Nerdaissance

Hey everybody!

I have a very special guest coming to visit me this weekend. Luckily for you, that means I am posting early this week.

I wanted to lay down the fundamentals of my world mythology in the hopes of getting some discourse over the flaws and strengths in it. This becomes very important to my game, so we’ll start here. Note:  Any of this mythology applies to my world in the realm of DnD. I really kill two birds by doing this.

One of the basic tenets of my mythology building is that most cultures use Gods to really explain how the world works. Oftentimes, they take an almost fairy-taleish way of explaining things, so I wanted to keep my story pretty simple as well.

Fundamentally, there would be the two ancient Gods- Time and Space (No names have been made yet). Being a physics major, the time-space continuum is a great place to start these things. These two Gods get go through a bit of “courtship” where they create the basic building blocks of the universe- earth, wood, fire, shadow,etc- in planes. That is how we get the different crazy planes that are pretty neutral, even if creatures on them are not.

Eventually, courtship ends up with marriage and 9 kids-the Elder Gods- come into the world. This number isn’t steadfast, but I want there to be enough to cover the 9 different alignments. Maybe there are twins in there who are both Chaotic good, but I’m going to say 9 for now. These kids each get their own “room” plane where they are free to do whatever they like. They create creatures to fight for them, play with, etc. Naturally they begin to fight. Good Gods versus Evil Gods, with the neutral Gods doing their own neutral best to be the mediators- does sound like a middle child right?

Eventually, they cause a big cosmic ruckus and get in trouble from the parentals. In order to get on better terms, they collaborate to create the material plane as a gift to the Ancient Gods. On the material plane, no God is allowed to set foot. This way, the Ancient Gods can have a nice piece of land to look at and not be bothered by the fueds of their children.

Unexpectedly, the humanoids who start springing up on Earth start to worship different things than just the Ancient and Elder Gods. They worship nature, the sun, booze, etc. Their collective worship starts to grant deitific powers to these objects. Most of this is benign however, a sun with powers doesn’t mean much, but a person who is worshipped can mean a lot. Powerful kings who are worshipped as Gods, start to get powers like Gods.

The elder Gods see this and realize that if they can get these powerful beings to fight for them, maybe they can win the God War. They talk to the different worshipped individuals and promise them positions in their planes in their afterlife if they dedicate their life to that Gods cause.

Byond that, some of the evil Gods talk to morally weak people, tell them what they can be in their afterlife, just so that person will activate a portal to let extra-planar creatures onto the material plane. It is a whole new level of the God War, except now it is happening a bit underneath the Ancient Gods’ noses without them really noticing. Mortals can’t fool Gods, but other Gods can.

How this all leads into the game is that once, the Evil Gods made a creature specially designed to be supreme over all other creatures.It is as strong as one of them, but it can also walk the material plane. The method of any of this isn’t thought out yet, but they unleash the creature on the material plane, it unleashes destruction on the world. When it was around on the material plane, some people survived its destruction. Some of those people started to worship the creature secretly, slowly giving it even more power. (All part of the Evil Gods plan).

Eventually, it goes back to the cosmoverse and kills a good God, changing the balance of the GW. Unfortunately for the Evil Gods, it turns around and kills one of them as well. This is such a powerful being, and it doesn’t see things in the Good/Evil scale the Gods know. It is dangerous, so the rest team up on the creature and end up banishing it to its own tiny plane.

This plane is populated with creatures that are immune to the mechanism the creature uses to kill Gods. The creature waits for years upon years. Somewhere in the beginning portion of the game, it will have gained enough power through years of sacrifices for it to break free from its prison. It will take its sword (or whatever weapon) and cast it into the fabric of the plane, breaking it off from its orbit.

On the material plane, a giant comet strikes the ground. The mechanical creatures start to try to take over the world. This isn’t the biggest problem though, because the creature is waiting for the right time to strike.

That was a bit long, but it was more like 2 medium posts in 1. Thoughts?

Where have I been? I had three or four great posts in a row, a month of good posts, only to leave a gaping hole of production on my game. Sure, I think only about 6 people at most read this, but to a certain extent I’m doing this blog for myself. So to Ian, and everyone else who reads this, I’m getting back on track and will do my very best to have weekly posts from here on. I’m sure there will be gaps, I’m human, but I am going to keep them to a minimum.

This week was my spring break, and among other things, I did some broad work on the ol’ Sightseeing: World Tour! There are three tiers of adventure. 

The smallest tier of adventuring will be very specific to where you are in the world. Most of these will be purely optional, but as any side quest in a game has, they will give access to something extra- different weapons,spells, information, etc. These adventures haven’t been planned out yet, but since there will be so many of them, there will be a ton of different things. I have been toying with the idea of having them be similar to the popular (and fantastic) computer game Fable. In Fable, you can go on every side quest you desire, but you pay a price: your character ages. I was thinking of either doing something like this, or if you spend too much time away from a quest you have taken that is in a higher tier, maybe there are some noticeable changes because of it, much like the butterfly effect. What do you guys think?

The next tier of adventure will be broader and world-effecting. Each of the four individual parties will have a definite storyline that they travel on. They will be concerned with things such as governments at war, Gods at war, pirates, chaotic nomads, and even cults and a mysterious force that is moving across the land. As I flesh out how these interplay, I will be putting it up as a post. The point is that the world is aware of these things, and as adventurers, it will be your duty (to your God, government, or personal honor) to fight them. They will be major plot points that were happening before you started the game, and you are just going to try your best to fight them.

The highest tier of adventuring truly encompasses the whole world. As each individual party will be focused on some general large event, there will be an event so large and encompassing that all individual storylines will be diverted. It isn’t going to be a Watchmen/WWII style, mutual enemy unites the world, there will just be something so big that it will complicate everything. I have this worked out mostly, so hopefully in the upcoming weeks, I can leave some flavor text style posts that give you a feel for what will happen without giving everything away.

For now though, I’m going to leave things here. Especially since I will be posting next week. Thanks for having me back guys.