#calorum lore

[wilderebellion]

Calorum Lore Shared in the Dropout Discord

Thank you, Past!Brennan.

Some of them might re-contextualize a thing or two about TRW series. Typically in response to specific questions, but I focused solely on posting Brennan's responses.

Lore on The Ravening War (from April 20, 2020 1:02am ET)

In 1188, a conflict broke out because Count Jacques Tomaté, a Fructeran noble, was by birthright next in line for the throne of Greenhold!

Culture of the Meat Lands (Feb 21, 2020)

Brennan: Meatlanders have clan delineations based on bloodline and their worship/propitiation of The Great Beasts, which is a pagan, polytheistic faith! Warfare between various clans goes back centuries and centuries, a lot like the ancient Celts, so while some Meatlanders might feel kinship with other Meatlanders over outsiders, it's just as common for a given Meatlander to feel THE MOST animosity to a member of an enemy meat clan. So "The Meatlands" doesn't really have a national identity in the same way that, say, Ceresia does, and individuals there are much more likely to define their loyalty by family, clan and faith than by nationality.

(May 18, 2020 8:14pm ET)

The Meatlanders are like ancient Celts: The fact that they don't wear shirts lets southerners stereotype them as barbarians, but their culture is equally as beautiful, ancient and complex as any other land's. Carn is a metropolis full of architectural wonders, beautiful art, etc. Meatlanders rule!!! Labeling them barbarians, like in real life, is a tool artistocrats use to breed xenophobia and hatred into their homleands population, making them more malleable and compliant

The Rocks Sisters (May 1, 2020 11:46pm)

The four sisters were the four archetypal classes! Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue!

Magic Items (April 20, 2020 9:44pm ET)

Magical items aren't quite as prevalent in other nations as they are in Candia!

Amethar's Mom (April 20, 2020 1:21am ET)

Amethar's mother, before she was Queen Pamelia Rocks, was Pamelia Pomegrana, a Fructeran noble!

Magic and Miracle Workers (from April 20, 2020 1:04am, 1:06am, 1:15am)

Brennan: Just like in normal D&D, it takes SPECIFIC training or divinatory magic to tell if magic is arcane or divine, or where its power source originates from! People's reactions to magic are LARGELY based on uninformed prejudice, and aesthetic. This is how Lapin is mostly able to con people.

Even within the Bulbian Church, 99+% of its clergy CAN'T cast magic. Being a miracle worker is a REALLY big fucking deal, and almost always guarantees ROCKETING to the top of the church hierarchy

Liam's magic truly getting him in trouble depends on context! Obvious spellcasting would get him in a lot of trouble, but Candian's magic items usually get a pass from commonfolk because it would be viewed as "alchemy," which isn't seen as being heretical at all!

Leadership in Calorum (from May 6, 2020)

5:32pm ET

Brennan: Plumbeline is the Sovereign Ruler of Fructera, yes! Gustavo had to abdicate in order to become Concordant Emperor! Plumbeline's title is still Lady though, Fructera doesn't have a monarchy, it has a complex consortium of Noble Houses that rule through an orchestrated bloc of alliances, kind of an aristocratic bureaucracy!

5:40pm ET

Brennan: Dairy Islands ALSO a monarchy, just doesn't confer the title of King or Queen to its monarch (uses Prince or Princess), also Ceresia HAS been a monarchy at times, has vacillated between Republic and Imperatorship MANY times, with some dynasties of Imperators lasting a dozen generations or more!

Social Categories

Brennan: All the food nations have weird edge cases, so the delineations are DEFINITELY social and not biological/botanical. Pie people, a combination of grain, butter and fruit, are overwhelmingly Candian. In Calorum, these edge cases would be much like they are in our world, the result of historical wars of conquest, marriages, alliances, etc!

Genetic Complexity (from April 20, 2020 2:14pm ET)

Brennan: Popping in here like a goddamned troll to say that Calorans' DNA are powerfully influenced by more than just their parents genetics, but also by the geographical location of their conception, their gestation and even their childhood dwelling place up through puberty! I suspect that every question I answer only serves to raise further questions, for which I am deeply sorry!!

Other Monarchies in Calorum (May 6, 2020 5:40pm ET)

Brennan: Dairy Islands ALSO a monarchy, just doesn't confer the title of King or Queen to its monarch (uses Prince or Princess), also Ceresia HAS been a monarchy at times, has vacillated between Republic and Imperatorship MANY times, with some dynasties of Imperators lasting a dozen generations or more!

Queer Rights in Calorum (from May 18, 2020 8:23pm)

Brennan: Candia is the MOST permissive of all the nations in terms of most issues, but no nation in Calorum is openly homophobic. However, it's important to remember that archaic concepts like bloodlines, political marriage, heirs and primogentiure [sic], etc. still exist in this world, and are more emphasized and expected in nations outside of Candia, which puts a lot of pressure on the nobility from that end of the spectrum. In a weird way, that means peasants are a lot freer in terms of who and how they love and marry than aristocrats and especially royals, which there is also some interesting IRL research and precedent for!

Post-War Events (May 18, 2020 8:07pm ET)

I don't think any of these are spoilers, but Amethar and Caramelinda married shortly after the war ended. King Jadain died shortly after the war, after the establishment of the Concord!

Funeral Rites of Calorum's Faiths (May 18, 2020 8:04pm ET)

Bulbians practice burial and very formal funereal rites, and have a sharp delineation between body and spirit, so the body which is crass and material goes back into the ground, and the soul joins the Bulb. Meatlanders practice cremation, and have different beliefs based on religious affiliation, but most Great Beast faiths belief that an afterlife is EARNED through great deeds, otherwise you're reincarnated and get to try again!

[brainrockets]

If I think too hard about food people gestation I will lose it. Whatever it is.

Just sitting here like, what in the evolutionary fuck?

I took too many classes in physical anthropology and just keep blue screening trying to figure out how these fucking pretend food people reproduce.

Like they clearly fuck... so some part of it occurs via some process of uh comingling their gametes. But like do they lay eggs? Do they spread seeds in the fields or idk put it in a pot on the windowsill? Did someone give birth to a fucking piece of cake (or I guess conjoined octuplets ie a full cake thanks BRENNAN)???? Like I would have guessed cupcakes grew into cakes but what the hell do I know!

Calorum reproduction is like chihuahuas and great danes having puppies together, kind of upsetting depending on the direction things go.

I felt it deep in my soul when quiddie was yelling about Mendel and Punnett squares.

Like it's already deeply distressing to imagine how their bodies work from a mechanical perspective? Like bipedal posture in hominids is already absurd and walking is just controlled falling and humans die in childbirth due to big brains and tiny pelvic areas and someone gave birth to a Cake! Or a STEAK.

It's fine. I'm fine.

[thevalleyisjolly]

There’s something really fascinating about the different ways in which the Hungry One is understood and conceptualized in Calorum.  In the Bulbosi Church, it’s characterized as an apocalyptic Satan-figure, the cause of suffering in the world and the thing that will one day come to devour everything just because that’s what it does.  Where things really get interesting is in the different sects within and around the Church.  Adherants of the Ramsian Doctrine, for example, believe that it is necessary for the Hungry One to devour the world so that the Bulb can triumph over it - and they believe that the Hungry One will not devour the world so long as it contains “junk food.”  In a similar manner, the Prophidian Heresy and the FDA believe that the Hungry One will not devour the world if it is full of waste -only the FDA consider waste to be general rot and decay rather than the Candians specifically, misanthropy vs xenophobia GO- and that this is therefore the key to preventing the destruction of the world. 

Within the FDA and the Prophidian Heresy, there’s also an intriguing link between body and soul that contradicts mainstream Bulb theology.  Whereas most of the Church believes in a rigid delineation between body and soul, that after death, the body returns to the ground and the soul (if it is not damned) goes to the Bulb, the FDA’s plan of filling the world with rot and decay so that the Hungry One will not devour it suggests, quite radically, that the body just as much if not more so than the soul is what the Hungry One devours.  Mainstream Bulbians believe the stomach of the Hungry One is Hell for damned souls who do not go to the Bulb - the FDA seems to believe that the state of the material is just as important to the Hungry One as the metaphysical and that large enough volumes of rotting decay (which could also be the moral decay that comes with actions in war, but in this case the FDA themselves have the most rotten souls of all) can keep this Devil-figure from consuming anything, regardless of the state of the soul.

On a different level, with Karna, we find the idea that the Hungry One is not just a powerful over-arching entity but rather something which people can relate to and personally interact with.  When Karna kills Sir Drunon and the woman, she takes part of their bodies and burns them “in offering” to the Hungry One.  As the audience, we know that Karna is mechanically a warlock of the Hungry One, with the specific subclass of The Great Old One.  Combined with the offering, the characterization of the Hungry One is as an active, powerful being who, to some degree, can engage with people personally.  Not necessarily in a reciprocal way -you can burn an offering as a sign of respect or acknowledgement without any expectation of receiving something in return- but people like Karna can and do engage with it on an individual and personal level.  Given the fact that when she kills, a new rotten spot appears on her body, it suggests that her relationship to the Hungry One does, in some part, go both ways, that there is something on the other side receiving her votives and responding to them.

Also fascinating to observe, when she kills Sir Drunon, she says “We are all eventual food in the maw of the Hungry One,” and immediately thereafter as she kills the woman he’s with, “I’m sorry, but we are all eventual waste.”  This presents another perspective on the relationship between the Hungry One and the concept of waste. In contrast to the FDA or the Ramsian Doctrine, which believe that the Hungry One won’t devour the world if it is full of waste or junk, Karna’s statements suggest that the process of dying inherently involves becoming waste - and that the Hungry One will still eat that waste nonetheless. 

Then there’s Cumulous and his specific monastic tradition (which is not actually one and the same as the Order of the Spinning Star because it’s stated that there are monks in the Order who draw power from the Bulb; overall, the Order seems to be more an organization of people dedicated to the same goal rather than a religious enclave of people with the same spiritual beliefs).  In ACOC, the first thing Cumulous ever says is, “The Hungry One must feed.”  It’s an interesting phrasing because there’s a very passive connotation - not “The Hungry One must consume” or “The Hungry One must eat,” but rather the use of the term “feed” suggests a little less agency and purpose.  It isn’t going out looking for something to eat, but rather it is feeding on whatever it is given.

Later, Cumulous explains to the party that he does not worship the Hungry One and that it is just a source of power to him.  He can tap into it, just like the Bulbosi miracle workers can tap into the Bulb, but it’s not something that has a real consciousness or its own will and he does not interact with it as if it does.  Combined with his monk subclass (Long Death), the characterization of the Hungry One is less a supernatural powerful figure but more a manifestation of inevitable death and entropy.  Very similarly to Karna’s perspective, it’s going to feed on everything eventually because everyone’s going to die one day.  It might be today, if you happen to be a cheese sailor trying to murder your lawful child duchess, but that’s neither here nor there.

And as Lapin realized in his last moments and as he later showed to Liam, this seems to be the closest understanding to the actual nature of the Hungry One which we have encountered so far in either campaign.  The Hungry One is just a cosmological ball (add that to the list of significant TTRPG orbs!) and while it certainly contains a lot of power, it doesn’t do anything with it other than eat what is delivered into its mouth.  The power and the destruction and the death associated with the Hungry One?  All of that has only been wielded or used by living people, for their own aims and agendas.

Anyways, all this to say that while I don’t think it likely to happen, my dream scenario is for a couple FDA members to flee the scene of whatever plan they had that some or all of the Scrumptious Scoundrels have managed to foil, and as they escape, they run straight into a group of Candian monks (aka what they were actually doing during the Ravening War).  The last thing they hear, after all their scheming to “save” the world, is “The Hungry One must feed.”  And it does.

[afoxysunny]

And finally, we finish one animal drawing for each Calorum kingdom with the Dairy Islands

Some Cream Bunnies, most of the ones depicted here, adapt to the land their habitat borders, giving them a wide variety of possible cream flavors.

It is an honoured tradition in the Dairy Islands to gift a cream bunny to nobility or people you wish to deepen your relationship with, with a bunny that reminds you of them.

Got enough milk? Try -

- Candia, - Ceresia, - Fructera, - Meat Lands, - Vegetania & veggy part 2

[honeybard]

managed to watch the first 45 minutes of the ravening war and as someone who has never watched Matt Mercer DM I like his style!

[officialjimmybuffett]

everyone be #grateful for my ancient dnd sideblog otherwise i would be clogging the dash w whiteman posting rn

[redsandsshoes]

I'm only halfway but I fucking adore the camera constantly cutting to Brennen just smiling so happily and nearly crying happy tears when mercer speaks about calorum lore

[thepringlesofblood]

i am SCREAMING!!!!! YESSSSSYESSSSSSSSSSSSSS ACOC is one of my FAVORITE SERIES ALL TIIIIIME!!!!!!!!

okwearebreathingwearebreathing

I’m going in-depth on the names we have thus far. Calorum is the setting that has some of the cleverest wordplay ever, period, and I want to know EVERYTHING about our new guys!!!!!

let’s get this one out of the way

Colin Provlone (Zac Oyama) - Provolone is a kind of cheese. Colin is a name of Irish/Scottish origin. It’s nice to have one simple one.

Bishop Raphaniel Charlock (Brennan Lee Mulligan) - hmmmm are we going to get an actually Bulbian cleric/warlock this season????

Anyway, the scientific name for wild radish is Raphanus raphanistrum, so that’s probably where Raphaniel came from.

wild radish has two other names - “jointed charlock” and “white charlock”. So there we go.

Your typical red radish (as Brennan described his character to look like) is a subspecies of Raphanus raphanistrum called sativus.

but!!! even MORE interesting!!!! you know what order and family radishes are in? the order BRASSICALES in the family BRASSICACEAE!!!!! Like a certain pontifex we know of??

This could be 100% unintentional, there’s a Lot of vegetables in the family Brassicaceae, but I remain optimistic.

Lady Amangeaux Epiceé du Peche (Anjali Bhimani) - so, Fructera has always been French, natch.

She is a mango! French for mango = la mangue

Amangeaux = almonds (according to google translate, I couldn’t find this word anywhere else online, it’s extremely possible that it’s just the most French-sounding way of saying “a mango”)

Epiceé  = spicy (can be used as slang for y’know. spICY)

du Peche = of peach. maybe she is of house Peach?

Karna Solara (Aabria Iyengar) - this one has me kind of stumped.

there’s the obvious karn->carn->meat connection, but she’s a chili pepper. lmk if there’s some secret vegetable lore I’m missing with ‘karna’

there’s also solar -> sun, which makes sense since the crest of Brightgarden is a big sun, and we see the DM screen this season has a big sun on it.

pLUS when I looked up scientific name for chili pepper, they come from the order Solanales in the family Solanaceae.

Thane Delissandro Katzon (Lou Wilson) -

Katzon

immediately made me think of katsudon- an egg rice bowl w pork cutlet on top.

thank you @blueaerin for your post about how this is most likely a reference to Katz’s Delicatessan, a famous deli in NYC! I never would’ve know that.

Also “katson” = Finnish for “I look” - from the verb “katsoa” meaning “to look at” or “to watch over” - probably nothing.

Delissandro - deli - deli meat

Delicatessen - the double s inspired by this?

while I was looking at Finnish stuff i found out “delissa” means “at the deli” in Finnish

Thane - y’all who read Macbeth know this one.

In Anglo-Saxon culture, It’s a title of a landowner, specifically someone who was gifted land by a king.

In Scotland, it’s a feudal lord.

There’s a connotation of military use in all of the descriptions I’ve found, so judging by the armor he’s wearing, it might be being used as a term for “commander”

[mistyunmoored]

as much as it would have been fun putting him 100% out of his element in sci-fi or something, Calorum is perfect for a Mercer D20 spot.

The goofiest setting which simultaneously had the most heartrending, agonizing, BRUTAL fights, deaths, and relationships of any D20 campaign. Brennan went HARD on the worldbuilding for Calorum (didn’t he say he made like a bazillion page reference/lore doc for acoc?) which fits Matt’s style perfectly. All of it mixes the things Matt is good at with the things D20 is good at, and I think it’ll be really, really fun

Not to mention. The cast. The fucking cast. The seating. The mini previews of characters. Holy shit

[workingwhileidream]

I'm pretty sure I saw a part of Brennan's soul leave his body when he got the How Do You Want To Do This for Queen Pamela. Brennan wrote some of the most in depth lore he's ever written for Calorum, that Pamela died in the Ravening War, and now his character was actually responsible for it. Time is a flat circle and I'm gonna lose it.

[chungledown-bimothy]

i'd do anything to see that Calorum lore doc i'm not even kidding

[wilderebellion]

On the one hand, I know that folks don't necessarily NEED to have seen A Crown of Candy to enjoy The Ravening War. On the other, there are definitely some common questions that new viewers are going to ask, some of which ARE answered in the Adventuring Party episodes for ACoC.

Answers below the cut in a spoiler-friendly manner. No significant plot elements of ACoC are discussed, but there are some character names and candy type that are identified if you haven't seen that series.

Today's Topics include: Caloran Biology, Imbalance of PC Levels, Campaign Tone and Setting, and Is Calorum in a Fridge?

On Biology:

"[. . .] Is there a genetical logic as to what type of candy you are born as?” Part of a submission by Sir Pengy

Brennan: I'll let you guys answer what candy you wanted to be. In terms of genetical logic, just remember one of the people that you met in this episode is a talking slice of cake.

So biology, we take some liberties with biology here. I think that that gets played with pretty fast and loose. Sometimes that matters, and other times it doesn't. You know what I mean?

Like Caramelinda is Carmel, Amethar is Pop Rocks. And their two daughters are licorice. So it's not a hard and fast thing, otherwise after a couple of generations, there wouldn't be, you would be like, I'm a mix of vegetable and whatever else.

And by the way, people from different kingdoms, they're all the same species, so a vegetable person and someone from Ceresia, who is a grain person can absolutely start a family and have children, that's no sweat.

On Imbalance in PC Levels:

Brennan:  Because I saw some tweets and stuff like that and people were going, what's the deal with the level imbalance? We have first level characters, one second level character and some third level characters. [. . .] What we wanted to communicate was a difference in levels based on experience. Amethar and Theo are veterans of the Ravening War.

[. . .] Basically I went to all the players before we started playing, and I was like, you guys can start between first and third level, whatever you think makes sense for your character.

On the Vibe and Tone of the Setting:

Brennan:  [ . . .] it is inherently unfair, which is a vibe of this season, it is communicating that this is not a balanced party. I didn't get these dungeon encounters from a module that are appropriately balanced for a group of X to X level adventurers. That is not the vibe this season. The vibe this season is not about fairness, it is not about things being easy.

[. . .] In a weird way we went the most technical munchkin land, candy land kind of setting. And I would describe this as a low fantasy setting.

All of the characters are mechanically just a human variant, with plus two stats, skill, feat. And that goes for all Calorans in Calorum are all the same species, even though there are slices of cake and apples and stuff like that, it's just one. It is that kind of Westeros vibe of we're all one species and magic is rare, and there is definitely this vibe of combat is scary, the world is not fair or easy. And that tone is something that you all should expect.

On the Fridge Idea:

"...Also, does this season just take place in a fridge?” Part of a submission by Ezra Davore

Brennan: Maybe you've caught onto my little bulb joke. [. . .] Calorum, there is like a refrigerator joke within the world of Calorum. That is like, the bulb is the sun.

One of the things about Calorum is there are no human beings that eat the people of Calorum. So when I was thinking if people know they’re food, but there is no human beings to eat them, how do they know they’re food?

One of the world building things that happened was them basically going like, their belief that they're food becomes a religious conviction. So what ends up happening is all of the faiths of Calorum, the main one being Bulbian Church, but then the older more pagan beliefs revolve around a religious conviction the people are food, and what that means in terms of their cosmology. We get more into that later in the season, but that's the basic idea there.

"Are the Dice Scripted?" Adventuring Party Ep 1

[islandoforder]

never made a calorum oc before but suddenly thinking about whether tea and coffee would be in fructara or vegitania or like an archipelago near the dairy islands or what?? someone deep into the acoc lore must know/have decided, please spread the good word

[thefantastickatinator]

I dunno why people are so concerned/salty about Matt Mercer doing a Crown of Candy prequel.

All of us spent a lot of time speculating on what he would do- would it be an original concept? A starstruck side-quest? I was really concerned because I wasn’t sure how Matt Mercer’s lore-heavy, more serious DM style would work with Dimension 20’s energy.

Honestly, when I saw the trailer for The Ravening War I was relieved. My first thought was “if I was going to have Matt Mercer DM an existing universe in the dimension 20 lexicon, Crown of Candy would be it”.

Brennan’s talked before about how much lore that season had in comparison to other seasons (he sent literally pages of it to his players). In many ways it’s unique because it doesn’t really have the kind of source material that his other universes did (Fantasy high - traditional fantasy and therefore faerun/dnd inspiration, Unsleeping City- new york, Starstruck- his own mom’s story, Neverafter - fairytales). So Brennan had to do the world building himself.

One of Matt Mercer’s strengths is his world building and detailed descriptions, which I think lends itself really well to Calorum.

I also think this is basically the one opportunity we’ll get to see another campaign in Calorum as well as a grittier, dramatic/emotional season. The Intrepid Heroes aren’t going to revisit it, for sure.

Also, it’s only 6 episodes, so chill out.

[bloodyshadow1]

for the new d20/acoc season I made a list of pros and cons

Pros

Too many to mention but I’ll try

Brennan getting to play in a world he made

Matt getting to dm for Aabria and Brennan

Lou getting to play in a game dm’d by matt, I remember him wanting to be in a campaign with him one season and now he gets too

More calorum lore

Aabria and Anjali are gorgeous as always

Mango Jessica rabbit need I say more

Lou and Zac getting to play with Brennan, it’s always cool to see the players get to play with their dm in a game

Can’t wait to guess what classes everyone are

We might get to see Amathar’s sisters

Lou was one of my favorite parts of ACoC so I’m glad he’s here in the prequel as well, kind of wish he was playing a young Amathar but that’s not really fair of a criticism

Cons

gonna be honest there being 5 players in the dome is bothering me far more than it should, there should be 4 or 6, 5 feels wrong

are they going to be fighting against Candia because that would be sad

ACOC was very stressful and I’m not sure if I can deal with that again

I was hoping that another CR person would be there, just personally.  I think it would have been neat for Matt to have a CR friend to heckle him when he’s doing a d20 prequel like Brennan had Lou his d20 friend to heckle him when he did a prequel to CR

Low magic settings at low levels kind of bother me personally, but I’m still excited for it

When Matt pulled the sword out in the trailer I had homestuck flashbacks

We might have to see Amathar’s sisters die

Other:

It seems like they might be playing a bad guy campaign, or at least anti-hero/otherside given that they’re called scrumptious scoundrels as their group name

Don’t really know where this all fits because I’m pretty sure since if I recall in the Ravening war, it was Candia, Fructerra, and the dairy isles, vs the Vegitainia, the Meat lands, and Cersia

we have 1 fruit, 2 vegetables, one meat, one cheese which wouldn’t matter much if they’re a rogue faction or something, but seems odd to be fighting on the same side

If they kill Cal in the past does that save Amathar’s hot sisters?

Is Matt capable of being as bloodthirsty as ACoC demands to give Brennan a taste of his own medicine?

[rlpersephone3259]

You know what? I really really want that Calorum lore doc.

Desperately.