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 (04-16-94)             | Marik's Building Memo |                 Dune 1.1  
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OBJECTIVE

What is the objective of making MUSH spaces resemble physical spaces?
That this tendancy exists cannot be denied, since most all rooms on the
MUSH (some OOC spaces aside) are "desced" with some degree of "human
scale" in mind.

GOOD CITY FORM ON A MUSH

For me, the "best" rooms are ones which create simultaneously a mood
and a sense of space. Both are necessary to trigger the imagination.
"You are in an ornately decourated room" is somehow less appealing than
"You have entered a cavernous space, coloured with ghastly, red-hewn
tile facades", although both are ornately decourated. 

TELLING A STORY

But it is more than that. Groups of rooms must somehow make sense as
they go together. They should tell a story. Moving through a hideous
slum a la Giedi, where shadows seem to jump out at you, and where you
EXPECT to be mugged, into the relative but tacky serenity of an upper
income district, filled not with muggers but with heavy-chested
securities, carrying truncheons to keep out undersirables, tells a
story which gives essential clues about the nature of Harkonnen
society. Similarly, a walk down Madison Avenue, from 106th to 86th
tells a similar story. Such "stories" give meaning to physical spaces,
communicating essential "facts" about a time and place. That is, they
convey a since of realism.

Similarly, one can wander through the bucolic, garden-like streets of
Seril (on Tupile), finally coming onto a public bulletin board. You
notice workers painting over the graffiti, and dangerous zombie-like
securities standing around, bayonets in hand. This contrast gives new
meaning, and an urgent realism to what otherwise seems like a type of
"paradise".... furthermore, as you wander through the complex, you
receive "clues" about other spaces, underneath or above the ones you
are in. Are there penthouses in which a few live in hedonistic luxury
above?
Is the peace of the main levels contrasted by the
squalor of unseen dungeons below? Is the enforced conformity of the
place a sign that something is hidden beneath the surface? Discontent? 
Sedition? Defiance? These questions, prompted by inferred physical 
attributes of those rooms, create the basis of the story -- they allow the 
imagination to work for itself.

CHRONICLING AN ADVENTURE OR A HISTORY

Spaces may take on intertemporal meaning as well. A decaying building
on Kaitain may indicate "Imperial decline" as it becomes grayer and its
denizens more decadent over time. A slum might become cleaner year to
year, or dirtier, and this too reveals a story that some observant
players will apprehend. The mechanisms here are the same as those a
writer might use: metonymy, irony, metaphor, allusion, etc. Thus,
house heads should considering modifying spaces from time to time. It's
true that most players won't consciously notice, but the mood will
stick and grow on visitors. Vectors of change lend further to the
imagination, and thus reinforce a sense of realism.

CHRONICLING A CIVILISATION

Contrast and meaning can take other, more dramatic forms as well. A
"society" of Dune cannot be understood by studying Kaitain by itself,
Tupile by itself, or Arrakis by itself. Meaning is apprehended only as
the visitor moves from one planet to another, and comes to understand
that the slums of Giedi, the filament spires of Tupile, the sewers and
metallic rooms of Tleilax, the dusty sietches of Arrakis, and the
baroque mansions of Ktain, collectively tell the "story" of the
structure of Dunian civilisation.

MAKING SURE NOT TO CHONICLE SUBURBAN AMERICA

This story, once told, must, in order to be successful, be "interesting".
The
natural propensity is to place a number of House mansions on a street on
Kaitain, each with a gate in front of it. One for each house.... and have 
ruthless securities patrol the streets, looking for deviants to round up
and
beat up. This does, indeed, tell a story... of a stratified society where
some people live in privilege, hiding behind high walls from those
without.
But, is this Dunian civilisation we're talking about, or is it 20th
Century
America? Indeed, as I have remarked numerous times, this story can be
seen,
easily enough, in any of a large number of American upper-SES suburbs.
Indeed, Kaitain looks rather like:

	Short Hills, NJ		Bel Air, CA
	Chestnut Hill, PA	Atherton, CA
	Marblehead, MA		Millbrook, NY
	Rancho Santa Fe, CA 	And countless others

My objective in logging onto a MUSH is not to feel that I ARRIVED back
in my teenage years on the Western Slope of Mount Soledad in beautiful
La Jolla, CA.... frankly, the worst years of my life.....!

A RL EXAMPLE

I remember reading the other day a newspaper account written by a
friend, based on interviews with another acquaintance. The "story"
began on the plant-covered the balcony of a yacht club, in 
North America, filled with hardwood furniture, where a young
lady, our heroine, is trying not to burst out laughing at her own
debutante tea, as she is forced to sit demurely while grandparents tell
embarassing stories. In the background, one hears the crashing of
waves. This scene "evokes" some emotions and images, to be sure, of
comfortable tradition, peace, and order. But it does not evoke change
or transformation. 

Now the scene shifts several months forward. The same young lady 
is being driven across a desolate industrial wasteland - a context
in which she looks very much out-of-place -  in the back seat of an
air-conditioned Lincoln (again an Americanised emblem of success,
security, and order, only now there is something wrong.. the 
desolate industrial context hints at idled plants, redundant workers.. 
the story beings to unfold). Then the car comes to a halt in heavy
traffic.
There's a howling to one side, and the driver quickly locks the doors
with the click of a button. All of a sudden, a man in rags (and of a
different skin colour) begins pounding on a windshield.. for the lady,
a terrifying apparition... outside, the sky is brownish-pink from
pollution. A story is beginning to form, as the first and second images
interact and contrast, creating a sense of dissonance.

Moments later, the scene shifts again. Now we are again in the midst of
a modern city of shining sky scrapers, except the signs which ring
them, are in some foreign language. The lady is here too,
surrounded by people of a different skin colour than herself, but
unlike the homeless man in the last seen, prosperous and well-dressed.
They are carrying banners of protest. Then we begin to notice the
problems of the scene. Helocopter gunships swoop loudly overhead. Shock
troops, wearing arm-bands which identify them as shock troops of the
38th Army, their heads hidden by Star-Wars like riot helmets, are
positioning heavy artillary facing up a large, skyscraper-ringed
avenue, pointed away from a large public square filled with
traditional, grandious government buildings at one end. They seem to be
indifferent to the young protestors, focusing on an approaching threat.
All of a sudden, shots are heard... mortars fired from tanks. The shock
troops turn and flee and the students flee, killing each other in a
stampede. The woman, forced into an alley, looks out toward the
street, as an armoured column passes by, guns blazing, mortars fired
into the thickest part of the civilian crowd. Blood and body parts seem
to be everywhere. As the tanks burst into the square, which has become
a free-fire zone, the girl smells burning flesh. New soldiers arrive,
and begin to drag away many of her friends from the now packed alley.
They are in riot gear as well, but they are taller. Different. This is
the 38th Mechanised Army of the PLA High Command.

Abrutly, the writer shifts scene, several years forward. 
Sand. Flies everywhere. Dark-skinned bodies, twisted in agony 
are being laid out by men in
white with red-crossed arm-bands. In the background, a large chemical
plant is belching flames and eerily red-orange gas. An explosion has
taken place here. A tropical forest surrounds, bayoneted soldiers in
khakis standing guard, guns aimed at the wounded and their caretakers
alike. The lady is again here. She is one of the caregivers... a
red-cross on her white armband, over her white, scratchy polyester
nurse's uniform. There has been an explosion in this jungle chemical
plant. Or maybe it is a coal coking facility. A village lies in ruins
around the facility. An old man curses the foreign companies that built
the plant. He speaks Spanish. 

By themselves, these images mean quite a lot. A scene of blissful
domesticity on the beach of a southern california resort, far from
troubles of any type save the social threat of relatives and friends.
Another scene, of a stratified society, where the basis of
communication between the rich and poor, privileged and homeless have
been removed, separated by tinted windows and auto-lockable doors.
Studying abroad, the same heroine is caught in another drama. A protest
for democracy in a society newly prosperous, but driven nearly insane
by its rapid ascendacy to relative affluence, and the drama of rapid
social transformation. Years later, in an Episcopal Mission working in
Latin America, the same woman experiences the dark side of
modernisation -- environmental degradation and callous corporate
disregard for human life.

Put together, these images of ROOMS, of times and places, 
are juxtaposed by the writer against each
other to tell a story. And the story transcends the meaning of each of
these spaces. The story is, of course, the drama of the last decade of
the 20th Century, where blissful domesticity is recast as a form of
stagnation, hidden behind expensive security systems from "Others" that
would cast a shadow over it. Across the sea, another civilisation
stirs, experiencing for the first time in a century of genocidal the
war, a collective consciousness for a civilisation ascendant. Here the
same icons of modernity that signify decline in the second scene
becomes a battleground between the forces of tradition and the forces
of change. The tension that is suppressed in La Jolla, or on a Southern
California city street explodes onto Tiananmen Square. Finally, we move
to a scene of people trying to survive in a hellish landscape, far away
>From all the conveniences of modernity. Here, in a developing company,
the industries that produce the materials to build the tanks in the
third scene, the tint on the windows in the second, and the lacy
cocktail dress in the first make life unbearable for others, that live
in the shadow of the great changes propelling one civilisation into
decline, and another into a violent quest for world prestige. Each of
these images give meaning to one another, reinforcing each other... to
giave vital clues about the civilisation that we live in.. in all its
small pleasures, its ironies, its power and drama and in all of its
squalor and tragedy. It also suggests a vector of change which could (?)
bring the tanks, the homeless man, and the exploding chemical plant to
trouble even the yacht club, in a confrontation of forces driven by
inequality.

BUILDING LESSONS DRAWN

This for me, is what we shold aim for as we begin to think about how
different MUSH spaces should be constructed, and how they interact with
others
around them. The "Story" they tell must be just as dramatic as the one
that the journalist tells in his four-part overview of episodes from
his sister's friend's life. ... the story of an Emperor ascendant, who
threatens to shake civilisation out of 10,000 years of Orange Catholic
fanaticism (with another form of religious fanaticism) and feudal
tyranny. Posed against him are the forces of stagnation, rot and decay
(as splendourous and comfortable as these might seem... the Landsraad
with their parties and palaces and chiffon gowns). Off to the sides,
are even more sinister forces, eager to emerge from the shadows to
seize power for themselves (the Guild, the Tleilax, the Bene Gesserit).


Well.. just my two cents. As you can tell, I'm trained as an architect
and I now work with numbers. I make a lousy writer. But I hope this
gives some food for thought as all these new planets come online.
 AND ABOVE ALL, DON'T BUILD CITIES TO RESEMBLE CLEVELAND!

Two other building considerations:

(1)	CONFLICT

This is SUPPOSED to be a feudal universe. According to the Dune
Encyclopaedia, this is an abusive system where most people are
repressed and in desperate poverty. Members of the Great Houses and
presumably the planet-bound entrepreneurial case (houses minor, etc.)
live in immense luxury... with servants... and slaves... Yes, Slavery
would be an integral part of imperial society... to cater to their
every whims. They live in immense palaces, filled with objets d'art and
surrounded by broad gardens.. the sort of spaces you are all very adept
at building...... These spaces would be filled with opportunities for
enjoyment, leisure and sport.... hedonistic palaces for the few....

But there's a flip side to this culture... outside the palace walls, on
most any Landsraad planet... are the putrid slums, hovels, and public
housing estates of the masses... There, the planet bound Pyon Caste (to
use Herbert's reference.. ).. a caste of near slaves.... perhaps
consisting of 90-99%% the population of any Landsraad world.. would
live, eeking out an existance on a few solari each year....
Characteristics of this caste would vary from world to world. On richer
planets, they might live in depressing, automated consumer societies...
sort of like the zombies that would people an industrial suburb of
North America, except with even less variety and no hope..... On your
average landsraad planet, however, these people live in far more
marginal conditions, with the State providing only the barest of
necessities... malnutrition, abuse, corruption, unhygienic habitats,
ec. would be the rule, not the exception. On rural worlds these places
might resemble migrant worker camps in the American Southeast or
desolate farming colonies in Bolivia. On urbanised worlds, they would
like the slums of Calcutta, Jakarta, Sao Paulo... take your pick... 

Progressive governments would strive to improve living conditions for
these unfortunates, but as the Enclyclopaedia noted, progressive houses
are rare indeed. Most simply use, abuse, and discard these people at
will (although not necessarily with the callousness of a Harkonnen)...
Either that or they largely ignore them, as long as they remain
productive contributors to the labour force, removing the occasional
labour organiser or dissident. Conscripts can pretty much be recruited
from this rabble, at will. Some despotic rulers may even try to keep
large segments of their populations in drug-bestupoured or drunken
states, so as to keep them subdued.

(2)	FEAR

But in such an unpleasant system, there is a price paid by the pampered
elite. They live in fear. Of assassination by other elites, of invasion
by the Imperium or the Sardauker, of duels and kanly, of many forms of
poison, of murder or abuse by their superiors on the flimsiest of
charges, of murder or rape by inferiors, and the rabble, for the
flimsiest of provocations.. of subversion by strange Ixian
technologies, by the black witches of the sisterhoods, their craft
little-understood but universally despised, by the monsters of the Bene
Tleilax, who are almost completely mysterious, by the hidden rulers of
the Guild, who have the power to make or break economies and hence
social stability. 

Physically, such a world is filled with guards, poison snoopers, locked
gates. An heir to a great house would be kept cloistered, like Paul was
before the transfer to Arrakis. Servants are required for everything
from bathing to dressing to dining; however, these are also perpetually
under suspicion. Perhaps some have even been chemically altered to
insure a degree of loyalty.. or docility. 

The hangouts of the rich .. whether they be a yacht club (as on
Regulus), a hotel (as on Wallach), or a restaurant (as on Caladan)
would be secured places... heavily guarded, with perhaps the
unfortunate masses falling over each other to get a peak through steel
grates and barbed wire.

Anyway, JUST SOME SUGGESTIONS ABOUT FACETS OF DUNE SOCIETY you might
want to try to capture as you build or rebuild your worlds. I think
many of the planets we have so far are by far too pleasant.

- Marik/Al
  New York City
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--- Riv