In-Universe Religion

[Red]

DarkGod, how much do people know? Legends and myths are damnably persistent-the people might envision the Sher'Tul as ten-foot tall, impossibly beautiful androgynous people instead of tentacled blobs, and might believe them to be refined, graceful, and wise in all ways instead of insatiably curious and ambitious, but considering just how much Sher'Tul there is in the world, it's hard to believe they've simply been forgotten.

[darkgod]

How much sher'tul there is in the world ?????? Wut ?

[astreoth]

DarkGod
I assumed that humans were the first of the lesser races since their myth of creation said the halflings, dwarves, and elves were made of bits ripped out of gerlyks first human and haven't seen any lore that conflicts with that, plus those races listed look more like each other than any other race so it kinda made sense to me.

edge2054
think there's a statue of harkor'zun in ashes that explains that he was a demon experiment in disguising a giant monster as a bunch of meteors in order to trick eyal's barrier into letting them through so the chunks could reform on the surface that failed at the reformation part because of an antimagic coating they got in transit, that your characters knock off allowing it to reform.

red
the spellblaze was caused by mages sticking a magic fork into the magical power outlet that is a sher'tul farportal they haven't been forgotten and likely won't anytime soon but little has ever actually been known about them and most of it lost like so much else of eyal's history.
and ever since the spellblaze everything sher'tul has been avoided and abandoned in fear of causing another disaster and there isn't much left since the spellblaze blew up most of the farportals on eyal.
so its unlikely the sher'tul have any kind of following when theirs plenty of cults that can give magic powers that wont blow up planets.
plus there is only four bits of sher'tul in the game
rod of recall, the sher'tul fortress, staff of absorption, and the farportal that the halfling ruins were researching. even though its not shown in the facility and likely would have taken it with it if it was destroyed so probably just past that psychic barrier.

I'm not counting the other farportals since aside from the ones to and from the charred scar their all confirmed to be made after the sher'tul left.

[Red]

We leave home with a Sher'Tul chest. The first boss we kill drops a Sher'Tul artifact. There's an enormous Sher'Tul ruin that's steadily expanding its influence over its location in a forest just south of Derth. Tooth of the Mouth is powered by unknown forces, just like Sher'Tul artifacts, so the dwarves have corrupted Sher'Tul influence in their basement. If all corruption can be traced to Sher'Tul, you've got Heart of the Gloom and Scintillating Caves along with it. There's a necromancer wielding a Sher'Tul artifact in a tower not too far from Last Hope. There's the Temple of Creation, another Sher'Tul ruins. Corpathus, Morrigor, Anmalice, and the Face of Fear are all also unknown powered artifacts.

And that's from a random adventurer. We aren't looking for Sher'Tul artifacts, or their ruins. We might travel more than other people, but we clearly see adventuring parties travel around too. They easily could've visited some of those areas, found some of those artifacts, and I don't see any reason for them to not tell tales of what they saw, including anything Sher'Tul. We find a scholarly article on the races, including the Sher'Tul. They are known among adventurers and scholars, so it stands to reason that average people would at least know the name and know that they're an extinct race that was really powerful.

Edit: Right. Completely forgot the whole "shunning" bit. I still see them having cults, since demons (who are actively malicious and not just passively dangerous) get plenty, but not as something the average person would support. They're still known, and have to be to actually be shunned in the first place.

[Hogulus]

I've been meaning to patch up the statue text for Harkor'Zun; I'd forgotten about the gauntlets when I wrote it >.< Currently I'm thinking that a cult gathered the fragments into one place, possibly even combining them into a sort of statue, but this woke the fragments up, at which point they lashed out at their devotees (either slaughtering them or scaring the survivors off). As they weren't properly recombined, the cultists were able to disassemble it again in the ensuing conflict.

[darkgod]

astreoth: yup human's creation myth. Emphasis on myth Lore ingame is designed to look real aka it can contradict itself

red: I try to stay away from that as much as possible but yes in this case the plaeyr is NOT your common person, nor even your common adventurer. You as a player are in the 0.001%. Call it random luck or destiny, it doesnt matter really

[edge2054]

@asteroth, that's new then Harkor'Zun is an old old monster, probably beta 20 or about.

@Hogulus Some of the early stuff was written when we desperately needed more interesting monsters and more artifacts. Also the games cosmology wasn't as well developed as it is now. Feel free to change the description on the monster or the gauntlets if you need to in order to make the lore more cohesive. Maybe the gauntlets are really his hands (a lost fragment!) You could send me a PM with it if you want and I'll toss it in the branch I'm working on for 1.3.

[astreoth]

huh forgot about the chest anyway unknown forces is just a catch all term for any power source that doesn't quite fit into one of the other classifications it isn't a single thing. heck if you dropped a flashlight into eyal it'd be unknown forces powered.

the tooth of the mouth and various horrors aren't a sher'tul influence but the result of their dead god amakathel trying to revive himself and or take vengeance on the sher'tul.

the scintillating caves aren't sher'tul either but a result of blight distorting the world anything sher'tul there was destroyed by the spellblaze

sher'tul artifacts are extremely rare your right that there probably being dug up by adventurers but theirs not much to dig up and so little is known of the sher'tul that most adventurers probably wouldn't even recognize an artifact if they found one the adventurers who brought the staff of absorbtion to the master sure didn't know what they had.

hogulus
huh good to know

darkgod
huh that's good world building would like it if there were more lore to highlight these conflicts and just fill out lore gaps.
we need more lore

[darkgod]

Yes we need more lore !

BTW anybody is welcome to try to submit some

[astreoth]

can we do some on nature and psionic powers

[edge2054]

Some psi lore would be nice.

Solipsists I figure are basically an extension of the Way. Tapping into the collective unconscious of all life in order to bend reality. The trap being that you can go from sort of a Buddhist concept of co-arising to a Descartesian worldview of I'm only sure that I exist. Which pulls them into a nihilistic trap of why do anything if I'm just dreaming all of this anyway (hence the speed penalty).

[0player]

Well, Transmogrification Chests are uncommon as heck, supposedly; Bill has one and Shadow of Fortress has one, and that's about it. As for Rods of Recall, there existed some, supposedly.
Corruption of the Deep Bellow is traced to Amak'thel, not Sher'Tul, and no one really knows about that besides dwarves, unsure if they do at all.
Heart of the Gloom is more likely to be just afflicted by a curse than corrupted, because it doesn't even have horrors.
And no one swims in Nur.
So all in all, I wouldn't say it's that common.

[astreoth]

huh just remembered that while the mouth and horrors in deep below are from Amak'thel the dwarves who became the mouth and horrors did dig up some sher'tul artifacts before the whole madness and mutation thing happened

anyway think a primer on their psionic and afflicted allies from the zigur bookstore would be a good place to put a laymans description of the psionic classes?

[Planetus]

The human (real world) need for religion is more than just a trend or personal preference. It fulfills the highest level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (modified later in life): Self-Trancendence. We can tell pretty well that the various peoples of Eyal at least have the first five levels of Maslow's hierarchy because, well, they do things like eat, socialize, and practice skills and seek to excel in professions.

That being said, there are many things that people can turn to in order to fill that need. What's more, even if 'religion' is the answer, real-world considerations shape that answer deeply. Societies that are on the brink of death (think primitive, tribal, agrarian, any society where one wrong decision or one instance of moderately bad luck can kill you... or your whole village) tend to turn to very simple religions. There is a god or pantheon of gods, or just generic spiritual force, that rules over various factors, and if you appease them, things turn out well. It's not so much a need to explain the unexplainable as it is a need to control (or produce some illusion of control) the uncontrollable.

I'd say this is probably where most of Eyal falls. They should worship things like the Sun, powerful natural forces (dragons and magic), and nature itself, possibly also the source of their food, so animals they hunt, and their own dead ancestors (assuming those dead ancestors haven't come back to life and tried to kill them recently).

It looks like at least Maj'Eyal is starting to move (after the Spellblaze) into a more stable life-situation, so people have more time to ponder and philosophize, and that's where you get things like firm codes of right and wrong, detailed legends and worship practices, etc.

Of course, all of that is in the absence of a real God or gods. If there's one or more of those present, then they're the source of their own religion in whatever detail they want it in. We've confirmed, though, that Mal'Rok is the only one of those left around in the area.

Also, just for reference, I wouldn't assume everything powered by unknown forces is directly tied to the Sher'Tul. The known Sher'Tul artifacts (off the top of my head) would be the Rod of Recall, the Transmogrification Chest, the Staff of Absorption, the Farportals, of course the Sher'Tul Fortress itself (and everything in it), and... that's all that's coming to mind. The Tooth of the Deep Bellow is something from some unknown power. It may be originally tied to the Sher'Tul, or to a god that's now dead or on the run, or to the blight and it's influences, or Mal'Rok (I at least interpret demonic influences as separate from the blight, though they seem to have a lot of blight forces today on Uhr'Rok, so they're close together).

That being said, some nature worship, some less fanatical dragon worship, some worship of ancestors, worship of magic, etc. all make sense.

[Red]

Tooth of the Mouth and other corruptions are apparently Amak'Thel being pissy about being brutally slaughtered by his own creations.

Anmalice and similar might be Sher'Tul, but those are just possibilities.

Finally, agreed on some of that, but what about people like the elves who have far, far longer lives? Or the dwarves, who have managed to survive and be safer for a lot longer than other races? Humans and halflings are easy enough to handle. In Derth, where they're still a small village, they'd be in the simple stage, but it's places likeLast Hope that would be starting philosiphising.

Maybe everybody should just convert to The Way. Yeeks seem like they have their shit together.