Hey all!
Holidays are upon us. Happy Holy Days to everyone that celebrates!
First thing out of the way: God Obliterating Vajra is doing pretty well! If you haven't joined the Discord yet, jump on in right now and let's get some discussion going. You can go there to ask stuff about the World of Hingsajagra, as well as discuss God Obliterating Vajra as a whole! The Hingsajagra discord, the Ultramystic Commune, is here: https://discord.gg/CYxKYz3S5k
For God Obliterating Vajra: Starting next year, I'll be doing my best to put up to 3 Advanced Chapters up on the Patreon. That's a pretty premium with how literarily dense the work is right now, but I hope you enjoy the content nonetheless! I'm still trying to get Swords Against Heaven done so that we can have a Character Creator, and then use the Character Creation Rules there to facilitate a Character Competition where you guys can submit ideas for Characters and I can take 2-3 as one of the 108 Glaives of Heaven that hunts down our Heaven Dancer.
For Swords Against Heaven: This has always been a lower priority than God Obliterating Vajra as I consolidate a lot of things that I'd be gamifying through God Obliterating Vajra. Nonetheless, I've been trying to hold some playtests for the game and I've been working on the third revision that hews it even closer to my original design vision. Stay tuned for that around January as well!
Musings On Hingsajagra
around a year and a half ago, i doing some serious vipassana meditation and one of the things that manifested from the mind of clear light was a world: half ancient southeast asian martial heroes, half communist struggle against neoliberal world order it had a name: hingsajagra
the name is inspired by the seminal work of dharmaraksita—the Wheel of Sharp Weapons: Effectively Striking At The Heart of the Foe. a basic mahayana text, it teaches to violently use past negative experiences as means to strike at Self-Grasping, the ultimate foe and cause of harm
the heart of Hingsajagra (which is an austronesianized rendering of sanskrit "Himsachakra" or "Wheel of Violence") is exactly that. the Violence that returns to you whenever you cause it. and to be free from it, requires tremendous and relentless violence against self-grasping
hingsajagra started off as ROMANCE OF THE LOTUS THRONE for a bit. it focused on a Lotus Throne wherein martial heroes and kingdoms and empires fought over who would sit upon it. but as i wrote the web serial GOD OBLITERATING VAJRA and ran ttrpg sessions with my friends, it grew.
the next playtest iteration had the players play in a post revolutionary period, after the Invincible Blade Princess tried and failed to sit upon it, stopped by the communist forces of Kafeng Masangwa. it was known as SUNDANG LANGIT here.
the next playtest iteration, i moved the timeline down even more. now there had been two world revolutions, with the second world revolution utterly destroying the lotus throne, and sending the setting plummeting into a post-apocalyptic neoliberal world order.
every setting iteration was me building upon what we had established earlier, guided by principles of dialectical materialism. but ultimately, around a year ago, i decided that i wanted to create a setting that echoed the situations of communist revolutions in the world today.
especially focusing on the revolutions in southeast asia. one of my inspirations was minguo fantasy, such as "batman of shanghai", which was republic-era china fantasy. republic-era china resembled colonial-era southeast asia, and i loved the aesthetic.
the architecture of this republican era shanghai felt so familiar to late colonial manila, colonial malacca, batavia, and so on. times where the world powers were giving up overt colonial rule for neocolonial domination.
it was a time of broiling revolutions and failed revolutions. even more, it felt like a great setting for horror as well. there's a certain dark melancholy and terror facing communists in the SEA, where efforts to crush revolutionary attempts have been backed by america.
so i set the final "modern" setting in post-calamity. a time where the people are scared of touching that word, while also not realizing that what they want more than anything is the abolition of private property and good people-first governance—communism.
the modern setting resembles 1950s seasia, just at the cusp of the cold war. spies factor heavily in the setting, as a common agent used as nation-states burgeon from the rubble of the 2nd World Revolution. just as well—spies make for great jianghu daxia.
the modern setting resembles 1950s seasia, just at the cusp of the cold war. spies factor heavily in the setting, as a common agent used as nation-states burgeon from the rubble of the 2nd World Revolution. just as well—spies make for great jianghu daxia.
the modern setting of hingsajagra lets me be flexible with what stories and genres i can do. at its core, hingsajagra is a dark cultivation fantasy world. its a world where corpses and ghosts and monsters outnumber humans.
but one can do a traditional wuxia romp through wildernesses and jungles in Pemi, or go into hong kong style urban martial romps in Selorong, or go sailing on steamboats and pirating in the Charnel Isles and Heavenshards, or go on world-changing espionage missions in Jhongxiya.
the violence of the old xianxia immortals, gods and martial masters fighting with the rise of the masses empowered by machines and mass-produced cultivation creates a fulminating tension point of Contradiction to be resolved, allowing me to tackle concepts of dialectics.
a fun challenge that faced me was the need to marry revolution-era seasia technology and city culture with the adventure focus of wuxia and the self-cultivation focus of xianxia. for that, i had to take inspiration at real life martial arts groups and clubs. irl jianghu.
and of course, another fun challenge i had to face was having to reconcile the idea of communist thought with the pretty selfish goals of cultivation (cultivation itself is an idea that can be found across all martial cultures of southeast asia, not just china!)
i face those ideas with a slow burn splendor in god obliterating vajra! mixing revolution era seasia, martial fantasy, and spirit cultivation.
ultimately, there's too many ideas, concepts, and inspirations that went into the building of hingsajagra. i think the harder it is for me to fully express, the more Real it is.
but it is meant to be a full world that I cultivate with every piece i write and create for it. much like ancient masters cultivating their cores to eventually consume or become it, I cultivate a World that is a mirror and, eventually, a goal.