Note: I need to make something simple as my brain is getting tired.
There is a parallel between the Courtiers who attended a king's court, and the Political Nation of the Internet Age.
There are about 300,000 people in the Political Nation currently according to Dinesh D'Souza, political pundit. I'm one of them. These are the people who shape the political discourse in the nation at large. Of course, in the rankage of people in this group, I'm about 280,000th in importance with Obama being #1 and Sarah Palin or Rush being #2.
The diffferences between the Courtiers and the Political Nation are that the Nation is two to three orders of magnitude larger than the Courtiers. Also, the Political Nation is spread out by the linking power of the Internet (although it is still heavily concentrated in Washington and NYC.)
Courtiers are known for 1)Hanging out in the King's Outside Courts. 2)Dressing Nice 3)Passing the time of boredom in the outer courts with conversation and games and flirting with each other. 4)While being mostly men, still giving place to steely willed older females and nicely dressed younger females. 5)Getting in duels with each other with rapiers 6)Factions and clever arguements 7)Taking bribes to advance some side. 8)Poisoning others.
For the political nation read 1)Hanging out on political forums on the Net 2)Um, okay, wearing Pajamas might not fit. 3)Games, chatting, and pron...that sounds like the Net. 4)Yup. The Net's rulers are mostly men, but pretty young girls have a definite edge. 5)Blogwars between certain bloggers. 6)well yeah. 7)If you were perchance a high level State Department official and you wanted to ensure a pleasant retirement you could do worse than chatting up the Saudi ambassador. 8) People do try to personally destroy each other on occasion.
There are a lot of things in this world that are simply the latest iteration of a previous phenomenon.
As to how to turn this into a world, ah, uh, I'll think about that.
Um, this has almost nothing to do with my previous post despite slight effort to go that way. Oh well....
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In dark bars out of the way, and hospital waiting rooms, in truck stops, in small white churches, and on the sidewalk up an alley the True Bard works. Wherever there is pain, unexpressed, possibly unknown, the Bard sings with her voice as true and clear as she can make it. In so doing, she gives form to the pain, risks losing it into the world, and then the ones hurting See and the pain is lesser, annealed over, understood, and the world is slightly stronger.
For if there is enough pain, the world will end. Everyone has the Gift, the Power of Mind, and when in rage or anguish, we tear at the world. Enough, and the world groans. Enough more, and there is no world. Few know of this there power, for this is not simple mind over matter, but a shredding of space and time by the unleashed pain and the destructive will.
Break the world a little bit, and you get tears and Things that come through. These things are the Manifestations of the Pain, and need to be destroyed. Break the world more, and earthquakes and hurricanes come. More and well, you don't need to worry about that if it happens.
--The Book of the Song
That is from the viewpoint of a 'True Bard', a psionic space-time telekineticist with empathic abilities all merged together with musical talent. Such people have a much higher degree of TK and empathy than most on this planet. Most people are what we would consider a 'tad overwrought' or 'sensitive souls' and they have enough empathy to get a touch, but not enough to really do any good with it. It does to some degree limit certain types of crimes. There are relatively few sociopaths, but the few there are exist as true horrors.
However, not every Manifestation is problematic. Sometimes the gates are opened, and what comes through is a mere traveller, or some random bit of this or that. Sometimes even a Verser comes through. Of course, such pain and sadness does seem to have a way of attracting evil. And it is often the case that the Verser brought through has a resonance between his nature and the problem.
Whisp came through on one of these as a women grieved over her adulterous husband. Tadeusz thinks he did, but right after he arrived, he got hit on the head with a shovel, and he woke up to realize he was drowning wrapped in chains dropping to the bottom of a river.