Topic: Magic and ancient civilisations

[craggles]

I've been reading through the Shadow World Master Atlas and I'm loving the several eras - initially being a space faring race. There's also an article on the ecology of magic by Rasyr on his personal blog about an ancient civilisation being wiped out because they were trying to harness arcane energy at stations around the globe. It was this that caused their destruction and formed the basis for earthnodes and laylines.

I'm going to be adding things like that in my campaign that the players are going to stumble upon. I've started a concept draft image of what I'd use for such a station below and there'll be more images on my blog in the coming months.



I'm going to try and describe the image to the players as best I can in a language the Characters would understand given their level of development and then I'm going to show the Players the picture.

I'm already keeping Arcane magic, Earthnodes and Laylines from them to be revealed at a later date, and now there's the cause to show them even further down the line - I can't wait! 

[Hurin]

I'll be really interested to see what you come up with. I love any images of Kulthea that I can show to my players-- I often find myself trolling images on the web for things to give the players, just to stoke their interest. So bring it on!

[craggles]

What I'm doing would be a cross between Shadow World, Rasyr's (excellent) ideas for Magic in his world and with the type of world campaign I've already established with my players - so it wouldn't be specifically for Kulthea.

Although a lot of the images I'll be doing can be adapted easily for the Shadow World by adding the huge impassible mountain ranges.

I have a few Shadow World adventures that I bought many, many years ago and I've been using the bits from them for little campaigns but now that I have the Master Atlas and I can see what's going on overall, my campaign world is going to evolve into something 'Kulthea' like.

As I get more time, image suggestions are always welcome. 

[providence13]

Really impressive images on your blog!

[craggles]

Really impressive images on your blog!

Thank you.

[munchy]

I really like those (pencil) sketches, they look very impressive. Hope to see some of your stuff in gaming books!

[craggles]

Thanks! That's something I'd never get tired of hearing.   

...and the 'pencil' sketches are in actual fact 'biro' sketches from start to finish - it hones the ability when there's no undo and no rubbing out.