I have no gaming group, and I must RP! - Or Game Brainstorming

@TheSeer Thank you very much! Stats & Spells tweaked accordingly. Question on Cantrips: # = Int/2 per fight seems low compared to 4 full spells/fight, is that based on the 3-18 scale? (NGL I intend to abuse the hell out of Fortune, I love that spell)

 

Er. The way spells work in 13th Age is this: You have a number of spell slots, and you take that many spells from your list each time you have a full heal-up. Each spell has a frequency that indicates how much you get to use it. At-Will means you can use it every round all day if you want, same as a fighter swinging a sword, but it still takes up only one spell slot. (Weal, Cursebolt). Once per battle means just that - you can use it again in the next fight. (Hexes) Daily means you only get to cast it once until you get a full-heal and pick your spells again (Woe). Recharge is similar to Daily, except after the battle if you roll at or above a certain number you get the spell back and can use it again in a later battle. (Horrifying Visage). As you level up, you gradually get more spell slots, but you also get access to more powerful spells as well as more powerful versions of the spells you already have.

Witch cantrips are actually a bit stronger than wizard cantrips (Fortune in particular is nice, as you noticed, but remember that hostile spells hit or miss by the caster making attack rolls against PD or MD, not by the target rolling a save. Saves end continuing negative effects, keep you from dying when you go below 0 HP, and a few other things.) So I wanted to slow them down a bit. But on second thought, I can get all the balance I need just by not offering witches the Cantrip Mastery talent, since you should usually have something better to do with your normal action. Cantrips are now Int uses per battle, I'll edit the description.

 

And the other races?

ETA: Could I play a Forgeborn sorcerer?

 

Here's Elves, which covers all but Half-Elves.

Also, something to remember- even though this information will talk about the state of things in present tense, this is stuff that would have been true for like... 100 to 200 years prior to when the Age of Ruin/14th Age characters, if we're sticking to the length the system gives for each "Age".

Spoiler: About the Elves (Dark Elves/High Elves/Wood Elves)

Though all of the Elven races are connected to and ruled over by the Elven Queen, they aren't considered a unified people, and have been as such ever since they went to war with the Dwarves.

The war ultimately ended up destroying the Dwarves' underground homeland and forced them to the surface after the deep underground was poisoned (by something- by Dark Elves or something else). The Dwarves have since moved on to make a new home in a Mountain Fortress they named Forge.

The Elves themselves live in Elven Woods.
To those who aren't familiar with them, these woods look just like large forests with giant trees that have leaves varying from vibrant greens, golds,reds, silvers, and indigo's. They are thought to be primarily occupied by Wood Elves, and occasionally High Elves (who tend to live in the heart of the Forest). Dark Elves are there sometimes, too, but rarely.

In actuality, Elven woods are supposed to function as three-tiered cities- The dark elves living in and under the giant roots, the Wood elves living amongst the trees, and the High Elves living in tall towers that rise far above the canopy. Back when the three races got along, you'd often find all layers filled. However, since the war, it's rare to find all three living together. If there are any "cohabiting" at all, it's generally either High Elves and Wood Elves OR High Elves and Dark Elves. The easiest way to tell which elves live in the woods is by observing the colors of the leaves.

Without all three races of elves living in a particular Elven Woods, something else (typically nasty) tends to move in instead.

The Court of Stars
The Elven Queen rules over her people from a place in the Queen's Wood that's referred to as "The Court" or "The Court of Stars". The Queen's Wood is fairly large, and still retains all the colors it had long ago when they were unified.

In more recent times, the Queen's Wood is mostly empty or partly populated by one or two of the Elven races. Outside of that, it often serves as a confusing maze for those searching for the Elven Queen's Court.

The Court moves around the Queen's Wood, and never stays in one place too long. Its appearance and trappings changes often to suit the Queen's whims. Only Elves and those with a special connection with the Elven Queen can ever easily find it. Those who are lucky enough to stumble across it once are unlikely to find it again without help.

Dark Elves
Within the Queen's Court, the dark elves are referred to by the name they use for themselves, the Silver Folk. Outside the Court, the use of the term Silver Folk is extremely polite, or ironic. Most surface dwellers refer to them as dark elves or drow, interchangeably.

Dark elves are not uniformly evil. Drow society varies from entirely evil to merely cruel. That said, it's almost a point of pride among dark elves that some of the world's greatest villains have come from their race, to the point that even a good hearted drow may end up arguing that her race's despotic overlord was far more powerful than another race's former tyrant.

Compared to the dark elves of some fantasy worlds, the Silver Folk can be trusted to the extent that they are mostly loyal, in some strange or disgusting way, to their Queen. The Queen's critics point out that it takes a twisted and capricious monarch to engage the affections of the dark elves - you can't win when you are Queen of three feuding races.

High Elves
The high elves are sometimes called light elves. Their term for themselves means both high and light. Humans hearing that description often supply "sky" as a better translation and are told "No, either high or light, not sky", which is apparently reserved for creatures for the overworld.

High elves in your game might have markedly different eyes when they've been using magical power, and you can call them by whatever name works best for you.

Wood Elves
The Wood elves are known as the gray elves in the oldest texts, but they grew out of the name, which appears to have been an early Elf King's idea of a logical transition between light and dark. Some humans call them the green elves. Wood elves resisted that name until recently when some wood elves associated with the High Druid began using the term "green elf" or "wild elf," to distinguish themselves from elves who do not follow the High Druid. Green and wild are presently considered impolite terms at the Court of Stars.

Elves on Half-Elves
Half-Elves (generally referring only to Half human Half-Elves) are fairly welcome among most of elven society. While all elves seem to to look down on them to a certain degree, Half-Elves tend to be better received and thought of than humans. High elves tend to be snootier than Wood Elves about it. Dark Elves tend to mistrust them about as much as they trust any of their own who'd admit to enjoying the company of outsider races.

The Elf Queen herself looks well upon them, if only because she sees them as a possible tool to extend her influence onto the Empire.

 

What a fascinating concept. The typical way for a sorcerer to get their power is to inherit it, which wouldn't apply to forgeborn. But forgeborn are magical, in a crafty dwarvish magitech sort of way. I see no reason a forgeborn couldn't have been made to tap elemental powers, or have acquired sorcerous ability some other way. Certainly there's no game balance reason why not, and the rules specifically disclaim race/class restrictions.

And about elves: The Orc Lord razed the Court of Stars, killed the Elf Queen, and thus accidentally released the Green, who was really, really unhappy about his millennia of imprisonment. He handed the surprised Orc Lord his first major defeat and then settled down to enslaving and torturing as many elves as he could. Some refugees got away - high elves tended to find their way to the Last Homely House, many wood elves snuck out and rallied to the Exile, and the crafty drow "surrendered" and escaped largely intact but are now locked in a vicious underground (in every sense) war of assassination and sabotage against the Black.

Half-elves haven't been born in Axis for some time, but they still pop up everywhere else that humans or elves are found. The 14th Age has a half-elven icon, the Exile, which gives the race more prominence than they used to have. Certainly any high elf who owes his safety to halfling asylum would have no good reason to look down on a half-elven hero.

ETA: @Aviari, your ability scores are too low, you have two more points to spend there. And your initiative is too high - with your Dex as listed it should be +0. Did you mean to have Dex +1 instead of Dex -1?

Oh, and just to make sure everyone knows, you are allowed to use racial or class bonuses to start with an ability score of +5. It makes for a very specialized build but it's allowed.

 

Yeah I think the Init was from earlier point fuckery I forgot about, that's probably where those two points go. Tweaking now. Also wrote up a rundown of the precognition spells might go in my "who are you" bit

 

Mm, speaking of rundowns, @Aviari, Taiga has two points of positive relationship with an Icon that nobody's seen for a long time. That sounds like an interesting story. What's the High Druid been up to? How are you connected to her, and what does she want from you? If I had any plans for her I'd have written them up - my sum total development on the High Druid for this age is "Well there's no reason why there wouldn't be one I guess." So you've got a fair amount of freedom to make suggestions there. Or, if you don't have any ideas, I can write her into the plot myself.

Oh, and the Four are definitely considered villainous in this age, not ambiguous. When the Blue was running Drakkenhall for the Emperor, that created some ambiguity. Running Drakkenhall for the Lich King, not so much, especially while the other three are ripping up everything that's not full of zombies and orcs and some things that are. The Four are bad guys.

 

Spoiler: ”About Humans”

As in most recent fantasy games, we like using humans of various ethnicities and styles. Some map to cultures in the game world, while others are part of the magical mixing pot.

Six of the major cities of the Dragon Empire are predominantly human (Concord being the exception). Even Drakkenhall, the City of Monsters, has a human majority, along with minorities of most everything else.

You can tweak the racial mix of your version of the Empire anyway you like, of course. Our assumption is that the Wizard King ran the first human empire in the area and the Dragon Empire is the second. So far all the Dragon Emperors have been human, though in a genealogical sense it would be possible to have a half-elven emperor.

The Dragon Empire

The Dragon Empire came to be after the humans, dwarves, elves, and Metallic Dragons (led by the Great Gold Wyrm) worked together to over throw the Wizard King (the man who would ages later become the Lich King).

While the empire is large, there are seven major cities within it.

• Axis - The City of Swords; The capital of the Dragon Empire sits inside the crater of an ancient volcano. The shards of the crater wall stand high above the city, carved into the likeness of great dragons and rife with troop tunnels and magical defenses. The topmost city spires and the magical clouds above them are the home of three or four dozen dragons—the remaining members of the army of metallic dragons that the Great Gold Wyrm gifted to the first Emperor to help him defeat the Lich King.
  
  Axis is a city of wonders, military power, and martial competition. Gladiatorial games, skirmishes between noble houses, and staged holy wars hone the fighting spirit of an empire built on conquest.

• Concord - The City of Spires; Concord is a blend of high elf spires, woodlands, carved dwarven holds, and halfling burrows—it’s a garden city, and in places too wild to even count as a garden.
  
  Elves, dwarves, and other nonhumans are familiar in all the cities of the human-dominated Dragon Empire. But in Concord, nonhumans predominate and have formed a society unlike anything else in the Empire or the kingdoms that would otherwise hold their citizen’s allegiance. The Dragon Emperor, Elf Queen, and Dwarf King are not entirely comfortable with Concord’s blend of citizens and diverse strengths, but so far the experiment has not caught on beyond Concord’s walls. This racial co-existence may be due to the fact that the city itself has magic that enables alliances that would falter elsewhere.

• Drakkenhall - The City of Monsters; Long ago, Drakkenhall was known as Highrock. While it had once been strong, it ultimately ended up falling (be it to monsters or due to betrayal, it is hard to say). For several hundred years, the city lay in ruin. Then the Blue Dragon moved in, intent on creating a city of her own. It is open to both monsters who are willing to play nice under Blue's rules and citizens of the Empire.
  
  The city is also known for its Goblin Market, where one can find, buy, sell, and regret buying almost anything.

• Glitterhaegen - The City of Gold; If everything has a price, Glitterhaegen is where you can find someone willing to take your money. It’s the most mercantile of the seven Cities, a place where merchant guilds have more sway than the Imperial governor and the thieves guild thrives despite countless pogroms to squash it.
  
  The human, half-elven, and gnome merchants of Glitterhaegen aren’t quick to admit it, but part of the reason for the city’s economic power is its proximity to Forge and the central kingdom of the dwarves. The dwarves do most of their trading through Glitterhaegen instead of inviting outsiders into their lands.
  
  The merchants are even slower to acknowledge that the proximity of Shadow Port may be a gray blessing instead of a black curse. Shadow Port handles the merchandise that’s too risky for people to get caught with in Glitterhaegen, and since the line between merchant and thief often blurs, especially over the course of an entire Glitterhaegen career, its proximity is convenient.
  
  Shadow Port
  Shadow Port is the gray side of Glitterhaegen, and is well-suited as a smuggler’s haven and pirate’s resort. It’s rumored to be the frequent home of the Prince of Shadows. Whether true or not, it’s certainly a refuge for thieves guild types when Glitterhaegen gets too hot.

• Horizon - The City of Wonders; Horizon is a magical city heavily influenced by the Archmage. It holds unparalleled libraries of arcane lore, wizards busy with mysterious tasks, rival arcane guilds competing in all ways, and, of course, many opportunities for the PCs to be recognized as exceptional individuals who can accomplish what the NPC wizards cannot.
  
  While Concord has the high towers of the elves, Horizon depends much more on flying buildings and floating force ramps. Such constructs are probably a creation of the Archmage, and possibly channel tremendous magical energy originally harnessed by the Wizard King.

• New Port - The City of Promise; New Port is the newest of the Seven Cities, which means that it’s something like two or three hundred years old. Most historians claim that it was created by refugees when Drakkenhall was overrun by the monsters. New port is run by an Imperial governor, but not with a firm hand.
  
  So far, no single power has established itself in the city.

• Santa Cora - The City of Gods; Santa Cora has always been the spiritual center of the Empire. Now that the Priestess has built her Cathedral there, it could be the spiritual center of the world. A few of the gods represented in the Cathedral also have temples outside its gates. Other temples and gods that aren’t represented yet in the Cathedral have their shrines elsewhere in the city.
  
  As proof of the gods’ approval of Santa Cora, the city has the best fishing on the Midland Sea. The town spreads out along the shore, bay after bay of fishing boats each blazoned with the symbols of the god or gods who bless the boat.
  
  The Cathedral
  In a land of ancient traditions and time-worn cities, there is one thing very new under the sun: the Priestess’s Cathedral. This massive, multi-sided edifice rises into the sky seemingly out of sight, and the interior is a maze of passageways, sanctuaries, chapels, statuaries, inner sanctums, and occasional sunlit courtyards high above the ground. It dominates the skyline of Santa Cora, the City of Temples, and it serves as the Priestess’s home and court.
  
  The Cathedral represents in stone the Priestess’s philosophy of spiritual union. The very shape and layout of the structure channel spiritual energy to generate greater harmony. She has built chapels and sanctuaries devoted to the many “spheres” of the Gods of Light, such as healing, life, truth, childbearing, harvest, strength, and fire. Priests of various gods convene there for shared rituals devoted to one or another of these virtues. The ceremonial unions achieved in the Cathedral echo spiritually through temples and shrines all across the Empire, enhancing the general feeling of solidarity. Powerful heroes are sometimes invited to partake in certain rituals, as their heroic deeds resonate with the ritual acts to create more powerful effects. Every follower of the Priestess hopes to pray in the Cathedral one day. The Cathedral is a bastion of hope and stability in a world beset on all sides by danger.
  
  The Priestess is constantly adding to the Cathedral, incorporating more and more worthy ideals into its structure. She even has passageways that lead to the overworld and to other planes of existence.
  
  Rumor has it that all the stone for the Cathedral comes from a single, secret, distant source, perhaps the body of a fallen god or goddess.

Spoiler: ”About Dwarves”

Dwarves are usually organized in extended clans. By extended we mean many members and many memories—dwarves love keeping track of the past and applying it to the present.

Dwarven traits from most any other fantasy source are welcome in our game. There are two we make use of frequently: ale and magic treasure.

• Ale: Technically, you’d expect dwarves to be distilling liquor. That would work a lot easier underground. But dwarves love brewing ale and the quest for quality ingredients and dedicated brew masters motivates a significant portion of dwarven interactions with the far corners of the world.

• Magic treasure: The Dwarf King claims to own a stake in every bit of treasure extracted from the ground. When you meet a dwarf and you’re the type of person who possesses actual magic treasures (a rarity, to be sure), the first thing the dwarf will do is look over your treasures (at least the treasures you openly display), figuring out how well you are caring for them and how the treasures feel about being owned by you. Obviously, most adventurers take excellent care of their magic gear, so in truth dwarves rarely have grounds for actual complaint. But that doesn’t stop them from looking. And if they feel like starting trouble, they always have a pretext.

Forge
Originally the dwarves lived throughout the deep underworld. The riches of the earth were theirs to harvest and shape. In this world, when anyone uses the term “Golden Age,” they are talking about the underworld hegemony and craftsmanship of the dwarves.

The war with the elves destroyed the dwarves’ original homeland, and even the deepest realm was poisoned during underworld battles with the dark elves. It’s not entirely clear that the poison was specifically the dark elves’ fault; most dwarves and elves believe that the poison was released as an unexpected side effect of the war, during a rupture from below. But when peace eventually came between the dwarves and elves, it was drow renegades who were willing to move back into the poisoned deeps and pay the price: their sanity.

The dwarves who lived in the deeps had to move closer to the surface. The largest dwarven population now lives under the great mountain named Forge. The mountain is honeycombed with tunnels and halls that extend far below it and on all sides. The Dwarf King rules from the mountain’s center.

Of course, a few dwarves are always trying to reclaim the deep underworld. It’s possible to go there, but those who stay too long are driven crazy by the poison. So far the results of these would-be reconquests have been various hard-pressed settlements and scattered subspecies of insane dwarves.

One dramatic consequence of the poisoning of the deep underworld is that living dungeons have more time to gather speed as they rise. In the centuries before the dwarves were forced out of the deep underworld, they took care of most living dungeons before the places could get any momentum. Now living dungeons gather more power and become more dangerous before those closer to the surface notice them.

Spoiler: ”About Half-Orcs”

The name half-orc is misleading. There are cases of orcs and humans mating, but most such intercourse is barren or lethal. The common origin story for half-orcs is that they are a supernatural response to the existence of orcs. Orc breakouts appear as magically generated infections. Half-orc births are a slower response, apparently encouraged by the High Druid in the wildlands to strengthen human tribes. It may not be true that the High Druid is responsible for half-orc origins, but half-orcs are welcome in most all groups that recognize the High Druid’s leadership.

Half-orcs are most common outside the Empire in the barbaric wildlands. Until the last century or so, half-orcs were rare inside the Empire except on the frontier. But that has changed. One of the more warlike Dragon Emperors formed a unit of half-orc warriors and magicians as his personal bodyguard. In the process, he gave half-orcs official citizenship in the Empire, and they’re now nearly as common as the other non-human races.

Many half-orcs don’t take to urban life, but feel easily at home in Axis (the imperial city of war and gladiatorial games) and Drakkenhall (the Blue Dragon’s half-ruined city of monsters). There are half-orcs in Concord, but they don’t maintain a racial identity there, instead going with the flow of whoever their friends are.

Spoiler: ”About Gnomes”

Gnomes are small people who live underground and have a remarkable talent for magic. Most live near the surface, usually in burrows near woodlands and forests, though others have left the burrows behind and moved into basement- or ground-floor dwellings in towns and cities.

A few gnomes live deeper underground somewhat above the realms the dwarves had to flee after the war with the drow. Some of these deep gnomes have come too close to the maddening effects of the deepest underworld. PC gnomes can use this fact as they wish.

Gnomes enjoy magic, tricks, and surprising bigger people. A few gnome adventurers take the racial affection for surprises so far that they follow supremely eccentric paths, such as becoming barbarians or paladins.

Spoiler: ”About Half-Elves”

As in other worlds, half-elves are often the result of a union between an elven and a human parent. But in the Dragon Empire, half-elves are also sometimes born to both humans and elves without contact with the other race.

In a past age, the first Dragon Emperor and the Elf Queen allied to destroy the wizard who later became the Lich King. After their great victory, half the children born to both humans and elves for the next twelve years were half-elves. Neither the Emperor nor the Queen claimed responsibility for the event. They both said that it was a spontaneous magical consequence of the great victory the peoples had won together.

Since then, half-elves have served as a symbol of friendship between the races. Beyond symbolism, they are generally welcomed in both human and elven society. High elves, of course, are snootier about half-elves than are the wood elves, but nowhere near as snooty as they are about humans. Dark elves mistrust half-elves who have spent too much time with humans, but no more than they mistrust other dark elves who enjoy the company of humans and dwarves.

The Elf Queen sees half-elves as a means of extending her influence into the Empire. She’s not wrong. The Dragon Emperor believes that so long as half-elves are spontaneously born throughout the Empire, the Elf Queen will not betray him, and so far he hasn’t been entirely wrong.

Spoiler: ”About Halflings”

The Origin of Halflings

The curious thing about the halflings’ origin is that so many humans, elves, gnomes, icons, and yes, halflings, seem to care about it. Races like the elves and dwarves, and even the humans, have their own creation myths, but they seldom come up in daily life and are generally regarded as extremely ancient history. Halfling origin stories, on the other hand, are both widespread and diverse. It’s generally agreed that halflings are younger than the other races. But that’s where agreement stops.

What the gnomes say: Some gnomes say that halflings were once a lost clan of gnomes who strayed to the surface, liked it there, and began to spread themselves across the world. You’ll probably never meet a halfling who believes this story, or even thinks about it twice unless they are talking to a gnome. But there are gnomes who regard halflings as distant kin and speak wistfully of the “halfling-path” as if it were a possible alternative to the gnomes’ strange underground existence.

What the wood elves say: Wood elves point to the halfling villages of Burrow, Old Town, and Twisp as the original homes of the halfling race. These villages sit in the calm center of the Empire’s strongest amity ward. The elves say that the ward has nothing to do with the Archmage. They claim that it flows from a different magic than the Archmage’s tradition, and that the earliest halflings lived within the ward’s protections while being hardly noticed by anyone outside it.

The inhabitants of Burrow and its neighboring villages sometimes agree with the wood elf story, but they are generally too polite to bring it up themselves. Their own story is that they were nomads who found a good place to live and stuck with it, a story that gives them something in common with the rather more adventurous halflings who live outside the ancient amity ward.

What the river runners say: A few halflings live as nomads on the rivers, traveling in riverboats that take advantage of the Inner Sea’s calm waters to dart along the coast and enter into different tributaries. Some of the river nomads say that the first halflings lived in the middle of the great sea and were pushed out of the ocean when the Dragon Emperor drove all the monsters from the Inner Sea. Depending on the speaker, this pronouncement could be a tongue-in-cheek jest or more or less earnest.

What the Priestess said: Once, and only once, the Priestess gave a sermon that told the story of how the Prince of Shadows broke into the minds of the gods and found a people there who were destined to save a future world. The Prince thought they showed promise and brought them back with him. The Priestess has never told the story again and says she doesn’t remember telling it the first time. But the tale has gained life of its own, partly because urban halflings whose activities may safely be deemed “sketchy” like the idea that the Prince of Shadows has been on their side from the beginning.

The truth: . . . may not be out there. Divinations and scholarly research support each of the stories, a fact that may point to the Prince of Shadows’ involvement in some fashion. Self-contradictory divinations are a trademark of the Prince when he wants to cover his trail.

Halflings generally aren’t troubled by their contradictory origins. In fact, one of the common ways of drawing a long and implausible tale to a close is to say, “And that’s the story of how halflings came into the world.” Halflings always laugh.

 

Hmm. I picked the High Druid because she(?) seemed like the best bet for a healing class, particularly one that's nature oriented.

My thought would be, well, the High Druid is more or less dead. What better way to make a comeback than through a pre/postcognitive person using a dead form of magic?

I'm a little fuzzy on the timeline. Elf Queen dies, Green is released, Green rampages. Was this before or after the death of the High Druid as the Fool and the subsequent end of the age?

I'm not trying to build myself up or anything, I just had grand plans for a player in my PF game that stumbled her way onto an artifact and a backstory that would make her "Speaker For A Dead God" and I was so excited for that reveal but noooo there had to be Friend Drama

Genuinely stumbled, too. She got a ultra-powerful artifact as a reward for out-of-game good sportsmanship and I asked how she got it in-game.
"Oh, uh... I dunno, my dead tribe was guarding it for centuries? Oh. Oh no. No no no why are you smiling like that?! What did I do?! What did I DO?!"
As I am literally, genuinely cackling.

 

Idea!
@Wiwaxia if @TheSeer is cool with it, I am absolutely down with Twp using Lusus as an auxiliary mount, provided she gets on his good side. It could make for a good dramatic fight scene.

Twp is dismounted in midair, too high for a safe fall (Yx is fine but out of reach or something) *70s cartoon narrator voice* Oh no! How will our hero survive?!
*swoop* In comes Lusus, catches her, the fight continues.

 

No, I'm pretty sure the High Druid is/was a druid. :-) She would be a good icon for witches, though. Clerics are largely following the Great Gold Wyrm or the Pretender these days, but neither of those are Taiga's style at all.

I'm sure if you asked the fireside storytellers who spread those rumors about the High Druid, they would make up an answer for you. But there is no, shall we say, solid historical scholarship on this question. There isn't a well-known battle or anything where the High Druid is known to have died. She was around in the 13th Age, making a serious nuisance of herself to the Emperor's new-settlement and road-building projects. In the 14th Age, neither she nor her successor (she was human which would normally mean she should be dead of old age, but both icons and druids can live a long time if they're not killed) are seen. Hence rumors. The High Druid might just be in hiding, or busy with something away from witnesses. Or she might have died, and the druids raised a replacement to the job like they usually do.

I can tell you that most bards place the start of the 14th Age at the Battle of Foothold, when the Orc Lord's invasion began in earnest, which would be years before the Elf Queen died and the Green got free.

 

Oooh, ooh, shower inspiration. Suggestion: what if Taiga didn't originally have a familiar, but Lusus just flew up one day and started acting like one, and the first time Taiga thought to cast Speak With Animals on him, he says "I am the reincarnation of a mighty druid, sent by the High Druid to guide you to an artifact that may be able to save the natural world from the forces of death and destruction. But first let's stop by the Last Homely House and pick up someone with armor, you'll need a meat shield." And then he hacks up a pellet.

 

That IS kinda how familiars work for witches. They just show up like, "Hey guess what, kiddo, I'm going to teach you magic." That's the main difference between witches' and wizards' familiars. Wizards choose, witches are chosen.

So she'll have had a familiar for a while, unless I make her younger. Either Lusus was a normal familiar that suddenly developed a connection to the High Druid, or was her agent all along and only recently began to push Taiga towards doing something Great rather than just being a wanderer.

Ooh I can take the Reluctant Hero angle if you want to do that last one.

 

Wait, your familiar taught you magic? *looks back* Yeah, you did say that. Woops. Okay, that changes what I'd want to do with him. No explicit mention of reincarnation, then. But he could totally be your connection to the High Druid - I like the reluctant hero thing. And then, I think I need to see more characters before I can fit more plot together. Does anyone need anything from me to help with character creation? @KarrinBlue, was there anything else you wanted to know about races?

 

Um, don't think so. I'll try and get characters written up.

 

I'm not sure who I'll slot in into which time period, but my other characters are:
Female Dwarf Paladin with a bitchin' awesome beard who, due to dramatic backstory, is missing an eye and has decided to replace said eye with the holy sigil/talisman she channels divine energy through.
Red-Dragon Sorceress that was a Tiefling but I'll prolly just flip her to dragonkin for this setting. She's hostile and standoffish from being raised in a wizard's lab as an experimental study on dragon/demonkin. It ended badly for him.

 

Sorry. My only real experiences with proper tabletop gaming has been organised play campaigns, where everything has to be run as written and nothing carries over between sessions and everything is generally regimented and regulated, is what I mean.

I want it, and I'm extremely interested, but I can't really promise or guarantee anything, is what I'm saying, time-wise, since if the sessions wound up falling in the middle of the night GMT I wouldn't be able to reasonably participate, basically. I'm concerned that you'd let me on and it'd turn out I was wasting everyone's time by having to drop out because of that.

Now that all those cards are out on the table, and I hopefully don't sound like a total wimp/douche (I am v tired and it plays havoc w my words+confidence sorry): Will you have me?

 

...can I make the forgeborn sorceror part BigDog-esque robot.

#humanoid robots are boring!

 

Oh. Yes, we'll be more casual than that.

Well, then it sounds like we should rough out times so you can make a decision. I doubt we'll be playing at exactly the same day/time every week or anything, because my spoons aren't that reliable if for no other reason. That said, I would expect to be available between noon and midnight, my time, on Saturdays (5 pm to 5am GMT, if I math correctly). Obviously we wouldn't play that whole time, but that's a block of availability. Or I could start a session about 9 pm on other days except Friday, (which would be 2 am in Greenwich), though those sessions couldn't last as long. How does that match with other people's schedules?

It got better.

Now I want to know what crazy dwarf wanted an all-terrain spellcasting deathbot. Not that that has to be the origin, but that's where my brain went.

 

Depending on how old the construct is, it could have been my crazy dwarf. That would definitely be up her alley. (I'm digging the interconnected timelines, stop me if it gets annoying)