April 15, 2022 • 24 mins
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel's creator was inspired by the solarpunk and hopepunk movements, but what even are those?
Read the transcript and get more from the show:
https://scintilla.studio/monster-solarpunk-journeysthroughtheradiantcitadel
Get stat blocks, bonus content, and other monstrous perks: www.patreon.com/scintillastudio
Join the conversation: www.twitter.com/SparkOtter
Meet my guests:
David Somerville, author, Planegea: https://www.twitter.com/Planegea
Mike Rugnetta & Taylor Moore: twitter.com/funcityventures
Kierán Suckling, Executive Director and Founder of the Center for Biological Diversity
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/
Tierra Curry, Senior Scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity
https://twitter.com/TierraMussel
Music credits:
"Limousine" by Jason Shaw
"Extinction Theme" by Alex Monroe
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lucas (00:00):
D&D's newest adventure book
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel
is an original solar punk spectacular
wrapped around a fossil monster.
This is Making a Monster, the bite-sized
podcast where we investigate the
monsters in D&D and other tabletop
RPGs, and discover how they work,
(00:21):
why they work and what they mean.
I'm Lucas Zellers.
Wizards of the Coast will be releasing its
newest adventure module "Journeys Through
the Radiant Citadel" in June of this year.
It's an anthology set in a multiversal
hub city adrift in the Ethereal plane.
There is a monster at the heart of
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, or
(00:43):
"Citadel" as we'll call it for the rest
of this episode, whose fossilized remains
form the basis of the city's architecture.
Moreover, the monster is one of
an extinct species lost to time.
I've been using D&D to tell the stories
of extinct animals since about January
2021, so you might guess why I think
this adventure is the most exciting
thing Wizards has yet produced for
(01:05):
fifth edition, but there's more.
Ajit George, one of the Citadel's
project leads, tweeted that the
project is inspired by the hopepunk
and solarpunk movements in its
optimistic vision of a community
collaborating to overcome long odds.
It's exactly what real life solarpunks
like the ones I'm partnering with
through Book of Extinction are doing in
(01:26):
the present to make a brighter future.
So in this episode, let's look at what
Citadel is, what solarpunk is and how
it relates to other punk genres like
cyberpunk or stonepunk, and why it
matters for the future of the worlds
we play in and the one we live in now.
Part the first, a diamond city.
(01:47):
Citadel is a collection of 13
short standalone D&D adventures
set in the radiant Citadel, a
multiversal hub city floating
adrift deep in D&D's ethereal plane.
The heart of the Citadel is a
massive gemstone called the Auroral
Diamond, a beacon of life in the
gray, endless expanse of ether.
(02:08):
The fossilized body of a seemingly-extinct
creature wrapped around that diamond
formed the foundation of the city's rock
cut architecture when 27 civilizations
from all over the multi-verse
built the city in the distant past.
250 years ago, descendants of 15 of those
civilizations re-established the city
(02:30):
Orbiting the Citadel are 15 smaller
crystals called Concord Jewels.
Each of those gems is connected to the
material plane, the world as we know
it in which adventures begin, and each
serves as a gateway to one of 15 of
the Citadel's founding civilizations.
If you're keeping up with the
math, that means 12 of them are
now missing doorways to anywhere.
(02:52):
Citadel continues.
Some recent design trends from Wizards.
It's an anthology adventure,
like Candlekeep Mysteries
and Waterdeep (02:58):
Dragon Heist.
It's also the next in a growing line
of multiversal adventures that runs all
the way back to the city of Sigil, the
multiversal hub from the much beloved
second edition Planescape setting.
And by the way, Planescape is the
same setting that gave us the D'vati,,
the only player race option that
lets you play two characters at once.
So check out my interview with the
(03:19):
2E and 5E creators of the d'vati
if you want to learn more about
second edition or Planescape.
Those missing 12 Concord jewels are
deliberate opportunities for DMs to
connect the Radiant Citadel to other
adventures or their own homebrew worlds.
By contrast, this adventure is
a first for Wizards of the Coast
in a couple of important ways.
(03:40):
And believe it or not, an extinct
behemoth isn't even the most exciting one.
First, the setting is entirely original.
The Radiant Citadel isn't a glow up
or a rewrite from earlier editions.
It was made from whole cloth
by the book's creative team.
Second, the book deliberately steps
away from gritty, crime-ridden cities
like Waterdeep and Sigil to present
(04:01):
an optimistic view of society working
together, what Ajit calls hopepunk.
Third, the book was written
entirely by people of color.
16 black and brown writers created the
book, including Iranian-American Justice
Arman, who you might recognize from
(04:22):
our season one episode on The Bagger
and who recently announced his hiring
as a Senior Game Designer at Wizards.
Each of the book's 13 adventure writers
drew on their own lived experience,
and three of these adventures have been
previewed ahead of the book's release.
"Salted Legacy" throws gamers into a
generational feud between two rival
(04:43):
vendor families after a series of
vandalisms and thefts begin to appear.
According to writer, Surena Marie,
who is also the Product Marketing
Manager for Critical Role.
It's written from Marie's experience
as a first-generation Thai American
watching different vendors try to cherish
their own traditions while competing
in a new cultural and business context.
It's a low-stakes drama played for
(05:04):
comedy, very reminiscent of the narrative
design in Jiangshi (05:06):
Blood in the
Banquet Hall from my very first episode.
The bustling night market where
"Salted Legacy" takes place is now
the cover of the adventure book.
The next adventure "Written in Blood"
brings players to a location as
sprawling as the Dessarin Valley called
God's Breath, an homage to the black
experience in the Southern United States.
(05:28):
Writer Erin Roberts, a contributor to the
Pathfinder and Starfinder lines at Paizo,
was inspired by her great-uncle's book
Growing Up Black in Rural Mississippi.
Her adventure centers on a ritual of
oral history called the Awakening Song.
Finally, Justice Arman's adventure
"Shadow of the Sun" presents the
isolated city state Akharin Sangar,
(05:48):
ruled by Atash, a benevolent but
dogmatic angel whose subjects have mixed
feelings about his totalitarian rule.
Atash's story and design draw from the
10th-century work of Persian poetry
Shahnameh, or The Book of Kings.
The complicated relationship
Sangarians have with outsiders, full
of misconceptions and stereotypes, is
part of the Iranian experience Justice
(06:09):
wanted to explore with his adventure.
All of these adventures picture the way
in which culture and storytelling work
together to create the societies we build.
For Ajit and the rest of the Citadel team,
that picture is a discal agrihood, where
crime and rebellious nihilism are replaced
with community and radical optimism.
And that peculiarly green radical
(06:31):
optimism already has a name, solarpunk.
Part, the second (06:36):
sticking it to the man.
"Punk" means a lot of different
things to a lot of people.
So it's important to
be clear on the suffix.
You might remember that conversation
with David Somerville, author of the
Planegea campaign setting with Atlas
Games about his idea of stonepunk.
David Somerville (06:54):
I recently
was super lucky enough to read
Neuromancer for the first time.
And that book is brilliant and it
took me a minute to get into it.
And then when I did, I was just in it.
And that's punk.
I mean, cyber punk was like,
fight the man, be a punk.
Like it actually had that
like punk anti-authoritarian
(07:15):
aesthetic, anti commercialism,
like rage against the machine.
And that was a real thing.
And both of those words were meaningful.
"Cyber" was meaningful and "punk"
was meaningful and it meant the
mashing up of these two things.
I feel like in geek culture, "punk" has
become a shorthand for this thing, but
a lot of it and sort of exaggerated.
(07:37):
So we're going to take whatever comes
before -punk and crank it to 11 and
build all of our assumptions around that.
So if you have "piratepunk", it
just means it's very pirates.
And if you have, you know, whatever
steampunk, it's very steam and it
means that all the aesthetics are going
to be exaggerated and intensified.
I think it implies like a less safe world.
(07:58):
Like, I think whenever you have
"-punk" on there, there's sort of an
implication that, that those extremes
are going to cause a lot of tension.
Lucas (08:05):
Of the litany of literary "punk"
genres, "cyberpunk" is probably the
most famous, buoyed by movies like
The Matrix, Akira, and Bladerunner.
Maybe the best cyberpunk property I
can point you to with this show is
Fun City, the actual play Shadowrun
podcast that wrapped up my discussion
of monsters and villainy with GMs.
For the Fun City creative team, cyberpunk
(08:27):
is a grim vision of the near future.
Taylor Moore (08:29):
Our version of Shadowrun,
in the world we play in, is very much
a, an answer to the question of if,
if technology got better with things
still be bad, you know, like, yes.
Mike Rugnetta (08:41):
Yes.
Taylor Moore (08:42):
And the answer, and we
play in the world of yes, but how, yes?
That's, that's the, in
what specific manner?
Mike Rugnetta (08:49):
In a lot of Shadowrun
games, you see the same attitude
develop, which is I'm a, I'm a player,
character living in a dystopia.
The corporations control everything.
It's very hard to get by.
You have to do whatever you look
out for number one, you do whatever
you can to like, make sure that
(09:10):
you survive by hook or by crook,
or literally just, just by crook.
And so what you get is you get a lot
of games that I have described as
"Capitalism Made Me Do It (09:22):
The Game," and
that people just wash their hands of any
moral consideration because they have to
do whatever they have to do to survive.
It doesn't matter what
it is that they're doing.
Like the world is bad.
And so they have to be bad in
the world because that's the
only way that you make it.
Lucas (09:40):
I think that reflects the
difficulty for current futurists
under 30, it's easy to feel like
there's no future left to imagine.
For those born after America's so-called
"greatest generation", as though the
best opportunities for innovation and
exploration have already passed us by.
In his book, Ghosts of My Life:
Writings on Depression, Hauntology,
(10:00):
and Lost Futures, cultural theorist
Mark Fisher, put it this way:
"The slow cancellation of the
future has been accompanied by a
deflation of expectations . . . the
feeling of belatedness, of
living after the gold rush, is as
omnipresent as it is disavowed."
Solarpunk rejects this
ominous ennui entirely.
(10:20):
According to a 2014 manifesto on the
genre by a writer calling themselves
Hieroglyph, "Solarpunk draws on the
ideal of Jefferson's yeoman farmer,
Gandhi's ideal of swadeshi and the
subsequent Salt March, and countless
other traditions of innovative descent."
In other words, we are not satisfied
with the world we've been given and
we'll do whatever it takes to change it.
(10:42):
Probably something clever with reclaimed
wood and leftover railroad spikes.
The Radiant Citadel itself is inspired
by Indian rock-cut architecture, a
practice as old as the third century
BC, where structures are created by
carving them out of solid natural
rock - or in this case, petrified bone.
Comic artist CJ Bell wrote in The Tree
(11:03):
of Liberty, "This is a green pepper.
It costs 75 cents at the grocery store.
Inside the pepper are enough seeds to make
hundreds, even thousands more peppers.
In a world where nothing comes
free and it's profitable to control
what people copy and create,
gardening is a revolutionary act."
(11:25):
In other words, you have to
keep the punk in solarpunk.
Part the third (11:30):
a solar future.
Despite being speculative or
future fiction, "punk" genres are
often transparently about now.
The radical optimism in the future
solarpunk envisions isn't possible
without radical change in the present.
For the past year, I've been telling
the stories of extinct animals in
the medium of Dungeons and Dragons.
(11:51):
And through that project, I've gotten to
meet some real life solarpunks who are
working to make that radical change happen
at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Kierán Suckling (12:01):
My name is Kierán
Suckling and I am the executive director
and founder of the Center for Biological
Diversity, which is a endangered species
protection group that mostly works, here
in the U.S., but also internationally.
And we try to save all species
(12:23):
great and small from, from
butterflies and insects to polar
bears and wolves, keep them alive.
Lucas (12:32):
Rarely do my guests
have a Wikipedia page.
There is a quote in here from The
New Yorker that describes you as a
trickster, philosopher, publicity
hound, master strategist, and
unapologetic pain in the ass.
Uh, how do you respond to that?
Kierán Suckling (12:46):
I would think that's
a pretty accurate description, uh, at
least of what I attempt to be at least.
Um, and, and, and that's what's
needed, to save species from extinction
and to be a successful activists,
uh, you gotta be a trickster.
You gotta figure out all the
(13:07):
different angles you can take you.
You've also got to realize at some
level, this is all street theater,
whether you're in the court or in a
scientific paper or in a protest, it's
all finally human theater and you have
to sort of keep that, that in mind.
Uh, and certainly I started this while
(13:27):
working on my PhD in philosophy, uh,
and to this day am motivated, uh, by
the philosophical issues around, uh,
extinction, animality, our relationship
with other, other earthlings.
Cause we're just one and we're just one
of the earthlings, and everything we
(13:52):
do, whether it's some formal-looking
law or scientific study or playing
Dungeons and Dragons, these are all at
the end of the day, ways of interacting
with this living planet that we live
on and in some way recognizing and
(14:12):
exploring the insane diversity of
animal life on this living planet.
And that's what we're all
doing in one way or another.
I think we forget that.
And it's, it's good to step back
and realize that's what's going on.
Lucas (14:30):
The solarpunks Kierán has
gathered at the Center come from a
variety of backgrounds, some with the
kind of tragic backstory that would be
right at home on a D&D character sheet.
This is Tierra Curry, Senior Scientist,
director of the Center's Saving
Life on Earth campaign, and science
consultant for Book of Extinction.
You've heard her voice already a couple
of times, but this is a piece of an
(14:52):
interview that I haven't released yet.
Tell me why you decided to choose a
career in conservation in the first place.
Tierra Curry (14:58):
I grew up in the
mountains of Southeastern Kentucky,
which are absolutely beautiful.
There's so many birds and frogs and snakes
and lizards and trees and fireflies.
I had played outside all the
time when I would get grounded.
I wouldn't be allowed to go outside.
I'd have to like sit inside and watch TV.
So I just soaked it up and I feel like
(15:20):
it became part of me, the beauty of
the mountains and all the wildlife.
And then the coal companies came
and strip mine the mountain behind
my house and in front of my house.
And so these places that I knew
so well where I had grown up just
playing and roaming were reduced
to bare dirt and they caused the
streams to start running polluted.
They polluted my well water.
(15:41):
And I, even as a kid, I
was like, this is wrong.
You can't just take a mountain
and reduce it to rubble.
And so I, from a really young age, I just
had the sense that that had to change and
that I wanted to do something about it.
And ironically, I decided not to
go to law school because I didn't
want to be inside all the time.
I was like, I want to be outside.
(16:02):
I don't want to be inside.
So I'm going to go into biology instead.
And as I started taking environmental
science classes, extinction is the
issue that resonated with me the most.
I think it's the ultimate injustice.
It's so unfair.
That the plants and animals that
we happen to like be here with that
were driving them off the planet.
I don't think that's right.
(16:24):
And so that's where I drew my line
in the sand and said, I want a
job that focuses on extinction.
And I didn't know how I
was going to find that.
I was taking an environmental science
class and my professor talked about the
center for biological diversity and was
talking about how they were opposing
the construction of an elementary
school in Arizona because the cactus
(16:45):
region is pygmy owl lived there.
And I was like, oh my goodness,
that people are going to hate them
because like an elementary school
is not a popular thing to oppose.
And I've never heard of a cactus for
regional pygmy owl, but whoever these
people are, that's what I want to do.
I want to be the person that's
like, no, the owl lives here.
Put your school somewhere else.
(17:06):
So I, I went back to grad school.
I wrote in my grad school
essay that I wanted to work at
the center when I graduated.
And then when I saw a job come
up at the center, I wrote a cover
letter that basically said, pick me.
I went to grad school so I
could work for you someday.
Lucas (17:24):
We've talked about mining
companies, we've talked about city
planners, and it's very easy to
cast certain people or industries as
the villains of the piece in this.
You know, I think heroic fantasy, really,
especially heroic fantasy and Dungeons
and Dragons being the, its example,
we're very used to telling that story of
like, this is the good guy with a sword,
and this is the big, scary monster.
(17:45):
And we know what's going to happen here.
But in real life, it's very difficult
to say that even if it is a mining
company or, or a city planner or, uh,
ingoing development of, of houses,
that those are the big, scary monsters.
How do you reconcile that?
How are you able to talk about people
who have goals and values that, that
(18:05):
conflict with the preservation of
endangered species, even in places
like plain city and still talk about
them as like people who have worthwhile
goals and are trying to solve problems?
Tierra Curry (18:15):
Yeah.
So humanity at large is like the big,
scary monster that's driving extinction.
You don't have to point your finger
to one faction, you know, human,
the causes of extinction are CHIPPO:
climate change, habitat loss,
invasive species, pollution, human
population growth, and overutilization.
So those are the drivers of extinction
(18:37):
and humans, there's just so many
of us now that literally the fate
of all wildlife is in our hands.
So I don't want to point
fingers at one camp of villains.
It's, it's all of us, it's all of our
responsibility, but there are so many
ways that we could do things differently.
There's just so much inertia and funding
to keep doing things the same way.
(18:59):
And literally it's as
suicidal war against nature.
As the UN secretary general just
said, kicking off the convention
on biological diversity meetings
like that opening statement of
the global biodiversity meetings.
So as we have to end our
suicidal war against nature.
And that that is so true.
And so all of us, we need to just
stop and reset and think about
(19:21):
how do I build a smarter city?
How do I reduce runoff into the Creek?
What are the better ways to
deal with sewer pollution?
Like we don't have to use the answers
that people came up with in the
forties, fifties, or even eighties.
There's so many like smart taking
people and so much technology.
And so many people who want to
make a difference that there
(19:41):
are solutions to these problems.
We just have the inertia and funding
factor of industry right now.
As for the mining companies, the
fossil fuel industry is one industry.
I'm not letting off the hook.
We have to get off fossil fuels.
Like we are all going to die.
If we don't get off fossil
fuels and that's just a reality.
(20:02):
And so that whole industry needs to
change gears and we need to develop
alternate sources of energy and, and work
on just transitions to agree in economy.
So that communities in Appalachia
who were getting revenue from coal
mining, aren't left high and dry.
And there's, there's a lot of
funding going into economic
revitalization to those communities.
(20:24):
So I'm not saying leave
people high and drive it.
I'm saying we have to be smarter.
Like we have to be smarter.
And we can, like, we have the solutions
that we need to end extinction
and preserve a livable climate,
but political inertia and where
the money is, is preventing that.
And so.
Most people wouldn't fall in the bad guys,
(20:45):
but there are a handful of incredibly rich
people who I will put solidly in the bad
guy category and say your money is not
as important as the survival of humanity.
And we have to do things differently.
Lucas (20:58):
The Internet's collective
solarpunk readers agree with Tierra,
if we can judge by the top all-time
posts on Reddit, R slash solar punk.
100 companies are responsible for 71%
of global greenhouse gas emissions.
That's from a 2015 report by the watchdog
charity Carbon Disclosure Project.
The report concluded that of the estimated
(21:19):
greenhouse gas emissions from human
activity, excluding certain sources
like agricultural methane between 1988
and 2015, 71 originated from 100 fossil
fuel producers, including Exxon Mobile,
Shell, BHP Billiton, and Gazprom.
This includes the emissions released
when the fossil fuels they sold were
subsequently used by their customers.
(21:42):
I don't think it's an exaggeration
to say that Book of Extinction is a
part of toppling that global system.
It's a monster manual of anthropogenic
extinctions, a bestiary of animals lost to
CHIPPO in the accelerating mass extinction
crisis of the so-called Anthropocene.
By supporting the solarpunk antagonism
of the Center's legal and artistic
(22:03):
activism and echoing the hopepunk
aesthetic of Wizards of the Coast's
latest adventure module, Book of
Extinction makes D&D a part of the
solution by doing what D&D does best:
telling stories envisioning a world
where those lost animals could live on.
At its core, that is
the vision of solarpunk.
(22:23):
A future that embodies the best
of what humanity can achieve (22:24):
a
post-scarcity, post-hierarchy,
post-capitalistic world where humanity
sees itself as part of nature and
clean energy replaces fossil fuel.
It's the vision of the future
shared by almost every young female
protagonist in a Ghibli movie.
(22:45):
And if you want to get on board,
here are three ways you can do it
without maybe flying to cities in the
sky or resurrecting ancient relics.
First, when you talk about Journey
Through the Radiant Citadel on social
media, use the hashtag solarpunk.
Solarpunk at the moment sort of seems like
cyberpunk's less cool art nouveau cousin,
and that seems a shame to me for a genre
(23:06):
with so much potential and beauty in it.
As an audience, let's take the
opportunity to connect the two
conversations and elevate them both.
Second, when you talk about Citadel in
person mentioned this podcast so far, it
seems to be the only article exploring
the connection with solarpunk in depth.
If there is another, please let me know,
I'd love to read it, but again, this
(23:28):
may be the most important connection we
can make and I don't want to miss it.
Thirdly, check out the Book of
Extinction preview on DriveThruRPG
or at scintilla.studio/extinction.
It's three extinct animals resurrected
for D&D 5E (23:41):
the passenger pigeon,
the thylacine and the great auk,
table-ready with stat blocks and lore
alongside the stranger-than-fiction
true stories of how they went extinct.
You can pay what you want for it
and every penny we earn from the
preview will go to support the Center
for Biological Diversity's work
litigating and advocating on behalf
of endangered species and habitat.
(24:02):
That kind of radical hope becomes
a beacon, just like the Auroral
Diamond spinning through the
depths of the Ethereal plane.
And if it's bright enough, we'll
gather around it and future
civilizations will build a beautiful
city on the bones we leave behind.
(24:25):
Thanks for listening to Making a Monster.
I'm Lucas Zellers.
D&D's newest adventure book
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel
is an original solar punk spectacular
wrapped around a fossil monster.
This is Making a Monster, the bite-sized
podcast where we investigate the
monsters in D&D and other tabletop
RPGs, and discover how they work,
(00:21):
why they work and what they mean.
I'm Lucas Zellers.
Wizards of the Coast will be releasing its
newest adventure module "Journeys Through
the Radiant Citadel" in June of this year.
It's an anthology set in a multiversal
hub city adrift in the Ethereal plane.
There is a monster at the heart of
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, or
(00:43):
"Citadel" as we'll call it for the rest
of this episode, whose fossilized remains
form the basis of the city's architecture.
Moreover, the monster is one of
an extinct species lost to time.
I've been using D&D to tell the stories
of extinct animals since about January
2021, so you might guess why I think
this adventure is the most exciting
thing Wizards has yet produced for
(01:05):
fifth edition, but there's more.
Ajit George, one of the Citadel's
project leads, tweeted that the
project is inspired by the hopepunk
and solarpunk movements in its
optimistic vision of a community
collaborating to overcome long odds.
It's exactly what real life solarpunks
like the ones I'm partnering with
through Book of Extinction are doing in
(01:26):
the present to make a brighter future.
So in this episode, let's look at what
Citadel is, what solarpunk is and how
it relates to other punk genres like
cyberpunk or stonepunk, and why it
matters for the future of the worlds
we play in and the one we live in now.
Part the first, a diamond city.
(01:47):
Citadel is a collection of 13
short standalone D&D adventures
set in the radiant Citadel, a
multiversal hub city floating
adrift deep in D&D's ethereal plane.
The heart of the Citadel is a
massive gemstone called the Auroral
Diamond, a beacon of life in the
gray, endless expanse of ether.
(02:08):
The fossilized body of a seemingly-extinct
creature wrapped around that diamond
formed the foundation of the city's rock
cut architecture when 27 civilizations
from all over the multi-verse
built the city in the distant past.
250 years ago, descendants of 15 of those
civilizations re-established the city
(02:30):
Orbiting the Citadel are 15 smaller
crystals called Concord Jewels.
Each of those gems is connected to the
material plane, the world as we know
it in which adventures begin, and each
serves as a gateway to one of 15 of
the Citadel's founding civilizations.
If you're keeping up with the
math, that means 12 of them are
now missing doorways to anywhere.
(02:52):
Citadel continues.
Some recent design trends from Wizards.
It's an anthology adventure,
like Candlekeep Mysteries
and Waterdeep (02:58):
Dragon Heist.
It's also the next in a growing line
of multiversal adventures that runs all
the way back to the city of Sigil, the
multiversal hub from the much beloved
second edition Planescape setting.
And by the way, Planescape is the
same setting that gave us the D'vati,,
the only player race option that
lets you play two characters at once.
So check out my interview with the
(03:19):
2E and 5E creators of the d'vati
if you want to learn more about
second edition or Planescape.
Those missing 12 Concord jewels are
deliberate opportunities for DMs to
connect the Radiant Citadel to other
adventures or their own homebrew worlds.
By contrast, this adventure is
a first for Wizards of the Coast
in a couple of important ways.
(03:40):
And believe it or not, an extinct
behemoth isn't even the most exciting one.
First, the setting is entirely original.
The Radiant Citadel isn't a glow up
or a rewrite from earlier editions.
It was made from whole cloth
by the book's creative team.
Second, the book deliberately steps
away from gritty, crime-ridden cities
like Waterdeep and Sigil to present
(04:01):
an optimistic view of society working
together, what Ajit calls hopepunk.
Third, the book was written
entirely by people of color.
16 black and brown writers created the
book, including Iranian-American Justice
Arman, who you might recognize from
(04:22):
our season one episode on The Bagger
and who recently announced his hiring
as a Senior Game Designer at Wizards.
Each of the book's 13 adventure writers
drew on their own lived experience,
and three of these adventures have been
previewed ahead of the book's release.
"Salted Legacy" throws gamers into a
generational feud between two rival
(04:43):
vendor families after a series of
vandalisms and thefts begin to appear.
According to writer, Surena Marie,
who is also the Product Marketing
Manager for Critical Role.
It's written from Marie's experience
as a first-generation Thai American
watching different vendors try to cherish
their own traditions while competing
in a new cultural and business context.
It's a low-stakes drama played for
(05:04):
comedy, very reminiscent of the narrative
design in Jiangshi (05:06):
Blood in the
Banquet Hall from my very first episode.
The bustling night market where
"Salted Legacy" takes place is now
the cover of the adventure book.
The next adventure "Written in Blood"
brings players to a location as
sprawling as the Dessarin Valley called
God's Breath, an homage to the black
experience in the Southern United States.
(05:28):
Writer Erin Roberts, a contributor to the
Pathfinder and Starfinder lines at Paizo,
was inspired by her great-uncle's book
Growing Up Black in Rural Mississippi.
Her adventure centers on a ritual of
oral history called the Awakening Song.
Finally, Justice Arman's adventure
"Shadow of the Sun" presents the
isolated city state Akharin Sangar,
(05:48):
ruled by Atash, a benevolent but
dogmatic angel whose subjects have mixed
feelings about his totalitarian rule.
Atash's story and design draw from the
10th-century work of Persian poetry
Shahnameh, or The Book of Kings.
The complicated relationship
Sangarians have with outsiders, full
of misconceptions and stereotypes, is
part of the Iranian experience Justice
(06:09):
wanted to explore with his adventure.
All of these adventures picture the way
in which culture and storytelling work
together to create the societies we build.
For Ajit and the rest of the Citadel team,
that picture is a discal agrihood, where
crime and rebellious nihilism are replaced
with community and radical optimism.
And that peculiarly green radical
(06:31):
optimism already has a name, solarpunk.
Part, the second (06:36):
sticking it to the man.
"Punk" means a lot of different
things to a lot of people.
So it's important to
be clear on the suffix.
You might remember that conversation
with David Somerville, author of the
Planegea campaign setting with Atlas
Games about his idea of stonepunk.
David Somerville (06:54):
I recently
was super lucky enough to read
Neuromancer for the first time.
And that book is brilliant and it
took me a minute to get into it.
And then when I did, I was just in it.
And that's punk.
I mean, cyber punk was like,
fight the man, be a punk.
Like it actually had that
like punk anti-authoritarian
(07:15):
aesthetic, anti commercialism,
like rage against the machine.
And that was a real thing.
And both of those words were meaningful.
"Cyber" was meaningful and "punk"
was meaningful and it meant the
mashing up of these two things.
I feel like in geek culture, "punk" has
become a shorthand for this thing, but
a lot of it and sort of exaggerated.
(07:37):
So we're going to take whatever comes
before -punk and crank it to 11 and
build all of our assumptions around that.
So if you have "piratepunk", it
just means it's very pirates.
And if you have, you know, whatever
steampunk, it's very steam and it
means that all the aesthetics are going
to be exaggerated and intensified.
I think it implies like a less safe world.
(07:58):
Like, I think whenever you have
"-punk" on there, there's sort of an
implication that, that those extremes
are going to cause a lot of tension.
Lucas (08:05):
Of the litany of literary "punk"
genres, "cyberpunk" is probably the
most famous, buoyed by movies like
The Matrix, Akira, and Bladerunner.
Maybe the best cyberpunk property I
can point you to with this show is
Fun City, the actual play Shadowrun
podcast that wrapped up my discussion
of monsters and villainy with GMs.
For the Fun City creative team, cyberpunk
(08:27):
is a grim vision of the near future.
Taylor Moore (08:29):
Our version of Shadowrun,
in the world we play in, is very much
a, an answer to the question of if,
if technology got better with things
still be bad, you know, like, yes.
Mike Rugnetta (08:41):
Yes.
Taylor Moore (08:42):
And the answer, and we
play in the world of yes, but how, yes?
That's, that's the, in
what specific manner?
Mike Rugnetta (08:49):
In a lot of Shadowrun
games, you see the same attitude
develop, which is I'm a, I'm a player,
character living in a dystopia.
The corporations control everything.
It's very hard to get by.
You have to do whatever you look
out for number one, you do whatever
you can to like, make sure that
(09:10):
you survive by hook or by crook,
or literally just, just by crook.
And so what you get is you get a lot
of games that I have described as
"Capitalism Made Me Do It (09:22):
The Game," and
that people just wash their hands of any
moral consideration because they have to
do whatever they have to do to survive.
It doesn't matter what
it is that they're doing.
Like the world is bad.
And so they have to be bad in
the world because that's the
only way that you make it.
Lucas (09:40):
I think that reflects the
difficulty for current futurists
under 30, it's easy to feel like
there's no future left to imagine.
For those born after America's so-called
"greatest generation", as though the
best opportunities for innovation and
exploration have already passed us by.
In his book, Ghosts of My Life:
Writings on Depression, Hauntology,
(10:00):
and Lost Futures, cultural theorist
Mark Fisher, put it this way:
"The slow cancellation of the
future has been accompanied by a
deflation of expectations . . . the
feeling of belatedness, of
living after the gold rush, is as
omnipresent as it is disavowed."
Solarpunk rejects this
ominous ennui entirely.
(10:20):
According to a 2014 manifesto on the
genre by a writer calling themselves
Hieroglyph, "Solarpunk draws on the
ideal of Jefferson's yeoman farmer,
Gandhi's ideal of swadeshi and the
subsequent Salt March, and countless
other traditions of innovative descent."
In other words, we are not satisfied
with the world we've been given and
we'll do whatever it takes to change it.
(10:42):
Probably something clever with reclaimed
wood and leftover railroad spikes.
The Radiant Citadel itself is inspired
by Indian rock-cut architecture, a
practice as old as the third century
BC, where structures are created by
carving them out of solid natural
rock - or in this case, petrified bone.
Comic artist CJ Bell wrote in The Tree
(11:03):
of Liberty, "This is a green pepper.
It costs 75 cents at the grocery store.
Inside the pepper are enough seeds to make
hundreds, even thousands more peppers.
In a world where nothing comes
free and it's profitable to control
what people copy and create,
gardening is a revolutionary act."
(11:25):
In other words, you have to
keep the punk in solarpunk.
Part the third (11:30):
a solar future.
Despite being speculative or
future fiction, "punk" genres are
often transparently about now.
The radical optimism in the future
solarpunk envisions isn't possible
without radical change in the present.
For the past year, I've been telling
the stories of extinct animals in
the medium of Dungeons and Dragons.
(11:51):
And through that project, I've gotten to
meet some real life solarpunks who are
working to make that radical change happen
at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Kierán Suckling (12:01):
My name is Kierán
Suckling and I am the executive director
and founder of the Center for Biological
Diversity, which is a endangered species
protection group that mostly works, here
in the U.S., but also internationally.
And we try to save all species
(12:23):
great and small from, from
butterflies and insects to polar
bears and wolves, keep them alive.
Lucas (12:32):
Rarely do my guests
have a Wikipedia page.
There is a quote in here from The
New Yorker that describes you as a
trickster, philosopher, publicity
hound, master strategist, and
unapologetic pain in the ass.
Uh, how do you respond to that?
Kierán Suckling (12:46):
I would think that's
a pretty accurate description, uh, at
least of what I attempt to be at least.
Um, and, and, and that's what's
needed, to save species from extinction
and to be a successful activists,
uh, you gotta be a trickster.
You gotta figure out all the
(13:07):
different angles you can take you.
You've also got to realize at some
level, this is all street theater,
whether you're in the court or in a
scientific paper or in a protest, it's
all finally human theater and you have
to sort of keep that, that in mind.
Uh, and certainly I started this while
(13:27):
working on my PhD in philosophy, uh,
and to this day am motivated, uh, by
the philosophical issues around, uh,
extinction, animality, our relationship
with other, other earthlings.
Cause we're just one and we're just one
of the earthlings, and everything we
(13:52):
do, whether it's some formal-looking
law or scientific study or playing
Dungeons and Dragons, these are all at
the end of the day, ways of interacting
with this living planet that we live
on and in some way recognizing and
(14:12):
exploring the insane diversity of
animal life on this living planet.
And that's what we're all
doing in one way or another.
I think we forget that.
And it's, it's good to step back
and realize that's what's going on.
Lucas (14:30):
The solarpunks Kierán has
gathered at the Center come from a
variety of backgrounds, some with the
kind of tragic backstory that would be
right at home on a D&D character sheet.
This is Tierra Curry, Senior Scientist,
director of the Center's Saving
Life on Earth campaign, and science
consultant for Book of Extinction.
You've heard her voice already a couple
of times, but this is a piece of an
(14:52):
interview that I haven't released yet.
Tell me why you decided to choose a
career in conservation in the first place.
Tierra Curry (14:58):
I grew up in the
mountains of Southeastern Kentucky,
which are absolutely beautiful.
There's so many birds and frogs and snakes
and lizards and trees and fireflies.
I had played outside all the
time when I would get grounded.
I wouldn't be allowed to go outside.
I'd have to like sit inside and watch TV.
So I just soaked it up and I feel like
(15:20):
it became part of me, the beauty of
the mountains and all the wildlife.
And then the coal companies came
and strip mine the mountain behind
my house and in front of my house.
And so these places that I knew
so well where I had grown up just
playing and roaming were reduced
to bare dirt and they caused the
streams to start running polluted.
They polluted my well water.
(15:41):
And I, even as a kid, I
was like, this is wrong.
You can't just take a mountain
and reduce it to rubble.
And so I, from a really young age, I just
had the sense that that had to change and
that I wanted to do something about it.
And ironically, I decided not to
go to law school because I didn't
want to be inside all the time.
I was like, I want to be outside.
(16:02):
I don't want to be inside.
So I'm going to go into biology instead.
And as I started taking environmental
science classes, extinction is the
issue that resonated with me the most.
I think it's the ultimate injustice.
It's so unfair.
That the plants and animals that
we happen to like be here with that
were driving them off the planet.
I don't think that's right.
(16:24):
And so that's where I drew my line
in the sand and said, I want a
job that focuses on extinction.
And I didn't know how I
was going to find that.
I was taking an environmental science
class and my professor talked about the
center for biological diversity and was
talking about how they were opposing
the construction of an elementary
school in Arizona because the cactus
(16:45):
region is pygmy owl lived there.
And I was like, oh my goodness,
that people are going to hate them
because like an elementary school
is not a popular thing to oppose.
And I've never heard of a cactus for
regional pygmy owl, but whoever these
people are, that's what I want to do.
I want to be the person that's
like, no, the owl lives here.
Put your school somewhere else.
(17:06):
So I, I went back to grad school.
I wrote in my grad school
essay that I wanted to work at
the center when I graduated.
And then when I saw a job come
up at the center, I wrote a cover
letter that basically said, pick me.
I went to grad school so I
could work for you someday.
Lucas (17:24):
We've talked about mining
companies, we've talked about city
planners, and it's very easy to
cast certain people or industries as
the villains of the piece in this.
You know, I think heroic fantasy, really,
especially heroic fantasy and Dungeons
and Dragons being the, its example,
we're very used to telling that story of
like, this is the good guy with a sword,
and this is the big, scary monster.
(17:45):
And we know what's going to happen here.
But in real life, it's very difficult
to say that even if it is a mining
company or, or a city planner or, uh,
ingoing development of, of houses,
that those are the big, scary monsters.
How do you reconcile that?
How are you able to talk about people
who have goals and values that, that
(18:05):
conflict with the preservation of
endangered species, even in places
like plain city and still talk about
them as like people who have worthwhile
goals and are trying to solve problems?
Tierra Curry (18:15):
Yeah.
So humanity at large is like the big,
scary monster that's driving extinction.
You don't have to point your finger
to one faction, you know, human,
the causes of extinction are CHIPPO:
climate change, habitat loss,
invasive species, pollution, human
population growth, and overutilization.
So those are the drivers of extinction
(18:37):
and humans, there's just so many
of us now that literally the fate
of all wildlife is in our hands.
So I don't want to point
fingers at one camp of villains.
It's, it's all of us, it's all of our
responsibility, but there are so many
ways that we could do things differently.
There's just so much inertia and funding
to keep doing things the same way.
(18:59):
And literally it's as
suicidal war against nature.
As the UN secretary general just
said, kicking off the convention
on biological diversity meetings
like that opening statement of
the global biodiversity meetings.
So as we have to end our
suicidal war against nature.
And that that is so true.
And so all of us, we need to just
stop and reset and think about
(19:21):
how do I build a smarter city?
How do I reduce runoff into the Creek?
What are the better ways to
deal with sewer pollution?
Like we don't have to use the answers
that people came up with in the
forties, fifties, or even eighties.
There's so many like smart taking
people and so much technology.
And so many people who want to
make a difference that there
(19:41):
are solutions to these problems.
We just have the inertia and funding
factor of industry right now.
As for the mining companies, the
fossil fuel industry is one industry.
I'm not letting off the hook.
We have to get off fossil fuels.
Like we are all going to die.
If we don't get off fossil
fuels and that's just a reality.
(20:02):
And so that whole industry needs to
change gears and we need to develop
alternate sources of energy and, and work
on just transitions to agree in economy.
So that communities in Appalachia
who were getting revenue from coal
mining, aren't left high and dry.
And there's, there's a lot of
funding going into economic
revitalization to those communities.
(20:24):
So I'm not saying leave
people high and drive it.
I'm saying we have to be smarter.
Like we have to be smarter.
And we can, like, we have the solutions
that we need to end extinction
and preserve a livable climate,
but political inertia and where
the money is, is preventing that.
And so.
Most people wouldn't fall in the bad guys,
(20:45):
but there are a handful of incredibly rich
people who I will put solidly in the bad
guy category and say your money is not
as important as the survival of humanity.
And we have to do things differently.
Lucas (20:58):
The Internet's collective
solarpunk readers agree with Tierra,
if we can judge by the top all-time
posts on Reddit, R slash solar punk.
100 companies are responsible for 71%
of global greenhouse gas emissions.
That's from a 2015 report by the watchdog
charity Carbon Disclosure Project.
The report concluded that of the estimated
(21:19):
greenhouse gas emissions from human
activity, excluding certain sources
like agricultural methane between 1988
and 2015, 71 originated from 100 fossil
fuel producers, including Exxon Mobile,
Shell, BHP Billiton, and Gazprom.
This includes the emissions released
when the fossil fuels they sold were
subsequently used by their customers.
(21:42):
I don't think it's an exaggeration
to say that Book of Extinction is a
part of toppling that global system.
It's a monster manual of anthropogenic
extinctions, a bestiary of animals lost to
CHIPPO in the accelerating mass extinction
crisis of the so-called Anthropocene.
By supporting the solarpunk antagonism
of the Center's legal and artistic
(22:03):
activism and echoing the hopepunk
aesthetic of Wizards of the Coast's
latest adventure module, Book of
Extinction makes D&D a part of the
solution by doing what D&D does best:
telling stories envisioning a world
where those lost animals could live on.
At its core, that is
the vision of solarpunk.
(22:23):
A future that embodies the best
of what humanity can achieve (22:24):
a
post-scarcity, post-hierarchy,
post-capitalistic world where humanity
sees itself as part of nature and
clean energy replaces fossil fuel.
It's the vision of the future
shared by almost every young female
protagonist in a Ghibli movie.
(22:45):
And if you want to get on board,
here are three ways you can do it
without maybe flying to cities in the
sky or resurrecting ancient relics.
First, when you talk about Journey
Through the Radiant Citadel on social
media, use the hashtag solarpunk.
Solarpunk at the moment sort of seems like
cyberpunk's less cool art nouveau cousin,
and that seems a shame to me for a genre
(23:06):
with so much potential and beauty in it.
As an audience, let's take the
opportunity to connect the two
conversations and elevate them both.
Second, when you talk about Citadel in
person mentioned this podcast so far, it
seems to be the only article exploring
the connection with solarpunk in depth.
If there is another, please let me know,
I'd love to read it, but again, this
(23:28):
may be the most important connection we
can make and I don't want to miss it.
Thirdly, check out the Book of
Extinction preview on DriveThruRPG
or at scintilla.studio/extinction.
It's three extinct animals resurrected
for D&D 5E (23:41):
the passenger pigeon,
the thylacine and the great auk,
table-ready with stat blocks and lore
alongside the stranger-than-fiction
true stories of how they went extinct.
You can pay what you want for it
and every penny we earn from the
preview will go to support the Center
for Biological Diversity's work
litigating and advocating on behalf
of endangered species and habitat.
(24:02):
That kind of radical hope becomes
a beacon, just like the Auroral
Diamond spinning through the
depths of the Ethereal plane.
And if it's bright enough, we'll
gather around it and future
civilizations will build a beautiful
city on the bones we leave behind.
(24:25):
Thanks for listening to Making a Monster.
I'm Lucas Zellers.
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