Minor worldbuilding help

[mrissa]

So I'm working on a thing, and in this thing, some gods have devised a system of handing out magic powers based on birth order. These gods are non-hypothetical: they show up in person. They are also highly idiosyncratic. So the question at hand is not going to be a matter of The Universe Is Like That, because there are other gods elsewhere in this thing that do things very differently. So it's not that All Firstborns Everywhere Are Like X, it's that these specific local powers have decided to treat firstborns in a certain way and secondborns in another and so on.

I got to thinking -- not that it's going to be relevant, of course -- about what happens if one of the older siblings gets killed while the parents are still having kids. And so far I don't have a very good story-related way to say that it should work one way or another, so here I am asking you:

[Poll #674498]

If your answer is, "Don't do it that way at all," please just don't answer.

I'm also very charmed by the elephant selkies timprov and I have been discussing. "Because selkies are all 'oooh, I have soft brown eyes,'" I said, "and then, hrrrronnnnnnnk!" There will also be walkies. Not the kind I'm taking Ista on in a minute, either. The kind with tusks. But not in this thing. Not until the next thing, because there's not room in this thing for half of what's in it, much less more stuff, and I know more stuff will sneak in accidentally. So we will plan the elephant selkies ---hrrrrronnnk! -- for later.

Now I'm going around the house going hrrrronnnnk!

Because I am delicate and demure, is why.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I can see all sorts of arguments. Given that any interesting literary magic takes some effort, and rewards that effort, #2 produces more stable results, and #3 perhaps more interesting story problems. Hmmm; #1 does also, as the family with 5 kids might not have the 5 powers expected.

Were these gods trying to accomplish something specific with this system? Like making it possible for most families to thrive? Or just playing games?

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I think birthorder gifts should stay regardless of intervening events. This could make for some interesting conflict, when a person is nominally the "first born" but doesn't have the gifts to do the first born thing in a first born kind of way.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

Hrrrooonk!

I think it should depend on how close-knit the key families are in your story, and here's why:

If the family is close-knit, I would go with option 1. There would be an assumption that by having x children the family got access to powers 1 through x. Thus, losing a sib out of the sequence means the family sudden loses the powers that sib had. Plot will ensue.

If it is a story about individuals operating out of a family/sibling structure, I'd go with 3. Individual who currently has (and is used to solving problems with), e.g., power over water "stuff" loses a sib and suddenly has power only over plant "stuff." Plot will ensue.

Them's my thoughts. Hhhhrrrooooonk!

[jenett]

Options 2 and 3 seem to present more possibilities for story weirdness (in the sense of Another Growth Opportunity, this may not be pleasant.)

Option 3 because you could have someone going along for 10, 12, 15 years, planning to be #2, and then all of a sudden, they're #1, and have a completely different set of skills coming to the fore, while losing a set they've relied on for a long time.

(This one seems to me to have a lot of potential for Bujoldian plotting techniques: i.e. "What's the worst thing that could happen to this character right now?")

And option 2 because it seems like it would shake social assumptions - would the personality traits common in oldest children tranfer? Probably not - so you could get someone with a typical last-child personality with the skills of #1, and thereby confuse or annoy people mightily. This one seems most fun if you want to play with social assumptions.

Option 1 seems most sensible if you want to tell a different sort of story entirely (not using either focus), and just want to get on with that.

I can see all three of them working, though the back story behind why they exist would need some varying or something.

[redbird]

Either of two:

The first, which I like better, is that if your immediately-older sibling dies before using their gifts and before you're born, you and any siblings after you move up once. If they're killed fighting trolls at the age of 12, or if they die of a fever at age 1 three days after you're born, you get the gifts you'd have gotten if you were still alive.

The second, which would make the world-building a bit more chaotic, is that the gods aren't consistent about this: If an older sibling dies, they sometimes leave everyone in their original birth order, sometimes do the valency thing, and sometimes move everyone up one. Or they might grab sibling number four, give her the powers of the dead sibling number 2, and move number six up to four while leaving five alone.

The latter would be gods who like to play dice, and might also lead to unprincipled people doing "experiments" by murdering random siblings from large families.

Also, either the "everybody moves up" model or the gods-randomize-stuff model creates new motives for murder. And for making very strong efforts to protect an older sibling who has known enemies, medical problems, or a tendency to take risks, by someone who wants to avoid losing their existing powers.

[kemayo.livejournal.com]

How would this work, vis-a-vis bastards or second marriages? Do the powers accrue in sequence to the offspring of a particular couple, or is it tied to one of the parents?

[sraun]

I like option 1, and I'd declare 'still-born counts' - what summons the god is the mother's labor, and whatever comes out gets gifted with the next power in sequence.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I'm also fond of the idea that the powers get equally distributed amongst the rest of the living siblings when someone dies thereby adding a bit of incentive to kill them.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'd vote for 1 or 3, and I think 3 offers more interesting potential -- then you might find your role in life changing unexpectedly because an older sibling kicked it. (Depending on the awesomeness of these powers, you might even get siblings assassinating their elders so they can have a different one.) If not 3, then 1; 2 doesn't make much metaphysical sense in my head.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Whichever way it goes, it will not be that stillbirths don't "count." I've had too many friends who suffered through them to do it that way.

[blzblack.livejournal.com]

I agree that #3 sounds potentially more dynamic. Who am I really? This happened in Brit royalty a few times (you mean spiting sailor hick, riding around in the royal carriage giving rides to average joes, is going to be king?). Also there could be conflict of inner powers as these get shifted--perhaps the powers themselves get transmuted so that #2 doesn't exactly become #1 but 1.5 or 1.25 or....

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Fathers don't matter for this, only mothers.

[rosefox]

What about abortions and early-term miscarriages? In all seriousness, when does life begin in this universe according to these gods?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For these particular gods, it's when they find out a woman is pregnant. They are not at all omniscient gods, so it's usually quite possible to deliberately hide a pregnancy from them if the woman intends to end the pregnancy. And there are some few cases where the gods have some reason to deliberately find out if a woman is pregnant before she makes it generally known (much less before she finds it out herself), but not many.

Some other gods in this world pay a good deal more attention to conceptions, and others don't notice until the kid is born or even until the kid is old enough to engage in deliberate religious behavior.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Alas, but they are not at all divisible powers.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The gods in question are indeed pretty much jerks. So that's relevant.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I should amend myself: they are not universally jerks. But neither are they universally banned from so being, with the results somewhat similar to humans' potential for jerkitude.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think "everybody moves up when someone dies" would be the most interesting, because people could suddenly switch powers, and there's the potential for dramatic scenes in which someone suddenly can grow plants instead of setting fires, and realizes that his older sister must have died.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

#3 perhaps more interesting story problems

If a second-born magic-user leaves Baltimore going 70 mph....

Surviving/thriving are major factors here, but the gods are not omniscient, nor particularly nice, so they're not the only major factors.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's a very clan-based society.

[zunger.livejournal.com]

These also create different incentives. #1 means that a family will often find itself in the position of "missing power #X" and so have weaknesses, need to contract with other families, etc. #3 creates some potentially nasty incentives for siblings, especially if elder siblings' powers are more interesting. #2 seems to dilute the effect of birth order significance considerably.

#1 also has some interesting implications when remarriage is involved. Is it birth order for that mother, that father, or for both as a couple? The social status of widows could be radically different as a function of which.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As I said as regards an earlier comment, only the mother matters. But the rest of the social structure is not really disadvantageous for widows any more than for widowers -- if that much. Hmm. Yah, as I think of it, widowers are not really in a very good spot, but widows are fine.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, except for the whole "losing their partner" part, which is a bit rough on anyone, one would expect. Other than that detail, though, they're fine.

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

I chose the first one because, assuming the powers for #1 are more desirable than for subsequent kids, it adds all kinds of fun (for some odd value of fun) to the desire for heirs. All the stress you get in some societies over the need to have kids, and the desire for them to be male, gets heightened that way.

[zunger.livejournal.com]

If only the mother matters, doesn't that put more of an onus on widows? A widow remarrying isn't going to provide her future husband with birth order #1, but #X.

(I suppose this depends a lot on how sequential the powers are, if #1 is substantially better than #5 or so)