Lore and world building question

[Lloyd Dupont]

As I am working on my campaign (get a few more month because, turns out, the other GM has more stuff for us), I hit 2 (somewhat related) lore issues. One is entirely arbitrary and just asking for your preferences. The other is what I would call a world building issue... as in competing interest I am not sure how it would play out or play out as I would like to.

To start with magic is divided in 5 main domains (Life, Death, Chaos, Nature, Sorcery) that have their own patrons. Most mortal don't have access to magic. But (one way to get it) is if they are blessed by a supernatural patron (with what I call a soulmark) they will be able to access and use the patron particular domain of magic. Additionally, their souls will be captured by their patron on death. Angels are on it, just like the Demons! 😛 

Anyway, all Voidlings - as I call them - are on the hunt for human souls. So, I guess they bless as many people as possible? At the same time, I find it more interesting if they only bless "the worthy". I guess it doesn't matter, it's up to me, can do that. Next step on that thought is what about other heathen souls? Is the best they can do is convert them at sword point? Or harvest the soul when their blessed ones kill them? Or when they come on the mortal plane to kill them themselves? It's vaguely important because it will influence how easily and often one can see Voidlings join mortal in battle. And I wonder what you think would be the coolest here?

 

Beyond that, it should be apparent now that all Voidlings want to be the ones to get all the souls. But as a King I rather have a handful of all the casters type in my domain. Life caster have the best buff, healing, tax boosting blessing. Nature has the terrain enchantment and unit protection. Chaos has the best destruction spell. Sorcery has the best metamagic. Death, ahem... I can see how they could be controversial... Anyway, I was wondering how would this all balance out "realistically"?

My plan was to have each nation having one major.. spiritual leadership? and small guild or something of the others... 
I guess the real problem is (only) Life and Death domains are almost entirely reliant on patronage and 100% at odds... can hardly be both openly in the same society. The rest can make do I suppose... Anyway, if this kind of line of thought trigger some idea, feel free to share?

[g33k]

21 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 ... Anyway, all Voidlings - as I call them - are on the hunt for human souls. So, I guess they bless as many people as possible? At the same time, I find it more interesting if they only bless "the worthy". I guess it doesn't matter, it's up to me, can do that...

I think you can have both:
They want all souls, but strongly favor one particular type.

So they might target a large village... or bypass it for the tiny stead nearby that has that one kid with the "special spark."  Or, in turn, bypass either/both if there's a city of 50K that's vulnerable.

Or you could put the "sparkiness" on a numeric scale, and they're just going for the high score; say that ordinary humans get a d10 of "spark," but a special few get 3d10x3 of "spark."  So a large household of 10 or so people is equal to one "average" sparkle-person, in terms of highscore, or however you want to set your ratios.

[g33k]

32 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

...
I guess the real problem is (only) Life and Death domains are almost entirely reliant on patronage and 100% at odds... can hardly be both openly in the same society. The rest can make do I suppose... Anyway, if this kind of line of thought trigger some idea, feel free to share?

I  think there's likely some amusing play available with necromantic kingdoms, where too many reliably-healthy people is a sign of heretical Life-Domain priests operating... leading to faked injuries & disease, drugs that simulate illness, etc.

At the same time, maybe there are embassies/etc, situations where they *must* tolerate one another...

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

To start with magic is divided in 5 main domains (Life, Death, Chaos, Nature, Sorcery) that have their own patrons. Most mortal don't have access to magic. But (one way to get it) is if they are blessed by a supernatural patron (with what I call a soulmark) they will be able to access and use the patron particular domain of magic. Additionally, their souls will be captured by their patron on death. Angels are on it, just like the Demons! 😛 

What happens to the vast majority souls of people who don't have a patron? Are they up for grabs? Get dissolved into aether? Get reincarnated until they pick a team?

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Anyway, all Voidlings - as I call them - are on the hunt for human souls. So, I guess they bless as many people as possible? At the same time, I find it more interesting if they only bless "the worthy".

Okaay. I think the answer you want here depends on why the supernatural patrons want the souls in the first place. 

Let's assume that they want the POW of the blessed. 

If the patron just get's the total POW of the blessed, then then it's probably the more the merrier. Two blessed will probably be worth more and one.

But if there is some sort of qualifier based on the "worthiness rating" of the soul then quality might be better than quantity. For instance, lets say you use some form of the BRP Allegiance mechanic to denote worthiness, Now say that the allegiance rating is what percentage of the person POW that the supernatural patron gets (the rest of it probably goes back into the great pool of mana or some such). In that situation someone with POW 10 an allegiance Score of 50, is worth 5 POW to the patron, while someone with POW 18 but an alligiance score of 11 is only worth 2 POW to the patron.  

So both would be of value but the more worthy would be worth more.

 

Now that's just one way of doing it, but hopefully it gives you an idea to work with.

Oh, and you might have that worship ceremonies transfer some magic points to the patron. Say all the worshipprs spend one (or more) magic point every holy day and the patron gets a percentage of that. Even 1% of magic points spend could add up to a tidy sum if the patron has thousands or millions of worshipers.

 

Oh, and BTW, this seems similar to how religions/gods work in Warpworld. Basically, gods got power from having followers, so most god perform miracles to attract more followers. But when the world got cut off, one god made out becuase he had his followers believe by faith rather than by witnessing miracles, so he didn't loose followers when the tie between worlds was weakened.

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

I guess it doesn't matter, it's up to me, can do that. Next step on that thought is what about other heathen souls? Is the best they can do is convert them at sword point? Or harvest the soul when their blessed ones kill them? Or when they come on the mortal plane to kill them themselves? It's vaguely important because it will influence how easily and often one can see Voidlings join mortal in battle. And I wonder what you think would be the coolest here?

Well first off what happens to the souls they don't get to collect? Are they lost, get recycled, what?

Secondly, what does it cost the patron to bless people. If nothing then why not bless everybody to up the harvest? 

As for what I think might be the coolest...

1. I think it should cost the patron 1 POW or so to bless someone. That way they won't want to do it to people unless they think they will (at least) get that POW back later, and (preferably) get more.

2. I think "converted at the sword" should probably give a lousy payoff, for several reasons. First off, it kinda goes against the whole worthiness idea. Secondly, and more worrisome, "converted at the sword" would encourage mass slaughter of people (even right at childbirth) since the patron would get the "points" right away and not have to worry about someone backsliding or converting to another patron later on.   I mean if there is no benefit to the ptatron for waiting then who not harvest as many as often as they can?

3. I think some sort of worthiness rating should be used. Followers could work to improve their scores to gain more favor from the patron. Maybe a minimum score is required to get blessed? And maybe there are more perks the higher the worthiness score? This makes sense to the followers, and makes sense for the patron who would get a better payoff when the followers die. This could also help to explain why voidlings would help certain followers, how often, and to what degree. 

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Beyond that, it should be apparent now that all Voidlings want to be the ones to get all the souls. But as a King I rather have a handful of all the casters type in my domain. Life caster have the best buff, healing, tax boosting blessing. Nature has the terrain enchantment and unit protection. Chaos has the best destruction spell. Sorcery has the best metamagic. Death, ahem... I can see how they could be controversial... Anyway, I was wondering how would this all balance out "realistically"?

Probably with pantheons. 

A "religion" could consist of several "patrons" (or one patron with some archangels) of different type who band together to share souls. Hence each pantheon has a healing god, a nature god, a death god, etc.

Look at Ancient Greece, Nordic God, etc. 

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

My plan was to have each nation having one major.. spiritual leadership? and small guild or something of the others... 

Which fits in perfectly with a pantheon.

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I guess the real problem is (only) Life and Death domains are almost entirely reliant on patronage and 100% at odds... can hardly be both openly in the same society.

Maybe if that is how you want it.  Or maybe they are just fighting for dominance. For instance, any form of life will eventually die to death would be part of a life based domain. And you can have death if nothing was alive to die. So maybe the domains argue over which one is more important.

If that were the case (I'm just presenting one possible option) then established pantheons have already (mostly) worked out the life/death relationship for that religion. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

The rest can make do I suppose... Anyway, if this kind of line of thought trigger some idea, feel free to share?

Did so. Hope it's useful. 

[Lloyd Dupont]

10 hours ago, g33k said:

I think you can have both:
They want all souls, but strongly favor one particular type.

Absolutely! Mm.... in fact.... 

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But if there is some sort of qualifier based on the "worthiness rating" of the soul then quality might be better than quantity. For instance, lets say you use some form of the BRP Allegiance mechanic to denote worthiness, Now say that the allegiance rating is what percentage of the person POW that the supernatural patron gets (the rest of it probably goes back into the great pool of mana or some such). In that situation someone with POW 10 an allegiance Score of 50, is worth 5 POW to the patron, while someone with POW 18 but an alligiance score of 11 is only worth 2 POW to the patron.  

Aaaand I am afraid I am going to make an info dump... 
I guess on one hand it is entirely arbitrary, on the other hand, since we are here...

== BEGIN INFO DUMP ==
- First I thought men had no magic... but then they can use monster cores to attune to magic and unlock magic of the monster domain! (all those Royal Road stories inspired me after all)
- But then there only 3 kinds of node (sorcery, chaos, nature) (I am closely following the old game Master of Magic), and so I think, oh, each magical realm could have patrons that can grant soulmark, i.e. your own monster core! and they capture souls...
- Patron could use those souls for, errm... gaining superpowers (by grinding them, mortal souls have a little "something") and extend their domain (ergo resurrection will be limited to short timespan - yest resurrection exist in MoM, I simply added a limit)(when you think about it, most superpower, using Mythras sup rule, are "free to spam spells", fair enugh!)
- Angel and Demon are obviously at odd encouraging never ending war (the other voidling probably the same to a lesser extent, for example I added - mot for MoM = Valkyries as Sorcery patron, they are warlike!)
- I didn't quite explicitly qualify "worthy soul" because it's not that important, but there are already quite a few ways one could ascribe a "level" to people looking at their perks and skills. In line with that most perks are gated behind requirements.
== END INFO DUMP ==

As to the worthiness... you reminded me, yes there is definitely worthiness!
Even though I rather not qualify it exactly... I mean I feel it's better it remains mysterious, but one could posit that the more perk and magic skill the higher the worthiness. And anyway, they have to bless the not yet worthy to start with...

10 hours ago, g33k said:

I  think there's likely some amusing play available with necromantic kingdoms, where too many reliably-healthy people is a sign of heretical Life-Domain priests operating... leading to faked injuries & disease, drugs that simulate illness, etc.

Well, no death kingdom will be prominent in the upcoming campaign. But this is an interesting fun factoid to keep in store for future campaigns 😄

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Well first off what happens to the souls they don't get to collect? Are they lost, get recycled, what?

Me was thinking of a cosmic horror kind of background. Yes, you have an immortal soul and could reincarnate. But your immortal patrons grind you soul to metaphorical oblivion. Ultimately voidlings are not mortal's friends. At one stage I had epic ideas of mortals vs voidlings conflicts... I even had some crazy idea of meeting an Ancient immortal transcendent arch sorcerer fighting the voidlings for humanity (sort of)!
But, since then, I sort of moved on from those voidling-mortals conflict stories... a bit of a hard sell when one starts PC as poor villagers.

As to why... I was thinking they use them to get superpower and extend their domain, i.e their, what one could call, plane of existence size and wealth of natural resources.

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Probably with pantheons. 

It's a good idea...
Although, me think they live in their separate magical realm, much like Europe and America are different continent, but as realms beyond The Void.
Anyway it's true that apart from those 2 antagonists: Angels and Demons, the other 3 other can somehow coexist. 
(On patron of Sorcery would be Valkyrie, so they are definitely war like though)

Yes, the more I thought about your Pantheon idea... The more it took a reasonable turn. I was blind sighted by the fierce Angel-Demon conflict, I reckon!
Can do that! Silly Lloyd! ^_^

Edited September 22 by Lloyd Dupont

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

- First I thought men had no magic... but then they can use monster cores to attune to magic and unlock magic of the monster domain! (all those Royal Road stories inspired me after all)

Okay. THen what is the   BRP POW stat going to be? 

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

- Patron could use those souls for, errm... gaining superpowers (by grinding them, mortal souls have a little "something") and extend their domain (ergo resurrection will be limited to short timespan - yest resurrection exist in MoM, I simply added a limit)(when you think about it, most superpower, using Mythras sup rule, are "free to spam spells", fair enugh!)

Okay. In that case I suggest that making new territory is more costly than taking existing territory from another. That way rival factions will try to take territory and resources from others to increase their domain rather than just being able to expand their domain as they wish, providing they get soulstuff. Because otherwise there would be no rel reson for them to fight eac other. They could all just bide their time and build with whatever souls they do get. THey are immortal so wht do they really care if it takes an extra year or so to get the souls they need to put in a jacuzzi?

But if they have to fight each other over (somewhat) limited resources then their heavy recruiting makes more sense.

 

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

- Angel and Demon are obviously at odd encouraging never ending war (the other voidling probably the same to a lesser extent, for example I added - mot for MoM = Valkyries as Sorcery patron, they are warlike!)

You might want to have them all at odds with each other to some extent. KInd of like allies during a war. They might like each other they might hate each other, but they work totether against a common foe.

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

As to the worthiness... you reminded me, yes there is definitely worthiness!
Even though I rather not qualify it exactly... I mean I feel it's better it remains mysterious, but one could posit that the more perk and magic skill the higher the worthiness. And anyway, they have to bless the not yet worthy to start with...

You don't have to explain it to the players, just as long as you know what you are doing with it.

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Well, no death kingdom will be prominent in the upcoming campaign. But this is an interesting fun factoid to keep in store for future campaigns 😄

Well considering what you've posted, it seem like the Death voidlings are just a little more impatient than the others. It's like they figure humans are going to die and give up their souls anyway, so why wait? The other voidlings seem to think that the humans sould live thier lives first. <Aybe there is in game reason for that? Like maybe the Death voidlings would like everything to die, including all the voidlings (even themselves) but that can't happen as long as the soul harvest continues. But if they can stop the production of souls, they win.  

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Me thinking they (the mortal souls) are grinded into oblivion.

So how is that any different that being blessed by a patron?

I mean from both human and patron point of view. As far as I can tell:

• Human souls get ground into oblivion, either way. Not much point for the humans to do anything other than the free powerup. But then there isn't much point for a human to actually do much of anything since they are just going to end up in the recycle bin and ground up. That's H.P. Lovecraft levels of downbeat. 
• If blessing a soul gives a patron "first crack at it" why not bless everybody.

 

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

Ultimately voidlings are not mortal's friends. Although... At one stage I had epic ideas of mortals vs voidlings conflicts... I even had some crazy idea of meeting an Ancient immortal transcendent arch sorcerer fighting the voidlings for humanity (sort of)!

You might want to revisit that. As things currently stand there is no point in playing a mortal in your campaign world. People are basically Duracells. 

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

But, since then, I sort of moved on from those voidling-mortals conflict stories... a bit of a hard sell when one starts PC as poor villagers.

But how do you sell, "in the end you soul gets ground up by the voidlings for bling"?

 

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

As to why... I was thinking they use them to get superpower and extend their domain, i.e their, what one could call, plane of existence size and wealth of natural resources.

Okay, that begs the questions:

1. Where do souls come from?
2. How come souls have this magical ability to be ground into magical currency? 
3. 3. Why can the voidling "cut out the middle man" and get this soulstuff directly from the source?

It sounds like there is a higher power above the voidlings that doles out souls, because if the voidlings had the power in the first place, they wouldn't dish it out. 

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

It's a good idea...
Although, me think they live in their separate magical realm, much like Europe and America are different continent, but as realms beyond The Void.

Sure. Or how countries can be divived up into territories, states, or counties. They live in their own realms but work together.

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Anyway it's true that apart from those 2 antagonists: Angels and Demons, the other 3 other can somehow coexist. 
(On patron of Sorcery would be Valkyrie, so they are definitely war like though)

So why don't the other three step in and take out one (or both) of the Angels or Demons? They'd all get a bigger take of the souls that way. Assuming an equal split they'd each go from a 20% share to a 25% share or even a 33% share, and stop all the wasted energy used in the conflict?

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Yes, the more I thought about your Pantheon idea... The more it took a reasonable turn. I was blind sighted by the fierce Angel-Demon conflict, I reckon!
Can do that! Silly Lloyd! ^_^

You could have multiple factions of angels and demons and maybe some will work with others (perhaps only temporarily, like for a few millennia) to achieve their goals. For instance maybe the demons from Pantheon B would really like to gather enough soulstuff to put in a new pool table so the strike a deal with the Angels of Pantheon A to get a share of Pantheon's A harvest. Pantheon A goes along with this idea because they are at war with Pantheon B and the demon's defection would give them an upper hand. The A truce is reach, terms worked out and a temporary alliance is put into place. Then maybe Pantheon C notices this and doesn't like the idea of Pantheon A getting too powerful and cut some sort of deal with Pantheon B to try and maintain the status quo (or maybe even gain a few extra souls or score some points with Pantheon B).  And Pantheon D doesn't like the idea of C getting too close with B so they offer the Demons from B enough soulstuff to make a pool table, if they break off the alliance and go back to Pantheon B. 

This could make voidling politics very Machiavellian. 

 

[Joerg]

10 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

if they only bless "the worthy"

Possibly they are somewhat selective because the soulmark generates feedback to themselves.

There might be a parallel game going on where the voidlings vie for advantages and possibly positioning in their respective realms, and becoming somewhat human may both help and hinder them.

[Lloyd Dupont]

Hi Yall.. thanks for your additional feedback! 🙂
While it might seems like a bit of a waste of time.. in the end I think it will have visible impact on the world I present! 🙂
Mostly how much interaction and what kind of interaction people have with them! 
I'd like to definitely have some interaction, instead of being the typical D&D trope, which is that they exist, they are in the monster manual, but in 20+ years of gaming I never saw one.
Also the whole Voidling story and lore is 100% my personal addition, as opposed to baked in Master of Magic.

So yes, The Voidlings are totally a hidden cosmic horror story (I update my post above before I noticed you already replied ^_^).
How do I sell it to people? It's very simple, they don't know! And like Atgxtg said... Demons are a little bit impatient, while Angels are the free-range-vegan of magic.
One would have to visit these magical realms in detail to know. And it's somewhat difficult (totally feasible though), plus the inhabitants might not be welcoming, and the few who have done it, have suffered the combined wrath of The Voidlings (my dropped immortal ascendant sorcerer story leaned into that) and their erasure from history. I guess they do cooperate when needed hey!

As to the worthiness of mortal live? The core meta-gaming idea was to force mortal-voidling interaction. Player will see Angel, Demon, Valkyries and other... 100%, not gonna wait for them to be super powerful. I guess, I would go with, the prime material plane generates souls naturally, but a raw soul is useless it first gather strength (basically the more perks the better, which is sort of a level equivalent) But I guess fantastical monster could be a good source of good soul too.

A little extra bit of info and tension I added in the background, travelling between realm can be a great source of resource (undocumented though) but it requires more than just the appropriate spell, it is kind of taxing (in game term it lowers a magical skill for a while and you need to pass the -modest- threshold to be able to do it). 

Now come one last, yet unmentioned, problem. The players I played with recently, on the few occasions it happened, show 0 interest in going to other plane of existence. Come to think of it, why make risky and difficult trip to distant place? And at the same time what were these conquerors of antiquity thinking? So I am not sure how prevalent Voidling outpost on prime material plane would be? (it's taxing for them too) Nor how common would be exploration of magical realm... (I don't want to force spoon fed my player with it, I rather they do it themselves and I am not holding my breath for it, although if they get the spell and keep seeing these voidling coming they might get curious...)

Edited September 22 by Lloyd Dupont

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Now come one last, yet unmentioned, problem. The players I played with recently, on the few occasions it happened, show 0 interest in going to other plane of existence. Come to think of it, why make risky and difficult trip to distant place? And at the same time what were these conquerors of antiquity thinking? So I am not sure how prevalent Voidling outpost on prime material plane would be? (it's taxing for them too) Nor how common would be exploration of magical realm... (I don't want to force spoon fed my player with it, I rather they do it themselves and I am not holding my breath for it, although if they get the spell and keep seeing these voidling coming they might get curious...)

This has an easy solution: Other planes of existence intrude into the normal world, overlapping with or in the worst case abducting pieces of ordinary existence. Possibly masked by "meteorological" phenomena like dense fog, twisters, meteor strikes, deluges, or massive fires. Or blackouts or whiteouts (and not necessarily denoting good or evil by choice of the amount of light).

How blatant is the use of magic in your setting? Significant SFX or discreet alterations to reality?

[Lloyd Dupont]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

This has an easy solution: Other planes of existence intrude into the normal world, overlapping with or in the worst case abducting pieces of ordinary existence. Possibly masked by "meteorological" phenomena like dense fog, twisters, meteor strikes, deluges, or massive fires. Or blackouts or whiteouts (and not necessarily denoting good or evil by choice of the amount of light).

It's something I was planning to do... But it's not really part of the interplanar politics, more like a natural random phenomenon...

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

How blatant is the use of magic in your setting? Significant SFX or discreet alterations to reality?

Significant... 🙂
Though, sort of inspired by MoM game loop.. the player starts when the amount of magic is somewhat muted.. and it will ramp up as they do 🙂 
 

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Now come one last, yet unmentioned, problem. The players I played with recently, on the few occasions it happened, show 0 interest in going to other plane of existence. Come to think of it, why make risky and difficult trip to distant place?

Well what's in it for them to do so? If you want the players to do something you need to give them reasons.

One possible reason might be that some of the magical energy caster's use is lost crossing the planes and that casters are more powerful the closer they are to the source of their magical abilities.  So maybe their spells get a power up. Magical items crafted get a power up and so on. This would seem especially true for magical effects of the same domain as the plane. For instance if you need to heal a gravely ill leader then going to the life domain would make that easier. 

Another might be that there is magical stores of power or items in magical realms (basically "banked" by the voidlings for their future projects) and humans can take or borrrow some of it (the voidlings look at it as an investment: let a caster go with a magical sword for his king, and then the sword becomes a royal heirloom, and you get generations of the royal family as payback, plus you become the official religion of the realm and get even more followers.  So maybe the voidlings loose 20 POW as a one time cost, but in a few years can be harvesting 500 more POW per year from that kingdom. 

6 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

And at the same time what were these conquerors of antiquity thinking?

What if doing their work is is also easier the closer they are to their followers? So it easier to bless people on the same plane than on a different one, they get more in the harvest, etc.

6 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

So I am not ure how prevalent Voidling outpost on prime material plane would be? (it's taxing for them too)

What is some portals between planes were a natural occurring phenomenon ? That way it would b a low effort activity to exploit a new portal when it appears. Especially compared to the effort of making one. Perhaps it has something to do with the harvest, too. 

6 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

Nor how common would be exploration of magical realm... (I don't want to force spoon fed my player with it, I rather they do it themselves and I am not holding my breath for it, although if they get the spell and keep seeing these voidling coming they might get curious...)

Then you need to give them a in game reason to do it. Nobody wants to go into the dragon's cave either until you mention the hoard.

[Lloyd Dupont]

Well... in vaguely related news... I think the rulebook is complete!
(Finished the monsters and updated almost all spells, there is still some messy rambling English sentences I am afraid though)
(Just updated it, shameless plug: 

So I should stop procrastinating on the campaign, haha! 
(but fear not, got some cool ideas already lined out!)