Tannen's tower rewrite

[Red]

So the fact that I wipe out the lumberjack village every time I "save" it from Ben Cruthdar means...

[Faeryan]

You tell us. I'm not enforcing my views and beliefs on other players.
Was just saying I like to think of Maj'Eyal as a bit bigger place to increase the liveliness of the world in my mind.

[Red]

Well, really people will just blame it on Cruthdar. I showed up too late to save them all is my story and I'm sticking to it.

People will grow more and more mistrustful of the Cursed, never making any attempt to understand them or help them through their affliction, just hating them on sight and trying to drive them out or kill them. The atmosphere of mistrust, paranoia, and general willingness to hurt others will give rise to even more of the Cursed, slowly splintering society until cities become impossible to live in, the largest beacons of civilization being small family gatherings in huts in the forest. Last Hope would probably be the first to go, but because of its location as a trade nexus it would quickly spread to all the other towns on the map, except for Angolwen and Zigur.

Zigur would use the Cursed, seeing as how they possess no taint of magic, but that would turn them from heroes into hated and they'd die a slow death as people stopped joining them, but in the process they might gather enough resources to find and assault Angolwen. With the suddenness and unexpectedness of the attack, Angolwen would be devestated, virtually all the apprentices wiped out before the more senior mages and Linaniil could respond. Linaniil would hesitate, unwilling to use her power on so many people in such a violent manner, but after more and more death she would raise her spells high and wipe out all of Zigur in a single spell.

With so much blood on her hands, she would change along with the world, seeing it as a horrible place where the people aren't fit to rule themselves. She'd gather the remaining mages of Angolwen and set out, exterminating anyone who might be able to oppose her and setting herself up as a great and terrible goddess of all Eyal. And when you get right down to it, her rule would be good-the land would be safe, there would be order and there would be no real oppression or anything. However, anyone who committed a crime or even thought too much about doing so would just... Vanish. No trial, no concessions, just gone in the middle of the night.

This Gilded Golden Age of Eyal would last until the orcs found a way to cross the sea. Linaniil, for all her power, would be unable to fight against all the orcs, and there would be no one else of power around because Linaniil has disposed of them. The orcs would flood over the land, wiping out city after city until she personally approached them. Many would die, but the mages and magehunters of the orcs would overwhelm her, butchering her and burning her body till nothing remained of her but ashes on the wind. The orcs would then wipe out or enslave all others as they saw fit.

And sometime in there, the demons would invade. It wouldn't change much-either they invade Linaniil and win, in which case the orcs would wipe them out when they came over. They invade Linaniil and lose, in which case nothing changes at all. Or, they invade after Linaniil has fallen, in which case they invade the orcs and get rebuffed and probably wiped out as the orcs send an army after them.

So because I wipe out one village, the orcs ultimately win. Unless I beat the game, in which case Linaniil ultimately wins. Unless I kill her too, in which case Eyal civilization collapses and someone from across the sea will have to pick up the pieces eventually.

[Faeryan]

in which case Eyal civilization collapses and someone from across the sea will have to pick up the pieces eventually

Like someone once said (Hope I'm quoting correctly)
"Blessed are the Yeek for one day they shall inherit Arda"

[Red]

Shit, forgot the Yeeks.

Honestly, they'd come last, ruling only if everything else fell through. If orcs won, they'd wipe them out and wear them as slippers. If Linaniil won... Well, if Linaniil won, she'd actually crush anybody capable of resisting the Way because they could resist her. So the Yeek could actually rule the entire world from right under her, subsuming everybody's mind to the Way. And obviously the Yeeks would be able to restore civilization if there was none at all.

So I suppose new question. Would Linaniil be able to break the Wayist hold over the people of Eyal? Who is more powerful on a mental setting-the Yeek race, or Linaniil? And if Linaniil failed, as she likely would, could she find a way to break the power of the Yeeks in the real world?

Also, throughout all this, nothing would personally affect the character that wiped out the lumberjack village. Absolutely no repurcussions for the guy who doomed the world. Yay karma!

[Dracos]

Heh, this topic spun long.

There's several bits of Zigur lore that basically say 'String up and murder anyone that is out of the ordinary, as they're obviously mages', but I think overall it goes with the general direction of world lore:

Almost everyone is terrible and almost nobody can even do a good thing for a few minutes. Pretty much if they have lore, they are simultaneous victims and monsters, with a handful of exceptions that stand out as pure victims (with no agency or good actions of their own) or pure monsters (often with no motive).

So you have the ones that don't really have lore or interaction: Derth, Shalore town, Thalore town. Aside from Derth being the victim of an attack, they pretty much are non-entity storefronts that don't voice an opinion or take part in the events going on. For all the Magic vs Nature arguments, arcane gear figuratively coats the walls on almost every building in every town in Maj'Eyal. So at the least, any Zigur following in that capacity is enormously hypocritical. The shalore are possibly intended to be tied to the elven crypt full of undead, but that comes across as pretty much a dungeon for the sake of dungeon at the moment.

Angolwen has lore, and some of it voices policing bad mages, but generally they're an isolated commune blamed for the last apocolypse, lead by someone that tore power from a godthing long ago. For all the very many evil mages encountered in the world, they have lots of opportunities to be involved more, but aren't really. They apparently have an in with Last Hope, since that place had no problem having a mage on call to show up and rip a giant portal into being in their town, right after ferreting out a local mage-scientist monster.

Zigur won't even appear to set you on the right path if you start with magic, having the most 'we're going to murder everyone' lore of any town on continent one. Tons of brainwash/murder-hippie stories with them in the lore. Whether or not you think they are in the right, a lot of writing is spent establishing them as horrible people. And horrible people that are secretive enough that they're a rumor to the nearby Derth, attack random travelers unmolested by Last Hope's guards, and yet are not called by Last Hope at all to deal with a potential rogue mage in their city.

Last Hope is built off the remains of the human and halfling empires. While the human side isn't covered too much, the halflings are clearly shown to be originally responsible for the horrible situation of both the Yeek and the Orcs in lore, a people that abetted horrible scientific studies (yay) and still have research labs full of monsters in then land. Humans don't have much lore aside from them fighting wars, but even in those, they aim for genocide as a repeatedly stated goal, making sure to kill off civilians and specifically potential breeders. Shining good folks there.

The Shalore rebels are pretty straightforward in being themed to being corrupt tyrants to be, working on their way there, and gladly slaughtering anyone in their way. If you help them, they'll destroy one city right away (and I think another in the ending?) It's possible they are also tied to the blight cultists (Similar magic), but who knows. Their angle seems to be rebellion against a world that doesn't accept them, to be executed by murdering the crap out of those that don't accept them.

The Orcs are actively trying to kill everyone and working with evil wizards that want to shatter the world for a god-thing, so not much to say there, except that both them and the demons spend a lot of their lore establishing themselves as victims striking back against a world that's done them terrible wrong.

The demons, expanded more, are established firmly as victims who do enormously horrible things to themselves and to everyone they come across. So...not much reason to sympathize much with the people that turned the shattered remains of their world into a death-science ship to come genocide Eyal for whatever reason (Even though the Sheratul haven't been seen in Eyal for ages, of course, they're the relevant place to attack the Sheratul).

The yeeks, innocent experiment victims...who also have been absorbed into some psionic hive-mind beast, looking to subjagate all living things and willing to sacrifice as many yeeks as needed to achieve goal of total world domination. Heck, it's most of their victory scenarios.

Apparently, the Sun Paladins used to have a monsterous 'let's go find their womenfolk and kill them all off' mission, that for various good reasons isn't there anymore, but now pretty much are actually good guys, since no other quests or lore has gotten slapped on to them.

And yes, even playing a good guy/hero, you pretty much wipe out an entire race (to the best of your knowledge), while getting swatted with suggestions that they're being manipulated and tricked and really weren't all that bad~.

It's something basically core to the current state of the lore. It's exceptional for both the motives and the ends to be remotely decent. Heck, it's exceptional for the motive to even be personal to that character. Cecilia and now Tannen are some of the few that are not "Lalala, doing evil cuz my race is evil! Trying to wipe out all of so and so! Doing good with terrible means! Living a peaceful setup built off the bones of thousands my ancestors murdered!" but instead are "Well, I have my objective here, and I've convinced myself its worthwhile, despite disagreement of others, and now, I do terrible things."

[Red]

*Points to signature*

I suppose it's just a collection of memories, when you get right down to it. And people like Nero or Hitler get remembered an awful long time.

[breadsmith]

Clearly the Nagas are the only good guys.

[Red]

*cough cough trying to drown the entire damn world cough*

Sorry, had a fish bone in my throat. Anyway, you've got Slasul trying to drown everyone, though he's just head of a (rather large, but still) minority group among them. And I've got a sneaking suspicion that the only reason the nagas are so peaceful is because they've got so little competition underwater. And even then, Slasul.

[tekrunner]

I like even more the new twist on the Spellblaze. The Zigur still think it's the mage's fault. The Demon's think it's the Sher'tul. And Shassiy knows it's neither, but isn't telling.

I wanted to go back to this, because this is something that confuses me. Shassy says the Spellblaze wasn't caused by the mages, but I thought that was because she blamed the Sher'Tuls like other demons do. Now I'm not sure, and to add to my perplexity, it's not just Zigur who think it was the mages' fault. The mages themselves think it was their own fault. That seems strange to me if their fiddling with the portals really had nothing to do with what happened. But why do the demons think it was the Sher'Tul's doing? I don't remember reading their reasons for believing that (though I may just have forgotten them).

[pheonix89]

I like even more the new twist on the Spellblaze. The Zigur still think it's the mage's fault. The Demon's think it's the Sher'tul. And Shassiy knows it's neither, but isn't telling.

I wanted to go back to this, because this is something that confuses me. Shassy says the Spellblaze wasn't caused by the mages, but I thought that was because she blamed the Sher'Tuls like other demons do. Now I'm not sure, and to add to my perplexity, it's not just Zigur who think it was the mages' fault. The mages themselves think it was their own fault. That seems strange to me if their fiddling with the portals really had nothing to do with what happened. But why do the demons think it was the Sher'Tul's doing? I don't remember reading their reasons for believing that (though I may just have forgotten them).

Because the demons know nothing about what went down on Eyal, they just knew it came from the portal and that the portals are Sher'tul magitech. And the reason Shassy says its not the mages fault is that she's a naturalist/anthropologist and knows damn well that the mages lacked the capacity or intent to pull that off on purpose. So she figures either someone else did it or it was an innocent mistake. She doesn't care, but she knows.

The mages blame themselves because it was their attempt to weaponize the portals that caused it, and they don't really care that they weren't trying to do that.

[Red]

To my knowledge, the portals and the Spellblaze are mostly unrelated. The portals simply let it spread.

What would make sense to me is that some dimension somewhere just - up, real bad. Let's say they accidentally caused every single sun to go supernova at once, magitechily. That's the Spellblaze right there. The only reason it hurt everyone else is because there was a portal there. In fact, it's possible that happened a long time ago and it's just still burning, so the portal that opened there let it propogate everywhere, and Eyal alone lived because the Sher'Tul had sufficient magical protection.

That being said, I've yet to get a lot of lore. Take my thoughts with some salt.

[HousePet]

Basically the Farportal network had two functions.
1: Allowing trade and travel to distant land/worlds.
2: Spreading magic from high background magic locations (probably manastars) to locations with low background magic.

The mages attempting to incinerate the Orcs tapped into the mana flow of the farportals and used it to cast a massive fire spell.
Unfortunately, the spell was too powerful for them to control and backflowed up the mana stream. As it burned along the farportal channels it gains more power, so Eyal was relatively untouched, Mal'Rok being in the same solar system was almost blown apart. Other worlds on the network were likely incinerated.

Was is the mages fault? Yes. Was it the Sher'tuls fault? More yes. They should have built flashback arrestors into the network, or intervened properly to stop the mages from using it wrong.

[Red]

I stand corrected.

So it's somewhat like the Centralia coal mine? Makes sense.

Although thinking about the Spellblaze mechanically, it's interesting. Let's assume it was, effectively cast by a fully sustained Wildfire Archmage. So right there it's got massive damage bonus and resistance penetration. To my knowledge, there is no specific recast more powerfully mechanic or talent (if there is, let me know. We could work with that being repeatedly used as the channeling of the Spellblaze), I think it's reasonable to assume this spell increases by about 5% every turn it propagates. I don't know what the most powerful fire spell is, but I know Alchemists can reliably hit for 3000 damage a pop with their bombs. I think it's reasonable to assume that a ritual designed to tap into the mana Farportal network itself is a bit more powerful, so let's give it a base damage of 5000. At 1000% move speed and assuming 100% move speed is somewhere between a brisk jog and a sprint, at 10 m/s (Which puts all characters at 83% the speed of the fastest sprinter to date, so not bad.) which makes this spell propagate at 100 m/s. The nearest solar system, Alpha Centauri, is about 4.3 light years away. (Rounding down.) A light year is about 9.5*10^15 meters. (Rounding up.) That puts Mal'Rok, if it's at the same distance,at 4.085*10^16 meters away. Divide that by 100, and you get 4.085*10^14. So now that we've got a good guess at how long it takes to reach Mal'Rok, the Spellblaze dealt...

5000*(1.05^(4.085*10^14))

According to Google, infinite damage. 1.05^(4.085*10^14) alone exceeds any calculator, including the Google calculator, giving either an overflow error or infinity as an answer. However, the approximate cap on Google calculator is 10^308, so if assume it's twice that and multiply by 5000 (since the overflow is BEFORE multiplying by 5000 in the original fomula.)

1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 fire damage
or 10^312 fire damage

And this is a low estimate.

[ProfessorCirno]

It absolutely was the mages, Shassy assumes it couldn't have been because they're just dumb primative Eyal losers, no way they could do something like that.

As for Zigur, here's the thing: basically every bad thing in the setting is due to either 1) Mages, or 2) Halflings.

Let's go down the list through history, starting post-Sher'tul since their stuff doesn't even count as magic because it's so bizarro and advanced.

1) Allure wars. Fault? Wizards AND Halflings.
3) Yeeks are tortured and enslaved horrible. Fault? Halflings.
2) Orcs get angry. Fault? Halflings.
3) Spellblaze. Fault? Wizards.
4) Cataclysm. Fault? Still wizards due to Spellblaze.
5) Like, hundreds to thousands of planets all burn, maybe. Fault? Wizards for the above reasons.
6) Orcs return for their Age of Pyre reunion tour. Fault? Halflings.
7) Demons begin invasion. Fault? Wizards.
Rhaloren decide to RULE THE WORLD! Fault? Wizards.
9) Cult of the Devourer wants to drown the world. Fault? Wizards.
10) Some geniuses decide to help some horrible death god thingie invade. Fault? Wizards and halflings since, you know, orcs.

It's pretty clear that the only reason that halfling woman is leading Zigur is that she's mad wizards muscled in on the halfling turf of ruining everything.

On one hand Zigur is made of violent fanatics. On the other hand, they didn't do anything so terrible as to make that list.