Backup Lago

"There were no planes of existence. There was nothing. Just the Void. And a bright shining light. It was not a light we could see, it was not really white either, but it would be the only way to explain the existence of such a Deity in contrast to the emptiness of the Void. None knows why, how or when this Deity existed. It is, in-fact, heresy to speculate on such matters. The all knowing God was this Deity.

Truly none can describe the majesty of the creator, the one and only. The Merciful Creator of the Seven Skies. With his intent, and only his intent, the World of Aegis was created. All he had to do was simply want it to occur and it happened. The rolling seas, proud mountains and vast landscapes, all in a second, created by God."

 

From the ancient history lore that's been official for years.

THE WANDERING WIZARD SPEAKS THE TRU7H

It's been treated the Wandering Wizard's tale for ages, that is to say, it's IC rather than OOC.

I think the way Jist phrases it (but likely not how he meant it) implies the Creator isn't a thing, which is wrong. The Creator is definitely part of the LotC. However, all lore is set up so that A: If you RP the Creator exists then lore will never contradict you and B: if you RP that the Creator exists only in the scriptures of the Wandering Wizard and later Oren the lore will never contradict you. If the Creator is real is completely up to the individual player and the staff or Lore Team will never force or confirm it either way.

Why change this (and remember it was changed ages ago back when I was LM)? When it was fact it railroaded all IC religions into following it. The Dwarven Brathmordakin, for example, started out as a novel idea and then suddenly became an exact copy of Wandering Wizard's tale with the Creator swapped out for the Brathmordakin, and all of their gods labelled as either The Creator or an aengudaemon OOC. This way, IC religions aren't railroaded: aengudaemons are indisputed fact but any higher transcedent power the players are free to create and roleplay however they choose.

Trying to appease your atheist elf friends, aren't you?

A huge percentage of the server acknowledges the creator as god, therefore making it a player made religion. The lore has always said that the creator is real, and now you just think you can say a player made culture and religion isn't valid because you don't like it? The original story even acknowledges the creator. If you really hate people who believe the true faith that much, you should be open about it and not try to screw true believers over behind their back.

As polite and civil as ever, I see.

I was the architect behind this, and a year ago too.

-can sense fear

You're aware people'll just RP not being scared, yes?

Four minutes after dawn, the first arrows fell.

Ranks of Elsillumir, clad in gleaming silver lit in orange from the dawn sun, were lined upon the Haelunor cliff that overlooks the Wood Elven city of Leyulin. Known as the Weeping Blades, the Sillumir were armed not with swords but with the bow. Under the command of Kalenz Uradiir they drew arrows and fired indiscriminately into the Wood Elven streets, targeting guard and civilian alike. Not a word was said, no demand was made beyond those made days before.

It is said war only breeds war, and within minutes the Leyulin guards had mustered and were returning fire. But the High Elven positions were superior: from their cover in Haelunor's tree line they were all but invunerable.

The Wood Elves sent to the dwarven capital of Kal'Karaad for help, and within an hour a ragtag band of dwarven warriors under the loose command of Lori Oathcast arrived in the city. Two wood elves, a guard and a citizen who stepped into the line of fire, fell to High Elven arrows.

The wood elven and dwarven forces pulled back to plan, but the Elsillumir did not relent their deadly barrage of the city. Then, in a great charge the elves and dwarves ascended the tallest tower of Leyulin and flung themselves into the cliff's treeline. The same canopy that had been the High Elves's shield was the dwarves' landing cushion and the force swarmed into the city. Those few Sillumir overzealous in their firing on the city were slain by the dwarven sally, and the rest rapidly pulled back to Haelunor's keep. The dwarves took control of the streets, but under Lori's tempered command discipline held and the massacring, looting and pillaging that often accompanies such attacks was prevented.

Pursued by the dwarves into the keep, the Elsillumir revealed their hand. The only ascend into the keep was trapped: gates slammed down and boiling liquid descended from the ceiling. One dwarf met a grizzly, firey end, and the rest of the dwarves pulled back. After it was clear the High Elven raiders had barricaded themselves in their keep, the horn of dwarven retreat sounded. They had thwarted the arrow attack on Leyulin and the wood elven town was safe.

For now.

(SupremacyOps approved battle account, ie: not crazy biased :P)

"Due to the the events of today I will be unable to attend unless the location of the event is changed. The Sillurimian have commenced a campaign of blatant terrorism against the town of Leyulin, taking potshots with bows against civilians seemingly for sport. Until Haelunor's military wing is firmly back under the control of a peaceful and noble Sohaer or a satisfactory explanation for this apparent mindless masscre and lack on control on the Sillumir's part is given by the Haelunor Foreign Office I will be unable to associate with the Silver City."

- Brandt of Oathcast

Donors are donors, not customers.

Sounds like a pain in the ass to me.

Adding chaos to the system shall not assist magical roleplay, it diminishes it. All who hold something unique will find themselves overwhelmed or circumvented because "Mr no name diety who I did name anyways gave me x magic". If I can attribute my enchanting to aenguldaemonic intervention that means I may access aenguldaemonic powers, creation of boons and the likes without lore master permission or anything of the sort.

"Aengudaemonica Nemo can grant the equivalent of any non-restricted magic to their followers"

ie: you can't do anything with it you couldn't do anyway.

Beats something changing with magic and the wizards going "eh, skygods did it."

A concept from the world lore overhaul I was working on back when I was an LM. Not actually sure what happened to that. You didnt stop working on it after I stopped being there to push it along, did you guys? D:

The purpose of this one is to allow players to have unofficial "patrons" for their order or cult magics that aren't entirely fictional without having to get an aengudaemon through the lore system. They usually either fail to or they succeed and then the aengudaemon lies unused.

Tahariae. Xan. Aeriel. Yeu Rthulu. Ondnarch. Metzli. Garzadriel. Iblees. These are the names of powerful aengudaemonica that have or had goals in this world and gathered followers to enact their will. It is unknown to mortals if they are more powerful in absolute or if the number and power of their followers is what gives them greater influence over the world than other immortal beings.

The powerful and famed aenguls, daemons and aspects are not the only ones who seek to meddle in our world, however. Many other weaker, minor aenguls and daemons exist. The more prideful appear in visions and dreams to potential followers and offer magical powers in exchange for service and worship. Others care not for reknown and find followers amongst  those who worship gods who do not seem to act in the world such as the Creator or the Brathmordakin. They are the Aengudaemonica Nemo, the Nameless Ones. Aengudaemonica Nemo are weak: their followers do not wield the incredible powers that the Undead, Ascended or Golden Lance wielded.

While an Aengudaemonica Nemo's followers may name it, they refuse to give themselves names of their own. As an Aengudaemonica Nemo's order or cult of followers and worshippers grows, its influence over the world grows also. An Nameless One that gains sufficient following may fully reveal itself and its identity and join the pantheon of known, named aengudaemonica, often adopting the name given to it by its followers.

Aengudaemonica Nemo can grant the equivalent of any non-restricted magic to their followers: they are essentially RPed as an alternate source to the Void. All they officially do is grant powers: any visions a player RPs or names given to it could either be the work of the aengudaemon or hallucinations and dreams on the part of the follower. As such, Aengudaemonica Nemo named by players are not official aengudaemons. They can, however, transition to a full named aengudaemon if they gain sufficient IC reknown that they are known amongst the playerbase, have a significant IC following and are approved by the Lore Team.
 

You're setting a standard, making lore undefinable, and thus opening too many variables for something to go wrong. Adding chaos to chaos doesn't make order.

League of Legends announced they will be cleaning out their lore, and trying again. Why? Because they tried expanding on a story which wasn't present in the first place.

Lotc has this same problem. Continuing to add snippets of lore, to an overall undefined, murky system. Coherency and clarification is what magic needs, if anything. The Void is a fantastic core, it just needs its lore to be more thoroughly flushed out.

I don't agree with this addition in the least, and believe it'll serve as a greater detriment, then benefit

Setting a standard? Not sure I follow.

The idea here is that the laws of magic aren't constant with respect to time: what you can do with magic changes as time goes on. That's already an OOC fact: the magic system changes from time to time, the rules change and plugins come and go. The idea here is to explain those minor changes into lore so that every time it happens it doesn't get bogged down in a lore retcon: the rules change deemed necessary happenes and it's explained IC by the laws of magic changing.

The thanhic powered golem was created to replace the soulbound golems. Functionally identical, thanhic golems were meant to render soulbounds obsolete. Soulbinding was leading to contrived PKs and a dark element to golemancy that was completely at odds with golems' nature. When I implemented thanhic golems through the Last of The Scriberfolk events in Anthos, I expected soulbinding to die out. It didn't.

I've no idea why its popularity endured, but I figured, if soulbounds are still around and coexisting with thanhics, I might as well differentiate them a bit and make them into an interesting golem variant in their own right.

Bound Beyond Death

Background

A golem core is both power core and mind to a golem. A golem's body is little more than a rune-operated puppet and periscope for the core. The core itself is a relic of a bygone age. Knowledge of the principles of operation are long gone: golem core forging is simply following a set of instructions handed down from golemancer to student perfectly. A golemancer understands the mechanics of the core no more than an orc understands the molecular chemistry within the boar he's roasting on a stick.

Golem cores are made of perfect arcaurum, heated to molten and then cooled through a very precise process involving runic magics such as to create a solid cube of pure arcaurum without defects. Basic alchemy is often involved in the process. Damage to cores introducts defects to the golem core, impeding its function irreversibly, and severe damage can drive a golem beserk or cause it to creatively misinterpret instructions to destructive effect.

In a thanhic golem, at the heart of the core is a blue crystal of the magical material thanhium. Thanhium coverts heat into an internalised form of mana and serves the magical power source of the golem.

Before thanhium was rediscovered by the modern descendants in Anthos there was another way to power golems. With a few slight alterations to the forging process and the omission of thanhium (often instead incorporating some of the red stone material known as eruthium) a golem core can be made into a soulbind core. If in physical contact with (usually by being hammered into the chest of) a Descendant or Kharajyr when they die the soul is unable to pass on to the next world and is intercepted by the core and trapped within. The soul's link to the Void and the realms beyond serves as a mana source for the golem much as thanhium does, powering its body and mind.

The unnatural process is excruciating for the soul. Sometimes the individuality, personality and mind is completely annihilated by the process, resulting in a creature very similar to a thanhic golem, if a little more unstable. This not, however, always the case.

The Soulbound Golem

A soul bound to a golem core remains conscious. Thanhic golems appear to form their own consciousness or at least respond as if they are sentient: soulbound golems retain the consciousness of those killed to create them. The experience is hellish: the consciousness can submit to the oblivion and its personality and memories be completely annihilated in the process. Those who survive the binding process often remember very little of it: those soulbound golems that fully recall the agony of the binding go insane and usually must be destroyed.

The forging process of making a golem core changes the nature of arcaurum: it ceases to behave as a metal and becomes much more glasslike. A normal golem core appears as a brilliant translucent golden cube with intricate runic carvings both on the sides of and somehow within the material, with a crystal of thanhium elegantly fused into its centre. A soulbound core lacks the crystal. When empty it appears as a thanhic core would without a crystal, but when filled the core is filled with a murky red mist, like blood suspended in water.

An individual with the will or luck to suffer through the soulbinding retains their memory and personality. Deprived of all sensory input while trapped in the core they enter a sleep state, and the longer they are in it the more their memories fade away like forgotten dreams.

Upon being placed into a golem core the first thing a soulbound golem usually does is scream. The second thing they usually do is try to move and fall over. Used to having a mortal body, the clunkly movements of a golem form take a lot of getting used to. Upon realising what has happened to them a soulbound golem can also go insane in horror and it usually has to be broken to them carefully. It cannot be kept from them however. An awakened soulbound golem knows something is wrong: they feel completely numb and have no sense of temperature: deprived of the sensations of a mortal body everything feels wrong.

Soulbound golems, like normal golems, cannot feel pleasure or pain. Their emotions are dulled, they have no concept of adrenaline, they can only sense touch where touch runes are fitted (usually fingers) and they lack the senses of smell and taste. (Keep these in mind when roleplaying them: you are not playing your old character completely intact). This total numbness combined with the strength of the golem combined with its clunkly, nonfluid movements take some getting used to and soulbound golems often take a few elven days to become fully in control of their bodies.

A soulbound golem retains its previous personality, albeit probably broken, and any memories that survived the binding process. This mortal consciousness is not truly compatible with the golem core: soulbound golems all have a split personality between their own mind and the placid, naive and subservient thanhic golem-like persona. The mortal mind remains in control by force of will, in times of stress or distress the mortal consciousness can withdraw and the basic thanhic golem personality takes over until the mortal one can reassert itself. This persona lacks the personality and memories of the individual bound to the core and takes on the Bro-ken. For-mal. Spee-ch. Of. The. Go-lem. It is not unheard of for a soulbound golem to mimic a thanhic in order to put others at ease or in order to deceive.

Soulbound golems retain memories and personality but they are not the old individual "ascended" to stone form. Life as a soulbound golem is a hellish experience: they have lost their free will: they are still forced to obey commands they are given and suffer from an inability to effectively create direction of their own.

Soulbound golems still have Imperas and are compelled to obey their commands: if they resist they are overwhelmed with psychological pain until they break, the "thanhic persona" takes over and they act like a normal golem. Like thanhics it is not possible for a soulbound to successfully resist a command. Soulbounds also suffer from a lack of initiative: they require direction from their Impera and struggle to create purpose of their own. If a soulbound golem were to run from its Impera to avoid being commanded it would soon find itself not knowing what to do with itself, unable to think, and would soon find itself returning to its master as if in a trance.

Soulbound golems do not speak like mortals. They still speak mostly in the golem's voice and pronounce syllables as individual words (U-sing th-is t-yping con-ven-tion), but they add much more accent, colloqiual and personality to their speech. They retain their old understanding of language and can make jokes, throw insults and use sarcasm although they do so in the golem's voice and still suffer from the speech rune's inability to inflect (they cannot use ! or ? marks)

Like a thanhic, an soulbound cannot be its own master: it is shackled to its Impera. For the character, being a soulbound golem is an unliving hell. They have lost their free will, their body feels numb and wrong and they are doomed to this state of potential undeath for as long as their master keeps them that way: a soulbound golem cannot kill itself if its master orders it not to. This is a dark magic of enslavement and while soulbound golems may be very fun characters to play they are not happy ones.

A few OOC reminders about soulbound cores:

• Soulbinding requires a PK, and you can't PK a character without their player's consent.
• Soulbound golems cannot be used to convert a living character into a powerful stone form. The new soulbound golems may possess the memories and personality of who they once were but they still lack free will and initiative and remain as throughly dependant on their masters for command as their thanhic brethren.
• It is up to the player of older soulbound golems if they want to be grandfathered into this: they can RP their personality traumatically reemerging or can RP that after all these years it has been completely obliterated and nothing changes with their golem.
• The skinning convention for soulbound golems is to use darker stone than thahnics. However, this is just a convention: the colour of the golem does not indicate the nature of its core.

Every now and again magic rules change. Something is added, removed, a plugin handles things differently... One of the main problems here is making stuff make retroactive sense. People can't learn mind magic any more? How does that make sense? Fireballs work differently? How do we explain this in lore. New magic type? Why has nobody used it in 1500 years and suddenly can now? So I figured I'd make a brief lore explaining why magic changes IC when it changes OOC and save everyone a load of work. Should help with implementing the magic plugin too.

"The Void is a realm of nothing and everything. Its very nature is an eternal state of flux, and it is said that nothing of it is constant save for its lack of constants.

Thus, it stands to reason that magics derived from the Void also bear a lack of constance. The Wizards of the Yir'Sari acknowledge this and thus have always shied away from the scientific approach to magic favoured by the Mages Guild. While the scientific approach to magic has its merits, the Mages Guild have long known that all knowledge they gather is subject to the Fluctuance Of Magic.

Much like nature, magics is ruled by a series of physical and metaphysical laws. Magic has capabilities and limitations, things it can do and things it cannot. Spells operate in certain ways. A fire mage can only control a blaze they summon and upon losing focus it disappates. Mind mages cannot communicate over very long distances. Summoned water cannot be drunk for it will vanish in the body when the spell expires.

While no mage can break these laws, one thing can warp them: time. The physical laws of magic cannot be broken but they do change: they are not constant. They slowly change over the years and decades, powerful abilities become less effective or even impossible and new avenues of magical spellcasting open up. The changes are very subtle over the lifespan of most descendants with only major ripples or disruptions of the Void being able to create a noticeable change quickly. One example of such a "Voidquake" occured at the death of Aegis, when the difficultly of casting magic decreased significantly and there was an explosion of magical practitioners. A second occured in Anthos with the rise of Setherien: the godlike "Tier Five" spellcasters found their powers diminish to that of skilled but normal magi and the rate at which one could form connections to the Void rapidly increased, leading to much faster learning of magic.

These major disruptions nonwithstanding, the magical knowledge a mage accumulates is unlikely to be completely invalidated during his lifetime. It is with the oldest texts that fluctuance is most apparent, with the principles of many powerful rituals of ancient lore based on magical concepts completely incomprehensible to modern magi.

In this age of turmoil, widespread magic and aengudaemonic intervention runs the risk of further Voidquakes. But should magical fluctuance spike again, the mages of Athera are ready."

Isn't carbarum a nightmare to work with?

Kalameet lifts a bloodied partchment, his invitation no less. He gasps softly

"W-who done it?"

A second piece of paper in folded aircraft form sails gracefully over the wall and lands gracefully at Kalameet's feet.

"T'e to Events Organizer of t'e Az'Elgus,

Ah discovered an invitation to a party at t'e 'igh Elven city on t'e corpse of ah wood elf who had carved an array of numbers into his own chest. Upon lookin' at this dead elf, ah vitally important and immediately obvious question jumped int'e me mind.

Why weren't we invited?

As allies of t'e 'igh Elf nation it seems odd that yer'd pass up this excellent opportunity for strengthenin' diplomatic ties and invitin' t'e best Yemekardamn partiers in t'e entirety of Athera t'e yer event! 'owever, ahm sure it was an honest mistake and it can easileh be corrected.

Please send an invitation t'e Brandt at this address in t'e city of Kal'Karaad along with an invitation t'e bring as many dwarves t'e t'e party who promise t'e obey t'e followin' rules:

T'e come without combat armour and t'e submit t'e searches by t'e 'igh Elven party bouncers.

T'e obey t'e laws of t'e 'igh Elven city while we are in it.

T'e nae kick up any shoite about golemancy.

T'e beh good guests: we're nae 'ere t'e fight, we're 'ere t'e party!

T'e leave peacefulleh if instructed t'e by yerself.

T'e bring five barrels of t'e best dwarven ale.

T'e pay fer any proveable damages dealt t'e t'e city in t'e course of partyin'.

And of course...

T'e all come appropriately dressed for the occasion!

Yers dwarfully,

Brandt of Kal'Kaarad"

We saw the magic plugin half a year back, Telanir had a video showing how it worked. It looked pretty much done and was certainly usable in that state.

What happened to it?

That, and we've pumped out no less than four smaller magic plugins for antagonists. Hell, one was put together for the Dwarf Mini Antagonist in Anthos.

I don't think there's an excuse for not having the magic plugin any more. I think it's about time we were told what happened to Telanir's one, and if that's somehow now off the cards why we can pump out plugins like they're going out of fashion but have failed to release a magic plugin since Aegis.

As an undergraduate chemist, the errors in the description of explosions make me sad.

As a former lore master, you can't make use of chemistry because nobody actually knows anything about it: it'd be metagaming. There's no real motivation to study it in a world that has alchemy.

Stuff can blow up. Stuff does blow up. We don't, however, have cannons and blunderbusses because gunpowder weaponary. It's not necessarily that you physically can't do it, just that nobody ever thinks it up IC because they're not allowed to OOC.

If you want to know if what you're thinking of is allowed, be direct and say what it is.

If fairies are ever implemented, I will create a character dedicated to capturing them, grinding them into paste, filtering alchemical fluids through that paste and producing washing up liquid to be sold throughout Athera.

Brandt finds Art's bleeding body in the woods, a 9x9 grid and numbers bloodily carved into his chest with a sword. He leans down, checks for a pulse and for breathing, then pulls out his knife and corrects a mistake on the grid before the monks arrive.

Brandt picks up the scrunched up invitation off the floor, unscrawls it and scrawls on it in dark ink "Why was ah not invited?", folds it into a paper plane and throws it over the city wall.

Let me guess, someone had to make a barf cannon (full-auto dispenser spread), and it ruined everyone's fun. Anyways, I thought cannons can appeal to the fantasy aspect.

The cannons went overboard in character. The admins axed them and nowadays siege weapons are used to the same effect. They're a bit more interesting too.

Okay, I can understand that. I'll either find a way to work the Athera lore into allowing Bohra or find a different way to save them if at all possible.

It's already in there.

Don't worry about lore that much, pretty much all the original bohrra operators are still around and we can handle that easily enough. What I'd try to get through ideas is the idea of bringing back the bohrra at all.

Question: Why is it against the rules to flee into the Cloud Temple? It's a mutually sacred ground run by monks nobody wants to annoy given their vital necromantic medical expertise. It makes sense to me that you could seek sanctuary within the Cloud Temple.

I'm not keen on railroading an aengudaemon into it. I think a lot of the bohrra's appeal is that they were straightforward primitive barbarians.

((Wyrvun is the Aengul of Cold and Virtue, not vigilence. Purity is indeed a virtue.))

((Out of character, an Aengul isn't of anything. They're defined by their goals in the word, not by being attached to part of the natural world or the human psyche. Wyrvun is of whatever his followers claim he's of. It's a debate for IC rather than OOC.))

Wyvurn was active in the world as his corrupted form, Ondnarch. After the defeat of Ondnarch at the hands of the dwarves and the restoration to being Wyvurn, I'm fairly sure he withdrew. His purpose in the world was the annihilation of the dwarves, once restored to purity, he likely withdrew to the Higher Planes with no further reason to interact with the mortal plane.

Weren't we at see for five years? That's what I was told, or maybe it was five days...

From what I saw most of the map transitions this time around were by portal.