Question & Answer Article #01
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As you would expect, I do not want Tales of Penumaria to just be a monologue. I have the Guilded server set up for you to go to and connect with me, and even ask me questions that you have about something I put in here, offer suggestions on what I should include in here, and even give me some give and take on how to improve on what I’ve got here so far. If there’s something that should be fixed, I’d be happy to hear it. If there’s something that’s I’m doing great on, I’d be happy to hear that as well.
Basically, if it’s not a long-winded denigration on me ragging over every perceived mistake and error in text, graphics, or anything else, I’d listen to whatever you’d say, and hopefully start a dialogue over it. And if a question is good enough, I’ll splice in an article where I answer that question. Starting with this one.
“I heard that Penumaria is designed as a non-hellish reincarnation-based purgatory, mixed with the Asphodel Meadows from Greco-Roman mythology. Did you know about Asphodel?”
No, I had to look that up. Looks like Asphodel is a bland afterlife for bland people. Penumaria, on the other hand, has the capability of being either a heaven or a hell. It all depends on what you make of it. In some cases, someone would find themselves so settled into what they made in Penumaria, they would tell God, ‘Thank you, Sir. I’ll take it from here,’ and would consider that to be enough of a Heaven and so would wish to stay. That’s their prerogative, and God will respect that.
I have this belief that who you are, what you believe, and who you hold dear, can make the Ninth Circle of Hell paradise, and the very presence of a holy and loving deity pure torment. Penumaria has the possibility to go either way, if you allow it.
“Can you explain in more detail how a soul from Gaia gets sent to Penumaria? And what about those who get Isekai’d here? Is that the same as a soul who becomes a Ghostlight?”
Let me answer them in order:
Those who had studied Fundamentalist Christian doctrine will know the first part. ‘It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.’ (Hebrew 9:27) According to fundie doctrine, you get a binary judgment, either or: The righteous hear a “Well Done,” and enter Heaven. The sinful hear a “Depart from me,” and are sent to Hell. And of course, in the eyes of the people setting up this fundamentalistic doctrine, the dividing line deciding between the two is whatever the people deem it to be. You’d think that the God they’re supposed to worship would get a say, especially when he wishes they’d evolve above hubris and binary thinking.
God might be jealous, but he’s not heartless. He’ll see every angle, look at all sides of a person’s life, look at where the person’s heart and soul were at as they do things, and considers every factor involved. Whatever or not the person goes to ‘the right church,’ or says ‘the right prayer,’ or show ‘the right belief,’ to be considered ‘saved’ by some arbitrary authority is irrelevant in the eyes of God. Even if the definition is considered to be accepting the forgiveness that came from the shed blood of Jesus Christ, who says that a given person is considered ‘Saved?’ God, His Son, or some asshole behind the pulpit spitting fire and brimstone while doing I don’t want to know what just the night before.
And what if God couldn’t put a soul in such a neat and tidy black or white box? What if He finds out that someone is keeping Him from passing such a binary judgment. What if the person everyone claims was ‘saved’ was just dragged down the Roman Road and covered toward Salvation without their volition or consent? Were they really converted or were they just a notch on someone’s Bible? Or the ones who would want to enter Glory, but something’s holding them back, such as a connection to a loved one that’s still alive, or some unfinished business that for the life of them just couldn’t let go. Maybe they were just about to make something out of themselves when they croaked and now only wish for a do-over. Or here’s a hot one, the one who lived an atrocious life who made a genuine deathbed confession. Not the sing-song, I apologized so you must let me in shit-eating grin confession; the one where he was genuinely contrite and sorry.
There are many other scenarios connected by one thing: God can’t go “Well Done,” and can’t bring himself to go “Depart from Me.” He needs a third option. That’s where Penumaria comes in.
The cycle of a Human soul in Penumaria starts when the Almighty rules, ‘Not yet.” The soul is taken to Penumaria where it becomes a Ghostlight. They get born, they live, and they die. After that comes Penumaria’s judgment, Anubis’ Weighing of the Heart. If they pass, they go back to the Almighty. More often than not this is when He goes “Well done, Good and Faithful,” although that’s not certain. If they fail, they are sent back to go through another life, and they go around as many lives as it takes.
Now then, the second part: Isekai cases. If you studied the genre, you will find multiple ways to get Isekai’d. Some of them involve the physical death of the person getting Isekai’d. Those methods fall under the above cycle, they just bypassed the Almighty. It happens. It’s different when the Isekai happens by what is called a Planeswalk. That’s when you physically go from one plane of existence to another while remaining whole and hearty. (Due to the nature of Penumaria, VR headsets a la Sword Art Online don’t work here.)
As a rule of thumb: If someone gets a kiss from Truck-kun, that person’s dead and is sent to Penumaria normally. If they fall through a portal or walk through an amusement park or get smacked with a beam of light, or otherwise end up in Penumaria while still alive, it is considered a Planeswalk.
Gaians who Planeswalk here is a special case and might or might not end up following the lines of the cycle. They might end up passing the Weighing of the Heart, but they would find themselves facing a God who’s going ‘What the Fuck?’ (And you know things are FUBAR when you hear God cuss.)
I find these articles meandering a bit. It’s sometimes hard to follow, the language is informal, you cuss on occasion, and I have to tell you, sometimes you go off on tangents? This can’t be your final version of these articles, are they?
No, sir. They are not.
While I have put these articles through several drafts and revisions, and in some cases, someone else checks it out for their feedback, they are, by no means, final when they appear here. The organization will be chaotic at times, the language I use is what I type the text into, sometimes my train of thought wanders and goes where it need not be, and while I try not to cuss, sometimes I drop an F-bomb anyway. It’s expected at this point.
There’s a Japanese term you’ll hear a lot of here: Kaizen. It’s means ‘Improvement,’ or to be specific ‘Continual Improvement.’ Kaizen is used for business organization and logistics. In Tales of Penumaria, I use Kaizen in regards to these articles. I’d first publish an article here once I’m at the point where I’m not embarrassed by it, even if it’s loaded with dross and drek, but from there, Kaizen kicks in. If I see an error on a document or something that needs improvement, I refuse to feel bad about it. I just fix it and move on.
The point where I have an article ready to be posted is when I start thinking that Perfect is the Enemy of Good. If I waited till something is perfect before I posted something, I would never post a single thing. If I had to think about every single word I have to say (obviously this includes pronouns nowadays) before I open my mouth and say something, I’d never speak a single word. If I had to ensure that my plans for the day are without a hitch or mistake, I won’t even think of sticking my head out of my apartment. Not the lifestyle anyone should live.
This is also why I like to work several documents ahead, creating a buffer of articles to work on so that I won’t feel rushed to a deadline. Each of these articles will go through a series of steps on the way to being posted here and will continue on more steps toward its final destination, a published Camp-aign Setting Guide, possibly in print.
Step 1: The Initial Draft. This should be academic, it is where the idea in my head gets squeezed through the Hot Gate which is my Logitech Wave Wireless Keyboard, and into a Word Document. When you type a lot as I do, you’d appreciate a quality ergonomic keyboard. At this stage, everything is on the table, no matter how wild. In fact, if you haven’t seen anything here yet that would make you wonder what I’m on, you will eventually. It’s here where I brainstorm, free associate, and show an inability to give a fsk. (If you’re easily offended, don’t look over my shoulder, problem solved.)
Step 2: Formation Drafts. After a couple of days of letting those ideas rest a bit, I then move over to the next draft, going over what I just typed (wondering whether or not I should change my prescription at times) and rewriting them into a more coherent form. I used to print out these texts and proofread them by hand, but I find myself going through so many documents that I had to do it on the screen.
There will be a second draft, and then a third draft where I use grammar and spelling checkers (I have Grammarly for a reason here) before it goes to the next stepStep 3: The Buffer. As I said, I like to work at least a month ahead of the timestream, so that I’d have time in case something comes up that requires a major revision. Tales of Substack has a buffer of about 7-8 articles that I have as drafts, but not published yet. At the end of the third draft, the article is added at the end of the buffer. That way, I can still work on it with discretion. While the text doesn’t need any more major work—usually—there is still formatting, referencing, linking, credit referrals, error checking, and in some cases even having a preview reader check it out. If I make some artwork to put in the article, I make it at this step as well.
It is here where my goal is to have the Article be good enough to be published when their time comes on the queue. This is where the adage “Don’t Let Perfect be the Enemy of Good” comes into play. I keep working on them until I feel okay showing this to the public. That will take time, and I’d like to have enough of it between now and when it is to be posted.
Also to be mentioned is that I have no wish to see a prereader come back with so many suggestions on an article and a demand that I change everything, while the deadline for that article is tomorrow. That’s a scenario I’d like to avoid, thank you so much. This is why I’ll only share articles to prereaders that are 3-5 weeks ahead of time. I want to have time to work on the corrections.Stage 4: Substack Stage. This is when the article is published in Substack. The day before, I give it one more read-through to make sure that everything’s okay. However, when I do hit that Publish button, I would say that the article is, at the best, 80% finished. I know myself too much to say that everything’s perfect at this point, so I don’t even try to reach that high. These articles will still have some thigns I need to correct, things I have to clarify, something that I should add, change or remove, maps that get expanded, and so on.
In other words, this is when the Kaizen philosophy takes center stage. Some people scoff at me for correcting mistakes after I publish them online, they’d mock the error and tell me that the article must be perfect when I post it out, otherwise I will not be considered professional or taken seriously. But would you rather post, say, or do something that ain’t perfect; or do, say, or be nothing and get that right? Don’t let Perfect be the Enemy of Good.Stage 5: Publishing Stage. I have not gotten to this point yet, nor will I for a year or two, but it’s my ultimate goal. At this point, the articles, documents, maps, and designs should be at least 90%, and probably up to 99% completed.
Here’s where I focus on the polish. Compiling the documents together, formatting the files into a proper book form, making all the maps more presentable, and better illustrations.
I would consider crowdsourcing like Indigogo or Kickstarter now that I have something presentable. I’ll be commissioning artists and whatnot so that the book will be more presentable.
Will Penumaria see print? Perhaps. But even if it isn’t ‘dead tree’ printed, it will be available for all.
I know that you’d be focusing on two flyspecks of countries in Refugina, Oakroot, and Chronicla. What about the surrounding lands? Got any more info on them?
Oh, do I ever? And I do take requests on worldbuilding. I’d normally just put them at the end of the Buffer (as I said, I like to work a month or two ahead,) but since this is so close to a previous document that touches on this, I figure I’d just post them here. The linked Worldbuilding Document file expands on the Northeastern Refugina area, compiling notes on people, places, and things, as I flesh out more of the world around Oakroot and Chronicla.
You can access this document at this link: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AjNYReLtj6OIny3YhMnY6FLUMoWQ
In the next article, I look into Van Richton’s Guide to Ravenloft and discuss Domains in Penumaria. I’ll also show you more of Chronicla as an example of what a Domain would be like, and after that, we start on Amber of the Woods.
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Tales of Penumaria is Copyrighted ©2022 David “David Foxfire” Gonterman, and is licensed under the ‘BY-NC-SA’ Creative Commons License. All Dungeons & Dragons related material is available under the Open Game License from Wizards of the Coast. Follow this link for credits and details on the licenses.