Help me with this "What if" - Page 3

D10 · 03-26-2013, 04:58 PM

A friend of mine is getting ready to GM for the first time, his world is basically a parallel earth where magic "came back" in 1 AD, due to banestormish effects.

The game is set to start at 1100, and this is the world map at this moment. http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/2...ineversion.jpg

Some ideas we played with so far to get to where we got.

Islam never really happened, as powerfull sorcerers and warlocks commanded a quite real power, instead, a very powerfull sorcerer called Raidran created a sort of religious philosophy that sees magic as a divine phenomenae, a sees mages as sorts of eyes and hands of the gods, eventually he took a monotheistic tone and started conquering the hearts and minds of the people, eventually he overthrew the local power and went on to create whats basically christianity main competitor.

He and his followers would have basically overthrown most powers in the middle east and installed a new order, over the centuries they would have all sorts of divergences and split into these major states that you can see on the map.

Christianity is somewhat different, as many priests would actually be mages trained by the catholic church with the purpose of having spells that allows them to be effective priests, and the study and use of magic would be seen as something that can only be done from within the church else it will lead to evil.

England for instance, had both help of druids and christian mages against the viking invasions, and as such the vikings invested a lore more effort into going to america (specially with their own magical helps).

The Byzantine empire would be essentially controled by a cabal of mages called the illuminati, based in antioch, they would have defeated their rivals in a shadow war and overtaken control of the empire, effectivelly reliving the importance of the senate and even making a constitution, that had egalitarian concepts and was overall very progressive, amongst other things, it declared the roman republic as having no official religion as of 1088, altho christianism is by far and large the most popular one.

Dark Elf refugees found this world around 450, and have established a powerbase in the gulf of guinea (the mandinga kingdoms on the map), and an elven task force was sent to track them down and kill them, but due to the elusiveness of the dark elves, and the fact that constantly opening portals made both this world and the elfs native world more likely to be invaded by demons, they decide to make a permanent foothold until the problem was solved, and established a powerbase in the area shown as grand hibernia on the map.

Early 0AD banestorms would also have displaced populations of dwarves and other fantasy races, but the world is 99% human as far as sentient things go.

But I really wanted to hear from you guys, what do you think would be some of the implications of having magic appear at 0AD, mostly to enrich the setting with your input, as he is quite set on having a "as organic as possible" setting, nothing you read here is set in stone, and this is mostly just what we have done so far.

Sry for the map quality, had to reduce due to size.

03-26-2013, 04:58 PM	#1
D10 Join Date: May 2009 Location: In Rio de Janeiro, where it was cyberpunk before it was cool.	Help me with this "What if" A friend of mine is getting ready to GM for the first time, his world is basically a parallel earth where magic "came back" in 1 AD, due to banestormish effects. The game is set to start at 1100, and this is the world map at this moment. http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/2...ineversion.jpg Some ideas we played with so far to get to where we got. Islam never really happened, as powerfull sorcerers and warlocks commanded a quite real power, instead, a very powerfull sorcerer called Raidran created a sort of religious philosophy that sees magic as a divine phenomenae, a sees mages as sorts of eyes and hands of the gods, eventually he took a monotheistic tone and started conquering the hearts and minds of the people, eventually he overthrew the local power and went on to create whats basically christianity main competitor. He and his followers would have basically overthrown most powers in the middle east and installed a new order, over the centuries they would have all sorts of divergences and split into these major states that you can see on the map. Christianity is somewhat different, as many priests would actually be mages trained by the catholic church with the purpose of having spells that allows them to be effective priests, and the study and use of magic would be seen as something that can only be done from within the church else it will lead to evil. England for instance, had both help of druids and christian mages against the viking invasions, and as such the vikings invested a lore more effort into going to america (specially with their own magical helps). The Byzantine empire would be essentially controled by a cabal of mages called the illuminati, based in antioch, they would have defeated their rivals in a shadow war and overtaken control of the empire, effectivelly reliving the importance of the senate and even making a constitution, that had egalitarian concepts and was overall very progressive, amongst other things, it declared the roman republic as having no official religion as of 1088, altho christianism is by far and large the most popular one. Dark Elf refugees found this world around 450, and have established a powerbase in the gulf of guinea (the mandinga kingdoms on the map), and an elven task force was sent to track them down and kill them, but due to the elusiveness of the dark elves, and the fact that constantly opening portals made both this world and the elfs native world more likely to be invaded by demons, they decide to make a permanent foothold until the problem was solved, and established a powerbase in the area shown as grand hibernia on the map. Early 0AD banestorms would also have displaced populations of dwarves and other fantasy races, but the world is 99% human as far as sentient things go. But I really wanted to hear from you guys, what do you think would be some of the implications of having magic appear at 0AD, mostly to enrich the setting with your input, as he is quite set on having a "as organic as possible" setting, nothing you read here is set in stone, and this is mostly just what we have done so far. Sry for the map quality, had to reduce due to size. Last edited by D10; 03-26-2013 at 05:12 PM.