@The Philosoraptor Care to collaborate and set up a roleplay?
Collaboration,
@Toxic Flower? Hmm. I can tell you how I imagined it would play out, and I can certainly set up the thread.
The Tear opens up on the coronation day of the new king of Helaeus, one of the more affluent and influential kingdoms of the world of Aeus. While terrifying, it soon becomes a tourist attraction and center of many scholarly studies. In an effort to revive the slowly dying aristocracy and knight caste, the king leaves his youthful crown prince to rule his kingdom and leaves with six of his greatest warriors on an expedition into the portal. Among them is the ambitious yet immensely loyal knight Caesarion, Duke of Astrius, a lesser province of Helaeus.
Years pass. The walls of the capital city are expanded to stretch around the wall, and a fortress is established. Occasionally there was activity on the other side of the portal, a shadow that could barely be seen as a monstrous figure, and the garrison of arbalests rallied into a wall of crossbows, waiting for an emergence that never occurred. Eventually, the king was announced to be dead, and the prince declared king. However, on his own coronation day, the portal finally spat something back out: Sir Caesarion, bedraggled, cut, bruised, and overall scruffy from the years spent in a foreign land. Saying that the king was alive, that the band of warriors had encountered the kingdom's divinity (Aëon, Lord of Creation) and an entire culture of divine entities, some of them spirits of the dead from Helaeus, he had returned as a herald of the king, and the King of Kings. In short, they had found their afterlife. The others, he claimed, had stayed behind to continue interacting with the Lord of Creation. While some were doubtful, mistrusting the attitude and reputation of Caesarion, the vast majority, including the hopeful royal family, set up a vast day of celebration and prepared to welcome the returning king on the day Caesarion had said he would return (years for Helaeus were only months in the Void). Shadows gathered on the other side of the portal, man-sized now. Anticipation was at a peak.
Suddenly, Caesarion stabbed the crown prince through the chest and threw his wife, pregnant with his son, over the ledge of the parapet from which they were watching. His eyes glowing with a dark, ethereal energy, he reached out to the portal, which spewed out legions of monstrosities, from rotting and skeletal berserkers to ten-foot tall orclike abominations, headed by six cursed, undead riders, one wearing golden armor and a crown. Great shapes followed behind them, pouring out into the world in the form of nightmarish shadows. These were later revealed to be the dark gods of the Void, who masterminded the whole plot. With Caesarion acting as their general and ambassador, the Void Gods swiftly conquered Helaeus, and soon the world. While they were unable to massacre the entirety of the human race (not being the omnipotent form of Elder Deity), they enslaved most of it, forcing them to worship and labor underneath them, all whilst allowing the monsters from their homeland to run rampant across the lands of Aeus. Some humans willingly joined with the Void Gods, and they were gifted with a similar dark power to that of Caesarion, who has since become the very representation of the Void Gods.
While the world under the Void Gods is a cruel, unforgiving, and malevolent one, their arrival has brought about a new age of industry and evolution. The world has been united under Caesarion's banner of shadows, and it has gone boldly into the Age of Industry (putting it roughly at the same level of advancement as the thirteenth century Ottoman Empire, though slightly further in the way of medicine and other domestic features). On the other hand, magic has finally touched the people. When the Void Gods entered the realm of mortals, they opened the door for another God, an Elder far greater than any of them individually: Man had called him Aëon decades before, and now he spiritually inhabited their realm. Unlike the magic of those who submitted to the Void Gods, that which he gifted to mankind was to those who had remained faithful to him, physically and spiritually, and to those who, while they may have forgotten or ignored him, were paragons in spirit and goodness. His magic was of light and good. However, it is increasingly rare, as the followers of the Void Gods show no mercy to the heretics. So too are the supernatural spirits and creatures that Aëon released on the world to counteract those who arrived from the Void.
So, essentially, the main characters would be living in this post-emergence world. Through some means, there stories are loosely tied together in an effort to close the portal, and defeat the Void Gods. Not all of the "good guys" would have access to magic, since it is a rarity. Most villains would have it though, and it was my intention to allow villain characters, who would serve either as ambitious antiheroes seeking to take power for themselves, or as true, purely evil monsters seeking to keep their masters in power. I would try to limit the number of supernatural characters, since most evil monsters are primarily mindless, and many good creatures aren't meant to be playable. An elf? Maybe. A corrupted elf? I'd like to see it. A
gorefiend? No thank you. So we would have to set some limits. And it wouldn't be all fighting and heroism, since most humans who are good are on the run, most humans who are evil are more involved in the politics of the new world than hunting rogue or outlaw humans, and what other good supernatural creatures there are who CAN fight are too powerful to let be used willy and nilly. So, there you go. That's what I had in mind, and what I've just come up with.
