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View Full Version : The World Of Tollah (Comments welcome)



Vesth
2012-04-28, 06:53 AM
I was struck by an idea of a world recently, which I might adapt into a campaign (for 4e, since I've never player 3.5e before).

History
When the gods were first struck by the idea of creating worlds, whether it be because of want of followers, or curiousity as to what would happen, they pooled together their divine powers and tried to construct one.

They failed.

The first few worlds were unstable, and either imploded or disintergrated within a few months.

Eventually, they managed to create their first working world, Tollah, which they quickly populated with whatever their divine powers could allow. More worlds soon followed, of course, but their joy was not to last. Roughly a thousand years later, they discovered a problem. Tollah was becoming unresponsive to their powers; divine spells started to fail, and their influence on what could happen on the world became limiting. Quickly, they met and discussed, and reluctantly decided to destroy, and recreate the world again, while they tried to discover the source of the problem.

They eventually realised that the place they built the world was flawed; it was unstable, and as the world grew, it became more and more unstable, until the point where it exists in a kind of bubble, where the gods will no longer be able to influence it.

This presented a dilemma. They could either restart Tollah every thousand years, preventing the problem from ever occuring, or they could allow the world to continue to grow, existing without their help or influence in any way.

We created this world! Our followers depend on us! We should reboot the world! cried one god out loud.

I will have to disagree. Tollah is like a child. When it grows up, we must learn to let him go, not kill him and create another baby.

Since we are unable to decide among ourselves, we should let the inhabitants of the world choose for themselves.

Indeed. We shoud leave the choice to them. We should give them the knowledge to restart the world on their own. But we should not give this knowledge to everyone. There would be chaos; nations would fight and battle over this decision.

Neither should we pass the knowledge to our followers. Devout as they are, they would most assuredly choose to reboot Tollah, to let us guide the world. They would not be a fine representative to make this decision.

Then let us pick people who are not of any religion, who are unbiased, and of sane mind.

And so, the gods set to work.

In this new Tollah, they presented the knowledge on rebooting the world to a select few.

These few banded together, and formed the Cult of the Moon, as the procedure to reboot the world (by a mortal) took 12 steps, the end of each step would result in a moon being created.

The Cult of the Moon set forth, and begun preaching, and reaching out to people who would believe in the knowledge the gods had given them. Most of the world took no notice of them, believing them to be false prophets. After all, religious leaders refused to believe that their gods would hide such important information from them.

Frustrated at being rejected, the Cult decided to show proof. They completed the first ritual, and the world was shocked at the sight of the first moon.

But things did not improve for the Cult. It got worse. The religious leaders branded them as a 'Doomsday Cult', and many adventurers went forth to crush them.

Within a span of a few weeks, all Cult members were either dead, or went into hiding.

A thousand years later...

The world had not advanced much in technology, preferring instead to call upon their gods for help when they need it.

However, divine spells were starting to fail, and many priests and clerics could no longer reach out to their gods.

Soon, a second moon appeared in the sky.

People were getting desperate. No one understood what was happening, and so, they called upon their religious leaders for help.

These leaders frantically called upon mages and sages, who could offer no help at all. Turning inwards, they searched the records of the past in search something, anything that could give them a solution.

The appearence of the second moon gave them the answer they wanted.

From what they could gather from historical records, The Cult of the Moon was a Doomsday Cult, where the end of the world would be heralded by the coming of 12 moons. They thus deduced that the failing of divine magic was a side-effect of the Cult of the Moon's attempts at world destruction.

Plans were set in motion, armies were amassed, merceneries were hired; they would crush this cult once and for all, hopefully solving their problems...

Cities and whatnot
Tollah depends very heavily on their gods. As such, most people are of one religion or another.

Most nations were build to honor one god or another, and over time, magnificant structures were build to mirror the follower's devout worshipping of their god. For example, a city of Ioun would be full of libraries and wizard academies, places of knowledge and lore. it could possibly have a Grand Library, inscribed with the symbol of Ioun upon the polished oaken double doors, and the interier would be saturated with magic to preserve all knowledge within, with a magical system, where books on related subjects of study can come flying to the reader at a moment's notice. Citizens will be encouraged to leave the city for a few years, learn as much as they can, and add it to the Grand Library upon their return.

In fact, all major nations are based on religion. Nations unaligned to any patron diety are small, and usually insignificant.

Tollah is generally peaceful, except for the occasional skimirshes between opposing religions.

Comments will be appreciated! :smallbiggrin:
(Mind, this is just a rough idea for now. More ideas will be fleshed out when I think of them)

Halyat
2012-04-28, 09:33 PM
I like the idea of a world that can be "reset", and the power of the gods waning as worlds develop. The gods must have a low opinion of themselves and their worshipers if they think the power to reset the world should be given to mortals who believe in neither though. If everyone knowing how to reset the world would create chaos (why?), what do the gods think of the panic from the moons appearing and people not knowing why? Is everything going according to plan?

I definitely think the most interesting part of the setting is the "reset", at any rate. If the gods want to leave the choice up to the people, maybe everyone in the world should know the ritual but it requires a massive amount of people to do it, so many that a single cult couldn't just do it in secret- you could have a group trying to convince people that the world should be reset, "converting" people by arguing for the destruction of the world. On that note, are the Cult of the Moon supposed to be the player characters or their antagonists or what?

Vesth
2012-04-29, 12:37 AM
Thank you :smallsmile:

I think one major reason for not giving everyone this information is that some lunatic who hates the world would just spam the reset button to end the world...

But your idea makes a lot of sense (the one requiring many people to do it, so a single cult couldn't do it in secret). I'll consider it!

Also, the player characters....well, I supposed they could be part of the Cult, but my original idea was that they would be merceneries hired to destroy the cult, only to find the true reason behind the Cult's existence...