ink, then digital.

Work for an upcoming Ironclaw project.

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Monkeys are everything expected of them; clever, devious, playful, agile, noisy, fierce, canny, social, adaptable, and whatever else comes to mind. Everything you've heard about monkeys is true - everything; if not about the monkey in question, then it's still true for a half-dozen others. They are not only capable of anything you could imagine, but somewhere, some monkey has already done it, is currently doing it, or will have it begun by the end of the day.

This is not because monkeys are particularly competent people; individually the monkey you know might seem like an incapable fool. Instead, monkeys are adept at pattern recognition and communication, particularly with each other. They also tend to feed off information and connection. It is a widely recognized that two monkeys, having just met, will lose themselves in the most banal chatter for hours, emerging from this screeching tête-à-tête with a thorough understanding of the other.

And so, what little that one monkey knows about or knows how to do, soon becomes something every other monkey met knows as well. They have no regard for personal, social, or occupational boundaries when it comes to exchanging jokes, gossip, recipes, tricks of the trade, weather tips, and other news.

This could make monkeys seem like jacks-of-all-trades, or that they always have a solution. Actually, it's not that the individual monkey is a savant genius, but that the problem at hand recalls something another monkey once said at a knitting circle, or in passing conversation waiting for a ferry, etc.

Understandably, monkeys are particularly poor confidants, and indeed they don't advance far in organized religion before betraying confessions, diluting scripture with hearsay and questioning current understanding with outside radical viewpoints. By the same token, they make excellent scholars, investigators, artisans, bards, jesters, scouts, and general assistants, improving the efficiency of any task at hand and the mood of any crowd.

In groups, monkeys exhibit social behaviour with startling emergent properties. It is said that two monkeys create annoyance, three create miracles, more than that create bloodshed.

This is because when brought together for any reason, soon after an initial period of cheerful chattering introductions, monkeys will behave as a loose, spontaneous collective, sharing information and purpose with uncanny prescience. A mob of monkeys with a common goal is unstoppable until they are divided from each other. The mob is also increasingly inscrutable as its internal culture develops in connection and complexity.

This can be a boon for the visionary with an impossible project; round up some monkeys, point them in the same direction, and step back. However, the downside is that unless they are tightly managed, monkeys will take over a project for their own aims. Many novice sea captains have fully crewed with monkeys for reasons of effective cohesion only to die in burning mutiny months later. The wise civic officer has many monkey informants, if only to keep tabs on the monkeys themselves; they breed revolution and conspiracy if left alone. After gathering them to build an engine of glory, the knowing leader then scatters those monkeys or risks eventual tragedy.