OT: The ambiance and setting (part 3)

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. The very existence of this project should be praise and honor to KO's accomplishments.

And direct contact is the sincerest form of confirmation. Pretty sure KO's email here isn't hard to find, and he reads his PMs anyways, I believe.


As far as Ulm goes, a fractured feudal atmosphere where most (or all!) of the lords are vampires, implies a good stage for the creation of the Illuminati, where in fact much of the real political intrigue is hidden, and the only reason Ulm has not been re-unified, is because of the code of honor that binds those lords, keeping them from killing eachother in their quest for power.


There could actually be a merging of Bandar Log and Agartha, to an extent, if Bandar were to be overrun by their neighbors. Considering the importance of the mythos of Shambala or Shangri La in that region of the world, then it would make sense if once conquered, the Bandar peoples took refuge in those cities.


Marignon of course would conquer and devastate Mictlan, and Marignon's apparent power at this time would be enormous (along with Man). Perhaps a new nation would have to rise from all of this, representing an amalgam of the French/British/Spanish colonies in the Americas. They would be highly resourceful, cunning, and wealthy because of their ruthlessness and hunger for power. Their magic would mostly consist of strange voodoo picked up in the islands, and they would eagerly pick up the best of the technological advances of their European "benefactors".


Perhaps the rise of "Rationalism" was what actually closed the Void, and ended the Dreamtime. People just became so skeptical, that the rise of this new "dominion" of modern thought, gave all believers innate Dream Resist (100).


An interesting twist could be that this really IS just the dominion of another pretender. This pretender is actively sucking the magic from the world, to empower itself as it purges the arcane mysteries from the minds of mortals, so that it can rule unopposed. Maybe what our world needs now, is to rediscover magic, before it is too late and we are fully subjugated by the new Pantokrator.

[JimMorrison]

I wouldn't worry -too- much about the map. This is ultimately a stylized and abstracted view of things from our real world. Thus, the stage for these events, can be quite stylized and abstracted. A map that had some passing similarities to our Earth (with most of the landmass in the "old world", and a smaller but naturally rich "new world" to play with), would probably do just fine.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

There could actually be a merging of Bandar Log and Agartha, to an extent, if Bandar were to be overrun by their neighbors. Considering the importance of the mythos of Shambala or Shangri La in that region of the world, then it would make sense if once conquered, the Bandar peoples took refuge in those cities.

Actually, what about Nagas of LA Patala taking over Agartha? The nagas are subterranean, cold-blooded, inhuman amphibians that live for centuries. If ALL the statues and ALL the corpses have been reanimated and then destroyed by the Agarthan worshippers, how could the humans now that original Agarthans weren't nagas? Even the magic paths come pretty close, nagas and descendants of Ktonian Necromancers cover all the paths original Agartha had access to.

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

But I thought Gath was the Jewish tribes...

EARLY Jewish tribes. Pre-Egyptian slavery, I think. Jumping from there to ghettoes is quite a leap, and even worse, it'd basically be Jews ruled over by the evil blood-thirsty Germans with plans for taking over the world. I don't usually care for political correctness if the idea works, but I don't think this is a good idea.

It'd depend a lot on implementation. It could be that I'm just paranoid and it'd work very well, with some Golem references thrown in the mix and incorporating the fluff in the Gath's tribes' descriptions (the humanbred tribe in/near Abysia, sibyl tribe near/in Arcoscephale, iron-working tribe in/near Man etc etc).

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Actually, what about Nagas of LA Patala taking over Agartha?

Well just to clarify, if you Google "Patala", you will find that it is referenced as one of the cities in the underground nation of Shambala itself, which Agartha happens to be the capital of. So, really intertwining the paths of those nations seems a no-brainer to me, especially if they fall into some sort of obscurity, where most of the world denies their existence (due to lack of empirical proof), and the only surface people who are able to reach them would be those who have the skill and tenacity to do so.

The whole thing smacks of "endgame quest hub" if it were to be an MMO.