Session 0 Recap - Welcome to Iusol
A brief presentation of Iusol, an original location for my Numenera campaign
The Ninth World is filled with strange places, where ancient technology finds a new life in the hands of unknowingly Ninth Worlders. One of these strange places, perhaps strange in a peculiar way, is the village of Iusol.
Placed in the far north of what the people of the Steadfast call "the Beyond", Iusol is a small community of about one hundred people who dwell in wooden cottages scattered around a small, lush oasis surrounded by the desert.
The Foundation of Iusol
The village of Iusol traces its origins back in ancient times, nine hundred years or so, when a small group of outcasts traversed the desert to find a place where they could live peacefully.
While the desert was far enough from civilization to grant them the freedom they craved so much, it was a harsh environment which would not sustain human life. But their leader, Ghescua, had brought with them an incredible device: the Hydrocom, a complex artifacat whose main power is to control the weather to great extent.
Aided by the Hydrocom, Ghescua and his followers turned a small portion of desert into the lush oasis where their descendants live to this day, and among palms, grass, and bushes founded Iusol.
The Way of the Oasis
Ghescua and his group of outcasts were highly educated people who had spent most of their lives researching the most diverse fields of human knowledge. They dreamed of establishing a utopia where violence, injustice, and prejudice could be eradicated, and where humans could live in harmony with the Ninth World.
Iusol is the concretization of that idea. Once the oasis was created and the village was founded, Ghescua and the first Iusolian summarized their beliefs into a coherent philosophy which would guide Iusol's development through the following centuries. This philosophy came to be known as the Way of the Oasis. If we had to describe the Way in our contermporay, 2024-ish terms, we could probably define it as an extreme form of eco-communism.
The main concern of the Way of the Oasis is sustainability: Iusol is intended to be a self-sustaining community, with no need for its people to venture away from the oasis' borders (with a single, huge exception). All the resources Iusolians need can be cultivated, harvested or hunted in the oasis or in its immediate, desertic surroundings.
Truth to be told, the base for Iusol's sustainability is stasis. The village has a precise cap of resources they can periodically extract from the environment, of tools they can build or repair, and, most drastically, of people they can sustain. The birthrate is strictly controlled year by year, and since Iusolian people reject every form of unnecessary violence, they devised an original ritual to deal with surplus births: the Explorers.
What are Explorers? Every child born out of the planned birthrate is an Explorer by birthright, and is destined to leave Iusol forever once they reach their 20th year. Explorers are trained all their life in martial, traveling, and survival skills, and are granted the task of preaching the Way of the Oasis to the Outside World. Without revealing the existence of Iusol itself, of course, since the community is pacifist yet almost completely isolationist.
Society of Iusol
Iusol is a direct democracy where every adult Iusolian holds the right to vote in the Open Assembly of the village, which holds legislative and judicial power. Besides the Assembly, there is a Council of selected people who take care of the day-to-day tasks and whield executive power.
As seen when discussing the caste of the Explorers, Iusolian society is divided into groups and offices, each one contributing to the greater good of the community. Some groups, like the Teachers or Carpenters, are larger and more mundane. Some others, like the Hunters, tasked with defending the village from outside threats, are more restricted. And some others groups are made of two or one individuals at max, becoming *de facto* special offices.
A selection of the most prominent offices of Iusol:
- the Senator, the chief executive of the community and head of the Council;
- the Historian, keeper of the Datacranium, the computer where all the knowledge of the community is stored;
- the Custodians, that is, technicians and scientists who take care of Iusol's numeneras;
- the Hydromaster, the keeper of the Hydrocom; and
- the Hunters, who defend the village from wild animals and external threats; the Master Hunter is also responsible for the education of future Explorers.
Technology of Iusol
As mentioned previously, the most precious artifact hold by the Iusolians is the Hydrocom. Without its power, Iusol could not exist and the desert would reclaim the land. It is the Hydromaster who, apart from regular maintenance, periodically activates the Hydrocom and reinvigorate the micro-climate of the oasis.
Not counting the Hydrocom, the Iusolians still rely on a large variety of artifacts and on the occasional use of cyphers to perform their daily tasks. As a matter of fact, the main responsibility of Custodians is to manage all these technological devices and administrate the Numenera Vault.
The level of technology in Iusol is higher compared to the average of the Ninth World, but Iusolians willingly decide to limit themselves to a less technologically advanced way of living. There are countless examples of this practice: while Iusolians employ mostly biodegradable materials, they know and can harness the chemical and industrial manipulation of matter; they can generate renewable electricity, but they use it sparingly; and even though their cottages are made of woods, their most important buildings stand on concrete foundations and have bodies of steel.
Weapons are a rare commodity in Iusol, given how Iusolians strongly reject every form of violence. The only one allowed to openly carry weapons are the Hunters, and even they have access only to electrosticks, a non-lethal ranged and melee weapons which Hunters colloquially label "boltspitters".
More complex weapons are restricted from use and place under the custody of the Master Custodian.
On the Main Characters
The next account from Iusol will focus on two of its inhabitants: Iua and Hesi.
You have just read the first recap from my current Numenera campaign, “Iusol”. If you find yourself wandering what this is all about, you can read the Introduction and find out what this series is about.