Howdy,
Thanks for offering to GM. Here's everything I can think of that you'll need to be able to run the game.
First is the scratch notes I was keeping for myself; I've annotated them a bit so they'll make sense. The full explanations are after the notes.
-Points-
Attar: 2
Asveh: 33
Irohim: 17
Coreagen: 27
Eilil: 30
I was using a simple point-based system as a measure of how much "divine power" each divinity is "using." When you do something beyond basic illusions/"show-offiness," I added points to your total equal to about one point per spell level based on D&D spells, plus more or less where I felt it was reasonable. Manipulating life force - creating or killing people - is much, much more draining than usual. It's a rough measure at best, and I was tying it in with your followers and ceremonies (see below) to see when you'd get tired (also see below); so you'd all be on about the same level, power-wise. I don't think it's updated to account for the latest few turns. This system never was really that useful, anyway, and I personally wouldn't suggest continuing with it, but it might still be a good idea to have some way of roughly keeping track of how much power each divinity uses.
-Tech-
Attar: flint-headed spears, ox-fur coats, beasts of burden, herding for food, flint axes, rafts, some horses, berry-ink/pens, record-keeping
Asveh: farming, clay architecture w/wall, hieroglyphic language, wheel, carts, magic*, music
Irohim: bird training, wooden shell-boats, herbal medicine, musical instruments, bardic magic*, environmental conservation, cross-island sailing boats, salt-gathering from ocean, food preservation w/salt, astronomy, nets
Eilil: wood-cutting axes, farming, arcane magic*, elevated village, writing, dugout canoes, clay pottery, wheel, carts, wooden palisade, riding horses, nets, druidic magic*, clay architecture, training wolves, ferrets, hawks, music, horseback combat, bow and arrow, metal arrows and axes, herding bison, fermentation, animal-hair cloth,
Coreagen: druidic magic*, pictographic written language, environmental conservation, scouting/stealth, sign language, bow and arrow, music & the arts, spiders for hunting, magically carved stone, spider silk, tanning
This one is simple enough. I kept a written list of all the major "technologies," or civilization advancements each of you had.
-Magic-
Coreagen: create water, stone shape, plant growth
Eilil: silent image, other illusions, invisiblity; calm animals, cure light wounds, confusion/phantasmal killer
Irohim: dancing lights
Asveh: entangle, sleep
As you see, I was basing things loosely off D&D spell lists. My explanation on how I was working magic is after the scratch notes.
-Followers-
Attar: 50; one holiday (arrival feast)
Asveh: 140; twenty-five magic users (Blessed Ones), thirty-five hunter-warriors (Wolf Guard)
Irohim: 35; symbol (starfish)
Coreagen: 30; eight magic-users (the Circle)
Eilil: 105; ten magic-users; four children who can use druid magic; one holiday (feast)
Magic is genetic, based on inheritance from the first few to be "blessed" with the gift the instant the divinities were formed.
Coreagen: (the Circle) Aeden and Lorn are brothers, Vael is the son of Kaysha, Sidda and Moeya are young women without siblings, and Delak, who is nominally considered the leader of the circle has a brother who is not gifted, and Aesa
Again, simple enough. I kept track of how many followers you guys had (plus a little note to myself about how magic works) and what ceremonies and such you were holding, to be able to a) give reasonable population numbers [I decided that population would about double every twenty to thirty years, which was the height of human expansion in RL], and b) be able to determine loosely how much you can flex your divine power before getting tired. More on that later.
-Afterlife-
Irohim: A gnome lives in each star, waiting to be born or reincarnated. In the star is a peaceful abode containing a pool of clear water which can be used to look upon the mortal world, a vase of white flower petals that can be dropped into the pool to aid the mortal gnomes, and an altar with a fire (the heart of the star) on it that must be sustained by playing a flute each day. Reincarnation, if the gnome wishes, will happen when he leaps into the pool of water. In the end times, the sky will be filled with stars, there will no longer be darkness, and the Volor will all live in this place of dreams.
Eilil: Radu elves become Watchers-from-Above, and have the power to turn flames blue in warning to their mortal kin. They can cast magic with a great effort, and can manifest more fully as an incorporeal spirit with all the abilities they had in life except the ability to physically touch things.
Attar: Fallen orcs have a choice as whether to be reborn or to watch over their kin.
Coreagen: Engulfed by a golden cloud (Coreagen), and the body is buried in a ceremony.
As I mentioned, each of you has their own sort of "spirit world," in addition to your mortal realms. It's set up however you like and is where your followers go when they die. Some of the deities (Irohim in particular) are not fully aware that this realm is not truly "in a star" or "the ghostly realm" or whichever.
-Mythology & Ceremony-
Eilil: A feast every other season to celebrate the day when Eilil showed them to eat and to farm the river plants.
Attar: A feast every year to celebrate the arrival of the migrational fleet.
Coreagen: A short song before each meal to honor the fallen animal spirits.
Basic ceremonies each divinity has established for their people. This is incomplete, I believe. I started making this list later into the game when I realized how useful the ceremonies could be as background flavor.
-General Status-
Irohim: On the island of Quam, they hunt and fish for marine life, using nets to facilitate the process, and salt to preserve food that they don't eat. Three gnomes are exploring another island, having traveled there with a well-constructed (and innovative) boat.
Eilil: There are three settlements, Nest (near the river, elevated so as to be safe from flooding), Corral (farther away, and breeds horses), and Alade (near the caves to the northwest by the coast, which mines metal). They use farming and bow-arrow hunting with horses to provide food, and live in clay-and-wooden houses. They also train various animals to aid various aspects of their lives.
Coreagen: They live in the Fountain Home, caves shaped by magic.
Also incomplete; I had started to write little blurbs as it became more difficult to keep track of what you guys were doing.
-Time-
Attar: 8 years
Asveh: 30 years
Irohim: 1 year
Coreagen: 5 years
Eilil: 29 years
This is how much time has passed for each tribe. Like I mentioned in the OOC thread, you don't "lock in," and synchronize with each other until you meet. At that point it's assumed that, for example, if Irohim had met Asveh right now, Asveh had had a 29 year head start; that is, he was "formed," 29 years earlier.
-Geography-
Two continents on each side of the world, one narrow ocean in the west and one larger ocean in the east which contains an archipelago. Irohim's gnomes are situated on an island in the archipelago. L1, from north to south: mountains, Attar's tundra, forest, Eilil's plain (river from northwest corner of plain), Coreagen's forest where river goes underground. A river flows from Attar's tundra through the north forest and then turns east to open into the large ocean to the east. L2, from north to south: mountains, Asveh's prairie (huge!), desert/badlands, mountains.
Gasp! The secrets of geography revealed! L1 and L2 are the two continents, respectively. If you need clarification, or even a simple MS Paint map, I can help with that.
So, now, how the world runs:
Divinities: As I mentioned, the divinities are formed when tribes reach the stage of development where they are a) sentient, and b) have an (unconscious) need for a leader/guide. You five were not the only divinites, but I've only been keeping track of two other NPC ones. The first was the lycanthrope deity that you were about to kill. [Note: "you" refers to Serpenteye and his character, Asveh] If you remember, you sent a group of halflings ahead to begin fertilizing the soil of farmland so that it would be ready for the whole tribe when they reached it on their cycle. At that point, another divinity was formed, and he offered some (not many) the gift of lycanthropy in exchange for their worship, before you brought your presence into the farmland. A very few accepted, and began leading the wolves in attacks on the halflings. You advanced far enough to keep your halflings safe, and the lycanthrope divinity chose not to pursue technology. Thus, he decided to call a sort of one-sided "truce," and stop his attacks entirely. When you began slaughtering the wolves, he tried to intimidate you with the storm, but that used up all of his "energy," as well as the fact that he had very few followers (semi-sentient wolves and the more powerful werewolves) left anyway. Basically, you would have crushed him, and later would have found his lycanthropes dead in the middle of a ceremony that gave him enough power to create the storm. He couldn't attack your halflings directly because, as I mentioned earlier, it's very fatiguing to create/destroy/manipulate living things (especially the higher orders of living things). Did I miss anything? It's been a couple weeks since I've worked on that storyline.
The second divinity is the ruler of the fey in Coreagen's forest; she/he/it is barely sentient her/his/itself (though still very powerful, and growing in intelligence) and is concerned mainly with preserving the lives of her/his/its fey. This divinity is more cruel than most.
Creation of the World: I hadn't really plotted out anything specific, though I did have an idea for some sort of dormant over-consciousness that created the world that might come back to threaten you all when you had become very advanced. If you've been following the other players, Irohim just encountered a chaos beast. Such things (and other shapeshifters or highly chaotic creatures) are the "leftovers," from the world's creation. They're sort of the fringe that got trimmed when everything was put into order from the void, and are now tied down to the laws of creation. That angers them greatly. They have only one desire: to feel and cause extremely strong emotions, especially pain and suffering. They're pretty rare; I'd say maybe a couple hundred in the whole world.
Magic: Magic, like I mentioned in my scratch notes, was a talent certain individuals in a tribe received at the exact moment the divinity ruling the tribe manifested. It was totally random and fairly rare, and is a dominant genetic trait; all the offspring of the few original magic-users will have magical children, those children's children will be magical, etc. No others will ever have magic. That's why, in the first generation to receive magic, you'll see a magic-using son but a mundane mother (the mother didn't get the talent), or one brother but not the other. I was running magic basically off the D&D spell-lists, but I wanted to give you guys maximum freedom to express it how you wanted. Coreagen, for example, decided to show his tribesmen "how to call and direct spirits," so I interpreted things to let him run magic the way he wanted, and just kept an off-stage record in terms of D&D spells, though a couple times I twisted a spell a bit to suit the needed purpose.. Higher-level magic is more difficult (and more fatiguing), and one's ability to use more powerful magic is roughly based on a) the "spiritual advancement" (religious and artistic advacement) of the tribe as a whole, and b) how long the individual has been practicing magic. Working in well-coordinated groups makes magic easier and less tiring.
Divine Power, Magic, and Fatigue: Flexing your divine muscles makes you tired. Getting too tired makes you weak, susceptible to easy defeat by other deities, temporarily lessens your ability to use magic, or even puts you into a sort of coma if you keep pushing way, way, way beyond when you become exhausted. No one has come close to that yet; though Coreagen's experienced a weakening of his power due to extended stoneshaping, and the lycanthrope deity was about to get eaten because he was so tired and weak compared to Asveh. "Divine power," is based on three things: a) number of followers, b) devotion of followers, and c) ceremonies and rituals. The more "divine power," you have, the more you can do before getting tired, in terms of magic.
Any more questions, or things I left out?
I assume you mean the more intelligent ones. They were vicious and very predatory, so it would have depended on how you tried to contact them. They weren't ruled by the fey divinity.
