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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8450987" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Ooh, only three things? Hmmm...gotta be choosy then.1. A cosmology that explains why devils and demons are Always Evil and yet still, maybe, sometimes, possibly redeemable...maybe. (I've mentioned this one a lot, so people are probably familiar with it.)[SPOILER="On the Origin and Motives of Fiends"]Being brief: according to one cosmology, which is difficult or impossible to corroborate independently, the One created the universe long ago and populated it with many different kinds of life, including Servants (celestials), Guardians (not yet identified in-story), and mortals. Servants and Guardians were forbidden to use compulsion or coercion to follow the Divine Plan--they could mete justice, but could not make people obey. Some Servants rebelled, saying it was dumb and wasteful to let mortals hurt each other or damage the world when they could just prevent it from happening in the first place. This caused the War in Heaven, which to ordinary mortals was over in an instant, but lasted an infinitely long span of time for those who participated. Though two factions started out--the loyal Servants and the Rebels--three factions came out, with the third being essentially Anarchists from both sides who had come to revel in the violence and destruction. As a result of that infinitely-long conflict, the Rebels became Devils: former celestials now bound by the rules they wished to visit on mortals, living under ironclad contracts and unyielding hierarchies. And the Anarchists became Demons: former celestials ruled by their gnawing hungers and unslakeable thirsts, ever empty inside and unable to be quenched. Each faction tends to see this as a win for their side, so it's a matter of furious debate who actually won.As a result of the above, though, there's an extremely good reason you can almost always presume fiends are evil. If they could've been persuaded with an argument a mortal can come up with, they would've been, because they had infinite time to be persuaded. It takes something more, something truly special that couldn't possibly have occurred within that enclosed spacetime bubble, for them to be redeemed--but it can happen. Our party's bard is a double tiefling, descended from an unknown powerful devil on his father's side, and with a succubus as a direct matrilineal ancestor. That succubus has since ceased to be a "succubus" proper and is now...something else, because she redeemed herself through various actions she's taken over her life. She gave away her remaining succubus powers to our bard, who is now essentially half-human, half-devil, half-demon because MAGIC, and great-gramma-succubus now hopes to die a mortal death and rejoin her husband in the afterlife.[/SPOILER]2. A history which extends back over 2000 years, connecting to several key events that have led to most of the Huge Problems of this world.[SPOILER="On the Historical Origins of Villainy"]Nearly every major threat of my campaign can be traced back to its historical origins, though the history is murky and hard to follow at times. There's a good reason for every major event, and many of them are linked together. I haven't nailed down all the details yet so it's hard to say too much without potentially restricting myself too much, but here's a shortlist.Long ago, the genies ruled the world; the celestials claim genies and other elementally-aligned beings (like dragons) were essentially uplifted from ordinary mortal existence to help shape and maintain the world and its inhabitants. These uplifted individuals have sometimes gone astray...like the genies.The genie-rajahs mostly ruled with tyrannical indifference, if that makes sense. They kept mortal races as slaves, some treated their slaves well, others treated them very poorly, but in general humans(/etc.) weren't allowed to independently own property, couldn't marry without their master's permission, and just overall had really restricted lives.Mortals living outside the cities have a hardscrabble life, but the Kahina--druids and shamans--help them survive, even thrive out in the desert. This raises them to a position of great prominence, and some of the modern Nomad tribes are still ruled by druid (or, more rarely, shaman) chiefs. This also makes the Kahina rather more politically and socially active than the usual perception of druids.Some terrible event happens. This fundamentally changes the world. The powerful ancestors of the elves, whom the people of today call the "El-Adrin," departed from the world and took their cities with them in order to avoid this change. The genies also departed, but left their stuff behind, and remain accessible in the elemental otherworld, called Akirah; their country is called Jinnistan. This is also--not coincidentally--around the time that evidence of the mad Cult of the Burning Eye begins to appear.The First Sultan, a mythic figure that some believe didn't really exist, but the party has evidence that he did, rose up sometime after the terrible event, but before the genie exodus, and played a pivotal role in taking genie cities and encouraging a thorough exodus. The party has learned that he had three wives: a human wife (from whom many of the modern-day merchant class descend), an orc wife (from whom many of the modern-day Nomads descend), and a genie (specifically an air genie) wife, whose descendants are not yet known.Around this time, the celestials also completely depart the world, and the Safiqi Priesthood comes into existence. As mortals take over the now-abandoned genie cities, the Waziri mage order comes into being, and the Kahina slowly lose prominence as city life becomes much more common than nomad life.A heretical group--originally part of the "internal police" branch of the Safiqi priesthood--breaks off sometime about 2-4 centuries after the genie exodus. They become the Zil-al-Ghurab, the Raven-Shadows, who believe that true enlightenment can only be obtained through taking someone's life when they don't expect it. The Safiqi have tried to stamp them out ever since, and every time it seems like they've succeeded, the Raven-Shadows pop back up again a few generations later.Much more recently, about 400 years ago, a rift occurs among the druids (but not shamans): wishing to reclaim their former prominence, they begin using powers attuned to the Sun and the Moon, and a internecine conflict breaks out between these warring factions. A druid of the moon falls in love with a druid of the sun, and the two of them have a secret romance and produce a child, hoping he will be the great uniter of their two disciplines...unfortunately, their son cracks under the strain and runs away, only to later return as a dark and twisted being leading the Shadow Druids, who revere death and decay and want to transform the region from semi-arid to swamp so they can exist forever beyond the boundary of life and death.Around that same time, a black dragon secretly immigrates to this area from their homeland, running away from good dragons hunting them. They have slowly built up their power, intending to rule the largest city of the area as their "hoard." This went unnoticed by the people of their homeland until very recently, and the hunt is now on.There are of course puppetmasters and manipulators behind the scenes, [/SPOILER]3. Justifications for the world being overall tolerant and open, but still having conservative/absolutist/intolerant groups or factions that sometimes gain power but can never truly hold onto it forever.[SPOILER="On the Merit and Efficacy of Tolerance"]In Jewel of the Desert, mortal races generally needed to band together in order to survive outside the controlling, enslaving genie-rajahs who ruled this region of the world long ago. This means that many races who are normally considered monstrous, like orcs, ogres, tieflings, and minotaurs are just as much part of society as humans, elves, and dwarves--you couldn't be choosy about what allies you accepted in the ancient days, and that has continued to the present day. Further, the main religion, the Safiqi Priesthood, maximally embraces difference and variance, because their monotheistic deity, the One, can only be understood in Their divine simplicity through an infinitude of facets, so each person's perspective is vital for coming to understand the Divine better. But, of course, there are always those who fear difference or variance, and when things to very wrong (as they occasionally do at historical scales) sometimes intolerant or oppressive voices gain power through fearmongering or in response to serious injustice...but the triple forces of money, power, and tradition never let that hold away forever. The world in general is bright, but often at risk of going astray, and that's where heroes come in: not to totally fix a broken world, but to prevent a generally good one from going bad.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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