Today I'm going to generate a random Venusian city-state for LWR!.
Size: 1d20 roll is a 14 : Medium City. Nice, something substantial but not overwhelming. This gives us three Ancillaries.
Technology:
1d20 roll is a 20 : Oooh! Very high tech for Venus! This means black
powder guns, efficient sailing ships, clockwork, the beginnings of
science! Very cool!
Ancillaries: 1d20 roll is a 14 : Herds.
Ancillaries: 1d20 roll is a 1 : Extraordinary Adjacent Farmland.
Ancillaries: 1d20 roll is a 9 : Ingenious Craftsmen.
OK
- they have pastureland with herds of some kind. I will say some
moderately sized herbivorous dinosaurs. useful for meant, sinew, bone,
and hide - and possibly mounts? Why not! Also extraordinary farmland -
volcanically enriched fields? Yes! And ingenious craftsmen, able to work
with the dino bones and sinew to fashion both beauty and utility.
Government Form: Roll 1d10 is 9 : Theocracy
Hmm. The Government outwardly looks like a Theocracy
Government Substance: Roll 1d10 is 4 : Oligarchy
So,
the *real* government is by a select few - perhaps a committee of the
faithful - who send the priests their orders. Sounds quite functional.
Castes - Rigidity: Roll 1d10 is a 8 : Bendable
OK, Castes are not very rigid, and there are ways to manipulate them if necessary. Practical.
Castes - Base: Roll 1d10 is a 2 : Religion
The Castes are based on Religion - makes sense in an ostensible Theocracy!
Castes - Complexity: Roll 1d10 is a 1: Byzantine
Aha!
This is how the Castes are *bent*! They are so complicated that those
who actually understand them are very few, and it's relatively easy to
push the envelope!
Cultural Oddities - Economics: Roll 1d20 is a 14 : Matrilineal Succession
So - descent is traced through the mother - perfectly rational! You always know who the mother is!
Cultural Oddities - Interpersonal: Roll 1d20 is a 17 : Amazonism
Cool! The warriors are women, not men! Hooks up nicely with Matrilineal Succession!
Cultural Oddities - Leisure: Roll 1d20 is an 11 : Alcohol
Alcohol is central in leisure activities. I'm picturing bacchanals with hard-bitten Amazons and their fancy men, sealing the deal with off-world traders.
Cultural Oddities - Fashion: Roll 1d20 is a 19 : Courtesans
With
this culture, I'm interpreting this result as open Courtesans being
central to the culture. Courtesans would be mostly male, but also female
- a big gender reversal implied by the Amazon warriors.
Cultural Oddities - Taboos: Roll 1d20 is a 13 : Marriage
Marriage
is taboo, and really not needed under Matrilineal descent. This doesn't
mean that pair-bonding is unknown, just that it is not officially
sanctioned, and probably rare.
This culture took some sharp
turns there! Let's roll with it! Since Martians took their Human slaves
from all sorts of places and times, we'll say this City-State recons
their ethnic descent from the ancient Amazons known to the Greeks, which
was from some place along the Euxine (Black) Sea. The Martians, in
fact, took the whole tribe, which is why it vanished from Earth's
history, leaving only a scattered remnant which died out.
This
implies the religion to be some offshoot of Greek polytheism - not the
same, but an evolved version of it - as the Greeks wrote about the
Amazons as if they shared much the same religion. We can safely assume
that female deities were held in higher regard than among the Greeks. So
- both male and female priests would be allowed, depending on the deity
they served. I will push that into a dualistic Female Principle (Gaia)
and a Male Principle (Anthros), who manifest themselves as various Gods
and Goddesses as appropriate, each with their own priestly Caste. The
Ruling Council, then, would be the head priests of these Castes.
There
seems to be a fairly strict division of work between male and female
implied by the Amazon Warriors, with some professions being
male-centered, some female-centered, and a few jointly centered. There
would be a strict dicision of sexual relations between sex-for-pleasure -
harmless, ambiguous, unstructured, and open to same-sex as well as
opposite-sex dalliances - and sex-for-procreation - serious, limited,
opposite-sex only, with heavy obligations. While descent is determined
by the mother, the father is also important - possibly cementing
relationships between families, possibly healing breaches, with the
father or his family giving some resources as a male dowry.
I will name this City-State Hippolyta, after that most famous of Amazons.
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