatening thing people do, and most of life is about finding a safe place with enough food and shelter to survive another winter. Community forms when people stay, cocercion is involved sometimes. Sometimes not. Most often a mixed bag that creates the first pockets of Tradition and Culture as Some People start choosing village life over nomad life. Not everyone, just some. Knowledge is remembered and travels orally, with all the human error that comes with that.

Amid the early villages, popping up where annual life Worked as a Strat, were the Shrines for the Eight Earthly Goddesses. Each shrine was built by one of her devout followers, the stories of each shrine’s building melding and morphing into each Temple City’s future Founding Myth. Its another thing lost to time, overwritten by children of a newer age who decided the past was Theirs To Use. The reader will never be privy to the Original Telling of any of those myths, but I Have To Know What The Truth Is so I can leave traces in every version told ;3 That’s what the Story Bible is for ( document containing the Base Rules Of Reality for a work of fiction. If you have a long term project and you aren’t logging your Hard Rules to reference as needed, I highly reccomend you add a new document to your notes folder. If you don’t like the religious connotations of “Bible” you can also call it your Blue Book. A Blue Book is something like blueprints, but for specifications that need more space than a single flat page or Have More Layers Than That, thus you need a book to contain contingancies and edge cases and What That Means for the thing being made. Holds the similar vibe of “unbreakable rules” without bringing a faith charged word into it 💚 )

So According To Jiaal, the Default Way Of Doing Things From Time Immemorial revolves around the road that runs between the 8 shrines and Jiaal’s ancient standing stones. The standing stones were the territory of Jiaal’s High Priestess, and folk of faith would make pilgrimage to Jiaal to meet with her, hear her teachings, assist in her ceramonies, and return home with knowledge gained. Over 8 years, each shrine’s Priestess is expected to take a turn traveling to Jiaal and working with / learning from the High Priestess for a year, returning home when the season is fair for travel and often encountering her sister Priestess on her way To Jiaal as she was on her way home. Thus, chance meetings On Pilgrimage are part of a LOT of stories, myths, and Just So explinations for historical events that the oral history remembers but the newborn written tradition didn’t bother with until a century or two later and someone took the first crack at writing a “Complete History”, panicked about the holes in the written record, and made up their own filler instead of Asking The Storytellers Whose Entire Lives Were Remembering The Past To Readily Retell It Upon Request. ( me? Giving side eye to ancient scholars who decided writing was so special as to be Literal Magic with an effect on the tangible world and Able To Change The Past when all they were doing was Writing Down Lies And Rationalizing It Into A Mythical Act? Nooooo, never ;P ). The 9th year the High Priestess handles on her own ( not really, she p much always has a cloister of deciples who assist in her operations ) and in the 10th year its her turn to make the full Pilgrimage out to the 8 shrines, usually with a caravan of followers who protected the High Priestess in transit via Strength In Numbers, and often baring gifts for the shrines she visted. This morphed into the once a decade Pilgrimage of the High Priestess collecting the first form of tax in raw materials, food, and labor for the Shrines as they began to become Temples with villages of both maintaining labor and devout followers forming around them. Since many who traveled to a Shine Village during the once a decade pilgrimage were Permanently Moving, the tradition of taking a symbol of one’s birth and home with them when they moved began to take shape, creating the keeping of the Au'pek and wider adoption of making one for a babe while expecting. This is also when the ritual of sending a child into adulthood by cutting the kid’s hair short began, their Adult Coif speaking to their ability to care for themselves and 100% a thing prospective masters they might apprentice Would Judge. Male pattern baldness begins to be seen as a sign of being rejected by one’s mother goddess, and the temple’s solution? Pennance via hard labor! Of course 🙄 This is when the Empire goes from being Matriarchal In Flavor to Matriarchal In Enforcement, and the first Open Exploitation of People by the System Made By The Faith. Men whose only mistake was Being Bald, being pressed into a miserable life of unpaid hard labor with no right to himself. Just like the Christian Church did during its infancy to anyone whose only mistake was Being Born Poor, or Being Widowed, or Being Disowned.

Btw when the Christian chuch had to give up slavery by another name, that’s when Sanitariums became a thing; laundry facilities that did the cleaning for the clergy. Women who were involuntarily commited were put to Forced Labor washing the Clurgy’s robes, sheets, and finery while subject to subhuman treatment. Any System Demanding Free Labor Is Sus, It Does Not Matter If Its Of Faith Or Of The State. That’s Yours. If You’re Trading Labor, You’re Not Trading. You’re Being Bought. If the Buyer insists its Not A Perchase, its because They Don’t Intend To Respect You Like Their Belongings. They Intend To Treat You Worse Than That, And Expect You To Thank Them For It, And That Is F U C K E D No Matter WHAT its dressed up in. Okay? Okay.

Jiaal also contains Fucked Things that come from Keeping Things Because That’s How We’ve Always Done It. The point of keeping the Human Flaws when building my own from the ground up is to remind readers People Fuck Up, No Matter What Shape The System Is. Jiaal is ruled by a Semi Representative Theocratic Council of Priestesses who are unelected and have no Defined Powers, thus No Limitations save what people can Stop Them From Doing. Did some cool shit grow outta that? Sure! Part of why I’m Still On About It 20 Years After Having The Idea. But make no mistake; The Empire Of Jiaal Has Always Had Cracks Down To The Foundation. As every system Always Does on the first draft without any sort of forethought or testing. People Surviving Till Tomorrow Don’t Make Good Rules For The Future. Sooner or later, Something Old We Accepted Is Clearly Killing People, and no amount of screaming “TRADITION!!!” Will make it Okay. It was never okay. It was fucked when the first person did it, it was more fucked when someone made a rule enforcing it. Legal is not moral. Traditional is not moral. Those words are NEVER synonyms, and if you make that mistake in your mind? You Will Harm Your Peers In Your Desperation To Feel Secure About The Past. And Leaders Who Make That Mistake Will Kill Thousands Before Anyone Will Even TRY To Stop Them. Even leaders with No Formal Power, because People Are Power. Two people can overpower one. Four can overpower two. People Interested In Power will join the group of Four to Win and them claim sole credit for the victory, and somehow Aren’t Immediately Ejected By Their Comrades. People. Are. Power. That person would hold No Power if their comrades, who woulda won without That Person, simply removed them. But they don’t. They keep that person. And that person May Well Kill Their Comrades Before They’re Even Willing To Hit Back.

Oppertunists will twist systems meant to check themselves to remove all barriers to inflicting themselves upon others. They will always exist, and systems that are empowered to interfere with the lives of strangers will Always Be Attractive to the Oppertunist. Systems built to delay an oppertunist and fustrate them often take on layers of burracracy, which Regular Folk get fustrated with as promises are broken and support is withdrawn in favor of Quietly Doing Nothing And Hoovering Up Taxes So Government Operators Can Live In Luxury And Have No Desire To Change The Status Quo.

Then the sparks of revolution begin to strike under the pressure of the system laid atop. Unacceptable axioms are violently shattered– but again The Oppertunist can get in the way and demand More Interfearance On The Population, Less On Operators. That’s corruption. That is someone seeking subversion to act upon others, who wishes to use the Social Tool Of Governence to Control And Restrict, because That Is Peace To Them; full control over Fully Miserable people Who Hate Them But Are Too Afraid To Say It. They Take Open Glee In Compelling Others To Play Nice By Whatever Means Avalible, And They Are Always Trash Wastes Of Skin Who Do Not Belong Anywhere Near Leavers Of Power. Jiaal is not immune. The system of the Empire is particularly VULNERABLE to the self serving who seek neither permission nor forgiveness. And The Faith Protects Them When They Operate The Faith. People turning a blind eye cause the vile shit is being said in a temple aren’t being respectful, they are Protecting An Abuser, and the outcomes will be as wide reaching as the Abuser Can Make Them, Until Someone Gives Them A No They Can’t Break Or Go Around. Jiaal may be Different from systems in the real world, but I want people to See The Cracks at every point– even when good outcomes happen for the party in the story.

That’s why Viri “managing their own business” is a scary phrase warning the reader “They sexually exploit children” before the protag is anywhere NEAR that situation. That’s why there’s a plague in Chokasha that No One Is Assisting With, Just Staying Away. Its why Bokuriki fucking collapsed in an earthquake and now exists in the giant fuckoff hole that opened beneath where the city once stood, and why they’re xenophobic as FUCK. Its why Dritar has Zero Respect for anyone who hasn’t had to defend their life before, and make friends by starting fights. Its why Malta was allowed to become so cruel to peoples within their walls without a PEEP from Jiaal about them draining Halflings dry. Audzep and Kralt are doing the BEST in the 3rd era, and they’re still wrapped up in petty power plays between ruling families– they’re just too fucking far from Jiaal for resources to be expended Making It Worse ATM.

… I wandered off from recounting stuff I said to explaining Jiaal Is Flawed, And That’s Intentional. These Mechanics Are Also Flawed. I want readers to Think About That, and the systems they live under, and how to judge systems; by their Actions, not their Rhetoric or Ideals.

tangentially related

yellow/white/black spiky electric type pokemon are literally the best in every conceivable way. this is 100% objective and not at all biased.

If you can’t handle complex ladies in fiction, You Will Always Show Your Entire Insecure Ass To People Around You In Real Life When You Learn ALL Women Are Complex. Because They. Are. PEOPLE!