Domains
People constantly shape the world around themselves, and this is most true within their home. The way you might leave a drawer full of things, or where you put that book you were reading, or the smell in the air after you make a nice cup of tea just the way you like it. It all shapes the place with your intentions.
This is true too for truly puissant or masterful individuals. Deliberate work done over the course of decades shapes the workshop by the work, carving the grooves and patterns of mastery into a Locus to help any who would follow the same path. Some philosophical types even pose the concept of an "Ideal" Locus, a place achieved through perfect intention and perfect work in which anything is possible.
Monsters also have Domains if they settle in one place. This slowly twists the world into extensions of their own intentions and compulsions, creating what are colloquially known Dungeons.
Geometristics, according to a Geometrist
Geometrists are wizards, but they do not work spells in the conventional sense.
The Geometrist works with borders, pens, and politics. They toil to shape boundaries, to carve up the world with roads, and borders, and networks, and civilisation.
But not for the sake of their own Domain, at least not entirely.
Geometrists can see the innate "flow" of cause and effect. Whether you'd call it prophecy or fortune or destiny, they may ask a simple question about their Domain and intuitively know an exact- if abstract- path to "achieve" it.
For example: let's say you asked "How could I get everyone in this town to live a really, really long time?"
A normal, conventional thinker would think of normal conventional advice. A clean environment, plentiful resources, etc etc. All of this should reasonably help most residents of the town live longer and better lives.
A Geometrist would have the esoteric insight that the best way to achieve this would be to reconstruct every building to face the south. A road should then be constructed alongside the river to connect it to the town over. The forests to the north should be burned down completely, and not allowed to regrow. And, once this is all finished, any child who cannot yet walk on their own should be killed immediately.
The path as seen by a Geometrist is but one path forward, and more conventional means can arrive at comparable ends, sure. But the path charted by a Geometrist is a GUARANTEED one. As long as the vision is followed, then success is certain.
Only... the bigger the goal, the more grand and complicated the requirements.
Besides the limitations of time and resources, there's also all the damned wandering egos you need to contend with. Sometimes a single person stepping out of place can upset countless years of effort or require even more time to correct things, so reigning in dissidents in advance is key.
And all this goes without mentioning rival Geometrists, with their own paths and their own visions and their own requirements which almost always stand in direct conflict with yours.
Suffice it to say, the guaranteed path is not always the easiest one.
Geometristics, according to a Subversive awaiting execution
Whether Geometristics is even "real" is a matter of debate.
There is some truth to be found there. After all: the dedicated work and intentions of hundreds if not thousands of people surely may shape their greater Domain in some way. And history does have many accounts of inexplicable happenings, seemingly achieved through Geometristics.
However: countless mad lords have committed terrible deeds in the name of supposedly being a Geometrist and fulfilling a glorious vision. Whether they really were and merely stumbled in the process, or were deluded from the start, whose to say?
But even if Geometristics is completely real, it is by nature flawed. It relies on the conceptualisation and asking of a single question by a single fallible being.
Let's say I wanted to create a shining city. One that will surely reign for a thousand years. If the cost of founding that city was feuding and eradicating and destroying countless others, is that a fair path? Is that a fair question?
So I say: what if the Geometrist is asking the wrong question?
A concept I've been stewing on for my MuGM setting, which hopefully fits into Glaugust Challenge 1, #3: Spells of the Evil King.
This post © 2026 by Ro Pham is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
No comments:
Post a Comment