This RP is GMed in cooperation with Cyclone and Lugubrious. You may ask them or myself questions.
This RP is closed, but we have a new one here
Don't ask me about character sheets and don't ask me about how to start unless you have read part 5 down the bottom.
Long ago, in a distant world, the godly being the Devourer created us, the Keepers. We built incredible fortresses called Dungeons to harbour our magical might, and from them we sent out great armies which slaughtered the humans of the land and razed their cities. The reign of our evil soaked the land, until we finally unleashed the Apocalypse and destroyed that world. But we did not die with that realm.
Our great patriarch the Devourer has led us, as well as some Keepers from various other worlds, through a portal to a whole new realm. This realm is called Elysium, a place the humans living there consider a paradise. Once again, we have a world to march upon and conquer. The denizens of this world will bend to our might or be crushed beneath us. There will be blood, whether it is in the name of the Devourer, ourselves, or another.
But be warned, this revolting paradise of a world is not so soft as it may appear. The air is laden with magic. The abundance of such energies has left many of the humans with magical powers, and those warriors who aren't battlemages, summoners, or knights with enchanted armor have access to the so-called 'black powder weapons'. There are those who would use magic to cast spells and kill you, those who utilize magic to be superhuman or enchant their equipment, and then those rare few who would rather blow you to bits with a cannon or shoot you with a musket.
Basis:
As one may have guessed, this roleplay is not focusing on being the ‘good guys’ of the roleplay. Rather, you are the evil overlord you have always been trying to beat (in other, more archetypal stories) during the course of the roleplay. You must build your army and Dungeon and set out to conquer this little world. This world has known war, yes...but never against the likes of Keepers or their minions. Still, these humans know the land, have strength in great numbers, and most have gained magical powers in order to better adapt to their environments. They won't be defeated too easily, at least not at first.
Your real problem, after establishing yourself, lies with your fellow Keepers, as we are not a very organized or friendly group, and have always been known to fight each other. We're also not so easy to take down.
Index:
1. Dungeons
1.1 Dungeon Construction & Basics
1.2 Dungeon Heart
1.3 Dungeon Rooms
2. Keepers
2.1 Avatars
2.2 Death
3. Creatures
3.1 Blueprints & Basics
3.2 Constructs
3.3 Rogue Beings
4. The World
4.1 Geography
4.2 Resistance
4.3 NPCs
4.4 Some history
5. Conclusion
5.1 Credits
5.2 Rules
5.3 Compendium
5.4 Starting
1. Dungeons
1.1 Dungeon Construction & Basics
Dungeons are essentially our bases of operation. Without them, you'd be mere overpowered mages or warriors as compared to demigods with huge armies. Your dungeon can be a castle, tunnels, even a floating fortress. Do note that while you will always have one main centre of operations, your first dungeon, you can build new outposts, conquer human settlements, or seize others' dungeons to expand your domain.
The larger the domain, the more powerful the Keeper. This is why Imps or a source of human servants are very valuable to every Keeper, as they are the only creatures that can build your dungeon, and is also one reason why you might fight other Keepers. You could take over the dungeons of others to become even more powerful. Dungeons are fully customisable, although there is one structure which must be present in all Dungeons. That one structure is the Dungeon Heart.
1.2 Dungeon Heart
We are sustained by the first creation we make, the Dungeon Heart. Now, the Heart is our sanctum – it’s where you should be if you’re not out leading an army. You see, while you’re resting in the Heart you can do loads of things – you can expand your conscious mind to your entire dungeon, letting you see everything that’s going on within it at once (your magical powers get downgraded slightly, as they’re being used to keep an eye on everything, but this lets you rain down death upon invaders everywhere); you can directly give orders to your beings all over the dungeon, such as telling them to mass here to prepare to attack the Keeper next-door, and, most importantly, you can create new Creatures and Constructs. Once you have a heart and a sizeable dungeon, you can use magic to alter your physical form, or Avatar, and become far more powerful. Until then, you'd do well to lay low and make building your dungeon a priority.
1.3 Dungeon Rooms
Our dungeons have virtually limitless different types of rooms to be made and utilised. Each new one built will increase the size of your dungeon and the power you hold. Every Keeper will probably need some basic facilities in their dungeon, like a storage room, barracks, prison, foundry, and so on. It takes a lot of infrastructure to support a horde of minions!
2. Keepers
2.1 Avatars
Keepers are demigods in an interesting way. They have immortal souls, as in they will always be conscious. However, their bodies can be destroyed and manipulated by magical and physical means. This means that Keepers can take on the form of whatever they choose, as long as they have the power to do so. This physical shell is called an 'Avatar'. If you wish, you can forfeit certain things for others – you could ditch your magic in order to become the Keeper equivalent of the Hulk, or lose all your considerable physical prowess to become ultra-magical. At the start you will not yet have a Dungeon, so you will be no more powerful than a sorcerer. You must earn your strength.
As I have already mentioned, you can always alter your Keeper's Avatar later on so that your physical form is more powerful, whether that means having new magical powers, the ability to fly, or just more muscle. Do be aware of your limitations, however; you cannot start with the ability to fly, use telepathy, destroy entire armies with your magic, and laugh as arrows bounce off your huge body covered with scales as hard as steel. You must earn and develop such powers, and try to be original too.
2.2 Death
Should your Keeper be slain, your creatures become a disorganised rabble. Your Constructs, if you have them, may be able to keep them under control, but creatures are normally weak-willed things that will be terrified out of their wits upon discovering that their master and maker has just been defeated.
Assuming you manage to beat back the enemy who just managed to put a serious dent in your operations, you’ll want to try and resurrect yourself ASAP. A Dungeon without a Keeper is a gilded invitation to your foes saying “Dear Keepers, come here and kill me once and for all”. The first step towards doing that is rebuilding your Heart. After that it’s the standard resurrection sequence, in which you spend a couple of pages with your minions trying to get your soul back from the Void. During that time your dungeon is crippled – you can’t get new creatures, can’t fight off any invaders with magic, and everyone else will probably be swarming to finish you off. That isn't a good situation to be in, so avoid it if possible, but no meta-gaming or power playing! If someone tries to kill you, be fair about it. If someone kills you, take it on the chin and move on. This is just a roleplay after all.
When you’re resurrected, you’ll likely be rather peeved. So if they haven't left yet stay in that Heart and start giving ‘em payback – remember, they can’t fight back very effectively against your realm itself. Creatures can be overwhelmed by attackers. The very walls and floor, not likely.
If you don’t manage to beat the enemy off, then this is even worse than having everyone swarming to defeat you. Your creatures will all be dead, your forces slain, and your dungeon probably got absorbed into your rival's, making your foe doubly strong. Now, in the spirits of keeping this RP continuing and remaining fun, you can always say that a few imps managed to run away – they can summon you back to life after a while, just I’d suggest that it’s very, very far away from your old home. After that, again, it’s up to you – I’d suggest building up in secrecy. Or you can admit defeat and let it go.
3. Creatures
3.1 Blueprints & Basics
The first type of followers you will get are the lowly imps, which are weak little demons, and humans (you could enslave the humans, mind control them, or somehow convince them to serve you willingly). Imps and humans are the only followers that can construct your dungeon, so despite being pathetically weak in combat, they are still very important to your dungeon. Nobody really knows how the imps came to be, only that they inhabit a separate realm of their own and have been summoned to serve Keepers since the dawn of time. They’d rather spend a long evening in a torture pit or tavern than run outside and fight for you, but they abhor being without a master and will help defend your dungeon if they must. Just don't expect much out them in a fight; a few might be able to throw small fireballs, but most will have nothing but their tiny tools to fight with.
Imps are the only one of your creatures that can be created without a Dungeon Heart. You could summon them directly from the Void, fashion them out of materials and creatures at hand or perhaps find some novel source. Imps can be incredibly diverse in form, and are like just about everything else customisable. Their default form are short reddish demonic figures, although get creative and make Imps which suit your theme and location. The main limitation is that they are invariably bad fighters.
Now, just having imps would be a bit boring. After your Dungeon Heart is completed, you can go wild and create all kinds of creatures. The process is quite simple – you go into the Dungeon Heart, you invent what you want to create – maybe an ogre, or an elemental, or something, but whatever it is it'll be weaker than a Keeper or Construct – and then you start creating the blueprint for it.
Now, this is where you've got to be careful. Should you get interrupted while making the blueprint, disaster will strike. This means that you can’t personally attempt to organise a defence for your base if it comes under attack, you can’t rain down death from the heavens, you can’t do anything. Your life, and the safety of your base, rests firmly with your existing creatures and constructs. All your avatar’s attention is focused on the creation of a new blueprint – someone kicking open the door of the Heart will be enough to break your concentration, and from there the bad things will start happening.
In short, your avatar, the Heart, and a large chunk of your dungeon explodes from misdirected magical energy. If the thing you were making somehow survives, it will be malformed and probably unable to last more than two minutes on its own, so best to put it out of its misery. Just throw it at the enemy, provided they survived as well, since if they got this far you need all the help you can get.
We’ll be using a thing called the Fibonacci Sequence to determine how long each successive blueprint takes you to build. Just type it in on Google if you don’t know what it is – basically, your first creature takes three posts to create, the next one five, the next one eight, then thirteen, twenty-one and so on. Note that it is the number of different blueprints you have that determines the number of posts, not the number of blueprints you ever made, so you can destroy older blueprints and minions to make way for newer one. By the way, these aren't your posts, but rather those of the others in this RP – so if you want to make your first creature, you can’t spam three posts to get it straight off. They’ve all got to be other peoples' posts.
Your creatures don’t increase in power as your dungeon expands – they stay just as you have created them, and your first few creatures have to be something fairly weak. As your dungeon expands, you can create more complicated creatures and, if you so wish, destroy the weaker ones to reduce the amount of time it’ll take you to make a new one. Just, you have to destroy the old ones first before you make the new ones – no distractions or things go boom, remember?
Once you’ve created a blueprint it is relatively easy to create hordes more of that specific creature. A room designated as a summoning chamber, hatchery, or something along those lines will allow your imps or other followers to create more of that creature without your aid. Extremely minor changes to an individual caste of minion can be easily done, whether it be a physical change in, say, pigmentation or a replacement of swords with spears as standard weapon. Any serious modification, however, requires an upgrade. Upgrades take the same amount of other peoples' posts to complete as the creature (that is being upgraded) took to create as a blueprint. Luckily, this process doesn't need to take place in your Heart and won't incapacitate you.
3.2 Constructs
Think of Constructs as the link between you and the rest of your normal creatures – they’re the halfway point. They are far, far more powerful than ordinary creatures, while still being much weaker than all but the most pitiful of Keepers. Constructs can keep your minions in line while you're not there and are often deployed to lead scouting parties or armies. Being much more closely linked to your Keeper than any mere creatures, a Construct can easily be empowered or even possessed if the need should ever arise.
The strength and great loyalty of Constructs comes at a cost, however – they must be personally created by your Keeper, which is a hassle. You create Constructs similarly to how you create your creature blueprints. For example, a level one Construct would take three posts to create, and your Keeper must spend that time in his or her Dungeon Heart uninterrupted. However, the number of blueprints you have does not influence how long it takes to make a Construct, and vice versa.
3.3 Rogue Beings
Anyone who doesn't want to play as a Keeper in this RP can be a Rogue Being (originally called Rogue Constructs). While Rogue Beings can be stronger than Constructs, they still cannot create creatures and proper dungeons, or stand up to the might of a Keeper. It would probably be a good idea to ally yourself with a Keeper for protection and access to an army to have some fun with.
A Rogue Being is a powerful entity- something like a dragon, sorcerer, elemental, demon, monster, ex-Construct of a long-gone Keeper, etc. You are quite spoilt for choice, as Elysium is a very magical world full of interesting beings, and the Keepers of Outremar had made all sorts of abominations in their time. You have great potential for a very interesting and original character, whether you choose to be a Keeper or a Rogue Being.
As a general rule, your Rogue Being may not partner up with your own Keeper, should you decide to make one of each.
4. The World
4.1 Geography
The world Keepers originally inhabited was called Outremear. Outremar was once a massive shield volcano, located on an entirely separate planet (and even in another dimension) from Elysium. Eventually, it became dormant, and humans, trees, and other critters migrated onto it. Cormumag and his children, the Keepers of Outremar, wreaked havoc during five different ages of evil. That is all unimportant now, as it has been destroyed by the Apocalypse.
Elysium is a large continent roughly the size of Africa. In the shape of a tear-drop or pear, it stretches from south of the equatorial tropics to the edge of the northern polar ice cap. The planet is smaller in size than Outremar or Earth, but unless you are doing some cartography that won't make too much difference. The sun is not a conventional sun. It is a colossal gas giant which emits huge amounts of heat, light and magic. It is called the Source, and is where most of the world's magic originates. As it is a magical world, you may find the occasional magical landmark or magical species.
Map of Elysium
In case it is of use, prevailing equatorial winds come from the West, prevailing polar winds come from the East, on the East coast currents go towards the equator and on the West coast currents go away from the equator.
4.2 Resistance
The various civilisations you will encounter on Elysium do actually pose a significant threat to any would-be conqueror. This large continent is not entirely unified, though it is somewhat politically stable as of the beginning of this story. Various tribes, kingdoms, and empires have existed. They have grown, fallen apart, and even had a few wars in the past. Of course, never in their past did a horde of extra-dimensional beings show up to enslave and pillage people, so this will be a first.
Keep in mind that magic is very prevalent on Elysium. Sure, there might be an occasional enchanted forest populated with mythical critters and monsters, but the main impact of this is that every civilisation worth conquering will have magic of some sort at their disposal.
Not every human has magic, but it is common enough to transform the type of warfare conducted on this planet. You might send an army of ogres into battle with plenty of armour, expecting to face archers, only to find that your enemy utilises spellcasters instead. You might send a flock of bird-people to fly over the enemy soldiers and drop throwing axes, only to find that your foes have enchanted armour or have used magic to enhance their bodies to the point that any one of them could catch a flying axe and easily hurl back with five times as much force.
This world, in terms of technology, is close to the level of Earth during the Renaissance. This means that any Keeper or group of humans could have access to cannons and muskets, though they would probably favour the use of magic. I won't forbid combining technology and magic to create potions, magical automatons, or anything like that, just don't have your Keeper or an NPC group gain access to anything ridiculously powerful.
4.3 NPCs
Feel free to create NPC people, organisations, corporations, towns, religions, whatever. Just make sure you don't create anything that is ridiculously overpowered in some way, and all should be well.
There might be a few groups of people who don't have any magic, but for the most part every group of people will probably have at least one caste of people with some sort of magical ability. For instance, you could encounter some desert nomads that are able to transmute small quantities of sand into water. Large cities or empires could enjoy the benefit of having many different people and therefore many different types of magic to make use of, although natives of one area tend to have magic of similar types.
The world population, at least before we start killing them, is around 10,000,000. Major cities have populations between 1,500,000 and 100,000.
4.4 Some history
Few living beings hold memory of Outremar. The transfer to Elysium either stripped Keepers of their memories or the Keepers came from so long ago that they know nothing of recent history. What is known is this: Just after the Creator made Outremar, the Devourer made Cormumag to crush it. Once humans arrived, Cormumag emerged and created evil as we know it. His Dungeon and armies were of legendary proportions, and he spawned the first Keepers, his children and our ancestors. But his reign was ended by an angelic race of beings, the opposite of the Keepers- the Anti-Keepers. His children scattered, and the first Age was ended.
Several more ages followed, in each the Keepers emerged with some new strategy, and in each they were eventually defeated by either the humans or each other. Not much is known of the final age, the Fifth Age, other than that the Apocalypse took place, headed by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and they won, destroying the world and opening a rift in the Void for all Keepers past and present to flood through into a new world- Elysium.
Elysium is a small world in a small universe, created by an angelic being by the name of Sophist. Something happened during the last Age of Outremar to allow a rift to open to it, and Sophist is nowhere to be found.
As powerful as Sophist was, his perfect world was still only perfect in the sense that resources were dispersed equally across beautiful landscapes and the land gave plenty. The humans and other creatures, which were taken to Elysium from other realms in the earliest days, were far from perfection. Naturally, not even Sophist was able to control the entire planet for long, so the men split off into various tribes.
Naturally, they then found reasons to get into their petty wars, and found ways to use the abundant magic to kill each other, despite Sophist's vain and petty hopes of peace. This world has seen war, but at present there still isn't near enough bloodshed and anarchy. We Keepers can fix that, and have a bit of fun in the process.
5. Conclusion
5.1 Credits
This RP has migrated here from the Spore Forums. Credits go to Senger Drol/Tri for the original version of this over there, GrandEnder for the second version, Prospo for the next one, and Cavalier (now Lugubrious) for the following two. The map of Elysium was made courtesy of BBeast.
5.2 Rules
Aside from using common sense and following the typical rules, (play fair, no godmodding (controlling others' characters), no metagaming (using knowledge your character doesn't have), etc.), there's just one thing.
In order to help others see your progress and ensure that nobody cheats by advancing too quickly, I ask that you keep count of your progress towards new creatures, constructs, rooms, etc. at the bottom of your post. While not required, it would also be great if you could keep count of your Keeper's current forces and resources, and provide me with a brief description of your dungeon that I can add to the Compendium.
5.3 Compendium
I will try to keep a running record of all Keepers, their appearance and domain (theme over which they preside, like fire or swamps), and brief descriptions of their dungeons and creatures. I find that such records are incredibly helpful whenever two players start interacting. You yourself will be supplying these snippets of information by appending them to the end of your post right next to the obligatory status update. Just a few words will do. If you elect not to do this, you don't get logged in the compendium and it's that much harder to get things done around here.
Also, when you visit somewhere new, create a good description of it. I can't design an entire world on my own, so you need to do your part. These descriptions of NPCs and important locations will also be added to the Compendium for consistency and convenience.
5.4 Starting
No character sheets are needed, just make a descriptive entry post about your Keeper's humble beginning on Elysium, and perhaps reveal the back-story of your character over time. Your entry post should describe your appearance, location, name, theme and a bit of your character and powers. Your Keeper shall appear in a place of your choosing on Elysium. You may instantly materialise, fall out of the sky, have your soul possess an existing being, be summoned by some ritual (probably unintentionally, with you just snatching the place of whatever was supposed to appear), or some other means of your imagining.
It is also worth noting that your character needn't necessarily be from Outremar. As mentioned in the Introduction, a godly being known as the Devourer has occasionally created Keepers on purpose to manipulate and use to further its goals, or accidentally warped life-forms into Keepers with its corrupting aura. Sometime entities which aren't true Keepers, such as unusually potent sorcerers, extra-terrestrial beings, local demigods or mythical creatures, can still become Keepers and do what Keepers do. Be creative and original.
If you are a Keeper from Outremar, you may have no memory of recent events other than that outlined here unless you have our permission. You may be from a distant Age, or be warped and distorted by the journey so you have lost your memories and possibly become an entirely new Keeper. Many souls of Keepers float around the Void, but few can manifest regularly in the material plane, so you could be an entirely new Keeper who never got out of the Void before. This world is a chance to start anew.
So get thinking, get creative, be original, and prepare to conquer the world.
This RP is closed, but we have a new one here
Don't ask me about character sheets and don't ask me about how to start unless you have read part 5 down the bottom.
Long ago, in a distant world, the godly being the Devourer created us, the Keepers. We built incredible fortresses called Dungeons to harbour our magical might, and from them we sent out great armies which slaughtered the humans of the land and razed their cities. The reign of our evil soaked the land, until we finally unleashed the Apocalypse and destroyed that world. But we did not die with that realm.
Our great patriarch the Devourer has led us, as well as some Keepers from various other worlds, through a portal to a whole new realm. This realm is called Elysium, a place the humans living there consider a paradise. Once again, we have a world to march upon and conquer. The denizens of this world will bend to our might or be crushed beneath us. There will be blood, whether it is in the name of the Devourer, ourselves, or another.
But be warned, this revolting paradise of a world is not so soft as it may appear. The air is laden with magic. The abundance of such energies has left many of the humans with magical powers, and those warriors who aren't battlemages, summoners, or knights with enchanted armor have access to the so-called 'black powder weapons'. There are those who would use magic to cast spells and kill you, those who utilize magic to be superhuman or enchant their equipment, and then those rare few who would rather blow you to bits with a cannon or shoot you with a musket.
Basis:
As one may have guessed, this roleplay is not focusing on being the ‘good guys’ of the roleplay. Rather, you are the evil overlord you have always been trying to beat (in other, more archetypal stories) during the course of the roleplay. You must build your army and Dungeon and set out to conquer this little world. This world has known war, yes...but never against the likes of Keepers or their minions. Still, these humans know the land, have strength in great numbers, and most have gained magical powers in order to better adapt to their environments. They won't be defeated too easily, at least not at first.
Your real problem, after establishing yourself, lies with your fellow Keepers, as we are not a very organized or friendly group, and have always been known to fight each other. We're also not so easy to take down.
Index:
1. Dungeons
1.1 Dungeon Construction & Basics
1.2 Dungeon Heart
1.3 Dungeon Rooms
2. Keepers
2.1 Avatars
2.2 Death
3. Creatures
3.1 Blueprints & Basics
3.2 Constructs
3.3 Rogue Beings
4. The World
4.1 Geography
4.2 Resistance
4.3 NPCs
4.4 Some history
5. Conclusion
5.1 Credits
5.2 Rules
5.3 Compendium
5.4 Starting
1. Dungeons
1.1 Dungeon Construction & Basics
Dungeons are essentially our bases of operation. Without them, you'd be mere overpowered mages or warriors as compared to demigods with huge armies. Your dungeon can be a castle, tunnels, even a floating fortress. Do note that while you will always have one main centre of operations, your first dungeon, you can build new outposts, conquer human settlements, or seize others' dungeons to expand your domain.
The larger the domain, the more powerful the Keeper. This is why Imps or a source of human servants are very valuable to every Keeper, as they are the only creatures that can build your dungeon, and is also one reason why you might fight other Keepers. You could take over the dungeons of others to become even more powerful. Dungeons are fully customisable, although there is one structure which must be present in all Dungeons. That one structure is the Dungeon Heart.
1.2 Dungeon Heart
We are sustained by the first creation we make, the Dungeon Heart. Now, the Heart is our sanctum – it’s where you should be if you’re not out leading an army. You see, while you’re resting in the Heart you can do loads of things – you can expand your conscious mind to your entire dungeon, letting you see everything that’s going on within it at once (your magical powers get downgraded slightly, as they’re being used to keep an eye on everything, but this lets you rain down death upon invaders everywhere); you can directly give orders to your beings all over the dungeon, such as telling them to mass here to prepare to attack the Keeper next-door, and, most importantly, you can create new Creatures and Constructs. Once you have a heart and a sizeable dungeon, you can use magic to alter your physical form, or Avatar, and become far more powerful. Until then, you'd do well to lay low and make building your dungeon a priority.
1.3 Dungeon Rooms
Our dungeons have virtually limitless different types of rooms to be made and utilised. Each new one built will increase the size of your dungeon and the power you hold. Every Keeper will probably need some basic facilities in their dungeon, like a storage room, barracks, prison, foundry, and so on. It takes a lot of infrastructure to support a horde of minions!
2. Keepers
2.1 Avatars
Keepers are demigods in an interesting way. They have immortal souls, as in they will always be conscious. However, their bodies can be destroyed and manipulated by magical and physical means. This means that Keepers can take on the form of whatever they choose, as long as they have the power to do so. This physical shell is called an 'Avatar'. If you wish, you can forfeit certain things for others – you could ditch your magic in order to become the Keeper equivalent of the Hulk, or lose all your considerable physical prowess to become ultra-magical. At the start you will not yet have a Dungeon, so you will be no more powerful than a sorcerer. You must earn your strength.
As I have already mentioned, you can always alter your Keeper's Avatar later on so that your physical form is more powerful, whether that means having new magical powers, the ability to fly, or just more muscle. Do be aware of your limitations, however; you cannot start with the ability to fly, use telepathy, destroy entire armies with your magic, and laugh as arrows bounce off your huge body covered with scales as hard as steel. You must earn and develop such powers, and try to be original too.
2.2 Death
Should your Keeper be slain, your creatures become a disorganised rabble. Your Constructs, if you have them, may be able to keep them under control, but creatures are normally weak-willed things that will be terrified out of their wits upon discovering that their master and maker has just been defeated.
Assuming you manage to beat back the enemy who just managed to put a serious dent in your operations, you’ll want to try and resurrect yourself ASAP. A Dungeon without a Keeper is a gilded invitation to your foes saying “Dear Keepers, come here and kill me once and for all”. The first step towards doing that is rebuilding your Heart. After that it’s the standard resurrection sequence, in which you spend a couple of pages with your minions trying to get your soul back from the Void. During that time your dungeon is crippled – you can’t get new creatures, can’t fight off any invaders with magic, and everyone else will probably be swarming to finish you off. That isn't a good situation to be in, so avoid it if possible, but no meta-gaming or power playing! If someone tries to kill you, be fair about it. If someone kills you, take it on the chin and move on. This is just a roleplay after all.
When you’re resurrected, you’ll likely be rather peeved. So if they haven't left yet stay in that Heart and start giving ‘em payback – remember, they can’t fight back very effectively against your realm itself. Creatures can be overwhelmed by attackers. The very walls and floor, not likely.
If you don’t manage to beat the enemy off, then this is even worse than having everyone swarming to defeat you. Your creatures will all be dead, your forces slain, and your dungeon probably got absorbed into your rival's, making your foe doubly strong. Now, in the spirits of keeping this RP continuing and remaining fun, you can always say that a few imps managed to run away – they can summon you back to life after a while, just I’d suggest that it’s very, very far away from your old home. After that, again, it’s up to you – I’d suggest building up in secrecy. Or you can admit defeat and let it go.
3. Creatures
3.1 Blueprints & Basics
The first type of followers you will get are the lowly imps, which are weak little demons, and humans (you could enslave the humans, mind control them, or somehow convince them to serve you willingly). Imps and humans are the only followers that can construct your dungeon, so despite being pathetically weak in combat, they are still very important to your dungeon. Nobody really knows how the imps came to be, only that they inhabit a separate realm of their own and have been summoned to serve Keepers since the dawn of time. They’d rather spend a long evening in a torture pit or tavern than run outside and fight for you, but they abhor being without a master and will help defend your dungeon if they must. Just don't expect much out them in a fight; a few might be able to throw small fireballs, but most will have nothing but their tiny tools to fight with.
Imps are the only one of your creatures that can be created without a Dungeon Heart. You could summon them directly from the Void, fashion them out of materials and creatures at hand or perhaps find some novel source. Imps can be incredibly diverse in form, and are like just about everything else customisable. Their default form are short reddish demonic figures, although get creative and make Imps which suit your theme and location. The main limitation is that they are invariably bad fighters.
Now, just having imps would be a bit boring. After your Dungeon Heart is completed, you can go wild and create all kinds of creatures. The process is quite simple – you go into the Dungeon Heart, you invent what you want to create – maybe an ogre, or an elemental, or something, but whatever it is it'll be weaker than a Keeper or Construct – and then you start creating the blueprint for it.
Now, this is where you've got to be careful. Should you get interrupted while making the blueprint, disaster will strike. This means that you can’t personally attempt to organise a defence for your base if it comes under attack, you can’t rain down death from the heavens, you can’t do anything. Your life, and the safety of your base, rests firmly with your existing creatures and constructs. All your avatar’s attention is focused on the creation of a new blueprint – someone kicking open the door of the Heart will be enough to break your concentration, and from there the bad things will start happening.
In short, your avatar, the Heart, and a large chunk of your dungeon explodes from misdirected magical energy. If the thing you were making somehow survives, it will be malformed and probably unable to last more than two minutes on its own, so best to put it out of its misery. Just throw it at the enemy, provided they survived as well, since if they got this far you need all the help you can get.
We’ll be using a thing called the Fibonacci Sequence to determine how long each successive blueprint takes you to build. Just type it in on Google if you don’t know what it is – basically, your first creature takes three posts to create, the next one five, the next one eight, then thirteen, twenty-one and so on. Note that it is the number of different blueprints you have that determines the number of posts, not the number of blueprints you ever made, so you can destroy older blueprints and minions to make way for newer one. By the way, these aren't your posts, but rather those of the others in this RP – so if you want to make your first creature, you can’t spam three posts to get it straight off. They’ve all got to be other peoples' posts.
Your creatures don’t increase in power as your dungeon expands – they stay just as you have created them, and your first few creatures have to be something fairly weak. As your dungeon expands, you can create more complicated creatures and, if you so wish, destroy the weaker ones to reduce the amount of time it’ll take you to make a new one. Just, you have to destroy the old ones first before you make the new ones – no distractions or things go boom, remember?
Once you’ve created a blueprint it is relatively easy to create hordes more of that specific creature. A room designated as a summoning chamber, hatchery, or something along those lines will allow your imps or other followers to create more of that creature without your aid. Extremely minor changes to an individual caste of minion can be easily done, whether it be a physical change in, say, pigmentation or a replacement of swords with spears as standard weapon. Any serious modification, however, requires an upgrade. Upgrades take the same amount of other peoples' posts to complete as the creature (that is being upgraded) took to create as a blueprint. Luckily, this process doesn't need to take place in your Heart and won't incapacitate you.
3.2 Constructs
Think of Constructs as the link between you and the rest of your normal creatures – they’re the halfway point. They are far, far more powerful than ordinary creatures, while still being much weaker than all but the most pitiful of Keepers. Constructs can keep your minions in line while you're not there and are often deployed to lead scouting parties or armies. Being much more closely linked to your Keeper than any mere creatures, a Construct can easily be empowered or even possessed if the need should ever arise.
The strength and great loyalty of Constructs comes at a cost, however – they must be personally created by your Keeper, which is a hassle. You create Constructs similarly to how you create your creature blueprints. For example, a level one Construct would take three posts to create, and your Keeper must spend that time in his or her Dungeon Heart uninterrupted. However, the number of blueprints you have does not influence how long it takes to make a Construct, and vice versa.
3.3 Rogue Beings
Anyone who doesn't want to play as a Keeper in this RP can be a Rogue Being (originally called Rogue Constructs). While Rogue Beings can be stronger than Constructs, they still cannot create creatures and proper dungeons, or stand up to the might of a Keeper. It would probably be a good idea to ally yourself with a Keeper for protection and access to an army to have some fun with.
A Rogue Being is a powerful entity- something like a dragon, sorcerer, elemental, demon, monster, ex-Construct of a long-gone Keeper, etc. You are quite spoilt for choice, as Elysium is a very magical world full of interesting beings, and the Keepers of Outremar had made all sorts of abominations in their time. You have great potential for a very interesting and original character, whether you choose to be a Keeper or a Rogue Being.
As a general rule, your Rogue Being may not partner up with your own Keeper, should you decide to make one of each.
4. The World
4.1 Geography
The world Keepers originally inhabited was called Outremear. Outremar was once a massive shield volcano, located on an entirely separate planet (and even in another dimension) from Elysium. Eventually, it became dormant, and humans, trees, and other critters migrated onto it. Cormumag and his children, the Keepers of Outremar, wreaked havoc during five different ages of evil. That is all unimportant now, as it has been destroyed by the Apocalypse.
Elysium is a large continent roughly the size of Africa. In the shape of a tear-drop or pear, it stretches from south of the equatorial tropics to the edge of the northern polar ice cap. The planet is smaller in size than Outremar or Earth, but unless you are doing some cartography that won't make too much difference. The sun is not a conventional sun. It is a colossal gas giant which emits huge amounts of heat, light and magic. It is called the Source, and is where most of the world's magic originates. As it is a magical world, you may find the occasional magical landmark or magical species.
Map of Elysium
In case it is of use, prevailing equatorial winds come from the West, prevailing polar winds come from the East, on the East coast currents go towards the equator and on the West coast currents go away from the equator.
4.2 Resistance
The various civilisations you will encounter on Elysium do actually pose a significant threat to any would-be conqueror. This large continent is not entirely unified, though it is somewhat politically stable as of the beginning of this story. Various tribes, kingdoms, and empires have existed. They have grown, fallen apart, and even had a few wars in the past. Of course, never in their past did a horde of extra-dimensional beings show up to enslave and pillage people, so this will be a first.
Keep in mind that magic is very prevalent on Elysium. Sure, there might be an occasional enchanted forest populated with mythical critters and monsters, but the main impact of this is that every civilisation worth conquering will have magic of some sort at their disposal.
Not every human has magic, but it is common enough to transform the type of warfare conducted on this planet. You might send an army of ogres into battle with plenty of armour, expecting to face archers, only to find that your enemy utilises spellcasters instead. You might send a flock of bird-people to fly over the enemy soldiers and drop throwing axes, only to find that your foes have enchanted armour or have used magic to enhance their bodies to the point that any one of them could catch a flying axe and easily hurl back with five times as much force.
This world, in terms of technology, is close to the level of Earth during the Renaissance. This means that any Keeper or group of humans could have access to cannons and muskets, though they would probably favour the use of magic. I won't forbid combining technology and magic to create potions, magical automatons, or anything like that, just don't have your Keeper or an NPC group gain access to anything ridiculously powerful.
4.3 NPCs
Feel free to create NPC people, organisations, corporations, towns, religions, whatever. Just make sure you don't create anything that is ridiculously overpowered in some way, and all should be well.
There might be a few groups of people who don't have any magic, but for the most part every group of people will probably have at least one caste of people with some sort of magical ability. For instance, you could encounter some desert nomads that are able to transmute small quantities of sand into water. Large cities or empires could enjoy the benefit of having many different people and therefore many different types of magic to make use of, although natives of one area tend to have magic of similar types.
The world population, at least before we start killing them, is around 10,000,000. Major cities have populations between 1,500,000 and 100,000.
4.4 Some history
Few living beings hold memory of Outremar. The transfer to Elysium either stripped Keepers of their memories or the Keepers came from so long ago that they know nothing of recent history. What is known is this: Just after the Creator made Outremar, the Devourer made Cormumag to crush it. Once humans arrived, Cormumag emerged and created evil as we know it. His Dungeon and armies were of legendary proportions, and he spawned the first Keepers, his children and our ancestors. But his reign was ended by an angelic race of beings, the opposite of the Keepers- the Anti-Keepers. His children scattered, and the first Age was ended.
Several more ages followed, in each the Keepers emerged with some new strategy, and in each they were eventually defeated by either the humans or each other. Not much is known of the final age, the Fifth Age, other than that the Apocalypse took place, headed by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and they won, destroying the world and opening a rift in the Void for all Keepers past and present to flood through into a new world- Elysium.
Elysium is a small world in a small universe, created by an angelic being by the name of Sophist. Something happened during the last Age of Outremar to allow a rift to open to it, and Sophist is nowhere to be found.
As powerful as Sophist was, his perfect world was still only perfect in the sense that resources were dispersed equally across beautiful landscapes and the land gave plenty. The humans and other creatures, which were taken to Elysium from other realms in the earliest days, were far from perfection. Naturally, not even Sophist was able to control the entire planet for long, so the men split off into various tribes.
Naturally, they then found reasons to get into their petty wars, and found ways to use the abundant magic to kill each other, despite Sophist's vain and petty hopes of peace. This world has seen war, but at present there still isn't near enough bloodshed and anarchy. We Keepers can fix that, and have a bit of fun in the process.
5. Conclusion
5.1 Credits
This RP has migrated here from the Spore Forums. Credits go to Senger Drol/Tri for the original version of this over there, GrandEnder for the second version, Prospo for the next one, and Cavalier (now Lugubrious) for the following two. The map of Elysium was made courtesy of BBeast.
5.2 Rules
Aside from using common sense and following the typical rules, (play fair, no godmodding (controlling others' characters), no metagaming (using knowledge your character doesn't have), etc.), there's just one thing.
In order to help others see your progress and ensure that nobody cheats by advancing too quickly, I ask that you keep count of your progress towards new creatures, constructs, rooms, etc. at the bottom of your post. While not required, it would also be great if you could keep count of your Keeper's current forces and resources, and provide me with a brief description of your dungeon that I can add to the Compendium.
5.3 Compendium
I will try to keep a running record of all Keepers, their appearance and domain (theme over which they preside, like fire or swamps), and brief descriptions of their dungeons and creatures. I find that such records are incredibly helpful whenever two players start interacting. You yourself will be supplying these snippets of information by appending them to the end of your post right next to the obligatory status update. Just a few words will do. If you elect not to do this, you don't get logged in the compendium and it's that much harder to get things done around here.
Also, when you visit somewhere new, create a good description of it. I can't design an entire world on my own, so you need to do your part. These descriptions of NPCs and important locations will also be added to the Compendium for consistency and convenience.
5.4 Starting
No character sheets are needed, just make a descriptive entry post about your Keeper's humble beginning on Elysium, and perhaps reveal the back-story of your character over time. Your entry post should describe your appearance, location, name, theme and a bit of your character and powers. Your Keeper shall appear in a place of your choosing on Elysium. You may instantly materialise, fall out of the sky, have your soul possess an existing being, be summoned by some ritual (probably unintentionally, with you just snatching the place of whatever was supposed to appear), or some other means of your imagining.
It is also worth noting that your character needn't necessarily be from Outremar. As mentioned in the Introduction, a godly being known as the Devourer has occasionally created Keepers on purpose to manipulate and use to further its goals, or accidentally warped life-forms into Keepers with its corrupting aura. Sometime entities which aren't true Keepers, such as unusually potent sorcerers, extra-terrestrial beings, local demigods or mythical creatures, can still become Keepers and do what Keepers do. Be creative and original.
If you are a Keeper from Outremar, you may have no memory of recent events other than that outlined here unless you have our permission. You may be from a distant Age, or be warped and distorted by the journey so you have lost your memories and possibly become an entirely new Keeper. Many souls of Keepers float around the Void, but few can manifest regularly in the material plane, so you could be an entirely new Keeper who never got out of the Void before. This world is a chance to start anew.
So get thinking, get creative, be original, and prepare to conquer the world.
