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Legends. Myths. Tales of angels and demons, gods and monsters. Every nation and culture has them, some dating back to the very dawn of humanity. But they have always been thought of as mere fantasy, fabrications of the imaginations of storytellers and poets.
Until that fateful day.
Millennial Day, most people call it. The crux of the millennium, when thousands upon thousands of rifts in space itself tore open all around the world. Out of them flooded fantastic creatures of every shape and size imaginable, ranging from majestic and awe-inspiring to more terrifying than any mortal's nightmare to everything in between. These creatures displayed powers beyond all human knowledge and understanding, powers that put most human technologies to shame, powers that could only be called magic.
Fortunately, it was not the end of humanity. At the same time as the supernatural creatures' arrival, multitudes of people across the globe suddenly awakened magical powers very much like those used by those mysterious beings. Battles were fought, societal structures were torn down, and the world was nevertheless forever changed that day.
With such a sudden and radical shift in the distribution of power, it seemed like every man and monster wanted to take a piece of the world for himself. Then the first Soul Pact was forged between a human mage and a spirit, as the creature called itself, unlocking much greater power in both. Many others followed suit, pioneering an age of hopeful, if tentative, cooperation.
The more they worked together, the more familiarity the humans began seeing in the spirits, recognizing figures in their legends and myths and, more amazingly, actual histories. It wasn't long before the truth was publicly known, that humans in fact passed on to the spirits' home plane of existence after death and became spirits themselves. The spirit world, like the spirits themselves, resembled heaven and hell and everything in between. According many spirits, especially those who had lived for centuries or even millennia, travel between the human and spirit worlds had always been possible, until two thousand years ago, when it was closed off by the Biblical Seven Seals for reasons unknown, along with the sealing of all magic and spirits into the spirit world. And thus magic and spirits had been all but forgotten by humans, their various myths and legends the only remaining fragmented accounts of events past. Two millennia later, the Seals were released once more, but their aftereffects still linger, limiting the magical powers of any being in the human world who does not possess a Soul Pact between human and spirit.
Thirty years have passed since Millennial Day. For the most part, the human world has settled into a state of relative stability and order, but large swathes of planet Earth still lie in chaos as myriads of forces struggle for dominance. Seven major factions have emerged over time, each having its own visions for the future. Beneath the calm surface, a storm is brewing, and the future is going to be... exciting, one way or another.
As for you... Human or spirit, you are one of those blessed with great power, the power to potentially shape that future with your very own hands. What path will you take? Will you bring about an age of untold prosperity, or of utter ruin?
So this is an RP idea I've been planning for several months, with
@BCTheEntity and
@Hierophant. These two will also be the game's co-GMs. Basically, in this game, you create at least two characters, one human and one spirit, which may be bonded together through a Soul Pact. You can either pair up your own human and spirit, or have each paired up with someone else's character, or even have them remain alone if you wish. Another big part of this RP is that, if you want, you can play as famous cultural figures. If you ever wanted to play as a god like Osiris, a legendary hero like Hercules, or even a historical figure like Shakespeare, this is the RP for you. You can even create as many characters as you want, in case you want to play as multiple mythological figures, provided that you can handle that many characters. Of course, the more powerful your character is, the better a roleplayer you must be, to make sure that you can use that power responsibly to create meaningful and interesting storylines.
Note: Unfortunately, you won't be able to play as just any mythological figure, because some of them have already been taken by a member of the hosting team and have subplots planned, or because of other special reasons. A list of restricted mythological figures can be found
here.
There will be four "alignments" of spirits that you can play as: Light, Dark, Neutral, and Hybrid. As you may have guessed, Light is for angels, Dark is for demons, and Neutral is for other non-angelic, non-demonic types of spirits. Hybrid is for mixtures of the other three alignments, such as fallen angels, ascendant demons, and actual hybrid spirits. In general, if a mythological figure isn't explicitly depicted as an angel or a demon by legend or popular culture, then it should be Neutral, even if the figure has "dark" themes such as death or chaos, or "light" themes such as sky or creation. Of course, there can be exceptions; see the next paragraph.
One major mechanic in the setting is the presence of "mantles", parts of souls that are analogous to figurative mantles that can be passed on to different people. More details will be given in the game thread itself, if there's sufficient interest for the game, but basically it's possible for a spirit to "inherit" the mantle of another spirit. Once this happens, the first spirit gains some of the second spirit's memories and powers, and many other spirits will consider this spirit to have inherited the other spirit's names, roles, and legends as well. This allows a spirit to be a mythological figure, while not necessarily being the "original" version of that mythological figure; the current version may even have a different alignment from the original. This should allow for much greater flexibility in character biographies, and allow players to not worry too much about staying true to real life myths.
As mentioned in the previous section, there are seven major factions in the game, and player characters are strongly encouraged to join them. Each faction will be briefly described below, and more details will be available in the game thread.
- The Celestiarchy: A theocracy of zealous, devout angels, who seek to convert the world to faith in the Abrahamic God, as well as remove all demons from existence.
- The Infernal Legion: An army of demons united by little more than the goal of conquering the world, in addition to obliterating their ancient enemies, the angels.
- The Reclamation of Chaos: A brutal, ruthless sect of monstrous neutral spirits who seek to destroy both demons and angels, and return the world to its former purity, untainted by darkness and light. Its true goals seem to be more than this, however...
- The Protectorate of Humanity: A radical organization of human techno-mages and artificial, human-created robotic spirits who believe that all other spirits must be wiped out, lest they wipe out humanity first.
- The Mythic Accord: An alliance of most of the spirit world's major neutral pantheons of various cultures, intent on maintaining balance and stability. However, due to the pantheons' conflicting interests, the Accord has been mostly limited to maintaining the status quo.
- The Millennial Union: The youngest of all the major factions, a group of progressive humans and spirits who advocate global peace and cooperation, for the sake of societal development. As expected, their hopes are impeded by millennia-old hostilities and conflicting goals of various other factions.
- The Wandering Souls: A loose coalition of drifters and outcasts from all sorts of other factions, this faction doesn't officially exist, and seems to mostly try to stay out of trouble. However, rumors speak of their secret underground activities and plots...
We will try to have the majority of important plot threads take place in the Millennial City, a large and diverse city in which every single one of the major factions have significant influence, so that characters can interact with one another more easily. Of course, we'll try to not railroad anyone either, so if it makes sense for a subplot to take place outside the city, then it will.
One last thing to note is that there will be a very strict, structured magic system used in this game, to ensure that magic physically makes sense, behaves consistently, and isn't in any way "overpowered". More details will be given in the game thread when it comes, but you can take a look at
this document if you want. To those who do end up reading the document, you should know that characters in this game will be limited to the "demideity" power level described in the document, instead of the actual "deity" level, even if these mythological figures are called gods by themselves and other characters.
So yeah, that's an overview of my game idea. If you have any questions, suggestions, or other comments, please post them here. But most of all, tell us if you're interested.
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