I watched a DVD tonight at church which had Ken Ham speaking. He runs, I guess, Answers in Genesis, and he's from Australia.
Austrailians and Americans both speak English, but he said, he'd had a few difficulties in his first week in America.
The car battery in his car was without power. So he asked a passerby for help.
"My batteries flat."
"Um, what did you do? Drive over it?"
"No, its flat. Doesn't have any power."
"Oh...you mean it died."
At which point, he's thinking. No, it didn't die. It was never alive.
Or the point where he has his newborn at his house in America, and a teenage girl is visiting.
"Do you want to nurse the baby?"
Girl says nothing. Looks upset.
"Um, okay, well, I guess I can nurse the baby myself."
He explained that in Australia nurse meant to hold, but he later found nurse meant to breast feed in America (although it does have a wider meaning I guess like to bottle feed an infant.)
So those are cultural differences you can stick into various differing universes.
Now for a world inspired by a bit of history Ken Ham related.
====================
Magnoriok City is on the pass between the pleasant Highlands of Norgiol, and the Jungles of Oflam through which twists the great and slow and navigable River Pai which winds its majestic way down to the Gulf of Quaj. (Mnemonic...first letter is M,N,O,P,Q,R). It is an important trade point between those who traverse the jungle and ship up and down river and even overseas, and to those who live beyond the jungle in the Savahnah of Roouha.
Magnoriok is Faithful and Merchant inclined. Its healthy, and wealthy. The Jungle below it is a symbol for decadence, and savagery, and plague, but with Magnoriok's strong foundation walls (strengthened by holy magic), and its height above the miasmas of the Jungle (that keep the mosquitoes down), and good public health rules and practises, Magnoriok is a good place to live.
The technology level is that of stoneworking, and oxen pulled carts, and lateen sail rigged ships. Magic is powerful enough to animate the dead.
The political system is a once yearly vote for Council Members who appoint everyone to other councils. However, at any time, someone can put up a gold ducat,a nd call for a 'no confidence' election against any member of any council. Lose enough of your people you appointed to lesser councils, and you'll find yourself booted from the Grand Council.
There is a somewhat uneasy tension between the occasionally shortsighted on both sides of the Merchant/Faithful divide.
There are a number of villages, independent ones, on the Highlands, which cart product down to Magnoriok to sell to the merchants in town. This selling is done mostly at the Harvest Fair with judges appointed equally by the villages and the city on a counsel to make sure that the farmers and sheepherders and vintners don't get robbed by the merchants, but also to make sure that quality product in large easily salable lots ends up sold smoothly for the merchants.
Occasionally, the town shield (as they called the guard) had to fight off monsters from the depths of the jungle.
And so it went for several good centuries with Magnoriok becoming a name heard of among travellers a thousand miles away.
But then came a man preaching a new doctrine. Life and death were but the same, and he had the key to show everyone. Due to some tricks such as doping his attractive assistants with drugs that simulated death (from deep in the jungle), and to some genuine power, he was able to convince a number of folk that his animate dead were what they had to look forward to on the Other Side. Of course, his dead agreed because he was a necromancer.
The Faithful priests disagreed, but he laughed at them, and pointed out the empirical nature of his experiments. Most of the Faithful priests were,it is unfortunate to say, extremely flabby. Good times had left them with no mental defenses, no cunning to defuse tricks, and little faith. They tried to incorporate his teachings into theirs.
The Necromancer was willing, even though he held them in not so private contempt. In fact, the chief skeptics at the time were other Death Magi who used 'windows' opened to the Other Side to study it. They claimed his stories were without basis, but unfortunately for them, they were a rather spooky and creepy bunch, and the Necromancer was rather charming.
His teachings were accepted readily because they said that Life Here, and Life There was pretty much the same. You could be a Merchant here, and there. All you needed to do was stack some gold bars in your tomb....which was how the Necromancer financed himself by stealing the gold and replacing it with counterfeit bars.
This had the result of encouraging the Merchants to exceed their bounds. Instead of compromising with others, they sought advantage at all times. Judges at the Harvest Fair were corrupted. Caravans across the Jungle found a less generous and more grasping Merchant Class awaiting them.
The Faithful protested, but the Merchants sneered for it was regarded as conclusively proven that the Faithful were wrong, or at least not relevant. After all, they had taken in the Necromancer's ideas and replaced their image of Paradise and Pain with his vision.
Still, the Faithful were powerful,and so the Merchants did not do much to offend them.
And finally the Necromancer died. Some say he turned to the Faithful at the end,a nd others say he died screaming, and others said he collapsed into dust and reformed as a demigod of death. But in any case, his body needed to be buried, and some of his friends in the Merchant class petitioned very hard indeed, kicking some out of the Grand Council who did not agree, and had the Necromancer's body buried in the center cathedral's foundation along with other famous heroes. And this foundation was the keystone of all the City's great foundation stones.
And so it was that from that day to this, that the number of monsters, of undead things, of unwholesome beasts began to climb decade by decade as the influence of the Necromancer's doctrine and the aura of his body worked in the people and in the foundation of the city. Out of the Jungle, walking dead were once a novelty. One saw a zombie once a month. But now, its multiple zombies every night try to breach the walls to no effect.
But other things come out at night as well. More fell beasts than simple zombies.
And with the rise in danger, more town shield are needed, and more taxes for the shield. Plus, the caravans have to have heavy guards to pass the jungle. And this reduces their profit. But still, the Merchants are greedy and grasping,and sometimes their neighbours in the city, and in other lands feel the pinch of their greed.
But the Faithful continue to accept the doctrine of the Necromancer even though there have been at least three Prophets who testified against him. And even though, the Death Magi who actually pay attention to this field, and not to the brainwashing in their college, still say quite clearly that the Necromancer was an idiot. But the bought and paid for spokesmagi support the Necromancer in loud clamorous tones. And on occasion, a mob can be found to go burn down the house of someone who too loudly questions the Necromancer's teachings for in the poorest part of the city, the teachings of the Faithful start to fail as they already have in the richest part of the city.
And then the Verser arrives, perhaps in the edge of the Jungle looking up toward Magnoriok, or perhaps on a Caravan heading toward Magnoriok.
