To Spoof (Alzem)
For everyone's information, Alzem was the player of Hope Island, Toril, during the 2nd IR.
Alzem, here is an overview in brief:
40 years have passed since the 2nd IR.
On the world of Toril, peace and prosperity have ensued.
The world has become divided into several great powers:
The United Commonwealth of Toril, PL (Power Level) 10,000
The Eternal Empire of Toril, PL 5,000
The Scro Star League of Realmspace, PL 3,000
The Church of Toril, PL 1,000
Hope Isle, PL 3,000
Meanwhile, on the world of Oerth (the Greyhawk Campaign Setting) the Greyhawk Wars (see the boxed set From the Ashes) ended, and the world has spent 40 years rebuilding and recovering in peace.
In that time, the medieval world of Oerth became divided into many alliances:
The Alliance of the Crescent
The Sunrise Alliance
The Baklunish Confederation
The Kevellond League
The Kingdom of Ulek
The Eastern League
The Iron League
The Delrunian Alliance
The League of the Warlords
The Dark Union
The Scarlet Brotherhood
The Empire of Iuz
The Sky-Sea League
The Black Brotherhood
The Coalition of Light and Shadow
Most of these had PLs ranging from 50 to 100.
The United Commonwealth of Toril voted to secretly aid a group of gnomes and dwarves in the Lortmil Mountains of the Flanaess, Oerth.
The result of this was the secret Lortmil Technomancy, which over the 40 year period flourished, passing through the Renaissance and Enlightenment into the Industrial Age.
Also, the Church of Shade, unable to get a grip on Toril, moved it's base of operations into the Plane of Shadow.
From there, they infiltrated Oerth, and their agents went about subverting the City of Greyhawk.
Which they finally succeeding in doing.
At the start of Turn 0, the Shade came in force to the world of Oerth, took Greyhawk City and all it's surroundings, and renamed the area Shadow Throne.
In a further complication, at the beginning of Turn 0 Kas and his Legions emerged into Oerth from the Past.
Shortly thereafter, Vecna and his Legions emerged into the Present.
Vecna had foreseen that Kas would kill him, in his own time.
He sought to cheat this death by leaping over it into the future.
However, Kas also saw the future where he would betray and murder his employer.
Kas saw Vecna leap into the future.
So Kas leaped into the future, and got there first.
When Vecna arrived, Kas had hoped to be ready and waiting for him.
Instead, Kas and his Legions opted to ally with the Dark Union, and marched eastward across the Flanaess to join up with them.
Finally, Turrosh Mak, leader of the orcs of the Pomarj, became a major force and power, allying with many evil humanoids, evil giants, and other nations.
This was the start of the third IR.
- - -
At the beginning of the 3rd IR, a someone called the Wanderer (nobody knows much more about him) made a long and terrible Sending to everyone on Oerth.
In this Sending, he portrayed Toril as a place of horror, filled with evil and wickedness.
He revealed to everyone the secret of the Lortmil Technomancy, and urged all Oerthians to destroy it, and drive the Torilians off of Oerth.
War broke out that day.
With the news out, all of the Powers of Oerth starting helping themselves to the new technology, obtaining it either from the Shade, or from the Lortmil Technomancy, or making it themselves - inspired by the Sending.
They came to call this the Technological Arms Race.
With the arrival of Kas and Vecna into the world, the Arcane Age came back with them.
All the Powers of Oerth started the long, painful research that would lead them to mastery of 10th level magic (and, eventually, 11th level magic.)
This became known as the Magical Arms Race.
Nearly all of the Powers started summoning Planars to their aid, be they celestials, demons, slaadi, elementals, planar faerie, planar unseelie, planar dragons, or whatnot.
This became known as the Planar Arms Race.
Most of the Powers began summoning undead, or creating them.
Some brought good undead, but most brought evil undead.
This became known as the Undead Arms Race.
Most attempted to recruit or create monsters to aid their armies.
Others created armies of constructs, such as golems, to help them.
These became known as the Monster and Construct Arms Races.
Some of the Powers progressed from their medieval state into the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution much more rapidly than others.
This was known in the rules as Advancing your Civilization.
Those who did this found their Power Level soaring.
War raged across the Flanaess as the Powers struggled for dominance.
The Pomarj (Turrosh Mak), Kingdom of Ulek (Dagger), Lortmil Technomancy (GnomeWorks), Eastern League (GnomeWorks) and Iron League (GnomeWorks) all formed a tight confederation.
The Kevellond League (William) lent them aid and protection on the west, northwest, and north.
The Shade stood strongly at Shadow Throne, and allied with the Dark Union.
The Dark Union, after many bitter battles and reversals, went on to conquer most of the Eastern League, and Kas and his Legions came to their aid.
Vecna (Bonedagger) attacked the Legions of Kas, but withdrew after Iuz showed up.
(Then Bonedagger left the IR, and I assumed his place.)
Vecna then joined forces with the Shade.
Acererak the Demilich and his allies the Scarlet Brotherhood arose in power in the southeast.
They conquered Sunndi, then the Hestmark and Hollow Highlands, then all of the Iron League except Irongate, which they besieged.
This drew in Forrester and his forces from Toril, representing the United Commonwealth of Toril, for Irongate was pleading for their help.
Forrester was only able to employ 1,000 of the 10,000 PL of the United Commonwealth because the World Forum of the UC refused to grant him more than that to deal with the Oerthian situation.
And then, Forrester found that the high technology of Toril could not be taken to Oerth, and the Torilians had to relearn technology - as it works on Oerth - from the ground up ... a process they have been working on furiously.
They also discovered that magic worked differently, and they had to relearn how to use 10th and 11th level magic, a process they have also been working on furiously.
Thus, Forrester was only able to deploy a maximum of 500 PL to the battlefield, and was loath to deploy more than 250.
None of the other powers of Toril became involved.
Hope Isle was too busy trying to figure out a way to stop, forever, the threat of the Elder Ones.
The Scro Star League lost a fleet that was going to Krynnspace, and disappeared without a trace, and they were busy trying to find their lost fleet.
The Eternal Empire was watching the United Commonwealth with jealous eyes, hoping it would weaken itself, so that the Eternal Empire could gain an advantage. They cared not for the problems of Oerth; they could not be bothered with the doings of medieval savages.
Or, to make a long story short, Forrester's UC was not the dominant power in the game.
He wasn't involved at all, really, except for some secret aid to the Lortmil Technomancy, until Acererak started (personally) eating all the people of Irongate.
Forrester sent people to rescue the Irongaters.
Acererak sent an evil, magical plague against Forrester, and it spread worldwide. It became known as the Red Death, and for a brief time it looked like all of Oerth might die from it.
However, before the first incubating cases showed symptoms, the Alliance of the Crescent successfully created a counterplague, that was fatal only to undead, and which cancelled out the Judas Kiss Plague, as Acererak called it, or the Red Death, as everyone else called it.
Nevertheless, this drew Forrester fully into the war, and the army of the United Commonwealth landed in Lyrn, offmap far to the west of the Flanaess.
Then Vecna, infuriated at the failure of the plague, launched his great attack against the Lortmil Technomancy.
However, everyone allied against him. The Alliance of the Crescent (Uvenelei) and the Baklunish Confederation (Darkness) had their forces ferried by the Sky-Sea League (Kaboom) into the conflict, while the forces of Keoland (Dagger), the Pomarj (Turrosh Mak), the Lortmil Technomancy (GnomeWorks), the Kevellond League (William), and Iuz and the Empire of Iuz (John Brown), with some help from the Coalition of Light and Shadow (Black Omega) fought against Vecna, his Legions, and the Shade.
The Dark Union (Mr Draco and Serpenteye), the Scarlet Brotherhood (Maudlin), the League of Warlords (Sollir), the Delrunian Alliance (Creamsteak), the barbarians of the Thillronian Peninsula (Zelda), all stayed out of the conflict.
However, Celene and it's allies in the Alliance of the Rising Sun (Alyx) were in the thick of the war.
Vecna was defeated and killed, and his Legions destroyed, but the Shade escaped back to Shadow Throne.
Vecna arose again, because only his body had been destroyed, and not his phylactery.
The Oerthian Alliance (as the confederation of allies called themselves) suffered severe losses in the great battle.
All the region that had been Dyvvers, the Welkwood, the Gnarley Forest, and the Wild Coast was renamed the Bloody Waste, for nothing lived there, and pools of blood sat undrying (and no magic would affect them) on the broken ground.
When magma came up through the cracks Vecna created in the earth, it merged with this blood and the Shade poisoned waters of Wolly Bay to produce a strange and terrible substance, similar to Oerthblood, but with a lethal side.
As a result, the Bloody Waste became impassible to both foot and air travel.
In spite of all of this, the Industrial Revolution commenced and flourished across the Flanaess.
Railroads, the wonder of quick troop transportation without magic, went in.
Telephones were created, the wonder of instantaneous communication without magic.
Electricity was harnessed, the wonder of the lightning of the heavens taken and tamed for use by mere mortals.
Books became commonplace. The Workday became an Oerthian term. Factories arose. Cities sprang up around them. The ways in which life had existed for millennia was fundamentally altered in country after country.
And finally, the Lortmil Technomancy created the first flying ship that flew without magic, the aircraft, and the moving war machine, which they called the tank.
Dissatisfied with the railroads, and the poor state of the horsetracks the Oerthians called roads, the Lortmil Technomancy began pouring asphalt down to create a hard surface their machines could travel on.
The Paved Road came to Oerth.
All of this required mines and quarries, refineries for oil, great factories to make steel and shape it, and great factories to produce war materials.
As the sword and armor were abandoned across the Flanaess, they became quite a different place than people had known.
Then, simultaneously, both Forrester and Kalanyr (who plays the Drow of the Underdark, while his allies, Forsaken One and Festy Dog, play the other Underdark Races) gained the secrets of 10th level magic.
With those secrets, the promise of a new and far more terrible war hung over the Flanaess.
Forrester, now with a great army in Lyrn and able with 10th level magic to bring his forces much more directly to bear, demanded tribute from the Dark Union and other Powers on Oerth, and took a pro-agressive stance.
Many of the Powers of Oerth became terrified of the Torilians.
It seemed that the Sending of the Wanderer would prove true, after all.
The Angels of Hope Isle attempted to rescue the civilian population of the world of Oerth prior to the outbreak of war.
However, the Angels found they could not enter Greyspace, or go to the world of Oerth, and in sadness and grief they watched events unfold.
They chastised Forrester, unfairly, for not sending immediate all-out aid to Irongate (which fell to Acererak.)
When the Red Death threatened Oerth, the Angels blocked the route to Realmspace from Oerth, even to Forrester, for reasons that are still being questioned - apparently out of fear of what Vecna would do.
That brings us to the current situation.
The current situation being:
Hope Island has finished blocked the Elder Race, and can now finally get involved on Oerth (since you have arrived to play them.)
The World Forum of the United Commonwealth refuses to give Forrester more than his 1,000 PL of forces to deal with the Oerthian situation, and 100 PL of them have been killed.
The Scro Star League is STILL searching for their lost ship.
The Eternal Empire repudiated the Oerthians, and has remained strictly neutral, although they would love to conquer the United Commonwealth if they could.
They secretly hope the UC sends all it's force to Oerth, so they can launch a coup and take Realmspace for themselves (the Eternal Empire is the high tech alliance of the continent of Kara-Tur, and many allies.)
The Alliance of the Crescent still stands on Oerth, much stronger than it was.
The Alliance of the Rising Sun is grimly cleaning up the ruins of Celene.
The Baklunish Confederation is counting it's losses against Vecna.
The Coalition of Light and Shadow is warily watching the Torilians.
The Lortmil Technomancy, untouched by Vecna, continues to produce more and more advanced weapons.
The Kingdom of Keoland is cleaning up from the great battle.
The Pomarj is trying to recover from it's losses (and from the fact it's player, Turrosh Mak, just left the IR.)
The Dark Union has grown into a great power, thrice as great as it was at the start of the IR.
The Sky-Sea League has done likewise.
The Delrunian Alliance and League of the Warlords have engaged in their own rivalry.
Acererak and the Scarlet Brotherhood have been untouched, allied with the Dark Union, and comfortably in control of the southeast.
Iuz has been massively upgrading his empire, industrializing at a great pace, demanding higher standards and ethics out of his humanoids, civilizing them into a real fighting force.
The barbarians of the northeast, together with aid from other Powers, have created an army called the Swanmay Army, which sits off the Dark Union's northern border.
Hope Isle is in for a shock if it attempts to send forces to Oerth.
Most of Hope Isles 5,000 Power Level (PL) is in the Angels themselves, and they will not, or cannot, go to Oerth.
Of the remaining 1,000 PL that Hope Isle could send, they could send all of it, but they find that on Oerth, their 10th and 11th level magic does not work, and their high technology does not work either.
As a result, Hope Isle can send only 500 PL worth of forces into the Oerthian fray, should they choose to do so.
- - -
Because of the number of players in this IR, and due to problems that occurred in the first two IRs, I am running this 3rd IR in Turns.
Each Turn represents a month of game time.
Each Turn has two threads of 200 posts each allocated to it ... when those 2 threads are filled, the Turn is over.
Anything, be it roleplaying, diplomacy, threats, bribery, attack, defense, and everything else, is possible within a Turn, but one cannot do more in a Turn than their Power could do in a month.
Welcome back to the IR, Alzem!
Alzem, are you interested, based on the general history I have given you, in joining this IR?
If yes, then I have more specific information I need to give you.
Edena_of_Neith
