A Jaded Life

I stepped out of the capsule, forced by basic necessity. As it was evening now, I decided to order pizza and while waiting I did some forms to limber up. When it came, I plopped down and started looking for stuff other testers had posted, in order to get some information on the world, my arctic forest was somehow scarcely populated by libraries, don't know why. Luckily, every tester had a certified Forum-Account and the NDA was incredibly lax, they wanted to use the tester as free advertisement. I read through a couple of posts, describing basic training, some bitching about the attributes being based on tests, some bitching about the attributes in general and some bitching about the minimum-values being too high or too low.

One of the 'minimum-values are being too low, raise them, or at least let me redistribute' was incredibly funny, that guy had thought that Intelligence, Intuition and Charisma are completely worthless for a fighter. He put them all on 8, the minimum value. Now, he had trouble to remember where he put his sword, it took him minutes to comprehend basic things and no body wanted to talk to him because he smelled. The instructors at the training hall were basically telling him, he'd be cannon fodder, of course, while inside he wasn't able to figure that but outside, it worked.

That pulled me up short, I'd realized that the capsule was basically reading my mind, else the whole 'magic-thing' would not work the way it did but what that guy described was more the capsule actively messing with his mind to limit it to the chosen stats. The realisation creeped me out, big time but on the other hand, I doubted that any company would release something into circulation without it being largely safe. And I'd far too much fun to stop playing.

Another post was interesting, it was of someone who picked Guildmage, describing the process those had to go through to cast spells. Their Spells were a combination of Runes and Chants and they were only taught from master to disciple. Interesting. Also, the guy was mightily struggling with the Runes-portion, they had to be inscribed with very little margin of error. That was something I hadn't realised, I guess I had lucked out, my martial arts training in combination with my wonky brain made me a natural at doing a specific movement in excruciating detail. Sadly I was unable to get any ideas for Runes out of the footing, he was only casting Fire and to be honest, it was hardly impressive. He mainly created small flames but he was given a wand that could stand in for the Rune-Portion, so he just had to chant and Firebolts would shoot from the wand. Still, it sounded like he was a rather pure backline character.

Then I struck gold, someone went actually into a library and had looked up the overall geography and written it down, alongside basic political information.

As I had seen on the way down, the overall shape of the lands was similar to earth, I wonder why, lazy devs.

North America was ruled by the Human Empire and other than that, it contained the Wild Woods, a huge, primordial Forest taking up what would be the north-western US and all of West Canada. Various wild tribes lived there, human or otherwise. North-eastern Canada was a desolate, frozen landscape, only inhabited by a race called Giantbloods, beings that were possibly the result of Giants mixing with other races, resulting in tall and hardy humanoids but due to their limited number they were never able to found a true nation. The dominant force was clearly the Human Empire, made up out of various Kingdoms in competition with each other but no open warfare, that was cracked down by the Empire. However it was the third Empire, they called themselves the Eternal Empire but future generations would have to judge that. The first and second Empire were both overthrown when one of the Kingdoms gained enough support to make a bid for the throne. The overall political situation was apparently relaxed but tensions were flaring up from time to time. The Continent was called Aletoma.

Central America wasn't populated. Well, at least not by anything you'd want to talk to. The whole thing was a mix of desert and mountains, inhabited by some of the worst monsters on Mundus, everything from rocs, gigantic wyverns, possibly even Dragons. Few went there and even fewer ever returned. Calling the place 'unfriendly' was akin to calling the Pacific a 'small puddle', better adjectives would be hellish, deadly, murderous or a plain and simple NO.

That land of death was called Helar and covered everything from South Texas to Panama and separated Aletoma and Arbotoma.

South America or Arbotoma as it was called on Mundus, was crooked quite a bit, with the Cape pointing to Australia. It was covered in the ancient forests that sprung up around what the elves called 'World Tree' or Eldrarbor. They claimed only elves born with the blessing of Eldrarbor were true elves as it was only with support from Eldrarbor that they were able to claim immortality. Various tribes lived in the forest, each with their own Kingdom but all under the High Keeper, the highest Druid of their religion, Eldra, centred on the worship of Eldrarbor.

Africa, or Daiea, was further in the Atlantic so what was a narrow channel in our world was a wide strait in this world. The whole continent was inhabited by Daimons, something the poster claimed as incredibly racist, portraying Africa as the Demon Continent, but I felt different. If the game was built upon Greek Myth, then Daimons were not evil, they were messengers of the gods and connected to the Greek Pantheon. Upon reading in the comments, it was confirmed as someone explained that he had found some writing about the cataclysm and that it was caused as two rival factions of deities had warred with each other. Their war broke both sacred anchors that served as an easy connection between the realm of Olympus and Mundus and the realm of Asgard and Mundus. The shattering of the anchors was the cataclysm that had caused so much damage to the world. The Daimons had been the favoured children of the Olympian deities and still worshipped them. After the Cataclysm they'd left their ancestral home due to the pain the broken anchor caused them. All of Daiea was governed by a theocracy, ruled over by the High Priest of Zeus.

Europe might be the most interesting continent, the whole of Europe and northern Asia was a powder-keg of races, various mountain ranges were inhabited by Dwarven Kingdoms, some connected by an underground network called the Deep Ways, the rest of the land was inhabited mostly by various tribes of Orcs, Centaurs and pretty much every flavour of beastman imaginable. Other races and tribes existed but those three were the most important ones. The various tribes were never able to unite so the whole continent, which was called Aretia, was engulfed in small scale conflicts.

South Asia was the territory of the Valkyries, which I had mistaken for Angels when skimming through the races and they were the counterpart to the Daimons. Not Good and Evil but more Greek vs. Norse. The Valkyries are winged humanoids, also a theocracy, this one centred on Odin. The Continent was called Valkar and mostly peaceful. A mountain range spanned from Iran to the Korean Peninsula, separating Valkar and Aretia and similar to Helar, it was inhabited by a lot of unfriendly creatures.

The last known race of note were the Naga, they had formed various small communities all over the world and were active traders and seafarers. The whole seafaring-buisness was made spicy by the fact that the Oceans of Mundus were probably the most dangerous region of the realm. They were inhabited by lots and lots of sea monsters making every journey by ship an interesting one, or if you had no water mages, a suicidal one. Water Mages, especially those trained by the Naga, were able to cloak their ships from the Sea Monsters making it possible for individual ships to cross the sea.

Last, but not least, Australia. Nobody knew. Apparently there was no information to be found, it was on the map but as a blob, labelled as 'Wyld Lands' and when asked, the librarian said that the Wyld Lands were simply that, a continent inhabited by monsters and strange fairies, deadly to everyone who dared venturing there.

I have to admit, for a Game-World I highly approve, large scale war, that would wildly shift the balance of power or even wipe out races is pretty much impossible as most races are either isolated or culturally not capable of large scale war. So lots of conflict all over the place, huge areas pretty much earmarked as 'High-Level Content' and high-sea adventure as a bonus, small Islands could make terrific out-door dungeons. And if, at one point, the world of Mundus was completely 'gamed out', the prior existence of other Realms made a re-establishing of such links an easy, lore-fitting way to introduce more, endless, content.

With those thoughts, I went back into the Capsule, I had wolves to hunt and I needed to come up with a plan to manage the pesky Snowbolds.