So today in a random turn of events I found myself at the Barbican in London. If you don't know what that is - imagine if the Minotaur was really into Brutalism.
I saw Francis Uprichard's 'Wetwang Slack' exhibition
I just went because I had an afternoon free in London. I didn't expect to think "hey, this is the kind of asthetic I want more of in my Yoon-Suin campaign"
(my campaign is an ever-evolving beast of hating last week's idea and mourning that next week's idea won't segue naturally into the established rules, mechanics, setting, or lore of the bad ideas I implemented last week. If only I had a time machine, I'd start from the beginning and everything would be perfect. I'm not crazy, you are)
So I went home and googled Francis Uprichard and found a choice curate* of Yoon Suin NPCs from among her wonderful works.
I don't have the names of these sculptures but they're all Francis Uprichard work.
(Ignore the names, descriptions, and enumerations-that-suggest-it's-a-random-table if you want, I just figured just posting a bunch of pictures was a bit lazy.)
3. The Yellow Monk of Samdruplokha
Nobody knows his name, only that he is the very last monk of the Yellow Order at Samdruplokha Monastery. In fact his name is Ajit, but somewhere over the decades everyone got the idea in their head that his name was a mystery and so never bothered to try to find it out. For now he keeps to the vast, overgrown temple, picking his way among the dusty rooms filled with the clutter of an elaborate and ancient religious tradition now shelved and mothballed. Nobody knows what happened to the other monks. Nobody except him.
4. Doctor Cong Phan Wan-ji
Spiritual guide, servant of the Multichromatic Marutiswami, and well-credentialed street dentist, Doctor Cong is not actually blind, although it's simpler if he explains it as such. As part of a byzantine religious service his eyes were exchanged with that of a Mantis Shrimp, and he perceives colours undreamed in aspects deeper and more myriad than the untrained eye could bear. He is also a master of Juk-Phratang, able to read one's future in the grooves and pits of their teeth, and alter their fate with aggressive and enthusiastic orthodontics.
5. Arati Govindar
Ever since she lost her job at the mothmercing mill, Arati has been on the streets begging for scraps to feed her children. Her wife, Joshingi, had the desperate, foolish idea to try to steal trinkets from the ancient cave-crypts in the swallow-chasms below the Hanging Wall. She's been gone four days. Won't you help?
6. Kalpa Soong
A spiv, a wandering salesman of high-quality cosmetics fresh from the Yellow City that fell of the back of a rickshaw. His sales persona is complicated (he would say enhanced) by his eternal opium high. He fervently fears that mind-control agents are slipped into his tea, and lives by the chemically-uncertain principle that it is impossible to be high on two substances at once. It is possible this idea, and the fear of brainwashing, have something to do with his habit.
*I'm aware a curate is a kind of clergyman and not a noun meaning "a curated selection" but fuck you I'm a modern Shakespeare inventing words up in this.
I saw Francis Uprichard's 'Wetwang Slack' exhibition
I just went because I had an afternoon free in London. I didn't expect to think "hey, this is the kind of asthetic I want more of in my Yoon-Suin campaign"
(my campaign is an ever-evolving beast of hating last week's idea and mourning that next week's idea won't segue naturally into the established rules, mechanics, setting, or lore of the bad ideas I implemented last week. If only I had a time machine, I'd start from the beginning and everything would be perfect. I'm not crazy, you are)
So I went home and googled Francis Uprichard and found a choice curate* of Yoon Suin NPCs from among her wonderful works.
I don't have the names of these sculptures but they're all Francis Uprichard work.
(Ignore the names, descriptions, and enumerations-that-suggest-it's-a-random-table if you want, I just figured just posting a bunch of pictures was a bit lazy.)
1. Champu Bhung
As sour as the high-quality butter she carries down from the mountains, Champu is the best Sherpa who ever was. If you can handle her poor personal hygiene, chronic misanthropy, surliness and strange and outdated bigotries, she can get you anywhere in the Oligarchies unseen, unheard, and three days faster than the maps say you ought. Some say she is a demon in disguise, cursed by a sadhu of old to serve as a guide to humans, but the curse never stipulated she had to be polite about it. The truth is far more interesting.
2. Adesh Adhuk Adhir
A fey-faced perruquier, overly proud of his induction into the replete halls of the city's mercers' society. Preening, picky and persnickety, he believes himself a mover and shaker, a grand manipulator of things-behind-curtains, and would hire the party to arrange accidents and acquire documents. Unfortunately he's just a spoiled overperfumed brat, and any action the party takes to further his agenda will backfire and find them in a legal quagmire.
Nobody knows his name, only that he is the very last monk of the Yellow Order at Samdruplokha Monastery. In fact his name is Ajit, but somewhere over the decades everyone got the idea in their head that his name was a mystery and so never bothered to try to find it out. For now he keeps to the vast, overgrown temple, picking his way among the dusty rooms filled with the clutter of an elaborate and ancient religious tradition now shelved and mothballed. Nobody knows what happened to the other monks. Nobody except him.
Spiritual guide, servant of the Multichromatic Marutiswami, and well-credentialed street dentist, Doctor Cong is not actually blind, although it's simpler if he explains it as such. As part of a byzantine religious service his eyes were exchanged with that of a Mantis Shrimp, and he perceives colours undreamed in aspects deeper and more myriad than the untrained eye could bear. He is also a master of Juk-Phratang, able to read one's future in the grooves and pits of their teeth, and alter their fate with aggressive and enthusiastic orthodontics.
Ever since she lost her job at the mothmercing mill, Arati has been on the streets begging for scraps to feed her children. Her wife, Joshingi, had the desperate, foolish idea to try to steal trinkets from the ancient cave-crypts in the swallow-chasms below the Hanging Wall. She's been gone four days. Won't you help?
A spiv, a wandering salesman of high-quality cosmetics fresh from the Yellow City that fell of the back of a rickshaw. His sales persona is complicated (he would say enhanced) by his eternal opium high. He fervently fears that mind-control agents are slipped into his tea, and lives by the chemically-uncertain principle that it is impossible to be high on two substances at once. It is possible this idea, and the fear of brainwashing, have something to do with his habit.
*I'm aware a curate is a kind of clergyman and not a noun meaning "a curated selection" but fuck you I'm a modern Shakespeare inventing words up in this.
"Imagine if the Minotaur was really into Brutalism" - I cannot conceive of a better description of the Barbican ever being coined. Well done!
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