Introduction
In the earliest days, there was nothing, not even the empty shell of a world. Then Chaos!
From the emptiness erupted fire and light, water, air, and earth. These primordial forces clashed with terrible power, and from their violence was born life. The beings that emerged were as terrible and primal as their time. Giants, monstrous beasts, and even some great figures that would be remembered in the tales of survivors and eventually regarded as gods or demons. This First Era was a time of great violence. The world was forged, but then the land was cleaved and reshaped a hundred times over as these beings clashed with one another alongside the ancient forces that had thrust them into existence.
In the end there was no victor. The primordial forces grew tamer with every passing millennium, until there came a time when the mightiest of breezes was nothing but the faintest whisper compared to the storms of old, the hottest flame no more than a candle before the sun of the first fires, and the world was not so savage. The children that Chaos had begotten did not grow any less wild, and they kept fighting endlessly; they slew one another and destroyed the very lands and fortresses they had ruled, leaving their surviving minions and degenerate offspring to scatter across the land and hide fearfully in the shadows. In the end the children of Chaos dwindled so much that they at last began to realize their time was over. Some of the remnants laid down in rest and began a long, or perhaps endless, slumber, whilst others departed the world altogether for more distant lands beyond our comprehension.
The signs of the First Era still remain for those that know with a discerning eye. In some places, the greatest fortresses and works of the past might still be visible above the ground as forlorn ruins. Within ancient caves there are not just crude paintings depicting an early era, but also there are the lost and long-buried remnants of the ancients, and perhaps even the occasional snore from primordial beings that still slumber. In the wildest and most untamed of wilderness, there may still roam great and extraordinary beasts.
Yet aeons have passed, and now new masters emerge to dominate the world. The Dawn of Civilization has come; everywhere it seems that the wilderness is being conquered as cities, villages, fortresses, and kingdoms are erected. This time they are populated by mortals, be they weakened offspring from the great and powerful children of Chaos, or perhaps descendants of whatever servants or playthings entertained such gods and demons of legend, or perhaps even just animals that have found their intelligence. Most of these mortal civilizations arise and are shaped not organically and of their own, but rather by the will and leadership of great sorcerers.
For in their rage, the ancients had left some of their weapons and relics scattered across ancient battlefields. Similarly consumed by lethargy, they later abandoned their treasures and the secrets of their magic upon the earth or inside their crumbling holds. There those secrets rested for untold years before they fell into the hands of new owners, those inquisitive mortals that harnessed the lost powers of the past to grow stronger and lord over their own kind as wizards. The age of Chaos and Its children has long passed. Now it is the Second Era--the Reign of Sorcerers!
Sorcerers
The names are mostly interchangeable--call them sorcerers, witches, wizards, magicians, magi, thaumaturges, artificers, or demigods; for our purposes here, they are all practically the same thing. This RP takes heavy inspiration from mythology and folklore of all different sorts, so magic can take many different forms and our wizards will likely have very different arrays of powers. These differing magical abilities probably won’t be on parity when it comes to power level, but that’s fine by me. Because magic is often situational, nebulous, and vague, I suspect that even if I wanted to it’d be impossible to define, much less, enforce, an equal level of potency in all of our characters without destroying diversity. So I will simply be very permissive about what magic can do in our setting, and hopefully with a small and generally good group we can have that much greater range of freedom without suffering for it. Magic can be acquired in numerous different ways; above, I implied that the most common means would probably be to discover some artifact or long-forgotten secret from the great and powerful precursor beings, and then gain magic from that. However, I am entirely open to other means. Perhaps there is something special about your wizard’s lineage that left latent power in his or her blood, until it was somehow activated. Perhaps your sorcerer’s magical powers were gained through the consumption of a magical being (perhaps even the flesh of another sorcerer?!), substance, or potion. Regardless, the means of acquiring magic shouldn’t be something that’s very easy.
That leads me to talk about some traits that I wish to be common for magic in this setting:
Potency. Magic is very powerful, and though it can come in various forms, sorcerers practically are demigods on a whole level of their own, far above the abilities of all but the greatest of mortals to challenge on even footing. Think of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings or Sith Lords from Star Wars, for example.
Mystery. This will certainly be more of a soft magic system, without rigid overarching rules or much of an explanation for how magic functions or comes into existence. Besides being thematically appropriate that magic be strange and poorly understood, this works best in a collaborative story setting because it enables many forms of magic to exist without precluding or contradicting one another. This enables greater variety and freedom, and hopefully less plot holes, internal inconsistencies, and suspension of belief rather than more. Of course, some people prefer more hard magic systems, so if you really want to state that your sorcerer derives power from some force (like mana) or physical object and explain the constraints of that magic and its source, then perhaps something can be worked out.
Limitations. As magic can come in various flavors, as alluded above, one sorcerer shouldn’t necessarily be able to do what another one can, and as an exception to the general rule of mystery outlined above, I would like for you to at least have in mind what the general limitations of your specific character’s magical powers are. For instance, one might be able to mentally dominate and control malleable minds like those of animals or even dim-witted or emotionally vulnerable people, but not mentally powerful beings like fellow wizards or a determined and disciplined warrior that is wise to your tricks. Or one might be able to fly, but only for a certain length of time and not through storms, etc. As a general rule, things like time travel, use of alchemy to create gunpowder and bombs, and raising millions of undead are not going to be allowed because they are too extreme and not conducive to the sort of theme that we are going for. If you are in doubt as to whether something is permissible, just ask.
Rarity. This is the biggest one; magic users are meant to be very powerful, yet exceeding rare. Think once again of the Lord of the Rings, and how unlike in World of Warcraft or the Elder Scrolls where magic-users are everywhere, there’s just a handful of wizards like Gandalf scattered across the world. Perhaps an even better example is Thulsa Doom from Conan, who is the last of a near extinct race of men and practically the only magic-user.
Setting
As this is the Dawn of Civilization, there are some things to take into account so that we can all be on the same page and maintain consistency in the setting. Note that almost all of these things come with caveats and potential exceptions, consider all of the following a rough guideline rather than a hard rule or limit. If you think that in some way you might be going beyond some of these guidelines, maybe it’s worth discussing, but I’ll probably be fine with it.
The denizens of this world are all very humanoid, if not entirely human. Furthermore, the civilized people (with the obvious exception of the few individuals that have become sorcerers) are quite mundane and should not possess any blatantly magical or extraordinary abilities or traits; if their ancestors ever had such powers, they were lost in the ages past. Different groups of people will naturally have different races and look different, and in some cases they might even be wholly different species; perhaps Neanderthal analogs, or elves-lite (pointy ears and slender bodies, minus the immortality and being superior to humans in every way). Cyclopes or blemmyes (headless men) would exist on the very periphery of what is allowed; full beastmen, orcs, and the like are too extreme.
I envision that the civilizations of this world will be set mostly in the early Bronze Age (technology circa 2000 B.C.) and will be smaller, weaker, and more diverse than that of typical NRP settings. Allow me to elaborate upon each of those points:
Individuals matter more in such settings, especially given that our primary characters (the wizards that lord over these civilizations, be it indirectly or directly) have magic and are superhuman, comparable with story figures like Saruman, Thulsa Doom, Maui, etc. That is why I would like this to be a mostly character-driven and focussed story, with the narration more coming from the angle of what individuals (probably the wizards, or people close to them) are doing, rather than the point of view being like that of some omnipotent god as their perception encompasses what the entire state and all its apparatus are doing.
Early history was dominated by small agrarian villages for many thousands of years, before the urban revolution would eventually lead to the foundation of proper cities as we know them today. These cities were often independent and localized powers that only ruled enough hinterland to sustain their own population, and that limited their size; however, given our setting with wizards championing advancement, it makes sense that there would be much greater centralization. The development of proper kingdoms and empires rather than mere city-states and tribal groups is possible in our setting, so don’t feel that social organization is confined to what historically existed in the early Bronze Age. Feudalism or similar systems are fine. Still, cities should not exceed around 100,000 in population at the absolute most, and any city with more than 10,000 people would be large. Just keep that in mind--something like a vast empire with millions of people is a bit too much for our setting. Similarly, standing professional armies would be rather small (if they exist at all) due to the inefficiency of labor and the difficulty in producing a large enough surplus to support many people that don’t directly contribute to the sustainment of the population, and warfare would probably be conducted largely by normal citizens levied into armies for a season or two. The limited technology also limits the speed of transportation and spread of information, and therefore contributes to a difficulty in projecting power over vast areas.
This segues into my next point--since we have the first civilizations to emerge after a very long gap-period where nothing really went on, which was preceded by some vague time of creation and Chaos, there probably won’t need to be excessive backstory. NRPs often suffer from excessive premature worldbuilding while everybody sets up their sheets, with hardly any of those details becoming relevant to the IC, much less making it there. Some backstory between our wizards and civilizations is okay, and it certainly makes sense that the people of this world might have many legends and myths about the First Era (of dubious veracity, of course!) but for the most part I would discourage a heavy emphasis on the background and history of your civilization. Instead, I think it best to place the emphasis more on the wizard--how did they attain their power, and what have they already used it to do? What would they like to do in the future? From that frame and point of view you can still answer many questions about your civilization’s formation and roots whilst retaining the emphasis mainly on the characters.
OOC Goals and Thoughts
With the soft magic system such that it is and our rules and guidelines being kept loose, there will of course be a disparity in the power level between various characters. That isn’t inherently a problem, though it does mean there’s a lot of potential for abuse in the form of powergaming. It has to be emphasized that this is not a “game” to be “won” but rather a collaborative storytelling effort, so some maturity and restraint are necessary. Though Oraculum and I would rather leave everyone with a great deal of freedom, we will be forced to intervene if such powergaming becomes apparent.
The intention is to keep the planning phase for this RP rather short. Too many RPs on this site, especially NRPs that act similar to this one, stall in the pre-IC phase and don’t take off. For that reason, character sheets can (and are even encouraged to) be very brief and just contain the broad strokes. This is the Dawn of Civilization anyways, so there shouldn’t be some huge and ornate history to write out. Instead I would prefer a “show rather than tell” approach where your first IC post acts as a sort of introduction that tells one more about your character. You do not need to go so heavy on the exposition as to render the character sheet useless by virtue of restating everything in it but in even greater detail; ideally you’d just use the barebones established in the character sheet as a platform and quickly build off from there to establish detail, motivations, and so on.
So what ‘barebones’ should be in a character sheet?
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