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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 340340" data-attributes="member: 926">If anyone is interested..."...for in the Outer Dark lurk things more terrible than any God."    Alterra is a world of conflict, where secret societies battle in hidden wars over the fate of the world, and all is overshadowed by the threat of an ancient evil that lies waiting to be released to rule the world once more.    In Alterra, heroes arise from all walks of life, though most are trained in academies or secret societies.  Covert wars occur frequently across the world, and even spill into the Planes.  The Eletec Houses of the Isle of Antire train wizards for unseen battles over dominance and position.  The Militant Orders of the Medaens are Greco-Roman inspired warrior-philosophers, trained as psions, psychic warriors, and monks.  The Zhen Tao produce knights and samurai style fighter/sorcerers.  Fighters across the world are trained in academies that compete in friendly and not so friendly rivalries.  Druids unknowingly serve hidden gods as soldiers in a great war, and the elves consider themselves to be among the ranks of angels.   Those who become heroes sometimes gain notoriety, but most who gain true power stay hidden to the public, and among adventurers another society has formed, one where status and fame are established through deeds.  The Militant Orders wage a war in two worlds, one against an evil empire on Alterra, and one in the Astral Planes against alien demigods.  Independent adventurers form companies to seek treasures from the ruins of ancient civilizations, and those that are lucky enough become secret societies themselves.     Lurking behind everything are the hidden evils of Abomination, an ancient demon god, who is said to be the true ruler of Alterra. Legend says that Abomination lies imprisoned behind the moon, chained, and is waiting to return to its world.  Aruis of Warwec, an ancient fallen paladin, is the head of Abomination’s cult, and has legions of cultists and orcs seeking to free it.  The Verandi, a once noble desert people who conquered the world but now have fallen into decadence, seek to reclaim their lost glory.  Finally, the old gods of the druids wage a war against each other over dominance of a shattered Plane, fighting the Militant Orders of the Medaens when their battles threaten to spill onto Alterra itself.   Magic is the highest science, using advanced mathematics and logic developed over thousands of years.  There is no one force that is magic, rather magic is a multitude of various processes and methods of manipulating different phenomena.  Psionics arose from the philosophers of the Medaens, who delved deep into their beings seeking Truth, and discovered hidden powers waiting to be used.  Magic was once widespread, as were psionics, but when the Verandi conquered the world, they declared arcane learning to be witchcraft, and destroyed it wherever they could using the divine magic of their clerics, who greatly outnumbered the arcane casters and psionicists of the other cultures.  Libraries were burned and philosophical academies were destroyed, leaving most of this knowledge lost for ages.  The Eletec Houses kept wizardry alive, and the Zhen Tao have a long tradition of sorcery, with most of their nobility being sorcerers of some power.  Many psionicists went into hiding, and ran secret schools where psionics was still taught.  Ever since the world spanning empire of the Verandi fell 200 years ago, magic and psionics are once again coming out into the open, but long years of being hunted have made the practitioners of these lost arts secretive, and most jealously guard their power.     Alterra has the benefit of having psionics built into the foundation without replacing magic, and provides sorcery with a cultural basis for its existence alongside wizardry.  It includes a framework for epic level play built into the background, with characters gradually becoming involved in existing extra-planer wars and high-powered conflicts once high levels are reached.  Western and Eastern style civilizations exist side by side with significant contact with each other. A single, unified culture once ruled much of the world, and gives a good reason for a common tongue and cultural interchange.  Several eras of civilizations have left countless ruins to be explored.  Different human and nonhuman cultures provide varied backgrounds for characters, and basis for conflict.  Lastly, the Verandi religion is monotheistic and has become dominant throughout much of the world, but several religious systems exist, providing for many gods.Aaron M. Litz</blockquote>

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