talking hirelings (this is for you @valerialoves.bsky.social) elmc.at/hirelings-an...

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Like! Cultures have nuance! You need things for people to believe in for the world to have verisimilitude. A living breathing world has gods, and they're not magic, or aliens, or D&Desque "divinities" they are Culture. They're people, practise, and social fabric. Ough. I just love writing this shit!

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I think a lot about the faith in the Dispossessed and Ursula le Guin generally when doing the writing about faith for this game. The idea that no society would "advance" beyond culture and spirituality is so important to me as a writer, even if I am a fairly avowed atheist generally.

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You clutch her close, the tiny fragment of a world you only visited, a souvenir, a tchotchke, a gloried postcard. But, for a moment, when you cut your finger and place a drop of blood in her basin, you can pretend you can still hear music over the hum of station's power grid.

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My goal with wandering saints in Arbor Point was to capture this feel of post-culture anti-social spirituality that treats the faiths of conquered worlds like a TCG. You get executives holding onto desperate scraps of culture trying to be "authentic" in a deeply meaningless late capitalist void.

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