#polymathic aestheticism

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Munsang

Munsang might give a character beliefs in:

Tradition

Beauty and opulence as signs of goodness

Materialism

Fate, particularly dark fate

Art as inherently valuable

Everything has a price but not necessarily a price willing to be paid and not necessarily monetary

It’s likely to produce above average:

Conceit

Generosity

Aestheticism

Honor

Wanderlust

Conservatism

Love of Tragedy's beauty

Being raised in Munsang might give character drives like:

Acquire something old, lost, or magical

Make the perfect exchange of goods

Experience something of beauty or grace

Choose honor over gain

Uncover something about a mystery

Ensure that others will spread your name

Cause trouble by over-indulging

Keep a promise

Discover a piece of lost knowledge

Settle a conflict or dispute without bloodshed

Refuse a request or order that’s beneath you

Share a passionate moment with another

Defeat a worthy foe in single combat

Show someone a place/thing of great beauty

Suffer hardship so that another doesn’t have to

Let a problem escalate while you brood

Cause your allies trouble by adhering strictly to your oaths

Prove the superiority of your own kind

Endanger yourself to defend those weaker than you

Increase the prestige of yourself or your family

Create or discover something that helps other people

Endanger yourself to protect the world from corruption

Create, restore, or protect something of lasting value

Take a major risk to acquire something valuable

Travel to or discover a spiritually significant place

Freely sacrifice of yourself to bring about a good result

Uphold your personal code of honor despite the cost or inconvenience

Help something or someone grow or move on to the next step in the cycle

Experience something you can tell people about in a tall tale, and take a souvenir to prove it

Help someone deal with or overcome their personal problems

Make a fortune by fair play and hard work

Give someone something that will change their life

Put someone in their place for disrespecting you

Make yourself worthy of song or legend

But, of course, someone living as a Tri Poke out beyond the firm boundaries of Civilization might just as well be there as a way to distance themselves from the way people are back home.

The Munsang Empire was old enough that's it's gradual decline starting about 300 years ago seemed more like an aberration than a fact of history. Just a little bit of bad luck in a long string of victories stretching back to the first Munsana nearly a millennia ago.

The first Munsana was one of the greatest polymaths in history, his accomplishments seeming more the boasts of legends than facts but people delving through the histories of the Known World often discover to their dismay that the tales are often understated. And from the moment he took his place on the Orchid Throne he molded his Empire in his image.

Travelers who come to Munsang will find beggars clothed in fine silks and golden jewelry. "Ignorant" children who can quote great poetic epics of history verbatim from memory. Spectators who would be champion athletes in another country. Every Munsant strives to be the next great polymath, to be the key to the renaissance of their fading glory that should have come long ago by any reasonable account. But deep down they've nearly all realized by now that better days are never coming.

The Empire once stretched over half the Known World and was placated generously by the other half but the revolution of the Twin Kings and the breaking of the Orchid Throne broke the back of all their blessings. Now their are two capitals. The Ivory Throne, ruled by Munsanga Somanal, daughter of Upajuk in the new east, and the Rose Throne, ruled by Munsana Bardatu, son of Ulasuk in the new north. Each lays claim to an ever shrinking whole. And like their rulers, all the Munsant live in that image, a great people of great wealth, ever dimming.

Even as Munsang slips into senescence, it is a power to be reckoned with, and its prideful people have a knack for proving they are every bit the people out of legend that they make of themselves in song. And yet their greatness always snags on some unexpected flaw and their great height leads over and over to some great fall and the best they seem able to do is make their fall as opulent and beautiful as their rise. And it doesn't seem to matter if they're in the remaining heart of the Empire or following in the first Munsana's footsteps living out in the world as a Trader.

Munsant are renowned business people, traders, and artists. No Munsant is truly considered an experienced adult until they have traveled beyond their borders and found the perfect thing to bring back home in exchange for the perfect thing to leave behind.

This comes from a grand tradition of gift giving from the Empire's height, where they proved their wealth and power by giving carelessly. Even today, a stranger in Munsang may give money to a beggar and receive a piece of jewelry of infinitely greater value as something to remember the beggar by. Many modern philosophers have suggested this is the actual origin the Munsang curse but a Munsant would rather die a pauper than give up their traditions or dishonor their ancestors.

A Tri Poke who grew up in Munsang grew up knowing for sure that they come of the greatest civilization to have ever walked the Known World AND that their time is ending, their greatness is broken, and the world now descends unto lesser beings. They were taught in no uncertain terms that it is more important to end well than to stop the end but always with the unspoken command that they should try to do both.

Playing a Tri Poke from Munsang is a good way to play the Tolkien Elvish experience. Munsant are born old and live long lives of fading glory that they're happy to idolize.

[comicweek]

"Batman: Damned" answers a question about Bruce Wayne, but has nothing to say about Batista.

“Batman: Damned” marks the official launch of another DC imprint, the Black Label. The solicit proudly proclaims, it puts the “black” in Black Label. But does it really, and what does that even mean? With a creative team like writer Brian Azzarello and artistic polymath Lee Bermejo it isn’t hard to imagine something with a bit of edge to it. Maybe, even something approaching “S”erious – I mean that with all the pretentious irony in the world. The marketing and overall messaging around “Damned,” and this imprint, has traded in the juvenile male idea of maturity. Which always seems to be the case when dealing in highly aestheticized texts, as Azzarello and Bermejo do things normally unseen in the pages of a DC comic. Stuff like silhouetting Bruce Wayne’s penis in the pale light of the Batcave. At least in the print copies, this Batfamily member was digitally inked over in the digital release. All this fawning over transgressions does is fail to contend with “Damned” as a piece of sequential art and the choices they make. For all the posturing “Damned” feels more in spirit with Bermejo’s “Noel” than the duos previous work in “Joker.” The first issue of this three issue oversized miniseries reads like a fanciful nightmare, where the mythic characters of the DC universe play roles in a  weird detective story. The Joker is dead and Batman isn’t quite sure if he did the deed, all the while a cadre of DC’s supernatural characters guide and mislead the world’s greatest detective’s search for truth on supernatural journey of horror.

Books published with the Black Label are being printed in what is known as square bound, which makes them roughly magazine size. The technical differences aren’t much but seeing the pages take up the full width of an iPad, with minor vertical letterboxing, easily created the impression of size. Bermejo uses this extra size to emphasize the size and spatial relations of objects. Everything looks spooky when it’s so much bigger than the hero. Tim Burton and Anton Furst imagined a Gotham City as if hell had burst threw the pavement and kept growing through the juxtaposition of non-complimentary architecture. Bermejo takes a more literal approach to things as seen early on after a wounded Batman escapes an ambulance. He kneels looking around him at a Gotham that seemed to have kept growing on top of itself. Skyscrapers slowly fade away into a mixture of cloud and pollution, a megalopolis built out of 70’s architecture. The page is two panels, the image of Batman and the city is a splash with a single panel overlaid it at the top. Inserting the panel dose not lessen the impact of seeing Batman and Gotham City, there’s still two thirds of a page with skyscrapers on the flanks threating to overtake everything. Bermejo’s uses of perspective and the overall size of a single page has me curious to see what a double page spread would look like, “Damned” #1 only features single page splashes.

Bermejo’s decision to often overlay panels helps gives pages and the sequence strong readability without sacrificing imagery. In one sequence as Bruce recalls a trip to the park, Bermejo uses a single large image to ground everything, with subsequent panels forming their own almost micro comics around it. These sort of scenes within scenes, mixed with Bermejo’s decision to transition on matching imagery give this issue a strong technical footing for the grim imagery and darkness it projects.

If there is one noticeable technical flaw in Bermejo’s work this issue it is the lettering. Helping guide the reader is the impish narration of John Constantine, which Azzarello writes with an unsurprising level of awareness. This narrative chorus often frames the page thematically and literally. In a couple of instances the pale white used for the text fails to stand out against the common grey tones that litter pages leading to some muddy bits of text. As a digital reader it wasn’t too much of a problem, you just pinch to zoom in, but it was a slight annoyance.

Read the Whole Review @ MultiversityComics.Com