Professor Barker Interview

UCon 2000, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

PB: Professor Backer KDo: KristaDonncly BO: Brian Oliver

DA: David Aitkin GF : Giovanna Fregni JP : Joe Piairusso
BA: Bob Alberti GH: George Hammond VR : Victor Raymond
PBr : Patrick Brad MH : Martin Heidemann JS : Joe Saul
KB: Karl Brodt LL: Lisa Leutheuser BS : Brett Slocum
SC : SimoneCooper JL: John Lewis JZ : Joe Zottola
KD: Keith Dalluhn AL: Andy Lorince
CD: Chris Davis BM : Brian Murphy BA: Brett Alder?

Take 1 side 1

JS : Phil, this is Joe. We're here.

PB: Good morning, Angel.
JS : We have a lot of people here today to talk to you
PB: Good Let's talk
JS : Great, let's have everybody very quickly say "hi" around the room. You know, next year we won't be able to do this
because there'll be too many people .
PB: Well, in that case you'll have to make a film.
JS : You know, that's actually not a Gad idea Andy?
AL: Okay, Governs Phil here, gov .
JS : Andy Larinceis here
PB: Hi Andy, goodto see you're there again
AL: Yeah, I manage to make it every year or two.
PB : I can't quite hear you . You're going to have to speak up a let, you folks in the back there.
JS : He's sitting behindthe mia-ophone, whirl doesn't help.
PB : Okay, anyway, we know he's there.
GF : Phil, it's Gio .
PB : Who's that?
GF : Me, Giovanna.
PB: Okay.
GF : Oh we1L
KB: Hi, this is Karl.
PB: Hello Karl, how are you? Good to hear from you.
LL: I'm here, Lisa.
PB: Hi Lisa Shekkara's doing v~ll; she's still alive.
LL: Oh, that's good That's very reassuring.
JS : She news to go after that Governor a bit harder, though .
PB: Yeah, I know. She goi her jewelry back, but somebody'd enchanted it badly, and she hadto throw it all away again
JS : She's upset .
BM : Hello, Phil . It's Brian Murphy from Chicago .
PB: Hello Brian. It's been a long time.
BM: Yes, it's been a long, long time. The imperial scribe is alive and well.
PB: Good deal
GH: Hi. George Hammond is here, too.
PB: Hello, George I write to you sometimes, and deal with a lot of your questions .
GH: I'll try to keep them moderate.
PB: Good
SC : This is Simone, here You dn't know me.
PB: Good to hear from you . Nice to meet you.
PBr: Hello, I'm Patrick Brady .
PB: Ah, the famous Brady. Or is that infamous?
PBr: I'm really very gla3 to be here.
JL: I almost feel like Pm at adorn intervention . I'm John Lewis ; you cbn't know me This is probably the third time
I'veplayedthe game. Hello .
PB: I hope you're enjoying it.
JL: I am .
JS : He played Baron Aldlast night. The man's a bastard Ald, I mean.
PB: Who, Baron Ald, or this guy? The Baron will be pleased ; he always likes tQ have people play him who are real
bastards .
BA? : Hi, Phil, this is Brett Alder.
KB' : He lives out in Berkeley with me, Phil.
CD: Hi, Phil, it's Chris.
JS : Say hi to the man, Joe.
JZ: Hi, Phil, it's Joe .
PB: Joe?
JS : The Shen.
PB: Oh, God That is magnificent .
JZ: Thank you .
MH: Hello. That's Martin from Berlin .
PB: Ah, hello . Good talking with you.
JP : Joe Piairusso from Philadelphia.
BA: Phil, this is Bob . Pm here
PB: Let me think, do I know a Bob?
JS : Arjai?
PB: Of coupe, Atjai . I know Atjai .
JS : You should have seen the props these guys had. . . Oh, you probably didsee the props .
PB: I saw them and they were m~nifioent. They had a great time making them.
KD: Hey, Phil, it's Keith.
PB: Keith, how ate you?
KD: Good Pm sorry to bail on you and not shoveling your snow .
PB: Ah, it's no problem . The snow didt't come very much. We were able to get out easily . Um, you're wife's pregnant .
KD: Oh, really?
PB: Yeah, Vlessa
KD: Oh, great .
JS : You hadhim wvrriedfor a moment .
KD: Just what I needed
JS : He looked a little concerned as to why you would know his wife was pregnant before he dd
PB : Well, in the case of Vlessa, I know becatse she lives on his estate
VR : Hello, it's Victor.
PB : Hello, Victor, how you doing? You made it all tight. You got your luggage back.
JS : Everybody's heard
PB : We all heardhere; I think it was on the news last night.
DA : Good morning fellas, this is David Aitkin . f ve been coming to these for the past couple of years.
PB : Hi David, goad talking to you again.
JS : He came up with some really cool handouts this year.
PB: Great. Be sure to get me copies of thesethings. I watt them for the archives.
KD: I've got a copy, Phil.
PB: Good But for me, not just for you .
KDo : Phil, this is Krista Donnelly.
PB : Hello there. I talked to you last year.
KDo: Yeah, you did
PB: We've been trying to think of ways to get you to come up and visit Minneapolis .
KDo: Yeah, I'd love to.
BS : And this is Brett .
PB: How're you doing? You got there this yea, didn't you?
BS : I finally got here. I finally came to Detroit in order to talk to you in Minneapolis .
PB: Any time you want to talk to me you can always pick up a phone.
BS : Oh, I know.
PB: Who else?
JS : That's the whole contingent here. Let's at this point start with questions .
PB: Questions? Fire away. . . .

GH : This is a very easy question. I have a friend who recently sailed into Jakalla harbor, and I wondered if there are
seagulls on the coast of Jakalla.

PB: There ere about six different species ofcamon buck that live along the coast of Jakalla; I assume you cbn't need all
their names. There is a great big blxk caruon bill that lives right along the coast and eats mostly the sewage andstuff
that floats cbwn on the Missumariver. And there are several small white spedmens of different shapes and sizes that live
along the mast and fly back inland a little ways and eat stuffin there; eat refuse and things like that . Quite a good
population of bird life on Tekumel .

GH: It also causeclme to wonder about the Tsolyani navy. We know lots and lots about the army but
nothing about the navy. There are 500 ships ; who commands them? how are they organized?
PB: It's pretty well organized. The ships are not all that big ; we're not tallcing about battleships . We're talking about
small coastal navy ships that d stuff like investigate cargoes and do customs work and go up anddown the rivers to river
robberies and piracy andthings . They help traveler who become strandal, crashes at sea and things like that. So they're
not all huge military warships. There are a number of them that are; same of the big Zirunel ships moored in Jakalla.
They very rarely go out to sea, but when they do they take a whole city population with them . They're big ships. Some
of the smaller ones go all the way up the Missuma up to Bey Su and patrol up and down the liver . There ere lots of other
bases besides Jakalla, of course, up and down the river . Usenanu has got a good seaport . Ask Sanjesh . . . well, he never
goes down there very much, but there are a bunch ofthem up to Bey S u aid up to Avanthar.

GH: Are they organized into legions?

PB: The two legions that are listed in the old army book, and those are really the only legions as such, but like many
legions they are broken down into smaller contingents for ease of administration andso forth, so you probably would
findthat some of thesecontingents hardly knew thepeAple in some of the other contingents. It's not areally well-
organized modern navy situation After all, the navy is not a minor force in Tsolyani politics because warfare along that
coast is difficult . There are very few ports between Tsolyanu and Mu'uglavya on the west. On the east side you have
ports all the way down through the islands, Ayudi?? Isle, and Gaiga, aryl so forth. But if you keep going down that way
you run into either the Salarvyani or the HIutrugu, and nobody knows which is worse.

JS : So some of the ships, then, are under the command of the Legion of Hagaar???

PB: As I said, there are many offices under them. Each ship has its own echelon of offices, captains, the equivalent of
first mate, and that sort of thing.

JS : Do the commanders use the same ranks as legion officers?

PB: Yes .

JS : So, the commander of say a medium-sized warship would be a K~i?

PB: It depa~ds . They probably would call him a Kasi, yes . As I said, this is not a well-organized, structured thing,
becaue the navy is technically the same structure as a military legion, but when you look at the exact structure ofthe
navy itself; you realize that each ship has to have its own contingent of officers and be semi-independent of the others .
You can't have just two Molkars, two Dritlan for the whole legion; it's got to be more senior officers than that. They
run it on a slightly different basis. It's something whidu no one has much gone into, because we haven't had much naval
combat on Tekumel, simulated or otherwise. The Salarvyani came dwn andinvad?d Penom a couple ofyears ago, but
that was sort ofa major fishing expedition, I'd say . They came down and just fought to pull a raid on Penom quickly,
pull out, and get back to sea main. They managed to do a little of that, but the Tsolyani were fairly ready fa- them; they
hadsmall sea battles .

??: In Penom, the river that travels north through Userranu, is that navigable?

PB: No. Well, it would be if it weren't for the river akho.

??: This is a smaller version of the sea version?

PB: Yes, a smaller subspecies . And there are other creatures in that river. They are lizardike a~eatures like the draa and so
forth that dwell in those rivers . They are really ugly creatures, and there is a lot of mudand swamp bxk there, andyou
can run into sancbars and stuffvery easily . ff a ship gets studs there at night, you don't want to be there. It's very
unpleasant. Now, you can go from village to village fairly easily; the villages have palisaded walls, wooden or reed
palisades aoundthe outside to protect their fishing craft andso forth, but they dm't do any night sailing .

JS : Nobody does much night travel on Tekumel, do they?

PB: Nobody does much night sailing . Without stars, it's a bit of a problem, and of course, you can navigate by the
positions of the planets and the moons . You know where they're going to come up and what time they're going to come
up, and you can pretty well figure out where you are . I leave this kind of question up to people like George Hammond
who know something about scienm andthings like that. They might know exactly what the scientific problems and
solutions might be. But my understandng is that they don't have much in the way of night navigation at all on
Tekumel . They go up anddown the rivers, but they don't go out to sea.

??: With the exception of the river north of Penom!

AL: On this thing of the Imperial Navy, I recently had somebody that turned up while conducting a
census in Fenul that bears the title of Commander of the Imperial Fleets of Fenul, and I'm
trying to figure out what fleets are there.

PB: Of Fenul? That wouldsort of be like being commander of the Swiss navy .

JS : Sounds like ascam.

PB: I would susp~t his credentials . It's very very tricky; that far inland I don't think there's much of a navy.

AL: We do have ariver there, but that's about it.

PB: Yes, you've got rivers up and down Tekumel, andsome of them are sort of navigable by small waft for reasonable
distances, like the one that goes up to Sokatis out of Thraya. You know, you can go all the way up the river and get to
Sokatis, but only in seasons when there is plenty of rain and rivers are high Then you can navigate it for reasonable
distances ; otherwise you'd be porting almost every couple of hours. You'd have to stop andpull your ship off of the
sancbars arrf come out of the wzter and carry it around So, there's not much navy traffic or river traffic up there. T'hey've
got rafts or barges; that's the major thing they use on that particular set of rivers, the Equinoyal andthe Rinanga in
eastern Tsolyanu.
KDo: I herder question about some of the social proprieties surrounding magical use, especially the ones involving mind
readng . How insulting is that to do it, to say, clan members or other people in casual situations
where you kind of know what they're thinking? Is that done?

PB: No, the reason it isn't done, though it isn't much describedin the various game books, there are various people who
havethe power to know when magic is being cast. They may not be able to know what the magic is, but they know it's
there. So if you're casting a spell on somebody, then maybe these is somebody in the other party who could just sort of
say, "What did you just do?" That can get you into all kinds ofsocial problans . You're not supped to read people's
mind; unless you have a government kind of permission to do so, if you're a member of a military or temple form or
something like that, than it's kind of legal and permissible. But just casually readng somebody's mindat a dinner party
is not supposed to be done. Difficulties are more severe if you've got people who can really readminds and can tell that
you've cast a spell, andthen can throw one right across the table right back at you Especially if there are semi-hostile
fortes sitting at a feast table at a large party or something, you get the Sarku contingent firing spells back and fath at the
Vimuhla contingent, it isn't any fun. You can then get to larger questions ofthe Concordat and aid up in Imperial Court
for doing naughty things. There are then legal problems involving payment ofshamtla, or sometimes hotheads will get
into a duel or something of that nature when there is the casting of magic bxk andforth. You dorr't normally dJ that.

There are of rouse people who are so talented that they can probably cast spells pretty safely, except for the possibility
that there might be some really talented peson that could pick up on it. But you might furl that the average person
might not pick up on it, so you couldcast a spell in a village full ofvill~ers that contains nobody with much psyd is
power.

KDo: So you might but you'd be taking a chance.

PB: There might be somebody there who can actually pick up on the fact that magic is being used, and that makes for
great suspicion.

BS : How mudr is magic, for instance, mind reading, in use in the Courts?

PB: It's used in the courts by various temples andmilitary andadministrative organizations . They prefer it to torture
because torture d,esn't always get the truth, and if you have amind reading spell, it has a better chance of getting the
truth, even thought that, too, can be blocked as you know. You can block a mind readng spell so that there is no way to
tell if a guy is telling the truth or not, especially ifhe is of a very high capability . You just can't really say sometimes if
his mind is telling thetruth a if he's got a superficial kindof a shell over his mind that tells you lies. It's very hardto
tell.

BM : My question's on shamtla, which has been mentioned. I'm wondering how common it is to
have quarrels in which shamtla is demanded.

PB: It's the commonest thing, rather than having lawsuits and people going to prison Some crimes can even be solved
with shamtla ; ifyou get into athing where somebody has attacked somebody or beat up on somebody, there's a tendency
to go for shamtla rather than try to put theperson in jal. Wherr you want to use the law to put people in jail to punish
them, it is usually high to low that is, a high peson has been injures or burglarized or something, and you have to
punish the low criminal, you don't w~te time trying to get shamtla out of the criminal . You simply impale him, or
otherwise punish him severely . But ifit a matter of equals or near equals, like a member of a good clan doing something
wrong to amember of another good clan, andthey get into a quarrel ova what has happenedand get to arguing back and
forth, you can take it to court, andif there is areal aime committed- andImpenial crime or temple aime -then
obviously they are going to take these people into court and try to get them put into prison or impaledor whatever. But
the average quarrel is solved through shamtla . When there is a ~mand of shamtla you send your Clan representatives
over, or tanple representatives if it is a religious crime, andargue it out, and eventually somdhing is solved

BM: Most of the punishments mentioned »tape broken up«

PB : If it is a serious aime, one that involves violence and so forth, by a lower person against a higher person, andthe
lower person is taught, he is likely to be impaled There are vey very few lesser punishments for that; they may throw
the person into prison for a very long time or do something else to him, but the judges are whimsical and sometimes not
terribly kind about these things, like in cities in the US ., you end up with all kinds ofcorrupt judges and these kind of
things . The average punishment for theft, violence by a lower person, say lower people set upon you andbeat you up,
and you have the city guard capture them and take them prisoner, they would probably expect to be impaled Either that,
or the victim might generously forgive them just to show off his generosity and nobility . Punishment andcrime on
Tekumel are not ~ highly rigidy controlledby coc)rs oflaw as they are here on this planet . They are ~ntrolled by laws,
but the laws are kind offree floating . You have judges that rule to impale nearly everybody, aryl otherjudges will
probably prefer to have the peson sold into slavery where they can make some use out of them.

Karl: If somebody is thrown into jail, who actually pays the cost of the imprisonment and the
nourishment of the person?

PB : Their dan does that If they can't do that, then the person is simply sold into slavery rather than be kept in jail at all,
sell him into slavery and put him someplace where he will be used as a fieldhand or something . If the Clan derides the
person has social value to them, they may very well pay his shamtla, or, if they can't get him out ofjail, they may pay
for his foodandlodgingin prison until such timeas the case is finally resolved

VR : This came up from aquestion somebody asked me. The concept of Ditlana, it happens with big cities,
what about smaller towns, cities . ..?

PB : It's less common there . It is rarely used in the really small cities . The tendency in small does is to simply gow in
another direction That is, you aband,n the older buildings andbuild new ones out in the suburbs, more or less like you
do in northern North America here, where the suburbs grow and the big does slowly rot away, andthen somebody
decides to renew them so they come bxk andtear down the old city buildings and put up new ones. So the small cities
don't use dtlana very much. The big cities use it because the hnperial govenement thinks it's akind of a showpiece, kind
of a grandoccasion to show Imperial power. So they sendin legions of worker and government officials, planners and
architects and so forth and engineers, and they build andtear cbwn things, and they make a great show of tearing down
things andrepladng the old with the new . This is how it is supposed to be rime. In actual fact it isn't cone very often, ~
you know. You've all lived in does ; if any of you have lived in Tekumel for any length oftime, which many ofyou
have, then you know. . . when was the last time they did it in Usenanu? Ask Sanjesh ; he doesn't even know.

JS : When was the last time they did it in any city of significant size in Tsolyanu?

PB: It was done afew years ago in Tsuru, maybe 20 years ago in Tsuru. It was done there because while Tsuru is a
smaller city it is still big enough to be hnperially noticeable, and the governor there at that time wanted it done to sort of
make a nice shining new start and perhaps build his city's reputation and political / social power. So he authorizedit he
got the Imperium to agr~ to it and they didit . A nice, very pretty job, but it would be very hard to dr in areally big
city, Jakalla for example .

GH: Can we expect Mimsiya to sponsor ditlana?

PB: You could expect some more ditlarra, I'm pretty sure. He's probably likely to put his signature on the plans of tire
priests andoffi~rs from Fasiltum- that wereput in to him a few months ago .

JS : Where are they going to get the money?

PB: T'he money comes out of the Imperial treasury, and the is the reason why Mirusiya is in no great rush to do this,
beca.rse the Imperial treasury is very low a$er that last war with Dhich'une, and now they have a new war on their hands,
as many ofyou know, with Mu'ugiavya.

JS : The Mu'uglavyani are a fine, peace loving people?

PB: Like the Salavyani .

JS : Not like the Salarvyani at all .

PB: You head about the Salarvyani invasions in Sokatis, which made almost ditlana necessary these. The current
governor has his hands full trying to get things rebuilt there.

JS : I heardthey sackedthe city twice; once on their way in . . .

PB: . . .and once on the way out. Well, they didn't actually really go andsack it in any complete tams. They simply
stopped, grabbedand looted, raped aril murdered anddid whateverthey could aid continued on their way.

JS : An upd~e on the rent invasions wouldbe good Could you tell us how the S alarvyani happened to
hit Sokatis twice in a relatively short period of time and where they were really going?

PB: You've got the governor right there ; he could probably tell you better. He couldtell you how the city was sackedthe
second time The first time the Salarvyani went through and manned to invade and make a great sxking of the aty aryl
the environs around there. They were driven off, and then they tried again aril got dawn as far as Thraya They expected to
go right through Thraya because they had the high general of Koyluga and his sister with them, and they expected to be
able to persuade Tsolyani that they were just presenting a sort of courtesy call andthat they was going to have an
allegiance between Tsolyanu andSalarvya . In actuality of course; the Salarvyani were hoping to get down as far as
Thraya andthen sack every city in sight, but they triedand failed and were driven off. And on their way back through
S okatis they sacked it again acrd made a big mess out of it. Some of you were there for that occasion .

JS : It sounds like it was the fault of the dty administration .

PB: Well, the previous governor had been replaced The old Durritlamish governor hadbeen replaced after the fall of
Emperor Dhich'uneandreplacedwith aThumis governor, who was not very effident, so he was unable to stop the
sacking ofthe city .

PBr : »tape broken up«

PB: ". . .well, the natal charts drawn up for people in most of the upper echelons of Tsolyani society . Some temples don't
like it very much and don't sort of go along with urology as amethodof predicting things . Many people are not happy
with astrology; they feel that it takes away from the forces of change; change wouldchange your chart whether you
would have anything to dJ with it or not. I'm having a had time trying to think how to phrase that. Most people cbn't
findastrology very usable, because they say it doesn't predict anything . It could be usedto identify the natal
characteristics of people, you couldidentify whether the soul will be generous or kind or sexy or whatever, but you can't
really predct the future . Rather like modem Western astrology in this world modem astrologers don't predict the future
very much, they mostly talk about chaacter traits and things like that Almost half of the temples would be interested in
astrology, and half wouldbe serf of neutral to it. Some clans use astrology more than others, and some clans ere kind of
negative to it. I know that the Dome Tomb Clan of Sarku is very negative to astrology ; they have forbidcbn astrology in
the city ofSarku

JS : Why?

PB: A lot of it is that it takes away from the right of the Worm, and how they get that I dm't know. They simply say
that the rights of the Worm are offended by any attempt to predict how people will behave, and it is up to the intellect of
each individual to perceive the universe as best it can, and these is no ovemding governance of this . I know that's not
terribly clear, but it's the best I can do render the cirarmstan~s . I mould think it out mere; I know it to be true, but I d,n't
know quite what tire scientific explanation would be
PBr: Quickly, I assume one of the effects of the bureaucracy, the military and the priesthood
would be to . . . »tape broken up«

PB: No, the regional acmnts are there . The villages and so forth have got very powerfully different accents . Rather like
in, I supp~e, modern England or Gem~any, you have accents that the lower classes mantain, but the upper classes kind
of level them out You cbn't hear that much difference in the standard, received pronunciation of Tsolyanu . The one big
difference is the difference in the vowel structure I think I've even said it in a couple of the Tsolyani language text books
anddescnptions that there's adiffaence between the vowel "ed'?? in the East and"oo"?? in the West. Very very clear
difference. You can always tell somebody from one of the western cities from and eastern city by whether they pronounce
those vowels one way or the other. But as far as the villagers go, there are big differences . The only way we simulate
these differences aroundour gaping table is simply for me to use some horribly garbled four of kind of a British aunt
mixed with hillbilly, or low class British with hillbilly. "You got to get the vegetables in out of the sun ; they gon'ta
rot," that sort of thing.

PBr: As I always suspected

PB: You do this because you want to simulate the world as best you can, but you can't simulate a Tsolyani accent any
more than I can simulate a Mu'uglavyari accept . Mu'uglavyani is clearly different when you hear it spoken ; it has a
flatter more "a" kind ofvowel to it, not the "ah" that the Tsolyani use. Andthe vowel system is different andthe glottal
stops between vowels : Mu-uglavyani and Ma-alert andMe-elenish, and sounds like that. The glottal stop between those
vowels is very clear in Mu'uglavyani, and they kindof slur it over in Tsolyani .

PBr: So, an intelligent person with a good ear could place a person by their accent?

PB: Yes, you could place a midde clams, lower class person very easily by their accent, and that wouldbe a very
important way of maintaining your identity if you have a proper commandof an accent, and people are going to think
that you was from a given locality, so that a person who wants to fool people wouldpretty well have to be a good
linguist in order to attain that correct accent, or at least a mimic.

PBr: Within an area if say you have an area isolated by mountains, do you see sort of micro-
accents developing?

PB : Oh yes, like Swiss-Deutsch, small accent groups in high village valleys . Go up around the great mountain ranges in
the north there up by the city of Sadcu andthe great mountain heights and you'll hear all kinds of very strange accents .
They're very different, all kinds ofvowel flanges and consonantal shifts, wards being lost out . You know, the suffixes
they use for nobility and ignobility on the end ofstandard Tsolyani, where you have a word like "corun" or "corunich" for
book and the "-ich" drops off when you put a prefix on, "buconm," in the book? Those suffixes d-op out entirely in
some of the vill~e dialects; you don't have a noble or ignoble suffix at all. And other places they've got different
prefixes different from standard Tsolyani . In some places the pronouns have become much abbreviated so insteadof
"masun"?? for it or she, you have "m'sun" or "m'sn." That's about all you get "M'sungwai," it is, instead of
"masungwal ." "M'sngwai ." You get all these strange pronunciations that are almost . . . you can't duplicate them at the
gaming table at all, you have to just sort of speak in adifferert European ascent if you can andmake it soundforeign in
order to imitate the fact that the villagers sounddifferent.

KB: We've talkeda lot about accents, and clot has been written about accents . How actually different are the
rhythms of the language that aie sort of built in? If you hear them do you hear a very distinctive
rhythm?

PB: All of the Tekumelyani languages have their own rhythm . As Pve said, the Mu'uglavyani has kind of a sharp, hard,
flat way of speaking, and the Tsolyani has a softer, rather longer lilt How can I phrase this? lY doesn't come out in any
sensible f~hion because American, Western )srropeam linguists have never been able to formulate exactly what they
mean by these rhythms anyway . There ere whole books on learning to speak correct English that have all kinds of little
arrows on them to indicate whether you have a rise or a fall in the melody of the sentence, and they just don't really serve
the purpose The only thing that serves is to hear them and have the practice of then. That's about the only way that you
can learn to speak with a different sentence melody. But Tsolyani has a clear, syllable by syllable pronunciation . They
don't slur their syllables . American slurs its syllables to the point where American English sometimes has very little
resanblance betw~n spoken American Fnglish and written American English . "Didn't you" becomes, `dinja," as you
know. "Hitcher" instead of "hit you;" "Hit'um" is "hit than" and "hit'im" is `hit him," andthere's very little possibility
of writing those different vowels . We don't have astandard orthography for spoken American dialect English . But you
can certainly hear it when you hear American English . I imagine that someone says, `Djeatjet?" the average foreigner
wouldn't understand what you said "Did you eat yet?" The answer is, "Na, sgweat ." `i~To. Let's go eat ." The average
American simply understands all that; that's how he's trained, tc> hear those things . He slurs right into it, and understands
from context andeverything, but for a foreign person learning Fnglish, it's got to be incredibly difficult . We slur vowels;
we d-op than out entirely, we dlange our grammar around so that over a period of a few yeas, new grammatical features
comein all the time. Take the example of the word"like," meaning "speak." `So, I'm like, `Let's go eat,' andhe's like,
`No, I don't want to do that yet ." And that "like" stands for "he says" or `2 say ."That's not in the modern American
grammar books at all, but it's there in every American dialect nowadays. I don't know how to formulate these things
without doing a ~mplete grammar of slang Tsolyani, which wouldbe. . .

JS : That would be great, Phil!

PB: f11 let Joe Zottola writeit; Joe's great at cbing slang.

JZ: No, menot here. (Shen voice)

PB: Ask him to do his Shen for you . He's getting now so he even talks like a Shen at work.

SC: Just wondering how mutually unintelligible those accents become .

PB: Pretty unintelligible. Terribly unintelligible when you get up in the really rural, remote areas in the mountain passes
north of Avanfar?? and north ofthe Sarku hills, the Kraa?? hills, they become almost unintelligible . The averse
Tsolyani who goes up there has almost as mull trouble undbrstandng than as you would if you walked completely
untutored into some remote English pub in northern England. Ask Patrick, he probably understands well enough what
I'm saying .

JS : They'dunderstand him, is the point.

Tane 1 side 2

PB: I myself hadan example of that. I was on my way home from Pakistan long, long moo . I was on a ship, a
Norwegian freighter as amatter of fxt, andthere were abunch of Britishers on board, anyone fellow had no particular
fria~d to talk to so he got friendly with me When we larxled in Japan we got off and went to a restaurant together and sat
togeher for dinner, andhe spent the whole evening telling me along story about something, andI couldl't evai
understandwhat he was talking about, except here and these I got the ward, `°itla," and I knew he was talking about
Hitler . He was telling me a story about WWII, but it was so unintelligible, so absolutely dfferent from anything I'd
heard spoken that I hadjust a temple time understanding even simple sente~es . I suppose you could get complete
unintelligibility from one endof a dalect stratum to another. If you have, say, a dialect from a far western to a Far eastern
variety ofthe same language they'd be unintelligible. They become difiirrent languages as far as anyone is concerned

SC : Does the written language drift as well?

PB: The written language cbesn't dri$ as much, because the Imperial government keeps it stable, ratherlike the Queai's
English . You do have changes, but the changes are not swift. They are not swiftly reflectedin writing. Well, we've got
the correct form of Tsolyani and that's it. You can't make changes, you can't teach a different farm ofTsolyani in the
temple schools. ff you tray doing that, then people will object very strenuously the same way the language texhers
might object if you tried teaching slang Black English in an American high school, for example. h is amatter of
standardization .

DA : Switch topics pretty drastically ; this was brought to attention last night. I'm interested to know how the
Omnipotent Azure Legion spreads their allegiances ; it seems like they obviously report directly
to Avanthar, but in a social setting or in the presence of some other prince or princeling, or
princess as we had last night, can they be compelled to protect her or serve her interests if she
is on the scene for example?

PB: Well, they are required to follow orders from any Imperial officer, any higher officer who is there, yes . They are
supposed to do that . How well they do that is something else. If someone really objmts, and doesn't want to follow an
order, there are always ways of faking it. Dodging and so forth . This is done the sane as here. ff you expect someone I
suppose an agent of the FBI would be unhappy to be following an order from someone who happened to be a superior
but who was politically very negative to him.

JS : Do they automatically have a responsibility to protect members of the Imperial family?

PB: They have a responsibility to protect the society andrepresentatives ofthe family, of course. But again, there are
individual differences and these are individual interpretations . There is no single ritual rule that has to be obeyed We're
not playing monopoly here, where everybody obeys the same rules automatically. This is a human society, so you have
problems between human beings who don't always see eye to eye and don't want to obey what they're supposed to obey.

VR : »tape broken up«

PB: Thhey can't disobey hnperial commands that have come from Avanthar and are vested in clear authoritative soceal
organizations . Far example, the Prinmss cannot command somebody from the Palace of the Realm to disobey the laws
of Tsolyanu She could not command an army officer to disobey his army orders, and they know better than to try to do
that, because it would cause instant questions andwouldraise questiorn that wouldgo all the way back to Avanthar, and
it mind get her seriously repumanded, if not toldto get her tail bade to Avanthar and stay there for a while In reality, of
couse, these commands and rules andthings are pretty slippery . You could give a command to an officerto shoat
somebody, and ifhe does it, he does it sort of because he feels it is correct ; he fels it is the correct couse of action . And
if he ~esn't feel it is correct, he may hem and haw, bade down, or kind of refuse to obey orders in one way or another.
Simple humanity .

??: »tape broken up«

PB: T'hat's true in any human society . There is a difference between what is authori~d on the legal level, on the Imperial
or government or administrative level, and what people really wart to d,. People don't always obey orders and dJ exactly
as they're told There are people who wouldsay, `2 don't really want to shoot that man . fve been toldI have to do it
because he's an enemy of our country or something, but fm not gonna do it because Ijust dn't feel like it. I don't feel
he deserves it," or whatever. They won't do it. So there are all kinds of le~ls of societal obedence . You can make rules
and laws all you want, but you get it down to the final human nature level aryl there are always dfferences . We found that
out so many times when we're doing army stuff on Tekumel - somebody gives an order that you charge the dty walls,
andyou're going to all die over there because you know you can't possibly win, andyet some solders will chage andgo
up ~ainst them and die ; othersoldias will find some excuse and say, "Well, yeah, I just can't quite see doing that, and
maybe we'll try something else or go somewhere else It's not e~y ."

JS : The OAL would seem to be able to wield a great deal of direct political influence, and I
understand that the senior officers have probably passed through the Jade Arch, yes?

PB: Yes .

JS : What sort of protections are in effect to keep the level directly below that from having a lot
more to do with the making of day to day policy than they are meant to?
PB: Well there are always authoritarian andbureaua~atic controls on people . You can look cbwn the echelons below you
and see, well, is this echelon bbing what we want it to d~? And if it isn't then you can call their lea~rs in and reprimand
them or punish them or replace them with more leaders who are mere to your liking. There are various ways of doing
that Again, it's not always successful . Sometimes it wins and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you can give an order
and have it obeyed and people will do what they're supposed to ~, and other times they just don't. That's the way life
goes.

Krista : Sostererpriests in the temples, are they always also another type of priest, like the
administrative, ritual, or scholar priests? Are they always part of one of these three branches?

PB: Yes, but again there are crossovers. These are people who are goodritual priests who are only interested in the rituals
andtheology andso forth, andthere are some administrative priests who are pretty interested in that, and they may very
well dabble somewhat in performing the rituals andtaking over ritual posts on various occasions . Sometimes these are
scholar priests who aren't very scholarly, who are simply time servers, sitting up there in their studies studying nothing
in particular, enjoying their life, having good parties with some of the younger members of the initiates .

JS : I think Krista was specifically wondering about priests who are sorceress, are they drawn exclusively
from one of those three branches or are they effectively a separate branch?

PB: No, you can have the lay priest, who is not a temple priest at all, but is trained in the temple schools and doesn't
particularly have any leaning to become a temple priest, and who thus finds his job somewhere else in society . You can
have priests who are quite competent sorceress who work as bodyguards for one or another noble clan or noble person,
andthey have all the rights and prerogatives, in being able to go to the temple anduse the temple libraries, and they have
fr-iards and colleagues in the temple who help them, whatever, but they're not really temple priests . They don't have to
go to the temple ritual stuff at all . Mostly what our player characters tendto became is not the temple priest, but the lay
priest personality, because it gives them mare freedom to act in the society . After all, ifyou're tieddown by bureaucratic
regulations and daties and so Earth then it becomes very tricky to play a character. You can't relax andsay, okay, P11 go
out adventuring this morning, because you have to go to the temple to perform certain rituals anddo certain things . The
same way with the militay ; we've hadmany many problems with people wanting to be soldiers on Tekumel because
it's an interesting military society, and you have an interesting time being a soldier on certain adventures, but at other
tuns you're pretty well tied cbwn. `Today we go out anddrill the troops," and you spend four hours sitting around a
table filling out forms and listening to cases andgetting recommendations and getting authorizations fa more supplies
andthings like that. That's no fun . So if you want to get around all that, then you want to become a non-organizational
person. Of course the game master has to kirrl of slur that over a little bit, and kind of allow people to say, "Well, I
spent the morning filing papers, but you don't go through role-playing every paper in the file; that'd be boring as hell."

GH: David Aitken and I got very involved in a remote, very large copper mine. And there's an
Avanthe priest, a ritual Avanthe priest »tape broken up«

JS : It's p~sible that anybody on Tekumel can have sorcerous skills without really being a sorcerer as such. It's just a
native talent that you're born with, to have those capabilities . And if you're lucky and interested andwealthy enough,
you can perhaps hire somebody from one of the temples to tutor you, but you may not get all the good stuff, all the
details ofthe spell or the ritual things you want to lean. It's again, a matter of personal good fortune . If a person
happens to be a sorcererand has a tutor who can teach him certain spells, and the wrong tanple and he learns grain
spells from another temple, andhe's not supposed to do that, aryl if hedoes, he might very well run into problems from
his own temple or from the temple priests from the other side, who accuse him of breaching the Concordat That can
result in trouble

DA: I want to get back to the military, . . .»tape broken up« Does that suggest that the legions, the
military, would hire a lot of civilian advisers?

PB: For certain purposes, yes, of course. They havetheir engineers ; they have their supply people ; they have offices
who are in charge of organizing transport, the chlen cart brigade, andso forth . All kinds of military things have to be
dons logistical stuff, and getting the foodsupplies, buying the clothing, getting the arrows made in the smith factories,
are part of the task of a logistics officer. And these people are not soldier as such. They're outsides, clans that have that
capability, that particular skill orexpertise. They are hired to produce these things and sell them to the armies for
whatever price is agreedupon, and the Imperium oversees a goodpart of that, so that the army doesn't get too badly
cheated

DA : As well as logistics, I was thinking more along the lines of higher level advisers, like
comparison in our world now, the Pentagon will hire people who are experts in theirfields .

PB: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You're talking about hiring a geographer or aperson who knows the animals andplants of an
area, sure, they will hire that expertise. And there are also people who are simply travelers who are brought in andasked
questions aid allowed to not rally spy, but report on conditions, as it were

DA: It seems like that would be an avenue for a player who had an interest in things military but
who did not want to be a soldier twelve hours out of the day.

PB: Yeah, it depards on how long the army needs him or ha, andfor what purpose andat what level that person would
be hired Sure, you could arrange something .

KB: What responsibility does the OAL have if they caused the incorrect arrest of somebody of
status?

PB: There would be reprimands to the offices, depending on what level they were. Ifthey really committed a gross
mis~meanor, really deliberately accused this person of acrimethere might xtually be punishment. Call him home, and
if he was of an important clan they would r~ssign him to some small place bxk in the woock somewhere . If he were
really, really off base, they might xtually punish him, impale him or imprison him, if he did something to a high level
person that was right off the wall.

JS : If someone is acting, in the course of their duties as an Imperial official and they harm you
wrongly, do you have the ability to get shamtla from them or challenge them to a duel or are
they insulated.

PB: Well, you would go to the Palace of the Realm and complain to that person's superior, and that person's superior is
supposed to then, if the matter seems serious enough, call a commission of inquiry, and ingrire into the situation aryl see
exactly who did with whit and wfro andhow and all that good stuff. If there's a real crime committed, the person who did
the wrong wall be punislrd or recalled and shippedbackedto Penom to serve a sentence.

VR: It is possible for an OAL officer to ask someone to remain for an opportunity to be talked
to further about an investigation ; depending on someone's status they are treated with nobility
but they may be required to be party .. . to be investigated in some fashion?

PB: Yeah, it depends again on the exact circumstances, but generally speaking I'd say that a person could be requiredto
participate in an investigation An OAL officer can simply say, "We need your help and expertise . Please stay and tell us
what needs to be said, here." I don't know the situation ; it might have been more tricky than that.

VR : Yes, it was.

PB: These things again ere all hard to make rules about, because they tend to be just like situations in this world, where
the police require somebody to speak up, and the person for one reason or another doesn't want to speak . They manage to
fumble and stumble around until they manage to get away from it.

VR : Our world would be very different if we had mini-readng spells here.

PB : If we had mirrl-reading spells andthey had the OAL officer who could make use ofthem, then it would be quite
simple, unless that person hadenough magical power to resist, a couldcast a spell privately on himself to hide his real
thoughts . It would have to be afairly high-level person who could resist that much.

GH: One of the many factions orgroups in our Copper Mine is a barge load of Swamp Folk, aryl readng through the
material there's not quite as much description of Swamp Folk, ardwe were wondering things like, well, we
know we can't pronounce their words, but what do they sound like? What is it like for a human
to interact with them?

PB : Their language to me sounds like a sort of yodeling kind of almost . They have a kind of cbuble breathing pipe that
allows them to make sounds that soundalmost like two people speaking ~ once That's why their language is basically
impossible for humans to imitate ; they make a double whistling noise, a a humming background noise andthen a
smaller, lighter, shriller noise on top of it. God, it's almost impossible to describe.

JS : Is it unpleasant?

PB : It isn't unpleasant . It just sounds totally alien, like somebody blowing a double flute and not particularly keeping
any single melody. Have you ever heard a double flute? Some of you know that I have cbuble flutes here that I picked up
in India when I was out there, and same of you actually heard me attempt to play them . They are simply. . . one flute is
used for kind of a drone note, and the other flute plays the melody. There are people in Pakistan and Irxlia who can keep
both of these columns of air moving ~ the same time so that the melody never stops. It just goes on andon andon. It's
a very interesting melody ; it's not harsh; it's not shrill . It is kindof pretty in a way, but it is very difficult to imitate or
desa-ibe . That's kind of how the Swamp Folk sound, kind of a «sound effect» way oftalking, but not making much
sense to anyone who's listening.

BS : What about Tibetan throat singers who can keep two notes, essentially, at a time?

PB: Sort oflike that, yes. There are various musical instruments, like I said, that can produce two notes at the same
time, blow two notes, orplay one with either handor something like it

BM : Regarding the Temple spellcastes, or people who are designated in the temples to cast spells - I was thinking in
terms of the telepathic spells, but it couldbe any- is it unreasonable to ~sume that in each temple there are
specialists in a certain type of spell casting or certain spells that are called forth basically when
needed to do that spell?

PB: Absolutely. The answer to that is very dearly yes . There are people in every temple that are specialists in certain
kind; of spells that are required for certain purposes that relate to that temple . For example, in the temple of Ketengku,
there are specialists in different kinds ofhealing spells, andthey are called up when a patient comes in with that particular
injury or malady and can be used for that purpose . There are temple specialists who produce destructive spells and so
forth. And not emery spell caster can do the same spell as every other one, and so you might find at one temple that
there's nobody around at the moment that can cast acertain kindof spdl . We've hadthat happen many times in our
game; where somebody goes to the temple andexpects, well, yes, I'm going to get cured right away, and walks up to the
temple andfinds that the person who deals with that particularvariety of healing spells just isn't here today, or they don't
have one at this particular temple. You'd have to go sevaal miles away to a different city or something There are
different specialists, and the specialists, of course, are trained to their own abilities, and some people are more capable
than others with different types of spells. Specialists who are at the temple of Dlamelish who can get you excited just by
looking at you.

??: They don't eon needmagic for that!

BM: Do the temples allow these people occasionally to be farmed out to separate areas of
society, like to, say, a rich person who requests a certain spell to be cast, or possibly a military
official who neeck a spell for military purposes?
PB: Yeah, there ere cases where this has happened Well, you can ask Joe, these, Arumel hi Chankolel, the time when
they neededchilled wine, they hireda specialist from the Temple of Hm'u / Wuru [~. note unclear from tape] to cwt
freezing spells on ice. They had this guy citing freezing spells on i~ just so Anurrel could have his chilled wine. Then
of wurse people who can cast dfferent types of healing spells, people can be sort of sent off to cast different spills for
different purposes, andthis is arranged between the temples . Ifyour temple commandrrt comes to you andsays that the
Temple of Avanthe needs a particular type of specialist to cast a spell in older to do something that is not against our
temple, than-is useful to Avanthe's temple, say, in agriculture or something, then yeah, they can appoint somebody to
go over anddo this.

DA: We weren't quite done with the Swamp Folk, I don't think. There's not very much information about Swamp Folk
that's been printed anywhere. . .

PB: That's true; there isn't.

DA: You've explained about their vocal system, audit makes me rethink some of the things that we did Can you tell
us anything else about the Swamp Folk other than they like being on the water, and they're
fierce traders?

PB: They're excellent seamen ; they're great traders. They are quite competent in und'rstandng and doing things with
human society . They're not like the Tinaliya who have their own particular nutty kirrl of literal3rrindedpersonality . The
Swamp Folk are quite re~onable creatures arrl can d,al with humaikind accordingly . 'They tend to be rather secretive of
what they really think . They don't come out with their real opinions on any subject, and kind of live to themselves in
their vill~es along the river, along the Putelhenel?? river in Mu'uglavya . They're great wUOdworkers and basketweavas,
woodcarvers and dJ things with reeds and basketry, carving, things like that. They a e tremendously curious about human
society andget involvedwith the Mu'uglavyani society . Occasionally they wander ova into Tsolyanu andget involved
there, too, and not particularly offensive in any way . They're not like the Ahoggya or something that smell bad

DA: Are they considered a military presence of their own?

PB: They have their own abilities, but they're not consid red apowerful military rxe like the Shen. The Shen of course
being a kind of carnivorous, reptilian kindof personality, aremuch mere difficult for humans to deal with. The Shen are
aggressive. The Swamp Folk are not quite so aggressive. They will participate sometimes in human military activities .
There's even a Swamp Folk general, I think, in the Mu'uglavyani army.

DA: What about their religious predilictions? We found someplace - George did - that they
perform everything that they do with a ritual prelude or with ritual significance.

PB: Yeah, they're quiteritually involved in things. They believe that things shouldgo in certain structured ways, and so
they're very cardul in how they behave, andthey dn't go agaimt their own principles very often. But it's hard to discern
what their principles are, because they don't talk much about these things . They don't come out with pronouncements or
theologies or temple descriptions or books a anything like that; they're kiwi of secretive, They behave pretty well in
human society as humans hope they would behave, quietly, effectively . 'They're very good at what they do with the
military stuff, at sea especially . They're good fighters ; they're goodtrades, goodsailos. They're not very interested in
any other ~pects of human society . They don't go into the high level army farces or anything like that. But in their own
little limited enclave they have local autonomy .

GH: I have a friend who is of only medium clan status, and he wants to send a letter to a distant
relative of his in a faraway city. How does he do that? Is there an organized Imperial messenger
service?

PB: No, the Imperial messenger serum is fa Imperial messages. Now, you want to send a letter or something - and
we've had this happen many, many times, people want to send a writ, particularly to transfer funck from one area to
another - the way to do that is to go to your clan. That's one of the reasons for clans! Go to your clan and ask them to
do it; they tendto have relationships with other Bans that will take mail and writs and things like this andpost bags and
deliver it to other cities, sometimes quite far away . It's not fast but it's efficient . You can get your letter across in a
couple of months . It will work. This has always botheredsome of our player characters who want instant
communication, so they tend to rely on Nexus points and subterranean tubeway cars and things like this . But in real
Tekumelyani situations you'd have to be more patient . Things move rather slowly, sort of like medeval India or
something . You want to send a message from Delhi to Madr~, it wUUld take you quite a while

GH: Does the Imperial government maintain a sort of regular schedule for Imperial
communications? Is there a weekly post bag or a daily post bag that moves by runner?

PB: Not specifically. They do tend to be fairly fr«luent, in that if there is something to be sent, they send it right away.
There are runners who cary the messes, coaches and dispatches and so forth You've got one right there; I think Alberti
is still there somewhere ask him about Adlar; one of his characters was an Tmperial runner. That's a pretty e$icient
method Forreally fast work the Imperium relies on networks of telepaths within the temples, and the Imperium
maintains its own network of telepaths . These are ~ry fit. They're not always accurate, but they're fit.

PBr: I'm interested in Baron Ald's assessment of the performance of the mercenaries he used
against the Tsolyani, especially the Pygmy Folk. Did he get value for money, if only by
weight?

PB: The Pygmy Folk, alas, are not terribly ~ficient creatures . There, the Baron got some value out of them because they
are pretty ferocious creatures, but the Tsolyani soldiers who fxed them found that the Pygmy Folk wouldjust nrn right
at them andcharge and kill or murder; bite, slash, whatever. They're a little scary, but they weren't very effective in
terms of military ability to take an objective andkeep control of it, whate~r.

PBr: If the Tsolyani had taken casualties from a non-human like that, would we expect that after
the war there would be residual resentment or hostility towards that group?

PB: There is some residual resartment It's not as great as it is on this planet ; there are people who still resent various
things that happared all the way back to the Roman Empire But there is some resentment, but it is not very great
because people have to live together on Tekumel, and they tend to put these resentments aside rather quickly when it
comes to commerce Like President Clinton today is in Vietnam handing out all kinds of goodes to our previous
enemies . Apparently the resentment is pretty well gone. You can expect that kind of behavior on Tekumel, too . There
are some that don't ever forgives; I think the Jews are still looking for war criminals among the Roman Empire . It differs
from society to society and period to period The Salarvyani, for example, are considered to be barbarous creatures by the
Tsolyani, and thus there wouldbe a lot less sympathy forthem than these would be for the Yan Koryani who are
consideredto be sort of brave, small town kind offighting solders.

PBr : During that conflict did any Tsolyani legion take notable casualties against the Yan
Ko ryani ?

PB: There were several units of Tsolyani who almost got wiped out . I think our friends who were there, I think Arumel
(Joe Zottola) can recount several legions that got pretty well batteredbadly by the Yan Koryani . The Legion of
Herdklekta, for example; . and there were a couple of others . I bet, what's its name? The Bey Su Legion?

JS : Kayakama?

PB: Yeah, Kayakama, pretty badly slaughteredand is only now rebuilding. So some ofthose legions were d~rrraged
severely by Yan Koryani war casualties.

SC: This may be a little too big, but why is there magic on Tekumel? Not how, or anything ;
obviously that's a seminar.

PB: It's had to describe the whole structure of Tekumelyani sodety and magic because it's something that's so
underlying the whole world Well, as you say, it's too big . Tsolyani mimic works on dealing with the powers of the
planes between . That is, we live on acertain plane, andour sodety, our world, is made up of things we can sue, hea,
feel, percave on this plane, but these are other planes . There are planes that are like the leaves on a tree, above and below .
Between these planes these are reservoirs ofraw power. You can't reach them from modern Ea-th because the skin of
reality is too thick here. It's just not possible to push through with magical spells and forces to mental or spiritual
magical stuff, to push right through to those other planes and d-aw the power out that you need to create effects on your
plane. On Tekumel, the skin ofreality is thin, andyou can reads through in many merry plates . In some places it's
alm~t too thin; you can get mimic when you're not expecting it, so-called fertile areas like Livyanu . And other areas of
Tekumel are very dense ; it's impossible to get any magic through at all. Magic is a matter of pulling power from the
planes beyond Rather than using science as we have done here on this world, the Tekumelyani have learned to use the
power of the mind and other ritual structures to reach through between the planes, pull power through, and then moldit
into certain tradtional forms over here. So if they want to create a fire, they pull power through from a plane beyond,
moldit into a physical force of flame, andset it off over herein this plane. That's where magic comes from.

Magic is very very much sophisticatedover many miIIennia since the fall, the time of darkness. The humans who landed
on Tekumel didn't have magic as such. They were science people the way we are But over the centuries they learned to
use it, andthen when Tekumel was thrown into the drkness and into a pocket dimension all its own, this magic was
then developed aryl built up andmade more and more part of daily life, and silence fell out of use or fell by the wayside as
you might say . They developed more and more magical spells and sophisticatedspells . They can do very sophisticated
things with spells, incredibly sophisticatedthings, even to the extent of bringing people back from the dead as it were by
simply taking the mold left by the body - are you familiar with that type ofphotography that photographs leaves that no
longer exist? - that's essentially what you do. You get a picture of the human who was here and photograph him as it
were and use some part of his body to reprodrce his entire gestalt, his entire form, and you then pull power from the
planes beyond andyou car recompose him . That's possible on Tekmnel . It's very difficult, but it's possible. Many of
these spells are very very elaborate spells . Some of them are spiritual or mental spells that you can do with just your
mina other of them are much more complex and require all kinds of ritual assistance, guid;s of various kinds .

I think you can probably chat with some of my players these who have seen how magic works on Tekumel, and they
could give you good examples of some of these spells and how they work.

SC : Actually, that relationship that you just described between the humans when they first aurive~l and how they
developed was the heart of my grestion, so thank you very much .

PB: I hope you've got it It's not our easy grestion because there are so many things that happened between our time on
this worldand Tekumel's time, far in the future and so many developments that took places with other races out in space
and so forth . Our people didn't leave this planet until thousanck of years from now, and when they did the first people out
that they met with were the Pe Choi . And the Pe Choi of course had all kinds of understanding that our people ddn't
have And so we developed with them and then with other races acs we met them and finally we settled Tekumel . And
Tekumel, of course, for reasons which I still have not revealed, fell into the world of darkness and is cut off entirely from
all the other planes.

JS : You could reveal that any time you want to.

PB: Thanks . What's haa-dfor people to understand is that magic on Tekumel is not like magic in the traditional European
sense . It's not Krng Arthur's kind of magic. It is magic with a sort of scientific basis, as it were; it has a reason for
being. Andthe reason is the power from the planes beyond You can traverse those planes acrd enter into other planes by
what we call Nexus points. You can use a Nexus point to travel from a plane that is where you are to another plane
either on the same planet or fx far away aa~oss the galaxy. It's a very complex situation, period- hard to describe in
word; of one syllable.
BM: All your players have left the room except forGio, who might leave right now, so you mind tell the rest of us
what's going on!

PB : Who's still sound?

GF : Gio!

PB: Oh, she knows all about it. Ask her .

GF: Actually wasn't it Ken andthe old Thursday night group who actually found out about the time of the void and the
greet darkness?

PB: Well, they found out about it, but they didn't find the reason .

JS : We have a follow up question from Brett Slocum.

BS : Actually, it's just kind of a follow up on one of the things you sad while desa-ibing the mimic. Before the time
of darkness, did any of the races or the humans have any rudimentary understanding of like,
psychic abilities?

PB: Yeah, the Pe Choi did The Pe Choi did, and some of the other races had more or less psychic sensitivities .

BS : Or like what we have, some sense that we have today?

PB: Mmhmm . The Pe Choi had that senses our humans had some sense of it, but not very well c>rveloped, but the Pe
Choi were xtually ableto sense other things, andthey knew something about magical structures so that when they got
out into space and reached areas where the skin of reality was thinner, they very quickly were able to develop their
magical capabilities . Then of mursethere are those races that dwell in between anddon't actually dwell in one plane .
You've seen the various varieties of Mihalli and so forth; they have powers that take them between, between the planes
andfrom one plane to another. Sometimes the same a-eature doesn't even dwell entirely on one place, but may dwell on
several, partially or whatever.

JP: I was rereading Swords and Glory I on the plane on the way here, and one thing that caught
my eye was at the beginning it was clearly stated that at the same time that Tekumel got pulled
into its pocket dimension, 772 other planets also got pulled in as well.

PB: I'm afraid so.

JP: Who on Tekumel knows that, and how do they know that?

PB: I know it. They don't know it!

JP: Okay. I wasn't sure if this was source material or whether this wasjust for us.

PB: No, this is me, writing .

JP: I'm sons. So none of this is known in any way, shape or form.

PB: None ofthis is known . In fact, the Tekumelyani don't even know ofthe existence of the rest of the universe. They
know what is called the Time of Darkness, and they know that before the Time of Darlmess things were very different,
but it's sa-t ofmythological .

JP: Okay, it's mythological as well to the extremely educated, the extremely knowlec~eable?
PB: Even the very knowledgeable people on Tekumel wouldn't have any clue that there were once things called stars.

JP : Does this indude the wizards at the endof time?

PB: People who travel bdween the planes a lot, however, have figured out that there are other worlds, but they're not
sure how they're orients towani Tekurrnel . Whether they are on the same plane or different planes, or whether there is
some sort of other mechanism going here.

GH : Still spitting out drestions from our big Copper Mine complex . . .

PB: You guys andyour Copper Mine, good Lora

GH : Well, this ageneral question, though. We'd love to know what current events are in the Chakas .

PB: Hmm . Is that where your Copper Mine is?

GH : The Copper Mine is xtually on the coast, just west of Ngeshtu Head

PB: Oh, ova there.

GH: So, it's actually there with the active collaboration of the Pachi Lei . But we'dlove tp know what's going on further
north.

PB: The Padni Lei are still these? I thought they'dall been booted out by the Mu'ugiavyani.

GH: There's a bunch that retreated up into the hills up towards Ngeshtu Head

PB: Ah, so they're still there. Okay.

GH: What we wanted to know is what happenedwith the Mu'uglavyani .

PB: The Mu'uglavyani occupied Pan Chaka pretty well, andthey're still there. They're holding than own there. The
Pachi Lei of couse want them out, but the Tsolyani have been unable to supply troops and so forth down in that area.
After the last war with Emperor Dhich'une they manned to get rid of mast ofthe foreign incursions, but the
Mu'uglavyani then procedrd to invade Do Chaka, and got tangled up in the forest. The Pachi Lei was driven out, but the
Pe Choi refused to give up, refused to let the Mu'uglavyani go through . So the Mu'ugiavyani originally tried a short
quick siege of Trmrissa, and that failed, andthey retreated back into the Chakas, and there they are .

GH:So who is holding Butrus now?

PB : Holding Bums sti1L

GH: Who's in there?

PB : They're in there .

GH: The RedHats are?

PB: Yeah.

GH: I wasn't sure if they'd pulled bxk .

PB: Well, no, the Red Hats are very stubborn people They refuse to pull back, and they're holding Butns, and the
Tsolyani are busy on theEastem front with those a-azy Salarvyani invading the whole area up anddown Sokatis. They
 were unable to raise enough military stuff to get the Mu'uglavyaii out of Pan Chaka. As a general area, it's one that's
never been in Tsolyani hands really . It's always bin sort of a Pachi Lei city, andthe Tsolyani have always said, ifthe
Pachi Lei want the Mu'uglavyani out of them all they have to dJ is starve them out And the Pachi Lei, of course, have
no great military capability, and many of them are refuges down into the Tsolyani Morchavtla?? Swamps acrd that area.

GH: What about the Ito clan?

PB: Clan Ito are still in charge in Do Chaka, and they were helping the Pe Clroi actively to resist the Mu'uglavyani.

GH: Have the Ito ever collaborated with the Mu'uglavyani?

PB : A couple of them did but not the major Ito leaders Blitto?? Ito never collaborated actively . Pego?? Ito, on the other
hand his younger brother, didcollaborate somewhat But since even now he's stoppeddoing that. He's arefugee
somewhere in Tsolyanu . I don't envy you trying to run a Copper Mine down in there these days . That's one hell of a
job .

??: But they have such excellent mangers there!

PB: The managers don't matter. What happens is one of these days the Mu'uglavyani army's going to arrive and say,
"We want this ." They're going to have trouble getting there; it's a very remote area

GH: They've already been raided . .

PB: They may sail in down from Kaitus?? They couldget there from Kaitus; it's not too difficult, aroundNgeshtu Head
andup into that area, and then if your people have got people shipping copper down, they must have a road up to it in
order to ship the copper out of the area, and the 1Vlu'uglavyani can use that same road to get in. You may be in for a bit
of a batty sooner or later, d pending on how well the Mu'uglavyani do north up there, up in Do Chaka. If they do well
in the north and get the Tsolyani driven back across the border and get the Pe Choi back arxi get everybody out of these,
then they can devote their attention to things likethe copper mine down there.

GH : You've anticipated a lot ofwhat happens in our scenario! We'll send it to you .

PB: The thing is, these scenarios teal to become more real than reality. They tend to happen as people think they might
happen, andthey happen that way in my world too. I don't quite know why.

DA: We spent months andmonths hoping to have it paallel your world as closely as we could andwe will send you a
copy of it .

PB: I want it. By all means, if you guys want to write it up andgive it to Karl forpubliration, feel free.

DA: He's talked about that. Obviously, we'dvery much like you to have a chance to look at it.

PB: I'd like to look at it of purse before you do. I can help you fix your names and whatever else you've got in these,
those little details that sometimes get fudged up and all that kind ofstuff.

DA: Maybe we can talk to you about doing some kindof artwork for us.

PB: Great! Gio is a great artist; she s right there She can do it.

GF: The next one might have to be the all-Gio version of Seal, since Trent Wood still isn't to be found

PB: David Sutherland is back now for all of your entertainment, the guy who d-ew the original Tekumel illustrations for
Empire of the Petal Thrane yeas ago .
JS : Where's he been all these years?

PB: He's bin driving an eighteen wheeler track! He worked for TSR for many years until TSR finally kindof blew up
or he blew up or something happened, and heleft TSR and went off to drive a truck, and now he's given that up and is
now settling back here in the Twin Cities . So he'll be with us shortly . He's a real good artist . He andGio together can
make sweet music .

GF : Along with Ken .

PB: Well, yeah, if you can get Ken interested in drawing stuff, Ken was always a great artist. He always thought of
himself as a cartoonist but he really was much better at drawing Tekumd than a lot of other artists who do try to draw
Tekumel over the years. He was really able to get the spirit andfeeling for some ofthe Tekumelyani buildings and so
forth .

JP: Back to the Ditlana for a second, when the people in charge decide to cb this do they work
out a master plan of what they want the new city to look like?

PB: They work out a plan, yes . They build a scale model usually in clay or something in Avanthar and produce it before
the Imperial Court of Purple Robes, which is the highest Imperial advisory body, andget their input on it, andthen they
deal with the bucgets and all that sort of thing and deal with where they're going to get the labor from and which clans
are going to be involvedand who's going to benefit from all this. Complicatal

JP: f m guessing that due to their cultural biases that they wouldn't have large sections where all the buildings were in a
similar style andlookedthe same, that they might start that way, but due to haggling negotiations, different clans,
different people wanting different things, you'd get a great diversity .

PB: Yeah, things change. You ge places where things start one way andend up another because the local clans dsagree,
or there isn't enough of some raw material, wood or stone of particular kinds. So they endue disagreeing and aguing
about it, plans get thrown out, changed, whatever. This happens here as well as there.

JP : So they woulch't go for a unifiedlook?Everything would look delightfully dissimilar?

PB: Mmhmm . The similarities of course on Tekumel would be pretty great, because they're using a ~ntralizerl
government, with a centralizedattitude towads the kinds of structures they want and sorts of architecture they want. They
cbn't have different subcultures arguing for different sorts ofthings. You get Mexican subculture in New Mexim and
gothic subculture in Massachusetts or something . Things tend to be pretty similar in Tsolyanu .

BS : With the rarity of iron on Tekumel, have the Tsolyani or anybody utilizedbog iron?

PB: Bog iron?

BS : Yes, peat bogs have a natural tendency to concartrate environmental iron.

PB: They don't use that much, ~ far as I know. There may be some somewhere. I don't think they lmow about it.

BS : We had a great conversation on the e-mail list about an alternative source of iron. I was wondering how familiar you
are with the clan of blood boilers . Well, it occurred to me that there's not much iron around, and if you look at the
value. . . Well, a kaitau-'s worth of iron is a pretty small cpantity of iron!

PB: I wonder how many people that would take! Well, actually there's iron on Tekumel, but it's either akeady made up
into steel, which the Tsolyani can't melt ; they can't reforge steel very easily . Or else it's in very very small duantities in
very poor ore, so they have a lot of trouble getting iron out ofanything. There are iron mines. There are plains where
they do have iron; Kashkomai is one of them.
PBr: I've got a grestion about militay uniforms and the colors they use . In many cases I unders tand they have
religious and social affiliations, but there are cases where it would appear that, for example in
the Chegarran military, there are sections where they are, acconling to the painting guide,
lacquered black. Is that because of some specific historical or.. .?

PB: Yeah, it's where they come from and what they're original sponsors provicbd or authori~d or wanted The original
plans that sponsored that legion hadsomething to d with the manufacture ofblack Both or black dyes, so they endedup
with black. And others had to d with other colors or other fabrics andwere able to produco different things . This is all
largely dependent on clan attitudes and ides, so that you'd have to go back into history and look at each clan that
sponsored a legion and see exactly what the original reasoning was .

PBr : If the legion were sponsored by a temple rather than a clan, would those choices be
influenced by matters of theology?

PB: The legions sponsored by temples of coure are very very mud dependent upon the temple for support and hence
would try to do things a:cording to the liking of that particular temple. They wouldfavorcertain color and certain
designs andcertain glyphs or symbols on their uniforms, and you'd get a kindof a temple uniform, which again differ
from the actual temple guards, who are soldiers maintained by the temple to guard the temple and to sort of protect the
temple from local uprisings or anything like that. Some legions are closer to theirtemples than others . Some have
offshoots that are temple guardunits and the military units are separate. It gets complicated as to which temple you're in
and where they got their legion from.

PBr: Yes, I noticed that one ofthe legions sponsored by Chegama endedup with blade lacquered uniforms!

PB: Yeah, because the old sponsors were manufacturers ofblack dye.

??: Not because the old sponsor werethe temple of Ksarul or something?

PB : No, no, no, not at all . They just happened to be in that particular business of producing black dye, and black seemed
like a goodcolor to whoever it was running the show, who produced that legion .

JS: Of coure, years after the fact there may be other stories drculating through the ranks .

PB: Certainly . Don't expect to have just one story on Tekumel .

??: I have sort of a big, general question about the influence and wealth and extensiveness of the
different temples. It's not clear to me whether there are some temples that have coon;
worshippers or own more land or. ..?

PB: The answer is yes, there are temples that are much more powerful because they have more worshippers . Avanthe, for
example, doesn't show up much as a military legion sponsor, andyet it has lots andlots ofland and lots of worshippers
all up anddown the central Missuma over, and so therefore what Avanthe's people approve of gets approved in Avantha .
They have pressure; they have input on things . The military legions, however, the Karakan legions and the Vimuhla
legions are largely supported bY Fasiltum on one side or Khirgar on the other, and they tend to be really powerful only in
those areas, not very powerful outsid;. Some temples are quite weak all around They just dn't have a lot of heavily
military people or very wealthy people.

??: Which temples are the weakest?

PB: Well I suppose one of the weakest wouldbe the golden temples, like Belkanu, which pretty well runs the city of
Thraya, but that's about the only place that it has a truly major presence. They're very powerful in T'hrayar, and of course
the people who are Belkanu priests nm the funeral apparatus for a goodpart of the Empire. All temples - well, not all
because the Sarku temples don't, nor the Vimuhla temples that bum their dead- but those who bury their dead tend to go
to Belkanu to have their funeral ceremonies done, and therefore they can a lot of money. But they don't have a large
military presence so they kindof speciali~ in spiritual mattes, other-planar magic andNexus point theology and that
kindof thing .

FAREWELL AND ENDS.