The Gryphon Clerks: Mike Reeves-McMillan

Archives: Wiki Pages

  • Post Office

    Often the main official presence in smaller localities (where the post office is often found in a corner of the general store, operated by the storekeeper). Moves are afoot to staff rural post offices with trained clerks-minor, reporting to the Gryphon Clerks, and also tasked with educating the children and any adults who want to learn.

    The Post Office Acts stipulate that nobody who is not in the service of the realm and properly licenced may carry a pressure weapon, a knife longer than their forearm including the handle, a bow or crossbow, or a polearm or spear, other than in a locked case, within 3072 dwarfpaces of a post office. Since they also stipulate that post offices must be no more than 2560 dwarfpaces apart in populated areas, this effectively means that weapons are banned in towns and cities. In the more rural areas, this law tends to get ignored as long as nobody does anything stupid.

    The symbol of the Post Office is a stylized horse. Blue triangles set into the road point towards the nearest one in most cities and large towns.

  • Banners

    Realm of Koskant: green with a wavy blue diagonal, representing the river, and a golden river fish.

    Victory: a silver gryphon on black.

    Determined: A green spreading tree with golden fruit on white.

  • Wardens

    The equivalent of police/local emergency personnel in Koskant. They are part of the military (technically, they are gendarmes), and so subject to call-up in time of war. They do most of the routine work of law enforcement, with the Realm Agents taking care of the detective work and more serious crimes.

  • War

    The Protocols of Hesh, which prevent the destructive use of magic, have created an interesting technological situation.

    There’s nothing in the Protocols to prevent the defensive use of magic, so magical protection (against conventional weapons), for those who can afford it, is available, making it hard to attack them.

    At the same time, the Protocols can be stretched to allow magical countermeasures against magical defenses, so a lot of ingenuity has gone into producing these, effectively taking everyone back to square one (conventional weapons against conventional defences) – provided both sides are about equally supplied with magic. (Plus counter-countermeasures and so forth.)

    There has also been a lot of work done on magic to enable non-lethal forms of attack, intelligence-gathering, and rapid deployment of troops (and their countermeasures). None of these are forbidden by the Protocols. Nor is the adaptation of magical devices not originally created as weapons, for example compressors used to power airguns.

    So two forces that are magically equally matched, and have countermeasures for all of each other’s defenses and non-lethal attacks, are still reduced to running at each other with sharp things a lot of the time.

    Disabling with non-lethal magic is tricky to do. Most things that disable people can potentially kill them. Freezing their limbs is the most promising avenue.

    The Code of Willing includes rules of war intended to limit the destruction and loss of life that war brings, and even prevent it from getting started. Magical treaties, such as that between Koskant and Denning, are commonly employed between neighbouring realms to keep the peace.

  • Transport

    The most reliable transport mechanism, given the poor roads, is via rivers, the Gulf of Koskant and the Sea of Turfrae. Steamers sail all of these, as well as the older-style sailing ships.

    Land transport is mostly by horse and cart/wagon/carriage. In the cities, horse buses and horse cabs are used. The invention of the airhorse starts to change that, but they are initially expensive.

    Air travel is mainly used by the military at first, because of the expense of flight crystals. The Gryphon skyboats (holding up to eight people plus the pilot) are used for small-scale rapid transport of dignitaries or to apply rapid, targeted military force; in military contexts, they carry swivel-mounted rapid-firing pressure guns operated by a gunner. They have twin rudders, are jet-propelled, and have folding wings which are usually deployed once they have risen into the air, and are used more for maneuvering than for lift. A canopy covers them, part of it folding back when the swivel gun is fitted.

    The Victorious-class skyfrigates are used for larger-scale transport and disaster relief, and have a gun deck with multiple pressure cannon firing through ports, plus a heavy gun mounted on the aft upper deck. The frigates also carry two Gryphons each, and several Mantas, unpowered gliders with flight crystals that carry a single person and are used as reconnaissance aircraft.

    For reasons of weight, most aviators are women.

    Following Gnome Day, a number of dwarfholds began to create a network of underground railway lines between them to foil the laws requiring gnome emancipation if gnomes entered the territory of the realm of Koslin.

  • Symbols

    Some conventional symbols are used on signs intended mainly for the illiterate.

    A stick figure with a shovel indicates “workers wanted” (workers of any type).

  • Steam

    Factories, steamships and steam carriages work by a small magical portal to an alternate space that is hot enough to boil water – the steam is then used to drive the works. However, because the heat of the alternate spaces varies from place to place and time to time, they need governors and compensators to prevent them from becoming too hot or cold.

    These only work relatively slowly, so steam-powered flight is still experimental at best.

    Dignified has invented a form of jet engine which brings intense heat directly into a turbine and propels air through it very rapidly.

    Steamships are often painted in a bright colour called Marine Green.

  • Sports

    The Seventeen Movements of Strength and Balance: similar to tai chi.

    Highball: a field game similar to jai alai, pilota, or lacrosse; one uses a specially shaped bat to drive a ball through the air. The bat can be used as an improvised weapon.

    Rock drop: a gnomish game/sport with which young men in particular are often obsessed. It involves skill and strategy.

  • Splashback

    Side effects of magic, especially mindmagic and lifemagic. Dwarven Magic has its own safeguards built in for the practitioner.

    In the case of positive, healing magic, splashback is primarily beneficial. Mindhealers become saner and more mature, healers are healthy and live long lives. Maliciously meant magic, though, even if it skirts the Protocols of Hesh, tends to lead to negative splashback, in which the caster gets the consequences they intended for others.

  • Space and Time Magic

    The main real-world applications of space magic are to change the direction of gravity or reduce its effects. The skyboats of Victory’s military use the antigravity form of space magic, mediated by large flight crystals. These crystals are expensive and difficult to make. In fact, “expensive and difficult” is a phrase closely associated with space magic.

    The few space mages among the human population have blue stones set in their bracelets (usually sapphires, since they are well paid).

    Time magic is, if anything, more expensive and difficult than space magic, and is little used. Extremely valuable items that might deteriorate over time are sometimes put in stasis boxes, in which time passes more slowly. It’s theoretically possible to speed time up, as well, but considering how difficult it is to do so, there are no practical applications.

    There are no human time mages.