Asilikos: Averting Disaster (Discussion Thread)

[Knight of Ravens]

Very true. It was originally a bookmark name so I could remember my intention. It's going to be changed now to something else.

[Knight of Ravens]

Okay, updates finally coming, as I have a ton of free time on my hands (and I don't want Asilikos falling too far from the front page  :-p ).

[Knight of Ravens]

Hrm, this year in Egypt left me with less time than I had hoped for to devote to Asilikos. Will mend this oversight in about two or three weeks.

[Knight of Ravens]

Updated the initial post in the campaign thread. More to follow.

[Tangential]

I'm super excited for more Asilikos!

[Steerpike]

I read the intro to Asilikos and was struck by some of the similarities between the premise and my much vaguer, less well defined backstory for the Cadaverous Earth.  This of course can be attributed to some basic archetypal themes coming in to play, although your execution of those themes is far more detailed and fully developed than mine.  I really enjoyed the opening - it was really very well written - and am working my way through the extensive list of gods.

Reading down to the Remnant, I was a little thrown by the inclusion of the Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms/DnD deities showing up after the much more original pantheon described above.  I assume these deities are going to be changed a lot anyway in light of the war/disaster, but (along with some references to standard DnD planes and demon princes) the setting does appear to be set within the usual DnD cosmology, albeit with some heavy modifications.  I've never been hugely enamored with the DnD system of planes - I like Sigil and some other random stuff, but there seem to be a lot of flaws in that cosmology (infinite planes always seemed to problematize the Blood War a lot to me).  You seem to be abandoning a lot of the cosmology but keeping other elements. I suppose my question is, "how closely does the cosmology surrounding Asilikos resemble the standard planar array"?  Is it going to be essentially a more post-apocalyptic planescape sort of thing focused on a single material plane but drawing from others, or are you going to modify the cosmology very radically and totally reorder it?  If the latter, I'm wondering if the references to the standard cosmology are particularly worth the effort, or whether it would be better to ditch them altogether.

[Knight of Ravens]

As far as the gods are concerned, I'm dropping pretty much all but superficial resemblances to core deities. For instance, the Lolth-analogue will retain a history of being evil and demon-allied before her shift of viewpoint, though I have divorced the drow (d'ruh) from elven origins and Amael is not Lolth in any other fashion (I retain also the spider-link, though it is now more crustacean-like because of the aquatic idiom).

For the cosmology, it is largely the Great Wheel; that, however, is modified heavily by the material at Dicefreaks, which I like much better. The cosmology is also somewhat peripheral at this time, because the Shearing has rendered it closed off. For the most part, the only important planes are the transitives: Astral, Ethereal, Shadow, and Annwyn (once I get that last one straightened out a bit). I purposely dropped the Elemental Planes, not because they're unusable but because I wanted elemental powers to remain potent (due to the madness caused by the Shearing) in spite of a cut off from the planes. The Outer Planes can be said to be manifesting locally among the fiendish bastions to a degree.

[Tangential]

*nudges in an attempt to accelerate disaster.*