WHO GETS TO BE A PERSON?
The opening of my soon-to-be-real Cairn RPG adventure, The Tide Returning, is a crime scene.
The king of Zum and his sceptre has gone missing in the night. Hired to find him, you are allowed a tour of the royal bedchambers, to find clues to where he’s gone.
Design objectives for this opening:
- Give players an idea of who and where their quarry is. Who did the king prefer spending time with? Why did he write a letter to the governor of a nearby town? Why was he swimming the span of the canal?
- Allude to the faction politics of the adventure. These are mainly embodied in the characters present in the intro, and their relationships with each other. What is the culture of Zum like? How do they treat the indigenous witch-folk culture? Do the witch-folk resist? Do the witch-folk disagree on how to resist?
- Present complex setting detail in an evocative, gameable way. The fact that the Zum-folk practice slavery, and how that slavery functions, isn’t just set dressing, and shouldn’t be conveyed via lore dump. Players should be engaged, alarmed, invested.
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Particular to culture of Zum is canny-ware: human servants permanently bonded to heirloom objects or furnishings.
This is what the adventure text says about it:
CANNY-WARE
To the priests of Bowed God Market bring 500gp, a thrall you own, and the inanimate object you wish to make canny.
There will be one night of fearful rites. In the morning: your thrall is permanently joined to this object—if physically separated from it, they are wracked with agony; harm done to it transfers to their flesh, instead.
Henceforth your thrall is no longer a person. They are called by the canny object’s name. Their own is expunged from all record.
War galleys and weapons are never made canny. The priests insist murder is the province of actual people, not mere things.
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The idea that things have their own spirit is pretty common, ya? You beg your computer not to crash; you plead to your car to go just one more kilometre on an empty tank.
Plus: the baseline animism of Southeast Asia.
Plus: the fantasy trope of the sassy talking sword, the whispering One Ring.
So: if things have spirits and personalities, worthy of respect and consideration; if we already treat our possessions as characters in their own right—
Could the things we own be people?
Why not?
Considering we own animals which we believe have rich interior lives. Considering our history of owning actual humans; our ongoing objectification of whole genders; our industrial extraction and toolification of whole classes, cultures.
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In Zum a magical self-propelled cart is not powered by magitek nor combustion engine. It is pulled by a person whose personhood has been erased.
Canny-ware expands on an idea I used in (of all places) a personal essay on language and being a bilingual writer from the third world:
A prisoner of war is given to the sultan—“At the palace she was called Dagger. Because that was her function: to bear the royal dagger.” Because the magic dagger is, in her cultural context, considered more worthy of personhood than she is.
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Who gets to be a person?
What degrees of personhood are they allowed? How are these various degrees of personhood changed, or challenged?
I’ve fixated on this question for most of the time I’ve been thinking about and making art.
A perennial, perhaps now-overplayed question in science fiction: “OMG are robots / AI human???” “Do you lose your humanity the more cyborg you are???!!!” etc.
I like the question better in fantasy, though.
Asking whether a robot is a person gives the question a “Is this where we are headed?” speculative frame. Asking whether an ancient tree is a person lends the question a mythic “Maybe this has always been an issue?” air.
Its proper register, I think! Contained within the question is—everything, honestly? Everything in history, everything happening now. Colonialism, imperialism. Race, sex, gender, class. The webs of relation / power / violence in all these subjects.
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Anyway, back to the intro for The Tide Returning.
The royal chambers are full of precious heirloom canny-ware. They include:
The front doors—a pair who can tell you who came in and out of the rooms that night. The chamberpot—a blind fogy who’s kept the king’s hygiene and confidence since boyhood. The pillow—a jealous girl who was the king’s lover, before he started favouring the sceptre instead.
The writing desk—a prim woman who scoffs at indigenous traditions. She is indigenous, herself, but has grown accustomed to present luxuries.
The peacock fan—an agent working with local rebels, trying to maintain her cover. The silk parasol—who bristles at their bondage, the only one who will tell you their own name (Kanan) and that of the missing sceptre (Shiri).
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Essentially: looking through the king’s room is a series of interviews.
Less CSI, more Murder On The Orient Express. Clues aren’t facts passively waiting to be discovered, but NPCs with personalities you have to roleplay with.
Having play-tested this introduction with my home group I am pleased to say it is a fun time, and works as intended!
My players came away with the facts they needed; a better idea of what to expect in the hexcrawl ahead; and a deeper understanding of the stakes.
Playtest highlight:
“Wait wait, how does this canny-ware thing work, actually? Is it Beauty And The Beast? Because if it’s like Beauty And The Beast, then the chamberpot—” (cue horrified faces)
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( Image sources:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canopy_Bed_of_the_King_at_the_Chakraphat_Phiman_Hall.jpg
https://yayahkiki.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/cari-keris-berdiri-berani-harga-tinggi/
https://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/objects/1725
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:China;_a_woman_carrying_buckets_of_night-soil._Wellcome_L0056427.jpg
https://www.theatreco.com/galleries/beauty-and-the-beast/ )
