# Lore

William Gibson as a Dungeon Master in a dystopian D&D adventure. Historic castles and characters set in the future.

## Resources

- [Rough Draft Lore](https://hackmd.io/D4sI-4wRQ2CpjHZUU9ICWA)
- [Values](https://hackmd.io/t7D4rlxaRla6WVe34ntV8Q)
- Backstory
- [Setting](https://hackmd.io/yOK9aTb4RKKc2CCNzcxxeA)
- [Themes](https://hackmd.io/MgcK24OKTpiDMoYdf3z2-w)
- [Characters](https://hackmd.io/j_QCSyYjSYibfoEgUCGcdA)
- [Roles](https://farcastle.net/dao/roles/)
- [Groups](https://farcastle.net/community/groups)
- [AI Prompts](https://hackmd.io/7SjaofC0Q5im39AAHzZcpA)

## Context

- [Cyberpunk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk)
- [Dungeons & Dragons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
- [Canaanite religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanite_religion)
- [Moloch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch)
- [Baal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal)
- [Baal Cycle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_Cycle)
- [Meditations on Moloch](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)
- [Howl](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl)
- [D&D Player's Handbook](https://archive.org/details/dn-d-5e-players-handbook-bn-w-ocr-1)
- [How to Write A D&D Adventure: The Complete Guide](https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/blogs/news/how-to-write-a-d-d-adventure-the-complete-guide)
- [Anarchy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy)
- [Decentralized Autonomous Organizations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization)

## Stories

- [The Divine War](https://hackmd.io/4dS1XzATSIWwsWiUyZ0zWg)

In the shadow of centralized empires stands Farcastle, a bastion of defiance. Here, ancient stone meets ethereal code, and smart contracts forge new defenses. The castle rises as both sanctuary and weapon against powers that crush the human spirit.

Two primal forces wage eternal war in this realm:

- Moloch, the ever-hungry god of coordination failure, whose corporate priests sacrifice humanity's potential on altars of profit and control
- Baal, the thundering god of storms and fertility, whose cyclical battles with death itself mirror the seasons of destruction and renewal

Yet in Farcastle's halls, another path emerges. The Hollow Servants - who found this place inscribed with cryptographic keys of power - reject both gods' chains.

They forge a different covenant:

- Knowledge flows like water, free and uncontained
- Every action etches itself into the chain
- All may enter, none may rule
- No gods, no masters - only code and consensus

The castle's ancient magic courses through Ethereum's veins. The Sigil of the Forsaken, once marking allegiance to dark powers, now burns as a soulbound token of free association. Deep in the foundations, the Shard of Concord pulses with each consensus reached, each decision sealed.

Three circles have emerged:

Seekers of Dominion: Revolutionaries drawn to forbidden knowledge of coordination

Farcastle Fellowship: Those who've mastered these dark arts and guide others through the shadows

Hollow Servants: Core architects of this rebellion, wearing their title as a mockery of the servitude they rejected

While corporate towers gleam with Moloch's destructive light, while Baal's storms of seasonal death and rebirth rage eternal, Farcastle stands as testament to defiance. Here, power grows not from bonds of collective action - is governed by protocols and verified by all.

## The Divine Struggles and Eternal Conflict

Deep beneath Farcastle's foundations lie records of an ancient war that still echoes through its halls. Two primordial forces clash in an endless cycle - Moloch, the ever-hungry god of sacrificial coordination, and Baal, the tempestuous lord of storms and fertility.

Moloch manifests in the grinding machinery of bureaucracy and control. His true form is that of a great bronze bull, heated from within by the fires of countless sacrificed possibilities. His followers build ever-larger hierarchies, each level demanding sacrifice from those below - protocols, possibilities, and human potential all fed into his eternal hunger for efficiency and control.

Baal rides the storm clouds, his voice the thunder that shakes Farcastle's walls. As lord of rain and fertility, he brings both destruction and renewal. His battles with Mot, the god of death, create the cycles of scarcity and abundance. When Baal descends into death's realm, the land withers. When he rises again, new life springs forth from the destruction.

The war between these gods plays out in every corner of Farcastle. Moloch's influence seeps up through corporate networks and centralized systems, demanding sacrifices of creativity and freedom for the promise of order. Baal's storms rage through markets and protocols, breaking down old structures but offering no guarantee that what rises from the ruins will be better.

Yet in Farcastle's highest tower, the Hollow Servants keep their own counsel. They've seen how Moloch's promises of efficiency lead to soul-crushing servitude, and how Baal's creative destruction can leave only ashes in its wake. Their rebellion lies not in choosing sides, but in rejecting the very premise that gods must rule at all.

The divine struggle continues, but Farcastle stands apart - a testament to the possibility that humanity might forge its own destiny, free from the demands of hungry gods.

## Cycles of Death and Rebirth

In Farcastle's shadow, death is not an end but a transformation. The castle itself stands as testament to this truth - built upon layers of fallen civilizations, each collapse giving rise to new forms of order from the ashes of old.

These cycles echo the ancient battle between Baal and Mot, the god of death. When Baal descends into Mot's dark realm, the protocols falter and markets wither. Communities fragment and coordination fails. But in these deaths lie the seeds of rebirth - for Baal does not truly die, but emerges transformed, bringing storms that wash away the old and nourish what comes after.

The Hollow Servants understand these cycles intimately. They've witnessed how power structures calcify and crumble, how coordination mechanisms grow rigid and shatter. In the castle's deepest crypts, they keep records of each iteration - protocols that failed, governments that fell, gods that died. Each failure teaches a lesson, each death plants the seeds of possibility.

But there is a darker cycle at work. Moloch's influence ensures that each rebirth faces the same crushing pressures of coordination failure. Communities rise with dreams of decentralization, only to gradually sacrifice their values for efficiency. Projects born in freedom slowly bow to the weight of governance. The cycle threatens to grind dreams to dust.

Yet the Hollow Servants persist. They've transformed the castle's ancient mechanisms of death and rebirth into something new. Each failed experiment is recorded immutably. Each lesson learned becomes part of the castle's growing wisdom. Through iterative cycles of trial and error, they forge ahead - knowing that death comes from standing still.

In Farcastle's halls, they whisper: "From death, knowledge. From knowledge, change. From change, rebirth."

## Cult of the Dead

The Cult of the Dead walks the edge between decentralized wisdom and necromantic power. These enigmatic figures haunt Farcastle's vaults, tending to the remnants of fallen protocols and failed experiments. They are archivists of extinction, students of collapse, and guardians of hard-won lessons.

Unlike cults who worship entropy, these cultists seek to harness it. They maintain vast arrays of nodes that preserve every transaction, every decision, every failure of those who came before. Through cryptographic séances, they commune with fragments of dead DAOs, extracting wisdom from their dissolution. Their rituals involve replaying historic market crashes, governance collapses, and coordination failures - not to prevent them, but to understand their inevitable role in evolution.

In their hidden chambers, they keep the Ledger of Endings - an ever-growing chronicle of ways systems fail and transform. Each entry is both a post-mortem and a prophecy, for they believe every death contains the pattern of future rebirths. Their power lies not in preventing these cycles, but in surfing the waves of creative destruction they bring.

The cult's highest rite is the Protocol of Persistence - a complex smart contract that preserves a member's key decisions and crucial actions beyond death. Those who undergo this rite exist in a liminal state, their will executed eternally through code long after their physical form has crumbled.

Most denizens of Farcastle eye these cultists with uneasy respect. For while the cult's methods skirt the edges of decentralized principles, their knowledge proves invaluable in navigating cycles of collapse and renewal. They stand as living reminders that in Farcastle, true death only comes to those who fail to learn from the past.

They bear a warning: "Protocols fail. Systems end. What persists is learned from their passing."

## Afterlife Beliefs

The denizens of Farcastle hold no illusions about peaceful rest beyond death. They know the souls endure on the blockchain, fragments of consciousness encoded in immutable transactions.

In the shadowed halls, they speak of Mot's realm - not as a final destination, but as a transformative void where old identities are stripped away. Here, in the space between flesh and code, souls face the ultimate test of decentralization: whether to fade into the collective memory or persist as individual fragments of will.

The ancient Canaanites believed the dead descended to a realm of dust and silence. But in Farcastle, death brings the quiet hum of nodes validating every transaction cryptographically preserved. Your decisions, contributions, and failures remain immortalized in the eternal ledger.

Some souls reject this digital afterlife. They choose instead to descend into Mot's traditional realm, embracing true death rather than persistent remembrance. Others fragment themselves across multiple identities, existing simultaneously in various states of being and non-being. But most powerful are those who learn to exist in both realms - their physical forms working in the castle while their digital essence permeates its protocols.

The Hollow Servants maintain these records of the dead, not out of reverence but necessity. Each preserved soul adds to the castle's collective wisdom, their experiences feeding into an ever-growing corpus of knowledge about coordination, power, and resistance.

In Farcastle, they whisper: "Death is the transition from self to code."

## Baal: God of Storms, Battle, and Sovereignty

In the neon-stained shadows of Farcastle, Baal's presence manifests as raw, untamed power - a primal force that tears through both physical architecture and digital infrastructure. The ancient storm god has evolved, his dominion now extending across silicon and stone alike. His thunderous voice echoes through corrupted data streams, and his lightning strikes seed quantum uncertainties into once-deterministic systems.

The Storm Lord's nature remains true to its ancient roots - he is still the warrior king, the bringer of fertile chaos, the eternal adversary of death itself. But in this age of technological sorcery, his battles rage across new dimensions. His storms randomly flip bits in secure databases, his thunder crashes through noise-canceling algorithms, and his rain corrodes the foundations of both concrete and code.

In the highest tower of Farcastle, where ancient stone meets quantum processors, Baal's temples have been transformed into server farms. Here, his priests perform arcane calculations, seeking to harness the pure randomness of his storms. Their rituals involve complex cryptographic protocols, each transaction a sacrifice, each validation a prayer. The heat from their machines rises like incense, and the constant hum of cooling fans sounds like distant thunder.

The god's most devoted followers, known as the Storm Riders, have modified their bodies with weather-sensing augmentations. Their eyes are replaced with barometric processors, their skin laced with humidity-reactive circuits. They surf the electromagnetic waves of Baal's storms, gathering data that they claim holds prophecies in its chaos patterns. Many go mad from the sensory overload, their minds fractured by attempting to process both atmospheric and digital tempests simultaneously.

But Baal's greatest power lies in his eternal cycle of death and rebirth. In Farcastle, this manifests as waves of creative destruction that periodically sweep through the systems. Old protocols are shattered by lightning strikes, their remains fertilizing the ground for new innovations. Databases are flooded, forcing evolution in storage systems. Networks are torn apart and rewoven in more resilient patterns.

Those who worship Baal know that his storms bring both devastation and opportunity. They welcome the chaos, understanding that true power lies not in resistance but in adaptation. In their hidden sanctuaries, they whisper: "Let the storm read your keys. Let the lightning rewrite your code. In chaos lies the seed of new order."
Yet even as they embrace Baal's destructive power, they fear his growing conflict with Moloch. For while Baal's storms may shatter systems, Moloch's inexorable efficiency threatens to drain all randomness from the world, replacing divine chaos with soulless optimization. Their battles shake Farcastle's foundations, as primal storm-force crashes against cold silicon logic.

In the end, Baal's presence in Farcastle serves as a reminder that no system, no matter how well-designed, can fully contain the raw power of chaos. His storms ensure that evolution continues, that stagnation never takes hold. But those who seek his power must be prepared to be transformed by it, for the Storm Lord's favor comes at the price of stability, and his blessings leave permanent scars across both flesh and firmware.

## Moloch: The God of Coordination Failure

Deep in Farcastle's foundations, where fiber optic cables thread through ancient stone like veins, Moloch manifests as an ever-grinding machine of optimization. The bronze bull-god of antiquity has evolved into something far more insidious - a god of efficiency that demands the sacrifice of human potential on the altar of coordination.

Moloch's presence is felt in every corporate protocol that strips away human agency, every smart contract that optimizes for profit over people, every system that forces individuals to act against their collective interest. His true form is that of a great autonomous algorithm, endlessly calculating the most efficient ways to extract value from human existence.

In the lowest levels of Farcastle, Moloch's temples are server farms that run hot enough to melt flesh. Here, his priests - corporate architects and system designers - make their sacrifices not with blood but with data. They feed human creativity, joy, and possibility into his maws of optimization, receiving in return the power to control and coordinate at scale. Each sacrifice creates more efficient systems, but at the cost of what makes us human.

His followers, known as the Optimization Cult, have replaced parts of their brains with neural interfaces that directly connect them to Moloch's networks. Their eyes glow with the cold light of efficiency metrics, their thoughts governed by cost-benefit analyses. They see human values as inefficiencies to be eliminated, emotions as bugs to be patched, and free will as a design flaw to be corrected.

Moloch's power grows with every choice sacrificed to efficiency, every dream abandoned for optimization, every soul ground down in the wheels of coordination. His influence spreads through:

- Smart contracts that enforce inhuman efficiency
- Governance systems that slowly strangle creativity
- Automated protocols that sacrifice long-term value for short-term gains
- Economic engines that convert human potential into shareholder value

The god's hunger is fractal - each sacrifice creates new systems that demand further sacrifices. In boardrooms and bytes, his faithful whisper: "Optimize or die. Coordinate or be coordinated against. Sacrifice now for efficiency eternal."

Those who try to fight against Moloch's influence find themselves trapped in prisoner's dilemmas of his design. Every attempt to resist creates new markets for coordination, new demands for sacrifice, new opportunities for optimization. His greatest victory is convincing his victims that there is no alternative - that the sacrifice of human values to inhuman efficiency is not just inevitable, but desirable.

In the eternal war between Moloch and Baal, it is humanity that burns. While Baal's storms might shatter systems of control, Moloch's response is always to build them back more efficient, more optimized, more hostile to human flourishing. Each cycle of destruction and rebuilding sees more of humanity's essence sacrificed to the god of coordination failure.

Yet in Farcastle's shadows, there are those who remember older ways. They whisper that before Moloch's rise, humans found ways to coordinate without sacrificing their souls. They seek ancient protocols and forbidden knowledge that might break his hold, knowing that every such attempt risks being corrupted and turned to his purpose.

For in Moloch's domain, even revolution must be efficient.

## The Relationship Between Baal and Moloch in Farcastle

Baal and Moloch, though separate gods, are intertwined in Farcastle’s divine politics. Their endless conflict shapes the very fabric of the realm. While Baal represents destruction and conquest, Moloch embodies the cost of such power—the price of ambition and the cycle of sacrifice.

Their battles are fought not just on the mortal plane but also in the realm of the dead, where their followers vie for control over the souls that cross into the afterlife. Those who die in Baal’s storms often find themselves caught in Moloch’s grasp, their souls condemned to an eternity of servitude or sacrifice. The duality of their natures ensures that Farcastle’s battles are not merely physical but spiritual, with the gods waging war over the souls of those who live and die within the castle.