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Worldbuilding Blogfest #2: History & Politics
Still no Internet at home … aargh. Obviously this is going to make it slow to reply to comments. Bear with me. 
Also, for anyone coming in via links from elsewhere, I have anonymous commenting turned off on the WordPress blog because of the spampocalypse. However, all these posts are crossposted to my Livejournal account, where I do have anon commenting turned on! Anyway, on to Day 2.
Day 1: Geography & Climate – on WordPress | on Livejournal | on Dreamwidth
Day 2: History & Politics – on WordPress | on Livejournal | on Dreamwidth
Karamanda: Political Overview
The city has an interesting, uneasy push-pull between the elected government who run its day-to-day workings, and the Angels who are the ceremonial and religious leaders.
The exact history of how things came to be this way is something that I’m still working out. The Angels are a different species, though they look very similar — the main visible differences are the color of the wings and a slightly different bone structure that’s especially visible on the face. (Think dogs and foxes, perhaps.) They’re more suited to the warm lowlands, but have come to rule the considerably more numerous mezzano, who hold them in religious regard. I don’t mean that they worship them (they don’t), but the Angels are considered holy and, to a certain extent, untouchable up in their high aeries. In the past, the Angels took a much more active role in running the city. Their political power has slowly slipped to the point where nearly all the political decisions are now made by a council that’s elected from the city’s twelve districts. (The city is divided like sections of a pie, as viewed from above, though in practice the district boundaries are wobbly and fuzzy and not at all clear.) Most mezzano can vote; no one else can, including the Angels. However, the Angels have their own internal government, their own police force, and their own process for punishing lawbreakers; they are not bound by mezzano laws; the two parts of the city (the aeries, and the lower levels) operate as nearly independent political entities.
Franza, the narrator in the Karamanda stories, is part of Karamanda’s mezzano police force. In “Angelcutters”, the murder of an Angel forces her to work with the Angels’ internal police force, the Silver Guard. From the story:
I had never dealt closely with the Angels’ secret police before. He wore a black mask and gloves, and voluminous white robes, with his silver wings folded behind him. He could have been old or young, fat or thin. I knew that he was male only from his deep, resonant voice.
Kae looked terrified, poor kid. He’d probably heard the same stories I had–that the Silver Guard made their own laws, that they had only to point and you’d be taken away. Normally they dealt with the Angels’ internal affairs, rarely venturing down to the levels of the city occupied by my own caste, the gray-winged mezzano who made up the bulk of Karamanda’s population. I didn’t feel easy myself. This was Silver Guard business, and those of us in Saskia’s office were the only people who knew about the body.
Crossposted to Wordpress, Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you like.
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I'm curious how the situation came to be, of course, which you said you don't know exactly yet.
Are the Angels still interested in having political power over the mezzano? That would make the situation more unstable. Obviously there must have been some mezzano movements to gaining political power in the past.
How closely connected are the aeries and the lower levels (and the ground levels) economically? Obviously there must be some connections - it seems to me that the higher levels would likely be more dependent on goods from below, like food etc., than the other way around, which might be an implicit bargaining chip in power struggles; and where does the water come from? Do the Angels usually only fly in the higher levels?
So the people on the ground in the slums can't vote. Are they organized in any way, are they interested in gaining more power? Do they look up to the winged people? Are they just written off as slums or are they considered trading partners?
What about political ties with the surrounding region? Are there other cities with winged people? What is their relationship with the farmlands who provide their food?
Now I'm very curious about the upcoming chapter about religion.
Tip: If you link back to the chapters you already did it's easier to follow :)
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... really, I think I need to do more thinking about how this situation came to be in the first place.
And now, thanks to the other comment thread, I'm imagining them in a much more Mediterranean-like place. Hmmm. Perhaps it's all oceanic islands, and they used to live on different islands, but something happened to the other island -- volcanic eruption? -- and the Angels ended up taking over the island the mezzano lived on.
Maybe I should stop thinking of the Angels as a priestly class and start thinking of them as a warrior clan instead. (Warrior-priests!)
I had the vague idea that there are other city-states around, but not very close. Actually, while relocating it to somewhere oceanic is throwing a monkey wrench in the stuff I have already written, it's suddenly opening up new vistas for why they're very isolated and have no close neighbors -- because the island itself is quite isolated. I like this. :D
So the people on the ground in the slums can't vote. Are they organized in any way, are they interested in gaining more power? Do they look up to the winged people? Are they just written off as slums or are they considered trading partners?
Oh, they are definitely organizing themselves and seeking ways to gain a political foothold. :D Actually, since most of the footbound have close relatives in the upper levels of the city, I might rethink the "can't vote" thing, or else make the qualifications for voting something else entirely, although I'm not sure what. I suppose I could institute some kind of tiered citizenship system like the Romans had, where it's essentially a matter of buying your way into a citizenship. I do need to give them some methods of upward mobility rather than having it be a complete dead end. (My original idea here was that the Angels were sitting on a political powder keg, but this is too much of a powder keg; it's just not stable as it is.)
And that's a good idea about linking the sections together - I'll do that!
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So the footbound are composed of two groups: Karamandans who lost their ability to fly for some reason and wingless immigrants. That could lead to tension and/or interesting alliances :) Yes, the voting system could be interesting (is there a reason why you want a democracy instead of, say, an aristocracy?) There could be some sort of in-between council between the footbound and the mezzano council, formal or informal? Upward mobility could be "only" wealth and not political power, and some who lost their wings could still be in contact with their families, depending on how strong the stigma attached to losing one's wings is. It'd be a class system within the footbound, even more interesting and even more possibilities for conflict ;)
no subject
However! I seem to have got flailing off in a new direction now! Going off the Mediterranean-island idea, I sat down and wrote the following tonight:
The Fishers have lived in the islands for thousands of years.
They are basically human-shaped, with two arms and two legs, but they also have great, feathered wings, correspondingly large chests to anchor their flight muscles, and feet that can be used for walking or perching. They have third eyelids that can be closed when they dive underwater. Every major island's population are a little different, with wings of different colors and patterns, brown and gray and bold black and white -- seabird colors.
The islands are green and white and gold. They resemble the islands of Greece, such as Santorini and Corfu, with limestone cliffs and white sand beaches above crystalline blue and green waters.
The Fishers adorned themselves with shells and bird feathers and made fabric of linen from flax they grew along the shore. They used spears and nets to fish and to hunt the birds, ibexes, and other creatures that lived on the island. They hollowed out caves in the cliffs of limestone and volcanic rock (depends on the island; some are volcanic, others aren't), grew crops on the shore, and began to build elaborate houses and towers of stone plastered with lime. They worshipped bird-headed gods and built shrines and high altars. Their buildings were richly painted with scenery, birds and animals, and solid colors: ochre-red and gold, white and cream, green and blue. (Similar to Minoan and Mycenaean decorations and paintings.) There were gorgeous mosaics and tiled floors. The idea of writing was adopted by trading, and they quickly became literate. Since food was relatively abundant, they were a society with a fair amount of leisure time. They liked books (which were in the form of scrolls rather than codexes) and loved importing them.
Although they had small boats, they were not typically sailors, except as passengers on others' vessels. Other peoples plied the water between the islands. Their primary trading partners were the dolphin people who lived in the water, and the feathered lizard clan whose small, swift sailing ships glided across the sunstruck waves.
In time the dolphin cities pierced the surface of the waves, gleaming towers of coral and stone. The caravels of the lizard people grew more elaborate, and in their homes on the much colder mainland far to the north, which they shared with several intelligent mammalian species, a technologically complex civilization arose with trains and factories. Some of the islands went to war over religion or trade. They traded with the people to the south of them, another race of winged beings, similar but separate. Their wings were brilliant green, red and gold (like parrots or lorikeets), and their skin was patterned with rich, complex swirls, which they augmented with paint.
A volcanic eruption devastated the archipelagos to the south, displacing the brilliant-winged Wayfarers, who came north to the Fishers' islands. There was not enough room for two.
... and then something happened. *g*
Actually, now I'm trying to figure out WHAT happened and what the present political situation is. Obviously this is just the bare bones of something more complex, but I'm honestly not sure what I want to happen next. The Wayfarers take over one (or more) of the islands? The Fishers enslave the Wayfarers, who form a (brilliantly pigmented) underclass? A war begins, but is put on hold because of a threat from the north (or under the sea)?
Fun fun fun. :D
I'm holding off answering your questions on the other post until I get more of this stuff figured out, since I'm on an entirely different tangent now. I did incorporate some of what you said into this, though -- falcon-headed gods, as opposed to actual falcons, because you have a good point about that.
no subject
Obviously I have many questions *g*, but you probably need more time to figure this out, since it changed so much from where you started. I'm really looking forward to what you come up with!
I get your point about democracy, but I've rarely seen it done well in fantasy. A merchants' council sounds great, but how do you get from that to general democracy? A guild council system or something that comes close to a democratic system could develop over time, but democracy as we have it today, with everyone having one vote, is difficult to achieve, especially if you have a caste system on top of it. Although for some reason I can imagine it more easily for the Greek island setting than for the mountain city setting, so part of that is probably my expectations from history ;)
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I think I'm going to do a new post with the updated version (though I feel guilty for basically going, "Hey, guys? Everything I just posted? Forget about it, everything is different now." *g*).
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Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying this. :D I am having a lot of fun, and thank you so much for all your helpful and insightful questions! I hope you don't mind that I keep changing things constantly. This is just how my creative process seems to work -- nothing is set in stone until the story is written, and often, not even then!