The Gridshamans are neo-tribal animists, urban shamans who work with the spirits of building and circuit to produce what could easily be called magic. Gridshamans work their will with everything from ecstatic dancing with colorful lights, to hard sweaty work with metal and arc welders, to clashing destructive junkyard performance art. Gridshamans aren't much of a codified faction; they have no membership list, or leadership, or particular goals. They do, however, have shared rites, and philosophies, and terminology, and often tend to gather together to live in tribes.
Philosophy
Everything has a spirit. When most 'traditional' cultures say this, they're thinking of the spirits of bird and beast, tree and river. The Gridshamans, though, have adapted this belief to their modern, constructed world. One building may have a better 'feel' to it, a better spirit, than an apparently-similar one, and praising your vehicles performance may really make it happy and help it work better. Forced to explain their worldview rationally, some gridshamans will call this a metaphor for complexity, for sentient attentioan and projection onto the inanimate... Others will just laugh.
It doesn't really matter; in the Mess, symbolic manipulation and dealing with these spirits does indeed have visible effects. All it requires is an acceptable-sounding reason to work, and the urban-shamanic worldview provides plenty of these in a place like Downwarp. A gridshaman may improvise electrical equiment by scribing the circuit schematic on a flat surface, or be able to seperate a welded-on component from a wreck just by convincing the part that it will be more appreciated elsewhere.
Attractors and Artistry
Gridshamans ascribe spiritual presence to concepts as well as objects; in fact they consider existence to be esentially made from three of them, which they call Spark, Steel, and Rust. These are another manifestation of the three forces that many mystic cultures observe; creation, pattern, and destruction in an endless cycle. Gridshamans call these the attractors, since every individual shaman tends to feel drawn toward one of them strongly (and often a second, less strongly), their projects manifesting or advancing one of those three principles.
Gridshamans usually feel that they work best in some sort of ecstatic, or at least altered, state of mind. For most, this is achived through art, in one sort or another; the totally focussed state of the musician or the programmer or the mechanic. Shamans explore and develop their attractor associations through this sort of work, and are therefore often well-known as enthusiatic artists in the fields they choose to pursue.
Attractor Descriptions
- Spark - Spark is creation, making something from nothing, intersting from boring. Spark shamans will often claim they work in creativity, although any works of art show this. What they really provide is inspiration and energy. Spark arts are usually ephemeral and active, like music and dance and song.
- Steel - Building things that last is hard work, but highly valued. Steel is the attractor of pattern and preservation and permanence, things that will hopefully make a differnet in Wheels to come. Many steel shamans find their place in pursuits like architecture, sculpture, and mechanics.
- Rust - Death and destruction, at least in any permanent way, are rather out of vogue in the world of the Mess. However, Rust still finds its place, applying to the entropy of Downwarp and the transformations, physical and psychological, that happen every day in the Mess. Rust artisans often work in bodysculpting, memetics, and psychopharmacology.
Traditions
Gridshamans tend to join together in tribes, smaller groups formed from friendship of mutual interest that consider eachoachother equivalent to family. Tribes may grow or schism for interpersonal reasons or changes in view, and there is no stigma built into this; tribal associations are intended to be fluid while still meaningful. Although most new gridshamans are 'converts,' coming to an interesting-looking tribe and asking to join, tribes sometimes create new members, tribechildren, with a somewhat obscure and mystical rite that blends the essense of all tribe memebers.
Joining a tribe and calling oneself a gridshaman are traditionally more involved than simply making the decision. An inititation rite gives all gridshamans a common background and serves as a first step on the path of looking at the world from the shamanistic point of view. A ritual drug is used for this initiation, Running Toward, which drives the initiate through a vision quest touched with elements of one of the three Attractors, culminating in an impressive death. The drug itself handles backup and reinstantiation, ensuring that the user remembers every moment up until the moment of death. The rite often leaves the new gridshaman changed, psychological problems sorted through by the vision quest, and sometimes even physical differences apparent after revival.
Members
(Attractor associations are in parentheses)
PCs
Masks
NPCs
- Ground-State (Steel) - Aleph (leader) of Induction-Coil's birth tribe
Reference Material
Some real-world books, films, and other things that may possibly help you get in the mindset or inspire some formations. Can you think of more?
Kaldera, Raven. Schwarzstein, Tannin. The Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle. Llewellyn Publications, 2002.
Spends quite a bit telling about how to adapt spirituality, magic, and yourself to a city environment, whether cities are the true home of your soul, or if they're a baneful place you've been forced into. Some of it is only meant as humor and not to be taken seriously, and other parts are truths meant to be taken seriously and carefully, and it doesn't stop to tell you which is which. (Like the Bible!) Many innovative ideas. It's not useful as a "paganism primer," or a plain city survival guide, but quite useful for those already familiar with both.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/technopaganism/
Where lots of ideas relevant to this dicussed. We're not as fictional as you might think!
Diane Duane's ["So You Want To Be A Wizard"] (1983, Delacorte Press), ["Deep Wizardry"] (1985, Delacorte Press), and ["High Wizardry"] (1990, Delacorte Press) series contain a similar vibe (coming to terms with arcane forces with bits of scrap and diagrams on the ground, mainly). There are more books to this series, though I haven't personally read them and cannot speak on their quality. -Kayle
- The first three books are the best, particularly Deep Wizardry. - Grace