Announcements and Updates [04/29/2022]

[Tyranny]

Site Releases, Updates and Announcements

Introduction
Major updates to the website as well as announcements will often go here, though also be sure to check the #announcements tab in our Discord server!

[Tyranny]

Hello all! Just posting this here to inform you all of a recent development: I managed to complete a new and accurate political map for the site! It can be found here: https://lore.atharen.com/index.php?title=World_Map

Also, a direct link to the large ver: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 12/map.jpg

We're currently working on Travel Times and will hopefully have them finished soon. Until then, you can use this map and this formula for travel: 30 mpd(miles per day)/foot, 50 mpd/horseback wagon, 60 mpd/horseback, 150 mpd/ship, 250 mpd/skyship, 60 mph/train

Just a heads up - you can only use skyships and trains between areas specifically designating that they have such routes. These will come with the Travel Times, promise.

[Tyranny]

Hello everyone! We now have a new domain for the wiki, which can be found here: https://lore.atharen.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

We will be updating it and linking it to the site properly over the coming days. Thank you!

[Tyranny]

The Raven's Descent

Change Comes to Lorien
For a very long time, the Kindred have repressed the people of Lorien to a near-dystopian degree. Even the great Celebrant of the noble houses have felt crushed beneath the weight of winged shadows, always there -- even when they are not hidden and actively listening, their presence is feared. An arbitrary chance might lead to an expression of dissatisfaction becoming an execution, or information leaked to an unwanted peer. They thrive and revel in the struggle of the aristocracy, and of class, and of clashing powers they drive against one another. They represent entropy within Rien society; an attempt to degrade the foundations of the Kingdom until they are so whittled, that only they might reign.

But within the Northern Lodge, the headquarters of the Pact - a traitorous group of mages once meant to serve the Kindred's will - lied a conspiracy for some time. The mage-Duchess and mage-Duke of Brandt, Lady and Lord Galbrecht, effectively gained control of a faction once adversarial to the success of the nobility. Perhaps by temptation of power, and of what could be, and of the serving men and women's own unwillingness to surrender their country to a blight of crows . . . they began to conspire. They built an arcane shield that would force any Kindred entering the Lodge to reveal themselves, and effectively turned the building itself into the Kingdom's most fortified place against their blighted overseers.

For years, within the Lodge a weapon was developed. Initially conceptualized by a Gnomish man named Tarstas Korbynek, who also placed its foundations in order, the builders of the weapon were determined that it would be a few things: elegant, simple and automated. A weapon that did not require heavy input, one that would channel the whole intellect of its designers as it accomplished its goal. The weapon, which was quickly decided to be a sort of mortar or cannon, was given some form of light sentience modeled after the Gnomish God, C.O.R.E. While inferior to C.O.R.E. in its sentience and functionality, the weapon - now called the Aether Cannon - was given incredible destructive capabilities.

Kindred who are 'tagged', typically by Transposers who communicate to it via Window, can be followed for up to three hundred miles by the cannon. Once they are tracked and found, it will fire aethereal bursts that will chase them across the skies, capable of seeing them even as they go invisible, and piercing them even as they are intangible. It only requires one shot to kill a Kindred, as the aether is so densely-packed and destructive that its volatile outer-edges wither them for feet around where the wispy-lance initially punctured. Even if a Kindred is to survive the first burst, their impairment and damage will likely make them immobile, incapable of evading the second.

The Aether Cannon is to be completed on 84 Searing, Year 4620. Upon its completion, House Galbrecht will stand before the masses of Essen -- guarded by a troupe of mages from the Northern Pact -- surrounded by the shrill sound of burst-fire from the cannon itself, whose shots appear more loud and frightening than lightning in the sky. As the cannon erupts with each bolt, Lorien is slated to change, the influence of their darkly masters rescinding.

This means that the Kingdom is now facing a new war, amidst its civil disputes. Brandt has now declared open war against the Kindred, and perhaps other realms are slated to join them. Nevertheless, it can be said that the Kindred and their influence will wane, and people will no longer need to fear their icy grip or harrowing whispers nearly so much. Nor their observations, leading to the downfall of so many well-meaning souls.

News of the Aether Cannon will likely spread globally, as the changes that come for Lorien speak of revolution, and a potential shift in the global balance of power.

[Tyranny]

Hey people!

I always post our updates to Discord, and then fail to remember to post them here! Woops.

We've had a lot of changes in the last three months. A lot. I'll list some important ones:

- Collaborative threads are now eligible for up to 16 XP, depending on individual wordcount.
- We've released some new magics, like Mentalism, updated Necromancy, and Blood Magic.
- We've completely revamped the meta-lore and the Gods, and have begun working on some of the other planes. An example: Bel. The Gods are no longer 'Dragon Gods' and 'Mist Lords', but the Living Gods and the Corrupted Ones. There are sixteen in total, and the pantheon was evenly split by the Sundering, which happened under different circumstances than originally.
- We have a new world map (though it can still be found in the first post of this thread)
- We have a method of voting on toprpsites now!:
https://www.toprpsites.com/index.php?a=in&u=Shemlock
- We've remade the Magic system, we've added Ghosts and the Dead Realm, and Dragons. We've also renamed a bunch of stuff.
- We're working on new races. We've also deleted some old ones that weren't in use and didn't match the vision of the site. I'll have an updated Race List soon!

There's lots more, but there are some fairly large updates, so there you have it!

[Tyranny]

A Line Drawn

Living Gods Live Again
On the 74th day of Glade, Year 4622, an unknown object collided with the southwestern corners of the Wastes, west of Mornoth and its conflict-bound nations. Upon the emergence of this object, and its devastating descent against Atharen's soil, the sky was blackened by a flickering volley of dark, careening tendrils, racing across the globe. For four days and four nights, all anyone across the planet could see was dancing shadows shifting through the sky, blocking out the sun, obstructing clouds, or moving behind them like an object cast light, shuffling through a room. In this time, curiosity and marvel quickly became fear, and declarations of a coming apocalypse raged through the nations of the earth -- all until the darkness splitting the sky was forcefully cleansed.

For nearly seven centuries, the Living Gods have agreed upon a rigid non-interventionism. Scarred by what war with the Unbroken Empire did to them, they sequestered themselves to their Divine Realms, hiding from their own creations and those they allowed to rot below; Corrupted once their kin, made enemies by pragmatism, and circumstance. The Gods wept, and became nihilistic, and eventually became complacent. They reformed their social spheres, communicating only with other Adac; the other Living Gods, or the Draedan chosen - almost arbitrarily - to accompany them.

On the 78th day of Glade, in the mid-afternoon, the non-interventionism of the Path officially ceased. A great, purging light consumed the sky, and the tendrils that lashed across the clouds were obliterated in a show of divine force. Immediately afterwards, Izonata and Kyrikain descended from Muid to meet with the King and Queen of Vendigad, and the Kyngs of Radenor, demanding their allegiance -- as the nations most fond of the Path -- in the war against the unknown anomaly to the west.

Across Atharen, news of the re-emergence of the Gods quickly spread, and as they moved across its fields, the world changed beneath them. Dragons -- many of a like never seen before on the planet -- descended from Muid; spirits flowed out from its bowels, and the priests gathered through the cracks of every society seemingly began to move in tow as if communing with one voice.

With the emergence of this peculiar mass arriving on the continent, it is clear to most that the world is entering a new state of flux.

[Mimi Pidders]

All That Glitters

Dagrun, Ho!
Not much news gets in or out of Dagrun. Sure, its borders are open, and the caverns see their fair share of peddlers and adventurers alike, but they are largely excluded from the deeper goings-on of the place, which holds outsiders apart from anything more lucrative than looking through the mysteries of what the mines may hold.

Sometimes, though, things are just too flashy, too odd, too noticeable to escape detection. The discovery of Neo-Dunarium is one such thing. Martine Jackdaw, a dry goods purveyor from Amoren, witnessed a consortium of gnomes engaging in a boisterous business deal over many mugs of ale, and after many more together, they divulged to the merchant that he might have a new revenue stream soon: arcana crags by the boatload.

Dunarium, a beautiful, sparkly blue-gold mineral, has been mined and traded for centuries, but its only use lies in ornamentation. It’s too soft to be carved into anything functional, and too brittle to be used for smithing, even when smelted with more ductile materials. Not so, with Neo-Dunarium, an isotope of Dunarium exposed to obscene amounts of Ether at high pressures deep beneath Atharen’s surface.

Miners who pressed ever deeper were aided by aftershocks following increased seismic activity when a whole new seam opened up in a largely abandoned Dunarium mine: a chasm extending so deep in the earth that miners had to acclimate in stages to get to the bottom. The dark mine is lit by the glow of arcana crags bigger than the gnomes that found them, and guarded by ferocious, terrifying creatures that seem to have mutated to incorporate the arcana crags into their bodies, giving them some facility with the magics contained within in addition to the more expected dangers posed by toothy tentacles, venomous spikes, and scaly hides.

Jackdaw scoffed at his gnomish drinking buddies until one of them showed him a crystal he himself had extracted, still pulsating and in matrix with Neo-Dunarium. Neo-Dunarium stays blue-gold, but seems to gain the ability to foster and grow arcana crags. As Jackdaw watched, the ghome put out a small arcana crag no bigger than his thumbnail and stuck it on the larger rock. Within seconds, it took root and could not be easily dislodged, and began pulsating. The gnome claimed that that they were experimenting with growing arcana crags, even!

Jackdaw’s mine raced. He was no minerologist, but it was clear that this could change quite a bit, and make people quite a lot of money. Which is why left Dagrun that next day, in search of backers in Lorien for his new venture in trading the crags. But in his search for a backer among the elites and academics, the secret truly got out: first to the Lorien military, then beyond its borders to entrepreneurial types in Grisic and opportunists in his native Daravin.

So far, there has been no official announcement from any of the three countries, but more and more people are abuzz at the idea of moving to Dagrun to seek their fortune. There are also rumors that each of the other three countries are interested in staking their own claim on Neo-Dunarium. Whether that will be through closer diplomatic ties to Dagrun or by trying to conquer it outright remains to be seen.

[Tyranny]

Faith in The End of Days

Touched By Light
Nestled in the mountains where the borders of Vendigad, Radenor and Daravin meet, the Eternity Priory of Vardrek stands tall, and has stood tall for three centuries. Vardrek, as a city-state, was founded near the middle of the Age of Ashes, created by a group formerly known as the Lightbearing, a group of faithful devout who sought old legends as an answer to the dwindling faith that encompassed Atharen as millions of souls began to renounce their piety to the Living Gods. The Lightbearing, eventually reforming into the Keepers of Light, have ruled Vardrek since then as a theocratic dominion, a wealthy, trade-focused city-state that watches over a river connecting their three mighty neighbors.

While the Keepers have remained in quiet contemplation for centuries, the return of the Living Gods has amplified their rhetoric, as has the revelation that -- only a few hundred miles to the north of them -- a Draedan of Venadak stirs and awakens, returning zeal to the old Herald Jaris Tilandrek and Lexavin Val'Bhreith, his right hand. They have sent news outward of an intent towards exploration: into the depths of Bel, across the barren surface of Arun to find the last Light-Touched, who might help guide the people of Atharen towards the right path as the Gods increasingly lose their way.

Jaris sends word out to those who would receive it: Niven, the last Light-Touched and the man to whom Lorien's great city was named after, is still alive. Watched over by a cruel warden of Venadak and a Warmonger of Bel, he prays every night that his devoted might answer his call, and now they finally will.