|
Romulus et Remus |
| 2022-03-01 |
Romulus et Remus
The comic serie Funérailles is a prequel to Freaks' Squeele, I have just finished its first volume. It's very good, but somehow horrific.
I will describe one of the core idea in the setting brushed by the author Florent Maudoux. It is an idea that is easy to steal for a fantasy role-playing setting.
All the women bear identical twins in that world. Those twins grow canines in the womb (which is named the "Athanor", maybe for the furnace). At some point during the ninth month, the twins fight, and the toughest of the two kills the other. The surviving baby, if it has no sequel, and is thus perfect, becomes part of the elite. If it is wounded but still "able-bodied", it is sent to a camp to become a soldier, should it survive the training. Disabled babies become servant to the elite.
On rare occurrences, the outcome is a monster, siamese twins living in the deep margin below.
The city at the heart of the setting is named "Rem" and was founded by two twins, named Romulus and Remus. They didn't fight in the Athanor and were born perfect, and changed the history of the world by founding Rem.
In the history of our city of Rome, Romulus and Remus were fed by a female wolf, while for Rem, they were fed by a spider (with a single breast). The prophecy says that the civilization of Rem will be toppled by the next two "cooperating" twins to be born (to a mother from the House of the Spider).
I am only at the first volume of the serie, but I think that the core idea extracted above could lend itself to build a urban setting with powerful characters.
A character might be a perfect, member of the elite, an able-bodied with scars earned in the womb and in the war, or a servant, mutilated. The final choice might be to play a siamese twin. But the comic hints that not all "secondary" twins die, and that clandestine links of brotherhood might be established. Maybe such characters could be considered beyond monster, un-siamese twins.
The uncanniest of the siamese and the last of our variants happens when the twin is completely absorbed and a single, unique, baby is born, but somehow haunted by its twin. Single yet double.
Each character has or had a twin.
