PDA

View Full Version : Homebrew lore: The origin of the gods



Immabozo
2012-12-18, 04:16 AM
(If the suspension of belief is too much for you that of any plane of existence, existed before gods, you can read this with the assumption that there was exactly one god before this lore, the "Creator" who is an Over Deity and cares not for the affairs of a plane. He simply creates one, perfects it, and then moves on to create another, paying little attention to past created planes and thus, no worshipers on the material, nor any plane. The "Origins of the Gods" of this lore, then, refers to the gods that come after "The Creator", the deities of worship in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. Personally, I kinda am a fan of the following lore as written.)

EDIT: As was pointed out later in the thread, this is not intended for a useful timeline for campaigns, I figure it would be an entirely new game at if used as a D&D setting, with people having to take feats to use the arcane in a certain tactical uses, there would be no spells, at least not at first.

Instead, I intend this lore as to explain the artifact I introduced at the end, which will play an important role in my campaign, played in the "modern D&D universe" by 3.5 rules. /end of edit

Many thousands of years ago, when the first dragons were no older than 15 (they formerly lived on another plane of existence, but this is their first entrance into the material plane), there were no gods and arcane energy had just started permeating into the material plane from the very young dragons. No one knows what it is, but some can feel it and it is very new and they have no idea what it means.

All this is in the middle of a very large war. A war between rival empires. The Elves are at war, defending themselves from a massive Dwarf invading army. The Dwarf empire is attempting to expand into the Elven kingdom.

In the fighting, a very unusual and unique champion arose. She was an elf named LuEvon Lightleaf. She was the first, and at this point only, one to figure out how to use the new arcane energy. She figured out how to use it to slightly manipulate the world around her, to amplify her actions, or influence the actions of others.

Well, the war had culminated into a single, massive battle with an army of 100,000 Elven heavy infantry and 150,000 light infantry, supported by 100,000 Elven Archers and 50,000 cavalry defending a major Elven city, against an invading army of 200,000 heavy Dwaven infantry and 300,000 Dwarven Defenders, supported by 200,000 Dwarven crossbow units, 10,000 allied Gnomish guerrilla fighters, 5,000 Gnomish engineers operating siege equipment.

Despite being outnumbered, the presence of their famous champion LuEvon, is enough of a morale boost to make every one of them optimistic about the battle. Their belief in her made her, oddly, made her feel stronger.

The day of the battle came. The slow moving, but strong line of the Dwarven army inched closer to the Elves until the front lines stood staring each other down, no warrior was eager to start the bloodbath that they all knew was about to commence. LuEvon struck first, causing the wall of Dwarven tower shields to part just enough and her slender, agile Elven frame dove between them, rolling to get her feet under her and she made a mighty arcane enhanced jump back over the Dwarves and into her elven line, As she jumped back, a strong ripple of arcane energy threw the surrounding Dwarves quite a distance into their surrounding troops, knocking many over. As she landed back in line from an unelvenly high and graceful jump, she could feel the increased admiration and intense respect from all of the troops in sight, both Elves and the Dwarves. It somehow felt gently empowering.

The Elves quickly used the opportunity and attacked, exploiting the serious breach in the Dwarven front line and putting many of them on the defensive from the start, right in the center of their battle formations.

Arrows began to stream overhead, LuEvon lead many Elves forward. Her rhythm and elegant dance of blades was a sight to behold, all around her were in awe, the devotion and determination of all the Elves that followed her seemed to strengthen her command of the arcane, making it easier for her to manipulate and direct the energy around her.

As she fought, she realized the siege equipment began to hurl large rock over their heads and began smashing down the city walls and bringing down some of the treetop guard houses. An idea bubbled up inside her that, for reasons she later could not explain, she did not second guess or doubt, she just did. she took a particularly heavily armored Dwarven Defender and swiftly disarmed him and in a feat of strength, picked him up and maneuvered him into the direction of the closest siege equipment, and made an arcane empowered kick, flying into the Dwarves, knocking many, many of them over, allowing an unnaturally fast dash towards the catapult, just before getting there, leaping into the air, landing on the weighted end of the loaded and ready to fire catapult arm. She quickly ran down the arm, making a swipe with her elegant elven sword at the ropes holding the tension at the pivot point of the great machine. The catapult arm quickly fell over and the falling catapult ballast crushed a terrified group of Gnomish engineers. LuEvon landed gracefully on the ground, just as her elven support reached her. Again, she could feel their respect, bordering on faith, empowering her, along with the awe of thousands of soldiers that could see her.

Again, the rhythm and grace of her blades inspired those around her, inspired awe and vigor in the elves and utter terror and a fearful awe in the Dwarves.

Despite how outnumbered the elves were, it seemed the Elves were winning, having beaten a solid path directly through the middle of the Dwaren army to all the siege equipment, lead by LuEvon. The Elven cavalry, supported many of the light infantry, flanked the Dwarves on either side, the Elven archers thinning out the Dwarves from the middle of the formations.

Finally, LuEvon met the massive, sleek black battle axe wielding Dwarven Champion of no small renown, Enkil Undermountain, on the battle field. When these two met, the surrounding fighting ceased and all just watched. The two circled each other, exchanging blows, the clash of their weapons went on for several minutes. Finally. Enkil made a fake to the right and swung to the left and his axe met with LuEvon's side, cutting into her deeply, but LuEvon did not feel pain and suffering. Instead she felt intense serenity and peace. A shock wave erupted from her, knocking over every single combatant in the battle, both Elven and Dwarf. All of the boulders flying through the air from the siege equipment froze in the air. Every single combatant was in utter amazement and slowly, starting with Enkil and then the immediately surrounding soldiers, everyone began to kneel before LuEvon.

LuEvon realized that the axe was still, painlessly, in her side. She removed it and was able to manipulate the massive amounts of energy she know had at her disposal, to repair her body.

She began walking throughout the battlefield, touching those that, were still alive, but seriously wounded, both Elf and Dwarf, and as she did so, their wounds quickly began to heal and as she did, they too kneeled before her.

Many of the inhabitants of the city came out to see, them too kneeling before her.

After about an hour of this, soldiers began coming up to her and asking for her help, from healing their brother or sister, to trying to cure a family member of a disease, to making their weapon as strong as hers or to teach them to fight like she did.

Then after an entire afternoon, a blinding flash covered the battlefield and the fist wish/miracle ended that war between the two rival nations, repaired the damage done to the city walls and brought each and every soldier home to their families.

They quickly spread the word of what happened and the first religions began to form, worshiping LuEvon, who walked the earth until creating (or waiting for "The Creator" to finish creation of) the Astral Plane and creating her home and palace there.

When this first wish/miracle was cast, as it was a true blending of the two, in conjunction with the ascension of the first deity, created a swirling white mass of pure, persisting, mixed arcane and divine energy.

LuEvon taught the Elves and other races who inhabit the Material Plane, how to harness and direct arcane energy, the elves were able to access the energy and create a very powerful artifact. This artifact was a permanent wish and miracle that could be used to power, or do, practically anything.

Crake
2012-12-18, 04:30 AM
I stopped reading when I saw that elves and dwarves predated dragons.

Voidling
2012-12-18, 08:33 AM
I quite liked it :smallsmile:

You might want to reconsider the time scale as 15 years is a very short time for empires to form unless the "The Creator" over deity makes this worlds with humanoid civilizations along with every thing else.

Immabozo
2012-12-18, 01:24 PM
I quite liked it :smallsmile:

You might want to reconsider the time scale as 15 years is a very short time for empires to form unless the "The Creator" over deity makes this worlds with humanoid civilizations along with every thing else.

Thank you.

I wanted to proved a different lore this a different twist than the usual. My intention was that these empires existed before, but dragons drastically changed things and the introduction of the arcane was a new and unfamiliar thing to the races on the Material plane.

I could easily change the races involved to be races that died out before the "modern era of Dungeons an Dragons", but I know of none and making up a race, let alone two, seems like a bit much for just this story.

AuraTwilight
2012-12-18, 02:09 PM
Yea...having mortal races predate dragons is pretty weird. And the characters involved are too specific to really be useful for a lot of campaigns.

Also, the first deity being an elf? Yuck, like they need more reason to stroke their racial ego. XD

Immabozo
2012-12-18, 02:17 PM
Yea...having mortal races predate dragons is pretty weird. And the characters involved are too specific to really be useful for a lot of campaigns.

Also, the first deity being an elf? Yuck, like they need more reason to stroke their racial ego. XD

Well, I wanted to tell a slightly different twist on the story. If you don't like it, I apologize. For the story to work the way I wanted to tell is, having dragon magically create the mortal races and have them grow up surrounded by the arcane, didn't make sense.

As far as being a useful timeline for campaigns, I figure it would be an entirely new game at this point in the story, people would have to take feats to use the arcane in a certain way, there would be no spells.

Instead, I intend this lore as to explain the artifact I created at the end, which will play an important role in my campaign, played in the "modern D&D universe" by 3.5 rules.

As far as an elf, it seemed to make a little more sense to me. More agile than most races, more perceptive and the racial ego seemed to be a good backbone to the confidence of the character

AuraTwilight
2012-12-18, 04:53 PM
Well, I wanted to tell a slightly different twist on the story. If you don't like it, I apologize. For the story to work the way I wanted to tell is, having dragon magically create the mortal races and have them grow up surrounded by the arcane, didn't make sense.

I guess...? I just personally dislike the trend that's been going on where dragons become more and more and more and more trivial in Dungeons and Dragons; it's not entirely the fault of the homebrewers and such, though.

The dragons don't need to create the mortal races, but it just feels wrong for them to be our juniors. Like, how the heck did they get so majestic, powerful, and wise while humans and elves are doing the same derpy bull**** this whole time without any meaningful social and cultural progress?

I know medieval stasis is part of the genre but holy hell.



As far as being a useful timeline for campaigns, I figure it would be an entirely new game at this point in the story, people would have to take feats to use the arcane in a certain way, there would be no spells.

Instead, I intend this lore as to explain the artifact I created at the end, which will play an important role in my campaign, played in the "modern D&D universe" by 3.5 rules.


This is all information I would've liked elaborated on first; it's hard to evaluate the quality, usefulness, or any other virtues of backround lore without knowing the world it's meant to complement, and it seems like your setting is radically different from the standards.



As far as an elf, it seemed to make a little more sense to me. More agile than most races, more perceptive and the racial ego seemed to be a good backbone to the confidence of the character

The sparkly superiority of elves is usually seen as a flaw, not a feature, for a good number of gamers, to the point that plenty of games and settings advertise a complete lack of elves. Justifying the superiority of elves isn't going to warm people up to it.

Immabozo
2012-12-18, 05:35 PM
I guess...? I just personally dislike the trend that's been going on where dragons become more and more and more and more trivial in Dungeons and Dragons; it's not entirely the fault of the homebrewers and such, though.

The dragons don't need to create the mortal races, but it just feels wrong for them to be our juniors. Like, how the heck did they get so majestic, powerful, and wise while humans and elves are doing the same derpy bull**** this whole time without any meaningful social and cultural progress?

I know medieval stasis is part of the genre but holy hell.

I never meant it to come across as dragons are trivial, just new. The arcane energy that comes from them is only stating to permeate the Material Plane, perhaps the lived much longer on a different plane, but this is the first entrance of them to the material plane.

As far as cultural progress, per this lore, it is completely and utterly a blank slate. There is no mention of cultural progress. As far as technological, it took Humans on earth several thousand years to come up to the Industrial Revolution. So assuming it took similar, perhaps a little slower, a stretch I do not think it is.


This is all information I would've liked elaborated on first; it's hard to evaluate the quality, usefulness, or any other virtues of backround lore without knowing the world it's meant to complement, and it seems like your setting is radically different from the standards.

I'll edit it into the beginning, you are very right.


The sparkly superiority of elves is usually seen as a flaw, not a feature, for a good number of gamers, to the point that plenty of games and settings advertise a complete lack of elves. Justifying the superiority of elves isn't going to warm people up to it.

I dont mean it as an endearing quality, only an appropriate one to the character.

AuraTwilight
2012-12-18, 09:01 PM
With the following edits, I need to ask; wouldn't this have been better placed in the Worldbuilding subforum? It's not really applicable to 3.5/d20 as a whole.

Immabozo
2012-12-18, 09:09 PM
I intended it for a 3.5 game, but possibly you are correct.

Only problem being I have not found those forums, but I'll go look for it and repost this in there instead