Southeast Asia in Fantasy (or how PSYCHOPOMPS is about death)

In creating the setting of PSYCHOPOMPS, I began with thinking of the dead. When I imagine death, I recall thick yellow sheets blocking foreign eyes, void decks with white plastic chairs, the incense smoke and quiet chatter, and the taste of fried noodles, coming to us in bulk from a nearby hawker centre. I recall circling the coffin, the tiny window revealing wisps of mould and fungi that had begin to eat away at a week-old corpse. I sit there, in clothes that would be burnt with piles and piles of paper ingots. In this conception of death, all I could see was my culture and my home. This inspired the Southeast Asian setting of PSYCHOPOMPS, which fundamentally is of death.

Southeast Asia is a uniquely distinct aesthetic from the traditions of Tolkien and Lewis. Rather than rolling vistas and carpets of snow, it is a land of overgrown jungle, and a thick, humid heat that is broken by torrents of pelting rain. Monsoonal storms rage, transforming sun-baked earth into wet mud. It is cramped, a land of neighbours and rivals, all of which bear the cultural and historical marks of centuries of different colonisers. It is a patchwork land, melting together under the same ever-scorching sun. This mongrel aesthetic, a bastard amongst purebreds, is a key mark of a confluence of different influences. Being caught in between the West and East has led to a multi-faceted and at times, confused identity. An infinity of languages, pidgins, dialects and patois are spoken in the markets, stocked by the ships that rush in and out of ports. It is a land of many gods, and a necessary acceptance of this multiplicity. Trade and the availability of spices and commodities fuel its rapid growth and place in the world market. A landlocked region leads to insularity, a certain narrow-mindedness that comes with limited entry and exit. Access to the waters of the world means access to the entirety of the world.

This presents an interesting setting, one in which many different cultures and histories can be explored. Certain European media have been criticised for a lack of diversity and/or shoehorned diversity that is incongruous. This may be an unfortunate result of the relative homogeneity of certain cultures but also a moot point when we deal with the results of years of colonisation and cross-cultural pollination. The messy connections between neighbours, infinitely similar and different, create the perfect environment for conflict. The fundamental beauty of Southeast Asia is in its density, the cacophony of contrast and mild dissimilarity of an urban environment expanded to a region. We could compare this to Western Europe, where one might take a road trip and end up visiting two different countries within the day. Yet there is perhaps less of the familiarity between states, less of that shared cultural identity. As much as the British and French seem to revel in their rivalry, they are siblings born of the same family. Southeast Asia's individual countries behave more like cousins, raised apart in different environments. 

Returning to the topic of the dead, PSYCHOPOMPS's central conceit of the Resurrection is tied to the Southeast Asian fascination with death and its relative impermanency. Fundamental to the Buddhist and Hindu elements of religion is the transitionary state of death. Even more fascinating is perhaps the fact that we speak with the dead. The dead are not far away from us in Southeast Asia. Our ancestors remain fully aware of us and we are able to interact with them, via prayers, burnt offerings and curses. Some Indonesian tribes, like the Torajan, even go as far as to keep their dead mummified for years after they die, dressing and interacting with them as per normal. Monks are buried into statues or displayed in glass coffins to be given gifts and prayed to. PSYCHOPOMPS takes this to a fantastic extreme. What if they physically came back? What if  death was no longer final, merely a transitionary phase? What if we when we pray to the dead, they can physically answer?

Adding to it is the Buddhist concept of Samsara, the world and the cycle of life and death. This world is made of suffering and the cycle perpetuates this suffering. Stagnancy is thus significant, a sign of unwellness and unproductivity. Breaking the cycle is paramount, a means in which we can escape the repetition of society, the world and the self. This lent itself very well to the idea of the "punk" genre, centred around the opposition to structures and establishment. The cycle keeps everyone in their "rightful" place, distributing as a divine machination. Yet, if the mechanism is omnipotent but not omniscient, capable but not competent, then the only means of right is to rebel against the mechanism itself. Capitalism, discrimination, bureaucracy are all symptoms of this mechanism and the setting aims to discuss the opposition to this. PSYCHOPOMPS is the cyberpunk movie, with ghosts and swords rather than A.I and lasers.

The heavy, humid air that hangs almost solid in the midday sun, is perhaps the most apt representation of this stagnancy. 

The Exorcised Cities live, amidst the dead world

 The Exorcised Cities of Liurza are a complicated intersection of city, state, territory and gang. They are the last bastions of human civilisation, the final seeds from which humanity may bloom after the Shattering. Each of them represent a mortal tenacity, an ingenuity and innovation built upon a reckless clinging to life. There is tension, a byproduct of decades of isolation and a deep mistrust. Brutal landwars and realpolitik is at play, the Cities famously "unrivalled under the sun, except for one another". Yet, they cling to each other in trade, their impenetrable gates wide open for the rich merchants that travel the White Roads. These immense highways of white salt (and the cartloads of silver that ride on them) are the sole reason Liurza remains a united country. Only the City of Parakris, the Sky-piercing Blade of the Heavens, is truly separated, by mountain first, undead horde second and forest of knives third. 

Corphaksa:

The Divine Spider sits upon its crystalline web of ivory roads, its every move sending shockwaves and reverberations. Corphaksa is the First and Greatest amongst the Exorcised Cities, the centre of Liurzan sovereignty and the heartbeat of its trade. From its architects came the salt walls that make up much of Corphaksa proper, as well as the spanning White Roads that bring seafood from the east, iron from the north and trinkets from the south. It sits upon the lip of Lake Yan, deathly to the sip. Corphaksa is said to be the City of many gods, and indeed we see rows and rows of temples lining its curving streets. In this centre of commerce and trade, the guilds battle each other for corporate supremacy. Every piece of silver was traded for with blood and steel. The poor, the ambitious and the bored all flock to this city in the west, quite possibly humanity's largest and most prosperous. The grand architect of the revival of Liurza, the Heavenly Tyrant resides in Corphaksa. From this seat of power, he continues his machinations to revitalise the region, without care for the mortal costs.

Irysl:

Each hour of the day is heralded by the toll of the Divine Bell of Ruin. It rings throughout the city, destroying any monster within earshot. Irysl is divinely protected by a remnant of the past, an ancient relic that repels evil. It has tied its survival to this Bell, which has both allowed it to flourish as the centre for magical research and crippled it, unable to expand beyond the scope of the Bell's rings. It is thus a small city, dwarfed by the other of the Southern Twins in Wealn. Ask the scholarly exorcists that train in the academy and none of them can tell you which came first, Irysl or Wealn. There is a tense rivalry between these two neighbouring cities, as siblings are wont to quarrel. In its pristine shops, artifacts and equipment are abundant, courtesy of the scholars and artisans that flock to its academies and masters. The Master College for warlocks is built here, the final step for the land's most distinguished (or well-connected) students. You will see the effects of this meritocracy in the streets, as peasants memorise books while pulling rickshaws, aiming for a chance at a better life. Some might even succeed.

Parakris:

This City is lost to the rest of us. We will speak no longer of Parakris and the Hundred Year Siege.

Seicho-Ran:

The fragrance is the first thing that hits you as you approach the north-east. The Xiangsui or Fragrant Sleep grows abundant in the hills towards the tip of the continent. It covers the dark clay walls of Seicho-Ran and can only grow in the clay soil of the region. It lures the monsters to a daze, soothing their fires and calming them. The flower fields are littered with sleeping spirits, making careless travels extremely dangerous along the Scented Shores. The Ran of the city are cartographers and botanists, their study of the unique flora and forests have seen tremendous results. The city is tranquil and soothing and one might almost imagine it to have been untouched by the Shattering. Yet, observe carefully and one might notice the narcotised smiles of addicts lying on the streets, the green smiles of peasants as they choke down cheap herbs for nutrition and the disfigured smiles of common folk, after-effects of alchemy. The city is a rose, its thorns many and subtle. One comes for the drink, food and luxury and may never again leave.

Suido-Kath:

The wandering city of Suido-Kath haunts the coasts of Liurza. Built onto the back of a gargantuan monstrosity some worship as a god, it follows the creature's annual migratory cycle. The city is thus a centre for continent-wide commerce, connecting blue-iron blades from Tortoi to the enchanters of Irysl, the paper men of Wealn to the floral farms of Seicho-Ran. Visiting it is challenging and it is wise to have a schedule of the creature's movements. As the most culturally-diverse and rich of the cities, it is a cacophony of spice and slang, of gods and men. The city is frequently on the brink of collapse, with lower floors falling off the creature over time and they can only keep building up. Mariners and pirates take to this city, clinging to the sides of the creature like barnacles and feeder fish. The Central Bank of Souls, Maas, is located here where the sailors may place their soul jar securely for their journeys. The city is safe from the Drowned God due to its constant movement but some of the Drowned do present a danger to its people and infrastructure.

Tortoi:

The old capital to the North sits on Fang Bay, the site of first landing. The Fortress City of Tortoi is built under this ancient architecture, into the mines that have made it the centre of metallurgy and stone-working. A waterfall flows through the centre of this vertical city, the only other source of hydration besides the series of fermented beverages and alcohols created from the stacks of fungi farms. It is a hive of blue iron and stone, its pitch black walls lit only by the flames of the forge and ghostly lamps. As the premier location for industry and manufacturing, it is where one may find well-crafted blades and devices. Tread lower into the floors and one may encounter the horrors of the dark, the spirits that scramble and crawl in the depths of the earth.

Wealn:

Wealn is the other of the Southern Twins, half of the Exorcised Cities renowned for the creation of magical items and equipment. It is a land of the learned, authors and poets flock to its teeming streets and scholars stroll along its papered walls. As you enter, you will first notice these walls, thick stone but entirely caked in paper, with an infinity of strokes and dashes in an infinity of handwriting plastered over all of them. These talismans keep the dead at bay. Others are used for manual labour, tall oxen folded out of paper work dry fields and man-shaped slips of red hurriedly deliver themselves. In Wealn and Wealn alone, a certain type of wizard is tolerated, a practitioner of the arcane talismans and words of power. Rather than physical artifacts and wands of Irysl, Wealn puts its trust in knowledge and memory.

Session 0

I recently began a Dungeons and Dragons campaign using the PSYCHOPOMPS setting with several of my friends. While we have played prior to this, their grasp of the rules and general concepts of 5th edition is fraught and I felt it best that I supervised character creation. Furthermore, the nature of the setting I intended to use and the changes to the rules I would make meant that some degree of explanation was in order. So we arranged a Session 0 to get together and create characters, as well as establish a basic understanding of the world they are about to play in.

Firstly, when it came to establishing the world and giving them an idea of the kind of campaign I was to be running, I found that describing it using historical culture and time periods was the most useful. Especially since we were all Singaporean, it was a lot easier for them to imagine the sort of culture that would be commonplace in PSYCHOPOMPS. The early Twentieth Century was a little more difficult to picture and I had to place it in context for a little better understanding. As PSYCHOPOMPS draws a lot from several niche interests of mine, it was difficult for me to convey the tone and aesthetic of the setting without resorting to referencing these media and leaving them lost. We did eventually get to a common understanding which set the stage for character creation.

Character creation was done separately, using Zoom breakout rooms. This was an interview of sorts, a short discussion of the types of characters that they would ultimately be playing and me providing some advice on how to functionally implement it in the mechanics of the game.

DA wanted to create a stealth assassin damage-dealing character, perhaps drawing from his understanding of MOBAs and the specific team roles. He is one of the player that is most new to the game of Dungeons and Dragons so it was interesting to see how he viewed certain character archetypes and roles. He decided on an Asura Rogue in the end. (I'm actually quite shocked that there were as many of the party that wanted to play the custom races that I had devised. As one player had mentioned, "you can play a zombie, robot, bugman or human").

A is a returning player from my previous campaign and perhaps the most invested in the lore and history of their previous characters. I had mentioned earlier that their prior campaign was set in the same world, just a few centuries ago, way before the apocalypse. This meant that she wanted to create a character that had investigative abilities and could explore the world at large to see how it changed. She decided on a Ghoul Ranger. 

S is another returning player who might be the most experienced in the game, seeing as she had played in other campaigns as well. She was most excited to role play and mentioned wanting to play a Barbarian as she had been playing wizards all this time. She felt drawn to the Deva, particularly the specifically non biological physiology that would lead to roleplaying opportunities. She settled on a Deva Barbarian and specifically requested that it be a secret. (Unfortunately, during the very communal filling in of the character sheet I had accidentally let this secret slip. S if you ever read this, I'm really sorry).

DE comes from my previous campaign as well but is still a bit unfamiliar with the game in general. He came into this character discussion with a very strong concept however, and this allowed us a lot of fruitful characterisation. He specifically wanted a character that represented a certain type of asian parent, a disapproving father-in-law. He wanted to play a Bard and reflavour all its magical abilities as his minor manipulations and scoldings spurring the party to do better, basically making his version of the Bard a purely nonmagical motivational speaker. He also wanted to explore certain elements of nationality and citizenship, so he decided to play as a human who was born outside of Liurza and then raised within it. In the end. we finally settled on his Human Bard (whom I affectionately nicknamed "Gaslight Grandpa").

E came in late to the meeting and so I had to explain the setting to him privately. He was excited by the concept and was drawn to my drawing of the Deva. He asked about the needs of the group and I mentioned that they had all picked classes that were relatively easy to kill so another melee combatant would be great. To differentiate him from S, I suggested he play a Fighter, one that could wield guns in combat like the Terminator. He was very much agreeable to this and thus he decided on a Deva Fighter.

X had actually texted me before this session 0 with his character ideas so we did those beforehand. X was definitely the most knowledgeable of all my players and specifically was interested in optimising his character. He wanted to play a specific type of magic-user and we brainstormed for a bit before finally deciding. He was an interesting person to create a character with as he focused a lot on the mechanics of the game itself, so much of our discussion was based on characterisation and flavour. He settled on a Human Warlock and we finalised elements of his backstory on that same day.

We ended with character relationships and filling in the character sheets.

A few lessons I've learnt:

1- My player were much more willing to play the more monstrous races I had created which was a bit of a shock to me. They had been such a big fan of the Elves from standard DND that it seemed like they wouldn't have been interested in my less traditionally "pretty" races. I am quite grateful that they were willing to explore what I think are really interesting races.

2- There were fewer magic-users than I expected. Among a group of 6 players, only one wanted to play a magical class. This could have something to do with the fact that managing and choosing spells was a struggle for many of them in my previous campaign and the fact that only X, who studies dice probabilities and puts his spells in a spreadsheet, picked a magical character seems to confirm this. This works well for the gritty, horror setting that I had intended and the worries I had of magic breaking immersion and the setting are slightly lessened.

3- It was particularly frustrating to coordinate the process of mechanically creating 6 characters with people who had not refreshed themselves on the rules of the game. X was the only one I could trust to do it independent of my help and the rest of them definitely did not subvert my expectations. It will now be a policy at my table that all players must be familiar with the basics of the game, the standard terms and their character abilities. I was a bit disappointed, considering that I was only running 5e on their request and they had not even taken the effort to learn it.

4- Creating character relationships was a really fun exercise. An issue I had with the previous game was that the players started to have conflicts and issues with one another as their characters wanted to do drastically different things and had no incentives towards staying together as a party. This could be said to be an issue with the players involved but I felt that by doing this, we could mitigate some of those issues. Creating character relationships allowed all of them to start tangentially related and flesh out some elements of their backstory as a prompt. The party basically centers around two figures, A and DE's characters, with the rest a combination of stalkers and drinking acquaintances.

I am excited for our first session of actual play, where I can perhaps test the setting even more.

The blessed damned stalks the world, pity the Ghoul

The world is truly damned and death is all around. The divine mechanism is faulty but balance is still its sole purpose. Thus, the Ghouls are the most common type of sentient Resurrected, a blessing and a curse on the world. They are the altar cleaners and sin eaters, born to purify the dead. When man drops dead and his corpse is devoured, it will not rise again. They are the cycle's response to the restless dead and thus their suffering is as eternal as death itself. They are cursed with insatiable hunger for the flesh of man and food turns to dust in their mouths.

Artist's rendition of a hungry Ghoul

The Ghoul looks emaciated. From far, one may mistake them for an opium addict, helplessly gaunt. Their hollow, deep-set eyes don't help this, dark black sclera and pupils with golden irises. The combination of agelessness and endless starvation means that they are often withdrawn and moody; their diet of human flesh means that most people will never get a chance to find that out. On their blue-grey skin, most ghouls are heavily tattooed, lines and lines of names spanning their limbs and torso. It is a superstition and also penance, the Ghouls keep records of everyone they eat. It is in the act of eating where they especially horrify, their mouths open slightly too large and their teeth slightly too sharp. Most ghouls keep the bottoms of their faces covered with veils or muzzles to give some mild reassurance to the general public. They are viewed with suspicion and distrust, a necessary evil in society. They are the alternative that smaller villages turn to, as Grave Priests don't often travel to the most remote corners of Liurza.

No one likes seeing a Ghoul smile

Stories warn of Ghouls with kindly, plump faces and pink, unblemished skin.  Consider how many people would have to die to fatten a Ghoul to that extent, how much blood one has to drink to revitalised dead skin. The Unmarked are unrepentant, revelling in their status as a predator rather than scavenger. It is perhaps ironic that the Ghouls that most resemble a human are the most monstrous.

Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya

(The Ghouls is perhaps one of the more difficult races to adapt to 5th Edition DnD. You will have to use the Dhampir from the Gothic Lineages Unearthed Arcana but with some modifications. Remove Darkvision and Spider Climb. Then, the Ghoul gets Relentless Endurance [Half-Orc trait], Resistance to Necrotic Damage, as well as not needing to eat apart from one meal of human flesh a day.)

Hold your swords and spears, draw not the ire of the Asura

When you first see an Asura, what first strikes you is their commanding physique. They are long-limbed and powerfully-built, muscles rippling under translucent clay-brown skin. Upon their head is a mask of bone, which is shaped in the rough approximation of a  face, with a shock of thick, spiky hair. They speak calmly, with a smooth, deep cadence that echos in your bones. As any discussion with the Asura goes, it quickly becomes a heated debate, a battle of words and minds. Their "face" opens up into a vast maw of teeth and eyes as the asura gets progressively more impassioned. This bloom of fangs and flesh is the Asura's true face, the mask-like skeletal growth merely a keratinised growth of horn and scale in a roughly humanoid shape. These masks are often also shaped like animals or insects, and are unique identifiers of an Asura.

Mantis-head Asura

The Asura are are beings of passion and desire. They live life with a joie de vivre unlike any other, a product of a certain degree of impulsivity and trust in the sturdiness of their physiques. As mutable as their physical body, the Asura can be mercurial and erratic. Yet, this is tempered by an open-mindedness and willingness to experience new things. The Asura thrive in states of passion and conflict but fundamentally do not seek it with (much) malice. While they might delight in ridiculing a stubborn wizard in verbal warfare, for them any conflict is a chance to change, a chance to adapt. On first glance, they might be perceived as mere brutes but they have a passion for discovery and learning, and indeed many famed philosophers have been Asura. They are inclined towards chaos, repulsed by overtly restrictive laws and rules that restrict their freedoms and desires. Rather than evil, it is easier to call them self-possessed, wilful and unwilling to live as others would dictate. 

A brief sketch of the "blooming" of an Asura's face

Notably, they are also one of the few sentient Resurrected, usually arising from the deaths of great heroes or fighters. Most Asura currently living in Liurza originate from battlefield Resurrections, from the days of city-states and warlords. The Asura have formed a small (but vocal) minority in Liurza, successfully arguing for citizenship amongst the Exorcised Cities. They have integrated the best amongst human society, given their shared love for fine foods, fighting and alcohol. Famously, Yasa Vaisram founded the Epicures, an organisation devoted to the discovery of new and exciting cuisine.  

(For those wanting to play an Asura in DnD 5e, the Goliath is very easily reskinned into an Asura, simply by replacing Mountain Born's cold damage resistance to a resistance to poison).