Ghyll:Folktown

wow. dib. wow. --Joe Bowers 20:15, 23 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Don't forget to see the Talk: Jcowan compiled a list of all Folktown references a few weeks ago. Could be useful. --Morbus Iff 21:00, 23 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Thanks! Those notes are awesome! --Joe Bowers 21:20, 23 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Notes only. Move along.

In only a bit more than 200 years, the once tiny hamlet of Folktown has emerged a center for industry, culture, and thought, and is ??considered by some to be| STYLE- refer to courts and parliment below?? "the capital city of Ghyll"!

or possibly a center for business, the arts, and scholarship.

or at least a powerful source of pollution, pretension, and some of the finest grant writing since Aminfarances.

Modern Folktown boasts at least one of the somewhat notable scholarly organizations of Ghyll, powerful Industrial and Alchemical manufacturing, and is a center for the patronage of the arts.

A Gloss of the History of Folktown

Due to the large number of patrons of scholarship who reside in Folktown, the history of the community has been the subject of extremely thorough research. The following gloss is by necessity very brief and as a result somewhat superficial. Where appropriate, the author has taken pains to refer the reader to more exhaustive and authoritative sources.

Prehistory and The X Documents

Archeological evidence suggests that agriculture and toolmaking peoples were settled on and around around Arbuckle Hill as early as -1100 EC. The earliest documentary evidence of this culture are the puzzling "X Documents". More than two hundred of these documents are known to still be in existence. Scholars speculate that the documents were agricultural manuals.

"X Document" 103, with annotations

The above is a copy of the decorative cover of X Document 103, currently in the private collection of Baron Claude Lloyd Albert Smallwood. (The numerals, in red, are annotations by this scholar). Like all of the known X Documents, it is painted in remarkably permanent vegitable pigments on carapace-leather with has the distinctive orange and purple blocks and common text elements. (1) and (2) are the same for all documents. The text of (2), with its character-forms that prefigure the modern folktown common script, has been translated as "this Joy, it is activity which prepares for harvest" or "We are amused and build". The text of (1) is apparently phonetic, in an unfamiliar script, and has yet to be convincingly translated.

The numeral part of (3), in what appears to be a degenerate form of classical N-ary (with only one dimension of meaning) varies from document to document, but the remainder of the text is also always the same. Here, a compelling reading is "Five are out of balance" or "Five are foolish", followed by the imperative "Find them".

Unlike the exteriors, the interior of the X Documents were likely painted or written on wood-pulp paper, and only the smallest traces of their contents survive today.

The most remarkable conclusion that can be drawn from these documents is founded on the fact that the dyes used are almost certainly manufactured from local agricultural products. This, together with the large number of surviving documents and their discovery in the region, leads scholars to believe the peoples of the region were shockingly literate- it is likely that the surviving number of these documents is close to or exceeds the population of the region at any point before -800 EC!

Early History of the Region

The next document, from circa -700 EC, is the Arbugghyll Map, which depicts a very small community of serfs living surrounding a manor farm.

The next mention of the town, circa -640 EC, is one of the rare documents that survived the purge of Harandraff, probably located in the Proto-Harandraff Orthonormal Basis Set {τ , ρ, φ}, the reign of the "disunited king" known to modern scholars as Proto-Harandraff ((-730, -600), 9ρ). The document is a contains the charter for a "Free Town", the only one of it's kind known to modern scholars. Blivingdel's translation of the preamblatory first degree of the charter (in Blivingdel's History of Folktown and It's Folks) reads simply:

You Wanted it? You Got It.
The fate of the folk is in the hands of the folk
Don't Come Crying to me when it all blows up in your face.
We and our officers wash our hands of you
The city is now called
By royal authority

Chump Town

(ideogrammatic seal attributed to P-H ((-730, -600), 7ρ)

Although the charter (as was customary at the time) also contains secondary and tertiary structures, the secondary is apparently a long definition of the word (rather politely) translated by Blivingdel as "Chump", and the tertiary structure seems a rather explicit description of rather implausible mating habits, attributed variously to "The City", "The People", and "The Lord of the People, Ar Bugh". What prompted the issue of the charter is still a subject of much debate amongst historians.

Courts and Parliament

(This section relies extensively on Burbleson's Early Folktown Court Documents in Translation, -639 EC and Early -638 EC Volumes I through CVI)

Our first records of the Folktown court date from the immediately following period. From the in-town charter of the courts "To provide for the common order, cause who needs that King character, anyway" (Burbleson, Vol I, Pg. 4), and the court's charter of itself (Burbleson, Vol I, Pg. 6 through Vol VI, Pg 2044) the papers and records of the initial Folktown court are an oasis of plenty in an otherwise parched historical landscape. The anonymous copyist of one of the Odlucian_Library's original copies of Harandraff, the Greatest Guy Ever! editorializes that perhaps when confronted by the quantity of documentation an enormously verbose judiciary had produced after one hundred and fifty years of operation, Harandraff's inquisitors for historical purity chose to forget it existed rather than spend the years that would be required to burn it all. (It is notable that the page containing this commentary in the margins is the last page copied in that particular handwriting).

The picture these records paint of Folktown from the time of the charter through the great civil war is detailed, rich, but unfortunately rather narrow.

One of the first cases approached by the court, and one that sheds some light on both the depth and the limits of these documents is the case of "Baby Alek", investigated in detail by Herringer in his Mick's Executioner: Origins of the Folktown Executioner's Festival. It involves a pair of families, the Hambeck and Harblock clans, both claiming parentage of the same infant (identified before the court as "Alek"). The case was initially presented to the court in -639 EC. Apparently testimony lasted for four days; the court considered the case for a full year before reaching the preliminary verdict that the child should be cut in half and one half distributed to each party of claim. A chronology of the remainder of the court's activities with respect to the case follows:

• -638 EC: court deliberates which half should go to whom, debates the measurement of one-half an infant.
• -636 EC: court issues preliminary table of legal infant metrics.
• late -636 EC: legal infant metric table rejected.
• -632 EC: court issues preliminary executive order deciding that the infant should be dissolved to paste with powerful alchemical reagents and distributed by volume.
• -630 EC: court issues charter for "The Institute for Reactive Chemistry in Pursuit of Civil Justice", "established for the research and development of a reagent appropriate to the flesh and exoskeleton of children 'Without undue suffering on the part of the subject'".
• -628 EC: IRCPCJ Bake sales spun off into "The Institute for the Fabrication of Delicious Treats in Pursuit of Civic Justice and Alchemical Research" and ladies' auxilliary.
• -613 EC: court retires charter if IRCPCJ, records recieving 7 clay jars, each containing 7 wurp of "ouchless child solvent". IFDTPCJAR continues operation.
• -604 EC: court issues preliminary decision covering claimant liability for residual solvent in the liquid portions of the infant received, measured by the difference between one-half the weight of the child and the weight of the recieved portion, minus the weight of the jars used for the purpose of distribution, assessed at the fair market value of "the actual or similar reagent used to disolve children to paste." Court charters "The Institute for Mercantile Research in Pursuit of Civil Justice" to determine this value.
• -599 EC: IMRPCJ issues request to the court for the definition of "A negotiable measure of value" in order to complete it's report.
• -598 EC: court establishes "The Institute for Standards in Mercantile Exchange in Pursuit of Civil Justice" to issue a currency. The ISMEPJ is endowed with a years supply of delicious treats.
• -590 EC: ISMEPJ submits a declaration of rejection of charter to the court. Sub-Lochree Markleson comments included in the court record are "We appreciate the cookies, but it is the opinion of the ISMEPJ board that you people are a pack of loons." The ISMEPJ recharters itself as the Chump Town Bank, begins minting the "Chump Chip" coin backed by harvest futures.
• -589 EC: the IMRPCJ declares that 1 wurp of ouchless child solvent is worth zero chump chips, since the act of disolving a child in acid, even ouchless acid, is in fact of negative value to individuals and society.
• -587 EC: the court appoints "Mick from Hillbottom" first Marshall of the court, and orders him to execute the judgement, collect and dissolve the child, appoint witnesses, and distribute the winnings to the claimant families.
• -580 EC: Alek Hambeck-Harblock dies of natural causes.
• -579 EC: the court appoints "Dex from Hillbottom" second Marshall of the court, issues an order for the arrest and execution of "Mick from Hillbottom" for dereliction of duty.
• -565 EC: Mick from Hillbottom dies in a farming accident. Cornelious Junior Crunch is appointed third Marshall, charged with the arrest and execution of Dex from Hillbottom.

Findings in this case actually continued formally until the Ivian Rejah, and informally continue to this day in the form of the "Executioner's Festival" appointments. (Out of towners should note that modern appointees to the post of "Mick's Executioner" are only charged with wearing a comical hat, buying the drinks and selecting the next appointee at the following year's festival.)

The court continued to operate and rule in this fashion until just after -300 EC, issuing orders and founding various organizations and institutions, but apparently being otherwise ignored by the residents of the area. In addition to founding and overseeing alchemical, baking, econometric, and financial institutions, the court established

• -599 EC: The Committee for the Measurement of Land Parcels in PCJ which lead the funding, design, and construction of the Folktown Clocktower.
• -560 EC: The Institute for Wiping that Smug Grin off of Your Face in PCJ which became the infamous Dark Conventicle of Morphomancy
• -551 EC: The Institute for Municipal Earth Moving Technologies, in PCJ Which became the famous golden age Brotherhood of Golemists, which refined golem technology and was the center of early Mechanaut research.
• -520 EC: The Committee for Standards and Decency in Pantomime in PCJ which became the Chump Town Council for the Arts and oversaw the construction of the Folktown Ampetheatre.
• -410 EC: The Council for the Preservation of Legislative Tradition in PCJ which in turn drew the charter for our current Nitenmangrey-influenced Parliamentary traditions, and established a formal parliamentary body (Although at the time with no executive power whatsoever).

The court of this period also provided for the creation of what is today the Folktown militia and its associated bake-sale operations.

In -500 EC, the Chump Town Bank changed its name to "The Folk Town Bank", likely for reasons of credibility. Since by this time it was directly involved in much of the trade between the thriving but still small community and its neighbors, the name stuck, and by -450 EC the community was known to the outside world as "Folktown".

In -420 EC, the (now Folktown) court issued a declaration which at the time was thought of as typical silliness, but which would have far reaching implications. Citing the cycle-clause from the Chump Town Charter "the fate of the folk is in the hands of the folk", and reasoning that not just the town but all of Ghyll was populated by folks, the court declared that "this court's ruling knows no formal or informal border, and it resolves to adjudicate, and executive to act, on petitions from all folk in all places."

At the time of what would later be called "the Grand Declaration" there had not been a petition to rule set before the court in over one hundred years. The declaration was dismissed as hyperbole by the residents of the hamlet, and as loonicy by those of the outside world who happened to note its issue. Copyist's commentary aside, scholars are uncertain whether news of this declaration ever even reached the ears of King Harandraff the Great or his courtiers.

Golden Age History

At the end of the great civil war in -390 EC, the life of the small community of Folktown was still very similar to the life in neighboring farming communities. The economic panic accompanying the war had prompted the collapse of the Folk Town Bank, and while the town boasted a court council that most considered a collection of harmless cranks and variety of research and philanthropic organizations, few had very broad effects or implications for the average resident beyond the easy availability of low cost brownies from charity bake sales. Indeed, saturation in the brownie market is what many scholars believe led to the fairly poor record of success for most of the "in PCJ" organizations chartered by the court in this period. While the golden age of Ghyll marched on through the 300's, Folktown was largely left behind.

The "space rock" disaster in -306 EC marked the an important turning point for this peaceful, if eccentric, village. The seemingly random death of fifteen children at the site of space rock impact prompted Arthir Jhostings to publish his breakthrough paper on Cataclysmatology, and began to attract the attention of scholars and students of Bute University to the town. Also, in mourning, the Folktown Arts Council established an annual of public music performance in memory of the lost children. These "rock concerts" initially featuring local musicians singing sad ballads, soon began to attract more qualified and diverse musicians to the promise of easy crowds and cheap brownies.

Twenty years later, these two catalysts would

300 EC- Bute University going strong, Andelphracia and Quizlar 6 kicking it, About the same time frame as Iganefta is united under Lord Glosfordshier. A golden age of Ghyll.

Odgar IV is the key piece here. Emmigration from the Bute and all over Ghyll to hear his wisdom, or his music, or because he told you to come and dangit, he's Odgar IV.

Citations: Arbugghyll, Proto-Harandraff Orthonormal Basis Set .

More Sources:

Blivingdel in Theoarcheology, Linguistics

Jarvik Jarvik Everything is Fine, Go Back to Your Homes

Zed Varren tehehehehe....

Macklefoot's Xlation of the Grimporke Grimoire for some extremely mundane topic.