Forum > Echoes of Heaven
Starting a game and running the first teaser
mocking bird:
Your party started out living in Heaven and fought outside the literal House of God. They saw the Prophets performing the Sundering ritual - but don't know which one finished it which is one of the main bones of contention between the various racial churches. Their existence is heresy because their tales could cast into doubt the very foundations of current church dogma and tradition and perhaps even contradict scripture. For example Atavists have a pantheist approach of 'God is Nature' and that the Prophets were mere bystandards at the Sundering and claim their religion is the 'true' religion as practiced in Heaven. The party could very well prove their claim true since they were members of the 'original' church, if there really was one.
Back to the original topic, I was thinking furthere about how arcane might have changed when the very nature of reality has changed. It depends on if you see the development of realms as a result of magical training/specialization or if they came about as necessity as arcane simply would not work kind of like taking an American electric razor and plugging it into an outlet in China causing it to run much differently due to differences in the outlet current.
It is similar to how elemental magic might have changed as well. Were there elemental planes before the Sundering?
Defendi:
--- Quote from: mocking bird on October 25, 2009, 12:19:23 PM ---It is similar to how elemental magic might have changed as well. Were there elemental planes before the Sundering?
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Yes.
Defendi:
Okay, family medical stuff has calmed down. I can respond now.
--- Quote from: GerikGnome on October 19, 2009, 12:30:53 PM ---I can comment on the Arcane magic thing. Arcane magic and magic of all types existed before the Sundering. Using Arcane above other types of magic was still rare, but some did. Those who did when transported to the Mortal Realm retain the ability to cast Arcane (you don't forget how to tap the primal powers). However, I have never met in playtest, or heard of in any other context, a caster from the Mortal Realm who can cast Arcane. At very least it's even more rare there.
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Yeah, it's pretty rare, but some people still practice it. There are probably even people in the church who practice it, concentrating on spell lists that don't attack suspicion. Gerik practices elemental magic, so he looks like a magician and is more likely to draw witch-hunters.
--- Quote from: GerikGnome on October 19, 2009, 12:30:53 PM ---The Church in general would consider using Arcane magic at least as evil as using any magic. There may be some who see it as more divine and pure magic, but those would probably consider it an even bigger blasphemy to use it than regular magic.
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This isn't Gerik's fault, because I've let him believe this, but this isn't quite right. Technically, the Church doesn't have a problem with Arcane, it's the original magic of God, after all. However, the people that are likely to realize this are also not going to move against Gerik because they'll assume that he's a Gnomish Priest and that killing him would be an act of Holy War against the Gnomish Church. Those who don't care about that aren't likely to care about the legal history of Arcane Magic, so really it doesn't matter for Gerik. He looks like a magician and the people that would burn him for that would burn him for that regardless.
But if you made an arcane caster that didn't appear to have essence or mentalism-type magic, it's unlikely anyone would question him, and if they took him to trial over it, he'd almost certainly get off clean.
--- Quote from: GerikGnome on October 19, 2009, 12:30:53 PM ---For money, the coins you bring with you are holy relics and extremely valuable. Certain groups (Sinius, Lonnuso, etc) might kill you for having them, since you obviously stole them. We gave them to Gleann for safe keeping, and he gave us local money.
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I use this to give the party money whenever I want. The party's coins get taken by Gleann in the first adventure who sets them up a merchant to sell them on the black market and invest the money. So anytime I feel the characters are behind a money curve (they don't get a lot of treasure between adventures 4 and 7) I can just have a caravan of money show up on their doorstep from their merchant business. In fact, there's probably several shipments of money looking for them at any given time. This is really handy in games like 4e where the game is balanced assuming a certain adventuring income.
--- Quote from: GerikGnome on October 19, 2009, 12:30:53 PM ---The chaos your appearance might cause is softened by Gleann sheltering you and making sure you'll at least pass cursory inspection before turning you loose on the world.[/spoiler] At that point, as long as you don't go around shouting that you're from Heaven (or are a Gnome so no one will believe you anyway), no one should be the wiser.
I hope that helps.
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Yeah, you might be dressed like your from heaven, but who's going to know that and if they do, whose going to assume you did anything but imitate heavenly styles.
Bob
markc:
--- Quote from: markc on October 19, 2009, 12:54:15 PM ---
--- Quote from: Defendi on October 19, 2009, 10:25:30 AM ---Gerik, if you're reading, it might take a day or two for me to answer this (my mother just had a surgical proceedure). Answer as best you can and I'll confirm or correct. :)
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I hope everything goes well.
MDC
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I hope your answering means all went well, Robert.
MDC
Defendi:
Yes! Sorry. I thought I'd posted that here. :) The angiogram showed nothing wrong, so the doctor said there might have been a false-positive there. Now we were kinda hoping that it would find something that would allow them to correct her irregular heartbeat with an angioplasty, but that wasn't the case. That means that they'll probably still need to go in and zap the cells that are beating out of time to fix her rhythm. So there's another surgery on the horizon, but it's laproscopic as well, so it's pretty low on the invasive scale as heart surgeries go.
Thanks so much for your concern.
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