Coyns

I'm doing a 'Secret of The Ancients' adventure for my players at the moment.
It's a different secret than the official one for several reasons; one, that
I don't like the whole Grandfather business at all, and, two, that even if I
did like it most of my players know it too, and that tends to ruin their
sense of wonder. And IMO the secret of The Ancients ought to be full of
wonder.

I have, however, tried to make my version fit all the clues left behind. My
Ancients left the universe in much the same state than the GDW Ancients did,
they just went about it differently. So some of he things I work out should
be useful even to those who want to stick with Grandfather and the kids.

At the moment I'm trying to work out how an Ancient set of coyns looks. We
know the names of the coyns in the set of 36 used by modern Droyne, and
we've been told what some of them looks like. The Ancient set consisted of
38 coyns and some of the odern coyns (Aslan, Hiver, K'kree) cannot be part
of the set.

I've listed the facts I've used (numbered) and the assumptions I've made
(lettered). If anyone can come up with facts I have missed or have some
good ideas, please let me know.

1) Coyn sets found in Ancient sites range in size from 6 to 38 pieces.
   [_Imperial Encyclopedia_ p. 21].

a) The lesser sets found are subset of one standard 38-coyn set, not
   alternate sets.

b) The Ancient coyn set is identical to a pre-Ancient coyn set used by
   pre-Ancient Droyne in prediction ceremonies.

2) Grandfather introduced the coyns as a tool of casting to a number of
   Chirper worlds around -75,000. [_Droyne_ pp. 6 and 45]. On some worlds
   the Chirpers gained the ability to caste, on others it didn't work
   (Vanejen, described in _Research Station Gamma_, is an example of the
   latter).

3) Grandfather modified the coyns on later visits and introduced the Aslan,
   Hiver and K'kree coyns (at least). [_Secret of The Ancients_ p 32].

b) The Ancient coyn set consisted of six groups of six plus two specials.
   The six castes was one group. Void, Soil, Air, Gas, Water, and Fire was
   aother (these were the Droyne concept of elements: Earth (Soil), Water,
   Fire, Good (breahable) Air (Air), Bad (unbreathable) Air (Gas), and the
   absence of any of the other five (Void). 18 of the other coyns mentioned
   in the modern set were also in the Ancient set, though any grouping of
   them into sixes lacks common themes (the third group, Darkness, Cold,
   Noise, Signal, Heat, and Light are pairs of opposites  -  but so are
   Genesis & Death and Defeat & Achievement from another of the groups).
   Anyway, the abovementioned plus Aspiration, Sacrifice, Beast, Mercenary,
   Voyages, Justice, Change, and Phoenix (can't really be a phoenix, of
   course; it must be a legendary Droyne beast with the same characteristics
   as the phoenix) were also part of the Ancient set. Humaniti, Vargr,
   Aslan, Hiver, and K'kree was not. Remains the Droyne, which was one of
   the two special coyns. The remaining special coyn disappeared from the
   set when Grandfather re-introduced it, presumably because it was no
   longer relevant to the new Droyne. I suggest Eskaloyt, the Droyne
   homeworld itself. We now have 30+2 coyns. We lack one group of six, all
   of them coyns that were subsequently removed. One solution supplies not
   only a group with a common theme, but also the explanation of why they
   became redundant: Six prey animals native to Eskaloyt. Used by primitive
   Droyne to perform hunt magic.

So I suggest that the Ancient coyn set consisted of:

Worker	   Warrior	Drone	    Technician	 Sport	  Leader
Void	   Soil		Air	    Gas		 Water	  Fire
Darkness   Cold		Noise	    Signal	 Heat	  Light
Genesis	   Aspiration	Sacrifice   Defeat	 Death	  Achievement
Beast	   Mercenary	Voyages	    Justice	 Chance	  Phoenix
Hissayt	   Emissyob	Ayvaylk	    Bestoy	 Nebbay	  Hayyarn
Droyne	   Eskaloyt

But I can't just hand a list like that to my players. I'd much rather give
them a description of what the coyns look like. And that's where I need some
help. I've come up wih a description of most of the coyns. Some I like, some
I'm not thrilled about, and some I downright dislike, but can't come up with
a good alternative to. So if you think of something you think is better, let
me know.

c) The modern coyns that duplicates Ancient coyns duplicates their design
   too.

4) The first Grandfather set (in -75,000) consisted of 38 coyns and included
   one with a human and one with a flame [RSG pp. 4 and 38].

d) The set of six fake coyns menioned on page 13 of _Twilight's Peak_ are
   copies of real coyns (albeit modern coyns); they depict an aslan leader,
   a flame, a human, a cloud, an ice crystal, and a sine wave.

e) The depictions of the six castes on page 64 of TP and pp. 12-13 of
   _Droyne_ are taken from the coyn depictions of those castes.

f) The coyn shown on the back of _Droyne_ (two flames and the lower third
   is obsured by a droyne) is not a variant of the coyn wih the single
   flame.

Now to match coyns to descriptions. The first six are easy, thanks to
assumption e):

A massive droyne with digging tools	Worker
A tall droyne with sword and shield	Warrior
A flying droyne with a bottle[1]	Drone
A medium droyne with tools and detector	Technician
A slender droyne with ball and bat[2]	Sport
A big-headed droyne with a spear[3]	Leader

[1] A feeding bottle, perhaps?
[2] My best guess. It looks like a giant spoon and an irregular disc. I
    suggest that it's for _feldoss_, a popular droyne game that I just
    made up ;-)
[3] A ceremonial spear, of course. See later.

The rest are a bit more tricky. The ones we know about, apart from the
Aslan and the human, was a flame, an ice crystal, a cloud, a sine wave,
and two flames. The flame and the ice crystal can be Fire and Cold. The
cloud could be Air, Gas, or Water (or any of the philosophical concepts,
of course; a cloud could be the symbol of hope to an agrarian community
("I do so hope it will rain")). The sine wave I eventually assigned to
Signal, which gave me a jagged zig-zag line for it's opposite, Noise.

Now, going down the list here are the symbols I came up with for each coyn:

Void	    Nothing engraved. A blank disc.
Soil	    A massive cliff.
Air	    A white cloud (ie. the outline of a cloud).
Gas	    A black cloud (ie. a filled-in outline of a cloud).
Water	    A foam-flecked wave.
Fire	    A flame.

(Except for the Void and the Fire I'm pretty dissatisfied with these, but
they are the best I can come up with. Any suggestions?)

Darkness    Two different sized cresents (The moons of Eskaloyt)
Light	    A sun.
Cold	    An ice crystal.
Heat	    A campfire (Two flames arising from a tree log).
Signal	    A sine wave.
Noise	    A zig-zag line.

Voyages	    A sailing ship.
Justice	    A ceremonial spear[4].
Chance	    Six sticks in a random pattern[5].
Beast	    A ferocious six-limbed carnivore in mid-jump[6].
Mercenary   A big-headed droyne with arms and armour[7].
Phoenix	    A six-limbed animal surrounded by flames.

[4] Used by primitive Droyne leaders to dispatch those judged guilty or
    supurfluous to the community (This must have been before krinaytsyu
    became common; when it did, the Leader kept the spear as his symbol
    of authority).
[5] The Droyne use such sticks to generate random numbers according to
    the pattern they fall in; coyn drawing is not, of course, considered
    a random procedure since theyare assumed to predict future events.
[6] The _Stomfelk_, the most feared predator on Eskaloyt.
[7] I reasoned that mercenaries must be krinaytsoyni, and the most common
    krinaytsoyni are leaders. Hence a leader with weapons for a mercenary.

Genesis	    An egg.
Death	    A droyne skull.
Achievement A brimful cup.
Defeat	    An empty, tipped-over cup.
Hope	    Six stars in a random pattern[8].
Sacrifice   A droyne sitting with eyes closed[9].


[8] Well, what can I say? If I could come up with good symbols for Air
    and Gas, I'd use the (rain) cloud for hope. As it is I'm falling back
    on a Droyne constellation symbolising hope.
[9] A droyne commiting krinaytsyui, of course.

The Hissayt, Emissyob, Ayvaylk, Bestoy, Nebbay, and Hayyarm are various
six-limbed herbivores and omnivores once important to Droyne hunters. I
had descriptions of them all worked out, but those notes seems to have
dissappeared.

Finally the two special coyns:

Droyne	   A group of three droyne, a leader, a drone, and a worker[10].
Eskaloyt   Some strange irregular outlines (diferent on the two sides)[11].

[10] In other words, an alpha-male, a female, and a beta-male.
[11] Polar projections of Eskaloyt. Since they don't have the lattitude
     and longitude lines common to human map projections they are unlikely
     to be identified as such by humans.

Well, that's what I've got so far. Any comments?

      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "A  subsector  official  pompously states that the
        subsector  armed  forces  have  four Kinunir class
        ships in service,  each with enough troop strength
        to put down any military operations that threathen
        the peace of the Imperium."

                        ---Adventure 1, The Kinunir