On the Interpellation of Nature; or, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

 

Interpellation erodes natural law; not over night but over generations; meaning infiltrates dumb matter, whether stream, hill or bone, redrawing the borders that separate what has a voice and what lacks one. Elementalism & diablerie, poetry & necromancy are fruits growing on the same reality-twisting tree. On Earth, the over-saturation with meaning is just starting. On the Red Planet, it has reached its terminal stage: a dying world chorus of improbable voices slowly fading away.

Interpellation and its discontents

The great naturalists that ushered in the Age of Excess proceeded from a simple fact: Not every stone is a gnome. From this, they drew out the differentia specifica that distinguished dead object from personality, and elaborated it into an elementary theory of interpellation.

The proposition was the following: Where nature was treated like matter, worked on in silence – there nature remained dumb. But where mortals turned to it with prayers, curses, exhortations & admonitions – it became a moment in the moral economy and, in time, spoke back.

Taking advantage of the stream, the cliff, the wind became a matter of cultivating meaning. The sciences of Rhetoric and Law found new practical applications. A golden age, in many ways. Like Phobos above the Red Planet, Man's sovereignty over the elements seemed a foregone conclusion. But the continuous sophistication of nature soon meant that Fire refused to stay at its hearth, that the Wind refused its yoke. And thus started an era of strife between mortals and the forces of nature, and a struggle sometimes waged in the open, as civil war, and sometimes through intrigue and bargains.

 Nature was bound through a thousand treaties, formulated with all the sophistication that History's greatest lawyers could muster. Over time, this patchwork of servitutes and pacts grew into a bureaucratic jungle. Dying nobles gave freedom to a favourite among its djinni, juridical archives were lost in fires. A class of free elementals were slowly formed. Shaped in the image of Man they formed their own clubs and courts, salons and guilds. And what nature had once given freely and in abundance, it now refused to give at all or gave only in exchange for treasures fit for queens. Through personal adress, all the major forces of nature have gotten other interests than acting as ground water for their former masters. Why waste your life raining, heating, cooling, eroding, blowing when you could dance, travel the Ether, feud with your neighbors?

 

At the end of history

To the degree that the elements still perform those functions necessary for the preservation of life, they do so because they are bound by ancient, shrewdly formulated contracts – or because they gain something otherwise beyond their grasp. Some play at being local deities, content by the adoration and sacrifices of their flock. Quid pro quo is the only natural legislation.

The remnants of human civilization that huddle around the Canals thus owe their continuing existence to brittle documents, whose opaque formulations few understand the true meaning of. The great legal schools of the past have degenerated into scholastic, pseudo-religious doctrines. Documents and catalogues of archaic turns-of-phrase are traded or stolen, memorized but seldom understood. One can imagine the bitterness of those waves and winds who remain in thrall to the mere shadows of former tyrants.

 

 

On Natural Law & Those Who Wield It

I like the idea of a class of itinerant natural lawyers, brokering deals with ancient volcanoes, finding loopholes when the 10,000 year long lease on breathable air is running out for a Canal principality, and the Weather in question is dead set on leaving the quite frankly depressing surface of the Red Planet. I'm not sure how to implement such a class (or if it should be one?), but I guess reading Elric! or the different iterations of the warlock class might give me some ideas. Or the auction mechanic in Whitehack. Or a version of the 2d6 reaction table, with the rolls modified by the strength of the elemental, the terms of the contract, etc. Perhaps something like this:

Getting the elemental to the bargaining table might be tricky. Perhaps you have to defeat it, perhaps you can trick or flatter it. Perhaps you present a suitably lavish gift (rare firewoods for the salamander, a custom made map for the road elemental).

Finalizing the Contract (2d6)

• 1-2: Provoked to attack or leave (if defeated: dissipates into dumb nature)
• 3-4: Won't sign anything (if defeated: dissipates into dumb nature)
• 5-7: Temporary bound (1d4 uses), but missed something in the fine print
• 8-9: Temporary bound (1d4 uses), with significant price
• 10-11: Bound, with moderate price
• 12+: Bound, with trivial price

Modifications might be things such as:

• Anyone lacking legal training: -3 [Anyone can of course attempt to strike up a conversation with elementals, but perhaps the natural lawyer class gains bonuses through unearthed fragments of ancient natural law?)
  
• Cha 13+: +1
  
• The power has been defeated: +2
• The power has received a lavish gift: +1
• You have compromising gossip about the power: +1-6
  
• A determined number of uses <4: -1
• HD of the power is 1-4: -1
• 5-8: -2
  
• 9-11: -3
  
• 12+: -4

Without sample pacts this is all very abstract. But lets say we have a

 

ROAD ELEMENTAL (HD 6)

Prerequisite: Being on a paved road

Pact 1: The Scenic Route. Decrease the travel speed of a pursuer with HD miles per use.

Pact 2: Downhill All the Way: Increase the travel speed of the party with HD miles per use.

Pact 3:  Charm Caravan: The road elemental lures a caravan in this direction. Arrives in 1d6 hours, willing to sell basic supplies.

Prices: Trivial: A new milestone per use. Clean a significant portion of weeds. Moderate: Write a detailed travelogue/biography of the road. A formal apology from rival route.  Significant: The road wants to stretch onward, to the city of Palimpspolis.

...the range of prices would have to differ significantly between a HD1 breeze and the HD12 Weather of Jokk, of course.

Three considerations: 

Most importantly: 99 times out of a hundred, a pebble is just a pebble. Spontaneous interpellation works like erosion: It takes a very long time, and the final form is generally not very useful. A whisper in the wind, a pattern in granite. I don't want the Red Planet to turn into  a swords & sorcery reskin of Pokemon.

Also: It is not magic, per se. Not any more than rhetoric or gravitational theory is magic: More like engineering on a world were natural forces might engage you in conversation.

Finally: This is probably all too convoluted, and should be a whole lot more streamlined. 1, 2, 3, a thousand pacts, sure. But not as many fiddly mechanical bits.