#guild-master and journeyman

[sbnkalny]

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, Lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to our neural pre-sets.

eyeoff

[apas-95]

Karl Marx: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman,”

me (under my breath [main exposure to society has been flash animations at this point]): and gandalf the grey and gandalf the white and monty python and the holy grail's black knight

K.M.: “...in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

me:

K.M.:

me: ........... it was the ultimate showdown

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Manifesto of the Communist Party

[ Table of Contents | Next ▹ ]

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians*

* By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

The history of all hitherto existing society† is the history of class struggles.

† That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master‡ and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

‡ Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The Communist Manifesto - Part 1

[ Table of Contents | Next ▹ ]

[noneatnonedotcom]

remnant society and general ramblings from me

@weatherman667 @howlingday @heliosthegriffin @thatorigamiguy

there are two differnet types of aura users, huntsmen who are considered tradesmen. they specifically take on grimm and only grimm though on occasion fight criminals due to the nature of bandits.

they have very simple ranks

apprentice: fresh out of huntsman accadamies these newbies hang around certain towns and cities taking on low level grimm until they build up enough experience and cash to buy all their own gear and pay off their debt to the guild they apprenticed under once their able to care for themselves they are ranked up

journeymen: a journeyman hunter travels between different guild halls taking on upper level grimm, sometimes this is done with a specific group backing them up but mainly a journeyman relys on the guild to back them up and provide lodging and info in new areas. apprentices are mainly the ones providing the info to them.

master: a huntsman who has grown old enough to settle down. these huntsmen become teachers in huntsman academies and guild masters making sure the apprentices and journeymen stay alive longer.

on the other side you have nobels, these are land owners who provide safety to those who rent from them in exchange for material goods and money. their standing is based on how much land they control and how many lesser nobels are under them.

knight: these nobels are the lowest level of land owner. most of their money comes not from their rents but rather from their pay as they work to protect the lands of those nobels over them. typically they own their own home stead and possibly the village that works their fields.

barron: these nobels own a city or castle. often with a mill. their money comes from not only rents but also from people paying to use their mills to turn grain to flower or for use of their storage areas to act as food banks ensuring a random grimm attack doesn't destroy all their stores for winter. they will sometimes hire knights in the surrounding area but mainly are just richer knights still expected to protect their own area from grimm and bandits alike personally

count: these nobles occupy the county capital and receive payments from many villages cities and towns. these are the guys who tend to hire most knights and dispatch them to handle problems throughout their realms. this is the first level of noble who will also receive taxes rather than rent sometimes too. as they receive payment from the barrons under them.

duke: a powerful figure, in charge of many counts, almost all of their money comes from taxes rather than rents. but their seats of power attract larger industries. they tend to hire huntsmen to handle grimm at this point and use their knights to handle criminals in their territories. they are a military leader rather than a government though and most of the actual legislation tends to fall to their councils rather than their own personal whims

there are no longer royal ranks in the modern remnant, most of the military leadership at this level is nonexistent. and the dukes are held in check by the guilds and other dukes preventing anyone from usurping the council. at least in Vale. In Atlas they have an actual military. and vaccuo is mainly divided up by various desert clans.

jaune is a member of house Arc a house that has spread far and wide and mainly expands via handing off territory to other members of the house rather than personally trying to hold greater and greater territory. as a knight and a newly minted one at that he's made waves by entering into a huntsman academy for further training. putting his homestead into a regency until he graduates. this is a problem as he's next in line for a ducal title and if he manages to get some of the guild masters on side he'll be able to make a play to become king. he of course isn't planning on doing this and mainly just wanted to travel and go on quests to fight grimm.

ruby is the daughter of two master huntsmen tai-yang xiao long and summer rose. summer is the master of the local guild and tai passed away when they were attacked by a ancient grimm that some locals managed to awaken and piss off. while she's still in the academy and not considered a huntsman yet she is the closest thing to a princess that the guilds have.

pyrrha is a knight recently hired by the arc family to act as a retainer for their son jaune, alongside nora and ren. she might be planning to sleep with her new master and by might I mean defiantly.

weiss is still an heiress for the sdc but being the daughter of a former duke is what really marks her. she's expected to somehow marry up since her older sister has abandoned the house for military service under Ironwood. this is a problem because the only eligible bachelor is jaune and she can't seem to get him to negotiate with her about a future marriage (he keeps trying to court her but she doesn't get that)

blake and yang are both from tribal societies and have come to vale to learn more about fighting grimm. they could go either huntsman or noble depending on how they developed their lands. blake is from Menagerie and yang from the branwen tribe.

yang loves her baby sister, even if she only got to visit half the year since her mother insisted she learn the ways of leadership for their tribe.

basically rwby but I tried to make a society that would reflect the overwhelming social power of aura users and their utter necessity in remnant society

thoughts? any changes you would make?

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 14 March 1883, German communist Karl Marx died in London, aged 64. He had travelled to Britain after being banished from Germany, and arrested and imprisoned in Paris, from which he managed to escape. The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser reported that at his funeral Friedrich Engels, Marx's lifelong friend and collaborator, described Marx as the "best hated and worst calumniated man in Europe… [who] had lived, although his work was not finished, to see his views embraced by millions of both hemispheres." Marx was clear that the driving force of history is the fight against oppression, writing with Engels: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. "The modern bourgeois [capitalist] society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. "Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie [capitalists] and Proletariat [the working class]." We have a number of works by or about him available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/karl-marx To access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photo https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2229979087187229/?type=3

[moosefrog]

I have a sticker on my computer that says, If I do a job in 30 minutes, It's because I spent 10 years learning how to do it. You owe me for the years not the minutes. I think about that a lot when I'm pricing art/commissions or paying for crafted products.

In a way, I wish we had a guild system for all artisans. It would sure help us with pricing and expectations of pricing if we could say, "Ah, that quilt is $300 because a junior quilter made it. And that one is $1000 because a journeyman quilter made it. And that one is $2500 because a master quilter made it."

I suppose the argument against a craftsman guild would be the cost of accreditation/testing/paperwork for something when you just want to be a hobbyist and not a production quilter.

Just a random Saturday morning thought.

[bonefall]

hi!! i was wondering about your council system -- what did the historic council look like? what's the clerics relationship with it? its a super interesting concept i'd love to hear more about :D

Aaaaaah that old thing??

It's an idea I had eons ago, before I even was working on a rewrite project, let alone before I started calling it Better Bones! You can sort of see how it influenced how I thought of Clan Culture going forward

In the original draft, I mentioned how the historic council used to be more powerful before the "Leader's Word Is Law" commandment. BB Fans will probably find that familiar-- it's because that idea ended up becoming Larkstripe's Strike!

And the "trials" that could qualify a cat for entry to the council, you can sort of see that idea living on in Honor Titles.

But, anyway, the Council System isn't something I went with... but, okay, I'll bite and toss some of the old ideas I had about it out there. Feel free to take them and do as you please.

Before the Leader's Word Is Law commandment, the Historic Council would have been JUST as powerful as the leader. In case of a tyrant, they would gather and find a replacement for their Star.

So keeping the Council on the leader's side was a huge political consideration. Morningstar for example lost control of his council.

They had a lot more control over who got appointed as well, so the Historic Council could be very cliquey.

It wasn't all a good thing; the Council was a huge contributor to the development of Clan culture's xenophobia and in-group mentality. They would often move to exclude cats they didn't like, and it was very hard to "move up" in a Clan if you weren't 'adopted into' the good graces of a Council member's family

Xenophobia was NEVER logical and it was never the fault of the foreign groups it hurts. It was because of power consolidation and politics.

BUT, it did have strengths, too. It meant a lot more cats were involved in the decision-making processes of a Clan.

Casting Stones was an event that the Council would extend to all members. It wasn't JUST a vote; it was an open forum, a lot like the way a lot of canon "clan meetings" essentially become debate matches.

The Cleric was actually separate from the Council. I've always imagined that a Cleric has more political sway in a Clan than people think, and that counts with the council as well

See, they can get rid of a leader. A leader is just a cat a mortal chose. But Clerics are supposed to be a sacred, unbroken line from Moth Flight to the modern era

So, a Cleric has the divine right to rule. Leaders actually don't... not until Dalestar and the Leader's Rights.

And as a final funfact, the Council system was based on Medieval guild systems! In my head, a Clan is a sort of "soft manoralism." The 'Star' of a leader's name is sort of like the deed to the land they own, they were beholden to the Council of artisans that live there, and the Cleric is supposed to be a religious representative hypothetically above the both of them.

The "Council Trial" is just an adapted version of submitting a masterpiece to a guild if you look closely!

I still write the life stages of Clan cats with that guild-system in mind, even though I didn't go with the council system. An apprentice is just like a medieval apprentice. A young warrior is a journeyman. A senior warrior is a master.

[hackernewsrobot]

Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master: The Medieval Guild (2018)

https://blog.philosophicalsociety.org/2018/01/10/apprentice-journeyman-and-master-the-medieval-guild/

[agrimmbrothersgrimmestgoose]

Oh shit, $7/hour for crochet? I have... made some mistakes. 😬

You are A Okay my friendo, I still have to encourage my animiguri making friends that Yes Really The Smallest Critter Cannot Be Less Than $15

And frankly, I use the $7 as more of an earmark to show just how valuable your work is AT MINIMUM, because, crochet work used to be Guildwork (I am serious and I am holding in such a rabbit hole rant you don't even know)

As a member of a guild, the work would have then been priced according to SKILL LEVEL meaning the work would cost less if an apprentice made it and MORE if a journeyman (intermediate level) or Master made it. The same supposedly holds true in capitalism, if you have more experience or you've got a unique skill you're supposed to be paid more

And yet! When we switched from a mercantile economy (guild based, handmade goods) to and Industrial economy (Kill The Union/Guild, mass market goods), Capitalism also got kick-started and a lot of the hand made guild protected crafts were entirely lost and with that the respect as well. Crochet goods used to have a regulated price and it was a career/livelihood, now it's a ✨Girl Hobby^tm✨

I say aaaaaall this to say, your skill and your labor is worth something; you spent your hard earned time to learn a skill! And then more of that time to make a handmade good! And once upon a time, that labor would have been respected and paid as such

So.

When you are pricing NOW in capitalism, and hearing aaaaaall of this nonsense about someone "just getting one on Temu" or "that's too much! It can't take you THAT long!" Remember that the time to crochet an full sized Afghan is 60 hours, it took 60 hours in 1600, it took me 60 hours 6 months ago. The only thing that's changed is people are no longer willing to pay you for your skill and for the time you've taken to develop and use it.

Thanks for listening, i sincerely and honestly hope you have a good day, please don't feel bad about yourself, just save what words you need for the next time you want to make a really cool octopus and someone wants to shortchange you (even if that person is accidentally you)

-Goose

P.S. Hab cat

[bluemooncove]

To clarify that last one a little bit. Beauty & Beast is kind of a middle ground between an actual medieval guild and a landsnekt company.

So they have the traditional guild ranks of Apprentice, Journeyman, Meister. With apprentices those being taught skills and being pretty new to the guild. Journeymen traveling and doing actual guild work. Then Meisters who manage the guild affairs and run it. Unlike real guilds (well sort of though) there's a specific finite amount of meisters that can exist at a time (One for each council) unlike actual meisterhood where anyone who completes a masterpiece can claim the title.

Of course the guild gets around that a bit by making others who would effectively be a Meister instead the master of a Beauty & Beast guild chapter (waystations that they use to operate from off of MokuMoku).

But alongside the traditional guild ranking, because 90% of the guild are all journeymen but some have more authority (and a higher pay grade than others, they also make use or rank to some extent. Though the only thing I presently have set is that "Captains" typically lead official parties

[mannatea]

sings the tune without the words, a Tales of Symphonia ‘fic in the Our Aselia series (Chapter 3)

Current Word Count: 11,474 Summary: 4,000 years after the events of Tales of Symphonia, our heroes have been reborn. Chapter Summary: Lloyd visits Colette in college (and has a question for her)! Pairing/Characters: Lloyd/Colette, Sheena, Zelos, mention of Presea and Genis. Background ships that I won't tag in the story to avoid disappointing people are: Sheena/Zelos, Genis/Presea, and Regal/Raine. Extra Info: Done for @colloydweek 2023, prompt #3: kiss/confession! Rating: T Genre: Friendship, eventual romance, and a lot of fun (I hope!).

The title is the link to Ao3. Please leave a comment if you have time!

Notes beneath the cut.

I swear, calling people 'hot' isn't a running theme in this story. LOL

I also love imagining Raine wearing long pants/cardigans/etc as a teacher. She dresses so specifically in the canon I had to carry it through to here.

Also, promenade = old-fashioned term for prom. But it sounds cooler, so I chose to use it. As to why she chaperoned despite not technically being in the same building: Iselia probably isn't a very big school district, so the buildings are most likely connected. #smalltownlyfe

Regal's hair being straight when Colette met him and now a bit curly = he used to straighten it, but wears it more naturally now.

Al is obviously Altessa, haha. I loved the idea of Dirk being a master carpenter and Altessa being a jeweler and/or metalsmith!

Emerald is the May birthstone (Colette's).

A journeyman carpenter has to present a "masterpiece" to be considered by his or her guild to ascend to the rank of 'master.' Lloyd submitted his ring + box he made for that purpose. (Fun random fact: one of my grandfather's was a master carpenter.)

[sbnkalny]

Michigan is home to a mysterious phenomenon known as "The Floating Pie Crusts," where perfectly formed pie crusts materialize and float gently above Lake Michigan, tempting passing seagulls.

Write me a LOVE story about Taylor Swift enthusiastically falling under the corrupting Influence of a mysterious amulet, the Origin of which makes me anxious, and at times like these to remind myself that our true lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, IN a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one of our best TEAMS To each other..

[ellynneversweet]

I’m so baffled by everyone claiming that museums routinely display super secret copies of artistic masterpieces and keep the Real Art in the basement as a response to the souping of the sunflowers. Like

1. Do they think they’re prints? How good do they think printing tech is?

2. What would be the point of that? People literally travel around the world to look at masterpieces.

3. Do they think they do this for all paintings, or just some?

4. What about sculptures?

5. Some of these works are so old the pigments have faded and the pencil is showing through. The classic brownish yellow colour of many older paintings is because the varnish is old and stained. Are they suggesting these copied versions included faking fugitive pigments and mixing a stained varnish to age them up?

6. For the sake of argument, let’s say they’re really excellent hand-painted copies. That is…still a work of art. Impressionists can, probably, be copied without too much difficulty, but old masters are much harder. Creating an exact copy is the kind of skilled and difficult work journeyman artists did to train to become masters (your masterpiece* was something you submitted to reach your guild rank as a master artist). Is this confusion seriously caused by people thinking that ‘version’ means fake, and not ‘this artist painted the same scene/subject multiple times they liked it, or because someone like the original and commissioned another version?’

*Van Gogh, to my knowledge, was not a guild artist. I’m pretty sure artists guilds didn’t exist when he was painting. Are his works not masterpieces?

[sagemonsters]

Writer's Commentary: Bargain with the Leshy

Hi! So the Writer’s Commentary series is something I want to create for all of my fics going forward, a sort of peek behind the scenes at what happens during the writing process. Ideas change a lot, and I like documenting this stuff as it happens, so I hope you enjoy reading it.

For this collection of ramblings, you'll need to have read my monster erotica piece, Bargain with the Leshy.

First of all, Bargain with the Leshy was written as a response to my frustration with myself. I said in this post that I really struggle to write short things - a lot of the time, my ideas spiral out of control into novella-sized (or larger!) projects, which then makes my perfectionism and anxiety go into overdrive as I work to make every little detail impervious to the angry critics who have taken up residence in my imagination and ruthlessly heckle me.

To be clear, this isn't a good attitude to have. Always writing in fear of potential criticism means that I don't get much writing done unless I feel more confident than usual -- overall I would rate my anxiety as a -2 out of 10, would not recommend.

Anyway...

I wrote that post, then got mad at myself and brainstormed a list of monster romance erotica ideas. Bargain with the Leshy was #3 on that list, and in that brain-vomit of ideas around a leshy-focused erotica piece I wrote Aiden as a witch's apprentice. I changed that very early on because I wanted Aiden to be a little bit older and more worldly.

Background World-Building & Characterization

Some world-building that I didn't get to include in the text itself was that witches in this world operate in a guild-like system. There are apprentices who live with their mentors from ages 14-19, and then journeymen witches who travel as they need to while working on their "masterpiece" -- and I mean "masterpiece" in the most traditional sense of the word; it's a piece of work (in Aiden's case, an herbal of magical plants and their uses) that, upon completion, will be judged by a council of master-level witches to determine whether the journeyman witch is ready to enter the guild as a fully-fledged adult member.

Rowenna is already a master-level witch since she has her own cottage. I initially wrote her as a "veterinarian-witch", but that sounded too modern (on completely illogical grounds) so I changed her descriptor to "farm-witch." She is very Pratchett-esque; I was really drawing from the Tiffany Aching series when I wrote her.

The world of Bargain with the Leshy was designed to be reminiscent of the 1940s. There's modern technology to some degree, and use of electricity is widespread, but there's no Internet or handheld phones. However, it IS a fantasy world, so I felt justified in allowing women to have societal acceptance if they choose to live a life independent of a male relative or partner - likewise, it's a queer-normative world. Although the Gregorian calendar is used, this world isn't Earth and WWII didn't happen.

Also, Aiden is very much autistic; botany is a special interest of his!

Technical Stuff

My boyfriend @mikk1n helped me edit the sex scene between Marek and Aiden. That took several days, since we have very different sleep schedules (we live in the same time zone, but are long-distance) and did most of the work between 11pm and 2:30am over Discord.

I don't really have writing playlists, and am VERY particular about music that I listen to while writing - if a song has lyrics, they can't be in English or French because if I understand even fragments then I won't be able to concentrate. I ended up listening to "Hörst du die Trommein" by Faun on repeat while writing the sex scene; it sounds vaguely Celtic, has a male singer with a nice voice, and the drumming was good. I have zero clue what the lyrics mean.

A Potential Sequel?

I'm on the fence about whether or not I'll write a sequel to Bargain with the Leshy; Marek and Aiden are not in love and neither of them are the type to get their heart mixed up after a one-night-stand, so it's unlikely that they would be emotionally drawn back to each other. I do have some ideas, but as it stands those ideas don't make for a particularly happy story and I am definitely the type of writer who enjoys their HEAs. If a sequel does enter the works, then it will be a long time off - don't hold your breath, in other words.

[hawkepockets]

i’m finally getting to those tav asks. thanks everyone who sent one!! the lovely @dragonologist-phd asked for #1, which includes birthplace & family, and i Got To Thinking in too much detail, much too much detail by far, too detailed, so here’s a separate post for just those elements.

jove grew up in baldur’s gate. they did have a clan, but it wasn’t a biological family unit—it was an all dragonborn craftsmen’s guild! most members were copper, brass, red or gold dragonborn who used their fire or acid breath to manipulate metal and glass. jove wasn’t born with that skill. their mother was a vagabond blue dragonborn, and although jove inherited their father’s brassy scales, they also manifested their mother’s electrical breath type, which wasn’t of any use in metalworking. the clan was warm to insiders but highly competitive and proud of their handiwork, and judged members’ worth almost solely by what they could craft. jove knew they’d be fed and cared for, but only tolerated, unless they excelled at a trade.

as a teenager, jove struck up a friendship with ritika estis, a much older gold dwarf metallurgist from a rival crafting guild. estis taught jove how to use a dwarven forge to work with metal, glass, and jewels using tools instead of relying on naturally heatproof hands and melting breath. estis was tough on jove, working them hard and giving praise sparingly, but every compliment meant the world to the young dragonborn. she built up their confidence to apply for a jeweler’s apprenticeship with their clan.

but estis also noticed that despite their dogged devotion to learning their father’s trade, jove was much more moved by folk songs and carved wood than any bauble made for a baldurian noble. jewelrymaking made them focus and sweat; music made them tap their foot, twitch their tail, and part their lips to try to taste it. it was a different kind of love. the day jove won their jeweling apprenticeship, estis went to them and, in a rare moment of open encouragement, urged them to forget the forge and learn to make music and instruments instead.

jove took up a secret, second apprenticeship with a human master luthier, learning to craft and repair string instruments and, tentatively, how to play the fiddle with their big, clawed hands. when the clan found out, jove was pressured to choose one trade and master it, instead of burning themself out to fail at both. with the self-assurance they’d learned from estis, jove committed to making instruments. many of their older clanmates were deeply embittered toward ritika and her guild for molding a promising young metalworker just to turn them against the family trade, but jove was happy.

after years of practice under the luthier, jove achieved the rank of journeyman and started to make gold for their clan selling handcrafted string instruments and repair services. they were much better at working on instruments than playing them, but had achieved enough skill on the fiddle to play gigs at local taverns and make passersby smile at them on festival days. they were more than content, and would have lived happily as an amateur musician and aspiring master luthier in the gate for the rest of their days.

and then came the bar fight.

fights weren’t that unusual for the cheaper inns and alehouses jove played music at, but this particular brawl started with a human woman harrassing a tiefling bachelor party, talking loudly about how they brought crime and sour luck on baldur’s gate, and shouldn’t be allowed to marry lest their offspring overrun the city. when she implied they killed and ate human children, one of the prouder and drunker tieflings took a swing at the woman. she reacted as though she’d been attacked, unprovoked, by the whole party, and other non-tieflings sprung to her defense. within seconds, the taproom turned into a battlefield, and within minutes all the celebrating tieflings were senseless on the floor. when the guards arrived, it was the tieflings who were arrested for disturbing the peace.

jove watched the whole thing, their bow sliding uselessly off the strings, unsure what they could do short of belching out a cone of lightning that would hit attackers, tieflings, and bystanders indiscriminately—so they did nothing.

when they told their master what happened, he was unsympathetic to the tieflings, saying that the other humans had taken things too far but that they hadn’t been wrong about the “foulbloods.”

jove got up before sunrise, stole their favorite of the violins they’d crafted and a simple glaive from estis’s forge (she would have given it freely if they’d woken her to ask, but jove couldn’t risk talking to her—if estis was as callous about the tieflings as their other mentor had been, it would break their faith completely), and left baldur’s gate. they’ve been roving the sword coast ever since, a vagabond like their mother, determined to protect strangers’ right to live and celebrate life loudly, especially those from “monstrous” races. this became the foundation of their paladin’s oath.

they’ve gotten rusty on the fiddle. but on the night of celebrating peace between the druids and tieflings, they’re compelled to play again.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 21 February 1848, the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was published. Translated into over 200 languages, and widely read by workers across the world, it remains one of the most influential texts ever written. Its chapter 1 begins with a note on history: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes… "The modern bourgeois [capitalist] society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones." * We have available a new translation of another key work by Marx, Critique Of The Gotha Program, which offers the fullest elaboration of his vision for a communist future, and corrects some errors with previous translations: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/critique-of-the-gotha-program-karl-marx https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2214858952032576/?type=3