Dark Gate Lore

[Tassadar]

An important note: What is listed here and what the common person actually knows are not the same thing. While it is a somewhat widespread belief that many of the gods are dead or never existed, saying that and saying that someone knows about what Matthias did are not the same thing. The gods almost never acted in any direct fashion, and as the world spun on without them their presence was not missed... Initially at least. Cults with genuine knowledge regarding the deaths or sealing of certain deities are rare and often guard the source of their knowledge, lest it destroy what little faith people still have. Most of the gods are still worshiped in one form or another even after the decline of faith in general following the loss of their influence, and while the benefits of such faith might be objectively questionable, many of those possessing such information are of deep faith themselves and thus opt not to reveal the death of the deities that they revere to the general public.

Also, keep in mind that this is what I'm choosing to reveal at this time. There may be more to an entry than I let on, but that would get revealed in the actual game and then eventually edited in here.

The Heavens in Ruins
A list of deities in DG-Verse
Part 1

Spoiler

Aivilniar
Title: The Silver Serpent, the White Death, the Mercenary.
Age: Roughly 6000
Current Status as of DG3: Bound in the woods near Acheron
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The patron deity of mercenaries and soldiers, Aivilniar was a mortal hero who fought against the demons during the first invasion, and who was raised as a god by Avo in order to help battle the god of war, Alronok. Despite being raised to deity status, Aivilniar held no loyalty to the king of the gods, and finally abandoned him when Matthias came to destroy the gods. For his betrayal of the other gods, he was hunted down by Doraleous and Sivicine, whom Matthias had spared, and sealed within a cavern near the town of Artmirst.

He remains a popular deity among soldiers despite his disreputable history, particularly among sellswords and bandits, though he never fostered an outright clergy for himself. He represents survival at all costs, a common need for those who make their living through violence, and those who ascribe to the Serpent's Sons, the official name for Aivilniar's clergy, are always those who have fought through impossible odds and emerged at least alive through cunning, timing, and prudence. His symbols are a pair of crossed swords, the dagger in flight, and of course a snake, most often a cobra.


Alronok
Title: The Obliterator
Age: Roughly 11000
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The violent deity of war, chaos and destruction, Alronok was the patron deity of werewolves, savage berserkers and the blood and devastation caused by war. Despite being openly destructive, Alronok was a popular deity among warriors in ancient times, and as such became fairly powerful. Roughly five thousand years ago, for reasons unknown he began to attack other deities, resulting in the deaths of several lesser gods before the others rallied against him. Despite his own incredible power, he was defeated by the combined efforts of Doraleous, Sivicine, Boris, and Aivilniar. Rather than destroy him, however, Alronok was stripped of most of his power and sealed within a gem. The battle against him weakened several deities, however, and it is often considered this weakening that allowed Matthias to take up the mantle of Godslayer.

It wasn't until the Artmirst invasion that he was discovered again, the wave of magic from the opening of the Dark Gate causing the daemon's prison to crack. Calling out in an attempt to break free, his vastly depleted power was no match for the one that he drew in to free him, an Anudorian priestess named Nillien, and after she fended him off he was then permanently destroyed by Matthias. His clergy were rare, but where they existed they tended to be as violent as the god they preached, working towards a simpler and to them more natural society where strength was all that mattered. His symbols were a crossed warhammer and broadaxe, a spiked helm, and a human skull. The Deathguard, the group that Matthias once belonged to, were worshippers of Alronok.


Arcade
Title: The Magician, God of Magic
Age: Roughly 2500
Current Status as of DG3: Unknown
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Avedel
Title: Shepherd of the Dead
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Avo
Title: The Lord of Creation, King of the Gods
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Boris
Title: The Knight Lord
Age: Roughly 13000
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The patron deity of honorable combat, paladins, knightly orders and swordsaints. For many centuries Boris was the enforcer of Avo, and he was also the husband of Notos and the brother of Michael, two other powerful deities. He was one of the deities killed by Matthias, and the only known being to survive a single hit from Soulshatter other than Avo himself. He did not survive the second hit, however, and as he fell his blade, the Heaven Cleaver, fell from his grasp and landed upon the surface of Donevrion.

Despite his fall, many still call upon Boris' name when they enter into battle, and almost every Crolian general or warlord has carried a charm to the knight-god with them. His followers were decidedly martial and often included knights, paladins, professional soldiers, and the more honorable figures among sellswords. His symbols are a kite shield with a long straight sword over it, the cross, and the helm.


Corini
Title: The Demon Queen
Age: Unknown, estimated roughly 10000
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church:


The Devourer
Title: He Who Consumes
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:
A parasitic deity of unknown origins, the Devourer is responsible for the creation of the demons and their twisted society, the demonic invasions that occurred every thousand years and the corruption of hundreds of thousands of mortals. Little is known about its origins, and it has never been seen taking physical form by any who now live, but it was destroyed permanently by the daemon Matthias at the end of the 7th invasion.
Prior to that, the Devourer had no known associations with any other deities, and it can be assumed that all would have been hostile to the Devourer given its penchant for consuming everything that it could. Its only known worshipers were the demons themselves, though it could also be said that cults that worshiped demons also indirectly worshiped the Devourer.


Doraleous
Title: The Thunderlord, Skylord
Age: Roughly 12000
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Elric
Title: The Drowned King, Master of the Sea
Age: Roughly 4000
Current Status as of DG3: Bound
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The former king of Adamantia, Elric was once a powerful sorcerer, and as king of the most advanced and most powerful nation in the world at the time, had power rivaling that of the faerie queens. He was killed when his island was invaded by demons, but had amassed enough personal power to rise as a daemon and take vengeance, and though his kingdom was destroyed and his subjects wiped out, he was able to kill the demon queen at the time and drive the demons back with Matthias' assistance. They parted as allies, and as a result Matthias never sought to slay Elric even after adopting his title.

Being the god of the seas, Elric became very popular among sailors very quickly, but the death of his people left him bitter and fickle. With little reason to respect the prayers of followers whom he had never asked for, Elric made the sea a very dangerous place for many years before, about 20 years before the invasion, his former island home was attacked by a cabal of wizards from the surface. When the daemon went to investigate, the cabal bound him there and then sealed him within a secluded tomb, and crafted a number of keys to his prison that they subsequently spread across the oceans, placing each on a hidden and dangerous island. Only with all of the keys could the daemon be released, but as a result of his imprisonment the seas have become a much safer place. (Not really, they're actually getting more dangerous as stated in the oceans lore post, but people think they're getting safer because hapless NPCs.)


Glissa
Title: Lady of Revelry, the Challenger
Age: Roughly 9000
Current Status as of DG3: Unknown
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The Lady of Revelry was a favored goddess among the upper class, for she is often associated with wealth and prosperity. While not powerful compared to the more martial of the gods, Glissa was nonetheless a deity of great importance, and was the one most likely to be seen among mortals even though she traveled in disguise. Tales say that she would join the greatest of gatherings, spreading joy even while inspiring mortals to indulge in the greatest of vices, but at each gathering she would challenge one person, and one person only, to a series of games. Usually there would be eleven, five of her choice and five of the one she challenged with the final game being a simple dice game of five dice if a tiebreaker was needed, the winner being whoever created the most pairs or similar under the same rules as conventional poker.

On the rare occasions that she was bested, the Lady of Revelry would appear in her full glory and grant a single wish to her opponent, and given that she was oft considered the loveliest of the gods besides Venus the most common request was a night in her bed. Those nights would always leave the ones who asked for them changed, but none ever claimed to regret their choice even when mocked for not choosing something more grandiose. Standing at just an inch over the average height fro a woman, Glissa's physical form is usually that of a human woman with stunning platinum blond hair that falls straight down halfway to her waist only to curl slightly at the tips, a statuesque figure with ample curves, fair of skin, and with eyes of the deepest blue that any who has had the luck to look into them can imagine. She walks clad in whatever garb is appropriate for the party she engages in, always of the finest styling available and perfectly fitted to her form.

Glissa was a deity commonly worshiped by those seeking good fortune in business, as well as those who reveled in the greatest levels of decadence. Prostitutes also commonly pray to Glissa. She attracts few clergy, but those she does are tasked with spreading joy to her followers in whatever means they can. Her symbols are the spilled cup, the six sided die, and the hummingbird.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

The Heavens in Ruins
A list of deities in DG-Verse
Part 2

Spoiler

Issir
Title: The Shadow of Death
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Janis
Title: Goddess of Nature
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Matthias
Title: The Godslayer
Age: Roughly 6000, ascended during the first demon invasion
Current Status as of DG3: Active
Known History, Affiliates, and Church:
The most powerful single being on Donevrion by all accounts, Matthias was originally a human from a kingdom of Western Anudor, its name lost to history now. It was that kingdom that saw the very first assault upon the mortal world by the forces of the Devourer, resulting in its total annihilation. At that time, Matthias was the first son of a high ranking noble, a member of the elite bodyguard of the king known as the Deathguard, their symbol a dark skull surrounded by flames, and though he fought with all his skill against the invading demons he was eventually slain defending his wife, his daughter, and his lord. The demon knight that killed Matthias consumed his soul, but despite besting him in martial combat, the demon could not crush his will or sunder his enraged spirit. For nearly a century the human's spirit festered within the demon, slowly consuming him from within until Matthias took control of the demon's body, but even to this day it is unknown how much of the man who once died defending his country is left.

Having claimed his first soul, Matthias rapidly started slaughtering other demons and taking theirs, steadily growing in power until even the strongest demon lords could not hope to face the daemon's wrath alone. Eventually, after slaughtering countless demons, he destroyed Corini, the first queen of Hell, and destroyed the Dark Gate connecting Hell and Donevrion. The gods offered him a place among them at that point, having finally begun to act against the demons when they had begun to summon their own dark god to Donevrion, but he refused. In his eyes, the gods had abandoned his people to the horrors inflicted upon them by the demons and allowed them to be mutated into their now inhuman forms, and though he didn't so much swear vengeance as offer them his disdain, his actions were indicative of what he would eventually do.

Centuries would pass, with the daemon learning to control the power he had taken from the demons he had consumed, before the demons would amass again and once more assault the mortal world. Again the daemon was there, seeking vengeance for wrongs committed centuries past by those long dead, and eventually the demons were repulsed. It became a cycle, with Matthias steadily growing strong from the souls he had rent from his demonic foes, but they were not his only prey. Matthias, after a time, began to consume all souls near to him, ignoring the order set by Avo and maintained by Avedel, but even with that insult the elder gods continued to largely ignore him. The younger deities, Elric, Sivicine and Doraleous, did begin to form a loose association with the daemon, however, as they agreed with his stance that the demons ought to be destroyed wherever they sprang up.

That association was to end when, after killing and consuming Phlagius, Matthias found that consuming other greater daemons was a much more efficient manner in which to rise in power, power that he needed if he was to fulfill his final vengeance and destroyer the dark god who had sent the demons in the first place, the Devourer. Seemingly accepting the offer to join their ranks at long last and given the title of god of war after Alronok had been banished and Aivilniar had proven untrustworthy, Matthias used the knowledge taken from the plaguelord to have the lord of crafts, Michael, forge him a weapon capable of striking down any foe who opposed him such that they would be easy to consume, even the gods who were at that time stronger than him. Though he was dubious about making such a powerful weapon for one new to their ranks, he forged Soulshatter for Matthias, but as he strike the final blow to forge the immensely powerful weapon he realized what it was for. Unable to destroy it even with his own immense power, Michael attempted to refuse to surrender it to him, and the two fought. Though he had the very weapon that Matthias intended to use and was by far older and metaphysically stronger, Michael was no warrior, and so eventually fell to the superior fighter and was obliterated by the weapon he had crafted, his essence shattered and then largely devoured by Matthias.

Another god had witnessed the battle, however. Issir, the goddess of shadows, thieves, and assassins had been intent on stealing the blade for her own purposes, and had seen what Matthias had done. Intent on telling the other gods of Matthias' actions, she attempted to slip away, but unknown to her Matthias had known of her presence and thus cornered her. She fought, and lost, and was likewise devoured by the now seemingly unstoppable daemon. His hatred for the gods, like that for demons, had festered in Matthias' mind for centuries, and so when he stormed the palace atop Mount Truomm, now with the power of Michael and Issir added to his own, he came seeking vengeance. Boris faced him first, and tried to calm Matthias, but the daemon simply attacked without listening to the god who was the lighter side of his given domain. Boris was not Michael, the knight god being an accomplished and experienced warrior in life and orders of magnitude beyond that as a god, but so too was Matthias, and when Soulshatter managed even a minor through the knight lord's guard hit it was enough to cripple him. Notos, Janis, and Sivicine came upon them then, as Boris was on his knees, and the three goddesses were forced to watch as Matthias ruthlessly destroyed and devoured Boris with a second strike.

Sivicine and Janis, appalled, attacked without hesitation, but for Notos the battle was already lost, and against Soulshatter and Matthias' by that point immense metaphysical power the two nature goddesses could not hold out on their own. Sivicine was repelled but not destroyed, for she had earned the daemon's respect for actually aiding her followers from time to time, but Janis was smote in a single blow. A being of immense power, she could not be devoured completely before portions of her shattered essence were allowed to fling themselves upon Donevrion, and there the gardener's last works created several sites of immense power that both mortal and faerie gardeners tend to to this very day. Notos did not even resist as Matthias advanced upon her, his eyes burning with a special hatred, for Notos had been the patron god of his kingdom before the demons had destroyed it. She too was rent asunder before Sivicine's helpless eyes, but then he simply left her there, to break free of his binding enchantment hours after it was too late to do anything.

Next to confront him were his old allies, Doraleous and Elric, both of whom had fought with him against the demon invasions. At first they spoke, demanding to know why, but eventually things devolved to violence and Matthias defeated them both, again sparing them for their part in fighting the demons. Aivilniar came upon the battle as it was under way, for by that point the heavens raged due to the immense power being wielded in the various battles, but rather than assist his two comrades the serpent god fled, passing Sivicine in his flight but not even lifting a finger to aid her. With his last obstacles pushed aside, Matthias entered the deepest chamber of the palace of the gods, where Lord Avo waited with Venus, the goddess of love. The moment he entered the chamber, the goddess sprung with every ounce of power that she could muster, attempted to do with guile and emotion what might and flame had failed to do, but the daemon was unmoved. He had prepared for this, and wards of his own making protected his mind from her wiles. Lord Avo sat unmoving as Matthias slid Soulshatter through the goddess's heart as she attempted to draw him into an embrace, and then watched with apparent dispassion as she died at his feet.

The two spoke, about what none can know, for none were there to witness it, and there came lull in the metaphysical storm raging between the mountains between Crolia and Anudor where the mountain lay. That storm raged again, its strength magnified a thousand fold, when the two gods fought, however. The mountain itself was obliterated in the first few moments, scattering those gods whom Matthias had spared across Donevrion, but it was not the end. All across the skies the two fought, nearly setting the whole of the world alight with the runoff power and scattering warping energies across the globe. To the fae, it was nearly a repeat of the last time Avo had unleashed his full power, and the fair folk readied themselves for another catastrophe that would cost them another portion of their already waning power.

Such was not to be, however. As they clashed, Matthias brought Soulshatter to bear, and though the king of the gods was a being more ancient than Donevrion itself, even he was gravely weakened by the first blow. The second bite of the blade was all it took, and the king of the gods was no more.

With the gods destroyed, scattered, and consumed, Matthias knew power unlike any that he had ever seen before. So great was his power that he was forced to lock most of it away lest the energies he now possessed spill out and leave Donevrion a burning wasteland, but that immense strength could still be brought to bear in more subtle ways. Not just strength, but knowledge was his to wield thanks to the manner in which he absorbed the other gods, and then he had only to wait. The demons would come again, and then he would finally have the final vengeance that would sate his ancient fury. Almost as an afterthought, Matthias hunted and devoured Avedel, and thus took control of the network that had once delivered every soul to the god it had worshiped, ensuring that any creature that died upon Donevrion and wasn't immediately consumed by some other being would find their way to Matthias and add to his already immense power.

And so they did, but despite going to Hell itself through the Dark Gate, Matthias could find no trace of the Devourer. The dark god hid itself, keeping its true location a secret save to a select few followers, and even with his vast power he could not find it. Raging, he scoured Hell until it was naught but ruins and the few scattered survivors that escaped his wrath, but was eventually forced to return to Donevrion with his goal incomplete. Again he waited, but the next time they came the demons assaulted a remote place where no mortals were present and departed almost immediately, again leaving his vengeance unfulfilled.

Finally, a mere two years before another threat from beyond the stars arrived, the demons came again, now with a plan. Their newest queen, the very daughter he had lost resurrected by his foe, attempted to seal Matthias into a gem of immense power that they had taken from an Amazonian monastery, but the plan was a failure and Matthias escape unharmed. His plan had been to let the demons take a foothold, opposing them in small ways that would keep them from spreading while they worked some scheme to deal with him, and it had worked. By chance, one of the few demons tuned in to the Devourer directly fell into his path, and through her mind he found the dark god in his corner.

Again the daemon entered into a cataclysmic battle, only this time it was the desolate world of Hell that suffered, a place that Matthias cared not a wit for damaging. The Devourer stood little chance against his wrath, and with its destruction via one final blow from Soulshatter, Matthias vengeance was at last sated. He returned to Donevrion, leaving the surviving demons to regroup as they willed, and then found that he had no purpose. Wielding immense power that grew with every second but with no actual use for it, Matthias has been rarely seen since destroying the Devourer, and did practically nothing during the Invasion even though he could have easily wiped the aliens out before they ever reached Donevrion.

When he was mortal and on those rare occasions that he retakes mortal form, Matthias was human. Dark of skin, hair, and eye, he was tall for his people but not so compared to the larger breeds of humans, and preferred light armor while defending himself with a shield and wielding the khopesh, the preferred sword of his people. Some time after he became a daemon, however, he abandoned the use of a living body and instead opted to craft a body from daemonmetal, working various magical artifacts into his new form until he had created a golem of such immense strength that it could move faster and with greater force than any body of flesh and blood could ever hope to. Practically indestructible to the point that it can withstand the force and heat at the heart of a star, even if his shell is damaged it simply repairs itself. His form to those looking upon him varies, but it always the figure of a fairly tall man, standing at about eight feet and broad shouldered. Though it isn't all covered by his garb, no inch of the daemon's flesh is ever visible through the clothes that he seems to wear, the drab black outfit including a long coat that covers most of his body, simplistic trousers and an equally simplistic shirt, a wide brimmed hat, and a pair of heavy black boots. Claws gauntlets made of what appears to be black steel cover his hands, and a round black mask covers his face, hiding even his eyes behind opaque black lenses through which a red glow can on occasion be seen. Soulshatter hangs at his side, held within a battered green and gold scabbard, but even though the weapon can undoubtedly take any shape its wielder desires it always maintains the form of a long, curved sword in a mix between the Amazonian and Anudorian styles. Though it isn't always present, on occasion the old symbol of his order, the Deathguard, can be seen on his chest, often glowing when he wields greater degrees of his power, but why it isn't always there isn't a question that most bother to ask. All of the cloth seemingly covering him is merely more animate daemonmetal, and the various oddities of his form are artifacts that he has incorporated into his body to make it more powerful.

Hateful of the ways of the gods who left his people to die, Matthias suffers no one to worship him. Groups have done so before, most often seeking power, and each of them has met a swift and violent end as soon as he took notice of them. Few even know of his existence besides the other gods, the faeries, and the demons who have come to refer to him as the Destroyer, but those few who do meet Matthias rarely have much reason to think well of his actions, for he rarely offers mortals any more help than his predecessors did.


The Merchant
Title: The Merchant
Age: Roughly 3000
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The Merchant is a strange figure, a daemon who, as despite being very commonly encountered by adventurers and treasure hunters very little is known about him. He buys and sells assorted goods, seemingly having an unlimited amount of coin on his person at all times, and appears and disappears on a whim and often without warning. He has no known followers or associates.


Michael
Title: The Eternal Crafstman
Age: Roughly 13000
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The creator of the weapons commonly associated with the gods, Michael is the brother of Boris the Knightlord, raised by his elder brother to godhood after the knight god himself was raised by his wife. They were good friends up until he was killed by Matthias, being the second deity to be destroyed by the Godslayer when he refused to hand over the blade Soulshatter to him. Despite his destruction, Michael's followers continue to revere him even now, and have lost none of their prosperity for their god's death.


Naya
Title: Bringer of Life
Age: Roughly 7000
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Notos
Title: The Wind
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:
The goddess of the winds and creator of the harpies, Notos is a combined being. Ages ago, the at the time faerie queen of autumn and a primordial deity of wind joined as one in order to battle a great evil, the names and natures of all three now long lost to time. The result was Notos, who later came to love an elven knight whom she eventually raised as a deity and made her husband. She created the harpies in celebration of their joining, but after her death the harpies rapidly corrupted away from her original image of them. She died with her husband at Matthias' hands, offering him no resistance after he had already killed Boris and Avo.


Phlagius
Title: The Leper King, Plaguemaster, Pestilence
Age: 11000
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:
Phlagius has the dubious honor of being the first deity ever to be slain by Matthias following his rise as the godslayer. Before being destroyed, Phlagius was a deity with a very small following but with a fairly impressive degree of personal power. Despite this, he largely tended to keep to himself, and despite his titles tended to leave mortalkind largely to its own devices save in a few instances when he started massive plagues. Before becoming a deity, Phlagius was an elven sorcerer who created the cure to leprosy, resulting in the eradication of that disease before the end of his lifetime. His actions following obtaining divinity were rarely understood and never explained, and he gradually became hated by the followers of other religions as he inflicted untold suffering upon them via engineering plagues.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

The Heavens in Ruins
A list of deities in DG-Verse
Part 3

Spoiler

Sheogorath
Title: The Trickster, Lord of Madness
Age: Unknown, conflicting reports range between 11000 to 15000
Current Status as of DG3: Unknown
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Sivicine
Title: The Huntress, the Pathfinder, the Archer
Age: Roughly 7000
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church:
Like many deities, Sivicine was once a mortal. An elven woman, to be exact, who was famed for hunting dangerous creatures, including dragons, and for defending her home village and eventually a queen. She was revered as a champion after her death, and was raised as a deity by the goddess Janis shortly thereafter. She never developed her own church, and usually the only shrines to her were minor ones generally within temples dedicated to her patron. Still, many priestesses of Janis revered her as well, and she became more popular than her patron among the more pragmatic members of their joined clergy.

This all changed when Janis was killed by Matthias, at which point Sivicine was forced to take over the nature god's duties. Of all the deities, she was the one who pushed the strongest for retribution to be taken, and even attempted to do so on her own, sending forth her beasts to hunt the other daemon before confronting him herself. She unsurprisingly found herself outmatched, having fought Matthias before with assistance and lost then, before he had gained Avo's power. Not even she knows why Matthias spared her, but he did, and afterwards she largely withdrew from the mortal world until the Invasion, when she aided mankind in the battles against the aliens. Her popularity has soared since then, particularly in the Amazon and Crolia where she fought directly.

When she appears, Sivicine almost exclusively takes the form she held in life, that of an incredibly beautiful elven woman with auburn hair, garbed in a brown-red hunter's garb. She may also appear in her more primal form, that of a primordial hunter's god that she long ago defeated and consumed, leaving her clad in the thick furs of ancient beasts long since driven extinct and wearing a helmet made from the skull of a massive elk-like beast, and when she appears as such it is a sure sign that she brings death with her. She favors the bow and the spear in favor of more advanced weaponry, but she (and her clergy) offers no disdain upon her subjects for using whatever tools they see fit in the hunt so long as it is conducted with honor and skill. She is often accompanied by her hunting hounds, the spirits of a dozen or so ancient fey warhounds, but she can also call upon the Wild Hunt, a band made up of the spirits of the greatest of hunters who come on spectral horseback, preceded by their baying spirit hounds. The symbols of Sivicine include the bow and arrow, the leaf, and the wolf.


The Star God
Title: Lord of the Heavens, That Which Rises Above
Age: Unknown, though his church is roughly 7000 years old
Current Status as of DG3: Unknown
History, Affiliates, and Church:
Of all the deities, the Star God is unusual in many respects. While some gods have directly opposed others, the Star God is alone (with the possible exceptions of the Devourer and Matthias) in holding animosity toward every other deity, even going so far as to claim himself as the only true god worthy of worship, and driving his followers to persecute other religions. While he quickly grew in popularity among those who felt deserted by their often absent gods, this spike was followed by several violent wars that eventually drew the direct attention of the other deities. This made the Star God's followers aware of one other unique aspect possessed by this deity: that he has never, not even once, appeared in physical form. Not even a manifestation rose to defend the followers from the wrath of the other gods, though that did little to dissuade the Star God's followers from their belief. Indeed, there has never been any actual evidence to suggest that the god they worship exists, an extremely unusual idea considering that the other gods will at least sometimes appear to select followers. Ironically, it was the demon invasion and the rise of the Godslayer that prevented the complete annihilation of the worshipers of the Star God, and after a time they began to spread once more, albeit with a slightly more peaceful and inclusive message.

The church of the Star God is completely patriarchal, disallowing women from rising higher than just beyond a minor priest, and professes ideals of purity and self restraint as chief virtues among both sexes, another rare feature among deities. It is demanded that believers do whatever they can to spread their faith, decrying all other gods as pagan and false and promising eternal punishment for the souls of those who refuse to believe. Magic in all its forms is widely distrusted by the followers of the Star God, viewed as tools of evil beings who would rise above the communities they inhabit, and those displaying such abilities who are raised in the faith are forced to join the clergy regardless of their personal desires, where the elder clergy can keep an eye on them. The symbol of the Star God is an eight pointed star, colored in white over a dark blue background.


Venus
Title: Mistress of Love
Age: Roughly 13000
Current Status as of DG3: Dead, killed by Matthias
History, Affiliates, and Church:


Whisp
Title: The One who Whispers, the Dreaming Queen, Desire Made Manifest
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Unknown
History, Affiliates, and Church:


The Widow
Title: The Spider Queen
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Active
History, Affiliates, and Church: The creator of the arachne, she is worshiped by each and every one of her daughters to the point of fanaticism. The Widow abhors civilization in all its forms, and as a firm believer in the laws of natural selection and survival of the fittest, the Widow seeks to destroy the structures of the settled peoples and return them to a more natural state, on in which they will no doubt be prey to her servants and other natural creatures more fit to live in a world where magic and advanced weapons don't offer mortals an edge against nature. Her origins are unknown, some believing her to be an outsider while others believe her to be a demon, but they fae and the angels haven't yet sought to destroy her with the fervor they normally attack such beings so neither seems to be the case.


(Londorien gods)

Nergilga
Title: The Dragon of Choice
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Active
The youngest of the three dragons who rule Londorien.


Anguran
Title: The Dragon of Action
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Active
The middle dragon of the three dragons who rule Londorien and the only female.


Mete
Title: The Dragon of Consequence
Age: Unknown
Current Status as of DG3: Active
The oldest of the three dragons who rule Londorien.

 

[Host]

Re: Lore

Glory of the Hive
A history of the Shadow Demons in DG-verse

By Tassadar's request, I'm posting the Shadow Demon species' (approved, canon) history in DG. I may create one of those timeline thingies when I'm set on dates.


On The Nature Of Shadow Demons

Spoiler

The Shadow Demons were the dominant species among a number of different and dangerous creatures within the realm to eventually be known as hell. They possessed an intrinsic mental connection to each other over any distance that effectively allowed them to meld consciousnesses completely, and a body made out of living shadow, liquid spirit, and willpower. Their exceptional rate of reproduction, deadly biology, and collective nature allowed them to come out on top in a world of things far more alien then even they – at least for a while.

Birth, xxxxxx PI - xxxxx PI

Spoiler

Shadow Demons, despite their almost golem-esque physical nature, were a naturally evolved species. While their exact process of evolution is lost to all, shadow demon or otherwise, they grew from primordial swamps in the strange realm that would later be known as hell. To begin with, only the buglike strain of the creatures existed, the beetles sharing a symbiotic relationship with a species of carnivorous plant that had been fairly common in the forested areas of hell-as-it-had-been. It was a vine-creeper, and rather spry for foliage as it had the ability to launch its trap-mouth several feet in a short space of time, able to trap and consume something even the size of a human, with effort, though the odd biology of the insects proved unpalatable to it. Shadow Demons were, even then, parasites that required the souls of others to reproduce, and the plant species was unique in that its stomach was entirely insulated – not just physically, but spiritually. By farming the plants for souls , the primordial shadow demons were able to obtain an easy source of spirits for reproduction, and so they learned to farm the things well, creating creeper-walls and ledges for the vines to climb, forcing prey towards killzones with webs of carapace to deter them from safer paths. The behavior became quite ingrained into them, well before they were even sentient, and even now the instinct persists.

Over time, the race of beetles grew and evolved, achieving sentience and intelligence at a much faster rate than could have been normally expected, thanks to their hive mind. The Shadow Demons were intrigued by the humanoid, tribal races they encountered, eventually finding a way to change their young into increasingly humanoid shapes by mimicking the spiritual ‘shape’ of the other species’, creating the breed of Shadow Demon typically referred to as a Spawn. These humanoid insects were far more capable than their predecessors, and quickly became the bulk of the shadow demon population.

Rise, xxxxx PI - 10000 PI

Spoiler

The species’ interaction with others was… somewhat lopsided. Most of the tribal, sentient species of hell could not understand the Shadow Demons, and saw the race as expansionistic and limitlessly warlike… while the shadow demons were perhaps better described as philosophical and spiritual, believing themselves to be helping the mortal races by freeing them of their physical forms, allowing their spirits to exist without feeling physical desires. It took several years for the insects to understand the languages used by the other races, and that was mainly through fragments of memory picked up from the souls of those who mothered their young.

Despite being alien even on their home ground, the Shadow Demons were not without friends; one race of large, warlike humanoids was on good terms with the insects, despite also trading blows. They had a culture that was entirely martial and focused around combat, bloodshed, and honor, and saw the Shadow Demons as perfectly amicable in their methods. In addition to trading blows, the two cultures traded words, and it is through this species that Shadow Demons adopted their first words – not having a language of their own, as their hive mind rendered the concept redundant. The few words that they do use come from this species, including the original, and long forgotten name of their species: Xsishi. The word had more meanings than could be easily covered; it most literally translates to “DarkestBrightest”, though “Shadow Demon” is oddly quite close to its meaning, if less respectful.

Being in a permanent state of war with all-comers did not go as badly for the bugs as one might expect; their biology triumphed easily over all other species that had been alive in their era, the other sentients barely at the point of fastening rocks to sticks, let alone iron to a hilt. The Shadow Demons could have very well destroyed them all, but that was far from the insects’ goal; instead, hell retained equilibrium, with Shadow Demons allowing the races to survive, observing and occasionally taking new birth-souls from them. The young race increased in knowledge about themselves, their land, and even about those strange, independent creatures around them, developing an increasing understanding of magic and the manipulation of their spirit, even warping their own biology into more varied and useful forms.



With the rate and direction that the Shadow Demons were philosophically and intellectually developing, had they continued down the same path, in time they would very likely have become something similar to the mortal realm’s angels: watching over and guarding the mortal races of hell, and taking the souls of the dead with them to enjoy the happiness of the after-life that the Shadow Demons would provide. Unfortunately for the bugs, it was not to be.

Fall, 10000 PI: Advent Of The Devourer

Spoiler

When The Entity, later known as the Devourer came to hell, the only group who could even try to oppose it was the still-young Shadow Demons. Their physical god of their own making, the All-Devourer, met the creature in spiritual combat, trading blows before finding itself at a severe disadvantage. The Entity gave the bug god no time to lick its wounds, destroying the All-Devourer and consuming its essence, the Shadow Demon’s hive mind. The loss crippled the invertebrates, paralyzing them for a day while the invader simply consumed their world’s life… and most of their species with it. Ten years later there was little left of the forests and jungles that the Shadow Demons had inhabited, or of the insects themselves, the creatures barely able to survive without being connected to each other. The Devourer did not bother to lick up the scraps of the dead world, instead trying to move to the mortal plane once it had consumed the more choice parts of the now-quite-hellish realm. The intelligent races it found there gave the daemon pause, however, and he took a group of humans and retreated back to hell, in order to study them. The mortals it had taken proved quite malleable, particularly when subjected to powerful magics, a trait the denizens of Hell had lacked.

From these humans, the first demons were born, naming themselves after their kind’s own myths about foul creatures in the night. The Entity required their obedience and worship, but possessed no name for them to call it. Seeing the devotion of the race towards the god that had been decimated fighting it, The Entity took the name Devourer for itself, requiring the same unrivaled devotion of its own, new creations.


The Devourer could be aptly called a force of nature, and nature always takes the path of least resistance; the daemon’s guiding principle was to eat, find the next closest realm to eat, eat it, and repeat. But this time, the closest realm was guarded by daemons even its own power would be tested against, and it was for this reason that it had created servants out of the humans in the first place. Its normal pattern interrupted, the Devourer got crafty.

The newly-christened demon-god then sent its warping magics through all the remaining dregs of life in Hell, anything robust enough to still hold onto the decayed world – which included the shadow demons, even if only because of their former numbers. Most of the few life forms that remained were changed into the various forms of lesser demons that often accompany their more powerful and more intelligent cousins. The shadow demons were one of the few races to largely maintain their original form, only receiving the mark of the devourer’s energy; while corruption through pleasure was one of the daemon’s most useful tools, it had an entirely different fate in store for the genderless bugs. Instead, they became its unwitting pets. The demon-god replaced the Shadow Demon hive mind, adjusting their memories and allowing them to continue existing much as they had before. The creatures reproduced the fastest of all the Devourer’s new minions, and their unusual biology meant that each dead Shadow Demon’s soul would be fed directly into their hive mind – which, because of the daemon’s deception, meant directly into the Devourer, giving the creature a stream of stolen souls straight into its stomach.

It was only then that the Shadow Demons received the name they would hold for the next ten thousand years and beyond; a simple statement of their nature, as shadowy creatures of the Devourer.

The New Shadow Demon Race, 10000 PI - 25 PI

Spoiler

It took far longer for the Shadow Demons to recover than it had for them to grow in the first place. Nothing was left of the plants they had evolved around, or the marshes; only flat desert, with all demonkind to fight for resources. The shadow demons at once became the Devourer’s both highest and lowliest minions; to normal demons, they were untouchable, not to be interacted with, were his most trusted enforcers, and could get away with sacking towns without repercussion… but at the same time, the Devourer, posing as the hive mind, sent them out on suicide missions with the intended purpose of dying, and giving him another soul. The demons had little reason to like their shadowy cousins, and several thousand years to get to hate them. The bugs found the demons equally distasteful, due to their insincere dealings and general incomprehensibility.

The Devourer only replaced the most key memories to the insects, allowing them to believe that a natural blight had struck… then later that a daemon, Matthias the Destroyer, had been the cause. The stupid things couldn’t tell that they were talking through him, not their hivemind, so the daemon left them be, allowing the creatures to go about their normal business. After five thousand years, the shadow demons had a standing population even greater than they had ever had before the Devourer’s arrival, and had even begun researching and philosophizing on new aspects of their being. The interference of the Devourer had left them with a Haze in their minds, foggy half-understood memories rather than the full ones their species should have, and so they had a lot to relearn.



Over the next two thousand years, the shadow demons refined new philosophies and breeds of shadow demon, including the breed for Shadow Demons able to operate independent of the hivemind. These advances, and the constant failure to take the mortal realm prompted the Devourer to send the Shadow Demons with the rest of his armies. Unfortunately for the daemon, their help could not stop Mathias from destroying the portals, and the stalemate continued for nearly three-thousand more years.

The Price Of Vengance, 25 PI - 2 PI

Spoiler

From the begining, the Devourer had a clear plan for the Shadow Demons; to use them to increase in personal power, hopefully making him even more powerful than the Destroyer. It was for this reason that he continued to allow them to increase in population, knowing that the more of the insects there were, the more insects they could spawn for him to consume.

The creature’s plan would have perhaps worked, but in allowing the shadow demon population to become so large, their will had also become dangerously powerful. To the daemon, there was no risk; they didn’t even realize they were slaves, or that he existed, so allowing them to build up just gave him more of a chance in the next invasion. Unfortunately, by stroke of luck or fate, the Shadow Demons’ experiments with their own nature eventually allowed them to notice the deception being carried out. In one action, the collective force of all the living insects wounded the Devourer, stunning the creature for a brief moment as they took their vengeance against his minions, the Demons. The Devourer responded by simply removing itself from the hive mind, leaving it empty and the living shadow demons with no connection to each other. The attack broke down as quickly as it started, the race set upon by the demon-god and its mouthpiece... and only the intervention of one independent Shadow Demon, eight-hundred years old at the time, stopped this history from ending here.

The survivors were warped to have gender and reproduce through typical methods as an insult, then thrown to the demons for their pleasure - and they happily took out centuries of hate on their darker cousins, tearing into them physically and emotionally. Twenty three years were suffered at the hands and under the heels of the fell people of hell, sending the survivors through as much torment as they could fit into the time. It ended only when they were used as shock-troops for the seventh invasion, giving the population of merely five-hundred a chance to recover, and attempt to return their species from the brink of total loss.

Present Day, 2 PI - 0 PI

Spoiler

Three months after the Artmirst invasion, the Shadow Demon population had migrated to the Pfithirian Jungles, hiding themselves in the unpopulated and harsh area, finding it one of the few places not well-traversed by humans. For nearly two years, they built up underground tunnels and got their bearings, hunting around and at least striking even in their births against deaths. Then the invasion occurred, and the changes to the world proved positive to the inhuman species…

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Hell's Children
The Various Demonic Races

Spoiler

Before the coming of the Devourer, Hell (then called Enellon) was a lush, verdant place that supported a wide variety of creatures. Many of those creatures were wiped out by the daemon’s scouring of the world, however, and those that survived were warped almost beyond recognition. Some others, including the true demons and hellhounds, were creatures transplanted from the mortal world and warped by dark magics, but many are the native creatures of Hell twisted by the Devourer’s power.


Crawlers

Crawlers are lesser demons that were created from creatures that once resembled terrestrial wolves. Fairly swift and possessing dangerous talons, these black skinned creatures were often used as shock troops or guards by the demons during their invasions. Despite their apparent numbers, most of them were killed in the last invasion, as the demons no longer saw a need for them, and they have since been driven extinct as the last of them were left in Artmirst after the closure of the Dark Gate. The Queen of Acheron saw no need to retain such base creatures, and rather than preserve the few that remained of their kind she directed her servants to wipe them out.


Darkwalkers

Darkwalkers resemble very large terrestrial spiders, and have only been slightly altered from their original appearance and function. Covered in a thick, black, hairless carapace that protects their delicate innards, Darkwalkers actually have more in common with ants and other communal insects than they do with their more solitary arachnid likenesses. Darkwalkers cannot speak, but can understand spoken language and communicate with each other by pheromones and body language. Greater Darkwalkers, also known as Darkwalker Queens, have been known to communicate telepathically with their superiors and occasionally even their victims. All Darkwalkers are able to produce sticky webbing, which they can project at short range to ensnare their prey, and possess a powerful but non-lethal paralytic venom that they inject through their fangs.

Normal Darkwalkers are generally found in small groups, and use ambush tactics and numbers to overwhelm their prey, whom they will use to host their eggs and eventually consume. They work together with other types of demons when the opportunity arises, often attacking from surprise while more durable creatures distract their foes, and are blindly loyal to high ranking true demons and nightmare lords so long as a queen isn’t about. Larger groups of Darkwalkers generally indicate the presence of a Queen, a much larger Darkwalker that is more intelligent than its comparatively simple kin. Queen Darkwalkers are capable of speech through telepathy, and are able to direct the lesser Darkwalkers using chemical signals with such precision that it almost resembles mind control. Darkwalkers, twisted by the Devourer’s influence, require other creatures to host their young, but are capable of laying their eggs in almost any living creature even, though they always seem to prefer female hosts. Darkwalker eggs take eight hours to gestate inside of a host and another hour to hatch, after which they will take a day or so to mature into full darkwalkers.


Goblins

Goblins are small, crude, energetic demons who are often employed as shock troops in demonic armies. Despite their demonic nature and unlike most other demons, goblins are not immortal or even particularly long lived compared to humans, usually only living for about thirty to forty years if they survive long enough to die of natural causes. They make up for this by an extremely swift breeding cycle and a sense of communal unity unique among the denizens of Hell, a leftover from their tribal culture. Most goblins are skilled fighters, able to match or even defeat the average human warrior, and what they lack in intelligence they make up for in an oft surprising amount of cunning and ferocity.

Prior to the Devourer’s arrival in Hell, the goblins were on their way to being driven extinct by their competition. No match for the ogres in brute strength, the stalkers for intelligence, or the shadow demons for numbers, the goblins were being outcompeted despite their greater numbers. That all changed when the Devourer arrived, and warped the goblins into what they are now. The diminutive demons thrived upon the blasted, lifeless hellscape and rapidly replenished their numbers, forcing them to expand for what little resources remained. Unlike many lesser demons, the goblins retained both sexes, but they also developed an unusual and unique mutation regarding their breeding cycle. A male and a female goblin that mate can produce a child of either sex, but a goblin who breeds with a creature of another race (possible thanks to the magic inherent within them as with all demons) will always produce a goblin of the same sex as the goblin parent. This has resulted in a significant discrepancy in the numbers of each sex, with male goblins outnumbering female ones almost 20 to 1, and some tribes that have ended up on the mortal world don’t have any females at all.

Goblins possess a highly tribalistic culture that hasn’t changed significantly since long before the coming of the Devourer. All tribes have a chieftain, usually a male goblin who is stronger than all of the others in his tribe. The chieftain has control of the overall actions of the tribe, such as where they hunt and which lord they serve, but all other aspects of a goblin’s life are governed by tradition. The chieftain’s word is obeyed without question in all matters that he has control over, particularly in battle, and any unmarried females in the tribe are required to bear the chieftain’s children, a task they set about with almost fanatical zeal. Unlike most demons, goblins do marry and will almost always remain with their partner until one or both die, and married goblins are forbidden from mating with those other than their spouse without their express permission. Goblins keep slaves of other races whenever possible, particularly females whom they use to breed more warriors, but are often fairly lax and easygoing in terms of their treatment of said slaves beyond raping them, rarely employing torture or painful punishment to their captives unless they are particularly unruly.

Physically, goblins generally stand between three and four feet tall and possess skin colors ranging from green to black. They also have long pointed ears, enlarged canines, and larger than normal eyes, but otherwise appear largely human. Before the coming of the Devourer, goblins would take about six months to give birth and mature within five years, and with their newly warped nature they are able to breed even more quickly, generally taking three months to give birth and only a month to mature. Goblin males impregnating females of other races can breed even faster, their child often being born within a few days. Possessed of surprising strength given their size, goblins are dangerous foes in hand to hand combat, and their sharp eyesight and reflexes make them equally dangerous when employing whatever primitive ranged weapons they can get their hands on.


Hellhounds

Like the true demons, Hellhounds are transplanted creatures taken from the mortal world. Unlike the human ancestors of the demons, however, the hellhounds were created from creatures already possessed of potent magical nature, being a group of twenty or so feerie warhounds who were taken from the mortal world and warped by the Devourer’s magics. These twenty are called the Hellfangs, but over the centuries most of them have been killed, such that less than a half dozen of the powerful demons remain, each of them silently hating every moment of their existence as they retain the memories of their previous forms.

All hellhounds have black fur and red eyes, and generally stand at about five to six feet tall at the shoulder, though some can grow much larger. Their massive canine forms are durable, powerful, and quick, and all such creatures possess the ability to control their own shadows, a skill they often use to cover themselves in armor or bind their prey in tentacles. Though they cannot speak, all Hellhounds are intelligent and able to understand speech, and as a retention of their faerie origins tend to have a fairly strong sense of honor. Even so, they are still demons and will kill or rape their victim just like any other demon if encountered in a hostile setting, particularly if they have a knight or lord controlling them. Hellhounds are a unisex race, requiring females of other races in order to reproduce, and will often impregnate their victims with half a dozen or so pups that will be born within a few days and grow into full hellhounds within a month.


Nightmares

Nightmares were once magical creatures resembling terrestrial horses, though in reality they do not originate on either Donevrion or Enellon, and rare sightings of them upon Donevrion are the origins of legends about unicorns and pegasi. Once noble and pure, they moved in small herds across the vibrant world of Enellon, awaiting the day when their immense power would mature to the point that they could leave to fly among the stars, before the Devourer warped them into the twisted, hateful abominations that they are now. Their skin as black as charcoal and with manes that burn like fire, nightmares are fearsome creatures possessed of a malignant intelligence belied by their bestial physical forms, able to speak but rarely willing to do so even with other demons. They possess no loyalty to their kin, whom they view as competition for power, to the true demons, whom they view as upstarts undeserving of their position, or even to the Devourer, whom they despise for taking their beauty and freedom from them.

Nightmares grow in power as they age, but are all capable of flight without wings even at a young age. Eventually, if it survives long enough, a nightmare will grow powerful enough to shift its form as the true demons do, at which point it will become one of the most powerful and evil creatures in all of creation, a nightmare lord. Possessed of power rivaling that of a fully developed angel, nightmare lords are among the most powerful beings on Hell or Donevrion, and their numbers have steadily increased over the centuries due to their knack for survival when they should not, though they still thankfully number fewer than ten thousand. Filled with hatred unbound, the nightmare lords carve out empires among the denizens of Hell that they rule with cruelty that dwarfs even that of the true demon lords, for the memories of what their ancestors once were burns within them. Long ago, the nightmares were creatures of such power that they could travel among the stars aided only by their power, with no need of air or sustenance. Natural power unlike anything possessed by any other creature in all of creation sustained them, allowing them to ignore the hottest fires and the strongest forces of gravity. Once, the creatures who would become nightmares roamed not only among the stars, but danced upon their very surfaces, and when the Devourer stripped them of their glorious power it was a blow unlike any that a mortal, or even any other immortal, could ever hope to understand. Though they still possessed immense resistance to heat, cold, and even the greatest forces, their incredible durability is lost to them, forever more.

Nightmares are a unisex race, requiring females of other races in order to breed, and this fact more than any other has driven the nightmares to hatred of the Devourer. Despite their prickly demeanor, nightmares are often sought as mounts, and those that manage to keep them appeased will often earn their grudging respect given enough time.


Ogres

Before the Devourer came to Hell, the ogres were at the very top of the food chain. Possessed of daunting physical power, massive size, and a thick hide like that of a rhino capable of shrugging off many minor blows, few creatures besides the shadow demons could hope to bring down an adult ogre, much less a group of them. Their massive size, however, came at the cost of a slow breeding rate and long development period, keeping their numbers relatively few and allowing the other primitive races to compete, a factor which was helped by the ogre’s relatively limited intellect. Possessing a warlike and utilitarian culture, the ogres viewed a death in battle against a worthy foe as the highest honor that they could receive, and many sought just that against the other races that inhabited Hell. After being corrupted by the Devourer’s power, their skin turned dark grey and their eyes turned red, but otherwise they were largely unchanged.

An ogre stands at ten to twelve feet tall, and possesses a generally humanoid shape, though their arms and longer and thicker than one might consider normal, and their legs just a little bit too short. Possessing a natural hunch and occasionally walking on their hands like an ape, ogres aren’t very swift, but make up for it with tremendous strength, enough to tear chunks of the ground up and hurl them at their opponents as makeshift projectiles. Their faces are simple and flat, and heavy fangs that resemble the tusks of a walrus protrude from both their upper and lower jaws, while bull-like horns jut out from their temples. The ogres were transformed into an all-male race, forcing them to use the females of other races in order to reproduce, and being forced to carry an ogre's young is considered a punishment in Hell.

In battle, ogres are simple creatures who rely on their strength and durability rather than any complex tactics. They are often used as living siege engines or shock troops by true demons, and even though they are few in number compared to most demons ogres are generally regarded as expendable by their masters. Even so, the ogres obey the true demons who rule over Hell with endless and blind devotion, happily throwing away their very lives at their master’s whims.


Stalkers

Stalkers were once the second most dominant species on Hell, possessed of a complex and developing culture that had just gone from nomadic to settled and able to use increasingly complex tools. Their superior intelligence compared to the goblins, ogres, and shadow demons as well as their natural ability to change the color of their skin in order to hide allowed them to rise in numbers and influence rapidly. They had only just developed agriculture when the Devourer came, and the daemon swiftly took the opportunity to pose as the chief god of the proto-stalker's pantheon to ensure their cooperation. The creatures joined the daemon willingly, and served as its most powerful and loyal servants even as he devoured most of their race until the Devourer created the true demons.

The stalkers did not take kindly to being made to serve another race, and quickly rebelled against the Devourer, but for their impudence they were stripped of what little remained of their power, their immortality, and reshaped into their current form. With pale grey skin, a mouth filled with shark-like teeth, and hands tipped in wicked claws, the stalkers are naught but an ugly shadow of their former selves, and have carried the bitterness of those wounds for millennia since. Stalkers generally live for about fifty years naturally, but unlike many demonic races they retained their dual sexes and have been able to keep up decent numbers once they recovered from their losses during the rebellion. Though they possess little actual power, many stalkers serve as lieutenants to the lords of the true demons, following orders despite their hatred of their masters in the hope of regaining their former power. With the death of the daemon that warped them, the stalkers have become increasingly agitated, and many believe that another rebellion is likely.


Slimes

The slimes employed by the demons, unlike those used by the aliens, are always completely unintelligent constructs. Created to serve the true demons, they aren’t particularly dangerous in comparison to more martial demons, but they are nonetheless not to be taken lightly. Their bodies are composed of a potent aphrodisiac, which they can hurl at their prey. Possessing no minds of their own, these “spitter” slimes are unable to communicate and serve merely as unintelligent golems, used as short range artillery and distractions by demons looking to bring down unruly prey.


Tentacled Horrors

No creatures were more wildly altered by the Devourer’s magics than the Tentacled Horrors. Prior to the daemon’s arrival, the tentacle horrors were simple, slow moving, herding herbivores that were largely hunted as game by the other races. Their numerous tentacles were used for grabbing fruit off of trees and self-defense against creatures looking to break through their armored carapaces for the plentiful meat beneath, but they largely survived by breeding more quickly than they could be killed off. With the coming of the Devourer and its foul influence, however, the demons were warped into twisted horrors barely resembling their former selves.

Now, tentacle horrors resemble massive ants with a hundred or so tendrils sticking out of their backs, many of them ending in deadly blades or spikes or other weapons. Tentacled horrors are unable to communicate themselves, but can understand the commands of their demonic masters well enough to obey them without question, even if it means their own deaths. Though dangerous on their own, tentacle horrors truly shine when working with other demons, as their dangerous tentacles can easily be used to distract or entangle their prey while others demons attack. Over time, their tendrils will slowly lengthen until their bodies can no longer support them, at which point they will curl up and resemble nothing more than mobile orbs of writhing tentacles.


True Demons

The masters of Hell now that the Devourer is gone, the true demons were once human many centuries ago before their daemon god took them from the mortal world and filled them with his malice and corrupting magics. They are among the most numerous demons in hell, their magical nature allowing them to breed unnaturally quickly, and are also the most powerful overall. They are a race of natural shapeshifters, able to change their forms at will, and as such they don’t have a normal appearance, but the classical look is that of a human with horns, wings, and a tail ending in a spaded tip. All true demons are immortal, and some have existed since the Devourer took them to Hell, granting them unimaginable power that is matched only by their cruelty and by their insanity.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Heaven's Children
Angels

Spoiler

The creation of the angels is one of the most mysterious events ever recorded. The being or force that caused them to come into existence is unknown, even to the gods and the fey, but it is generally accepted that the first sighting of them occurred roughly 4900 years before the alien invasion. They have no allegiance to any other group, mortal or immortal, and the power wielded individually by the archangels rivals that of the four faerie queens and several of the lesser gods, while even the youngest angels possess power dwarfing that of most mortals. They are few in number even now, and general estimates put the full force of the angels at less than twenty thousand individuals with perhaps two hundred archangels functioning as their defacto leaders.

Unlike most other races, angels have no need for an organized hierarchy or ranks. The archangels are respected for their formidable power and wisdom, but their word is not law and each angel is given leave to do as he or she pleases so long as they don't violate their basic tenets. Despite the lack of organization, there has never been a recorded conflict among their ranks unless the incident with the Nephilim can be counted as such, and angels are ready and willing to work together as needed at any given time regardless of any personal enmities between individuals. Most do what they can to make the lives of mortals better, either through direct intervention when they must be protected or through subtle influence when such a heavy hand is not called for. Above all else, angels serve as the protectors of the mortal races against immortal threats, and as such they do not discriminate between humans, elves, orcs, and su-ku-ta, which has led them to abstain from intervening in mortal wars despite the atrocities that take place in them.

All angels save those who have fallen from grace are creatures of incredible power, beauty, courage, and wisdom. All angels are naturally altruists to a fault, and indeed most simply don’t even understand the point of acting in self-interest when presented with the idea. This property is often attributed as that the reason that the angels have never fought against one another, as they lack the drive for personal benefit that would result in such internal strife. Before they joined the fey, angels were barred from reproducing with mortals after the Nephilim incident, where their spawn with mortals were born with all of their strength but none of their altruism, as well as an insatiable hunger for souls to feed upon in order to increase their already potent metaphysical power. After the magical influence of the fey altered them, however, any children that they create with a being less powerful than they will be another angel, though some races such as demons and kitsune naturally supplant their genes. Angels are capable of choosing to birth offspring of their mate's race instead, and to a degree this choice is reflexive as no angel can produce another angel even if they are controlled into wanting to when in captivity. Even fallen angels are capable of breeding pure members of their own kind, but none have ever been recorded as doing so even if they attempt to.

The angels often come into conflict with demons, whom they have hunted sometimes with near psychotic zeal right up until the Devourer was destroyed by Matthias, after which they have adopted a somewhat more tolerant stance regarding their supernatural opposites. Demons, being naturally corruptive, are generally avoided by angels even when the individual demons have forsaken the destructive nature of their kin, but unless they do something to earn an angel's ire most demons on Donevrion are largely left alone. The angels also have had conflict with the fey courts, albeit not as commonly nor as fiercely. One such incident involved a meeting between the archangel Michael and the Queen of the Summer Court, Titania, which sparked a full war between the angels and the four courts, as the other three were quickly dragged into the conflict. The warring supernatural powers threatened to scorch the surface of Donevrion, and after thousands of mortals died in the crossfire the angels began to desperately work for a peaceful end to the conflict before more of their charges could be lost to the senseless violence.

Eventually, the peace between the angels and the fey became friendship, and the angels agreed to join the fey as a separate court following an alliance between the two that allowed them to seal a maddened demigod who sought to annihilate a city. The magics that the angels were exposed to during the ritual that brought them into the fey changed them, giving to them the boons possessed by the sidhe in their ability to control their fecundity and reproduce freely with mortals to produce their own kind. This also fundamentally altered the angel’s genes, making it impossible for them to produce nephilim and thus making Anthriel, the last bound nephilim, the very last known member of her kind.

Though angels are naturally possessed of superhuman strength, agility, and endurance, vast intelligence and wisdom, potent magical ability, and vast spiritual power, their most impressive ability by far is what is known as Insight. An angel’s Insight Is different for each one and manifests in a wide range of different abilities. Some angels simply spontaneously know things in a manner similar to intuition, being able to state things about a person without having known them beforehand, while others are able to predict the future through prophetic dreams or visions. The only thing that is consistent between the angels is that their Insight is never wrong, though it isn’t impossible for an individual angel to misinterpret what their gift shows them or to avert a dark future if the right steps are taken. None who have tried have ever been able to copy or steal an angel’s Insight. Not even daemons who have consumed an angel’s spirit can gain access to a controlled form of it, and the angels themselves have no information to give regarding the source of their mysterious ability. An angel that falls loses their Insight permanently.

Angels vary only slightly in appearance from one another. All are humanoid, and most appear almost completely human save for their wings. An adult angel can use their wings to fly, but most don't grow fully until the angel in question has matured fully. Unlike many supernatural beings, angels don't mature any faster than humans do, though their pregnancies are quicker due to the influence of the fey. Though their skin and hair color vary as much as those of un-mutated humans, almost all angels have blue eyes that often glow when they expend great deals of power at once. The only difference in terms of appearance between a fallen angel and a true angel is that a fallen angel's wings have turned black, though fallen angels often possess other markers displaying their corruption.

Angels have few sanctuaries, most preferring to wander rather than settle in any one place, and those that do choose to remain in one place often settle among the mortals that they protect, sometimes hiding their nature with magic depending on the outlook of the group they join towards outsiders. There are a few places, mostly in at the tops of the highest mountains in Crolia and the Amazon or in the deepest, hottest, most barren reaches of the Anudor desert where angels keep permanent sanctuaries, and store whatever artifacts or knowledge they've accumulated to keep it from mortal hands, usually because it is dangerous. Even so, these places rarely have more than two dozen angels present at any one time. Outsiders, while not banned from their vaults, have a great deal of trouble even finding these places given the perilous nature of the terrain, which is a deliberate act on the part of the angels in order to keep mortals from stumbling across their sanctuaries and disturbing the dangerous artifacts or supernatural prisoners they might have. Archangels are usually the ones who upkeep these sanctuaries, the unmatched strength of their guardians making them all but impossible to attack with any hope of survival, much less success.

Though angels can have children with mortals without risk of corruption, the child never shows any signs of heritage from the mortal parent due to the angel's supernatural nature unless that child is a member of the other parent's race. Angels only occasionally take mortal lovers, and since they possess the ability to choose when they are fertile it's rare for angels to have children at all, much less with a mortal. Strangely, angels can uniquely choose to release their dominant genes when breeding, causing their children to be born seemingly as full blooded members of the race of the nonangelic parent.

This odd bit of physiology is part of a greater scheme by their mysterious maker that includes the ways in which angels lose their power, or fall. An angel's body will automatically keep itself from having angelic children that might be born into the hands of their captors should they be taken prisoner, and an angel who loses their mind or ability to resist and gives in entirely to those holding them will fall as well, preventing Insight and angelic power from falling into the control of demons or other antagonistic supernatural entities. An angel will also fall should they make a conscious decision to put their own desires, whatever they might be, before their duty to protect mortalkind, though this is a rare happenstance. Angels do not marry, or even form lasting relationships, either with each other or with those of other races. This is because of their natural sense of duty above their own desires and because of their respect for the fact that all of them will eventually die in some violent manner in the course of their duty, and for mortal allies they will naturally outlive them eventually anyway, as angels like other supernatural forces do not suffer from aging, or disease.

Timeline
4900 BAI
-First angels are seen.
4800 BAI
-The first nephilim are born, the results of angels and mortal races such as the humans and elves. This results in the Nephilim incident, at the end of which angels were barred from loving mortals by the archangels, the only time that they have ever really enforced their unofficial leadership.
4400 BAI
-The angels enter conflict with the summer court of the fey due to a conflict caused by the archangel Michael refusing the advances of Titania, Queen of the Summer Court. This conflict lasts for a decade and a half, and very nearly results in the destruction of the mortal world due to the forces unleashed by the competing powers. The gods step in and demand peace.
4000 BAI
-The angels battle demons for the first time, and do so with a savagery and passion never before displayed by the normally peaceful immortals. This leads some to believe that they were created to fight the demons, though no proof of such has ever been found.
3500 BAI
-The angels officially join the fey, resulting in slight alterations to their nature. Despite this, they owe no allegiance to the four courts, and are generally considered an unofficial court of their own. The alterations caused by this allow angels to reproduce with mortals and produce angels rather than nephilim.
3000 BAI
-The angels once more battle the demons, showing even greater hatred for their immoral opposites than before.
-The first angel falls from grace during the invasion, becoming a demon. This phenomenon causes the angels to become much more cautious in their later dealings with demons and other supernatural powers.
2000 BAI
-The angels reduced presence is noted by the demons during their invasion, though they have little opportunity to capitalize on the reduced resistance to their attacks given the massively increased power of Matthias following his slaughter of many of the other gods. Unbeknownst to the demons, the angels had foreseen Matthias obliteration of the demon’s forces and decided not to endanger their own in the crossfire.
1000 BAI
-The angels are ready for the demon’s invasion, and prevent the demons from establishing a beachhead, thus all but avoiding the invasion. No mortals ever learn of this.
2 BAI
-The angels are unprepared and pre-occupied by other matters in the mortal world, mostly dealing with smaller groups of demons that have sprung up since the last invasion, and thus can devote few of their number to Artmirst.
The Year of the Invasion
-Some angels feel dark portents just before the aliens arrive, but none are prepared for what is to come. The angels scramble to defend the mortal world from the grey tide, but barring a few victories they are largely unable to push back the vastly superior numbers fielded by the invaders.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

The Rarer Breeds
The Lore of Uncommon Races

Spoiler

Arachne
Long ago, an ancient city inhabited by the night elves was lost in the jungles of the Amazon following an earthquake, the place where it had once stood sunken deep into the earth and buried in ton upon ton of earth and stone. Though many perished in that great cataclysm, not all of the citizens of that lost city were killed. That earthquake was caused by the escape of a long sealed daemon, a being known only as The Widow, and upon arising from her long torpor she took the helpless survivors of the quake as her servants. Through exposure to the daemon's foul magics, the former night elves had their bodies twisted and mutated in the image of their new liege. Two legs became eight as their lower halves took the form of massive spiders, while their upper halves retained their elven beauty.

Though hidden for many centuries in the depths of the Pfitherian jungle, away from the dangers posed by the powerful civilizations present around them, the coming of the invaders was like a sign to the servants of the spider queen, now called the arachne. They emerged from their hidden homes out into the jungle, taking all near their sanctuary captive even as the groups that might have seen them eradicated or contained crumbled in the face of the aliens. They have expanded and spread since then, and in every area they reach become the apex predators almost as a matter of course, feeding on the blood and flesh of wild beasts and using any sentient beings that cannot avoid or defeat them for breeding.

Arachne are all female, all beautiful, all immortal, and all incredibly dangerous. Their razor sharp claws are capable of cutting as well as any steel weapon, and their hardened carapaces and deceptive agility make them difficult to harm. They are capable of spinning webs from their spider halves that are highly dangerous, especially to flying opponents, and possess venom that is unique to each arachne, though most often it paralyzes their victims. Sexually, arachne have fairly human-like vaginas concealed where their spider half meets their elven half, and lay their eggs through an ovipositor that is normally hidden in a pouch on their underside.

Despite their hostile nature to all other races, arachne require semen from other creatures in order to reproduce, and usually prefer mortal victims to immortal ones when hunting for a mate to fertilize their eggs. Even though they require the seed of other races, their offspring generally take few traits from these matings and always seem to produce pureblood arachne. Their eggs require a period of incubation within another female host in order to hatch properly, and after eight hours of such incubation they will naturally drop out of their host, hatching about an hour later into baby arachne. If the arachne who planted the eggs is present, she will generally take them far away to a secluded place, usually a cave if one is present, and leave them there to fend for themselves in the early stages of their lives. The eggs hatch into large spiders resembling darkwalkers, and from then on they must defend themselves and find their own food for up to a month before reaching maturity. Natural predators will often kill most of them, but this is a desired result as it ensures that only the deadliest of arachne live long enough to cocoon themselves and molt, becoming adults and gaining their upper elven halves.

Arachne are not adverse to working together, or even with members of other races, but can most often be found holding small stretches of land for themselves like any natural predator. If their deity calls to them for a task more specific than propagation, however, few arachne would even be willing to resist that call, much less able to. When working with members of other races, arachne rarely display anything but utter disdain for their temporary associates unless they have already proven themselves capable, as non-arachne races are ultimately useless to them as anything other than breeding chattel. The concepts of home, wealth, and love meaning nothing to the arachne, and feelings of attachment seem nearly impossible for them to possess, let alone display. All arachne, regardless of their geographic location, are tied psychically to their monstrous goddess progenitor and may be contacted by her at any time, and are genetically hard coded to follow her grand design to spread their kind against the encroachment of civilization. Any alliance with an arachne is temporary at best, as the spiderkin are driven to enslave any being that displays strength for use in breeding through guile if they cannot be taken by force, particularly if they possess the ability to provide seed for fertilizing their eggs.

Hard coded to breed but having no maternal instinct whatsoever, arachne litters rarely have more than a handful of survivors after hatching, as they will often consume one another until only a few remain as soon as their eggs split. Those survivors are the strongest of the litter, for the things that hatch initially are nothing more than overlarge spiders, but those that survive for the month needed to pupate into adult arachne are the most worthy to do so in the eyes of their kin. Arachne that hold their fertilized eggs for too long (usually about three days) will have the eggs hatch inside of them prematurely, resulting in the spawn eating their way out of their mother before setting upon one another as they normally would. Arachne who go for about a month without mating will have the urge to lay their old eggs, and such will hatch into creatures similar in many respects to the demonic darkwalker spiders, albeit without their hellish heritage or hive mind. These "pureblood" arachne will avoid attacking both one another and true arachne, as well as those that their progenitors enslave, but will often attack travelers regardless and are no less dangerous than their demonic or faerie arachnid kin.

All arachne are possessed of deadly rending claws and powerful musculature in much of their bodies, as well as natural instincts that make them deadly hunters and hardened bodies that are very resistant to harm. Just beneath a thin layer of skin is a continuation of their spider-like exoskeleton, the subdermal portions of it no less strong for being hidden and making the spiderkin feel hard and cold to the touch. Though they cannot wield weapons designed for most humanoids in their clawed hands, their bladed fingers, poisonous fangs, and superhuman strength and speed ensure that they hardly need them in melee combat, as even young adult arachne are more than a match for the average mortal warrior. Though they possess no training institutions where they can learn, some arachne are blessed by their goddess with knowledge of sorcery or inherit the ability to wield spiritual powers or devour the souls of their victims from their fathers, and these often become broodmothers to colonies of arachne made up of their own daughters. Arachne broodmothers, often referred to as priestesses, often control entire clans of the spiderkin in the closest thing that they have to a group effort, and generally hold sway over vast swaths of territory that they keep as their hunting grounds, sending out any unruly daughters to find their own territory and killing any who challenge their rule.


Harpies
Harpies are the beings created by the wind goddess, Notos. Capable of reflexively tapping into their patron deities power over her domain even after her death, all harpies are able to wield wind magic by second nature without any training. All harpies are also capable of natural flight, but their other features can vary heavily, some appearing like little more than human women with wings, while others possess scaly feet bristling with talons and have only their wings rather than separate arms. Their physiques tend to be fairly lithe, a necessity for flight, though they aren't naturally weaker than humans.

All harpies are female, and require male mates of other species in order to reproduce. Though there isn't any known reason for this, harpies generally prefer human mates to any other species, though they will go for elves, orcs, or su-ku-ta sometimes as well. A harpy will almost never take a faerie or a demon as a mate, even if they are the only option available, and though it isn't unheard of for them to be bisexual, most harpies are genetically hardcoded to prefer men to women. If a harpy does take a mate, it will generally be for life, as harpies are not naturally immortal like other supernatural beings even though they do possess elven life-spans. Though they take mates, harpies rarely choose to live in groups even of their own kind, and many mortals only know of them by brief sightings or legends, as they also tend to live out in the wilderness.

Harpies, after being impregnated, will generally lay only a single egg anywhere from 3 days to a week afterwards. This egg will take up to a month to hatch and requires consistent but not constant attention from the female harpy that laid it and a warm environment even when she isn't present. When it hatches, about 3/4 of harpy eggs hatch into harpies, which can break out of their own eggs if they possess natural talons. However, 1 in 4 harpy eggs will contain a baby boy of whichever race fathered the egg, and those along with any harpies with no talons will require that their mother help them break out of their egg before they suffocate. Baby harpies grow up in a matter of weeks, and only require their mother's care for a few days before they are capable of defending themselves, but they take several years yet to reach full adulthood. Mortal babies born to harpies take as long as the mortal race that fathered them, and rarely show any hints of their unique heritage. A harpy's menstrual cycle is unusual in that, rather than bleeding likes mortals do or simply not having one like many immortals, if an egg isn't fertilized they will instead lay it, allowing for a healthy and delicious meal.


Kitsune
Of all the magical creatures who inhabit the world, few are so poorly understood and rarely glimpsed as the kitsune. Possessing of magical power rivaling those of the angels and without any of their inbuilt moral restrictions, those few mortals who truly know anything of the kitsune beyond that they have a humanoid shape with fox-like anthropomorphic additions often wonder why they haven't overtaken the whole of the world yet. Truthfully, the reason for their relative obscurity has less to do with powers working against them and more to do with the solitary nature that most of this enigmatic race possess. Another factor, however, is the method by which a kitsune rises in power, which often leads them into direct conflict with beings that not only rival their power, but outnumber them severely.

All kitsune are born with only a single tail, always the same color as their natural hair. Unlike many other supernatural races, kitsune do not develop at an accelerated rate, taking the full nine months of a human before being born regardless of their parentage, though they do grow at an accelerated rate like other supernatural beings. Kitsune appear completely human when they're born save for the ears and tail, but like demons and the sidhe can naturally shapeshift to hide their unnatural features, which they may do instinctively just after birth. All kitsune are able to feed on the souls of others, and this is how they rise in power and gain additional tails. When a kitsune completely absorbs the soul of another being, leaving their partner's body as naught but an empty shell, they grow an additional tail of a color relating to the race and disposition of the individual absorbed, and in doing so they gain all of the memories and abilities of their victim. A person absorbed in this way can have their soul released by the kitsune, and even restored to their original body if it is still alive. Thankfully, only a handful of kitsune ever discover this ability, and those that do so only rarely make use of it. In fact, despite the nature of their empowerment, kitsune are generally more reluctant to feed than demons or faeries with similar abilities, as unlike most beings that feed on the souls of others, kitsune still naturally regenerate their essence on their own.

Another reason for their rarity stems from their reproductive oddities. Only rarely will a child of kitsune parentage mixed with another race produce a pure kitsune. More often than not, they will produce a member of the other parent's lineage but with some vestigial benefits of their supernatural heritage. The exact nature of those benefits vary from race to race, though they generally involve some form of spiritual potential. The children of such hybrids show no immediate detectable signs of their supernatural grandparent, however.

As a race, kitsune have existed for thousands of years, having come into being at almost the same time that the first demon invasion occurred. Little is known about their genesis, but legend has it that their progenitor was a sorceress of incredible power who challenged a goddess to some contest. The story goes that the sorceress was distraught over the death of a lover, and that in her grief she challenged Avedel for ownership of his soul. Though she was defeated handily, the goddess took an unusual measure of pity, and rather than welcome the sorceress into her realm of death she offered a bargain. The angel of death would warp her into a state that would allow her to keep her lover by her side forevermore, or at least as long as she lived, but in so doing she would sacrifice both her humanity and her mortality. The sorceress agreed, and thus became the first kitsune, styled after the creature that she had emulated when she was human. The truth of this legend has never been verified.

Tails and fur colors - Tails containing humans are brown, high elves are gold, night elves are violet, orcs are green, demons are red, vampires and other undead are black, gemini and other aliens are grey, su-ku-ta are orange, naga are teal, arachne are violet with a black web pattern, dragons are the color of their scales mixed with red in a flame-like pattern, fey are blue, and angels are white. Daemons, half daemons and particularly heroic souls are colored depending on their personality, half breeds are a mix of their parent's colors, and other kitsune grant a tail of the same color as the absorbed kitsune’s original tail while also giving any tails that that kitsune had when absorbed.


Naga
The serpentfolk, a race of all-female beings with the lower bodies of snakes and the upper bodies of humans, are an exceptionally rare race. They are long lived like elves, and when mating with another mortal race they will produce pure nagas regardless of the race of the father, with races of more supernatural origin producing a hybrid instead. They are warm blooded despite their reptilian appearance, but their blood runs cooler than that of a human or elf and they tend to prefer warmer climates. They rarely gather in any great numbers, their genetic instinct being to separate shortly after birth much like alraune, but they are intelligent and have the ability to work together as any other intelligent creature would.

They have fewer inborn instincts than most "unnatural" races, and have no genetic memory of their own, but they make up for this in an insatiable curiosity that is particularly powerful early in life, and they learn and physically mature more quickly than most mortal races. Despite their reptilian appearance, naga can sometimes care deeply for their young and will either nurture them in a nest or place them within the womb of another woman, the latter causing them to hatch much more quickly. Other naga will leave their eggs either in a host or a nest and simply abandon them, leaving their young to hatch and grow up without parental influence. They have no particular natural bend when it comes to how they treat others, learning ethics like any other race would from their parents.

The origins of the naga race are unknown, but they are a relatively old race, nearly as old as humans and elves, which has resulted in their wide spread. The general prejudice against them among mortals and the lack of male members of their species has kept their population relatively low, however, and that fact seems unlikely to change any time soon.


Oni
Orcs have venerated the awesome power and relentless savagery of dragons for time immemorial, but the great daemons of the sky are not the only creatures to whom the warlike warrior race have shown respect. Besides their nature spirits and the wild beasts that they often venerate, some orcs came to respect and even worship the power held by demons. While such opinions aren't generally accepted among the stoic and superstitious mainstream orcish culture, who by and large view the manipulative and deceitful nature of demons and their regular use of sorcery with open contempt, some of the outlying greenskins possess no such scruples. Given the lustful nature of both groups, it likely comes as no surprise that children resulted from this, and while those children generally favored their demonic sires, the strength of orc genes still showed through to create a unique combination.

From these unions the oni were born. Often huge even for orcs, some say that they have ogre blood rather than that of true demons, though rarely is such an opinion spoken to the face of an oni. Possessed of superhuman strength to accompany their massive size, the oni are unusual in that they possess a fairly chaotic bent, a fact that is at odds with the natures of their fairly orderly progenitor races. They are also unusually friendly, at least compared to the races that created them, though their ferocity if angered is a terrible thing to behold. Though few in number, oni often possess an orc's fertility and a demon's lusts, leading them to be fairly fecund, and while it isn't universally true their unions tend to result in more oni, particularly if they're with other oni, orcs, or demons. Another unique aspect of their physiology is the reactions of their bodies to alcohol, which produces a uniquely euphoric state that makes them both incredibly strong even for them, and heavily aroused. No one has as yet been able to explain this reaction, nor has any one ever been able to find an alcoholic drink that an oni didn't like immediately.


Sphinxes
The mysterious race of sphinxes was created centuries ago, the first documented appearance of one occurring some two hundred years after the first demonic invasion to Donevrion was repulsed in the vast deserts of Anudor. When discovered they seemed ancient, possessed of alien knowledge and unknowable desires, but whatever secrets they have, they keep. No one who has attempted to get them to divulge their secrets has ever succeeded, persuasion proving fruitless to the stoic race and magical attempts to read their minds proving ineffective even when used by the most powerful psychics. Their unknown origins aside, that they take the shape of the ancient guardians of the Anudorian kingdoms of old suggests some connection to them.

All sphinxes are incredibly powerful, their physical abilities equivalent to those of dragons and their metaphysical powers perhaps even greater. Oddly, they seem to possess such power and the ability to control it even at birth, though they mature as quickly as a demon and always breed true regardless of their partner. All sphinxes, or at least all sphinxes that have been encountered, are female and choose generally to remain so even when sexually engaged by female partners despite their ability to shapeshift. They generally assume a shape that is a cross between a lion and an eagle but with a human face, though they can also take on a more appealing humanoid shape that only possesses their wings and occasionally some other racial features.

When first encountered, the sphinxes seemed lost for all their great wisdom, and the Queen of the Spring Court quickly offered the powerful beings asylum within her court, resulting in their induction into the fae. Most (though not all) sphinxes still belong to the Spring Court because of this, and offer their services to those with allies among the faeries at the cost of a grave gamble; a potential summoner must answer a riddle before the sphinx will offer them any aid, and to fail that test of wits is to incur the wrath of the powerful being alongside whatever peril they might be entering into. What the sphinx does to its would-be summoner is up largely to the creature's whims, and some of them are violent, cruel, or both. More than one powerful wielder has fallen to one whom they have called upon as an ally, and even when the sphinx is an acquaintance this rule is never overlooked.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Dotet
A Game of Monsters and Legends

Spoiler

(This was written by BlueSlime, and is to be altered and expanded on when I have time to do so.)

Dotet is a game for 2 players, played traditionally on a wooden circular board inlayed with dots and grooves depicting the playing surface. Each dot indicates a space where a tile may be placed. The grooves indicate connecting paths between spaces. Each player begins with an identical set of 40 tiles. In World Dotet, players agree beforehand which 40 tiles they will each have from a variable pool of tiles, dependent upon local Dotet customs.

The Board:

Though the board is circular, the actual play area is roughly diamond shaped, with four "islands" of three spaces each rounding out the playing area. The "mainland" of the board consists of 144 spaces, 72 on either player's side. Tradition has a West (Red) player and an East (Green) player at either end of the board.

Two rows of 16 dots each form the "border" spaces between the East and West halves of the board. Then, going back from these rows on either side is a row of 14 dots, then 12, then 10, 8, 6, 4, and finally 2.

Each of the final dots in a "16" or "2" row is connected to one of four islands placed in each corner of the board by white colored grooves known as "Trade Winds." The islands are "L" shaped and are comprised of only 3 spaces. The middle dot on each island is highlighted black, and is referred to as a "Bazaar."

Each player has a 2x2 square in the center of his "6" and "4" rows marked in his side's color. This is the players "plaza" and is a critical part of the game's victory conditions.

Between each dot are grooved roads that run orthogonal to connect other adjacent dots. There are no diagonal roads. There are however five sinuous, often blue-colored grooves that run through the Dotet board, often skipping many spaces to connect unadjacent dots. These grooves are called "Rivers" and some tiles have the ability to use rivers to move very quickly across the board.

Objective:

A player wins Dotet either by capturing all of his opponent's movable pieces, OR rendering an opponent unable to move, OR placing two of his pieces simultaneously in his opponent's plaza, OR achieving a special victory condition. In Pure Dotet, this only applies to placing the Merchant tile in the opponent's Plaza after having visited two of the four Bazaars. In World Dotet, local customs have introduced alternative tiles that come with their own victory conditions.

The Tiles:

Most tiles represent movable pieces, each with its own set of rules governing movement, captures, and board effects with regard to other tiles. Each movable tile has a name, and an alignment: Lawful or Unlawful.

A minority of tile are referred to as Terrains. In Pure Dotet, these are: The Wall, The Watchtower, The Temple, The Ziggurat, and The Palace. These tiles, once placed, cannot move, but may have an effect on other tiles or spaces within range of them. (ie: The Priestess tile gains extra movement and the ability to capture adjacent tiles, if it moves through or from the Temple tile.)

Some tiles, The Guard in particular, are very weak on their own, but quite strong strategically when used in conjunction with a Terrain.

Some tiles have differing capture rules based on Terrains and Alignments. For instance, the Demonbane (Hero) can only capture Unlawful pieces.

-----
The List of Tiles (Alternate Names in parentheses)

1 Demon (Lich)
2 Demonbane (Hero)
3 Storyteller
4 Magus
5 Thief
6 Guard
7 King
8 Queen
9 Enchantress (Mistress)
10 The Watchtower
11 The Wall
12 Skiff (Galley)
13 Merchant
14 Corsair
15 Stargazer
16 Magistrate
17 Gambler
18 Miser
19 Gardener (Druid)
20 Shepherd
21 Raider
22 Ogre
23 Djinn
24 Burrower
25 Dragon
26 Bird of Paradise
27 Poet
28 Vagabond
29 Priestess
30 Mermaid
31 Mariner
32 Crone (Witch)
33 Soldier
34 Blacksmith
35 Reaper (Death)
36 Messenger
37 The Palace
38 The Ziggurat
39 The Temple
40 The Sandstorm (Storm/Tempest)

The Acheron Arena Trading Card Gamer
You can't even handle the derp

Spoiler

The arena in Acheron, though a recent opening all things considered, has been a raging success among locals and tourists alike. Many individual fighters have created massive followings from regulars, and some enterprising arena attendant decided to capitalize on the rapidly growing fanbase. Thus the Acheron Arena Trading Card Game was born!

The cards can (and often are) simply collected by fans, but the game is fully playable even in its current state. Starter decks that come playable with thirty cards are sold for eight denarii, as well as packs containing ten cards each for two denarii. In addition, an enchanting playing mat can be purchased for fifteen denarii that allows the cards used in the game to be represented by illusions taken from the card art.

Rules

Spoiler

-Decks are made up of 40 cards, and proficient players will generally base them around a known team of fighters. Up to four copies of a single card are allowed in a deck, and cards are organized into two types, Fighter and Ability cards. Ability cards are subdivided into Power and Guile cards. All of the cards are enchanted to ensure their legitimacy, and cards are also divided by rarity, which includes Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary.
-Players require a coin to play, though a dice or some other method of 50/50 randomization can be substituted for it, as well as a method of keeping track of life totals.
-After deciding who goes first, two (or more) players shuffle their decks and draw five cards for their starting hand. The first player to play doesn't draw a card at the beginning of their first turn unless the two players are playing a free-for-all with multiple players. After that, each player draws a card from their deck at the beginning of every turn.
-At the beginning of every turn, each player gets an amount of energy with which to play their cards equal to the turn counter, which starts at one and increments every time the turn of the first player starts. Each player's energy pool doesn't empty, allowing them to slowly gather energy if they choose not to spend it, but doing so leaves them vulnerable.
-Each players starts with 30 life. The goal of the game is to reduce their opponent(s) life total to 0 or less, at which point you've won the game.
-Any player may have no more than eight cards in hand at any given time. A player ending their turn with more must discard down to eight cards.
-The discard pile is referred to as the infirmary, and is where Ability cards that don't attach to a fighter go after they resolve, and where Fighter cards and an Ability cards attached to them go if that fighter takes an amount of damage equal to its Health.

Fighter cards are the fighters that make up the brunt of most decks, producing a force that can destroy other fighters and deal damage against an opponent's life total multiple times.
-Fighter cards have numerous flavor texts that only sometimes matter, including but not limited to their race, their name, their class, and the team to which the represented warrior belongs.
-Fighter cards have several statistics that are important, including Strike (the amount of damage that a fighter deals in combat) Health (the amount of damage that they can take before being put into their owner's infirmary) Cost (how much energy they cost to put into play) and Resistance (how difficult they are to affect with certain abilities.)
-Fighter cards, when put into play, are normally unable to take any action on the turn, and may generally only take one action per turn. This effect is called being "tapped" and is generally indicated by turning the card sideways on the board. A given player may have up to 6 fighter cards in play at a time, and no two copies or version of the same creature may be in play at a time unless that fighter has "None" for its name text.
-A fighter card that isn't tapped may do any number of things, including; attack an enemy fighter, attack the enemy's life total if and only if they have no fighters in play, return to the player's hand, or have an ability card used on it. Each of these actions causes the card to tap.
-All fighter cards untap at the beginning of each turn, after the player's card is drawn.
-When one fighter attacks another, they are considered "engaged." Two fighters that are engaged each reduce the other fighter's Health by an amount equal to their Strike. A fighter at 0 or less Health is put into its owner's infirmary.
-Fighter cards have a number of basic keywords that supply specific effects. A list of these effects;
Hasty: The fighter untaps on the turn in which it is played.
Upkeep X: The fighter must pay X energy per turn or sacrifice the creature, sending them to the infirmary.
Powerful: The fighter may have one ability card played on it per turn without tapping them.
Swift: The fighter may attack once per turn without tapping.
Absorb X: The fighter ignores X damage per attack dealt to them.
Piercing X: Damage dealt by this fighter ignores X points of Absorb.
Stealthy: The fighter deals its combat damage first when attacking another fighter. If this is enough to send the opposing fighter to the infirmary, that fight doesn't deal its damage to the fighter with this ability in return. Has no effect on other fighters with this ability.
Grapple: You may pay the difference between the Resistance stats (minimum 1) of this fighter and its target and tap it. Choose a fighter controlled by an opponent and tap it if it's untapped. Neither fighter untaps unless its controller pays an amount of energy equal to this fighter's Resistance to end the effect. For every turn in which the two fighters are tapped, this fighter deals damage equal to its Strike to the "grappled" fighter.
Drain: This creature regains Health equal to its Strike when dealing combat or grapple damage.
-A fighter card with effects may use them as they would a Guile Ability card unless they state otherwise.


Ability cards are those that don't (usually) remain on the field after being played. They can usually be played on either one's own fighters, or on their opponents, but note that generally playing an ability on an opponent's fighter won't tap it. Most ability cards will indicate what they can or cannot target.
-Power ability cards may only be played during one's own turn.
-Guile ability cards may be played at any time. Some Guile cards can target an opponent's cards. These are resolved via an effect called the stack, in which the last Guile card played is always resolved first, meaning that the first card to be played is the last to have an effect.
-Some ability cards attach to a fighter, either your own or one controlled by an opponent. These normally remain in play until the fighter they are attached to goes to the infirmary or returns to the player's hand, at which point they go to the infirmary.
-Keywords associated with abilities include;
Lockdown: Creatures with this ability cannot be returned to their owner's hand by tapping them.
Upkeep: As the fighter keyword.

Card List

Spoiler

The format of each card goes as follows:
(Fighter) Card Name: Cost / Strike / Health / Resistance [Type, Class, Team/Name, Effects]
(Ability) Card Name: Cost / Type [Effects]
Cards with * before their name are Uncommon. Cards with ** before their name are Rare. Cards with *** before their name are Legendary. All other cards are Common.


Unaffiliated Fighters
Goblin: 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 [Demon, Warrior, None, Hasty]
Ogre: 7 / 5 / 5 / 3 [Demon, Warrior, None, Absorb 1]
Hellhound: 6 / 3 / 2 / 2 [Demon/Beast, Warrior, None, Absorb 1 + Grapple]
*Goblin Brawler: 2 / 2 / 1 / 1 [Demon, Warrior, None, Hasty + Grapple]
Stalker: 4 / 2 / 1 / 2 [Demon, Warrior, None, Stealthy]
*Stalker Lightmage: 5 / 2 / 1 / 2 [Demon, Mage/Warrior, None, Stealthy + Pay 2 energy and tap this fighter to negate an attack]
**Stalker Blightmage: 6 / 3 / 2 / 3 [Demon, Mage, None, Stealthy + Pay 3 energy and tap this fighter to do any one of the following: negate an attack, deal 3 damage to target fighter, reduce a single fighter's Strike by 1 for as long as this fighter remains in play, increase a single fighter's Strike by 1 for as long as this fighter remains in play, or flip a coin, and if it turns up heads destroy an ability card or force another player to discard a card]
**Demon Knight: 8 / 5 / 5 / 5 [Demon, Warrior, None, Absorb 3 + Powerful]
Grabber: 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 [Alien, Warrior, None, Grapple]
*Hunter: 5 / 3 / 3 / 2 [Alien, Warrior, None, Stealthy]



Unaffiliated Abilities
Battle Aura: X, Power [Attach this card to a fighter you control. That fighter gets + X Strike and + X Resistance. Upkeep X]
Energy Blast: 1 + X, Power [Deal X damage to target fighter or player]
Dispel: 2, Power [Destroy an Ability card attached to a fighter]
Binding: X, Power [Attach this to a fighter controlled by an opponent. Lockdown. Tap that fighter. It cannot be untapped unless its controller pays X+1]
*Power Burst: 3, Power [Gain 5 energy]
*Blood Magic: 0, Guile [Pay 3 life to gain 2 energy]
Grapple Training: 2, Power [Attach this card to a fighter you control with Grapple. That fighter gets +3 Resistance for the purpose of determining the costs associated with its Grapple ability.]
Moment of Insight: 4, Power [Draw 2 cards]


Acheron
***Xeon: 13 / 8 / 10 / 12 [Demon, Wielder, Queen Xeon of Acheron, Absorb 4 + Powerful + Piercing 2 + Tap this fighter and pay 5 energy to do any one of the following: Return a card from the infirmary to play, deal 8 damage to target fighter, send a target ability card to the infirmary, or draw 3 cards + if Xeon would be sent to the infirmary, return her to your hand instead]
***Xeon, Queen of Acheron: 23 / * / * / * [Demon, Wielder, Queen Xeon of Acheron, If this card is successfully put into play, you win the game]
**Varthic, the Demon Prince: 8 / 6 / 6 / 6 [Demon, Warrior, Varthic of Acheron, Absorb 4 + Powerful + Hasty]
Acheron Guardsman: 3 / 2 / 2 / 2 [Demon, Warrior, None, Stealthy + Absorb 1]


The Prancing Paingivers
*Fiona: 5 / 2 / 2 / 4 [Orc, Warrior, Fiona of the Prancing Paingivers, Absorb 1 + Stealthy + Swift]
*Presea: 5 / 4 / 3 / 3 [Faerie, Warrior, Presea of the Prancing Paingivers, Absorb 2]
*Isolde: 3 / 1 / 2 / 3 [Demon, Succubus, Isolde of the Prancing Paingivers, Grapple + Drain]
**Medea: 4 / 2 / 2 / 3 [Human, Mage, Medea of the Prancing Paingivers, Tap this fighter and pay 2 energy to do any one of the following: deal 3 damage to any fighter, increase any fighter's Health by 1 to a max of its starting Health, increase a fighter's Resistance by 2, or have this fighter gain Absorb 3 until your next turn]
Force Wall Combo: 3, Power [Fighters you control cannot be the target of abilities or the activated effects of creatures controlled by your opponent, or be attacked unless the opponent doing so pays 1 for each ability. This card may only be played if at least one member of the Prancing Paingivers is in play under your control. Upkeep 3]


The Foxy Fighters
**Kherem: 5 / 5 / 3 / 3 [Kitsune, Warrior, Kherem of the Foxy Fighters, Absorb 1, Stealthy]
*Lumi: 3 / 1 / 1 / 3 [Kitsune, Mage, Lumi of the Foxy Fighters, Stealthy + Tap this fighter and pay 3 energy to do any one of the following: Negate the next 3 damage directed against this fighter, deal 4 damage to a target fighter, or negate the next ability or effect that would target this fighter]
*Oormi: 4 / 2 / 1 / 3 [Kitsune, Warrior, Oormi of the Foxy Fighters, If Oormi would be targeted by an attack, ability, or effect, the controller of Oormi may flip a coin. If the flip comes up tails, the attack or ability has no effect]
Melissa: 2 / 2 / 2 / 2 [Human, Warrior, Melissa of the Foxy Fighters, None]
Kherem Blender Mode: 3, Guile [Play only on Kherem of the Foxy Fighters. The targeted creature gets +1 Strike, +1 Resistance, and +2 Absorb until end of turn, but takes 1 damage]


The Four Blazing Knights

The Golden Fellowship

Cece's Thorns

The Hammers of Widun

Jane's Fangs

The Wolves of Shoheath

The Ruby Rangers

Rewalt's Ravens

Folke's Rogues

The Circle of the Crimson Dragon

Gauwalt's Saints

The Order of the Silver Angel

The Dragons of Nargundin

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Orcs
The Terror of the Northlands

Spoiler

No one truly knows when the orcs first came to be, nor when they first adopted their own form of civilization. They existed before any written records, including those of the elves. They predate both the angels and all four of the current faerie queens, as well as the coming of the Devourer to Hell. When the city states that formed the core of Crolia and Gods-Reach was first being constructed by the elves, the orcs lived amidst the mountains, fighting one another for the sparse resources that their frigid environment surrendered. Their culture has changed little since the ancient days, and they have remained largely isolated up in the mountains where none go to bother them.

The history of the orcs as a people is shrouded in both mystery and blood. Though they possess a written language of their own, few of them bother to learn it save for their shamans and tribal leaders, as the vast majority of their ways are transmitted by oral teachings and through example. As such, few outsiders are able to easily penetrate the orc's insular culture, and given the already few who have even bothered to try, it is unsurprising that not many know of the orc's ways. The orcs keep little in the way of written history, but what they do write is largely kept in the form of epic poems or stories, most often having to do with their great heroes or leaders and their exploits. As such, little is known of the orc's history that does not concern bloodshed or hardship for their kind.

Due to their insular culture, the only contact many have with orcs are with those that work as slavers or those that have fought in their invasion of Crolia. What many don't know, however, is that the vast majority of orcs who live among outsiders, such as those who form or join slaving and mercenary bands, are live there because they were exiled from their own people for crimes not warranting the death penalty. Orc convicts are sentenced by their tribal council, and those who are exiled are sent unarmed and with no supplies out into the wilderness. Many do not survive this, but some that do are able to reach settled lands. Since the only exposure that most outsiders have to orcs is through the very worst elements of their society or at the hands of their conquest, the beastmen have gained a fairly poor reputation in human and elven lands.

Those few that have come to understand the orc's culture, however, understand that, though they are unmistakably violent by nature, orcs are not the brutal savages that they are often labeled. Orc tribes are generally fairly small and tightly knit, usually numbering no more than two hundred and rarely surpassing more than a thousand. Weapons, slaves, food, and supplies are owned by the tribe, not by individual orcs, and any who takes more than their fair share without earning more by conquest or hard work is seen as a parasite and often exiled if they don't shape up. Few orcs bother to collect small trinkets or wealth as such things are of little use to the tribe, and because of this orcs tend to own very little themselves, and the idea of wealth is something which they often have to adjust to if they try to assimilate into Badarian or Crolian culture.

Orcish society is divided into castes, the very bottom of which are the Clanless. These orcs are the children of slaves or those who have been outcast from their own tribes to join others. They have few rights under orc culture beyond right to conquest, as they must seek permission from other higher ranking orcs to make use of slaves or weapons, and are generally seen as inferior until they prove themselves. Above them are the Clansmen, the common orcs who make up the majority of their ranks. Risen children of slaves or trueborn orcs, they are afforded right to conquest and to property, though few bother with personal possessions. Above them are the Honored, those who have distinguished themselves in battle or by other accomplishments and are able to lead orcs into battle, equivalent in many ways to knights in human and elven culture. Finally, above the Honored are the Heroic, the leaders of tribes who have fought and bled for their people on numerous occasions. The shamans hold a unique position in orc culture, as they are the only caste not reachable by deeds in combat. One must be born or chosen to become a shaman, and though they have no official rank shamans are deeply respected.

Though much of their culture is centered around martial matters, orcs respect those who work to support their warriors greatly as well. A successful farmer or hunter is treated with as much respect as a blooded warrior, and some even ascend to the Honored caste without ever stepping onto a battlefield. This respect transfers even to their enemies, as bands of Clansmen and Honored will not only ignore farmsteads of other races, but actively defend them from bandits or even groups of Clanless. Those who adopt non-combat roles that are less familiar to the orcs, such as healers or laborers or fishermen, are given the same respect. The only ones for whom orcs have no mercy are mages, as they term the manipulation of external energies thievery of nature, an abomination in their eyes, and they will seek to enslave or kill any mages that they find, even those that don't fight against them.

Slavery in orcish culture is a right granted to conquerors, as the victors have free rights to their defeated opponents. Enslaved orcs can eventually be freed through diligent work, at which point they will assume their old caste within their new tribe. Slaves of other races, however, are slaves for life barring exceptional circumstances, and are at the mercy of their often ruthless owners. Only worthy opponents are taken as slaves by trueborn orcs, however, as the weak are generally seen as unfit and those who do not fight are either accorded the respect of productive members of society or seen as vermin who live off of the work of others. The former are allowed to go about their business even if they live within orc controlled lands, and the latter are killed without mercy. Men and women are seen as equals in orc culture, and they have no concept of long term marriage, with any children produced being raised by the tribe as a whole.

Since they began conquering the lands of other races, a number of things have been observed in orc culture that had never been seen before. Firstly, that they have allowed those who do not resist them violently to live in peace, even regarding them as Clansmen despite the face that they are not orcs. Many of the cities that they held were swiftly rebuilt, and the orcs have at least temporarily adopted the mercantile system of Crolia in order to absorb their new neighbors into their culture. Finally, slaves have been seen entering into combat on the side of the orcs, something that has never happened before, and their intimate knowledge of their opponent's tactics has allowed them to aid the orcs advance tremendously. None of these slaves have as yet been captured for interrogation, and so their motivation in fighting for their enslavers and former enemies is unknown.

Most recently, a single orc has risen to the caste of Emperor just after the alien invasion, a caste that has only had four members in recorded history. Each time before was a time of great hardship for the orcs, requiring that the orcs unite to face some great foe or the like, but this time was very different. The aliens found a foe prepared for sudden attacks from armed enemies looking to kill and enslave them, and who had long experience in battling the dragons and drakes that ruled their mountain homelands as well as the mages of the South. Only the weakest tribes were overwhelmed, and from the sudden war rose a single leader who looked to the human and elven lands and saw the weakness that had almost allowed the aliens to wipe out all sentient life. Knowing that even their warlike nature would be not match for the aliens if a second invasion came and took over what was left before turning on his own people, this figure united his tribes under the banner of war and marched his people into the already battered Northlands.

What came next was a stunning series of victories that earned the orcs fully half of the Northlands, including the elven fortress of Gods-Reach. Only when the orcs attempted to attack the Academy was their blitz finally halted, as the large group of mages laid waste to vast swaths of the orcish army. The Orc King, as he was called, chose to enter into an uneasy truce with his opponents so that he could consolidate his power and strengthen his stretched supply lines, all the while sending groups of Clanless into his enemy's territory in order to wreak what havoc they could. No outsider has ever glimpsed this mysterious figure, but his own people speak of him with an awe normally reserved for the nature spirits that they worship, and it is generally assumed that he is possessed of incredible strength and cunning given his ability to control his own chaotic people and guide them to such a flawless conquest.

Physically, orcs are both incredibly stronger and naturally hardy, surpassing the average human in both respects, and their martial lifestyles afford them natural skill at arms even if they adopt a less violent path. Orcs mature sexually by the age of ten, but aren't considered full adults until they reach twenty. Unlike most of the mortal races, uncorrupted orcs have an accelerated gestational period, giving birth only three months after being impregnated if both parents are orcs and six months for half breeds. It is often supposed that they have some sort of supernatural parentage in their bloodlines, as children of orcs and humans or elves will generally resemble orcs more than their other parents. Even their children with the fey or with demons tend to adopt more physical traits from their mortal parent than is normal for the children of supernatural beings.

A Rundown of Orc Culture

Spoiler

Tribal Organization and Hierarchy

Despite their apparent disorganization as viewed from the eyes of outsiders, the culture of orcs is actually fairly strictly regimented. At the very top of every tribe is the chieftain, which is actually an elected position rather than an inherited one. The candidates are chosen from among the honored by a shaman, a group that functionally exists outside of the standard hierarchy, and then voted on by the other honored. If a solid majority cannot be reached, the entire tribe votes, even the slaves, and if a decision still cannot be reached the evenly tied opponents are left to duel.

Below the chieftains are the honored, which range from those who have distinguished themselves in combat, to the most skilled craftsmen in a community, to very successful civic leaders and merchants, to those who have simply shown exemplary wisdom in the past. The honored are the ruling body of the orcs, but as with most of their society, their positions are earned, not given by birthright or coin.

Beneath them are the clansmen, the rank and file citizens among orc-kind. Common warriors, farmers, hunters, laborers, crafstmen, and all manner of conventional occupations make up their numbers, and though they normally look to their chieftain and their honored for guidance, each is taught from a young age to be as self-sufficient and free-thinking as possible. Dependence is unacceptable in orcish society, and is considered the path to weakness and dishonor. That said, the nature of their existence causes all orcish tribes to be very tightly knit, and a member of an orc tribe that doesn't agree with a decision made by their superiors will still go along with it unless it grossly violates their way of life, at which point they will call for a council to see that such an injustice is righted.

Beneath the clansmen are the slaves, the official bottom rung of the orcish societal ladder. The slaves of orcs are usually owned by the tribe but "given" to individuals to be put to use, usually as a reward for deeds. Though technically considered property, slaves in orcish societal are treated with at least a degree of respect, particularly if they are conquests of battle. A slave, in the view of the orcs, is one who owes a debt to society that must be repayed, at which point they will be risen up to the rank of clansmen. This privilege isn't given only to their own kind, though it is rare for a non-orc to rise in rank.

Finally, beneath even the slaves are the clanless, those who have been cast out from their tribe and from orcish society as a whole. Treated even worse than the slaves, these orcs are reviled by their own kind. Unfortunately, given that they are the orcs most often encountered by outsiders and that they represent the very worst that orcs have to offer, they are largely responsible for the foul, brutish reputation of their kind. Clanless have no rank nor rights in orcish society, and only in rare circumstances will they even be taken as slaves, much less allowed to rise back to clansmen or higher.


Slavery

Orcs enslave both their own kind and non-orcs on a regular basis, but this process has a number of simple rules. Firstly, a slave may only be taken either in battle, or through a contract to repay a debt, not through subterfuge or coercion. Survivors of combat against orcs, particularly those who showed particular valor, are generally treated as valued commodities, and are often seen as appealing mates with which to breed more orcs. A slave is allowed varying amounts of leeway depending on the condition of their enslavement and the particular tribe to which they're enslaved, as slaves are community property rather than personal property, but will generally have little choice in the work they do in the course of their enslavement. That said, orcs are anything but wasteful, and will generally teach their non-orc slaves the ways of their people in an effort to prepare them should they be freed, a rare but not unprecedented event.


Warfare

Honor in battle is the baseline of orc culture. This is not to say that personal glory is the most essential goal, however, as the very reason that orcs go to war is to better the community as a whole, not the individual. Orc tribes fight one another over resources that are necessary to survive and grow and that cannot simply be split evenly between two groups, while individuals will duel over disagreements that cannot be settled (in a properly orcish manner) without bloodshed. In battle, orcs generally prefer fairly straightforward

Tactically, orcs tend to do a lot more relying on their strengths than on the weaknesses of their enemies. Given that they're trained from childhood and physically superior to the average human or elf on a purely genetic level, the average orc warrior stacks up favorably to the average human one, and the orcs are very much conscious of that fact. The strategies enacted by orc leaders are often decisive, daring, and fairly straightforward. That isn't to say that they are simple or easily predictable, however, as an orc leader has been taught to value the lives of his soldiers as highly as his own, and winning a battle with minimal losses is a mark of honor.

Though they lack the healing and supportive magics, as well as the sheet firepower of trained mages, orcs are surprisingly adept at siege warfare, being adept at both sapping and at siege warfare. They've also grown accustomed to battling mages, often proofing their siege engines against both fire and lightning, and their snipers are trained to target mages first. Their troops too are trained to battle mages, and will usually target them first with the aim to kill rather than capture, particularly if the mage in question proves effective at disrupting their ranks.


Noncombatants

Despite the common preconception of orcs as warmongering raids who take what they want from others rather than working to get it themselves, there are as many non-warrior orcs as there are soldiers. Healers to tend to the wounded, craftsmen to produce tools and weapons of war, farmers and herders to produce food and materials, all these are recognized as worthy among the orcs and respected as such. Those possessed of such skills in places that orcs conquer are almost never harmed or enslaved, and are instead allowed to continue working at their craft without interference, and are even generally inducted as clansmen after only a short while if they behave according to orc standards.


Law

Orcish society is both highly regimented and lightly policed. The only way to better oneself is to better the community by your actions, and those that favor themselves over their tribe will quickly find themselves without a tribe to support them. Orcish law is generally not based on morality, but rather on practicality and on personal responsibility. Personal disputes are expected to be resolved without community intervention, and the normal expectation is that the two disparaging parties will compromise in some manner. If an agreement cannot be met, but the issue affects more than just the two directly involved, the tribe will generally vote on it and the loser is expected to simply live with the decision. If the matter only affects the two involved, however, the two orcs may duel over it if both are warriors. These duels only rarely result in death or crippling injuries, as the goal of such contests is to prove oneself superior without causing harm to the community as a whole.

When an orc does something that harms the community as a whole, however, there is usually action by the whole rather than by individuals. Orc trials are swift and succinct, and if the party is found guilty they are punished appropriately for their crime. The death penalty is a rarely used recourse, as such is considered a waste. For less serious offenses like losing a herd animal or a tool, or injuring another orc by accident, the penalty is usually some minor punitive labor. For more serious crimes, such as stealing or desertion, the penalty is generally demotion or exile depending on the severity of the harm caused by the individual's crime, record, and former history. The willful rape or murder of another clansmen, an act that occurs extremely rarely, is one of the few crimes for which orcs will execute one of their own.


Religion

The orcs do not revere any of the deities revered by humans or elves. Possessing a culture in a more primal state, they worship what can be seen as a primal religion, giving their respect to and swearing their vows upon the formless spirits of nature that most directly govern their harsh homelands. Earth, fire, wind, and frost are the gods of the orcs, and their ancestors are the conduit through which they commune with those spirits. As such, the dead of both their own and their enemies are treated with respect, and the practices of necromancy and treating with daemons are viewed with unbridled hatred even by clanless orcs.

Despite the shamanistic traditions held by most orcs, however, there are some who deviate from these practices. The god Alronok once favored the orcs before being sealed by the other gods, and some orcs once worshiped demons as well. Most orcs also revere dragons as symbols of the height of power that they wish to attain as well, though this rarely if ever devolves into outright worship of the great winged beasts. Even so, those said to have the blood of dragons are greatly respected among orcish tribes, and are referred to as Dragonborn by their peers.


Magic

In orcish culture, the power and greatness of the individual is a central aspect. As such, powers that come from the soul are seen as tools of greatness, and those possessing them are often given great respect among orcish culture so long as they don't violate the orc's religious views. Learned magic, on the other hand, is viewed with open contempt by most orcs, though that isn't to say that its martial abilities aren't respected by orcish strategists. There are no magic users among clansmen as such, as the study of magic is punished almost universally by exile or enslavement.


Marriage, Romance, and Sex

Orcs view men and women as equals in more or less all things. Only clanless are likely to disrespected the strength of a woman, and there are as many female orc honored as male, a fact often seen as strange by outsiders whose initial thought of orcs generally stems to their rape and enslavement of women. Despite this view, rape is one of the few crimes punished by death rather than by exile in orc society, though slaves being property removes them from this protection. Marriage between clansmen or higher is generally a simple agreement accompanied by a brief ceremony, the brutal nature of their lives leaving little time for long romance. Sex, while more generally for procreation than pleasure, is something generally given respect but not awe among orcs, leaving them to take whatever partners they wished without fear of social repercussion unless it results in a child out of wedlock.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Badaria
The Empire of Men and Machines

Spoiler

Ancient Times

More than twelve thousand years before the alien invasion, the first groups of people who would later create the Badarian began migrating from the far corners of the world. These early humans, competing for land with the more advanced elves and physically stronger orcs in the North and with each other everywhere else, were pushed through hostile lands until they found themselves in the lands that would eventually comprise the Badarian Empire. Compared to the endless dunes of the Anudor desert, the cold wastes of Crolia, and the bleak rocky isles of the Great Sea from which they had come, the temperate, verdant lands were a garden of eden the likes of which they had never imagined could exist. Few dangerous predators, little initial competition, and lands ripe with seemingly unlimited resources caused a rapid influx of settlers such that some were eventually pushed into the jungles to the East, joining those early human refugees that had arrived there from across the ocean after their own homeland had fallen to natural disasters to form the kingdoms of the Amazon.

The rapid increase in population caused many conflicts to erupt, and the first feuds, though bloody, sparked an arms race as hundreds of different groups each vied to gain an advantage over the others. Any new advances were, of course, immediately stolen by any one group's neighbors and eventually spread throughout the region, and as such agriculture, architecture, and metalworking developed rapidly across the conflicted land. Even with the constant conflict between the relatively primitive civilizations, the population of the verdant lands nestled between the Great Sea, the Anudor desert, the Amazon jungle, and the Gormoia mountains increased steadily over the next several hundred years. The disparate groups of people gradually grew and joined, forming the first noble families and their vassals in the years to come.

Early Badarian's spoke a smattering of languages and had dozens of customs and religions, worshiping nature spirits and the enigmatic fey and gods that have long since been forgotten by all. They possessed simplistic tools at first, barely more sophisticated than bows and stone-tipped arrows, but gradually developed more advanced hunting and fighting tools from their resource rich environment. Cultural diffusion through various nomadic groups moving from one settled area to another allowed advances to spread across the country.


The Superior Men

Around ten thousand years before the alien invasion and four thousand before the first demons assaulted the mortal realm, the first of the Badarian noble houses were establishing themselves as lords over their holdings. Though they were themselves only freshly gaining dominance over their lands, the people of Badaria began to see themselves as superior to the nomadic tribes living to their North and West, as yet unaware of the civilizations developing in the dark heart of the jungle to the East. They were the reigning masters of science and technology as the first to begin discovering the arts of metallurgy and chemistry, allowing them not only to make war more effectively but to produce more food and medicine that allowed them to expand even further. A smattering of languages both ancient and evolved made communication between disparate groups difficult if not impossible, and thus many variations in culture according to local custom developed.

It would be another two hundred years before the noble houses as they were known in the present day began to rise and take control of truly vast swaths of land, subjugating the smaller villages around them by coercion and force of arms. Disparate cultures merged together until one realm of influence hit another and each individual house began to clash. For another thousand years this continued, some houses collapsing while others rose, but each house regarded themselves as superior to all others, thinking themselves as the only ones worthy of ruling over all of the lands that eventually became Badaria. This arrogance gradually transferred to their subjects, creating the foundation upon which the Lich King would later build upon to convince the people of Badaria that they were the rightful masters not only of their own nation but of the whole of the known world. None were strong enough to conquer all others, however, and the country was to not acquire its name, its common language, and its more homogeneous culture for another seven hundred years.

Around 10,100 years before the alien invasion, two prominent noble houses in central Badaria made an alliance when the head of house Varien gave his eldest daughter in marriage to the heir of House Alvar, the first recorded political marriage in Badarien history. The two neighboring great house's alliance did not go unnoticed by their now considerably more threatened neighbors, and a plot was hatched that went ten years in the making. In that time, peace reigned (locally at least) as the two great houses ended any disputes with an iron fist. The couple had a son a year after the wedding, and a daughter a year after that. The girl's name is lost to history, her role minor, but the son's name was recorded for all time. Artorius Dovikulus Alvar. The First King.

He grew up pampered, the son of two prominent noble houses that kept the peace in one of the richest lands in the world, and received the best education and training that money could buy. He learned warfare, horsemanship, dueling, archery, logic, mathematics, diplomacy, and how to command men in battle among dozens of other skills, and according to legend learned at a prodigious rate, being able to beat many of his instructors before the death of his parents left him with little time to study. Ten years after the marriage of the heir apparent of Houses Alvar and Varien, their enemies finally struck in a move that they hoped would shatter the iron grip that the two families had held for so long (in human terms at least.) A team of assassins crept into a grand ball being held in celebration of a decade of peace, disguised as guests. The massacre was said to have filled the manor's wine cellar with red up to the ceiling due to all of the blood that seeped through the ballroom floor, and among the casualties were the entirety of the First King's immediate family, including his parents and his younger sister.

Artorius escaped, however, allegedly killing a dozen assassins come to kill him all on his own before fleeing out a window with the help of a faerie queen. Whether any of that is true or not, the young King took charge of his suddenly scattered and leaderless household within a matter of hours, and struck out for revenge against those who had slain his family immediately. After a short war in which he devastatingly outmaneuvered and eradicated forces equal or greater in strength than his own thinly spread retainers, his revenge was had as the families that perpetrated the act were wiped out to a member, their vileness wiped forever from the face of history and their names erased from living memory, the only thing that would live on of them being the memory of what they'd done in a grab for power.

The First King was not content there, however. After uniting his parent's two housing and forming House Alvarien, sometimes called the First House, he turned his gaze outwards, and thus began a long campaign that eventually united Badaria from corner to corner for the first time in history. The war took him ten more years, but he ruled for another seventy after that, and in that time he is reported to have sired over ten thousand children, having never taken a wife. Some even say that he took the faerie queen who saved him from the assassins as a child to bed at one point, getting a child on her that would eventually become one of the faerie queens herself, but this isn't supported by any records and the fey will not speak of the truth or falsehood of it themselves. What is known is that he built the city that the Lich King would eventually claim as his capitol and rename as the Necropolis, though it was then called Artoria. The secret to his force's strength, besides the King's own undeniable skill in battle, was that his House was the first to develop a technology that made his troops both deadlier and more resilient than those of his enemies; Steel. The rise of the first Empire resulted in the entry of Badaria into the iron age well ahead of any of its competitors, once more ensuring the prosperity of the Kingdoms of Humanity.

House Alvarien ruled for another six generations (120 years) before their empire crumbled, but they remain a prominent noble house to this day, having survived the demon invasions and the alien attack relatively intact. Their fortunes have waned and waxed over the centuries, as has their reputation and their standing among the other houses, but their pride in their lineage has remained strong and true over the thousands of years since their fall from grace. Regardless of their present fortunes, the First King's war is a tale of legend that has come down through the centuries, and his influence created unified Badaria for the first time, building the Imperial Road and allowing cultural exchange and trade from one corner of his empire to the other.


The Iron Years

The turmoil of the fall of the First Empire was a time known as the Blood-Soaked Century, as the other noble houses tore apart the empire and resumed old feuds once each had taken as much as they could. It was a time of war, but also resulted in the founding of a number of knightly orders that have gone down in history for producing both heroes and villains. The Badarians themselves were more or less left to their own devices by their neighbors and the supernatural world, save of course for those times when the demons invaded the lands of shattered empire. Even so, such events went largely unnoticed by anyone not directly affected by them, as the nobles bickered and fought one another in struggles that affected many more people than the attacks of the demons ever did, convinced that their own struggles were more important than any events taking place beyond their own domains and the lands that they desired to take from their peers.

Despite the relative instability of this long stretch of time, there was still progress. Advances in technology, particularly the working of metal, continued to be made and spread as each was adopted by the creator's rivals just as soon as they could steal whatever new techniques had been invented. The Incantarium was founded in Artoria, a school for magic that then competed for prestige with The Academy in Crolia. The Imperial Road was not only upkept by each noble house in order to better move their troops and communicate and trade with their allies, but expanded to reach out to smaller settlements. Cultural exchange continued, eventually producing a largely homogenized society even though many of the people that then populated Badaria were of varying ethnic backgrounds.

Trade with outside nations began on the fringes of the country, bringing in yet more new ideologies, technologies, and immigrants from other parts of the world. The changes gradually spread in diluted form across the former empire, brought by refugees and wanderers and mercenaries, and though its penetration into the increasingly proud Badarian psyche was shallow it provided for a number of social changes, not the least of which was the ease of the long-standing fear and suspicion that the Badarian people had held for wielders of Spiritual Powers. Sadly, these changes were done away with and more before they really had a chance to bear fruit.


The Lich King, for I am Come Death Onto These Lands

The Lich King was born Thomas Markhov Sengir, the fourth son of a grain merchant and a priestess to the goddess Sivicine, in the village of Argent Vale some five hundred years before the alien invasion. Growing up, he was aloof and unpleasant to be around owing largely to his latent talent for Necromancy and his natural ability to use more mundane magics. He did poorly at mundane studies, often skipping out on his lessons despite how much his father payed for them, and showed little propensity for business despite his natural cunning. Eventually, his father gave up and made to enter him into the clergy, where he would be around his mother constantly, an idea that he loathed almost as much as the woman that had birthed him.

One night, he fled into the woods, intending to run away from home and find his own way, despite the fact that he had no supplies or skills that might allow him to provide for himself which was more or less a death sentence. However, on that night, a storm of falling stars streaked across the sky, and one fell close enough that Thomas was able to see where it landed. Mesmerized, he tracked it deeper into the woods until he came across the smoking crater of the impact site, and in it he found something strange. A round, flat stone with strange carvings on it, like an engraved wheel. It was cool to the touch despite its origins, and when he touched it a flood of both power and wisdom from sources beyond the known world entered into him, altering his very being almost beyond recognition. He collapsed in agony as his mind and soul were rent asunder and reformed in the span of a few seconds, and when he awoke, Thomas Sengir was not the same person who had found the strange artifact.

A lust for power far greater than any that he had possessed in life now drove him to wander the world, seeking yet more arcane secrets. He took the artifact with him in his wanderings, though it had seemingly been reduced to an inert state as it never reacted to anyone else, and over the next fifty years he became one of the most powerful mortal mages in living memory, until his personal power rivaled that of one of the faerie queens. At some point he enacted the arcane ritual that transformed him into a lich, trapping his spirit within a phylactery but allowing him to retain control of his body and even replace it if necessary. So long as the artifact in which he had stored his own soul was intact, he could not be killed even by the most powerful daemons, and few of those even remained after Matthias was finished.

After completing his wanderings, the Lich King set about earning his title, firstly by gradually taking control of several prominent noble houses through the use of its magical prowess and guile. After he had a dozen or so powerful groups under his control through coercion, threats, promises of power or glory, or even overt mind control of the reigning patrician, the Lich King began to expand through over military power. Frustratingly, he was not the leader that the First King was, and his campaigns were fraught with setbacks and defeats. Fortunately, he was immortal, and thus possessed an unlimited amount of time in which to complete his conquest, and after thirty five long, bloody years the whole of Badaria was finally under his control, and he declared himself the Second Great Emperor.

Though people were initially resistant to the idea of an undead king ruling over them given the long tradition of distrust towards those possessing such unnatural powers, every rebellion was crushed swiftly and efficiently. During his war for conquest, the Lich King had prepared to manage his empire well, setting spies among every one of the noble families and stirring the embers of old grudges while forming new ones, ensuring that no strong force ever rose to oppose him. Among the people he sowed disinformation and dissent against the organized religions of the time, the strongest outcry against his rein, and after another decade or so he outlawed them completely. Though the first century was tumultuous, the next few were far cleaner and more efficient for his efforts, and he could turn his attentions back to feeding his never-ending hunger for more power while consolidating his now firmly established empire.


The Empire of the Damned

Power and direction were not the only things that the Lich King gleaned from the mysterious artifact. Knowledge that had never even been imagined before was contained within, and even before he had conquered all of Badaria the Lich King had begun to make use of the dark secrets that he had gained. Machinery and chemistry produced weapons the likes of which the world had never before seen, and allowed his empire to not only expand its power but produce things that had never before been imagined. Electricity brought light even on the darkest of nights to those that could afford it, and powered the factories that were to produce more goods than even the greatest craftsmen in the world could ever hope to match.

Millennia of war had left the Badarian people remarkably good at the task, and the Lich King was quick to find a way for his people to satisfy their bloodlust. The people of Anudor had long held settlements on the fringes of the desert in order to trade, and these settlements were seized violently, the settled Anudorian's forced back into their nomadic lifestyle with their more traditional kin. The outposts held by Amazonian kingdoms were likewise taken, and the islanders in the Great Sea were forcibly conquered and included into the Lich King's empire within five years of his complete domination of Badaria. Only the Crolian's resisted, fighting the incursion of the Lich King's forces. Those of other races were quickly demonized by the new regime in addition to igniting distrust and hatred of those with supernatural powers.

Within two generations, humans were the only ones truly allowed to be citizens in Badaria, as those of other races were both reviled and distrusted. The advances in the technology of warfare and the new tactics that they required were fully implemented and perfected, and the people themselves had on reason to waver in loyalty from their undead king who had given them so many glorious advances in science and protected them from the poisonous outsiders and treacherous sorcerers. The Incantarium was turned into a military camp where any with magical talent were trained into battlemages, forced to use their talents to kill for the state. The Inquisition had been created to hunt down Spirit Wielders and capture or kill them and turning those they captured into inquisitors themselves by manipulating their memories.

Even with his advanced technology and legions of loyal slaves, however, the Lich King met with little success in his attempts at conquest. The desert was barred to him by its hostile environment and the guerrilla tactics of its inhabitants, as the Anudorian's remembered how they had been driven from their holdings outside of the desert and the Su-Ku-Ta, who were even then mastering firearms themselves, had no desire to see the undead king ruling over them. The Amazon was impenetrable, as even the Fey rose against the Lich King when he attempted to drive his forces to attack the dense woodlands. And, lastly, the nearby forces of Crolia united against the Lich King, meeting him year after year in the Pass of Ghosts, their magical resources, superior training, and the number of spirit wielders among them making up for their disadvantage in weapons technology. This stalemate lasted for hundreds of years, one side occasionally gaining a slight advantage over the other only for any ground gained to be lost almost immediately while short periods of peace allowing both sides to build up their forces.


Fallen Empires

The Lich King's advances in technology, mastery of the dark arts, and skill for manipulation did not serve him well when the aliens came. The majority of his army was in the North when the aliens struck, three of their titanic floating vessels appearing at once over the Necropolis and raining death down upon it. His forces crumbled immediately, unable to rally properly in the confusion of the sudden attack for which they had been completely unprepared, even those few undead troops that he retained proving insufficient to the task of pushing back the invasion, particularly when their controllers were killed or captured. Few survived the battle at the Necropolis, but those that did knew nothing of the Lich King's fate. All that is known is that he hasn't been sighted since. Now, the Necropolis is true to its name; a place for ghosts, the Incantarium and the Inquisition's headquarters both lost along with all of their leaders.

The Empire, beset by legions of aliens that cleaned out many of the major population centers, fell apart in days. The nobles fell to squabbling amongst themselves quickly once the aliens left, looking to carve out their own miniature empires now that they no longer had the Lich King to fear. The common folk, as they had done through every hardship that Badaria had ever faced, simply strove to live day to day, their education having been largely the brainwashing of the Lich King and their lot in life seemingly to suffer as they were beset from all sides by an increasingly hostile world.

Timeline

12,000 BAI
-First humans move South across the Gormoia mountain range from Crolia, West from Anudor, and North from the Great Sea to colonize what would eventually become Badaria.
11,000 BAI
-Early groups that would eventually become the Badarian noble families form, some settlers are pushed East into the Amazon by competing groups and join with the people colonizing the jungle in order to create the early Amazonian kingdoms.
10,800 BAI
-Badarian noble houses rise, turning the countryside into a series of dozens of small, feudal kingdoms, each with its own set of lords.
10,100 BAI
-Houses Alvar and Varien join with the marriage of House Alvar's firstborn heir and House Varien's firstborn daughter, marking the first major political marriage in recorded Badarian history.
10,090 BAI
-Artorius Dovikulus Alvar, the first king, assumes power after the murder of his parents and sister by enemies of his family, adopting the last name Alvarien and thus creating his own House from the ashes of those of his parents. After taking his revenge, he begins a war that eventually unites all of Badaria.
10,080 BAI
-The first empire is founded, uniting Badaria for the first time.
10,010 BAI
-The First King, Artorius Dovikulus Alvar, dies peacefully in his sleep. One of his sons assumes the throne.
9,860 BAI
-The First Empire crumbles, leaving House Alvarien destitute and friendless in a land even then being divided up among the other noble houses.
521 BAI
-Thomas Markhov Sengir, the man who would eventually become the Lich King, is born in Argent Vale.
497 BAI
-Thomas finds the strange artifact in a crater on the night of a meteor shower, and when he comes into contact with it it changes him. Knowledge and arcane might suddenly at his fingertips, he begins his search for more power.
443 BAI
-The Lich King takes control of a number of noble families through coercion, bribery, threats, and enchantment. He uses this force and advanced technology to conquer the rest of the country over the next 35 years, thus creating the Second Empire.
408 BAI
-The Lich King takes control of the whole of Badaria and crowns himself emperor, beginning four centuries of tyranny.
The Year of the Invasion
-The Lich King vanishes when the aliens attack, and it is presumed that he was among those taken. Alberik the Outsider connects the artifact uncovered by the Lich King to the invaders after pouring over aging tomes in the Academy and communicating with a captured Elder Lord.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Simple Economics
It's in the title ladies and gentlemen...

Spoiler

The four most common types of currency are the imperial denarius from Badaria, the dactyle or talent from Crolia, the tael used as the common currency between the various kingdoms of the Amazon, and the daric from the Su-Ku-Ta hegemony. Smaller cultures, like the tribes of Anudor and the Amazon, tended to use whichever currency was favored by the major group that ruled the region that they lived in, but generally favored barter economies over ones involving currency when trading among themselves. Other cultures, like the orcs, the demons, and the fey, base their trade solely on bartering save when dealing with members of other races. The four major coins all have more or less the same value (and thus in game they're referred to as denarii even in lands other than Badaria) as their value is in the coin itself rather than in any credit associated with it.

The imperial denarius is a small coin made of iron, about an inch in diameter and fairly heavy, and has the symbol of the empire stamped on one side and the face of the emperor (in his human form of course) on the other. The dactyle is much smaller, about a third of an inch across, but it is made of silver, and they usually have the symbol and visage of a deity pressed on either side. The tael is the smallest of the coins, but is made of iron faced in gold and often has an intricate carving on the front, while the opposite side shows the symbol meaning "worth" in the common trade tongue of the Amazon. The daric is between the denarius and the dactyle in size, is made of bronze, and has a rune on one side for whichever palace it was minted in, and a picture of the noble that owns the mint on the other. The stamps for each type of coin are often closely guarded in case someone should try to print their own money, and taels in particular are often enchanted so that they can be identified as real or fake.

The average unskilled laborer makes between 3 and 5 denarii for a day of labor, while a skilled artisan like a carpenter, an enchanter, or a mason can make anywhere between 8 and 30 denarii per day, depending on individual prestige and their employer. Alchemists and purveyors of magic, rare even in the cities of the amazon, tend to require expensive parts and gear for their crafts and thus often sell their fairly expensive goods exclusively to nobles and adventurers, though more mundane potions and poultices can turn a steady profit as well. Merchants are common across the world, ranging from men with little more than a cart of a pitch tent and some minor trinkets to full companies that own and profit from over a dozen trade routes. The Empire has few monopoly laws, and its efficient manufacturing has allowed them to corner the market on things that cannot be easily reproduced by magic wherever their economic influence spreads, but the coming of the aliens has disrupted their advantage since many of their factories were located around their cities. The pollution caused by this has yet to be viewed as a problem, even when it causes friction with the fey or the local alraune.

The average prices of other common items:
A live chicken = 3-6 denarii
A live cow = 10-15 denariii
A live bull = 10-20 denarii
A goat or sheep = 9-12 denarii
A mule = 7-9 denarii
A work horse = 9-12 denarii
A trained horse = 15-50 denarii
A trained war horse = 50-100 denarii
A cooked meal or trail rations = 1-4 denarii depending on quality
A bag of rice or grain = 3 denarii
A room for the night at a flee-infested dive = 1-2 denarii
A room for the night at a reasonably decent inn = 3-5 denarii
A room for the night at a high class inn = 5-10 denarii
A simple hand tool = 1-2 denarii
A set of tools for a complex craft = 12-50 denarii (depends heavily on the craft)
A barrel of water = 5 denarii (including the barrel)
A barrel of ale or mead = 9-12 denarii
A mug of ale/mead/beer or shot of liquor = 1-3 denarii
A bottle of cheap wine = 3-6 denarii
A bottle of decent wine = 8-10 denarii
A bottle of fine wine or liquor = 20-25 denarii
A bottle of excellent wine or good liquor = 30-50 denarii
A well crafted weapon or shield = 10 denarii
A well crafted suit of armor = 20-50 denarii
A common pair of pants, a shirt, a pair of socks, a skirt, or a cloak = 1-4 denarii
A piece of fine clothing, like a dress or an expensive outfit = 8-15 denarii
A bottle of shorn nectar = 4 denarii
A sack of sugar or salt = 8 denarii
A silver ring or chain = 5-10 denarii
A gold ring or chain = 15-20 denarii
An ounce of processed shorn powder = 5 denarii
An acre of poor land = 5 - 20 denarii
An acre of decent but unkept or remote land = 20-40 denarii
An acre of quality land = 30-60 denarii
An acre of quality land in a populated area = 40 - 200 denarii
A doll or small toy of poor craftsmanship = 1-5 denarii
A quality toy = 5-20 denarii
A wooden practice sword or similar training weapon = 4-6 denarii
A box of Badarian ammunition (20 shotgun shells, 30 rifle or revolver cartridges) = 10 denarii
A box of Su-Ku-Ta ammunition (40 rounds) = 15 denarii
A make-your-own-ammunition kit = 10 denarii
A yard of cotton cloth in Badaria = 1-5 denarii
A yard of cotton cloth outside Badaria = 2-8 denarii
A yard of silk in the Amazon = 5-10 denarii
A yard of silk outside the Amazon = 8-20 denarii
A spool of thread = 1-3 denarii


Wages (all per day)
A peasant or unskilled laborer = 3-5 denarii
A skilled laborer working at a simple task = 5-10 denarii
A skilled laborer working at a complex task = 5-20 denarii
A master craftsmen = 10-50 denarii

(More to probably be added later as I think of them)

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Honor in Battle
A collection of knightly orders, mercenary groups, and martial arts schools (and others where appropriate)

Spoiler

The Ironrose Monastery
Location: The Amazon
Teachings:


The Falling Leaves
Location: Crolia, particularly centered in Gods-Reach (before its fall to the orcs)
Teachings: An order of elven knights, hunters, soldiers, and mages who have forsaken their own lives in order to safeguard the future of their race. Though they are not chaste, they cannot marry or hold property other than a small handful of items, and the only crafts to which they dedicate themselves are those that relate directly to battle. Any children they have, assuming they are not the products of rape, are to be raised by other elves, those barren or willing to care for more children.

Their heraldry is a leaf, half golden maple and half crimson oak, over a viridian backdrop. Though they have no official uniform, most wear a special cloak, a dark green one clasped with a silver broach in the shape of a wilting leaf.


The Academy
Location: Crolia, to the North of the village of Buttersville
Teachings:


The Imperial Battalions
Location: Badaria
Teachings: The imperial army was a mixed army of poorly trained militia, better organized regulars, and undead raised by necromancers. Their line troops were armed and armored depending on their standing. Militia generally wore little more than a bit of cloth and a metal helmet and armed with pikes or primitive single shot rifles, with clubs or daggers issued depending on the regiment. Regulars were issued leather armor, flak armor, or even chainmail depending on their origins, but all of them were issued rifles and combat knives, with officers often given swords and handguns, though some regiments had better kit than others depending on the area from which they were levied. A well equipped group might have lever action rifles, sabers, revolvers, or even long rifles from Anudor, or perhaps favor older style combat in the vein of more primitive swords or maces paired with shields, though such is quickly falling out of favor and very few continue this trend. The undead troops used, on the other hand, are rarely offered any protective gear at all and sent in with little more than hand weapons, as they lack the skill necessary to make expensive weaponry practical and their natural immunity to pain is enough to make up for their lack of armor.

In general, the order of the day for imperial battalions is to send in undead shocks troops while militia and regulars set up positions, using their superior weaponry to keep their enemies at bay. Those willing to fight them at range will lose, for even the heartiest and most well prepared of mages will run out of energy before a well equipped regiment will run out of ammunition. As such, they tend to favor entrenching and barricade construction on open ground, allowing them to slow those trying to get close in to take advantage of their lack of talent for melee combat while picking them off with volleys of fire. Artillery and magical support are meant to weaken enemy morale as they come in and scatter and slaughter routed survivors of those charging their lines, while what few units of cavalry the empire still makes use of sweep the flanks and keep harassing enemies at bay.

Every imperial regiment has some variation of the imperial symbol, the black skull on white backdrop. Some vary the colors, which also changes the colors of their parade uniform which is normally black with white trim, but each has its own insignia accompanied by a number, though since the invasion the numbers have often been dropped with the collapse of the empire into conflicting regions led by noble houses and city councils.


The Incantarium
Location: Badaria, the Necropolis
Teachings: The state-run school of magic for the Badarian Empire before the Invasion destroyed it along with the rest of the Necroplis. Specialized in necromancy, evocation, and dangerous research into various arcane disciplines that have, along with their fairly brutal training program, resulted in the deaths of many applicants and students. They trained necromancers and battlemages to serve in the imperial army, the former often called skullherders by the line troops they were stationed with and both rightly feared by their subordinates. Though separately trained, they were included in the normal imperial army power structure, though even the lowest of Incantarium trained magi were never of lesser rank than a lieutenant.

Like other imperial orders, their official emblem is a variation of the imperial symbol, the black skull with a sigil on the forehead on a white backdrop. The sigil, in their case, was a square with a diamond in the center. Their uniforms were black robes with white heraldry, with a patch on their right soldier signifying their rank.


"Stygius" The Inquisitor's Headquarters
Location: Badaria, just to the South of the Necropolis
Teachings: The secretive academy in which those possessing the proper talents are brainwashed by the Badarian Inquisition. Their headquarters, which were once guarded even from the eyes of angels and demigods, was wiped out in the Invasion with all of the senior leadership now dead or missing. Many of their members have since gone freelance in various fashions, though their programming to despise all nonhumans and those who use unregulated sorcery still remains.

The Inquisition had no standard colors and never took a pennant into battle, their only official symbol being the black skull with an I in on its forehead on a white backdrop, the normal heraldry of the Lich King. When acting in the open they had a black and white uniform, but more often than not their only identifying mark was a badge with an imprint that enacts psychic power over the weak minded.


The Solar Templars
Location: Badaria, Crolia
Teachings: A knightly order founded by the leadership of the Church of the Star God in its height of power, it was originally a method for the devoted to enter into military service without necessarily needing to owe allegiance to any but the church's hierarchy. Taking even common soldiers if they showed prowess at the martial arts, they functioned mostly as individual fighters organized into small warbands, sometimes leading mobs of militia or even conscripts when they needed more bodies, and mostly dealt with the hunting of mages and nonhumans within the Badarian Empire. As such, when the church began to lose standing much of the writings relating to their methods were taken and examined by the Badarian Inquisition, who gained many useful tactics in dealing with supernatural threats from them.

Their standard is a white banner with the symbol of the sun in gold.


The Order of the White Rose
Location: Northern Badaria
Teachings: Knightly order that survived on private funding after the Empire largely abandoned the use of heavy cavalry. Promotes personal honor and the protection of the helpless over personal gain or loyalty to any ruling body. Has been persecuted, but never abolished or threatened with violence by imperial officials.

Originally a splinter group from the Solar Templars, their standard is red with an intricately detailed white rose.


The Imperial Black Dragoons
Location: Badaria
Teachings: Badarian military outfit, one of the few remaining cavalry outfits and the only one to retain the more ancient aspects of Badarian warfare, namely the use of heavy armor and the lance. Fanatically loyal to the Empire since the golden age of King Alvarien, they are one of the most storied military forces left in the world, existing even after the Invasion.

Their symbol is a white shield with a black knight's helmet carved into a dragon's roaring visage.


The Jade Falcons
Location: The Amazon, Celesis (now disbanded)
Teachings: The royal bodyguards and assassins of the city-state of Celesis, the most powerful in the Amazon and controversially considered the oldest settlement still inhabited (a title some attribute to Therion.) Trained in the use of stealth, spiritual magics, and guile from a young age to protect their small kingdom and its ruling family from all that might wish it harm. All but wiped out following the Invasion.


The Soaring Swords of Ironrose
Location: The Amazon, Glassmoor
Teachings: A group of thirteen night elf warrior-monks trained at the Ironrose monastery, each highly trained in martial arts and a formidable fighter in their own right. Focused on highly swift, acrobatic swordplay. They follow a practice of non-indulgence, though the adherence to these philosophies by individual members is relative.


The Silver Legion
Location: Crolia, Therion
Teachings: A well organized group of mercenaries from Crolia who often contract with the Therion guard or as personal guards for nobles. They tend to favor shield and sword or shield and spear contingents in the style of the ancient legions of Badaria, but also have companies of scouts and archers. Usually require heavy discipline and prefer formation fighting. Their standard is a silver backdrop with a blue blade pointed upwards.


The Red Crows
Location: Crolia
Teachings: A highly varied band that actually started from a bandit group that became large enough to represent a significant threat only to be bought off by a noble rather than driven from his lands, they eventually developed into a mercenary company with a checkered past. They take all comers and work them into their organization somehow, and thus are often unpredictable but poorly disciplined and with little in the way of unit cohesion. They will take nearly any job, often at lower prices than many other groups so long as they have looting rights.

Their standard is a black banner with a red raven sitting atop a hill, looking skyward.


The Blue Falcons
Location: Crolia
Teachings: The largest mercenary company in Crolia, with branches situated all across the North, they employ a wide variety of styles and individuals, but most commonly they favor the weapon-and-shield style that is most popular in Crolia, making their shield walls fairly diverse. They've taken a role of active participation in the war between the orc hordes and the rest of Crolia, fighting alongside the Therion militia and the volunteers from the Academy.

Their symbol is a light blue backdrop with a darker outlined diving falcon inscribed on it.


The Deathguard
Location: Anudor
Teachings: An ancient and long extinct order of elite warriors from the ancient kingdom that ruled Anudor from the mountains bordering Crolia down to portions of Badaria along the coast, the Deathguard were the elite servants of the royal family. Given the best weapons and armor that the kingdom can afford and leading the armies as generals and commanders, the Deathguard were expected to serve with near fanatical loyalty, which most often they did. When a king died, it was expected that his loyal Deathguard would follow him into the afterlife, serving him in death as they had in life, and thus each king's most loyal group of Deathguard were buried with him in his tomb, killed in arcane rituals that were long lost to time. They were annihilated by the demons in the first invasion.

Their symbol was a white human skull enshrouded in blue or red flame, all on a black background.


The Acheron Guard
Location: Badaria, Acheron
Teachings: While demons had rarely if ever counted among those making use of organized military forces, Xeon has organized her city guard into more than just a simplistic warband. While individual members, many of which are demons and thus shapeshifters, still retain their own unique appearances, the one thing she has done is force them into uniform to represent their station, and outlawed the sale or creation of similar garb in her realm. Acheron guard are usually clad in leather armor, breastplates, or flak armor depending on their station, and though they can wield whatever weapons they like are always issued a rifle and a sword.

The Acheron guard use the symbol of Acheron, the eight point star in blue and black over white, and the uniforms of the guard match those colros with the majority being black with blue and white trim.

 

[Smokefish]

Re: Lore

The Ember Brood
A summary of the history, of one of the younger races, born from the union of a Dragon and his Demon concubines, and how they fell before they had a chance to rise.​

Spoiler

-The History of the Ember Brood-​

Spoiler

Roughly three hundred years before the Alien Invasion began, a group of demonesses had managed to survive the centuries they had been cut off from returning to the demon realm, but they had grown weary and weakened from always being on the run, only able to feed scarcely and infrequently, until they happened upon the lair Ashrigaaz, a Red Dragon. The demonesses bargained with what they had, themselves, in an attempt to gain the dragons protection, and he agreed. While it at first was a simple arrangement of the demonesses serving his whims and desires, it would over time grow into something more. Lusts and desires would always remain, but while they had begun as those of the flesh, they would over the years share such feelings for something else; power.

The demonesses and Ashrigaaz would begin fulfilling their newfound desires, and greatly enjoy the time they spent together as they worked towards what would ultimately result in the Ember Brood; creatures of equal parts draconic and demonic heritage that one day would undoubtedly serve them well. Over many years of hard, passionate, work the Drakes and Wyverns would be born, but such simple-minded creatures would at best suffice as shocktroops and grunts. What Ashrigaaz and his demonic concubines desired, would ultimately manifest in the youngest Brood to be born; The Draconians, of whom the firstborn, a daughter, would be named Ashraani. This was a mere ten years before what would be the ultimate tragedy of this growing force.

The Aliens came, appearing without warning, and while the Ember Brood fought with fang and claw for their survival, they would ultimately be decimated and scattered, as they were reduced to only a handful of their earlier numbers. The result of over two hundred years of work undone before the eyes of Ashrigaaz and his concubines, with the later vanishing during the attack, and the former struck with grief both because of the loss of his children, and the loss of his mates. Wether they had been taken away by the aliens, or now decided that the arrangement was no longer in their favor, Ashrigaaz would never know. Ashraani would remain by her fathers side for a few years, to help mending the wounds and hearts of her weakened family, watching as one after another of her Draconian siblings set out on their own, with dreams and desires of their own. Ashraani would be the last Draconian that left Ashrigaaz side, with promises to return one day.

-The Physiology of the Ember Brood-​

Spoiler

Members of the Ember Brood, regardless of type all share a few common traits, such as black, obsidian-like, carapace criss-crossed by cracks that emit a fiery glow, and eyes that emit an amber glow, and a body temperature of around 40 to 50 degrees celsius depending on the type, with more human ones having lower and more beastlike ones having higher. But apart from these universally shared traits, members of the Ember Brood can vary greatly, but there are still some key things that allows them to be separated into different 'broods'.

The Draconian Brood is the most human-like in physique and mindset, inheriting much from their demonic parentage, for even as their physical traits and even outwards anatomy can vary greatly, they all possess human-to-above-human intellect. While not exactly rare of birth, the Draconian Brood exist in lesser numbers than the other types. Due to sporting the highest intellect among the Ember Brood, they often guide and direct the less intelligent Wyverns and Drakes, be it for their own purposes or that of the Ember Brood as a whole.

The Drake Brood is the second most beast-like in physique and mindset, for while they aren't unintelligent, they prefer to let their instinct, base desires and base needs guide them most of the time, unless a Draconian is present to command them. They are often adopted as guardians by their more human-like relatives, as their greater mental capabilities when compared to the Wyverns make them better servants, and companions. Drakes also often serve as Alphas and commanders of the less intelligent Wyverns. Physically, the Drake Brood ranges from monstrously humanoid to beastlike, and are often larger in size than the typical Wyvern variety of their given type.

The Wyvern Brood is the most beast-like of the Ember Brood, and are entirely driven by their base animal needs unless directed or commanded by a Draconian or a Drake. The Wyvern are most commonly born as great reptiles, sometimes winged and sometimes not, that sport a strong resemblance to their dragon ancestry. Uncommonly, wingless varieties that resemble carnivorous dinosaurs, ranging from smaller velociraptors to great tyrannosauruses, are born. It is fairly common for a group of Wyverns to follow a stronger Drake of a similiar type, such as Wyvern Raptors following the lead of a stronger, smarter, Drake Raptor. However, a Draconians commands are always obeyed above that of a Drakes.

The Half-Bloods, a type of 'brood' that have yet to attain any meaningful numbers among the Ember Brood, due to breeding largely being done within the Brood itself or with demons up until recent times. As far as the hierarchy is concerned, Half-Bloods are at the bottom, as Wyverns and Drakes do not see them as true members of the Ember Brood, fit only for breeding purposes, and Draconians commonly view Half-Bloods only slighter better; as breeders primarily, and potential playthings or servants secondarily.

-The Breeding Habits of the Ember Brood-​

Spoiler

The Ember Brood, having faced near extinction from the Alien Invasion, are trying to once more grow in numbers. While a fair amount of the Brood remain at their fathers, Ashrigaaz, lair in the eastern end of the jungle most of the Brood have spread westwards in pursuit of mates. The Ember Brood aren't picky with their mates, eagerly pursuing just about any creature or person that might be suitable for breeding with, but what they value the highest are those of demonic heritage. Due to their part-demonic parentage, the Brood find other demons particularly enticing as far as procreation is concerned, with full blooded demons being the most desired.

Wyverns seek out suitable mates among their own kind first and foremost, be it other Wyverns or Half-Bloods, and very rarely try to make advances upon Draconians, but will eagerly strive to please any Draconian desiring to breed with them. Wyverns do not pass up on the opportunity to mate with Non-Brood Females whenever such a chance presents itself however. Drakes meanwhile, aren't shy of seeking out available partners of their own kind, be it Drakes or Half-Bloods, or even trying to earn the good graces of a Draconian in hopes of getting to mate with them, if the Draconian appears willing. Male Drakes however, have a fondness for Non-Brood females, and will go to great lengths to pursue their chosen prey. Draconians on the other hand, work on a more individual basis in terms of what kind of mates they pursue the most. People of demonic heritage are highly coveted and desired by Draconians, particularly the females, as mating with those have the greatest chance of resulting in Draconian offspring.

=Gestation/Incubation & Maturity Times=
Ember Mother, Egg: 1 Day from conception to be ready for oviposition, 2 Days from conception oviposition is no longer an option, 4 Days from conception the Egg is ready to be laid for hatching
Non-Ember Mother, Egg: 6 Days after oviposition the Egg is read to be laid for hatching
Ember Mother, Non-Egg: 4 Days from conception until birthing
Non-Ember Mother, Non-Egg: 7 Days from conception until birthing
Maturing: 1 Month from hatching to reach adolescence, and another 11 months to reach full maturity.

=Draconian Father=
Draconian Mother: 1-4 Draconian, 5-12 Wyvern, 13+ Drake
Drake/Wyvern Mother: Same as Mother
Half-Blood Mother: 1 Draconian, 2-6 Half-Blood, 7-13 Wyvern, 14+ Drake
Part Demon Mother: 1-3 Draconian, 4+ Half-Blood
Full Blood Demon Mother: 1-6 Draconian, 7+ Full Blood Demon
Other Mother: Half-Blood

=Draconian Mother=
Draconian Father: 1-4 Draconian, 5-12 Wyvern, 13+ Drake
Drake/Wyvern Father: 1 Draconian, 2+ Same as Father
Half-Blood Father: 1-2 Draconian, 3-4 Half-Blood, 5-12 Wyvern, 13+ Drake
Part Demon Father: 1-5 Draconian, 6-10 Half-Blood, 11-15 Wyvern, 16+ Drake
Full Blood Demon Father: 1-10 Draconian, 11-15 Wyvern, 16+ Drake
Other Father: 1 Draconian, 2-14 Half-Blood, 15-17 Wyvern, 18+ Drake

=Drake/Wyvern Father=
Draconian Mother: 1 Draconian, 2+ Same as Father
Drake/Wyvern Mother: Same as Mother
Half-Blood Mother: Same as Father
Part Demon/Oni Mother: 1-5 Half-Blood, 6+ Same as Father
Full Blood Demon Mother: 1-10 Same as Father, 11+ Same as Mother
Other Mother: 1-18 Same as Father, 19+ Half-Blood

=Drake/Wyvern Mother=
Draconian Father: Same as Mother
Drake/Wyvern Father: Same as Mother
Half-Blood Father: Same as Mother
Part Demon Father: 1-5 Half-Blood, 6+ Same as Mother
Full Blood Demon Father: Same as Mother
Other Father: Same as Mother

=Half-Blood Father=
Draconian Mother: 1-2 Draconian, 3-4 Half-Blood, 5-12 Wyvern, 13+ Drake
Drake/Wyvern Mother: Same as Mother
Half-Blood Mother: 1-6 Half-Blood, 7-13 Wyvern, 14+ Drake
Part Demon Mother: Half-Blood
Full Blood Demon Mother: 1-10 Half-Blood, 11+ Full Blood Demon
Other Mother: Half-Blood(Mothers Race/Ember)

=Half-Blood Mother=
Draconian Father: 1 Draconian, 2-6 Half-Blood, 7-13 Wyvern, 14+ Drake
Drake/Wyvern Father: Same as Father
Half-Blood Father: 1-6 Half-Blood, 7-13 Wyvern, 14+ Drake
Part Demon Father: 1-6 Half-Blood, 7-13 Wyvern, 14+ Drake
Full Blood Demon Father: 1-6 Full Blood Demon, 7-12 Half-Blood, 13-16 Wyvern, 17+ Drake
Other Mother: 1-10 Half-Blood(Fathers Race/Ember), 11-15 Wyvern, 16+ Drake

-Notes-
'Part Demon' refers to any race with Demon special mutation that isn't Full Blood Demon, IE Part Demon, Oni, Karkastan
'Half-Blood' refers to a Ember Draconian/(Whatever) Hybrid Offspring, any Part Demon breeding with an Ember Brood that results in a Half-Blood replaces the Part Demon side of the heritage with Part Ember Draconian

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

From the Great Beyond
Aliens

History

Spoiler

To be Written Later

Codex

Spoiler

A guide to aliens and their names, with descriptions. Also serves as a dictionary for those playing as Gemini.

Format:

Common Name (Alien Name)
(A) Description from alien perspective

(N) Description from native perspective

The Converted, Gemini (Kynoshoa)
(A) The spawn of a hundred worlds rises at our command, their essences combined with our own and the remaining flesh that retains the ability to fight marching to bring this world to heel as it has so many others. Their bodies may warp and twist under our influence, but the paltry spirits that we spare those shells deemed worthy of more than the most basic intelligence are mindlessly loyal to us and possessed of unbreakable countermeasures. The processes that turns them to our purposes ensures their loyalty as much as it warps their weak flesh to be suitable to our needs, and every race under our command now is unified under our glorious purpose.... To eliminate the concept of the one, of the single entity, of the consciousness, and to bring all into glorious unity.

(N) Poor bastards. This is what happens to those not lucky enough to die when these... Things... Come calling. We've seen a lot of 'em, back during the invasion and now that we're trying to take back the world from these bastards. Sometimes it's somebody that you used to know, a friend or a family member... A son, or a daughter, or a wife, or a husband. Whatever they might have been, it doesn't matter. They're gone now. We've seen a couple of different types. The "fresh" ones are usually little more than mindless bodies that try to attack anyone they can, but sometimes they band together in groups of two or three. The group ones can't seem to get far apart form one another, and if pried apart more than about six feet or so they just seem to go limp and die, but they can work together in concert pretty effectively while they're still up even though killing one seems to drop the others at the same time. The worst of 'em by far are the smart ones though. Spellcasters, or fighters using our own weaponry against us, and they can actually talk unlike the rest.


Elder Lords (Ulrutoth)
(A) The physical manifestation of our perfection, flesh strong enough to hold our essence that we might shape this world without shattering it. Physical forms possessing exceptional mobility, physical strength to rival a yurakheeh, the ability to replicate with suitable rlathatur and kynoshoa, the ability to convert rlathatur into primitive kynoshoa in the field while collecting souls at the same time, and the ability to channel our power into useable form. They are, like all flesh, disposable and easily replaceable given enough raw materials, of which this world has plenty. They should be mobilized regularly against trouble spots where more dangerous rlathatur are discovered, and are the easiest method through which new members may be added to our collective when used to breed with suitably powerful rlathatur.

(N) The most dangerous individual creature that we've yet encountered from the aliens, and perhaps the most terrifying thing to see coming over the horizon ever, including the days back when dragons used to roam the skies! These things can cast spells to match any mage I've ever seen, and if those tentacles get a hold of you, you're as good as done for. Just one of 'em can lay waste to an entire village in seconds if it has a mind to, and they're tough enough to take hits that would kill a man instantly! Fuckin things are terrifying too, floating around like they're weightless, their arms way too long and ending in hands with fingers like tentacles! Completely faceless, just spheres for heads that don't even move besides these creepy little twitches... They've got no legs either, just a bunch of slimy tentacles dropping down from where their waist should be, I've seen those things swallow up whole people before like it was nothin.


Juggernauts (Yurakheeh)
(A) The result of larger beings converted to our cause, the yurakheeh are perhaps the most wildly warped creatures among our forces. Most of their natural features are to be stripped away, save for those that are of use to us as weapons, Used as shock troops against hardened targets, the Yurakheeh have their sentience fully stripped from them and, like the tulzscha, are programmed for combat and to follow our orders, and nothing more. The original Yurakheeh used in the invasion were spawned on the way using existing kynoshoa as hosts or taken from previously conquered worlds, but most of those were returned to the vessels and taken with the rest of the fleet. Those here now are largely those spawned among the local population of rlathatur, or using kyonshoa when their strength is needed. This world possesses numerous species suitable to producing such creatures if a ytho is allowed to invade them, allowing nearly instantaneous conversion. Battlefield applications of this tactic have proven quite effective. Further explanation is necessary.

(N) Juggernauts, the result of larger and stronger creatures subjected to the alien's corruption. Horses, bears, dok-cats, and other large beasts have been turned into abominations, their bodies warped to the point that they're all but unrecognizable. Grey flesh and faceless heads save for the mouths that just seem to open up, full of gleaming shark-like teeth that can shred a many to bits, and standing on four legs that always end in claws that are just as savage, these things have slaughtered whole squads of fighters before. The humanoid ones are, if anything, worse. They've got the same mouths, but they can lift a wagon and hurl it hard enough to smash it splinters, or rip chunks of stone from buildings or the very ground to huck at people... If you're lucky. Otherwise, they're going to tear you apart with their bare hands. Luckily, they've been seen pretty rarely since the invasion itself.


Hunters (Magotha)
(A) Slaves. While normally they might have simply been converted or eradicated as is standard procedure, the abilities of the magotha uniquely complemented the uses of our own troops, and they've been invaluable in the last few conversion campaigns. They are adept scouts and potent combatants, and their rapid breeding rate allowed us to induct them into our ranks with minimal genetic tampering. Their social structure, unique among encountered races, allowed us particular ease after we eradicated their native females and removed the genes allowing them to be born, effectively removing their natural social leaders and forcing them to be tied to our cause lest they go extinct completely in one fell swoop. Further genetic augmentation has been successful in creating more combat effective variants of the breed, and their potential is still only yet being explored.

(N) Gods damned lizards. They pop out of nowhere and can kill a man before he's even had a chance to defend himself. Fuckers hunt in packs too, and if they aren't spotted they can wipe out an entire patrol, all killed or captured, before anyone even has a chance to defend themselves. Freaky too, they look like a cross between a man and a lizard! They're green when they don't have that camouflage of theirs up, pretty burly too, and all those scales make for decent armor against hand weapons. Those claws on their hands and feet are as long and as sharp as daggers to boot! Nobody knows why they're so different from the rest of the invaders, or why some of them can talk to us when almost none of the rest of the damn aliens can, but I'll tell you one thing; these things are vicious and deadly!


Grabbers (Tulzscha)


Skyrays (Sathlacha)


The Ships (Ghastanath-Kad and Ghastanath-Kuba)


Grey/Dark/Queen/Living Slimes (Ytho/Ytho-Llorhish/Ytho-Athorl/Ytho-Dei)


The Unconverted (Rlathatur)

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

What Lies Beneath the Waves
The Sea

Spoiler

Elric, god of the sea, was not always so. Before he came, and tamed the seas, they were a wild, unruly place that few save for the Atlanteans and the ancient explorers dared to even attempt to traverse. The waves were wild, the storms that ravaged the seas constant and all but unsurvivable to the primitive vessels available at the time, even with the assistance of magic. Terrible beasts roamed beneath the waves, awesome in scope and power, and they destroyed any ships that dared to venture into their vast expanses of territory.

When the great sea king ascended to his position, he found a world with more depths and more danger than he had ever imagined even as king of the only civilization to have explored the ocean beforehand, and he immediately set out to tame the wild seas for himself. It took a hundred years of labor and drew him into conflict with beings that he had never known existed, but the newly christened god eventually conquered the oceans and opened them to mortal exploration. The cultures of the known world jumped at the chance provided to them once they became aware of it, setting sail under the care of their god, but little did they know that beneath them lay a world as wondrous and populated as their own.

The Four Great Seas

The world is covered in water, and each of the seas are named by the cultures that explore them.

Bordering Crolia to the East, North, and West is the Frozen Sea, the deepest and coldest of the seas, perpetually frozen where it borders the icy tundra to the North. Great beasts live within those inky depths, and though some daring hunters attempt to hunt them when they come to the surface, much is unknown about them.

Bordering the Western edge of Badaria and Anudor desert is the Jeweled Sea, sometimes called the Anudor Sea, and of the oceans of Donevrion it is by far the most explored. The Su-Ku-Ta and Anudorians eagerly populated many of the islands that dotted the landscape, bonding with or usurping the indigenous cultures and establishing thousands of small communities across the countless plots of land. It was the Su-Ku-Ta who first found an advanced culture beyond the borders of the known world, an insular but advanced group that hesitantly established trade routes from the chain of islands bordering their own continent, and upon learning of such a place not long after the Badarians were right behind them. Of the seas, while the Jeweled Sea is by far the most explored and the most settled, it is also the one that is most patrolled by pirates. It is in the Jeweled Sea that the underwater kingdom of Adamantia lies.

To the South, bordering the Amazon and portions of Badaria, is the Great Sea. The largest and most expansive, the Great Sea is seldom traveled save when one is attempting to go from the Amazon to Crolia or Anudor, and even then most vessels remain by the coast. Barring a few islands, the Great Sea is empty as far as any who have ever attempted to cross it... Those who have tried and come back alive at any rate.

Finally, to the East, resting alongside much of the Amazonian coast, is the Jade Sea. The most heavily populated of the world's oceans, the Jade Sea holds many populated islands near to the coast, some of them fairly large, along with the greatest variety of wildlife living beneath the waves in the fertile coastal regions. Beyond them is a stretch of vast, seemingly empty ocean that has never been successfully crossed by man, at least not since the first explorers arrived on the Amazonian coast in the earliest days of humanity.


Beneath the Waves

Like the world above, there are many things lying beneath the surface of the ocean that all but the wisest of humans and elves would know nothing about save for the legends that follow them.

The first and foremost amongst these in the minds of of the common folk who live along the sea are the merfolk, half human and half fish. Mermaids are the former inhabitants of Adamantia, the island empire once ruled by the god of the sea, Elric. When their home was sunk beneath the waves in the cataclysm caused by the efforts of Matthias and Elric to push back the third demon invasion, it was assumed that all upon it had perished with their king, but such was not so. The sorcerer king had unleashed powerful magics in order to repulse the demons that had laid waste to his people, and this magic allowed them to survive beneath the surface of the ocean. Their legs became fins, and they were able to breath as easily beneath the water as they could while on land. The merfolk became legends among mortals, though they rarely appear in their true forms for fear of being discovered and eradicated.

Moving from their lost island, the merfolk established a city beneath the waves, sculpted of magic and living coral. Though few in numbers, the merfolk prospered for many generations as their shattered culture pieced itself back together, ruled by their former king Elric now in the form of a greater daemon. The warping magics that had taken place upon them gave them the ability to manipulate both their surroundings and the natural creatures of the sea with their minds, keeping them safe from most natural predators, and those few unnatural creatures that threatened them were easily dealt with by the powerful sorcery that many of them still possessed.

For many years, the merfolk lived peacefully and isolated beneath the waves, with only occasional forays out into the mortal world by small numbers that used their shapeshifting powers to remain disguised as land dwellers, sent to trade for what little they couldn’t acquire on their own. When Elric was sealed away, however, the leaders of the mer sent out many to search for their lost king, for the merfolk’s god also held a dark power at bay.

The fall of Adamantia unleashed a great many forces upon the world, but it also awakened something. Something ancient and powerful and horrifying, long locked away at the bottom of the sea, hidden from the presence of mortals. A creature of horrible power and alien intellect awoke, and began to claw its way out of the depths to fulfill its unknown purposes. Elric, knowing that such a creature being unleashed upon the world could only bring evil, fought the being but could not slay it on his own. Instead, he sealed the creature back into its prison, forcing it back into its slumber. With the god’s fall to sorcerers from the surface world, however, the seals had begun to crack, and the ancient evil had begun to stir. The merfolk would be the first to suffer its ravages should it escape once more, and as such desperately search for their king so that he might seal the beast away once more.

The loss of Elric also left them vulnerable to other outside forces, however, including the intrusions of the other undersea races, known collectively as the Formori. A mysterious race of unknown origins to most, the Formori come in countless forms, but all appear amphibious or fish-like. Contrary to the beauty possessed by the merfolk, the Formori are often misshapen and hideous beastmen, barely recognizable as humanoid if they are at all. Some are able to walk on land for short periods, but none could ever settle there as the merfolk could, as their skin would dry and their weak, shrunken lungs would cause them to suffocate if out of salt water for too long. Driven to the depths by the more agile and more powerful mer, the formori have engendered a bitter resentment against the people of Adamantia, and with their god missing the formerly lesser undersea dwellers have begun to rise from the depths in force to threaten than undersea kingdom.

Far more terrible than the formori, however, are the leviathans. Without their god to control them, not only the merfolk but those that dwell above the seas are helpless against the rampages of those mighty beasts, nigh unkillable and possessed of unbelievable levels of power. Unless the king of the sea is found and released soon, the seas would soon return to the deadly state that they had been before....


The Leviathans

The mightiest beasts of the sea, it is unknown how these creatures came to be, or even what they truly are. The only thing that is known is that each of the nine is possessed of power beyond mortal comprehension, and that their rage and the horror of their wrath when they are disturbed is without peer. For centuries they had been kept in check by Elric, but now all but one of them is free to wreak what havoc they will once again, as they were in the olden days.

1) Aboshan, the Kraken.
A black-grey squid of titanic proportions, those situated along the coasts of Badaria oft compared the vessels of the invaders to him, but in truth this creature is even larger than the floating creatures used to bring the aliens to Donevrion's surface. Twenty tentacles covered in suckers the size of rowboats extend out from this colossal beast, and four extended tendrils that end in fleshy pads as large as full ships move out even farther. It is said that the god Elric had to wrestle the beast in order to tame it.

2) Chisei, the Great Crab.
A colossal blue and red crab that dwarfs even the greatest palaces of the Amazon, this four-clawed, six legged crustacean has been known to crush houses beneath his feet on the rare occasion that he comes up onto the land. He alone among the leviathans has been known to speak, however, and though the crab is anything but cordial and respectful to those whom he could crush beneath his feet by accident, it is said that the Great Crab promised his allegiance to the sea god after Elric defeated him in a game of riddles.

3) Circu, the Devourer of All.
A titanic white shark and second most savage of the leviathans, this great beast is large enough to swallow an entire vessel whole. Possessed of razor sharp teeth the size of grown men and sharp enough to cleave through a dragon's scales like butter, Circu roams the depths of the Great Sea, forever hunting for her ancient rival, Damia. Elric is said to have conquered this great beast by fishing it out of the sea, forcing it to swear allegiance or drown in the open air.

4) Damia, the Black Whale.
A great, one eyed whale of similar build to a sperm whale, this leviathan is as known to aid mortalkind as she is to destroy them, as fickle as the seas themselves. She has held a long standing enmity for Circu, for they once traded blows, each taking a chunk out of the other's fin, and they have borne a grudge and hunted one another within the endless depths of the Great Sea ever since. Elric is said to have tamed the great beast by catching for her the one thing that could sate her endless appetite, the spawn of Aboshan.

5) Dralnu, Lord of the Formori
A gigantic anglerfish, this most vile of the leviathan's has never been seen by mortal eyes, but legend states that the lure he uses is as bright as the sun. The alleged ruler of the formori, none have ever attempted to find truth to those claims, leaving Dralnu to dwell only in dark legends. Though he was never truly loyal to the god, Elric allegedly forced him to agree to serve him by defeating him in battle and stealing one of his eyes.

6) Charybdis, the Whirlpool.
This most alien of the leviathan's is all but mindless, defying any attempts to compare it to any natural creature. Floating across the ocean, Charybdis consumes all that it comes upon, whether they be ocean dweller or surface vessel, a vast all consuming cyclone of death, accompanied by a deadly storm. Elric sealed the beast in between a pair of islands, which he squeezed together to form a channel too narrow for it to pass through, trapping it there so that it could no longer terrorize the seas.

7) Dromar, the Titan.
An enormous fish that dwarfs even some islands, this creature is regarded as the most passive of the great beasts that rule the seas. He seldom ventures near enough to the surface to even be seen, much less close enough for those that breath the air to interact with him, and the merfolk know well enough to avoid him when they venture into the ocean's vast depths. Elric allegedly allowed himself to be swallowed and then stole the Titan's heart from within his body in order to win his allegiance.

8) Galina, the World Serpent.
The serpent that dwells within the deepest depths of the ocean, fabled to be able to wind all the way around the core of the world. In truth the lesser of the two sea dragons is only about a mile long, but even as such her size is enough to make her the second largest of the leviathans, and she is oft considered the swiftest among them as well, striking with the speed of a snake and sliding beneath the waves faster than any bird flies. Even so, Elric was said to have beaten her in a contest of speed in her own domain, thus winning her allegiance.

9) Keiga, the Dragon of the Tides.
The greatest and most terrible of the leviathans, and the only one other than Chisei able to walk upon the land. Unlike the Great Crab, however, the Dragon of the Tides is not bound to his watery domain by anything other than the convenience that it offers when the beast must satisfy its hunger. Though he is called a dragon, the only things to mark him as such are his generally reptilian form and his deadly breath, said to be able to obliterate entire cities in moments, for Keiga has no wings and is thus unable to fly, and also lacks the intellect of a true dragon. The largest and the strongest of the titans, this dark green beast stands hundreds of feet from the ground when his feet fall upon the land, his footfalls enough to cause the ground to shake for miles around, with a tail as large around and as long as the Tower Goldspike itself and a series of jagged spines that run up its back from the tip of its tail to the back of its head. Elric was never able to truly conquer the beast, only able to seal it deep beneath the bottom of the sea even as it struck down another mighty opponent, and it is there that the beast has slept ever since.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

In Emerald Twilight
The Fey

Spoiler

The Courts and their Queens

Spoiler

Spring (Leanan), the Court of Passion
The court of Spring is the court for which the fey have been called the most beautiful beings in creation, and it was Leanan for whom one can attribute much of that reputation. If the fey of Summer are warriors, the fey of Winter are schemers, and the fey of Autumn are lunatics, the fey of Spring can most easily be referred to as artists, as they most often strive to create works of beauty both physical and fundamental. The faeries of Spring are those most directly related to the sheer beauty of nature and the natural order. By far the most peaceful of the courts, Spring rarely wields its power in a manner that results in harm to even the most vile of beings, and while this has brought it ridicule from some, the fey of Spring also tend to care little even for the affairs of their own kind unless they are affected by them directly, and generally opt to practice a fairly pacifistic lifestyle. The tales of faeries as muses and inspiration are the result of the influence of the fey of Spring upon the mortal world, for they take great delight in sharing their wondrous beauty with the world.

Leanan herself, second oldest of the queens, is a peaceful and kindly woman who rarely displays her royal trappings. She rarely appears in her true form to any but her most trusted subjects, for it is said that her appearance is such that any who look directly upon her are immediately struck hopelessly and forever in love with her, but that she does not risk such because she could not break the hearts of so many. All of the sidhe are beautiful, and the queens even more so, but Leanan is by far the loveliest.


Summer (Titania), the Court of Honor
The court of Summer, sometimes also referred to as the court of knights for its martial bent, is the court that most mortals associate with the fey given their fairly public presence. Led by Titania, the second youngest of the queens, the court took the most active role in maintaining the health of nature and the beings within it after the cataclysm. This makes their presence fairly well felt among mortals, though they maintain the same stance as the other courts and take no direct part in mortal affairs. It was Titania who instituted the policy of maintaining sanctuaries for mortals who were in danger of attack by other supernatural entities, and it is the fey of Summer who take the most active role in creating and maintaining those glades, being the faeries most directly related to the vibrancy of propagation of life. By and large the most martial of the courts and also the most populous, Summer is also the court that hosts (and often wins) the great tourneys between the courts, where the best fighters of each court test their mettle against one another in battle. It is from Summer that tales of the fey as guardians and guides for the lost and damned come, and they have well earned their reputations for kindness and martial ability over the centuries.

Titania herself is by and large the most publicly visible of the faerie queens, and has even been seen in public in mortal places, albeit not without a glamor to protect mortals from her nearly blinding beauty. Possessed of a kindly but stern demeanor, Titania is also the most martial of the queens, and on occasion has gone into direct battle alongside her knights clad in enchanted armor that can withstand cataclysmic blows and wielding a sword made of pure light.


Autumn (Acrasia), the Court of Change
The court of Autumn is the court which changes leadership most often, and that history has been one stained in blood. The current queen, Acrasia, embodies the spirit of the court and its history as she is often called Acrasia the Mad by her subjects, albeit only when she is well out of earshot. Though their lower members are often no less outwardly friendly to mortals than those of the courts of Summer and Spring, the leadership of this court have often butted heads with the other queens. Faeries of Autumn are most closely tied to the chaos and randomness of nature. It was the Autumn court that stood against the mending after the great cataclysm, and is the only court to oppose allowing the angels to join the fae as an independent court. Since the great cataclysm, the queen of this court has been usurped or killed more than a dozen times, and each time has been bloody and often involved mortals being caught in the crossfire. Like Winter, their innermost sanctuary is rarely glimpsed by mortal eyes, though some few have been said to have visited the Twilight Grove and returned. It is from the court of Autumn that the tales of faeries kidnapping children and performing similar mischief come from.

Acrasia, the current queen, has only been in power for about a century and a half, and her reign has been characterized largely by more of the same. Though possessed of power exceeding that of an archangel, Acrasia has none of the wisdom or patience of one, and generally overreacts to problems and overreaches her boundaries, often bringing her into conflict with the far more reserved and experienced Titania. Her lack of experience and general hotheadedness haven’t done much for her among her peers, but as yet she hasn’t done anything awful or foolish enough to warrant being deposed, either by her subjects or by the other courts.


Winter (Mab), the Court of Fury
The court of Winter, ruled for centuries untold by Mab, is the court least known to mortalkind. Few creatures other than the fey themselves have ever stepped foot into the court’s deepest sanctuary, the Heart of Winter Coldest, where the queen holds her domain. Mab herself is by far the oldest of queens, and some say that she is the only queen who lives from the time before the great cataclysm that made the fey what they are today, though Mab’s direct subjects will not speak of it and none have had the courage to ask her such to her face. Cold and distant, the Winter Court rarely interferes in the mortal realm at all and largely pursues their queen’s cryptic schemes in the background of more visible events. Most of all, the fae of Winter are related to the seeming cruelty of nature, the harshness of mortal life, and ultimately with death itself. They tend to be the most hostile to mortalkind when encountered, as they care little for mortal life and will violently defend their borders against incursion if pressed, though that isn't to say that they are entirely unwelcoming to strangers.... At first. It is from Winter that tales of the fey as beings of terrible, deadly power and endless cruelty come from, as well as darker legends of kidnapping children or travelers, and many of the more monstrous members of the courts both in appearance and in temperament make their home in Winter’s domain.

Mab herself is a being so ancient that none even remember her birth, and is older even than many of the remaining gods. Possessed of cunning and guile beyond that of any other faerie queen, cruelty rivaling one of the queens of Hell, and powers both personal and arcane rivaling those of any deity, Mab is one of the most dangerous beings still active, and that she is rarely glimpsed in person even by her own subjects makes the faerie queen an enigma as well.


The Wyldfae
Those faeries who are not directly tied and loyal to a court are known simply as the wyldfae. Younger sidhe who are unpledged to a court are wyldfae, as are most lesser faeries such as trolls and kobolds. Though most of the more powerful faeries are aligned with one court or another, some choose to remain independent, carving out small kingdoms of their own, and members of these lesser courts are considered wyldfae as well.


The Ancient Courts
Long long ago, when the world was still in its primordial state, and humans were still primitive creatures, there came a great cataclysm. None now live who truly remember the truth, but it was said that Lord Avo, the king of the gods, fought a being of great evil. The fey courts were eight rather than four then, and divided into the courts of the earth and the courts of the heavens. The four courts of earth were led by the Queens just like the modern courts, but the four courts of heaven were each led by a King who was wedded to one of his female counterparts. The Courts of Earth were the court of wind, the court of earth, the court of water, and the court of fire, while the Courts of Heaven were the court of stars, the court of the sun, the court of the moon, and the court of the void. The kings and queens of the eight courts were all wed to one another to maintain peace, with the king of the sun wed to the queen of fire, the king of the void wed to the queen of the winds, the king of the stars wed to the queen of water, and the king of the moon wed to the queen of earth.

The battle between Lord Avo and the great beast wrought untold destruction across the world, devastating the surface of Donevrion and leaving vast swaths of it barely capable of supporting life. Mankind was almost wiped out in its infancy, and were it not for the intervention of the courts the world might have taken tens of thousands of years to truly recover. The fey, guardians of the natural world, saw the devastation wrought across the surface of their world and could not stand idly by. Banding together fully for the first time in centuries, they worked magics of immense power to repair the damage that had been dealt in the cataclysmic battle. Those magics were not without a price, however, as the fey found their powers tapped almost completely. As their power waned, the eight courts were left with an impossible choice; allow their power to fade to a shadow of what it once was forevermore, or work another spell that would take the power from half of them but restore the rest to full strength.

Conscious of the fact that another great cataclysm might come in which they would need their greatest strength once again, the fey opted to do the latter after much heated deliberation, and it was eventually decided that the courts of the heavens would give up their power to the spell. The magic was successful and Donevrion healed of its grievous wounds, but the fey of the courts of the void, the stars, the moon, and the sun were reduced from their former glory. Their kings were lost, some say into torpor and others into death, while their subjects became the now mortal elves. The remnants of the court of the void, who had resisted the spell and suggested that they ought to take a more patient approach to repairing their world rather than the drastic actions that had been taken, were lost shortly thereafter, though none remember how or can guess where they might have gone. The courts of moon, star, and sun remained together in peace until a disagreement drove the court of the moon to split off centuries later, dividing the elven race into the high elves and the night elves. The courts of earth were renamed, fire becoming the court of summer, water the court of winter, wind the court of autumn, and earth the court of spring. Thus has it been to this day, and few even know that the fey were ever eight instead of four save for a handful of the gods, and ancient Mab, eldest of the queens.

Prior to the cataclysm, the eight courts represented more primal aspects of the natural world than the seasonal representations that the modern courts hold, and included aspects beyond the surface of Donevrion. The courts, or more specifically the sidhe, receive their power from the natural order, the vital cycles that they are charged with maintaining. Thus the disruption of those cycles, especially through supernatural means, directly threatens their very existence and in turn earns swift and sometimes brutal answers from the faeries. It is this aspect of them that often causes the sidhe to fight so viciously against demons, who are so warped by uncontrolled magic as to not only be divorced completely from the cycles of nature, but to damage and corrupt those cycles with their very presence.

The Gatherings

Spoiler

The faerie courts, four times each year, are drawn together when the world enters periods of great change. Every equinox and every solstice, when the seasons change, there is a Gathering, a grand celebration in the greatest holding of the court who is passing from the heart of their power to celebrate the rise of the next, though every court is always present in force, even the angels. Each and every Gathering is a party of epic proportions, a display of power and prowess and the key aspects and values of the court acting as host. Non-faeries guests are rarely seen at Gatherings, though there are always at least a handful who usually include those of great power and importance.

Each court hosts a different sort of party for each Gathering. The court of Summer holds a grand tournament, with champions from each court competing against one another to see who is the strongest. The court of Autumn holds a great hunt followed by a banquet, the last feast before winter sets in. The court of Winter holds a grand ball followed by a competition of wits, most often a journey of a select champion from each court through the dungeons of the Heart of Winter Coldest, and it is this contest that claims the most champions, even Mab's own. Finally, the court of Spring holds a commune including simple revelry and contests both martial and mundane, though the grandest of all is always the congress of artisans, a contest which has seen not only masterpieces of music and art created but produced a number of practical developments. The champion of each contest - the strongest warrior, the best hunter, the one most quick witted, and the one with the greatest creativity respectively - are given a grand prize indeed; A single wish from the hosting Queen, who is honor bound to do all in her power to grant it.

A History of the Eternal

Spoiler

To be written later

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Frequently Asked Questions
And assorted other stuff that makes me want to tear MY FUCKING HAIR OUT WHEN I HAVE TO ANSWER IT FOR THE TEN THOUSANDTH GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING TIME

I actively encourage people to edit this with things if they have the power, or PM me with rulings I've made in the shoutbox or via PMs, even if it doesn't particularly relate directly to lore.

Spoiler

Q: What's the difference between daemons and demons?

A: In DG, demons are mortals who were changed by either the Devourer or a demon powerful enough to convert them, or are the offspring of those that were transformed thus. Demons are made of flesh and blood and can be killed through most normal means, though they don't die of natural causes, nor do they require nearly as much food or water as a human. Daemons, on the other hand, are spirits who grow stronger by eating souls. Most typically a daemon comes into being when a creature with a spirit powerful enough to avoid being eaten by other daemons dies. It's pretty much impossible to truly kill a full daemon without something that can destroy, consume, or otherwise seal its spirit, since their physical bodies are pretty much just shells that they can shed at will.


Q: What is DG-world even called?

A: The planet is called Donevrion by its inhabitants, and the continent that the brunt of the story has taken place on is called Heloras, while the other major continents are Londorien and Arlos. Hell was called Enellon before the Devourer fucked it up the ass, and is now just called Hell. The same solar system also contains a number of other uninhabited planets, including Valothlond (a red-yellow planet close to the sun similar to Venus), Ellon (a small blue-green gas giant with multiple rings around it), Ladrione (a great big ice planet), Udebes (an ice planet sitting far away from the sun), Arithas (an orange and white gas giant), and Honevrion (a tiny rock at the edge of the solar system.)


Q: I want to do X derpy thing with shapeshifting like turn into a frog or have my character squeeze under a door like a rat!

A: No. The shapeshifting mutation isn't nearly that powerful. You still need to obey the law of conservation of mass, and you still need to keep all of your bones and organs relatively intact while using it. In terms of DnD, shapeshifting isn't Polymorph, it's Alter Self. You can eliminate the outward manifestations (and therefore any mechanical effects) of your mutations, manifest one step worth of mutations, or do little things like change skin or hair (but not eye) color. If there was a polymorph ability, it would cost EP and wouldn't be useable as a free action in combat like shapeshifting is.


Q: I want to phase through the floor with the aether spells that let me do that!

A: You can do this. But you'll be essentially freefalling until you hit the next surface, because those spells don't allow you to fly, don't allow you to breath dirt, and don't protect you from the fall damage in any way. You also can't materialize (without most likely killing yourself) until you're not inside of something other than air, and can't see through solid objects. So basically it's extremely dangerous.

Sort of Secret Planning Zone! No one looks in this thread, right?

Spoiler

Arlos
A huge-as-fuck wild jungle continent largely untamed. Has no real countries besides a few ports controlled by the empire from Londorien. Wolfir (wolf people!) and such in the jungle, Londoriens on the South-Eastern coast with some port settlements and stuff, mostly wilderness.

Heloras
Where everything is. Badaria, Crolia, Anudor, and the Amazon. Will be adding a new group of elves, several kinds of demons, devils, and possibly hunters to playable races.

Londorien
Smallest continent, about the size of Australia and New Zealand put together, controlled by one large republic that was once an empire but converted after a revolution. Many territories. Steampunk technology. Controlled by Londoriens, a race that I haven't fluffed out too much yet but who aren't humans or elves or anything known.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Item Lore
Delicious Treasure!

Spoiler

Greyheart/Darkheart - A small, round stone of pure magical corruption that forms inside of most warped or alien beings. It is a common misconception due to the name that these are the hearts of the creatures they reside within, but they are not. These are mostly used for minor enchantments and experiments to better understand magical corruption and the invaders as they pose little threat by themselves, so long as they're not consumed. If a character swallows one they will find themselves heavily corrupted and even mutated by the experience, although not necessarily immediately harmed. Consuming too many of the stones might have severe consequences.

Pulsating Greyheart/Darkheart - A greyheart or darkheart with more concentrated corruption within it, causing anyone holding it to feel like it's pulsating in their hand, that tends to be discovered in more powerful warped creatures. These are slightly more dangerous than the less concentrated kind, but they can be used in enchantments in lieu of their lesser variants. They're also twice as corruptive and mutative when consumed.

Greybrain/Darkbrain - A round stone the size of a normal human's head that's often found in creatures of unmatched power and magical corruption. These are incredibly dangerous, as they are powerful enough to subconsciously manipulate and corrupt an unwary bearer. Not much is known about the effects of these due to the danger of experimenting on them and their rarity, but they are usable in powerful enchantments.

Slime Amber - A hard substance that looks very much like an uncut gemstone with many layers, these layers ranging from the color of the slime it was harvested from to opaque. Not only are these very pretty and capable of being cut much like gemstones and glass, but they're very resilient in comparison to more delicate materials and they hold souls and spiritual energy very well which makes them an invaluable enchanting and crafting component because of it. Even the raw form can be fed small amounts of spiritual energy for safekeeping and later drawn from.

Monster's Fangs/Horns - These come in many different shapes and sizes, though the name is always applicable. Fangs or horns cut from a monster, usually one with some innate magical properties. These tend to be sharp or otherwise viciously shaped, making them useful for primitive and improvised weaponry, and they usually are fairly durable as such. A talented blacksmith or someone with a bit of magical talent can reinforce them and make them every bit as deadly and dangerous as metal weaponry, and their properties can be siphoned by an enchanter.

Hound's Tooth - Much like Monster's Fangs and Horns, only these are taken from Hellhounds and fey Warhounds.

Faerie's Horn - Horns removed from a satyr or gruff. They tend to be less well shaped for usage in an improvised weapon, but a creative craftsman might use them for decoration or even some practical purpose. They also have natural magics present due to their fae origins which are useful to enchanters.

Shorn Nectar - Thick, blue syrup that can be coaxed out of a shorn weed's stamen which is capable of impregnating females of most any race with alraunes. To put it simply: shorn weed cum. It's thick and incredibly sweet and has mild aphrodisiac qualities. It can be sterilized and processed in order to make a safe, aphrodisiac-free version of the stuff which is usually called shorn syrup. Great as a sweetener.

Small Hide/Beast Hide - Exactly what it says on the label. These can be harvested from the uncorrupted wildlife. The corrupted wildlife tends not to have much intact hide left, having lost most of its integrity to mutations, tumors, and other oddities, and the only thing of value likely to be found on corrupted spawn are the darkhearts within. Armor made from beast hides tends to be stronger than leather made from more domestic sources.

Chameleon's Skin - Skin harvested from a creature that has either mutated or otherwise been born with a chameleon-like ability to change colors. When carefully skinned it does not lose its effect and will continue to change colors according to its environment. Non magical efforts to refine or otherwise improve the durability of this skin for use as armor, however, do tend to irreparably damage its ability to change colors. These can be used as a reagent in an enchantment to transfer some of its capabilities to a piece of armor, and it can be refined by non-magical means enough to at least make it wearable, though a set of full armor made out of it wouldn't offer much protection from an attacker.

Horror Carapace - The chitinous shell of a tentacled horror or other similarly massive insect. Strong and light, making them useful in the creation of armor.

Venom Sack/Huge Venom Sack - A large venom sac, usually around fist-sized, from a giant, venomous creature. Though it is possible to use the venom directly from the sack on a weapon or other method of delivery, it's usually nowhere near as effective as when refined or used as an enchantment reagent. A huge venom sack, as the name implies, is a larger variant comes from an even larger venomous creature, and tends to have a greater reservoir of venom.

Faerie's Blood/Demon's Blood - Blood from a faerie or a full-blooded demon. Blood from these supernatural races is innately magical and useful for enchanting. It can also be imbibed or otherwise used as a focus to heighten a mage's spells or spirit wielder's powers for a short period of time before the effect is exhausted. Overuse can cause oddities.

Angel's Feather - Though the reason is not known to mortals, an angel, fallen or not, grows one magical feather on one of their wings. Younger, weaker angels do not always have one, which might suggest that it takes time to grow or for a preexisting feather to otherwise become magical. It's unknown how long it takes to reproduce one or if it's possible at all, and may vary from angel to angel. This lone feather is an item of great magical power, and is an incredibly powerful reagent for enchanting. When its magic is expended on mundane materials, it has the odd effect of turning the metals a silvery color and everything else a pearly white. In addition, if an individual with one of these in their possession would be killed or otherwise rendered unconscious, they may call upon its power in order to bring themselves back from the brink of defeat.

Nightmare's Mane - The fiery mane of a nightmare, the steeds of Hell. Said to burn forever, they are effective sources of energy, particularly when used for enchantments related to fire.

Fiery Mantle - The mane of a nightmare lord, larger and grander than that of its lesser cousin.

Giant Hide - A giant's hide. Not innately magical, but the giants have naturally thick and durable skin. Most giant hide armor still in use was handed down from the days when giants were more prevalent. Such armor is thicker and more durable than more common types of armor, but usually heavier.

Dragon Materials (Scales, Fangs, Claws, Hide) - In appearance, these vary from dragon to dragon, but one thing that is constant is their value in enchanting and crafting. They are as durable, deadly, and magical as their wielders. The scales are naturally light and pliable while still remaining nigh impenetrable. The fangs and claws are every bit as sharp as steel and even more resistant to breaking. Most of the difficulty in creating mighty dragon weapons and armor is in procuring tools strong enough to work with the raw materials.

Mountain Troll Materials (Hide, Hair, and Fangs) - Much like dragon materials, anything harvested from a mountain troll is worth its weight in denarii to an aspiring craftsman or enchanter. Usually the hair is green and the hide is brown, but from an ancient mountain troll they're stony grey. Mountain troll hide is incredibly lightweight and yet still incredibly resistant to blows and piercing. Mountain troll hair is said to be like woven iron. Their fangs aren't quite as impressive as those of a dragon, but they still make for fine weapons.

Angelforged Metal - A silvery-looking metal with unusual properties, Angelforged metal is the result of a blacksmith using an angel's magical feather as fuel for their forge. When combined with magical fire, especially the flame of intent, any ore that's smelted with the aid of the fire takes on a silvery appearance. Weapons and armor created this way are somehow more effective in the hands of those who are pure of heart and untainted by magical corruption, and heavier and less effective on those who are corrupted. No matter what type of ore is smelted in the flame, all metal produced has the same qualities, so cheaper and more widely available ores are often used in Angelforged equipment. Because of the flame's transmutational properties and the ability to greatly extend the flame's life by feeding it magical fire, so long as a blacksmith doesn't mind smelting nothing but angelforged metal, the availability of angelforged equipment is relatively high despite the prerequisite angel's feather.

Anudorian Copper - An ore found in the deserts of Anudor that was originally believed to be copper. When smelted it takes on a redder hue than traditional copper, and is incredibly soft and almost entirely useless for crafting conventional weapons and armor. It is incredibly conductive to spiritual energy however, and as such occasionally finds usage as a mage's or spirit wielder's focus weapon. It's less popular for armor and shields, as though it's less encumbering toward a mage's magics or a spirit wielder's powers it also conducts opposing mage's and spirit wielder's attacks toward the wearer and folds like paper under blows.

Darksteel - A material found primarily in Hell that smelts into a metal as black as night. Warped by immense magical exposure, items crafted from this are innately lighter and more durable than most other materials, easily surpassing normal steel. It is difficult and expensive to obtain any item made of this material on the mortal plane due to where it comes from.

Daemonmetal - Believed to be harvested from the very core of the world by Michael himself and used to forge the weapons of the gods, thus its name. Daemonmetal is lighter, faster, and stronger than any other material known to mortalkind. It is not known where the materials to make daemonmetal are actually harvested from, and there may not be a single blacksmith still alive capable of pulling its full potential from it. The only currently known way for a new daemonmetal object to be forged is to melt down an existing one, which usually means finding one of the rare artifacts and prying it from its owner's dead hands. Then it usually takes a team of experienced craftsmen and enchanters to reforge it into its new form, which despite being a mere shadow of what Michael might have created is still enough to shatter inferior metals. Such an item is also believed to have an innate will of its own, and will soon part ways with an wielder it believes too incompetent to use it well.

Shiversteel - An alloy forged of iron and an uncommon ore found primarily in the mountains of Crolia. It has an icy blue appearance and an unusual effect of stealing the heat from the air around it. This alloy is most commonly utilized as a means of cooling objects that might otherwise overheat or catch fire, though it is has been used to craft armor as a means of doing battle in places with hot temperatures without sacrificing protection and for weapons which suck the warmth from those it cuts.

Cold Iron - Cold Iron is created through a process that leaves the finished product as pure in iron content as possible but maintains the materials at a low temperature all throughout crafting, typically requiring that the craftsman also be capable of some magics or powers. The pureness of the iron has an increased effect against magical beings, and is even more effective against the fey than regular iron or steel. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold an edge very well and is particularly soft, making it overall less effective against non-magical opponents.

Faeriegold - Despite its name, faerie gold doesn't really originate from the fey. It has been called many names, including fool's gold, but it would end up known as faeriegold due both to the discovery of another substance that mimics gold's appearance but carries a different danger, and an old, presumably false, tale about a miner who was tempted by promises of gold to trade his wife and son to a nymph only to find fool's gold instead. Faeriegold nearly indistinguishable from true gold, but is much harder to work with. Faeriegold is also innately magical, though not in any predictable manner. Due to the innate difficulty in creating anything out of it and its fickle nature, faeriegold is not particularly popular for any sort of crafting.

Dragonglass - A.k.a. Obsidian. Usually used for the cutting edge of a weapon alone with another sturdier material as the base, and not for armor at all beyond decoration, though with magics for durability some pure dragonglass weapons and armors have been forged.

Bloodcrystal - A type of crystal found in the most magic tainted areas of the Pfthirian Jungle. It looks much like normal crystal with a hue ranging from pink to dark red. It's a popular material for amazonian spears as it's much sturdier than normal crystal, even without magics, and can penetrate even steel armor without much risk of shattering. Despite its durability, it still tends to be used as the edge on another material, much like dragonglass, as it's not easily repaired when it does chip or otherwise show wear.

Orcish Pattern Steel - An alloy created from an ore found primarily in the orc mountains, though also found sparsely in the lands stretching quite a way south of the Crolian-Badarian border. Also known as Badarian Blessed Steel, though only within the former Lich King's borders, as the Badarian legend is that the Lich King himself discovered the ore, and used it to create steel that could slice through any type of metal. Neither of these is true, of course, as the appearance of Orcish Pattern Steel in the hands of exiled clanless predates its supposed discovery by the Lich King, and though it is superior to regular steel it is far from the strongest material available for crafting weapons and armor.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

The Poisons of Nature
Diseases, Pests, and Plagues!

Spoiler

Not all of the things that inhibit the efforts of civilization to make life easy are world changing invasions, the acts of enraged gods, or the conflicts between differing cultures. Some are tiny, even so small that they can't even be seen by even the sharpest of eyes, but are no less deadly for their small size. Parasites, crop and livestock destroying swarms, outbreaks of disease, fungal infestations, and spiders and snakes possessed of deadly venom are just a small number of the minor pests that plague mankind, and while the immortal races may be immune to some of them, the mortal races that make up the vast majority are not.

Entries in this lore bit will be formatted like so:

Spoiler

Name: The colloquial name for the creature
Locale: Where it can be found
Dangers: Why it's a problem
Description: What it looks like
Mechanics: What it does mechanically, if anything

Blank one!
Name:
Locale:
Dangers:
Description:
Mechanics:

Organization
Diseases
Pests
Plants

Diseases

Name: The Chills
Locale: Everywhere.
Dangers: Really a minor inconvenience.
Description: A common disease that causes uncontrollable shivering and the body to chill, as well as cold-like symptoms. It crosses the race barrier between humans, elves, orcs, and Su-Ku-Ta without trouble, and the sheer number of strains of it ensures that it often crops up even for people that have already had it. Generally more of a nuisance than a serious problem, it can rarely kill very weak children if left untreated.
Mechanics: Initial infection requires a Resistance check with a DC between 15 and 35 (depending on the potency of the strain and the level of exposure) that treats the victim's Body stat as if it were their primary stat, depending on the potency of the strain. A weak strain causes a minor (-2 to -5) penalty to d20 rolls and Dodge, and reduces the victim's maximum health by 5 to 10 until removed from their system. A stronger strain can cause additional penalties, but no more than 30 health can be removed. A character reduced to 0 maximum health by this disease falls into a coma and eventually dies without considerable medical attention. Attention when symptoms appear can reduce the duration of 1d6+3 days by half. Warped (and more corrupted creatures) creatures are immune.


Name: Malaria
Locale: South Anudor, Southern and Eastern Badaria, and the Amazon.
Dangers: A dangerous, parasite-born disease.
Description: The same as in the real world!
Mechanics: The initial stage, in which the victim only has cold-like symptoms, appearing some 10-16 days after initial infection, causes little harm and provides only a -4 penalty on Dodge and on d20 rolls. Two days after that, the first attack begins, forcing the victim to make a Resistance check against a DC of 45 that treats the victim's Body stat as if it were their primary stat or gain 2d4 stacks of the Weakened status, with a successful check only causing two of them. A character takes a -10 penalty to their max HP for every stack of Resistance caused by this disease, and should their max HP fall to 0 or less they pass into a coma and die quickly unless treated promptly. Even with treatment, the character must check against the DC of the disease every day, with a bonus of +15 provided by hourly castings of Greater Restoration by a character with the Physician Mage Feat, or die anyway. Supernatural creatures and faeries are immune.



Pests

Name: Anudorian Weasel Bug
Locale: Anudor originally, spread to Amazonia, Badaria, and Crolia via trade routes.
Dangers: None to non-humanoid humanoids, but dangerous to crops and alraune.
Description: A small white grub-like creature with six small claws and a spiky maw capable of moderately painful bites, this creature also has a long tongue contained within. It was a rare problem native to Anudor before some of them made their way to Badaria, where they had much more food and far fewer natural predators, at which point they began to spread at incredibly rapid rates. They are entirely herbivorous, but they often ruin a root vegetable's produce for human consumption by eating away at it with their tongues, which penetrate deep and allow infection to spread while simultaneously ruining the substance of the plant. The produce can be saved if they are removed quickly enough, and they tend to start out around the surface as their ability to burrow is limited. They breed by laying small, ovaline eggs on the bottoms of leaves, often on those of valuable herbs and spices which tend to make such crops useless as well. Dangerous to alraune in that it can feed on them, which is excruciatingly painful.
Mechanics: None normally. Can deal 1 damage per round to alraune, and be removed and killed as a grapple action.


Name: Brown Rot Spider
Locale: Southern Badaria.
Dangers: Deadly toxic bite that causes necrosis of the blood.
Description: A small brown spider with a black X on its back, this relatively docile arachnid nonetheless has a dangerous bite if cornered. Its venom causes the blood cells to die and rot, causing excruciating pain across several days before it passes from one's system, and can cause permanent scarring or even be fatal.
Mechanics: The initial bite deals no damage, but 1 minute later the venom begins to take effect, dealing 1d6 damage per hour that does not heal naturally for the next 1d3+2 days. Proper medical attention can reduce the effect to 1 damage per hour, but only magical healing can permanently repair the damage quickly. Without magical healing, the health is restored 2 points per week to a maximum of 3/4 of the damage dealt.


Name: Cuddlemites
Locale: The Amazon.
Dangers: Flesh eating parasite.
Description: An extremely dangerous creature native to the deep jungles, these small insects are deceptively small but capable of causing a death of excruciating agony. The queen cuddlemite is a small beetle-like insect about the size of a cockroach that will hunt down a suitable host, often a living creature of human size or greater, and attempt to bite them. The initial bite is painful but not particularly harmful, and the queen dies shortly afterwards, but the real issue are the half dozen or so eggs injected under the skin. If those eggs aren't killed or removed before they hatch the next day, the infestation becomes extremely difficult to remove as the smaller "drone" cuddlemites spread across the body by burrowing through and eating the host's flesh, laying eggs all along the way. Eventually the host will die in excruciating pain as flesh and organs are riddled with the parasites, and then the remaining drones will consume the corpse until there is little more than the empty husk of the skin over their victim's bones. Eventually they will start eating one another, and at that point the cuddlemites will begin to create queen eggs rather than drone eggs before all of the drones are killed off.
Mechanics: Initial bite deals 1 damage. The host takes 2 damage when the eggs hatch, and then double that recursively every twelve hours until they die. Removing the eggs after the initial bite manually causes 4 damage but requires no check besides a DC 35 Perception check to notice them, or can be done via the Lesser Restoration spell. Removing an infestation requires either a magical ritual (as the limb regeneration one) or a complex and dangerous surgery that leaves the host hospitalized for up to a week. Supernatural creatures and faeries are immune.


Name: Emperor Scorpion
Locale: Anudor.
Dangers: Painful venom.
Description: The same as in the real world!
Mechanics: The venom of an emperor scorpion does little damage to humanoids other than arachne, only 1d6. Arachne are particularly vulnerable to it, however, and take 2d12 and must make a DC 30 Resistance check or be stunned the round in which they are stung.


Name: Locusts
Locale: Badaria, Anudor.
Dangers: To crops only.
Description: The same as in the real world!
Mechanics: None.


Name: Mosquitoes
Locale: Everywhere.
Dangers: Blood sucking insect, can spread disease.
Description: The same as in the real world!
Mechanics: None unless they spread a disease.


Name: Ticks
Locale: The Amazon, Badaria, Crolia.
Dangers: Parasitic bug, can spread disease.
Description: The same as in the real world!
Mechanics: None unless they spread a disease.



Plants

Name: Anudorian Fire Rose
Locale: Anudor
Dangers: Mild skin irritation
Description: A pretty rose with an unusual flame-like pattern on its petals that normally grows in dry, arid regions in thick, prickly bushes. This flower is often used in potion making, as its petals have a unique reflective quality that allows them to absorb magical energies when properly treated. This comes as a result of its unique defensive mechanisms, the thorns protecting its stem and the bright orange petals containing much of its moisture all coated in a thin veneer of a mildly toxic substance that can cause a rash if it comes into contact with unprotected skin.
Mechanics: None.


Name: Bloodfern
Locale: The Pfitherian Jungle.
Dangers: Plant that is dangerous when touched.
Description: A small fern that tends to curl along the base of tree trunks and that are marked by the bright red lining along the primary veins of their leaves, these plants have developed a defense mechanism against being eaten. Touch one's bare skin to the surface of this plant's leaves causes its toxin to coat the skin and seep in gradually. The initial touch is just a little bit rough, but about an hour later the skin begins to redden as tiny amounts of blood seep out due to the poison rupturing the blood vessels and preventing the blood from coagulating. A dull ache begins a few moments later, and continues for several hours as the unfortunate victim begins to outright bleed from the affected area, the skin bloating with blood as it leaks out. Severe cases can even cause enough bloating to make the skin rupture, resulting in even more blood loss and tissue damage.
Mechanics: A touch of this plant causes damage depending on how much the touch was. Merely brushing against it causes 1d4 bleed damage per hour until magical healing is applied or for 3 hours. A greater brush can cause 1d10 bleed damage per hour for the same. Handling the plant for extended periods causes 2d12 damage per hour for 4 hours. Bloodfern has alchemical uses, and a single growth can provide between 5 and 20 denarii worth of material depending on its size. This can be sold or used as components to make potions.


Name: Poison Ivy
Locale: Badaria, the Amazon, Southern Crolia
Dangers: A plant that can cause an irritating rash
Description: The same as in the real world!
Mechanics: None. Naturally Warped (and more corrupted creatures) creatures are immune.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Lore

Relics
Legendary Artifacts

Spoiler

Thunderstrike and the Zephyr Blade, Weapons of the Thunder God
Forged by the god Michael centuries ago, Thunderstrike and the Zephyr blade were said to be his finest works before the great craftsmen made the blade that was to be his undoing. It is said that even in a weakling's hands a blow from Thunderstrike could smash down an entire castle with a single blow, and with the immeasurable strength of the thunder god Doraleous behind it the weapon could crush a mountain in a single blow. The Zephyr blade, in turn, was said to be able to cleave through any material crafted before it in a single swing, and strike harder and more quickly than a bolt of lightning. Both indestructible and possessed of magics beyond comprehension, the two weapons are both suitable for use in one or both hands, and are said to never leave the side of the Thunder God.


Soulshatter, the Godslayer
The very last creation ever forged by the smith god Michael, Soulshatter is the weapon wielded by Matthias. A long, curved blade in the style originating from the Amazon, Soulshatter strikes not only at the body of a thing, but at its spirit, earning its namesake and breaking apart all but the most powerful souls in a single strike. Those that survive the first hit are rarely able to mount a defense against the second, and no being in existence has ever taken a second strike from Soulshatter and lived. No weapon or armor save for those forged by a god and blessed with enchantments beyond the power available to a mortal smith are able to stand up to the edge of the perfectly balanced blade, and like all weapons forged by Michael the blade itself is completely indestructible. What's more, the spirit contained within is said to have been tainted by Matthias' influence, causing it to hunger for powerful souls just as he does. The enchantment upon the blade that allows it to kill even gods as effectively as it does has only ever been replicated once, an inferior version crafted by whichever being created The Colt, and they have not created a similar weapon since then, leaving the original unchallenged as the most powerful weapon present on Donevrion.


The Metathran Lotus, the Four Shards of Eternity
Legendarily the armor crafted and wielded by an ancient hero in the days before the eight elven courts became four, the Metathran Lotus are a set of objects legendarily linked by the pattern worked into the metal and the coat of arms inscribed upon them, that of a flower native to the Amazon that is possessed of a deadly poison. According to the story, the wielder of the four pieces was set to become a god after winning a battle against a primordial dragon with seven heads, but the god king Avo feared the warrior and, when he eventually died of age, bound his spirit into the four pieces and then scattered them. The ancient warrior, whose name was lost to time centuries ago, was supposedly able to use his sorcery to manipulate time itself, and his spirit was said to pass on that power to any who managed to assemble the whole set of his treasured belongings.

None has managed to do so since the unnamed warrior died, however, and even though each item is possessed of powerful enchantments, none have ever displayed any signs of an intelligence working within. Even so, each is possessed of potent abilities all their own. The shield, a kite shield made of bronze and stained dark violet, is said to be able to protect its wielder from even the most powerful of magics in addition to being as effective a barrier against more mundane harm as one could ask for. The helmet of the lotus, an ornate full helm with the lotus crest carved into the forehead, is said to protect the wearer from attacks against the mind and grant them increased power when wielding magic. The armor of the lotus is the third piece, and the one with the least written about it, though it is the only piece to have been sighted with each other part of the set since the items were split. Finally, the lotus amulet, an intricate piece of an unknown metal worked into the shape of the deadly flower for which the set is named, is often viewed more as a curse than as a gift, for with the immense knowledge and power that it provides comes an unending, irresistible madness. None have ever resisted its effects as far as the legends say, and no wearer of any one piece of the lotus has held it for very long in any of the tales that have spread around it.


Elderspike, the Huntress's Guide


Plaguespitter, Bringer of Pestilence


Shadowshift, One with the Darkness


The Crackling Veil


The Boots of Blinding Speed


Stormbringer


Neverstar, the Heart of the Void
The object known as the Neverstar was discovered in a deep crater in the depths of the Amazonian jungle in the year 379 BAI, a year that was otherwise largely insignificant. The artifact, dubbed the Heart of the Void some time later, was found in a crater located in the center of a village some weeks after its impact. The villagers, for reasons initially unknown, were found all dead, all apparently killed by one another or by their own hands. The black stone let off a glow that seemed to absorb light rather than emanate it, producing a field of darkness around itself even in bright sunlight, and upon being touched by one of the guards of the caravan let out a violet pulse that froze the man and everyone around him in their tracks. A moment later he went berserk, and needed four men to hold him down so that the wizard accompanying the caravan could knock him out. That sorcerer was no mere hedge mage, and that fact alone saved the lives of the men who had found it, for he recognized that the strange artifact was possessed of unnatural and evil power.

The star was left there for some time, until the mage could craft a box capable of containing it, and after very careful scooping it into the container and sealing it the caravan started off. The dark object seemed to draw evil to it even within its protective shell, for the caravan was assailed by every possible misfortune and enemy along the way, but eventually it arrived at Celesis where the merchant who had discovered it sold it to the royal family for a pittance of its true value. The sorcerer who had bound it cautioned against exploring its use, but the royal family of the great kingdom paid him no heed and sent him away, and then began to carefully study the dark object. It was possessed of immense power, unlike any that a mortal had ever harnassed before to their reckoning, and though it was obviously dangerous the lords of the wise abandoned caution and sought to harness that power.

Though they were successful, to a degree, that power came at a dear cost. Madness crept into the mind of the king as he used tiny amounts of the Neverstar's might, using its potent energies to craft items of massive power all their own. He became deranged, and in his madness threatened the whole of the kingdom. Only the return of the sorcerer who had originally found the star saved the city from civil war, and even then the king and queen, as well as their first born heir, were all killed as a result of it. The first act of the newly risen queen was to have the Neverstar sealed away in a chamber that could contain its awesome might, never to be wielded again. Though he was offered the title of royal adviser after aiding in the crisis, the elven magus who had bound the stone left Celesis shortly thereafter, and promptly vanished from history as far as any could tell.


The Longbow of Ever Complaining
At first glance a simplistic longbow with no abnormal qualities, this heavily enchanted strip of wood is actually a powerfully enchanted weapon that had seen more than two centuries of service in the hands of an elven champion. The enchantments on it allowed it to fire farther than some small artillery pieces, and it could add power of any primal element to its shots in addition to the expected bonuses of being exceptionally powerful and accurate. The quantity of enchantments present on it allowed the weapon some semblance of intelligence, however, and somehow it also gained the ability to speak aloud. It made use of this talent to annoy its original wielder until, after being wounded in one of the first wars between a Badaria newly unified by the Lich King and Crolia, he retired and passed it on. The weapon's ability to artfully complain about any action while simultaneously insulting whoever was using it only developed over time, and thus did it receive its title.


Devildriver
A rare sort of weapon, this heavily enchanted repeating crossbow seems to be crafted entirely of a strange silvery metal that, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be angelforged faeriegold. Upon taking a hold of the weapon, a wielder finds that not only is it a capable ranged weapon, but it can shapeshift itself into a long metal chain with bladed edges for use in hand to hand combat. The arrows it fires are, as is to be expected of a heavily enchanted weapon, incredibly accurate and deadly to the point that they seem to seek the hearts of their targets, but that plus its immense hopper of ammunition and enhanced range seem to be the only enchantments directly affecting it. When in its whiplike form, the Devildriver is subject to all of the bonuses available to its ranged form plus the ability to separate and briefly unleash a whirlwind of bladed links, warding off directed attacks and tearing apart any living creature unfortunate enough to be within ten feet of the wielder, who remains completely unharmed from this effect.


Himmelklyvaren, the Heaven Cleaver
The sword wielded by the god of honorable warfare, Boris, this is the only deific artifact ever to fall into mortal hands and permit itself to be used. A powerful daemonmetal weapon forged by the smith god Michael, this blade is said to be able to cut through any known material as if through empty air, that even the hardest dragonscales are rent apart by its cuts, and that as a channel for martial magics it has few equals. It is undoubtedly an incredibly powerful weapon, but the majority of its power allegedly remains locked away by the sentient spirit contained within the blade, even when one takes it whom the spirit believes is worthy of wielding it.


The Eye of Truth
A fist sized piece of carefully carved purple amethyst with a central slit in the center colored in a rosy red, this item is a powerful channel for spiritual and arcane energies, but is most often used as a focal point when working in complex and dangerous rituals. Created some four thousand years ago, crystal balls became popular tools for similar endeavors, but not even the best of them are as powerful a tool as the original. The Eye of Truth was confiscated from a traveling warlock by the Inquisition roughly ten years before the Alien Invasion, and it was lost afterwards somewhere in their abandoned headquarters after the Necropolis fell.


Wraithguard


Wotan's Spear
Wotan was a night elven hunter of some renown back in the year 681 BAI, a man born into poverty, into a group at the time who would be little more than slaves in the highly caste-based Amazonian city of Kodonga. His beginnings - and those of his legendary spear - were said to have been in the fighting pits of the lower classes, where it was said that he moved like water and lightning all at once. He quickly gained notoriety both for his skill in battle and for his honor, and by chance a noble of an agreeable temperament observed one of his battles and opted to raise Wotan up to his personal bodyguard.

The elven warrior quickly grew bored in his position, however, and by chance on one of his hunts outside of the city - for he had always possessed a passion for hunting even before rising above the poverty into which he'd been born - Wotan came upon the sight of the goddess Sivicine bathing beneath a waterfall. Though the elf was immediately smitten by the huntress's beauty, she was affronted by his peeping, and thus prepared to slay the man and have done with it for his transgression. His pleas for a fair chance appealed to her sense of sport, however, and she gave him a chance to prove himself and thus earn back his life. If he could hunt and slay a great beast, an elder drake who lived among a legion of her kind in the high mountains, she would not only spare him, but reward him.

Sivicine had assumed that this would be Wotan's death, and that he would know of it right then and there, but the elven hunter was crafty. He opted to add to the wager, claiming that he could not only kill the drake but claim it as a hunting beast, and when the goddess announced her skepticism he demanded that if he could prove his ability to make good on his claims, that she would have to spend a night in his bed with him. The goddess, again affronted by the hunter's straightforwardness, nonetheless agreed to those terms while thinking that she would easily be rid of the troublesome Wotan without having to expend any of her own effort.

Wotan was no loud-mouthed braggart, however. He went to that cliff, where the great beast waited through a legion of its own kind, and began his ascent. The drakes of the peak were restless, and sensed the elf coming well before he reached their nests, but Wotan counted on this. As the youngest of the beasts, those that were pushed closest to the ground by their elders, descended upon him, he hid among the rocks and threw forth a line, lassoing one of them and impaling it upon the jagged stones. The winged serpents, not the brightest creatures, eventually grew frustrated and returned to their nests, and soon forgot about Wotan. The elven hunter himself remained hidden there, cloaked in the blood-scent of one of the drakes, and it was with that camouflage that he eventually restarted his climb. The drakes, sensing him as one of their own while coated in its blood and wearing its hide, ignored him, and he soon reached the nests of the elder drakes where his true quarry waited.

The older beasts were not so easily fooled, but were also much more cautious when dealing with so obvious a threat, and so allowed him to pass with only a wary glare from each. On to the peak he went, and there he found the great white serpent, Akitanjo, waiting for him. The creature was not so frightened as its younger brethren, nor could the disguise of a younger drake fool her, and as soon as he walked within her lair she unleashed a roar and a gout of flame and attacked. For two hours they battled there before Wotan lured her out of her cave and into the open air. She took to the skies immediately, but Wotan had planned for this, and just as before he caught her with his rope. Akitanjo was no petty drakeling, however, and so hoisted the elf into the sky with her rather than be pulled to her death upon the sharpened cliffside. For two more hours they battled before the beast began to tire, and then the hunter played his trick.

Before he had gone to the mountain, Wotan had bartered with a sorcerer for an item that would grant him the power to speak the tongues of beasts. As the exhausted drake flew, the elf stood upon its back and held his spear against the back of its skull, but then, rather than deal the killing blow and undoubtedly die himself as both plunged to their doom, her offered Akitanjo a choice: Death to a mere mortal, or to spend a year and a day as his hunting bond.

When Sivicine saw the white drake land with the elf on its back, it is said that her surprise was such that she agreed to pursue the terms of her agreement without further thought, but whether the elf spent a night with the goddess or not, when he returned with his new mount, his prized weapon was forever changed as well. Though not as powerful as her own legendary weapon, Sivicine had imparted her blessing upon Wotan's spear, and though it was lost in the depths of the Pfitherian jungle by one of his sons many years later, the shortspear that Wotan pressed against Akitanjo's skull is undoubtedly one of the mightiest weapons ever wielded by a mortal man. It is said that, after his death, Wotan was taken up to the white drake's lair to be laid to rest, and that those carrying his coffin were allowed to pass without resistance even from the most unruly of the younger beasts. There the friends and family of the hunter found the drake with a stranger clad in a dark robe, and that both oversaw his internment in a tomb constructed within the drake's cave while those within felt their mutual sadness like a weight settled beside their own grief. When he had been buried, both the stranger and the drake were said to have burst into a song that crushed the hearts of those within anew, and when the last note of the drake's cry and the woman's mournful song had ended, she had simply vanished without a trace.

How much of the tale of Wotan is true or not remains a mystery to many, for none now live who bore witness to any part of it save perhaps for the huntress herself, but the legend has circulated across the Amazon for generations, and many believe the legend to be true as stated even among the circles of the nobility and the courtly scholars.


Ambisagrus, the Helm of Knowledge


Damara's Grasp


Heartripper and Stormclaw
These two gauntlets, forged from pure darksteel and filled with the essence twin demon knights, were discovered during the Fifth Invasion in Crolia, wielded then by the General of Hell, Azmodeus. Slain by an angel knight, the claws were taken by the angels and locked away, but the sentient weapons were more powerful than the angels had thought, and they ensnared a young angel working as an archivist and used her to escape. Her corpse was discovered some miles away, drained of energy and with its heart torn from its chest, seemingly by its own hand. After that, the deadly weapons have popped up in the hands of violent conquerors again and again, often controlling them to do its bidding.

The twin claws are said to be able to rend not only the flesh, but the very souls of those they shred, and no armor either crafted or natural is said to be able to withstand them. Both are pitch black and highly articulate steel gauntlets that offer full protection to the wielder's hands without hampering their range of motion any more than a pair of supple leather gloves might, but on command the fingers grow into claws capable of tearing apart any other material save for daemonmetal with ease, and are said to shape themselves perfectly to fit any wielder comfortably. Despite their relative similarity in design, right down to the gleaming rubies present on the back of each palm, the two gauntlets do have their differences. Stormclaw is often seen crackling with fell power and able to unleash bolts of devastating lightning by tapping into the wielder's energies. Heartripper is, while unable to conjure lightning as Stormclaw can, able to smash through materials as easily as it can tear, and when killing an opponent it will often possess its wielder and force them to tear its victim's heart from its chest. The gauntlets have defied all attempts to destroy them, seal them away, and separate them thus far, despite attempts by various factions including the dragon Intet, the Angelic Court, the Summer Court, the Badarian Inquisition, and the Theronian Royal treasury.


The Umbral Shield


The Six Gems of Power


The Colt
A mysterious weapon that appeared with the advent of gunpowder weapons, this five cylinder revolver has cropped up from time to time, displaying no magical presence to those attempting to detect such and able to fire only bullets that are found for it despite the efforts of the very best gunsmiths. The relatively primitive handgun is heavy and unwieldy, but is also durable enough to withstand any punishment known and has never been seen to jam. No creature ever shot with it, no matter how powerful, has every survived the initial hit even if the bullet hit in an area that would not be a lethal shot.


Neptune, the Trident of King Elric


The Black Dragon Claw


Helltooth
A shortsword in the style used by the legions of the ancient Badarian Empire in the time of the First King, this legendary sword is said to burn with the fires of Hell itself, though it actually has no demonic powers to speak of and also no demonic origins. It was forged from the bones of a great dragon slain by a hero whose name is long since forgotten, and then handed down through three generations of his family before being stolen and then subsequently lost. Some ten thousand years old, this weapon shows no signs of weakness or wear despite its age and is still deadly sharp. Having changed owners many times over its centuries of use and seen many battles, it is currently held as a curiosity in the home of a Theronian noble.


The Lover's Crown
Once, long ago in the ages of strife after the death of the First King, the goddess Glissa entered into a grand ball held by a noble Badarian household long driven to extinction. It was a grand party, with the best entertainment, the finest foods, and of course the most luxurious wines available at the time, and the Lady of Revelry enjoyed herself for a time before settling upon challenging the second son of the Host to her set of games. The young man, ambitious but set to be left as little more than a servant to his brother as was the custom at the time, won a wish in the tiebreaker game, but upon seeing the goddess of revelry in her true glory was not as spellbound by her beauty as most who defeat her are. Greed was stronger in his heart than lust, greed and ambition, and so instead of taking a night in her bed he demanded that the goddess retrieve for him the crown of the king of the gods as prize for defeating her at her set of games.

Mildly surprised but not greatly so, for he wasn't the first to demand something other than sex, Glissa smiled and vanished, returning to the stronghold of the gods on Mount Truomm. She of course knew that Avo, the king of the gods of Heloras, did not wear any physical piece of metal to signify his title, but the goddess knew that the spirit of his desires could easily fulfilled. The goddess Venus wore a tiara, after all, but it was a thing of no value to the queen of the gods, and she relinquished it at Glissa's request with little more than a curious look at the odd request. The simple golden band was grown and reshaped by Glissa's power, until it resembled perfectly the image that the greedy young noble's had envisioned for his prize.

She returned and handed the crown over after an hour and a minute of absence, and the young man took it greedily while the snickering goddess departed, for she had handed him what was to her a worthless piece of metal. Unknown to both parties, however, the crown had long been in the presence of beings of immense power, and Glissa's efforts to change it had also shaped the magical energies that the metal had absorbed, placing upon the object a terrible curse. As he held the divine gift in his hands, the young noble reveled like he never had before. Here was a feat unlike any that his elder brother could ever hope to best! The very crown of the king of the gods! His father would surely name him the heir, would surely recognize his worth now! All would see his worthiness now!

The moment that he placed the crown upon his head, however, the item's terrible curse enacted itself. Greed had possessed him to demand it, and so greed was his reward. The young man did indeed rise to the head of his family, for the crown caused those weak of mind and heart to obey the wearer without question, and there was little that cunning could do against such loyalty. Where greed was fulfilled came envy, however, and no true loyalty could be inspired when the young nobleman relied so much upon the power of the crown. That envy was his death a year and a day after he had gained the crown, and the death of his family as well, when those who envied its power came to claim it. It passed to the next owner only for the same fate to befall them, their doom certain after a year and a day, but after that it is lost to history along with the names of its earliest victims, though it has appeared from time to time, always bringing destruction upon those who wear it.