On the topic of the barbarisms in this topic, I think you don't necessarily need a different approach, but just a different presentation. It's metadata that we're discussing in the first place, so if we craft the filtering lens then perhaps some of the concerns will be alleviated.
If I were to put all this information on hold, and think about how I'd like it presented to me as a player, through the cards and through the flavour, this is how I would distribute pieces about the past around:
There's no knowledge on different races specifically, no information on the whys or the hows known to anyone (apart from that handful of angels). No nothing. All that the mortal races are aware of is that there's a massive scarring of Elysium, and that somehow the angels were involved. Drop a hydra skeleton somewhere within a collapsed forest cave, or rock art somewhere in an unknown language, symbolics, and depicting an extinct race. Leave material remnants in the rivers, broken by fire. Fill the map with wastelands, areas that were hit hardest by tactical angelic missiles. Hell, you could create a place referencing Tolkien's dead marshes, but with brutal savage leonin, mutilated angels, and hooman barbarians instead. Drop the presentation of half-assed information on who and what, and instead create a veil of mystery and legend. Ignore it within the story, but instead take it for granted as a background, never giving meta explanation. Make sure that people cannot simply piece together that the angels made something terrible happen that whiped half the plane from existence, but leave the hints in the background. Don't go about yelling it's a genocide of the barbarians, but show how it affected the world. Things like that.
We may know all that information that as meta data, but I feel the presentation to the public must be done differently - and must be explicit to us right away if concerns are to be alleviated .
You know, I can't help but kick myself looking back. I've been trying to decide what the taboo for the golden eyed moonfolk should be all about and I really took it for granted that taboos are by nature irrational. I think someone even might have mentioned it, but the golden eyed moonfolk should be tied to a prophecy. One made a long long time ago. People aren't even sure what the prophecy was at this point, but all that has come down through the ages is that they are poor fortune. Popular theories about what they are supposed to mean will of course range from just bad luck to the end of the moonfolk race. The major commonality in the taboo should always have something to do with change though, because there's nothing that scares a group secure in itself than change.
So the goldsight moonfolk reap the fruits of some unknown destiny they never asked for.
Of course I'm bloody well keeping the doom saying Hashmalim Sandriel. Eh, sometimes cliches are comfortable.
Oh and uh... the moonfolk could use more distinguishing features. Right now, they are just a little too human for my taste, or more appropriately, they could stand to be further away from the human/elf model.
Edit: was typing this when Terti posted. I'll check it out in a second.
There's no knowledge on different races specifically, no information on the whys or the hows known to anyone (apart from that handful of angels). No nothing. All that the mortal races are aware of is that there's a massive scarring of Elysium, and that somehow the angels were involved.
Remnants of the landscape are something I can get behind. Places of devastation that have barely recovered make sense. People don't like to go to these places. They know something bad happened there and even if they don't understand any of it, it's not a place any sane person would be comfortable at. What happened there left a mark and the living can pick up on it. And despite their best efforts the Zabaniahim probably can't get EVERYTHING. I would imagine even after all this time there are still spirits wandering that landscape, barely holding together any sense of themselves, the worst reduced to naught more than wisps.
Drop a hydra skeleton somewhere within a collapsed forest cave, or rock art somewhere in an unknown language, symbolics, and depicting an extinct race. Leave material remnants in the rivers, broken by fire.
However, I'm really not sure about material records. Though I'd be more inclined to say a dragon skeleton, but that's basic semantics and preferences and neither here nor there. Pretty much the major problem I have with material remnants is that... well, people are curious. They'd gather them up and try to figure them out and if there are enough to take note of, there are enough to probably work out something very very wrong happened. Any fewer remains and they almost aren't worth mentioning. That being said, despite everything you paint a vivid picture. I can see some moonfolk explorer out in the deep of the Green in some worn shaded cave, brushing ivy away from the walls to find something she cannot understand.
Fill the map with wastelands, areas that were hit hardest by tactical angelic missiles. Hell, you could create a place referencing Tolkien's dead marshes, but with brutal savage leonin, mutilated angels, and hooman barbarians instead.
I honestly think I did just that above... Though a little less defined. But at the same time, I don't want these wastelands too numerous. Just in some places. Probably on the Western continent since it is the larger of the two.
Drop the presentation of half-assed information on who and what, and instead create a veil of mystery and legend. Ignore it within the story, but instead take it for granted as a background, never giving meta explanation. Make sure that people cannot simply piece together that the angels made something terrible happen that whiped half the plane from existence, but leave the hints in the background. Don't go about yelling it's a genocide of the barbarians, but show how it affected the world. Things like that.
This might come off as dismissive or rude, but I genuinely don't mean it to be. Show me. Give me some legends and we'll see how well it all fits. Right now we seem to be working with developing history and legends, so pull up a seat and contribute to the pool.
Drop the presentation of half-assed information on who and what, and instead create a veil of mystery and legend. Ignore it within the story, but instead take it for granted as a background, never giving meta explanation. Make sure that people cannot simply piece together that the angels made something terrible happen that whiped half the plane from existence, but leave the hints in the background. Don't go about yelling it's a genocide of the barbarians, but show how it affected the world. Things like that.
This might come off as dismissive or rude, but I genuinely don't mean it to be. Show me. Give me some legends and we'll see how well it all fits. Right now we seem to be working with developing history and legends, so pull up a seat and contribute to the pool.
I would honestly hesitate to add it in as stuff of legend. "It", hmm. Pre-celestial? Pre-rapturous era? I'll go with that for now because it writes easier, though I have no doubt you got a better feeling for the words that don't want to leave the tip of my tongue atm :/
Anyway, I would not have it as obvious as common man's legend or folklore, but instead have it be mythical at best. (When I use those words, I think legend -> 'fantasy' based upon a core of truth, and myth -> pure 'fantasy' that sometimes approaches some obscure truths). (Depending on how alien you wish for the other races' thoughts to be, they may lack or have different spheres of cognitive imagination alltogether - I'm arguing most from a human's perspective, currently). Have the pre-rapturous era more shrouded in the mists of time and angelic erasure, than a simple reduction to mere legend. For example, you could use names that resonate as elfish or leonin to the player for the oldest, most desolate, or most historic places. Names of the land(scape) have a tendency of surviving the languages that they were first named in and the peoples/structures that they refer to in the real world also.
Also, you don't need stone ruins if you don't want them. Earthernworks on the plains, hill terraces in the mountains, ancient but functional dykes in the swamps, that have been there since times untold. Accepted by the beings that walk there as never-changing parts of the landscape, belonging there like the forests and the rivers themselves do. Remnants in the architecture of places, like the humans urge to extend windows and doors a feet higher than feels necessary - almost as if they remember sharing space with larger beings. Examples, of course, that goes without saying I do think that material remains have a place, because otherwise there can be nothing. If I look out of my window, I see the rest of my flat, which was built in the 1980's. The little garden and bike stand was made last year in 2011. The small park has been there since at least the second World War, judging by the size and age of the trees - possibly for much longer. Then, I extend my vision past the 1960's retirement home and intend the canal running there - part of the city's medieval defences as early as the fifteenth century, but effortly incorporated in the city's(landscape's) life. Straight on the other side is Leiden's Hortus Botanicus, which was established at the end of the sixteenth century - Linnaeus' studied there. More to the left, back on my side of the canal, is the Leiden University Library, which is just as old (but the building was built in 1987). The point of that little paragraph is simple: Every landscape is constituted by individual components, whom may vastly differ in their individual age - yet, they are vibrant parts of the city present. I could repeat this exercise for numerous other places myself, but realistically any place is constituted by such a history. Geology contributes, as does the climate and man's continuous efforts to shape its environment. Forests may grow magically in the multiverse, but here on earth they are naught but the result of eons of humans sustaining themselves - causing erosion and soil impoverments/enrichments, flooding, extinction of species (Europe's renowned old-growth forests could develop only after humans hunted the auroch to extinction), and the like. Incorporate the pre-rapturous era in Elysium's history, and if done well enough you would not even need the rest .
Needless to say, art and geography are by far the most important (and most well suited) tools to tell this story. They're still no examples directly set in Elysium, but I think some are easily ported. I'd need a better overview of the plane's geography (inc. processes), as well as of which race was where/for how long/had this level of technology/should differentiate itself from the others in U and V, to be able to make up a better fitting history. But this is how I would first approach things, and what I would use as a basis to build on, should the need arise to expand on the pre-rapturous age. I could fill in the wastelands, the desolated and devastated places, and the decimated dark forests easily. The blasted and barren lands of dark and grey earths, through which no water will flow but the muddy rainstreams that lay bare scarred rocks of crumbling sand. Sandstone of various grey hues, porously absorbing the scarce rainfall, giving in return only the pungent mossy smell of subterranean rivers of fungus. That inhospitable land stretches for miles in all directions, exhibiting no signs of life there ever was or life that could ever be, save for the imprints that the stone still carry: faint, black, excruciatingly vivid silhouettes, writhing in the agony of ages past. Makes for a nice commission to a spirit manland's art, but they're details that may end up fitting nowhere if the general direction lacks.
Edit: I want to stress that even though some of this comes across as negative, none of it is meant to be dismissive. I'm not shooting the ideas down, I'm just expressing doubts to how they fit as suggested.
I would honestly hesitate to add it in as stuff of legend. "It", hmm. Pre-celestial? Pre-rapturous era? I'll go with that for now because it writes easier, though I have no doubt you got a better feeling for the words that don't want to leave the tip of my tongue atm :/
Yeah, I'm going to go for something other than pre-celestial, but I'll need to meditate on what.
Anyway, I would not have it as obvious as common man's legend or folklore, but instead have it be mythical at best. Have the pre-rapturous era more shrouded in the mists of time and angelic erasure, than a simple reduction to mere legend. For example, you could use names that resonate as elfish or leonin to the player for the oldest, most desolate, or most historic places. Names of the land(scape) have a tendency of surviving the languages that they were first named in and the peoples/structures that they refer to in the real world also.
That's one of the major issues with having anything like material remnants. It gives a record and no matter what curiosity they may pose, it raises enormous question marks as to what they are. If there is record that people can point to, people will know something was up and they can't be mythical, even if they don't understand.
However, you make a good point that I genuinely hadn't considered. The fact that, as I pointed out, people are curious, and they will wonder at what came before. But I'm unsure if they should even be aware of the rapture as anything academic. The angels have been around for so long, they might genuinely believe they've always been there. I'll give it some thought though. As an aside, there weren't elves and I don't know if anything Leonin would be recognizable. It might work, but as far back as this would be, I don't know if names will survive anymore than Babylon as a place.
Also, you don't need stone ruins if you don't want them. Earthernworks on the plains, hill terraces in the mountains, ancient but functional dykes in the swamps, that have been there since times untold. Accepted by the beings that walk there as never-changing parts of the landscape, belonging there like the forests and the rivers themselves do.
You do have a point with these, and yeah, that'd work. At the same time, I don't know how much interest those would draw to even mention them.
Remnants in the architecture of places, like the humans urge to extend windows and doors a feet higher than feels necessary - almost as if they remember sharing space with larger beings.
Not that though. They were preyed upon, they wouldn't want to invite the beings in for tea.
Needless to say, art and geography are by far the most important (and most well suited) tools to tell this story. They're still no examples directly set in Elysium, but I think some are easily ported. I'd need a better overview of the plane's geography (inc. processes), as well as of which race was where/for how long/had this level of technology/should differentiate itself from the others in U and V, to be able to make up a better fitting history. But this is how I would first approach things, and what I would use as a basis to build on, should the need arise to expand on the pre-rapturous age.
Lot of that isn't established, just where they are at the moment and really, they've been there for a while, aside from some cities that were converted from one race to another at close to the start of the war.
I could fill in the wastelands, the desolated and devastated places, and the decimated dark forests easily. The blasted and barren lands of dark and grey earths, through which no water will flow but the muddy rainstreams that lay bare scarred rocks of crumbling sand. Sandstone of various grey hues, porously absorbing the scarce rainfall, giving in return only the pungent mossy smell of subterranean rivers of fungus. That inhospitable land stretches for miles in all directions, exhibiting no signs of life there ever was or life that could ever be, save for the imprints that the stone still carry: faint, black, excruciatingly vivid silhouettes, writhing in the agony of ages past. Makes for a nice commission to a spirit manland's art, but they're details that may end up fitting nowhere if the general direction lacks.
To some degree, the fact that they don't fit is part of the point. They're unnatural. Of course, this does give me an excuse to use something similar to Libyan Desert Glass, which I've been itching to do since I began researching obsidian earlier in the thread.
Don't worry about your comments, there's nothing wrong with the tone as far as I read into it :P. Besides, if you considered these points enough to doubt them they will nestle themselves in your subconscious thoughts only to rear their ugly heads again when you come to the writing. Or so psychology dictates - I'm not sure about their notion of subconsciousness. But that's besides the point. Ahem.
I think the only point I really should respond to again is the existence of a record in some way shape or form. From what I've read of the plane, I would denounce ancient and crumbling necropoli of extinct race X probably as much as you, and I can very well understand the angelic desire to go 1984 on history and remove as much as possible from the face of the earth. I think I'm just not convinced of such a thing being truly attainable, since the angels don't seem planeshaping omnipotent enough for that. Referring to the looking-out-the-window scene, I myself cannot imagine a landscape that does not bear a record of the past.
Also, I would personally not worry too much about curious questions and gigantic question marks. People started hunting for dinosaur fossils only in the 19th century, and still had no clue what to actually do with them until they had enough to form complete skeletons or realised that they were a tiny tad older than the biblic calendar. Given that Elysium's humans are a few centuries and a revolution or two earlier still, I'm not sure if the opportunity to safely ask/investigate those questions would be there, simply put. Then again, you could turn it into an angelic welfare state with the swipe of a pen :P. It's a fair point that it's better left aside if all it will do is distract (though I believe there's enough creative room to make the world breathe with non-angelic trivia).
So yeah, overall I'm just glad I could raise some smart points to help further the project along :P
Possibly tying into Terti's idea of a few indecipherable records in forgotten languages, I do think it's important to have at least a few places on the plane where "angels fear to tread." You addressed it briefly, but personally, I still feel the angels come off as too powerful. Granted, they are now the apex predators of the plane, but I think it's important, especially considering you want them to have cultures and even pastimes, I think it's vital that they have some things they're afraid of other than, well, one another.
It's more than possible that one of these places (a deep cave is the obvious choice) contains some forgotten history or lore, albeit one no one alive today can understand. Or can they? dun dun dun!
I think I'm just not convinced of such a thing being truly attainable, since the angels don't seem planeshaping omnipotent enough for that. Referring to the looking-out-the-window scene, I myself cannot imagine a landscape that does not bear a record of the past.
I do see a possibility in developing the landscape, stuff like burial mounds and ancient things like stonehenge that are... weird or out of the way enough that the angels had no need to mess around with it. Hell, stonehenge is still a mystery to us, and we actually know a lot about the culture that it rose within. It's just difficult for me to think backwards now that I've gotten to a certain place with where they are.
Also, I would personally not worry too much about curious questions and gigantic question marks. People started hunting for dinosaur fossils only in the 19th century, and still had no clue what to actually do with them until they had enough to form complete skeletons or realised that they were a tiny tad older than the biblic calendar. Given that Elysium's humans are a few centuries and a revolution or two earlier still, I'm not sure if the opportunity to safely ask/investigate those questions would be there, simply put.
Eh, the problem here is that the audience brings a modern sensibility with them when dealing with expectations of what the beings are capable of, even when knocking back the development of the plane, they will still expect archaeomancer s and the like to be diving into the mysteries. It's one of the catch 22's of building a modern fantasy world. The modern audience is spoiled in lifestyle. Most modern fantasy worlds don't come close to expressing the sheer brutality and pragmatism that our own past had. People's social mores imprint on the work, even if it is meant to be a throwback civilization.
(though I believe there's enough creative room to make the world breathe with non-angelic trivia).
I definitely agree, or hope to at least. The problem I have is that I'm too deep into the world to step back and see that room. It's my own problem, but it's where people can contribute in meaningful ways for me.
Possibly tying into Terti's idea of a few indecipherable records in forgotten languages, I do think it's important to have at least a few places on the plane where "angels fear to tread." You addressed it briefly, but personally, I still feel the angels come off as too powerful. Granted, they are now the apex predators of the plane, but I think it's important, especially considering you want them to have cultures and even pastimes, I think it's vital that they have some things they're afraid of other than, well, one another.
Torn about this. One of the major themes is the alien thoughts that shape the angels and... fear is a very very human response. About the only fear left in them is the fear of non-existence. I could go into a whole spiel taken from Dark Knight Rises but... well, I didn't care for it.
Anyways, I could see confusion in the ranks about some places, places that cause heated arguments and laws of forbiddence to tread in certain lands just because they lack the perspective to understand something about it. They are too far removed from what they once were. But fear? Not in the same way you probably mean.
Aside from that, something specific about why you feel they are overpowered would help. Things that would let me addess those concerns.
Today at work, I began jotting a little about the personality of the various branches of angels as well as a little about the deadlands and the sort of folklore and academic curiousity that sprang up around them. The Seraphs got most of the development from today's session, and I'll post it up a little later. Right now I wanna eat my pizza. Aside from that, I've resolved that we HAVE to fill in the major figures that are in charge of the branches. Oh, and I worked out how to do "clothing" on the Ophanim, which was bothering me. Very loose and flowing garments which are not tied to their body, but in fact tied to the rings which either circle their body or hover near them.
And there's still the to do list, mostly focusing on fleshing black out still.
edit: and what the hell, someone come up with a leonin name for a type of short sword with no crossguard and a single heavy edge and point. That'll be something the leonin used ages ago and people aren't sure where the name came from anymore. A type of sword is a good concession to some of that right?
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