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 Post subject: Realms!
PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 12:37 pm 
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Prismatic Pangolin

Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:50 pm
Posts: 2283
This will hopefully be a bit more interactive than other setting information forums, as players are allowed to devise their own realms.

As with the other setting info forums, this is also a place to post questions about the setting.


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 Post subject: Re: Realms!
PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:02 pm 
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Prismatic Pangolin

Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:50 pm
Posts: 2283
And, for ease of reference, here's the original setting description:

One thousand, three hundred, and seventeen years ago, the legendary spark Leonard De Quirm, constructed the Nexus, also known as the Great Clock. It linked, and more importantly synchronized hundreds of realms. No longer did trading expeditions randomly vanish years into the future; sparks from the connected realms could work together without discovering that their partner had died of old age overnight. The golden age of knowledge had begun.

However, all was not entirely well with this golden age (surprise, surprise). The Nexus is a horrifyingly complex device, and only Leonard himself understood the full reach of its workings. After his death, the sparks of the golden realms maintained it as best they could - but it was not enough. In time, dark cracks appeared in the paths between the realms, and beasts of pure shadow stalked the nights and brought death to the unwary. Dire cults sprang up, worshiping the darkness. Entire realms splintered away from the core, were engulfed in shadows, and lost forever. Many put their faith in the Clock, claiming that Leonard's greatest creation would, in time, re-align itself and return the golden age. It took one visionary hero, Othar Tryggvassen, to realize what had to be done: The Nexus had to be shut down; the Great Clock had to be stopped. And thus began the Great War; loyalists against time-shatterers against the cults of night.

No-one is quite sure what happened in the end; the realms that form the Core today were cut off from the Nexus prior to whatever Othar did within its workings, and the known worlds lapsed into barbarism for half a thousand years. This, however, is known: While the Nexus may have been disconnected, the Clock at its heart never stopped; it merely lay dormant until its rediscovery and partial repair by Oberon, three hundred years ago. Six realms now form the Core; each linked to the Nexus and loosely synchronized. Oberon claims that the original designs' perfect lock-step is what caused the problems, and that no new shadows will leak in from the gaps between the worlds. So far, he seems to be right - though the cults of darkness still lurk with whatever shadow-beasts yet exist.

The realms of the core are these:
1) Astaria, The Golden Fields - an idyllic land of rolling plains and towering castles. Originally plagued by clockwork giants left over from the Great War, but most of these have been shut down by Oberon. Astaria, and by extension its inhabitants, are generally considered to be fairly boring. Useful (most of the food supplies of the core realms are grown here), dependable, but boring.
2) Irallith, The Realm of Wind - Airships perpetually roam the skies of this realm; the Great War left a poisonous black cloud upon the land. No-one visits the darkness beneath - save only the mad junk divers, and they are becoming increasingly rare now that Oberon has opened trade with other realms and the floating cities no longer need spare parts and raw materials scavenged from beneath the clouds.
3) Tulthin, The Great Machine - This realm contains a continent-wide device, most of it clearly broken and inactive. Few people live here by choice, but the realm is important as a source of pre-made parts and rare metals. Many people believe that this realm is somehow related to the Nexus.
4) Chalkon, Land of the Talon - Chalkon is a land of dense jungles, giant lizards, and ornate pyramid cities. Many of the natives have been altered to be faster and stronger than a normal human, taking on some aspect of one totem animal or another. Most notable of these are the jaguar princes - local nobility who chafe under the outside rule of Oberon. Unsurprisingly, Chalkon's specialty is biotechnology - strange drugs and medicines, and even expensive processes to offer totemic power to those not born with it (though the esteemed jaguar bloodline is never made available for mere monetary payment).
5) Stygia, The Underdark - Much like Irallith, the surface of this realm was rendered uninhabitable during the Great War. Its inhabitants now live in a massive network of caves (some natural, some artificial), or in submarines and underwater cities beneath the seas of the realm. Strength is the most valued attribute here; strength of construction; personal strength and endurance. Buildings within the larger caverns look more like bunkers than anything else; they are, after all, built to survive even the most violent of cave-ins.
6) Eleghost, The Blasted Waste - Nobody is quite sure why Oberon connected this realm to the Nexus. Massive craters dominate its landscape, and only shattered scraps remain of what must once have been great cities. Perhaps its purpose is to serve as a training ground for Oberon's armies; the place certainly has enough dangerous mutant creatures and still active war machines...

And then, of course, there's the Nexus itself; a gleaming metal palace with permanent gates to each of the six core realms, and a vast array of secondary gates that are only opened as requested by traders and travelers... or never opened at all. The nexus is entirely indoors; though it contains parks and open spaces, there are no windows to the outside, nor any signs of what might lie beyond its borders. This is Oberon's personal domain; the guards are competent, and do not allow curious sparks to explore where they ought not to be.

Beyond these six (seven? six and a half?) core realms lie a multitude of other places, reachable by temporary portals within the Nexus, or gate drives, or teleportation systems, or any of a variety of other strange devices.


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 Post subject: Re: Realms!
PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:13 pm 
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Prismatic Pangolin

Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:50 pm
Posts: 2283
Other random facts:

The Great War left only ruins of the most advanced realms of the golden age. The realms that form the Core today were - with perhaps the exception of Eleghost or Tulthin - backwater areas. While the locals may remember the golden age as being a time of wonders, the truth is that most of those wonders were somewhere else.

The world is, in general, limited by the borders of the atmosphere. There may be rumors of space travel, attributed to unknown ancients or even just worlds that fell in the Great War, but it is not a reality in any current realm.

Shadow-beasts are incredibly dangerous. They were powerful enough to be a serious threat to golden age sparks and warriors - in modern times, this same strength renders them nigh unstoppable. Verified reports of Shadows within the Core are dealt with by Oberon himself; his elite shadow-hunter troops are merely there to find the things, not fight them.


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 Post subject: Re: Realms!
PostPosted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:14 pm 
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Prismatic Pangolin

Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:50 pm
Posts: 2283
So I think I've got the basic economy figured out.

Astaria grows food, which is consumed primarily by Irallith and Tulthin.

Tulthin excavates raw materials, which are mostly sent to Irallith.

Irallith makes finished products, which go everywhere.

Chalkon makes bio-stuff (used in small but expensive amounts by everybody), and relies on Irallith (and, to a lesser degree, Stygia) for actual mechanical devices.

Stygia exports mostly coal, with a side order of oil, and occasional bits of stone, gems, and special purpose heavy machinery. It imports a smattering of everything, albeit with an emphasis on luxury goods and specially bred air-freshening plants from Chalkon.

Eleghost imports everything; its continued existence is heavily subsidized by Oberon. Its primary export is notices of the form "We regret to inform you of the death of...", though it does occasionally produce some interesting chunk of recovered golden age technology.

The Nexus is a trade center - it imports everything - and turns around and exports most of that again for a tidy profit. Also exports law.


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 Post subject: Re: Realms!
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 11:23 am 
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Prismatic Pangolin

Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:50 pm
Posts: 2283
A timeline!

1017GC (T-300): Oberon finds the Great Clock and begins repairing it.
1052GC (T-265): The first two realms are permanently linked in to the new core: Astaria and Tulthin.
1130GC (T-187): Stygia is connected.
1132GC (T-185): Chalkon is connected; the "little war" begins.
1160GC (T-157): Most of the jaguar princes surrender to Oberon; the "little war" is officially over.
1195GC (T-122): The last open resistance in Chalkon is squashed.
1219GC (T-098): Eleghost is connected. Many people question Oberon's sanity.
1220GC (T-097): Irallith is connected.
1287GC (T-030): The jaguar prince Khennek Icepaw leads a violent rebellion against Oberon's rule.
1289GC (T-028): Despite some initial victories, Khennek loses decisively.
1317GC (T-000): Current day.

(The curious may note that Oberon is well over three hundred years old, and shows no signs of aging. The jaguar princes would be very interested in getting their hands on a sample of his blood...)


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 Post subject: Re: Realms!
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 3:57 pm 
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Prismatic Pangolin

Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:50 pm
Posts: 2283
On the topic of money.

Money should never be important in game in more than general terms. Prices of things will generally fall into two categories: ignorable, and too expensive to buy without some associated side-quest. This is not to say that you can't make a character who is frugal, or rich and throws money around; such distinctions can be easily made. But the exact values of things should never be important.

Money will (outside the core) vary from realm to realm. Barter can generally be assumed to work everywhere, but the details of what materials are considered intrinsically valuable will vary from place to place.

Inside the core, there's a fixed currency established by Oberon, and guaranteed in terms of services purchasable in the Nexus. Everyone in the core will accept this coinage, though several of the realms (Chalkon, Stygia, and Irallith) also have their own local currency that some individuals may prefer to deal in - and that usually has a fixed exchange rate with Oberon's coinage. There are a large variety of coins, but the most common ones are as follows:

Cogs: copper coins in a rounded trapezoid shape, used a few at a time for small purchases like meals, etc.
Gears: small steel coins with milled edges and a hole in the middle. Worth rather more than cogs; typically used for larger purchases - a night or four at an inn, or several for a pile of interesting scrap metal.
Hands: circular gold* coins with a stylized clock face. Worth quite a bit; a few hands will buy a high quality horse or small clank, or an out of the way chunk of farmland.

There are, of course, variations. Like the half-cog, the triangle (worth three cogs), the planetary gear (two gears), the second hand (half a hand), and the hour hand (sixty hands), among others.

Alongside this is a second, unofficial, set of currency based on gemstones and measured in facets. Exact values are hard to pin down; a gem valued at five facets in one place might be worth three somewhere else - but the tradeoff is that they're usually still valuable and viable for barter in realms outside the core. One facet is worth about ten gears, or perhaps half a hand. Fractional values are common ("Hm... looks like about two point two facets..."), though individual gems worth less than a facet are usually considered too small to be worth dealing with.

_____
* Ok, so they're only about 5% gold by weight. Details, details.


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