Sunday 28 May 2017

Naacal Logicians in the Ancient City on the Water

[Each level of Behind Gently Smiling Jaws contains a number of Naacal communities of different types. Here is an example.]

Naacal Logicians

A group of Naacal mathematicians who traveled to the Ancient City on the Water long ago to study its form. They were obsessed with the random and haphazard nature of its structure and riven by arguments over whether the city’s organization represents illogic, ab-logic, or a form of logic not yet given comprehensible analysis. 

Members

21-40 0-level Naacal logicians, each with a 1 in 6 chance of having 1 to 6 levels as a magic-user. Randomly select a leader; the logicians do not consider power to be the best arbiter of right to rule.

7-12 martial automatons of random types.

7-12 servitor automatons.

The logicians are either fully sane (1-3), half sane (4-7), fully insane (8-11), or slumbering or inert (12). 

Sane: The logicians either 1) remain engaged in serene and blissful study; 2) have abandoned their quixotic efforts and wish to return to the Unremembered Island; 3) are riven into disputing factions who no longer communicate with one another (divide the logicians, guardians, servitors and any other servants or followers into d4 groups).

Half-sane: The logicians either 1) are convinced that they have made extraordinary breakthroughs and cannot be disturbed, and have become highly hostile as a result; 2) are constructing a new vast piece of apparatus which will enable them to transmute the ab-logical into the merely illogical; 3) are searching for human subjects to replace their brains with those of half-birds in the hope this will give new insights into the crocodile’s unconscious thought processes.

Fully insane: The logicians either 1) have developed a new language purely comprising logical concepts such as YES, NOT, OR, NOR, AND and so forth, and have forgotten how to communicate normally; 2) long ago had their servitors conduct brain surgery on themselves in order to better comprehend ab-logic, resulting in completely inchoate reasoning which prevents them from functioning as human beings any longer (they are either 1 – catatonic, 2 – frenziedly hostile, 3 – in a fugue state, 4 – in high sexual arousal, 5 – creating insensible diagrams obsessively, or 6 – breaking their own equipment or the structures of the city itself, at any given time); 3) have gained genuine insights into the ab-logical construction of the city, but this has warped their thought processes, blending the human and the reptilian and causing the logicians to become cannibalistic and debased.

Slumbering/inert: The logicians either 1) long ago decided that they must render themselves inert, because the Ancient City can only be constructed on the basis of dream logic; 2) became despondent and went into a deep sleep to wait for the end of time; 3) became so obsessed with their calculations that they could no longer perform basic tasks such as eating and drinking and were put into sleep by their servitors for their own safety.

Treasure

The Naacal Logicians have Treasure Types A, N and O, and 2d6 entries from the Naacal Logician Equipment Sub-Table:

Dice
Item Type
Value in Paradijs Kolonie
Item Type
Value in Paradijs Kolonie
1/11
2d6 sheafs of equations
50 thalers
Silk robes
1750 thalers
2/12
2d6 sheafs of diagrams
100 thalers
Logic-based game akin to go
2000 thalers
3/13
Quill pen of an unknown bird
250 thalers
Scroll of logic theory
2500 thalers
4/14
Astrolabe
400 thalers
Scroll of pure maths
2750 thalers
5/15
Telescope
500 thalers 
Ceramic tobacco pipe
3000 thalers
6/16
Compass
750 thalers
Scroll of diagrams of famous mazes
3500 thalers
7/17
Model building
900 thalers
Scroll of celestial charts
4000 thalers
8/18
Abacus
1000 thalers
Scroll of dream interpretation
5000 thalers 
9/19
Quipu
1250 thalers
Rod of ESP
7500 thalers
10/20
1d6 steles of glyphs
1500 thalers
Idol of Seshat, goddess of mathematics and writing
10,000 thalers

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