The Legend of Aegria

[Sir Not Appearing on Forum]

This spot saved for when I get to writing the background story for this possible new game. Been thinking A LOT about this one at work.

Main Villain: Tetunom-Ibue, the Death of the Sky
Main City State: Dreg

General Background: Dreg is a heavily populated city-state located in the massive continent of Aegria, which was once a thriving paradise but was transformed into a desert wasteland by a group of evil magic users in ages past.

Dreg is ruled over by one of these magic users, named Tetunom-Ibue, and, just like the other magic users who rule over their own city-states, treats her people as though they were lower than dirt. Slavery, prostitution, random executions, gladiatorial fights, death orgies and other horrors are a daily sight for the citizens of places like Dreg. Its of no surprise that the people would grow tired of such things and want to be free. Unfortunately the City-State guard has first dibs on any useful material found in the wasteland and the only common materials that everyone has access to is bone and stone.

The Beginning of the Story (Character Creation ideas): Players take on the roles of common everyday people living around the City-State of Dreg. These people were either once slaves owned and working in the city, free but extremely poor individuals or maybe even old remnants of the City-State Guard who were discharged for some reason or another. All players know of the city and the immediate surrounding areas but are far from educated about the world. Education is a controlled thing in Aegria and if someone has the ability to read text then they are a diamond in a sea of coal.

Player characters represent people that are tired with the ruler of Dreg and want a change for the betterment of the common people. Characters therefore must be of good alignment as they want to help others around them in any way they can. I will allow slightly chaotic characters, but they will only do SLIGHTLY chaotic things in order to reach the ultimate goal.

Playable Races: Generic Humans, Generic Elves and Fire Elves, the Eath-based Drakul (forgot their name DOH), Generic Dwarves, Goblinoids, Kib. Neko.

Fairies are considered a thing of legend and are spoken of in ancient ruins and cave paintings. Cog-Men have never been heard of here. The Host have never been encountered. Lycanthrope would never be able to survive the harsh, arid climate.

Starting EXP: 40,000 points
Jobs: 2 (third job cannot be purchased)
Available Jobs: Anything besides steam-based, clockwork-based or otherwise cultural based such as samurai, ninja or the like. Knights are known as "Avengers".

Religion: The Celestial Gods are known of and are worshiped. Aegria has its own Demi-Gods so have fun coming up with some if you are interested. It should be noted that opposites apply in Aegria, at least around Dreg. The worship of Avodent is illegal and punishable by torture and then death. Marr is the main religion in Dreg but its more along the lines of human sacrifice in the style of the Aztecs.

Equipment: I'll take care of starting items for you so don't worry about it.

Questions?

[Ninjineered]

You say most characters will be good, but someone would be allowed to be chaotic slightly... I think that somewhere along the line, Chaotic has become interchangeable with evil. Chaotic refers to a characters opinion of law and order. Chaotic character, be them good, neutral, or evil, simply disregard any form of law or control.

Like Jason pointed out, Chaotic Good would make more sense than anything. A champion rising from amongst the oppressed would have to be at least Chaotic/Neutral Good to stand up against his oppressors in the first place.

[Sir Not Appearing on Forum]

Jason:
1.) Yes, trained individuals within the guard could be considered Avengers after they had been removed from the guard. Think of it as a fighter for the people, the chivalrous representation of a knight from a medieval period.

2.) Most people wouldnt have the skills for the jobs you mentioned. But then again, your characters arent really "normal" people. You are above the norm, so those jobs are possible for you. I'm sure you can come up with a reason as wo why your characters are what they are.

3.) Everyone is allowed some form of protection whether it be daggers or small clubs or along those lines. Security is decently high inside the city-states, but as long as you keep your weapons put away no one usually asks any questions.

4.) The main idea I had for "Chaotic-Anything" was that times are hard, people are born and raised with death and depression surrounding them at all times and they get used to that. I guess the best way to describe someone of this nature would be the guy who wants peace but isn't afraid to break a couple of bones of potentially innocent people in order to reach that final goal. I hope thats a good explanation.

5.) Asphodeus is known but is praised as mainly a secondary God when compared to Marr and Avodent in Aegria. There is a small movement of time worshippers and the lot, which is not illegal to do. The worship of Gaia is even less popular what with the lack of nature and all.

6.) I'd like to stay away from Marr or anyone who worships him as you pretty much have to be evil to do so. The other Gods are fine though.

7.) Everyone knows that Marr is evil and horrible the only thing keeping them in line and making them go along with the religion is the ridiculously over-powered ruler they have that demands they abide and worship as they are told. Basically everyone is forced to follow Marr out of fear. There are quite a few priests that devotely follow Marr that are under Tetumon but for the most part part people do as they are told and don't ask questions, or they tend to find themselves the next one to be sacrificed on the alter.

Roy:
I agree with you, someone would have to be hardened in order to be able to fight against something that awful. It takes a badass to beat a badass basically. I mentioned what I meant when I said Chaotic above. It's not "evil" but a chaotic character would go about doing not very good things in order to reach their ultimate goal which would be ultimately good. Sacrifice a few to save the many is a good way to put it.

Be careful in how you go about doing chaotic things though. There is a VERY fine line between chaotic (I break the random farmers kneecaps to find out something) to evil (I rip the heart out of the farmers dog and eat it to freak him out so he tells me what I want to know).

[Ninjineered]

I don't think a Chaotic Good character would break someone's knees unless it was to save a lot of lives, and ONLY if he were confident that the injury wasn't life threatening. They would certainly never do purely evil things unless it were for the ultimate good.

Realistically, how often do evil, evil things lead to anything good? I don't think the situation comes up all that often.

[Ninjineered]

Sounds like a lot of stuff that relevant governing stats would solve. ^^

[Sir Not Appearing on Forum]

Crafter-based jobs in the current rule listing are considered neutral to the class system.

In this current game if you had say a "Mercenary/Leatherworker" then the character would be a fighter class specified character. The mercenary is a fighter job, and since leatherworker is truly neutral it just takes on whatever the other job is, so it becomes a fighter based job as well. This might change in the future (I plan on releasing a crafting guide with more information on craft characters, etc.) but for right now craft related jobs are wild cards.

As for the chaotic discussion, in real life we make "chaotic" decisions on a near daily basis (going through that red light to get through traffic when theres a slight chance it could lead to a possible accident, etc.) Doing such things doesn't make you evil. A chaotic character can still be good at heart (Jason mentioned Jack Bauer from 24 in a recent discussion as an example) but have slightly despicable tendencies (Brandon's character for this campaign is a decent example. His character used to work as a City-State Guard in charge of groups of slaves. He was discharged and sent out to pretty much die because he fed the slaves more rations than he was ordered to. The sheer idea that he even out himself in the situation where he controlled and ordered around a bunch of enslaved people could consider him slightly chaotic, but he ended up doing so because it was a necessity for him to not bring attention to himself so that he wouldn't be exiled from the city.) I'm just saying, its totally possible to make a "good-chaotic" character without leaning more towards evil. Everyone knows their limits on what crossing the line would be. It's a complicated subject to say the least.

[Sir Not Appearing on Forum]

YAY!! Stamp of approval!!
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

This made my day