World Creation

And just like that, we are off to the races. There are random tables in the book for most of these topics, if folks are interested in using those. They are mostly d20 tables, with a d8 table for kingdoms / nations.

There's no need to create full encyclopedia entry for anything right off the bat, obviously. Let's embrace starting with building blocks or bursts of inspiration, and we can add details together, through conversation, interrogation, and -- later -- gameplay. You can get a lot out of a little, if those old JRPG manuals with their twenty-word summary of any given place or character are any indication.

Anyone can start with any of these! Go for it!

Well hello! Joined, looking forward to this!

🔸 Dig the idea of souls. Souls powering machines, souls becoming corrupted, feasted on by demons, etc.
🔸 Conflicts: love a messy relationship between old rival countries, or two countries posturing for war. Also like third / other countries caught in the middle.

Moving to straight world creation…

Hmm. Should we roll or choose? If rolling, one thing I’ve always liked to do is roll twice and choose the more interesting option. On magic, I’m okay with anything. I think high magic is probably best, at least fairly widespread? I’d love a mix of alchemy, magic, and science for airships, weapons, floating castles / islands, etc. Big enigmas and threats — love that, and would be interested in seeing the table value.

I think I’ll peek at those tonight after work…

Harri you’ve now already got me thinking about monsters/demons being this recurring "price-of-doing business" for operating soul-powered machinery. The same way that birds collide with planes, rats chew on electrical wires, cows kick over oil lamps, maybe some basic monsters are drawn to magitech and hitting them with a broom to make them fuck off is just another thing that has to be done. I can see an industry of Troubleshooters that are maybe handymen and IT support more than they are swordguys and exorcists here to smack a goblin.

For country rivalries, could easily give somebody more access to soul-juice and make them the equivalent of an oil powerhouse? Or go sideways and maybe somebody has the lion’s share of some ancient ruins that hold the components needed to make the widgets and gewgaws that you need to turn soul-juice into actual mechanical motion/power/whatever.

Just percolating over here. But one more post incoming.

While driving to work my brain buzzed at me, idly thinking about the first goofy step to pick your planet shape. I was idly thinking, I dunno, maybe doing flat world high fantasy could be unique in its own right. That definitely changes some dynamics if you literally can’t wrap around to the other side of the map, could be good weird fun.

And then my brain started thinking about oceans running off the edge (don’t worry, they fall *up* and replenish the sky, duh) and I was thinking "huh I wonder what the firmament is like in this case, is it flat too? How is it staying up?"

And my brain answered "pillars, obviously," and so now I’m over here thinking about what if the Eight Pillars of world creation are — in some weird way — literal physical out there in the world pillars that are holding up the sky. Little bit Legacy of Kain, little bit Dark Tower, little bit Golden Sun, but I am really intrigued by this idea right now. Gonna let my brain buzz some more.

Building off of what Harri said about conflicts: Did anyone see the FFXV tie-in movie, Kingsglaive? It's not without its flaws but the setting is pretty interesting. There's a long-running war between two kingdoms, one the "good" kingdom that leans more heavily on magic, and the other, the "bad" kingdom that uses more technology. The heroes are refugees who have fled smaller nearby countries that were overtaken by the bad kingdom. They've found refuge in the good kingdom and use their abilities to defend the land against the encroaching army from the bad kingdom, but they still struggle to be accepted by the general populace.

All this is to say, I find the idea of a refugee story interesting. What if the characters in our story are from refugee cultures as well? What does it mean to try to keep your cultural traditions in a different land? How hard do you try to assimilate into your new home's culture? How hard it is to fight for a place that you're simultaneously grateful to, but where you also experience prejudice daily? Exploring these themes in a non-real world setting can be interesting.

I love the idea of the soul-powered machinery - there is a definite horror element there. It dovetails perfectly with the eight pillars and made me think about the bleak and beautiful landscape in Shadow of the Colossus.

Could definitely do something with heroic refugees — but that is best saved for later on when y’all choose your Party Template. For now, best bet would be to create a world that makes that idea viable, if that’s what you want.

So just to keep this fire stoked, I am looking at the world creation random tables in the book (pg 147 onward) and the checklist of steps.

For step 1, I'm still kind of digging a flat world whose oceans fall up into the heavens once they run off the sides.

For step 2, grabbing a map, I like this one of the two pre-rendered Fabula maps:


I marked one square for one day of travel because it feels like a nice size to me. Takes about 11 days to walk from top to bottom of that big south-eastern landmass, which I'm fine with.

Which brings us to Step 3 and beyond. Just gonna throw some ideas out there.

Harri expressed an interest in souls, soul-powered machinery, souls being corrupted, souls being feasted on by demons. Argo mentioned a horror element, mentioned bleakness and desolation of Shadow of the Colossus. I mentioned some stuff about magical engineers, monsters being attracted to technology, a flat world, and the sky being held up by enormous pillars.

So, letting all of that bubble around in my head...
We haven't really talked about magic itself, but we've locked onto soul and technology so I am tempted to say that it feels like -- in our hypothetical world -- magic and technology are absolutely intertwined with one another. I am feeling a very strong academic slant to magic and alchemy and souls and all of this. I could see Universities teaching, very correctly, the idea that everything in the world is made up of a specific ratio of elemental motes and by understanding those ratios and the principles of Elemental Interaction or whatever then you will understand the way the world works. All physical laws as we know them actually just being interactions in the style of the classical elements, in the way alchemists' writings talked about metals and minerals and all of that. Taking that further, I can see (and I think really like the idea) of medicine having a very deeply developed working knowledge of the soul and its role in ailments and treatments.

This question gives examples of industrialism or renaissance type development, and if I were to point at one I suppose I am thinking more of the latter. Aqueducts, telescopes, sextants, printing presses, so on and so forth, with fun high fantasy extras like airships, maybe a high fantasy train somewhere just for fun.

I do still really like my idea of monsters/demons being drawn to technology and liking to get into it and gobble up soul juice (maybe in our setting "demon" is our word for monster, since they're all about chomping souls). And I still like my idea of, like, engineers who are half technical support and half sword guy because sometimes it's not turn it off and on again, it's oh dang a goblin got into the anima sluice let me get that out of there. Harri mentioned corruption and Argo mentioned horror, so what if this hypothetical soul-engineering job exacts a toll on the body. I'm just thinking of the idea of industrial accidents -- gouts of steam, chemical sprays, all of that stuff, except when you accidentally get exposed to processed soul-stuff (and probably just incidentally over time, it doesn't have to be one giant blast at once) you contract something like Ashitaka did in Princess Mononoke, or like Link in Tears of the Kingdom. I'm just picturing a plague of shadow or glowing lines inching up someone's body year after year on the job.

---

and
Harri mentioned rival nations in tension, third party nations caught in the middle. Argo mentioned refugee stories, and the bleak landscape of Shadow of the Colossus.

I think it would make sense to have some kind of major nation that enjoys the majority of the benefits of all of this soul technology. For whatever reason, my brain keeps latching onto Roman vibes if not Roman aesthetics. I think I'm just thinking of the way Rome's roads connected the world, the way Rome's influence stretched everywhere, the way the aqueducts crossed absurd distances. That kind of thing.

And in keeping with that idea, I'm thinking of, like, tributary states. You allow the Republic to send in its archanics (arcane mechanic?) and sages to build whatever it is that people use to tap soulstuff from the world, and in return you get a bunch of benefits and also limited self-rule, you'll love it.

Argo mentioned desolate landscapes...

Preamble: Maybe the method of grinding out soul juice to power engines and lights and purify water and all of those fun anachronistic technology stuff is, for as magic as it is, still pretty basic mechanical stuff? People chop down trees and break down rocks or whatever and throw it into the big magic factory archanics build and it just straight up squeezes all the soul stuff out. So, labor intensive and all that.

Returning to "desolate landscapes" with the above thought: maybe there is a place where a different process was attempted? Something to draw soulstuff just, like, directly out of the area, ambient soulstuff, an attempt to -- like -- tap the soulstuff that exists in wind, light, the more ephemeral and complicated elements. And yeah maybe that went badly and there is an expanse of what's left and trying to recover ("The Dregs?")

An ecological disaster would absolutely get you some refugees.

For some reason I am thinking about region that wanted to break off from its nation or governing power and became a tributary of the not-romans, only to have their land or some chunk of their land be what is now The Dregs... and so now they're in the middle of these two big nations. On one side of their borders, the power they broke off from who never recognized their autonomy in the first place and views the creation of the Dregs as destruction of their lands -- and on the other side of their borders, the not-romans who have fucked up some perfectly good real estate and now have all of these refugees flooding other tributary states and the homeland.

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Mystery: if demons are drawn to soulstuff tech, why isn't the capital absolutely fuckin' overrun and frankly already devastated by monstrosities the likes of which you've never seen? As I was writing all my brain bubbles up above, this popped into my head and I was like huh... that's absolutely a JRPG-tier question isn't it.

Do the pillars holding up the sky deserve a mystery? Maybe they just are, man haha. Maybe they're just existing haha

Sorry I'm late but I love all of this!

For some reason, the idea of literal pillars holding up the sky made me wonder what happened to the places where there aren't pillars. Firstly, it makes me think of pillars as being places of importance - religion-wise? Society-wise? But what if, apart from the edge, there were literal gaps in the world which you have to fly across. The pillars are also safe because you're less likely to fall into the Great Beyond.

Interesting! I had been thinking eight pillars, but maybe there were once 9? Or 10? Maybe part of our map is totally missing because those areas were wiped out by the sky falling after something happened to those pillars.

Sounds like you have something right here, Sam. Do you see this as a Historical Event and you want to talk about now losing a chunk or two of world changed the world’s history? Or do you see it as a Mystery like "What happened to those pillars?" Or both?

So much goodness here Alfred! Not even sure where to chime in, but I do have a bunch of comments and questions and a few ideas.

◻ Really like the mix of magic, science, alchemy, etc. All the same stuff, and the study of it is academic. There are schools where you learn it, there are trades based on it, etc.

◻ That train better be soul-powered!

◻ Where are all these souls coming from, and why is it okay to 'use' them? Are they troubled spirits that otherwise cause problems for the living? Remnants of the ancients that we've put to work? What form do they take in the technology? Soulstones? Are they called something different, like some made-up JRPG word?

◻ I really like the ecological disaster being the result of a war, a country experimenting with the dark side of soul magitech... or with the cause of it being one of our big mysteries.

◻ Alt idea, feel free to ignore -- was a former civilization the true masters of this soul magitech? But there was a cataclysm, and now our main country is sort of picking up the pieces and living in the shadow of a greater culture who don't fully understand?

◻ Are the souls demon / monster souls, and that's why the critters want them back?

◻ Does the soul-powered tech run out? So can the souls get used up? Or is there a way to refresh them?

Loving this.

Love your excitement, Harri!

Where are the souls coming from / why is it okay to use them? Great question! One thought was just the idea that maybe people don't consider the impact of using souljuice to be all that significant... the stream of souls is infinite, what's the big deal if we take a little off the top? Like, souls compose everything including trees and rocks and animals and monsters, so maybe -- for many -- the soul is just another body part or element on the periodic table, or what have you. I could see widespread disinterest in something that has largely been solved and measured and categorized like the soul might be in this world.

For form, I've definitely been imagining a liquid, but that's probably just because I am connecting fuel and oil and all that. Could absolutely be something more like soulstones -- extracting all the soul goodies from rocks and trees and what have you and compact it all down into diamond-shaped magical whozits.

I think the cause of the soulstone factory disaster would be a great mystery if we wanted it to be. If there's a choice between it being a result of war versus an experiment gone wrong, I think I am interested in the latter more, but I'm not picky.

As for a former civilization being the true masters of all this shit? I am 1000000% down for that and have honestly been thinking about that this whole time. Maybe they didn't have the secret that makes demons not destroy your capital city overflowing with soul tech, whoops. I imagine that a lot of our obligatory ancient ruins and dungeons etc that cover the world are probably this first civilization's. I think This is a great option for an entry under our History / Events heading.

Your last two questions are great questions and could probably be rolled into a Mystery about the nature of souls for fuel.

Liquid is cool vs. soulstones. And what if said ancient empire mastered all this... and the concentration of all it drew the fiends, and that was the end of that.

And now, *we're* starting to master it... and concentrate it.

You see where this is going, a little doomed to repeat the past...

We love when we’re doomed to repeat the past

Ahhh I love all this!
Okay, this is brutal, and heartbreaking, and I love it. Of course they don't consider it. It's an endless well, right? There certainly won't be any repercussions to using as much as we want. Never mind how the landscape is barren in places and some flora and fauna seem to have disappeared or died off...

The TRAIN. I'm so interested in this train! What is its function/where does it go between? Is it one train or many? Does it go around the entire world, so once it comes to your city, you won't see it again for months or more? Is it kind of a Snowpiercer thing, except the rich are using it as a party boat so they don't have to deal with the bleakness, and while they enjoy their extravagant lifestyles, they are contributing to the ruin of the world by perpetuating life in this train that is gobbling up souls at a frightening rate? Is the train new or from this previous civilization, or is it something new that was made from technology found in the ruins of the previous civilization?

How big are big cities? Is there one or many? Can people still make a living out in the badlands or does everyone have to concentrate in the cities unless they're really hardcore, kind of like Cyberpunk Red?

Is the train from the bygone times, but some caretakers are keeping it rolling? And I loooooove desolate places where we’ve leeched all the souls away…

So my thought had been that the world itself isn’t a wasteland, it’s still very much pumping along, it’s a lovely place with lots of great stuff in it. If we want to go for more of a "the world is absolutely dying and the folks in the cities just don’t know it yet," that is an option, but wasn’t my vision.

As for the stretch of damaged landscape, the thing I called the Dregs, maybe you *cant* make a living there? Maybe, like, it’s not just the place being drained of souls, maybe the stream of souls is like blind to it now and so now you don’t even have people having children and you’ve got people aging quicker, dying younger and all of that. Or maybe the environment and people are adapting to a weird twilit realm where souls don’t factor into the ecology, the science, anything, like the way creatures on the oceans floor adapt to scarcity of prey and lack of light.

Dunno! Thoughts!

Gonna come back in a bit and actually start nailing down a couple of my contributions formally!

No, I'm good with a beautiful world with a stretch of damage. Makes the contrast all the more startling. And gives us a variety of places to explore!

Maybe both? I think there's definitely a Mystery around 'why did the pillars collapse/how do we stop everything else crashing?' (Maybe the former civilization also built/upkept the pillars?) But I think it's also recently enough that all the other civilisations are WTF, and trying to do something about it (even if it's ignoring it). It could also be the cause of some of the aforementioned refugees.

All right gang, my brain has been doing some stuff...



So we have the Empire of Delos, at the center of the world. They sprawl east and west, and their capital city -- Babel -- is (like many seats of power throughout history) built into and onto the huge an unknowable edifice of one of the Pillars of Heaven. Babel, stretching as it does around the pillar and sitting astride two continents, is like Constantinople, and Delos has the sprawl and cultural clout (and probably history) of Rome. If it is Renaissance-related in our world, Delos has it and Babel has it in abundance. Sprawling "industries" of specialists in magic and archanics. I imagine they're on a lot of hilly grasslands and are bordered in the west by mountains, and maybe also in the south (or some other natural barrier). I wonder if Delos, in their incredible leaps and bounds to understand magic and the elements and the soul and such have hit a point where their primary religious faith revolves around -- for example -- the central Pillar "at the heart of the world" and the significance of the Pillars as a collective (that are literally holding up the sky and magically maintaining the equilibrium of the world around them) is maybe lost on them or waning.

We also have, in the east, The Kingdom of Endell. I think Endell might be kind of more a classical medieval vibe, but who knows. Rome once said "let them see to their own defense" in regards to ancient Britain, and so I think maybe Endell is our ancient Britain in some ways and not others. I think Endell is one of many territories that bends the knee as a tribune of Delos, and so still technically enjoys its own political borders, even if ultimately it has no authority of its own. As such, its own capital -- Endell (likewise built into and onto a Pillar of Heaven) -- has long since been stripped of its significance and is now a shadow of its former power and glory. I think there is a northern and southern territory of "true Endell" maybe? I wonder if the fair-featured Endellians once sprawled so far north and south that they have a religious beliefs incorporating the three eastern Pillars. I also think that the Endellians within the Empire, are incredibly loyal and mighty warriors, with some kind of ancient pacts or significant history that makes them feel tied closely to Babel and the Imperial line.

I named a few Pillars just for kicks, taking inspiration from the elements within the game and also the actual pillars guiding how to create a good setting.

Sam mentioned it in a semi-concrete way, so I'm throwing it in: In the far northwest, we have a shattered Pillars. I think it sits out on this inexplicable "island" of water or whatever, out in the void, separated from the rest of creation by this gulf of starlight or blackness or something that you can't sail across. In terms of history, this collapse happened recently enough that it is a big deal to the world and has sent flights of refugees south and east into other populated lands, lest the sky fall again and take them with it. In terms of mystery, our game will answer the question: Why did the Pillar collapse, and how can this event be stopped from happening again?

In the far north, the last extant city of the ancient Fomorian Civilization is a heap of shattered ruins at the literal edge of the world. I think there are a shit load of ruins that are clearly of the same build and style and history as this last city, and they're all over the world, you can barely walk in any direction without finding them. I bet some of them are of such an absurd scale that you can almost imagine how they once fit together and interconnected, even over truly obscene distances. I think the Fomorian Civilization absolutely collapsed and it plunged the world into kind of a dark ages that the Empire of Delos dragged everyone out of, through their scholarly pursuit of magic... I think everyone in-world understands that the Fomorian Civilization collapsed due to the overwhelming predation of monsters and demons. That's just how it is. They got wiped out. And of course everyone is thinking "luckily we are smarter than those silly ancients," which ultimately leads us to a Mystery: How, exactly, is Babel protecting itself from the overwhelming threat of demons and monsters that imperil everyone else who use archanic technology?

Finally, somewhere on this map -- I dunno where, this came up while I was writing all this -- there is one (or more?) dimensional portals that has opened up around one of these Pillars. This is itself a Mystery: What is this portal? Why is it here?

So, for anyone tracking, that's

Nations: 2 (Delos, Endell)
History: 2 (Fall of the Fomorians, Delosian Renaissance)
Mystery: 3 (Pillar collapse, Babel's secret, Dimensional portals)
Threat: 0

Most of these are mine, a couple of these are Sam's -- I'm trying to be careful about just diving in and saying too much about too many things, because we're in this together and I want folks to add in the things they're excited about without me putting words in their mouths!

◻ Pillar of Light... in the west. If we're gonna have elves, is this where they are from? (I don't need elves, btw, just making an observation.)

◻ Does the train go east-west in Delos? Or does it race on ancient elevated tracks from pillar to pillar? Does it connect this map with another?

◻ So I think we talked about old rivals, and maybe even the threat of war. South of Delos, near the Iron Pillar -- is there where some bad dudes hang out? Is that the Dregs, or the ruins of the prior civilization where priest-warriors are marshaling power? Or is it a cool desert or plains location where simple folk now lead simple lives?

I've got nothing against Elves at all! You wanna give us some deets about the Elven lands / customs / beliefs?
I'm thinking east-to-west across Delos... but maybe somewhere there are controls for these huge elevated tracks and if someone could figure out the secrets of the mechanism, the tracks could be realigned to let the train travel from pillar to pillar?
Man, Harri, I think it could be multiples of those, right? Maybe it is the Dregs (and the rest of the area is the other big power the Dregs used to belong to), and maybe the simple folks who have remained behind in the cursed aftermath are just trying to lead simple lives, and maybe this is where we can put our first Threat, in the form of some priest-warriors marshaling power in the ancient Fomorian ruins. Oh gosh, what if in the wake of the soulforge (I dont know what to call our big ol' soul-conversion factories) disaster, these priest-warriors have gained some kind of insight into a new power that exists in the otherwise dead and dying lands of the Dregs?

Incredible stuff! This is really coming together, and I'm really digging the vibe.

I wanted to contribute to a nation, at least a former one, originally located near the pillar that fell and caused refugees to have to flee to other lands. I'm thinking this was a less developed place, but an environmentally rich one. The people had strong ties to nature and believed that the natural world had spirits that were not to be so much worshiped as respected, though they called on their ancestors for strength and guidance. This nation had a tradition of handcrafting exquisite goods, everything from dyeing and clothmaking to woodworking and pottery and leather working.

In spite of not being as technologically advanced as other nations, they were intellectuals who wrote great works of poetry and literature, and were keen observers of the natural world, understanding more about biology and medicine than some cultures.

With the people scattered, they struggle to keep their culture and traditions intact. Their children are being born in different nations, never learning their people's native language that their parents and grandparents speak. In some places, they experience racism and are trying to assimilate as much as they can, changing their names to sound more like the names of the people around them. Meals are necessarily prepared with different ingredients, and typically without the vibrant spices of the homeland. The idea of "nature spirits" is largely dismissed or mocked in the big cities, so they do not speak of such things to outsiders or observe those traditions.

People from this nation that took refuge in Delos have developed a diverging culture from the people who settled in Endell. The fracturing of the diaspora has made maintaining a cultural identity difficult, and elders fear that their ways and culture will disappear, while a vague and generalized prejudice will remain.

Extremely cool, Argo. I love it. There's some names in the core book if you'd like to use any of those.

There's about 70 names total, I believe, and we've used 3. Feel free to pick or roll for the former nation / these tribes of refugees.

I feel like the name should sound quite "foreign" and "different", but has been watered down and "anglicized", for lack of a better term. So there is the original name and the name that most use now.

Let's say the common name is the Koga - both for the nation and the people. But it used to be Kho'guh'ouah or something.

That's got me feeling kind of a Polynesian vibe. I think Disco Elysium had the idea of a sailor with a star map body tattoo? What do you think about like, wind chart or tide chart tattoos for travel, and so now this is at least one thing that ties the diaspora together: tattoos marking the length and breadth of this huge exodus.

Regardless, Koga it is!

Oh I love that! Amazing. Ties into the arts and natural world focus of the culture as well. They're intricate, beautiful tattoos - which were first considered barbaric by the people of Delos and Endell, but now are sought after by the avant-garde. Perhaps those designs have been appropriated by non-Koga artists and are used with no regard to the traditional meanings. Or maybe some Koga who still practice the art of tattooing are considered sellouts by their own people because they will tattoo anyone who can pay, but hey, you have to make a living.

Gosh, there is a Symbologist class in the High Fantasy supplement whose powers all revolve around drawing symbols and imbuing them with power, and damn would that be perfect for someone who wanted to play, like, a Koga Tattooist or whatever. I had originally said "core book only," but I guess if someone is willing to learn the class?

All right here's another one. Threw in a now-absent landmass for Koga, as well as some negative coloring for the big ol' void where our flat earth has now fallen away. Put a dimensional portal down by the Pillar of Light, but @Samaritan can correct me if he'd like. Also drew some train tracks across Delos, and marked out the south-eastern continent if Harri feels like telling us more about that place, and I scribbled in a little red note about Warrior-Priests pursuing the power of the Dregs.

EDIT:

Nations: 4 (Delos, Endell, Koga, ???) from me, Harri, Argo
History: 3 (Fall of the Fomorians, Delosian Renaissance, Koga Diaspora) from me and Argo
Mystery: 3 (Pillar collapse, Babel's secret, Dimensional portals) from me and Sam
Threat: 1 (Warrior-Priests) from Harri

Okay, I think I have a Threat. I'm thinking there's a hardcore cult/sect of the Koga. Their charismatic leader has conned others into believing that he knows why the pillars have begun to fall. He believes that the world is a body and that they must inscribe a tattoo across the face of the world in order to restore balance. And by tattoos, of course, he means salting and burning the land itself.

Incredible! Love it, Sam!

Fuckin fantastic

And my suggestion for the nation on the south-west of the map is that it's the Queendom of Eskara. I'm thinking it's a bit like Dorne from GoT, or the Australian outback - very sandy, lots of desert, lots of stretches of nothing, but also patches of incredible beauty in its mountains and rocks. Eskara has also built onto the Pillar (the Pillar of Sand? the Pillar of Dust?) in a very literal way. Their city consists of massive brass-like arms that rotate around the pillar like hands of a clock, and the city's buildings and farms are built upon the arms. There's a fairly strict hierarchy in place - the higher up you are, the more important you are, with the Queen's Palace on the highest arm. Airships conduct business ferrying people and produce too and fro. Generally speaking, they have a major interest in mechanics, and look with a bit of disdain upon magic.

Threat: Heavenfall. Since the collapse of the Pillar in the lands of Koga, lights have streaked across the night sky -- and where those lights have fallen, only devastation has followed. Scholars call these lights "meteor showers," and the heavenly objects that lay waste to countryside and village "meteors." Meanwhile, artisans who have seen fit to cut and shape the cursed rock call them "luxstone." Regardless, there is no predicting the fall of luxstone, its timing or its devastation. Luxstones carry within them a well-spring of magical energy, and even fragments can be used to create and augment incredible works. This leads the foolhardy and power-hungry alike to seek them out, facing down lux-twisted monstrosities in the process.

also

Very busy yesterday, just want to keep the brilliant momentum up by updating our little world-building tally so far...

We have Five Nations, the Empire of Delos, the Kingdom of Endell, the Queendom of Eskara, and -- unless I'm mistaken -- the south-eastern region where Harri had mentioned some warrior-priests as a threat. Did you feel like detailing this region, @Harrigan, or am I off-base? Otherwise, Argo, Sam, and I have all contributed Nations.

We have Three Historical Events, from myself and Argo, as far as I can tell. We have...

> the Fall of the Fomorians, which left shattered ruins and ancient magitech stuff behind and cast the world into the dark ages for probably centuries. The world is full of ruins and lost knowledge and no doubt lots of history and myth are about the Fomorians, seen through a clouded glass.

> We also have the Delosian Renaissance wherein the Delos Empire rediscovered magictech, the study of souls, and the scholarship of magic that all now kind of culturally dominate; during this time they expanded and got some tribune states. Somewhere along the line the Kingdom of Endell fractured between those pledging loyalty to the Empire, and factions that did not. This is vague, someone feel free to do more with this if they want.

> Next we have the Koga Diaspora which followed on from the destruction of the Pillar in the northwest, just two or three generations ago from the sounds of things (their children have grown up without their homeland, and their children's children have grown up with their culture watered-down). Their spiritual views, while not necessarily at odds with the rest of the world, differ foundationally (real, live, thinking, powerful nature spirits exist and are owed respect) and are looked down on.

Then we have Three Mysteries so far, from myself and Sam.

> What was the cause of the collapse of the Pillar in the northwest, and how can it be stopped from happening again?

> How has Babel protected itself from the monsters and demons that hunger for the soul fuel used in the archanic engineering that fills every inch of the capital?

> What is the portal that has opened near the Pillar of Light, and why is it here?

Finally, we have Three Threats from myself, Harri, and Sam...

> Warrior-Priests in the southeast and it sounds like they have designs on mastering some new power that the Dregs represent.

> An extremist Koga Cult out to scar the world in a bid to heal it.

> Heavensfall: devastating meteor storms that leave behind luxstone, an alluring new material with dangerous side-effects.

Here is a mystery that has the potential to become a threat: Strange figures in featureless black masks have been spotted in remote locations, typically around pillars. They carry portable equipment in packs on their backs and seem to be doing something to the ground/water/plant life. On the occasions when they have been approached, they quite literally disappear. Upon inspection, there is a red-grey residue left behind from whatever their experiments are. It took a while for these incursions to be noticed and for the pattern to be surmised.

Of course, accounts vary - some say these figures are abnormally tall and thin, but some don’t remark on any physical abnormalities at all. The featureless masks are commented on in almost every account, though some say the figures are wearing robes and others say they are wearing some kind of uniform. Some report smelling something very sweet in the air. Others have stated they saw strange flashes of light.

That's creepy as hell, Argo. Love it!

Fantastic work all round on this, guys -- very cool stuff! What can I add?

The Warrior-Priests, the Yade Doma, are doing two things: carving iron from the pillar in the south east, mining it, weakening it, fashioning powerful weapons from it. In the wastes to their north, the Dregs, they have discovered a ruined underground city filled with soul-forges. These, when hapless fools are cast into them, will render the souls in such a way that they can be forged into the black iron weapons. Spears, swords, daggers, glaives -- known to cut through all other metal, no armor can withstand them.

In the west, surrounding the Pillar of Light, are the Samitra. Known by many other names, these are star-elf samurai who guard their pillar against the forces of shadow and darkness that long to consume it. Great leviathan beasts lurk beneath the waves, just as vicious flying lizards take to the skies at night, their eyes and spines glowing orange as they are drawn to the Pillar, and the eight temple-forts that protect it. By land, the assaults come from the shadazi, terrible wolf-spiders of shadow and smoke that dissipate when they are slain, and that reform if they are not killed by soul-forged / powered weapons. The Samitra are a dwindling people, and their centuries-long seige may soon be coming to an end.

Also, in the north? Where the Luxstones rain and the monsters Al referenced roam... that shit is spreading. And the luxstones have some unusual properties... how are they different from the soul-magic?

Wow, fantastic, that's some great texture and detail, Harri!

I need to add a Threat, but I am still pondering on it.

I'm going to expand on this and say that these appearances and disappearances have been going on for the last twenty or thirty years, on and off, winding back and forth across the line of fact and fiction. There's so little concrete evidence of the Black Masks, and no agreement on their appearances, that they fall into that in-between realm of (for our reference) the men in black, UFOs, moth man, etc. They carry such weight in the zeitgeist -- with literally no clue who they are or their agenda or what dangers they may or may not pose -- that they have been integrated into folklore throughout all corners of the world.

"Behave, or the Black Masks will take you."
"If you walk the moors during heavensfall, you will see the Black Masks dancing in the falling light"
"You must leave out an offering for the Black Masks; they'll come, and if they like it, they'll bring rain to your crops"
"The Black Masks go from door to door throwing bad children in their sacks"
etc etc

Ahhhh love that!

And a bit more History. Building on what Al was saying about Endell, I think that island in the North East is the island of Nara. On it, stands the Pillar of Life. It used to be part of the kingdom of Endell but part of their history is that a man called Gesi climbed the Pillar itself. Whether he *actually* did is the stuff of myth, but we do know that he returned a changed man, full of fire, and determined to declare Nara's independence from the kingdom of Endell. War ensued. In present day, Nara is technically part of the Delos Empire, but with distance, the actual military presence is thin. And there are constant rumblings about the 'sons and daughters of Gesi rising up again'.

Extremely cool, Harri! I'd like to expand on this call the whole southern continent something like the Theocracy of Yade, and the Yade Doma are just one caste of priest among several. Some random googling told me Doma exists in Greek as "gift," and its derived from Didomi which in Greek is "to grant, give over, deliver" so I can imagine a high holy leader called Yade Didomi. In my mind's eye I am imagining that the Yade Didomi has passed away, and now -- as if the equivalent of the Pope dying -- a bunch of "cardinals" are sat in moot, awaiting a sign to name the next Yade Didomi. So the country has kind of ground to a halt... which is what lead the northern territories to secede to the Empire, and then came the soul-forge followed by the disaster that created the Dregs, and now what we're seeing is a religious schism with these Yade Doma seeing fit to take matters into their own hands before their god-given holy land is desecrated any further.

Love it

Nations> Nara> Isle of Samitra> Theocracy of YadeHistoryMysteriesThreats

Okay, I have a threat, but it's both so big and so mysterious I felt like I needed to make another one as well because I don't know how the first one can be used.

Threat 1 - Cracks have been discovered in one of the pillars. And they're spreading. For maximum impact, perhaps it is the pillar in Babel, but perhaps it could be another one as well. Perhaps the one that's out alone in the sea?

Threat 2 (bonus threat) - Pirates! Believing the situation on land to be getting worse and worse, people from many nations and lands who have either rejected their homelands or were forced out have joined roving pirate bands preying on free traders. Are these traditional sea pirates or are they airships? Maybe there have always been pirates to some degree, but recently they are becoming more organized and gathering under the banner of pirate warlords.

Loving this process and the output... and looks like Al is getting used to the site. =]

Honestly? The world-creation process has actually been pretty good opportunity for me to just let me poke around at things in a way that feels less pressuring than having to immediately start "performing," if that makes sense. I'm pretty happy about it!

I'm really glad everyone is enjoying this process and what we're making!
It's your call, argo, but I am honestly tempted to say -- yeah, let's do Babel. We've got a lot of stuff happening all over the world, maybe tossing a threat (and kind of an abstract one at that!) into the heart of things isn't a bad call.
Fuck yes Pirates! Gotta be airship pirates, right? I bet they're preying on the new trade routes that were developed to cross the Koga Reach!