Creative Exercise: The Sovereign Dominion of Eyros

[Sarellion]

Don´t concentrate on the creator. His role is so insignificant that he could be dead for the setting. The creator is not aloof. He is a being outside time. He couldn´t work inside time even if he wanted. I just wanted a reason that worship creates power and that the cosmology works in a coherent way.

I am not familiar with WoT so I don´t know the cosmoloy there.

 

[Rystil Arden]

His role is so insignificant that he could be dead for the setting.

Point taken. Of course he is also insignificant enough that he could just not exist, which I view as preferable. Interesting that you don't know WoT since a being known as the Creator that is outside of time etc etc is exactly what exists there.

 

[Sarellion]

Well, if the other contributors feel uncomfortable with a creator deity I will retract my contribution or change it. He is important in this regard that he ties in several ideas from other contributors, without being a significant being himself. I think that many players would ask how the universe came into being, why is Taufenacht so powerful, etc. My player s found it interesting to get into the mythological creation of my universe especially if they got information from the point of view from other extraplanar entities.

I don´t know WoT andif I duplicated stuff from it, it´s completely unintentional.

 

[Rystil Arden]

There was a creator deity who created the prime and all planes.
However this deity is a timeless, eternal being so it CANNOT ENTER OR INFLUENCE the timestream of the prime and the surrounding planes.

Hmm...I notice this is a change, but how can both of these statements be true? Clearly the act of creation is an influence.

 

[Sarellion]

The creator created time and the planes and this would impede his own power that results partly from being eternal and timeless.
So the act of cretion started time and by doing this the creator separated himself from his creation. So he influenced his creation by creating it but at the moment Eyros started its own way, he removed himself and granted his creation a free will, by putting it outside its own sphere of influence.
I wanted to say that the creator cannot influence the prime or other planes inside time. So there is no hand of god that steers the ship.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Why don't you make this a theory of some scholars instead of a granted truth, since its clearly unprovable either way.

 

[Sarellion]

I wanted to give a frame of reference for other contributors.
It explains magic, psionics, divine power and other metaphysical stuff. It belongs to the DMs only section but I believe that a setting should give answers to some fundamental questions. A DM can always say, thats a nice theory , but I won´t use it or just use it as an in game theory. On the other hand I find that a system that doesn´t give some explanation for stuff like this is either flawed, tries to sell it in another supplement or is just ambigous to evade questions or doesn´t care.

Most of the time it tries to sell it in another supplement but we won´t make anther pdf, so a coherent theory of magic, religion and psionics should be included.

 

[Arkhandus]

There are no deities in Eyros. No true deities. No one knows how the world came to be or why, and the only people who care are those who think there's some great power to be gained in the learning. But nobody knows.

There is no need for the setting to be pantheistic, dualistic, monotheistic, or anything of the sort. Spirits could have created the world, or mere concepts and elemental forces could have converged to form the world. There does not need to be a mind behind it all. It was agreed long ago that Eyros would be a setting without defined deities. Deities are not necessary for a campaign setting. Not everything has to be explained. Mysteries are good, and without mysteries there's nothing for DMs to put their imaginations into when they actually run a campaign.

This is why I don't run Forgotten Realms and such. Everyone and their cousin knows about everything, and I have absolutely no freedom to do anything as DM without people having fits. And as I said, deities are not necessary in a campaign setting. Look at Dark Sun!

Edit: No one needs to know if the setting has deities, or how the world was created or why magic or psionics works. It has no effect on the ability to play in the setting or run games in it. Deus Ex Machina can still be used through powerful spirits and worshipped semi-divine creatures if the DM really needs it. Or he/she could just say "the universe did it" or "fate made it so". In some settings, divine magic is simply the harnessing of spiritual power latent in the world, through force of will and the power of belief, such that it doesn't come from any source. Arcane magic and psionics can simply be discovered by mortals through experimentation and such. In Earth's history, people spent ages trying to produce alchemy and magic, fruitless as it may have been, so what's to stop people in a fantasy setting from trying the same things but actually succeeding?

 

[Rystil Arden]

I wanted to give a frame of reference for other contributors.
It explains magic, psionics, divine power and other metaphysical stuff. It belongs to the DMs only section but I believe that a setting should give answers to some fundamental questions. A DM can always say, thats a nice theory , but I won´t use it or just use it as an in game theory. On the other hand I find that a system that doesn´t give some explanation for stuff like this is either flawed, tries to sell it in another supplement or is just ambigous to evade questions or doesn´t care.

Most of the time it tries to sell it in another supplement but we won´t make anther pdf, so a coherent theory of magic, religion and psionics should be included.

That's funny because disliking that same forced frame of reference for other contributors is the reason I suggested the opposite. If you say its a scholarly theory, then the DM can just choose to ignore it if he doesn't like it. On the other hand, if you make it established canon, and force the other contributors to use it as a frame of reference, then it might become so entrenched that it becomes requisite to use the setting without changing or eliminating many many other things. As an example, a DM who read Mouse's first post about Taufenacht and wanted to say that Taufenacht is actually just a myth and doesn't exist would have some real problems, not from the post itself, but because we used that post as a frame of reference.

That said, you could just say that the "spark" is an innate quality that comes from the Positive Energy of life and the Negative Energy of death and have the extraplanar beings formed from the energy (after all, somebody had to just be formed from the energy or the void, we're just picking whom), keeping everything else the same and your (otherwise fine) coherent explanation of magic, religion and psionics would still exist, without forcing a creator deity. Then you can add on the Creator theory as an optional theory posited by some scholars.

This is my preference, as it leaves it open for future contributors. If nobody else backs me up, though, this is the last I'll mention of it.

Edit: Ah Arkhandus posted in the middle of my post. Now I don't feel like nobody agrees with me. Thanks for the support!

 

[Rystil Arden]

There are no deities in Eyros. No true deities. No one knows how the world came to be or why, and the only people who care are those who think there's some great power to be gained in the learning. But nobody knows.

There is no need for the setting to be pantheistic, dualistic, monotheistic, or anything of the sort. Spirits could have created the world, or mere concepts and elemental forces could have converged to form the world. There does not need to be a mind behind it all. It was agreed long ago that Eyros would be a setting without defined deities. Deities are not necessary for a campaign setting. Not everything has to be explained. Mysteries are good, and without mysteries there's nothing for DMs to put their imaginations into when they actually run a campaign.

This is why I don't run Forgotten Realms and such. Everyone and their cousin knows about everything, and I have absolutely no freedom to do anything as DM without people having fits. And as I said, deities are not necessary in a campaign setting. Look at Dark Sun!

I agree. In fact, the only think that kept me from being leery of those dragon god things is that we established that the information on them was wrong and that they weren't really deific (like Al).