Arx
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Second is Player to GM, and this is going to be primarily GM tables, where GMs (whether player or staff), have tables of groups of players to run stories from, manage the stories of the PCs at them, help guide them on adventures, keep track of what they need to do and what can happen. I didn’t like how often people stalled out in Arx 1, and specifically I think the ambiguity of whether a next step existed at all caused way more harm than good. I think we can make enough mystery without not knowing whether a story is over, or if it’s waiting on it to be written or if a PC needs to do things first in order to advance.
You probably already have a solution in mind for addressing this, but Pathologic 2 and 3’s Mind Map might have some ideas to steal: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/pathologic-2-mindmap-a-questlog-people-actually-read
Pathologic are games built around philosophy, mysticism, and mysteries, and the Mind Map works really well as a quest log for that atmosphere as well as the word heavy narrative. Unfortunately, the Mind Map is built heavily around the GUI so some work would need to be done in translating it into something that works on a MU*
EDIT: Maybe have some sort of GUI on the website? But that makes the player have to leave the MU* client to go look at their “quest log.”
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I can think of some history related things that I’m not sure were ever made clear to players, such as how the war between the elves and the dragons started, Tyrval’s mom, wtf the Thicker was (I don’t know what the Thicker was), that the Primordia were all female, why Diamond lost his fool mind.
There’s a lot of stuff that I think only a few characters knew, like the entire deal behind the Castle of Yesterday, the origin of the spirit’s hatred of blood magic, White Bear’s existence, or, iirc, that the bottom of the ocean led into the Abyss.
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All I hear is I’m going to fuck around with alchemy and find out by a demon eating me because I can never leave well enough alone.
I’m in.
Unless SOME PEOPLE try to give me visions of the violent death of my soul less teddy bear again.
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@Apos Halfway through this turned into a Bloodborne narration in my head and I am buzzing.
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@Apos You keep saying Durance and all I think of is the amazing character from Pillars of Eternity 1. It’s going to keep throwing me.
But this is a good stuff. Took a break from MUing since Arx 1 finished to be ready for Arx 2: Electric Boogaloo
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The Umbral Empire
“One stands before us in Durance. Speak thy name and testament.”
There are several folktales taught to children that are unique to the Umbral Empire. The first is a type of tale where an individual is offered countless dangerous opportunities, and thinking themselves prudent and wise, decline to run reckless risks. These tales always end with the utter destruction of the individual and all they hold dear, chastising them for their foolish failure to be bold and gain what was necessary to prevent disaster. Similarly, other children’s tales emphasize the importance of never mocking another’s failure if what they tried was daring enough, or how shameful it can be to gain great success without ever running risks.
It comes as little surprise to outsiders that there is no greater cultural insult than to call a peer of Umbros a coward. It does, however, come as a significant surprise that the insult is almost unheard of, because gloryhound risk taking is so deeply ingrained, that if a peer is failing to act on something opportune but dangerous, it is just assumed that they are restraining their natural inclinations to try regardless of consequence and forcing themselves to wait for slightly better odds.
There is a constant tension in Umbros that is never truly reconciled. Deep responsibility to Houses whose continued survival very much depends upon their protectors continuing to draw breath, versus the constant need to run greater and greater risks to gain glory and strength to guarantee the success of those same Houses. To any that would bemoan that, there is a common saying in the Empire that if one finds the crown heavy, another would happily bear it.
“Dare Greatly.”
Modesty, as a notion, is not overly prized as a virtue inside the Empire. If one has a strength in any arena and in any form, it should be flaunted. This combined with an intensely daredevil culture can result in extremely predictable conflicts, and some cultural traditions have arose to slow the constant churn and bloodletting between the best and brightest of Umbros’ rising talent. Duels are more restricted than most would expect. While all take place in magical rituals to restrict the degree of collateral damage, it is an immense loss of face for a challenge to take place except between peers. And ‘peers’ have a more restrictive meaning in the Umbral Empire than in the peerages of the other realms: it is not noble blood alone. One is considered a peer of the Empire if, and only if, they are a blooded member of a noble family and have magical talent. The latter is considered far more important, and is a strict requirement in voting for the Tannistry. It is customary for the Gifted visiting Umbros to be given courtesy noble titles in address.
The need to cultivate the relationships between Peers and their houses finds an emphasis on social events that those outside of Umbros often find excessive and frankly exhausting. Masquerades serve a particular role in Umbros, where it is understood that many can recognize precisely whom they are interacting with, that those under exile are tolerated with a polite fiction of anonymity, but one can spend a pleasant evening with those whose situations would be materially improved by marrying them, murdering them, or frequently both.
Those perplexing social events serve an important function in that it is given to the Peers to cultivate as many allies as reasonably possible among other Gifted, as it is commonly accepted that one trying to go about their Durance alone is nothing more than a particularly self-indulgent way of committing suicide.
“Return puissant.”
More peers of Umbros are invited to Shroudwatch Academy than any other group, a source of not inconsiderable pride in the Empire, but the reason is not necessarily indicative of overwhelming natural ability. It is understood, of course, that it is far more likely to be Gifted if one’s maternal bloodline has magical talent. But the likelihood of one manifesting magical talent is tied inseparably to moments of great personal risk, intense danger, and all too often trauma.
It is expressly forbidden to have children in arms, strenuously enforced by all the realms of Catenys after some infamous and rarely-spoken incidents. But Umbral noble houses tend to not be overly concerned with the safety of their scions, and increasingly hope that life-threatening situations awakens ability in them. Betrothals between noble houses are generally of a shorter duration, as one would neither guarantee that a noble still be among them in the following years, nor would they imply that they would ever do the self-defeating notion of attempting to keep them out of harm’s way. Longer betrothals, in the rare cases they happen, are taken as a sign of immense confidence in the capabilities of those involved to not die despite whatever reckless behavior they chase.
Safety, it is said, is a price they are unwilling to pay.
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I thought the premise was that it was a small (ish) population in a sealed city that was just opened up to the post-apoc world. In-city empires? Nations?
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I thought the premise was that it was a small (ish) population in a sealed city that was just opened up to the post-apoc world. In-city empires? Nations?
Thank you, let me explain a bit. So what I’m doing now is posting lore introductions for different starting areas, from the angle of an unreliable narrator for different areas.
Mechanically, a new player making an OC character would select a region, and from there they can select a different Beginning from the different cultural groups available, and some of these could have very dramatically different starting stories (like playing a member of an oppressed group within a culture).
Arx as a city has been cut off for a thousand years (from their perspective), and now the world is open for them to explore.
The other starting areas are different realms that have risen up since the most recent apocalypse. There is Luxen, Umbros detailed above, and then we have three others: Inferna, Ariwn, and Aythirmok. Past that, there’s several neighboring powers that won’t have CG available initially, but will open up later- Blighton, Jadairal, and the Southern Compact.
One significant mechanical difference from Arx will be a replacement for clues in our Codex system, which largely has all the IC knowledge that a character has. So if someone has specific cultural knowledge to their starting area, they would start with that in their Codex, and something shareable to other characters, and something they could research further as they delve into histories.
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@Apos Very interesting!
So is this to be considered a sequel to Arx 1, and would it be 1,000 years in the future (via perspective) from Arx 1? Or are we doing a kind of reboot of the overall Arx story?
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@real_mirage It’s canonically the same game world, if warped by the passage of ages and catastrophic events, though I am trying to write it so it should not require any knowledge of Arx 1.
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They sound like the descendants of the Oathlands and the Lyceum, respectively, or perhaps a reimagining. Hopefully each group has some nastiness to them so that we don’t have a reprise of Thrax getting dunked on morally for slavery.
I love seeing some Tannistry. It scratches that Crusader Kings itch.
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