The Restless Fires
(A character driven NRP)
Welcome to our little slice of hell. On this continent your civilization has been thriving and occasionally dying in mass numbers, but nonetheless it exists; in what form, that is up to you.
This will be a rather open ended roleplay, with no main overarching plot provided by me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some major factor to curb all your desires and plans. You see, on this continent there lives a volcano, yes lives, it is alive and it has a bunch of these strange fellows to do its mundane bidding
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This volcano has played a crucial part throughout history and even has inspired the two largest religions of the realm. I will be playing as this volcano and the Bannik (the strange hairy men who serve as the Volcano’s servants and fierce protectors). This volcano will be unbiased and random in its actions. It is a divine rock, with the ability to alter the world and everything in it, and how it does so will be decided through complicated rolls every so often or when the volcano is beseeched by a player character.
You may ask it for boons, even for curses, and it will provide for a randomized price. Amazing artifacts created by this magical monolith of magma further over power or harm the ever changing political landscape of the world, with magical weaponry, or powerful charms.
Here is a list of Volcano options for you to get an idea of how this works: (subject to change, tasks are the prices for requested boons or curses)It’s a google doc.
More on the setting! This takes place in the tech level of the late latin iron age (think Three Kingdoms China or Trajan Rome). Magic exists rarely in the form of the volcano’s artifacts and the volcano itself. Some people (a tiny % of the population) have the ability to enchant. Alchemy is a common alternative to magic, yet also difficult. In short player magic is not going to play much role, giving necessity to Volcano Magic.
I don’t expect Roman Empires, I expect fun nations of unique creation. I ask players to run race or species suggestions by me before using them. I am trying to avoid tolkien races and stereotypes, and as such only satyrs and humans are currently the main races, with pixies as a fun side filler population race. (Mainly because @darkspleen wants to use them as food and @Solamelike wishes to create a secret pixie hierarchy in his nation) .
About the two main religions: I leave it up to the players to create or adopt already made religions, but there are two GM made religions. Each want to possess the land the Volcano sits, and even the Volcano. They do this because the Volcano is clearly the source of all magic, and artifacts of great power, and they both wish to be in control of that flow.
One will worship the earth and revere the Volcano as a whisper of the Earth God(s)(ess?) and wish to collect the artifacts to remain responsible in taking care of the land. The other will see the Volcano as evil and the use of magic to be regulated, and will try to control the flow of magic as to regulate it to the elite and pragmatic. I will be looking for players to house the autocratic heads of each religion as well as for players to build more upon them as they see fit.
My final warning is this: characters will die, wars will happen, nations will fall, your shit will get fucked… but it’ll be fun.
Sample of the Nation sheets below:
When I write the OOC I will go more indepth of the details, but let me know what you think so far. @Darkspleen and @Isotope get some credit in the creation of this pending adventure. I will make the OOC much more organized and with answers to any questinos that may arise, I know there is a lot unsaid in this interest check.