That's pretty neat. :D
I could pitch my campaign setting into the pile to see if anyone is interested.
Alvena Summary
History in a Nutshell: Gods are few, create the world and its life; primitive man was dominated by dragons; gods share knowledge of magic with humanity, humanity punches dragons in the jimmies; dragons get scarce, humanity creates advanced magical civilizations; magical civilizations get lazy, find demons; demons invade world, much problems; humanity survives war, lost civilization; magic diminished, dragons get ballsy again; humanity tries to rebuild civilization with mundane or low-magic means, while adventurers search for relics of the past; the gods wait for this cycle to carry their children to godhood.
Points of Interest: Alvena is a post-apocalyptic world with emerging technologies, countless ancient dungeons, ruins, even entire civilizations overtaken by nature and ripe for exploring. Civilization is inching its way back into existence with communities and settlements and a few governing powers with a loose control over their lands, and without high magic the world has become a mish-mash of swords and sorcery and emerging engineering technologies (such as ballistae, gunpowder, steam power, hot-air balloons, etc). Much of the world is untamed, unsettled, unexplored, and contested by emerging powers. Low level magic (primarily provided by adepts) makes communities in inhospitable places more practical (such as settlements in desert wastelands, or towns built on the side of a mountain).
Gods, Divine Magic, Religion: The "true gods" are the creators of the world, most mortals have forgotten they exist. They want their children the mortals to succeed but intentionally take a hands off approach (intervening indirectly with things like
dream spells or proxies and disguises), because for them the world and its challenges are a form of tough love that causes no "permanent" damage to their mortal children and will lead them to ascending to godhood. To some this might seem cruel, but it's how they too came into being before the creation of
this world and it's how their children will grow to godhood. They don't see their short lives on the material plane in the same way mortals do, and when mortals die they are reincarnated later anyway, so while they want heroes to succeed they're more than patient enough to wait for it.
Other gods are too many to mention and run the gamut of various outsiders of varying powers, and more mundane creatures that have developed cults (such as tribes of kobolds making offerings to hydras, or dragon cults sacrificing virgins to wyrms, etc).
Divine magic actually comes from the user, not from an external source. Most mortals don't know this, some mortals do. This is why priests often worship things as gods that aren't actually gods and why simply piousness doesn't necessarily lead to greater spiritual power (because the strengthening of the soul through struggle does), which is why clerics and the like doing things tend to level faster than those who spend their days praying in a monastery).
Power Scale:
If any of this stuff sounds kind of amusing, I could elaborate on more, but I don't want to bore anyone with lots of details.
Originally Posted by Ashiel
That's pretty neat. :D
Re: Talk to Ashiel About Anything Mark II
