D&D 5E (2014) The Light of Civilization - A 5e Renaissance Story [OOC]

[pathfinderq1]

Still indecisive- a chronic problem for me, I know... At this point I'm wavering between mercenary archer and Serious Scholar- it looks like we have enough melee types to make a monk superfluous.

>Would this idea work for a possible character?

A young scholar, raised mostly within the Church, she has always been interested in the history of magic; she is one of those who maintain the Church's library in the city where we are starting- the library where the Church stores many of the magical books that they have collected. It has been her job to review newly collected works, and to analyze and catalog them so that they can be properly stored (and secured, as necessary). Recently she has come across a slim volume written in an unknown script- sometimes the letters even seem to twist and shimmer. IT has, in fact, become an obsession- she swears she has put it down, or locked it away, only to find it in her bag. And she is beginning to understand the writing...

>Mechanically, she is a Lore Bard with the Sage (librarian) background- she tends to look and act more like a cleric. But she is leaning towards becoming a Tome Warlock, using the mechanics for the Great Old Ones. Only in her case, her 'patron' is in fact a pre-Harrowing wizard (or possibly several of them)- he (they?) was not killed in the disaster, but was instead banished to some other realm/plane and desperately desires to return to this world. The book is a conduit, forged in the years since the Harrowing- and the goal is to increase the amount and power of arcane magic in the world, to the point where a "bridge" may be opened between worlds. The possibility that this might cause a repeat of the earlier disaster (or even something worse) is inconsequential to the mage (mages), warped as he has been by his exile and long imprisonment.

 

[Jago]

Man, [MENTION=48394]pathfinderq1[/MENTION] and [MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION] crushing it with the setting details. Who is running this game, again? XD

Seriously, awesome work, love both. Thanks for contributing! Can't wait to see what we all come up with!



As for the character, Pathfinder, yeah: that totally works. Come on, forbidden knowledge mingling with the mission of The Church? Definitely appropriate and a driving force for storytelling. I like the concept and the framework.

 

[VLAD the Destroyer]

Man, @pathfinderq1 and @Shayuri crushing it with the setting details. Who is running this game, again? XD

Seriously, awesome work, love both. Thanks for contributing! Can't wait to see what we all come up with!

Now the pressure is on the rest of us to come up with something equally as good. I definitely need to step up my game.

 

[VLAD the Destroyer]

Still indecisive- a chronic problem for me, I know... At this point I'm wavering between mercenary archer and Serious Scholar- it looks like we have enough melee types to make a monk superfluous.

>Would this idea work for a possible character?

A young scholar, raised mostly within the Church, she has always been interested in the history of magic; she is one of those who maintain the Church's library in the city where we are starting- the library where the Church stores many of the magical books that they have collected. It has been her job to review newly collected works, and to analyze and catalog them so that they can be properly stored (and secured, as necessary). Recently she has come across a slim volume written in an unknown script- sometimes the letters even seem to twist and shimmer. IT has, in fact, become an obsession- she swears she has put it down, or locked it away, only to find it in her bag. And she is beginning to understand the writing...

>Mechanically, she is a Lore Bard with the Sage (librarian) background- she tends to look and act more like a cleric. But she is leaning towards becoming a Tome Warlock, using the mechanics for the Great Old Ones. Only in her case, her 'patron' is in fact a pre-Harrowing wizard (or possibly several of them)- he (they?) was not killed in the disaster, but was instead banished to some other realm/plane and desperately desires to return to this world. The book is a conduit, forged in the years since the Harrowing- and the goal is to increase the amount and power of arcane magic in the world, to the point where a "bridge" may be opened between worlds. The possibility that this might cause a repeat of the earlier disaster (or even something worse) is inconsequential to the mage (mages), warped as he has been by his exile and long imprisonment.

I like this. Has a really good vibe. It would be nice to have some more details on the archer so we can compare the two concepts.

 

[VLAD the Destroyer]

So do you have any idea how long it has been since the Harrowing? I think in your post mentioning it you said something like 150 years but wasn't sure if that was decided or not.

I would think it would be farther back than that as 150 years is only a hand full of generations for humans. I don't think details of what happened and a small resurgence of magical study would come back after only 4 generations or so and that is just humans. I'd think the Harrowing would need to have happened at least 1000 years ago. Civilization nearly ended when it happened and there were several centuries of a dark age. This would make it so even the longer lived races are only getting their knowledge of the Harrowing second hand. The church of the Maker comes to prominence during the dark age. The City-States began to rise to power 150 years ago.

Not sure if this fits but just throwing out ideas.

 

[Jago]

To be fair, we have a terrible conception of what has happened during the turn of the 20th Century, and that's only about 100 years ago for us, at a time when we had a large population of literate people, major news media, first-hand accounts, and so on. It only takes a handful of generations for humans to completely forget or misremember things, and we're in an age of basically immediate-information if we choose to seek it.

Now compound that with a Medieval-style setting where the lay person is not literate, knowledge and books are really only in the hands of the elite, access to news is mostly covered by messengers, bards, and heralds who are primarily concerned with local events as opposed to greater things like "How Magic Works", and then throw in a world-shattering event where again, the majority of people will be far more concerned with just surviving. My inspiration here is The Black Death that swept through Europe, killed millions in less than 10 years, and completely shattered Europe ... yet about 150 years later, we have the Renaissance. Civilization is on the rise, new knowledge is coming through, and while people remember that the Plague is a thing and was horrible, they were not all that concerned with the event itself. This was several generations later, and yet those later generations probably didn't even know anyone actually directly affected by The Plague.

It's kind of amazing throughout our own history, but even 20 years is enough for people to forget things or just file them under "not important" and then not think of them. Even for our Longer Lived races, again, many of them were not master level wizards who were directly involved in The Harrowing: most probably just know that magic went wrong ... somehow ... and it stopped working properly for quite some time.

To put our own history into effect again, it was just about 150 years after what we call the Renaissance that the American and French Revolutions took place. Those people probably had no clue of most of what happened during those eras, save for mostly 2nd hand accounts. 150 years after that and we're on the cusp of World War I, and I doubt the average person during the early 1900s was all that concerned or knowledgeable about what happened during the middle of the 1700s because it's as alien to them as the 1900s are to us now.

 

[VLAD the Destroyer]

I guess it is a matter of how drastically the world was changed after the Harrowing. The Black Death killed people but it did not physically alter the land around them or destroy the infrastructure and cities completely. The way you described the Harrowing I thought of it more as a meteor strike then an infectious disease. Something that can break continents and boil seas would not be as easy to recover from as just mass death over a short period of time. If it was just a small localized event then I can see where you're coming from. However if it was a global level event where every civilization and continent was impacted I just don't see them recovering to the point you describe in just 150 years.

This is just my personal opinion. I will work with what you feel is the history of your world. If 150 years is how long it took then I'm good with that. Just want clarification as I was working on some details regarding exploration and piracy and the impact of the Harrowing would impact how that maps out.

 

[Jago]

You nailed it in the first sentence: how much was the physical world affected by The Harrowing.

I do believe the words I used implied continental destruction and oceans literally evaporating, the surface of the world would have changed. However I am not sure if I want it to be so cataclysmic because, as you point out, that means a lot will have changed and it would be so long that it basically would pass into Myth instead of being remembered as a tangible event.

Hm. Thinking cap on.



I figure two ways to approach this:

1.) The Harrowing truly was that devastating, meaning yes, 150 years probably isn't going to cut it. I'd push it out to about that 1,000 year mark. This would generally make The Harrowing far more of like a mythological event, a pure biblical-level flood that wiped out the world and left the seeds of a new one to grow. Development would have been very slow and steady leading us to this point, with magic as a true force only coming back within the last 250 years or so and people trying to understand if there's some significance to that. However, technology and scientific thought would still have dominated growth, it would just be a lot more sow and cautious considering they remember the tales of what happened last time someone wasn't cautious with the Unknown. Magic is mistrusted, but not outright hated as the populace has had some time to get used to it again. The Church still speaks out against the Arcane, but is much more accepting of its own members with Divine powers.


2.) The Harrowing was bad, but not apocalyptic. It devastated those touched by magic and did some damage to the landscape (earthquakes, tidal waves, etc.), but overall it was not a continent-destroying disaster. Instead of changing the face of the planet, it changed more how things work: without magic to cure and aid people, knowledge had to step up and fill the gap. Without Mages in power, dramatic social shifts occurred. The old feudal-style system dies along with many practitioners of magic, and those who survived The Harrowing are not quite sure why they did. Magic suffers a 50 year lapse before slowly returning back, being much more regulated and people are very, very wary of this. Even Divine Spellcasters are looked at with fear in some cases. The need to try and recover after the loss of magic leads to the very quick and sudden boom of technological and scientific advancement, lead by The Church and encouraged by The City-States to gain an edge over one another.

 

[VLAD the Destroyer]

Both of those are cool. Each brings it's own interesting elements to the game world. Not sure which I like more. I was assuming the first idea from what you have posited initially but the second idea could have some fun and interesting story elements. I'd like to see what the others think on this.

 

[Shayuri]

I like 2 better for my own part. 1000 years is too long for recovery, I think. I was assuming the Harrowing was mostly a magical catastrophe...its damage inflicted through some 'magical explody stuff' but mostly because it overturned the very high-magic, high-fantasy world that had existed beforehand.

Also! I recall there was a PC at one point who was going to be associated with a noble family that I then vampirically pounced on and appropriated for my own backstory. Is that PC (I want to say...Pathfinder was it?) still going that direction? Do I need to consult with anyone while constructing my backstory or have we drifted apart like ships in the night?