The Gryphon Clerks: Mike Reeves-McMillan

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  • Calendar Systems

    A number of competing cultural, religious and racial calendars exist in the Great Land. The year is almost exactly 372 days in length and the moon orbits once every 27 days (just barely over, in fact, but the difference is miniscule). This means that there are 13.8 moon cycles in a year, an awkward number.
    The Asterist calendar is a thing of great mathematical beauty and complexity which manages to reconcile these two disparate cycles into a 9-year Grand Cycle containing 124 months. It is used only by the elves and by the Asterist religion. Everyone else more or less ignores the moon and goes by the dwarven work cycle. This consists of three days of work followed by a day of rest, the cycle being known as a thk or shift-cycle. Four thkr make a vnn or shift-round, the basic 16-day unit of dwarven calendar-keeping and the cycle on which regular bills are usually due. There are, unfortunately, 23.25 vnnr in a year, which is at least an even number of thkr (93, to be precise).
    Farmers and others who are more interested in seasonal weather changes tend to reckon time based on the solstices and equinoxes, following the dwarven approach (though dwarves pay almost no attention to the sky, since they seldom see it) of dividing the year into quarters, based on these key dates, and then into quarters again. A sixteenth of a year is 23.25 days, or approximately 1.5 vnnr, so in practice the farming year consists of a series of eight named periods (each divided into “early” and “late”), each consisting of 3 vnnr except for the one immediately preceding Northern Hemisphere midwinter (which is the end of the farming year). This is reduced to three thkr, a time for feasting and celebration.

    Asterist New Year wanders back and forth with the moon, approximately around the Northern midwinter solstice. Dwarves don’t have much truck with years as such, being resolutely non-agricultural and non-stargazing people, but they recognize the utility of a measure of time approximately that length and have a chronicle period, the lln, consisting of 16 vnnr or 256 days, a little over 2/3 the length of a solar year. Dwarven New Year, consequently, can occur at any time of the farming year.

    The civil calendar numbers its years starting from the Fall of the Elven Empire. According to this numbering, Victory was born in the numerically auspicious year 512 (8 x 8 x 8).

  • Bucket

    Gnome, assistant to Dignified Printer. Speaks good Pektal with a heavy gnomish accent.

    He is instrumental in Gnome Day, presenting his people’s plight to Realmgold Victory. This gives him status among the gnomes, despite his humble origins from a family of cleaners owned by the whole dwarfhold.

    He subsequently courts Wheel‘s sister Braise, and is elected to the Assembly.

  • Briar Heathlake

    Best friend and, for a while, flatmate of Hope at Merrybourne. They met when Hope’s lover Faithful Victualler betrayed her with Briar. As soon as they became aware of each other’s existence, they combined against Faithful and became good friends.

    She looks enough like Hope to be mistaken for her sister, but is a little lighter. They take the same shoe size, fortunately for Hope, since Briar has a large collection of shoes for her to borrow. Also fond of wine, sometimes to excess. Keeps her room in a very messy state, sleeps with the light on.

    As a betweener, had an affair with her teacher, and feels guilty that this probably influenced him to put her up for the scholarship that got her to university.

    From a Copper background in Gulfshore Province. Her parents are goatherds, though relatively prosperous ones, and the money Briar has sent back home has enabled them to buy the cheese factory they were supplying.

    Occupation: Lawyer. Ambition to be a magistrate. Originally employed at the firm of Forthright & Adamant, working for Mister Forthright, one of the senior partners (a thin-lipped, dry-mannered man who eventually sacked her over rumours about her relationship with Bucket). Her rival there was Pleasantness Milliner, a badly misnamed woman jealous of Briar’s success.
    Boyfriends: Marsh Whitegrove, and later Active Hedger.
    Mother: Leaf
    Father: Vale
    Grandmother (mother’s mother) lives with them.
    Brothers (ages at the time of Hope Persists, when she is 25): Thorn (23), oathmate Cloud, one newborn son, mother-in-law Feather; Bark (21); Twig (20); Grass (16); Dell (13); Moss (10).

  • Braise

    Bucket‘s beloved, daughter of Valve. Not especially pretty, but has “personal qualities” including a fierceness that’s aroused when the people she cares about are involved. Reddish-brown hair, cheerful face, blue eyes.
    When the tea shop where she, Ladle, Loom, Bucket, and Briar Heathlake habitually meet is firebombed, she leads the escaping gnomes in singing the anthem “Forward Together” in order to inspire them to advance on rioting humans, who flee rather than confronting them. Later, Truculent Roper attempts to have her assassinated, an attempt foiled by Active Hedger.
    She becomes a candidate for Assembly and is elected alongside Bucket.

  • Beauty

    Provincegold of Six Gorges, she is a middle-aged woman a little older than Felicity Lake, but looks younger. She takes great care of, and pride in, her appearance, so even though she is not in fact beautiful, most people think of her as matching her name.

    She is also highly intelligent, committed to education, and a supporter of Determined. She starts a magic school in her province, and hosts the Eye of Lakeside (see newspapers) when it is driven out by the first Siege of Lakeside Koslin in the Unification War.

    Beauty has an oathmate and sons.

  • Banking and Money

    Banking and the coining of money are both handled entirely by the dwarves (up until Rosie Printer creates the technology for the New Bank). There is one currency throughout the supercontinent, making international trade straightforward. The idea of a local ruler minting his own coins would be regarded as wrong-headed.

    The dwarves, whatever their other faults, are both scrupulous and exact about alloys, weight, counting and contracts, and whatever distrust they attract does not include these aspects of life.

    There are three major denominations of coins: copper anvils, silver hammers, and gold pillars. Sixteen anvils make a hammer, and sixteen hammers make a pillar. Coins are minted in quarter-anvil, one-anvil, four-anvil, one-hammer, four-hammer, one-pillar and four-pillar denominations. The obverse shows the object after which they are named and a number (1 or 4, as applicable), while the reverse shows the mark of the mint where they were coined.

    In Gulfport, a prosperous trading city, a quarter-anvil will buy a snack from a street vendor, an anvil will buy a basic meal. Among the labouring classes, to say someone “thinks he’s a hammer-man” implies “airs above his station”, that he thinks his work is worth a hammer a day, when the usual daily pay for an unskilled worker is about half that. Prices vary from this in other places, of course, in conformity to the famous law of supply and demand, but wherever you go, a gold pillar is a lot of money by the standards of an ordinary person.

    Rough NZ (early 21st century) money equivalents:

    Smallest coin is 1/16 of a copper anvil (50c).

    Other copper coins: quarter anvil ($2), anvil ($8), four anvils ($24).

    16 anvils make a silver hammer ($96).

    Other silver coin: four hammers ($384).

    16 hammers make a gold pillar ($1536).

    Other gold coin: 4 pillars ($6144).

  • Asterist Scholar

    An Asterist scholar is not a priest. He or she is more like a rabbi. Priesthood, in Asterism, belongs to the head of a family.

    Asterist scholars are trained in theology, liturgy, mathematics, astronomy and music, and often in other disciplines such as history. At one time a few generations ago, all teachers were Asterist scholars (except for some mages, who taught as part of their profession), and many teachers still are. All Asterist scholars know some Elvish, though it may not be much in some cases.

    In some rural areas, the Asterist scholar is still the main literate person (apart from the Localgold’s clerk, who may not be helpful to the peasantry), and most Coppers, though Earthist, will go to the scholar for help with anything that relates to reading or writing.

    An Asterist scholar is required to belong to one of the Asterist Orders, if geographically feasible, and in any case to adopt one of the Rules.

    Asterist scholars wear distinctive three-cornered hats. Scholars of Oversight wear three-lobed hats.

    The hierarchy, which is primarily administrative, goes:

    Student (not yet qualified, but bound to a Rule) – no hat ribbon
    Scholar-minor (some training, may be admitted to a Scholars’ Order) – purple hat ribbon
    Scholar (fully trained) – blue hat ribbon
    Senior Scholar (some significant responsibilities under the local Scholar of Oversight; roughly equivalent to a localgold) – brown hat ribbon
    Scholar of Oversight (more or less a local bishop; typically, in a largely Asterist area, responsible for an area about county size) – gold hat ribbon
    Regional Scholar of Oversight (responsible for a province, typically) – gold hat ribbon with a black stripe
    Senior Regional Scholar of Oversight (responsible for a realm or even a larger area) – red hat ribbon

  • Asterist Orders

    Any three Asterists, including laypeople, can form an “adoration” for the purposes of private prayer, worship and study. Such leadership as exists in an adoration rotates.

    Any nine can form a “congregation”, which may hold rites and have teaching from a qualified Asterist scholar. A congregation may choose three of its number to exercise rotating leadership duties, this appointment lasting for a ritual year (renewable).

    Any 27 can form a minor order. They may adopt a Rule of Concord and Devotion (rules for governing their collective life and worship). Again, rotating leadership by three is usual; the minor order may also be organised into congregations which may have their own rotating leadership.

    Any 81 can form an order. It is usual for an order to arrange itself into nine congregations, each of which is responsible for the rites of a particular face of the Divine (see Asterism). Each congregation chooses a member of the governing nine, of whom three exercise overall leadership (rotating among specific responsibilities), as well as having three internal leaders, usually not including the delegate to the governing nine.

    Once an order reaches 243, it is considered a major order. Major orders are encouraged to divide and send out descendant groups to other locations rather than growing much larger. They are still made up of nine congregations, and the leadership is as per an order, but the congregations are the size of minor orders.

    Orders form larger groupings known as Rules, based around shared Rules of Concord and Devotion. The member orders may send delegates to irregular councils of the Rules, but mainly the significance is that if one belongs to an order with a specific rule, other orders of that rule will take one in either temporarily or permanently if one moves from place to place.

    A local temple may be organised as a congregation or as one of the various sizes of order (as appropriate), but usually it is just a congregation, regardless of size, unless the people are unusually devout. Sometimes there is an order consisting of some, but not all, members.

    There are lay orders and scholars’ orders. Lay orders are devout people in a local temple who adopt one of the simpler Rules. There will usually be one or more scholars associated with them, who may practice an elaborated version of the same Rule. A scholars’ order consists only of partly- or fully-trained Asterist scholars, and usually has a stricter and more comprehensive Rule. They may live communally and have property in common (though they are allowed personal property as well, in all but the strictest Rules). To enter such an order requires a minimum degree of training, vows of adherence to the Rule, and oaths to one’s fellow order members.

    The designated leaders of the order may exclude or accept an applicant. If they accept the applicant, the rest of the order must also vote to accept the applicant (overall two-thirds in favour plus one). The applicant then takes initial vows and oaths and has a probationary period of one ritual year, or longer if the Rule or the vote of the order requires it.

    Orders are mixed-gender, and couples and families are not only permitted but encouraged. However, some contemplative orders consist only of people who are either not yet oathbound or who have been widowed and have no dependent children. They usually have associated orders with a similar, but less strict rule to which members can go if they wish to be oathbound.

    The existence of hidden orders is officially denied.

  • Asterism

    Based on the star religion of the elves, Asterism is the religion of the Gold Class and much of the Silver Class. A few Copper Class people also convert to it, mainly house-servants.

    Orthodox Asterism was the official religion under the Elven Empire. At the time of that Empire’s fall, human Asterists underwent some internal purging because of their collusion with elven oppression of humans, but as human high culture is, basically, elven culture, Asterism remained the religion of the (now human) ruling classes and most urban people. It was once the case that Asterists were primarily descended from house slaves and Earthists from field slaves, though it has been so long since the Fall of the Elven Empire that this is only approximately true any more.
    Even in the country and among Earthists, the local Asterist scholar is still highly regarded by most people – for his or her learning, if nothing else – and people who are otherwise basically Earthists in practice will show up for the occasional moon ceremony. The relationship between the scholars and the local Earthist mystics varies from mutual public denunciation to complete collegiality, depending as much on the personalities involved as anything else. Rural scholars are often ascetic and devout (and rather vague about worldly matters), while urban scholars are more likely to join the powerful whom they advise in a degree of worldly indulgence and display.
    Asterist ceremonies follow the lunar cycle and the seasonal stars. The numbers three and nine, and their significant multiples, are considered sacred and figure largely in ceremony, symbolism and practice. The cosmology recognizes a divine power which manifests in three aspects (the Origin, the Journey and the Destiny), each with three faces. The Lifegiver, the Lifesustainer and the Lifetaker are the female faces, the Planter, the Grower and the Harvester the male faces, while the Maker is both male and female at once, the Changer either male or female alternately, and the Ender neither male nor female.
    Elves are, in a sense, Asterists as well, of course, but the comparison is rather like that between a very conservative “high” Tridentine Catholic (the elves) and a rather liberal, rather “low” Anglican (the average human Asterist).
    The elvish practice is that priesthood resides in rulers and the senior members of families (male and female equally), but the priests are assisted by professional religious scholars who study the ways of the divine and instruct the priests in their ceremonial duties. This approach was passed to human Asterism (and has affected Earthism as well, in that the heads of families function as priests there also). Often, married couples are both scholars.
    It is, of course, possible to be both a priest (by position) and a scholar (by training) simultaneously.
    The scholars belong to a number of Asterist Orders, large and small, founded with different missions at various times. Some are teachers, some researchers, astronomers, mathematicians, musicians, historians, and so forth (in some orders, several of these are combined). Most are politically involved, a natural role given that they advise the rulers on their priestly duties, which are in turn intimately entangled with the running of the nation. There are also lay orders, voluntary associations of Asterists who have a practice, or a rule of life, or a mission in common, which can be anything from social clubs with an opening and closing ritual to devout secluded orders of ascetics.

    Someone acting as an Asterist priest wears a belt representing constellations, with a sun buckle.

    Asterism has a famous diagram, created by an artist named Courageous and therefore known as the Courageous Diagram, which represents the Essential 27: nine forbiddings, nine affirmations and nine practices that are, in theory, the unaltering core of Asterism, though in practice there are (in the words of an Asterist scholar from the early years after the fall of the Elven Empire) as many ways to be Asterist as there are stars.

    The Nine Forbiddings:

    1. Do not worship what is of this world; worship only the Nine in One.
    2. Do not destroy the image of Nine in others. (Usually held to forbid murder.)
    3. Do not take from others what supports their life. (Usually held to forbid theft; progressive thinkers apply it to unjust rulers and employers.)
    4. Do not set out to bring grief or harm to others.
    5. Do not create disorder in your mind, your life, your community or the world. (Usually held to forbid drunkenness, among other things.)
    6. Do not speak against the truth, or break your given oath or vow.
    7. Do not act or speak in arrogance or overestimate yourself.
    8. Do not act or speak unjustly or dishonestly.
    9. Do not take pleasure without responsibility. (Usually held to forbid various forms of debauchery, especially extramarital relations.)

    The Nine Affirmations:

    1. Divinity is Nine and One.
    2. All beings flow from the perfection of Nine.
    3. All beings participate in the glory of Nine.
    4. We come from Nine, abide in Nine, and return to Nine.
    5. All manifestations of Nine are equal and equally deserving of honour.
    6. Nine manifests as Origin, Journey and Destination.
    7. Origin manifests as Lifegiver, Planter and Maker.
    8. Journey manifests as Lifesustainer, Grower and Changer.
    9. Destination manifests as Lifetaker, Harvester and Ender.

    The Nine Practices:

    1. Congregate to study, worship and pray.
    2. Observe a regular practice to honour Nine.
    3. Study the words of the wise and holy and learn from them.
    4. Cultivate wisdom in yourself and others.
    5. Seek purification and self-improvement.
    6. Contribute to the benefit of others, your society and the world.
    7. Give to those in need.
    8. Strengthen bonds of family and friendship and support rightful authority.
    9. Observe the rituals of the stages of life and celebrate with others who do so.

  • Assembly

    The Assembly of Koslin is based on the Assembly of Mertven in the Hundred Counties, with some changes. It was designed by Perspicacity Weaver, a political philosopher who is one of the Realmgold’s Creatives.

    All adult citizens and residents of Koslin may vote for candidates and stand as candidates (except that persons convicted of treason, fraud, election manipulation or corruption may not stand, though they may vote, and Golds holding demesnes may neither stand nor vote). Any candidate who receives 65,000 votes (or nearest hexadecimal equivalent, actually 65,536) is elected. A candidate who receives more votes than that may pass on the excess to another candidate, named publicly in advance of the election. Candidates do not, therefore, necessarily represent a geographical constituency but a philosophical one.

    There is a provision for a recall vote by the supporters of a given candidate under carefully specified circumstances. First, 4000 voters who voted for the candidate (one-sixteenth, nominally, but a smaller proportion if the candidate received votes that overflowed onto someone else) must, within the same sixteen-day period, register their intent to recall. An actual recall then requires an additional 32,500 votes (half the number needed to elect) on top of the sixteenth needed for the recall process to be triggered. All these votes must be from voters who originally voted for the candidate concerned.

    For candidates elected by overflow, anyone who voted for a candidate who was a source of overflow to that candidate is also qualified to vote for recall, since they just receive a number of votes, not specific individual votes.

    If multiple candidates are up for recall, and a voter qualifies to vote for more than one of them, they may only exercise their vote once.

    If a recall succeeds, voters for the recalled candidate may vote for a replacement candidate, who requires only the same number of votes to be elected as the minimum number for the recall to succeed (nine-sixteenths of 65,000). If no replacement candidate receives this many votes, the recalled candidate is not replaced.

    Several political parties form in the assembly, the members of which pass excess votes to one another and support one another in Assembly votes.

    The Assembly debates laws (initially, integrating the laws of the two united realms) and votes on them. It is subject to overruling by the Realmgolds, though the Realmgolds exercise this power lightly and judiciously.