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Author Topic: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations  (Read 23457 times)

nighzmarquls

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The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« on: January 24, 2012, 03:02:47 am »

The Following material is free to use by anyone in any larger project.

I always wanted to make somewhere to start pouring out the ideas I've got bottled up on this concept for a while. And ya know what? why not here, its easy to organize nominally and there are lots of people who deal with all sorts of crazy stuff.

I have pictures too, for your sanity and monitor I am putting them in spoilers.

So without further pomp I give you what will hopefully be the first complete collection of tidbits on:

The Deep Nobles
They live in the deep places, where the only light is via the glow of the life blood and secretions of their various Royals
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Culture:
Deep Nobles view themselves as a step above all other life and make use of their personal longevity and physical robustness as proof of their quasi-divine right to rule over all other beings as best serves them. They take great care towards each other's happiness as a whole, often suffering traits in their fellows that almost any other would label as aberrational or dysfunctional. Alas for all the acceptance and warmth they turn inward in their culture the best that 'lesser' beings can hope for from nobles is pity and obsession with 'improving' the lot of 'poor creatures'. at worse Deep nobles will enact suffering on beings for their own convenience worse then death a thousand fold.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Government-
By their own word they practice a perfect Meritocracy. However in practice their cities are gerontocratic states where the eldest rule by simple fact of effectively limitless lifespans accumulate all of the wealth and connections to hold their power. The young might strive for their own station but with the ossified strata of society there is little hope of ascending any higher then your family and elders is willing to raise you.

In spite of the veritable fossilization of leadership the society as a whole is quite open to vast divergences of life style and outlook. At the heart of their values is one of 'quality' of life rather then quantity.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
As such it is perfectly acceptable for the young to trade the potential for eternal life in poverty for a brief flare up of adventure ending in spectacular demise.

With family coffers filled deep with the influence and power of mighty and still acquisitive ancestor patrons it is generally easy to tidy up even the affairs of massive debts during one of these 'losses'.

Fashion-
On average they boast diverse and opulent outfits, ranging all across the spectrum, the only unifying theme is one of generally that of gowns , cloaks or coats of variously exotic fabrics or ornate craft. Without the burden of distinct gender lines Deep nobles make few distinctions, although this ambiguity has lead some beings to mistakenly identify Deep Noble Society as matriarchies.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Politics-
Where their government in a given region is more or less static for generations Deep Noble politics seethe with deep fissures and enormous stresses. And like the fault lines of the geologic world these rifts among the leadership occasionally erupt into sudden upheaval followed by ages of altered but otherwise stable tension.

The easiest division in the Deep Noble elite is along the lines of the many city-states, within a given city the sheer longevity of your peers and the interdependence of the industries and individual scholars makes tolerance if not out right friendliness a preference. Abroad the other cities practice general independence and thus are easier targets to manipulate and exploit. But even in ones own home city a grudge can last for centuries and erupt from ages of cordial acceptance at the first sign of weakness.

The second easiest divide is over one of philosophy, in particular regarding the nature of the great royals. The undeniable power and inscrutable activities of these creatures inspires wild extrapolations of all manner of what their desires or 'goals' for Deep Noble Kind might be. There is no living memory among Deep Noble kind of a great royal acting in any way discernible as more then a simple animal or even vegetable creature But the zealous insist and cite the sheer awesome power witnessed when Royals have acted in defense of a deep noble city as proof of their divine natures, Skeptics will counter that the acts of defense are erratic and for every time that a Royal has wielded its power to strike down an invading army there is another where a royal of equal or greater age and power has simply allowed itself to be carved apart with barely a murmur of discomfort.

The debates, subversion and intrigue rage along these fractures in the cohesiveness of Deep Noble society but rarely if ever come to violence. In preference Deep Nobles work to slowly and circuitously drive their rivals to suicide by self immolation. Among the Elders the great duels of guile to maneuver the opposition to suicide is well known and considered a very intimate art, for to accomplish it you must know your enemy and your self down to the very stem.

Diplomacy-
For the most part other beings find it difficult to deal with Deep Nobles. From city-state to city-state and century by century the policy towards none-noble life can cycle from cordial if condescending envoys that bring riches from the deeps, Utter silence to the point of seeming extinction and sudden fearsome raids that leave villages or entire countrysides stripped bare of animal and plant life.

On the individual level outsiders get even worse impressions, from one Deep Noble to another the reactions they receive can be obscenely interested and affectionate, psychotically murderous, complete dis-interest or shockingly normal and down to earth. The impression when the full spectrum of discordant personalities turn up in a trade party is often catastrophic much to the annoyance/bemusement of the Deep Nobles.

Quote
"Greetings Oh Delightful Animal! Might dear Miss-sir be Partaking the Crude Metals so I and my companion take your Adorable Sheep... what... why do you scream?"

"Huh? What is the fuss? Its just a leg, I'll put your little spawn back together when I am done looking at the knee structure..."

"Wait... oh Wait please dear spindly lovelies... why do you flee?"

"Such Flighty creatures, I do not see what you find so likable about them."

" *Sigh* I will never understand why they always run... every time I've always put them back together better then before"

Transcript of the bi-centennial surface envoy from the city-state "Majesty's Shining Heart"

Taboos-
In spite of their openness to personal freedom Deep Nobles hold a very strong taboo against both accidental creation of noble life and the intentional preserving of a suffering or malformed noble's existence.

It is considered scandalous that any individual would not have on their person at least a small quantity of flammables and a means to create fire to both sterilize potential 'cast-offs' (more on those later) and if called for to be used for mercy killings at the behest of distraught bystanders.

Language:
Deep Nobles are predominantly a vocal people, they do not abide the pain of a child who is mute, nor are they easily deafened or permanently impaired in their ability to speak. As such they relegate sign and body language to gestures for punctuation and conveying emotional context, as well as a means to change the shape of their breathing passages to alter timbre and pitch.

Voices-
Deep Nobles speak by constrictions of their breathing tubes while cycling air through them. Since any given noble has sixteen such passages in their body they are capable of speaking with multiple vocalizations at once. Their natural voices are considered comparable to wood-wind instruments, organs or string and bow instruments like violins or fiddles, with effort they learn to imitate human voices to great degree but often sound sing-song in their manner unless they work against this accent.

Words-
Most words can be conveyed with only two voices working in harmony, but this is considered emotionally and contextually flat. Generally associated with bland delivery of dry speeches. It is considered better to use between four and six such passages to increase the audio complexity.

Human vocal chords are actually more versatile alone then any single Noble's Breathing passage and can manage their words and sentences with training and practice, most such trained animals speak at a primitive level. With the addition of musical talent some singers can manage to emulate a civil but flat affect in Deep Noble Speech.

Gender & Pronouns-
Deep nobles have no titles or individual identifications that reflect a gender or denote lack of gender. This conceptual blind spot presents Deep Nobles great difficulties when they attempt to speak languages other then their own, a common affectations are to drift in pronoun use, dictate by name when pronouns would be called for or combine pronouns and titles from both genders into compound words (sometimes by saying them simultaneously if the Deep Noble is skilled at the 'animal speech').

The only instance where ideas such as gender even exist in their language is a hand full of verb/action terms that denote very specifically the physical act of mating with another using postures of male or female.

As such the only way Deep Nobles ever think about the idea of male or female is in the forms such as:

Quote
Well dear one will you female or should I?

I would so male that lovely thing.

Among younger nobles who are just becoming acquainted with foreign languages this is often considered a rather humorous if not perverse part of linguistic studies and leads those less educated individuals into thinking surface dwellers are rutting beasts with nothing on their mind but filling the world with their spawn.

Naming Conventions-
Individual Deep Nobles identify most strongly by their clan/eldest ancestor as this is more or less the sole source of their own personal influence and power, these names are often two or three voice harmonies spoken together.

Example Family Names:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They are next gifted by their given name which is usually a short single voice chirp of endearment from their incubator/mother. This name becomes a sign of intimacy as a Deep Noble grows older and generally becomes one only used between those individuals whom are especially close. The revoking of the right to use ones given name from another who once was allowed is considered a grave and hurtful act paramount to disowning a child.

Given Names:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Last of all a Deep Noble will choose personal names both by profession, personal taste or other sources of inspiration. These handles generally become the basis for how they are acknowledged professionally and in normal conversation.

It is rare but occasionally a Deep Noble will also adopt a new family name in their long lives, such acts are generally a sign of breaking away from the greater support structure of their family and sponsoring ancestors, socially comparable to self imposed social exile.

Writing-
Deep Nobles never developed their own form of writing, blessed as they were with long lives and rampant with eccentric personalities there was never a standardized way of conveying information beyond their spoken language. It was only with the rise of other races and the occasional peaceful trade (or horrific interrogation) that their culture finally adopted one of the surface dweller's methods and slowly spread it along side their own tongue.

Hand writing among Nobles in spite of this is still greatly disturbing, prone to following spirals rather then linear lines and branching off in organic tangents to follow differing trains of thought on a single page. It takes training for None-nobles to get a grasp of how to read their writing style and the non-linear nature of it is occasionally attributed with causing madness. Deep Nobles themselves find it rather straight forward and easily legible as long as the symbols are recognizable.

Technology:
Seekers of their own betterment and accepting of what in most other species would be called genius or insanity as a natural state of being the Deep Nobles can at a glance seem extremely capable with artifice and the manufacture of their many living servitors. However beneath the surface of apparent technological superiority lies the fractures of their greatest failure as a society.The twin flaws of extreme longevity of its members and the lack of proper rigor in confirming the basis of their methods has left their kind in a frothing but more or less stagnant state for eons with little improvement and occasionally especially vast tracts of time when they have back-tracked.

Servitors
The catch all phrase for any number of motile or sedentary life forms which have been bred, engineered, altered and amalgamated into a form suitable for the convenience of Deep Noble Society. The techniques of this are a trained profession generally considered to cover a spectrum from the lowest rungs of Deep Noble society (maintenance and proper care of Servitors) to the height of achievement (Designing and proving a method for manufacturing new Servitors in a repeatable fashion).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Servitor Applications-
A human engineer might look at a problem and contrive a system of wheels, pulleys counterweights and some form of input power to solve a problem (if they don't simply stop thinking about the problem because its too complicated).

A Deep Noble Engineer will generally think about how they perform a task, then isolate the motions, behaviors, observations and thought processes needed to accomplish that task and go looking for organisms and animals that have those traits, cut them apart and stitch them back together in different ways until they have created a servitor.

Servitors are utilized in almost any task which is deemed too much trouble or drudgery for a Deep Noble to perform. As such it can be quite telling what the interests and personality of a Deep Noble is by what tasks they do NOT have a servitor tailored and tweaked to perform.

However in Noble engineering the quickest and simplest way to solve any complicated task is often to simply build a servitor with a broadly fitting physical framework and add more mental facilities till they can be trained to perform the task. Ideally via direct association of pain and pleasure connections to the servitor.

The raw material for such creatures is in high demand and since the breeding and care for sufficiently capable animals is problematic and intensive (they are all so FRAGILE), those communities without a sub-culture of sufficiently enthusiastic caretakers often fall back on raiding the surface or local populations for the vital problem solving kernals of other sentient species.

Servitor Manufacture-
Servitor creation goes back through recorded history for Deep Nobles and is generally considered to have existed in some form since the very start of their civilization with the gift of it often being attributed to the great royals in a comparable mythic structure as humans and the gift of fire.

It is also fundamentally tied to their biology, The methods of cutting and suturing organs and tissue from donors of entirely different species is crude by any observation, often painful or traumatic and would be completely lethal if not for the healing, immunosuppresing and regenerative properties offered by direct infusion of noble blood into the parts during the process.

Purification methods and even the inclusion of particularly 'gifted' strains of noble blood may be used in variation, even the inclusion of the terrible maladies bestowed by direct contact with Royal Blood might go into the Recipe of a servitor. Such methods are often found by painstaking trial and error and as often as not the theories each individual recipe go by can be completely in-congruent with the recipe of another.

This lack of unified theory of method or even documentation is generally not seen as a problem as for most of any forseeable future the designer is likely available to ask the specifics about.

Mechanics
With the abundance of servitors it might seem odd that Deep Nobles ever use something as crude as a wheel, but flesh and bone limbs require nourishment, maintenance and the careful art of a Servitor Recipe. For more vital, old or cost prohibitive devices Deep Nobles do set their minds to the working of wood, metal and stone.

Mechanical Applications-
Deep Nobles make use of wheels, levers and pulleys as way of directing or diverting the force of muscles. As often as not a servitor will be sculpted into place as an engine to drive some repetitive task with perhaps some plumbing in place to feed it and take away its waste. They are prone to building highly modular works in series or singular massive devices which receive input from multiple Servitor Engines.

Preferred applications of mechanics are:
  • Pumps for moving water from various wells or aquifers.
  • Conveyor Belts and Lifts
  • Pulley Systems where the investment in servitors for a supply chain is cost prohibitive
  • Rare Mechanical Optimization to reduce the complexity needed for a servitor


Mechanical Manufacture-
Deep Nobles rarely have the unified organization or motive to make precision parts, their machines are works of art at best when a motivated individual develops an obsession with clock work. But at worst gears, levers or tools are welded into a few useful servitor parts and set at the desired task with little care for the efficiency of the servitor or the suffering uncured.

As a preference Nobles Favor the most durable materials available, either stone or if a metallurgical expert is available high strength forged alloys. They rarely hold onto useful knowledge of material sciences past one or two generations, although obsessive archivists have filled libraries with ultimately incomprehensible arcana on countless subjects.

Royals-
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The sole exception to the Deep Noble sense of self superiority as a culture is the truly horrific creatures they term as 'Royals'. Ranging in size from the scale of small hills to an entire mountain range the Nobles hold religious awe for these beasts and of their more zealous members claim that these beings made them as a species from the original imperfect slime of other life.

However In spite of this reverence and the stance held by the devout that Royals are vastly wise and godlike beings (often they are attributed names and personalities which suit the character of a resident city's population) the Deep Nobles practice a degree of exploitation of the properties of their Royals that is only surpassed by the misery of Flesh Fields.

Royal Blood-
The blood of the royals is near boiling to the touch and retains this holy heat long after it is collected and stored. When combined with other minerals this heat can be transmuted into the eerie green glow which is so popular to the Deep Nobles.  The Royal Blood has also been constrained and utilized in countless applications and most devastating as a weapon against none-nobles.

Being even within the presence of raw royal blood causes illness in most 'lesser' beings and it is handled with great care and shielding when purified down into the more searing concentrated 'cakes'. Deep Nobles have spent ages experimenting with and utilizing the Royal's Blood and the more clever have made use of it to create intricate steam powered contraptions or to induce new and twisted mutations in experimental slave stock, although the survival rate of such experiments is often short.

Abilities-
There is a huge wealth of accounts describing the abilities of the great royals, even more are attributed to them via myth.

The easiest to observe and most commonly known capability of the great royals is their incredible strength. Most certainly attributable to their size the great royals can reduce a city to rubble by flailing their limbs or ripping up the foundations upon which it rests.

The second easiest capability to observe is that of the highly corrosive compounds Great royals will occasionally deploy against organic creatures. These enzymes can reduce most living things to a soup of organic sludge which is absorbed by the royal through a system of roots and porous material. They have been seen both to secret these enzymes into pools surrounding them as well as spraying them in clouds and sheets at great distances.

The last capability and rarest to be observed is that of the great heat that such beasts can bring to bear. Deployed as either a heating of their extremities to blindingly bright radiance or the expelling of searing hot liquids or steam the wrath of a royal can melt rock and stone and allow the beasts to tunnel through stone like it was butter or mud.

Migrations & Reproduction-
Perfectly able to rise and move through the world it is only the rarity of these occurrences which allow Deep Noble civilization to persist. But every few eons a given royal may bud off a new individual. this child wanders through the stone and caves of the world (destroying the cities and other Deep Noble Works in its path) until it finds a place which suits it and then becomes stationary for the majority of its life to come.

Already Settled Royals are also occasionally prone to movement, sometimes merely shifting position, others relocating to another site. They occasionally will even take up traveling to rendezvous with other Royals at a particular site. The reasons for these movements are unknown, there has been as many completely baffling shifts as there have been ones with discernible reason.

Habitat:
They live in deep caverns. Wherever there is rock, flesh & darkness they thrive like nothing else. Nestled around the warmth of the vast beings called royals. Twisting all life they encounter to their whims.

Natural Environment-
Deep Nobles do not appear to have an explicit environment that they are adapted too, they breath air but are as comfortable on land as in the water. They are also not particularly harmed by light itself as that they find it unnerving and the winds of a world's surface chaotic and unpleasant. These factors as well as the preference of their quasi-deities the 'Royals' are the primary factors keeping them living underground.

City Campus-
Wherever they are found deep nobles choose to live in cities built in rings around the resident 'Royal' this shape is more pragmatic then stylistic in choice, any structure raised too close to the great beasts will be summarily destroyed and building too far from it will be denied the warmth and resources available from its presence.

Within a city stand the structures of its inhabitants, predominantly dormitories for the numerous 'young' class with a smattering of the towers and mansions of the eternal elders. The architecture of nobles is quite diverse and can range from imposingly utilitarian to flamboyantly diverse.

There is a preference for personal workshops and the occasional factory hall where mass preparation of Flesh Field products is performed. The more affluent individuals may also have lecturing rooms for apprentices, personal laboratories or studios to practice and tinker with whatever draws their own interests.

Cities tend to have personalized names that range from short poetic phrases to grandiose titles or just simple personal style names. The name of a city is almost always shared by that of its resident royal or in the rare case of a truly massive metropolis hosting several Royals the city is named after some plural descriptor of the Royals.

What Deep Nobles Name their city tends to reflect the population's perceived relationship with the resident Royal, those that perceive their connection to be close and familial will even have a 'given' short name reserved for their Royal that is forbidden to be spoken by outsiders.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Flesh Fields-

Where other Civilizations will tend herds of livestock & sow fields the Nobles see no reason not to combine these actions into more efficient land utilization.

Where other civilizations will hunt great beasts for ivory, oil and bone the Nobles make what slaves they have managed to capture or breed grow to great proportion until they are smeared meters deep over acres of cavern.

Where Others choose to let their industry and personal wastes run off into rivers or pile their refuse in landfills, Nobles see raw food stuff to feed to the hundreds of mouths or shovel into the gaping open stomachs of the Flesh Fields.

The Flesh Fields are the foundation of Noble Civilization and significant portions of a city's population is dedicated to the care and maintenance of these tormented creatures.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Delver Camps-
Despite their best efforts Deep Noble cities and their Great Royals are not completely self contained. To feed their needs for raw materials the delvers make use of machinery, customized slaves and the heat and power of Royal blood to burrow through rock and stone in search of the most vital compounds they desire:

  • Water to feed the Royals & Flesh Fields
  • The Heavy Black Metals Feed the Royals and Protect Slaves from the blood
  • Fresh Animals to feed their industries and curiosity

To the great confusion of most other races Deep Nobles see little to no value in Gold, Silver or Copper as anything more then decoration. They gladly will trade the 'useless' metals for coal, graphite and of course more animals and plants. However if they are not quite overburdened with live stock after the trade they are prone to also simply taking all of the would be profiteers as more 'raw material' and leaving the overly heavy metal behind.

Biology:
While superficially similar to mollusks Deep Nobles (much to the chagrin of those scholars that seek to undermine their self-centered attitude) are not comparable to any animal or plant, by some discourses they are closer to fungus, but their complexity and high energy metabolisms more or less negate that hypothesis. They are often fit on their own entire branch of the taxonomic tree separate more familiar kingdoms.

General Anatomy-
The most obvious traits of Nobles are their gross limb anatomy, although prone to great diversity in distribution and number of sensory appendages and organs there is actually an extremely consistent limb arrangement and number for their primary locomotive branches and the predominantly tactile ones.

They all almost exclusively possess:
Six Arms
Seven Legs (three to a side and one 'trunk')
Seven Phalanges per limb at the extremity (which mirror in miniature the symmetry of three to a side and one primary index)

Deviations to this anatomical uniformity do exist but they are extremely rare and more often then not fall squarely into the realm of abberant deformity which is purged by merciful immolation at birth.

Internal Anatomy-
Noble flesh consists of smooth often scintillating skin over fibrous tissue which starts supple and relatively malleable but grows progressively more reinforced the deeper into the body it goes.

At the cores of their limbs and growing in a latticework around the trunk of their bodies is what is often called the stem. Not so much a discrete organ nor a framework on which the flesh is anchored the stem is more a zone of maximum saturation with microscopic mineral platelets analogous to the calcium deposits of bone.

These structures are flexible at any point but the energy to bend and contort them grows as the body stem thickens, although once bent they maintain their shape with little to no effort.

Animal Example

This makes the fingers of a noble relatively pliable and comparable in strength to the thumb of a strong human, but their arms and legs can seem far less mobile then their size might suggest and their core body trunk can hold up with a resistance compared to stone columns.

Vascular & Respiratory System-
Deep nobles possess no fully centralized lung or arterial system, instead they possess breathing 'pipes' along their limbs and trunk in symmetrical positions. Each passage has discrete intake and output vents which superficial resemble gill slits on the intake and are usually flush to the skin except when exhaling on the output.

Nobles have arteries wrapped around each of these breathing pipes on the stem-ward side which pulse and flex to pump their blood around a breathing pipe while it is either cycling or filled with fresh air. When a pipe is not being used to breath the arteries do not initiate pumping reflexes. In this way the over all workload of the being's circulation is tied to the presence of usable oxygen in one of the sixteen breathing passages along their body.

Although it is possible for a Noble to survive using only a single passage this is found to be very uncomfortable and causes a sensation comparable to extreme shortness of breath for a Noble, by preference they rather use at least four if not six or eight at a time and will generally cycle which are in use through a day's activities.

Immuno-Digestive System-
Although many more obvious physical features are often considered defining elements of their character and bearing. To the Deep Nobles themselves the defining proof of their superiority is in their robust Immune System.

Where as other organisms depend on Immune-Responses, a fact which many deep noble scholars observe and classify with the condescension of 'passive' or 'submissive'. The Deep Noble's body are saturated with a voracious, aggressive and 'vital' phages that carry out the following functions in their bodies.

  • Deploying & Creating Enzymes for Digestion
  • Carrying Nutrients & Oxygen
  • Isolating Pathogens, Parasites & Cancerous Cells for Digestion
  • Providing Genetic Material for Reproduction
  • Clotting Wounds and Supplying Stemcells for recovery
  • Carrying Waste Products from Cells

When Feeding Nobles snip and masticate organic material as needed with a dense beak or beaks which develop around a convenient tube ending a pocket which is filled with their 'blood'. The beak is formed as an outgrowth of the same mineral platelets as the stem and can actually consist of several such beaks layered over one another for ideal break down of the food item.
The feeding pocket or pockets sit inside the lattice of stems in the body core, food is broken down continuously by various acids and enzymes. In the rare case where something is utterly indigestible it will often become embedded in the lining so that muscular action can use it to further break down food items more readily.

There is no known substance which is lethally toxic to deep nobles by ingestion that is not similarly toxic by contact (and of those there are very few). They tend to deposit metals or hard minerals into the platelets that reinforce their bodies, if an acid is insufficient to injure them from the outside it does little more then provide digestive aides on the inside and they have no known forms of allergies.

Deep Nobles Possess no symbiotic flora what so ever, they have no parasites, their bodies aggressively consume and dismantle all invaders without quarter. The only known diseases which plague them are related to the very rare case of body rejection where by their blood consumes them from the inside out.
These unfortunate individuals are mercifully immolated on SIGHT.

Reproduction-
this section is included for factual completeness and is written as analytically as possible, if there is any complaint that this violates the forum rules I will remove it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cast Offs-
Because of the peculiarities of Deep Noble Immune Systems their blood brings complications and personal ramifications that most species do not even consider.

When a mammal is cut the blood flows and quickly succumbs to the elements in the harshness of the outer world.

When a Deep Noble Bleeds, if there is sufficient nutrient and water the blood persists, it treats the outer world as an injury and without the subtle cues and hormones of the rest of a noble body it becomes tumorous.

In relatively dead regions or alongside plants this might eventually form misshapen abominations, malformed suffering creatures without the vital care of Incubation to raise them to the state of full bred Nobles and no sense of the vital basis of civilization, such feral monsters are burned on sight by any but the most depraved lunatic in Deep Noble Kind.

The willful creation of castoffs is one of the few irrefutable capital crimes to Deep Nobles, punished by the mercy of fire.

Augments-
When Deep Noble Blood is introduced into the bodies of living animals the combination of hormones, immune system response and living working cells has a markedly different effect then a cast-off. The blood seeks cohabitation and eventually subversion, in the most extreme cases the immune system of the host is completely exhausted, supplanted and then the body is spider-webbed with Deep Noble Tissues.

More generally, especially in minute doses the blood takes up its role as source of stem cells and provides scaffolding and regenerative properties to the host and encourage cell growth.

With variations of quantity, purity, donor traits and application methods Deep Nobles can use their blood to assemble or manipulate the flesh of others in order to create their many and varied servitor races.

***

This is very close to all the general data on the Deep Nobles, if there are any further pieces of info or example vignettes people would like to know about the Deep Nobles please post and I will supply.

I also will occasional do art on them, and if I've got the time I might even take Deep Noble Related Image Requests (that don't violate the forum rules).

Short stories are now included :) and you are welcome to write your own and add them to the thread.[/list]
« Last Edit: March 11, 2015, 02:36:05 am by nighzmarquls »
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NRDL

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Re: The Deep Nobles
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2012, 03:07:08 am »

Nice idea.  Is it for a game, a book, a movie?

Can other people post their civilization ideas, too? 
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GOD DAMN IT NRDL.
NRDL will roll a die and decide how sadistic and insane he's feeling well you do.

nighzmarquls

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Re: The Deep Nobles
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2012, 03:13:32 am »

I actually decided to post this after watching the other civilization thread kind of sputter out and drift into the depths of the 3rd or 4th page. I have no problem with other people working out their own ideas here if they like, although if that becomes the case I'll have to change the title  :D

I originally invented the deep nobles as a story basis, but they kept growing beyond the constraints I put them in.

At this point I'd like to develop the concept out to a state where all the broad strokes of what their about is in place, and when that is done and I feel like their polished setting them loose on the world as free-to-use Intellectual Property in whatever format people might like.

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NRDL

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Re: The Deep Nobles
« Reply #3 on: January 24, 2012, 04:01:00 am »

Alrighty then.  I'm not actually gonna make a civ, but more of an organization.

                                                                                                     

Organization Name: The Order of Heblun

HISTORY: A famed military order created during the Time of Great Strife.  It was in this age that the fire of rebellion took hold, in practically every nation.  There were so many rebels, terrorists and anarchists that it was impossible to determine who fought for what.  Ties to nations were severed, and the nations themselves were usually devoured by the massive hordes of rebels.

The Order of Heblun ( Heblun meant "freedom" in the old Hiraptic language, a completely outdated and hardly practiced tongue ) was established out of a desire to make a group beyond the petty squabbling and limitations of countries.
The Order was composed mostly of soldiers, mercenaries and military leaders who banded together to survive the chaos.

When the era of rebellion stopped, the Order had already forged a reputation for being extremely powerful, both in terms of military might and economic power.  They crushed rebels, bandits and entire standing armies.  While they weren't savage, their tactics were ruthless, and precise. 

After the dust settled, there remained only three large countries: Krickzal, Om, and Avarin.  Each of them had destroyed and survived the attacks from other nations, and the rebels, and each of them were afraid of the Order's might.  So they created the Triumvirate, an alliance between the three of them.  They gave an ultimatum.  Either the Order disbanded, or fight all three countries.

The current leader of the time,Sir Charles Vohrtensky, was a short sighted but competent man, and he chose war over dissolution.  Much to the relief of current historians and leaders, a faction of pragmatic officers, later called the Isolationists, assassinated their leader and assumed command.  With this new party leading the Order, diplomatic talks were immediately held with the Triumvirate. 

The common people of the Triumvirate rejoiced, but the warriors and officers of the Order of Heblun were anxious.  They were forced to sacrifice much in the name of peace.  Their holdings were limited to five great fortresses, and were forced to promise never to make war in the continent again.  You'd think that this would mean their demise, but the Isolationist Party was cunning. 

The new leaders, using the vast riches of the Order, built a fleet of ships and used these ships to transport a large amount of troops to a different continent, with no nations, just savage wilderness, mysterious tribes, and lone city states.  The warriors of the Order of Heblun would raid, plunder and conquer as much as they could, then return to their home continent with great wealth.  They could not control land on this new continent, but the raiding revenue gave them enough money to potentially hire tens of thousands of mercenaries, in the case war broke out. 

This raiding also served to harden and improve their warriors, and to prevent stagnation in the Order's ranks.  With this, the Order survived, waiting for the time when they could amass enough money and enough weaponry to create the greatest army in the world, an army strong enough to destroy the Triumvirate.

Characteristics:

Military Strategy
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Standard Warrior
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Crossbow Trooper
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Officer
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I'll add more to this if I have any other ideas. 
« Last Edit: January 24, 2012, 04:09:03 am by NRDL »
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GlyphGryph

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Re: The Deep Nobles
« Reply #4 on: January 24, 2012, 12:40:16 pm »

Deep Nobles are really cool (even if the name is a bit lacking). Really like the picture of the one getting dressed. Would love to hear more about them.
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nighzmarquls

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Re: The Deep Nobles
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2012, 01:26:46 am »

Deep Nobles are really cool (even if the name is a bit lacking). Really like the picture of the one getting dressed. Would love to hear more about them.

Thank you, I just posted a segment of their biology. Also if you have a suggestion for better sounding name that means more or less the same thing (perhaps leaving off the term deep would be acceptable) I'd be happy to use that, I think at some time down the road I'll do up a few samples of their 'native tongue' so people can try and transliterate the phonetics because I am not even going to try writing out what three voices in tandem can do.
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Sheb

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2012, 05:47:24 am »

The picture of the Flesh Field was terrifying.
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nighzmarquls

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2012, 11:18:52 am »

The picture of the Flesh Field was terrifying.

Thank you :) that was the intended response.
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Armok

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2012, 01:17:15 pm »

Wow, great depth and love the images!
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Svarte Troner

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #9 on: January 25, 2012, 05:00:34 pm »

They look kind of like something you'd find slithering around at the bottom of an oceanic trench. I like it.
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nighzmarquls

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #10 on: January 25, 2012, 10:58:07 pm »

They look kind of like something you'd find slithering around at the bottom of an oceanic trench. I like it.

Thank you, The core body plan actually took the better part of a sketch book and a half to work out, more to get some of the biological mechanics figured out.

By comparison I had the core character of their civilization figured out years before that :).

Also Apologies to the curious but I don't have the energy for an update tonight, but maybe more details on the Deep Nobles tomorow.
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Little

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #11 on: January 26, 2012, 05:46:30 am »

This is really cool.
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nighzmarquls

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #12 on: January 27, 2012, 01:10:59 am »

This is really cool.

Thank you, I'm now at the point where I don't have a lot of general information left to provide, I could do minutia or write up short blurbs/stories if its desired.

I also might do any image requests for various aspects of nobles people might like to know about (these take hours to do so I'm gonna be a bit more restrained with them then text based requests).
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Armok

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #13 on: January 27, 2012, 10:53:33 am »

It might be nice to know some more about how they manipulate flesh as they do, and how they acquired that knowledge.

Also, more about where they live.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: The Deep Nobles & Other Civilizations
« Reply #14 on: January 27, 2012, 10:58:48 am »

Some stories about individuals would be nice, too. Give us an idea of what they think from the inside.
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