Thus far... WIP

[Mason]

At a snails pace... this is what I have bouncing around my head lately. Don't be surprised if it's not really coherent.

Premise
Magic is subtle. No flashy fireballs or lightning bolts. Magic is...well, largely overlooked. Mostly because it only appears briefly in children. Oh sure, in the old days magic was pretty common, as evidenced by the subject matter of frescoes found in ruins of the old civilizations. A small portion of the population would be born with the gift, or through dedication to the diety of magic, would be given powers that lasted until death. Now magic is leaving this world. The great civilizations are gone, but there ruins and legacy still haunt the world.
 
Digging Deeper
But back to the kids. (I know 'kids with magic' is pretty popular these days but whatever) The kids have the gift for a short period of time, say from ages 3 to 13 or so. One of the stories revolved around a certain kid being born on the longest day of the year and having the gift well into his twenties. The psychological, social impact of a kid growing up with a very powerful skill is what I'm trying to focus on here. Anyways these kids can't channel a fireball. But they can do other things, like gather enough moisture to enliven crops, or alter there appearance slightly. The people living in this world have only an inkling of why the gift appears, but the backstory involves a feud between dieties. The diety (or supernatural creature, not sure which yet)of magic was wounded in this feud, and has lay dying for the last thousand years. (thousand years is a blink of the eye to these creatures) As the creatures life slips away, so does the magic from the world. The creature and the world and the people inhabiting it are interconnected through a spiritual concept called the current. Metaphysical, ethereal, whatever it permeates everything. (thank you deepak chopra) But this is not common knowledge.
 
The Current
  The current can be seen in some remote parts of the world. The common man fears this as the ancients feared the sea. But there are quiet estuaries where one can visit, and gleam great knowledge. There are tumultuous places as well, like geysers of energy or hot springs bubbling raw energy from the earth. Nobody really knows what the current is or does, its kind of like asking medieval man what electricity is.
 
The Tutors
Anyways. The kids. They are found by a (masonic influenced) society of tutors. The tutors are the remains of the clergy that once prayed to the creature of magic. They teach the kid how to use the gift to its full effect (read:Merlin and Arthur Pendragon) Many tutors were once children that had the gift and so the cycle goes on and on.

Prejudice and Conflict The tutors are hated by the common man. Farmers and fisherman are known to lynch a tutor every now and then, and in some cases, the child is thrown down a well or left to wolves, or some other such grizzly fate. Mostly because they are scared but also because the Ethereans spread propaganda against the tutors. The Ethereans are..well a little more complicated.

The Ethereans
  These guys. hoo. Fundamentalists. It is pretty hard to kill a god.. So the gods who were on the losing side of the ancient feud, were instead shattered. Remnants of these shattered gods were hidden away in the recesses of mortals minds. Time passes..The Ethereans are a cult opposed to magic, formed from certain mortals that have remnants of these shattered gods in there minds. They might not know it, they might be plagued by dreams of past lives or given visions of things mortals are not supposed to see. Either way, these people have flocked to the banner of (don't have a name for the person yet)lets call him/her Etherea. This is the (once) diety opposed to the creature of magic, and the other gods, and they want to wipe out the tutors/children with the gift. (It's a little convoluted, but no more so than your average FF game.)

[note]I was planning on this setting be more focused towards creating a world where I could write a few short stories every now and then, as opposed to a campaign setting for gaming.[/note]

That's pretty much it for now, a few names for kingdoms, and if I get my scanner hooked up soon I might even have a rough draft for a map.

[Xeviat]

Nifty. I like the idea of building a setting solely for fiction and not for gaming; my setting is for both, so it has added complications. Magic is much easier to handle when you don't have to fit it into a rules system.

My first question is what type of world is this? Like what era? Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, Victorian, Modern? I could see it working as any of them, but non-modern would probably be best. Then again, if the deity of magic started to die a thousand years ago, I could see technology growing up in its place.

What happens when a kids magic fails? Does it just go away one day, or does it get progressively weaker? Do all children develop magic, or only some?

I like the Ethereans, very chilling villainous force.

What types of stories are you planning?

And lastly, welcome to the CBG!

[Ninja D!]

Is there a certain kind of feedback you'd like? Really, it seems that you have this well in hand. I like how it is shaping up at this point.

PS: When people don't post for a while or very infrequently, sometimes Xeviat thinks they're new when they've been around a while. ;)

[Mason]

What happens when a kids magic fails? Does it just go away one day, or does it get progressively weaker? Do all children develop magic, or only some?

And lastly, welcome to the CBG!
[/quote]
Anyways, thanks for the interest, oh and I've been here quite a while, but thanks for the welcome nonetheless!

[Ninja D!]

I suppose I will have to elaborate a bit more on this ancient mathematics, but really I think it would have to be tutors recording dates and times of past magic users/how long they had the gift/etc. Kind of like a database the future tutors could use to help determine how long the gift lasts.

I like this. In fantasy settings, it seems that these mysteries are usually already explained. In your world, people are still figuring out just why it works the way it does. They may have a pretty firm grasp but not a true science. If I understand you correctly, at least.

[Mason]

I had imagined an European era

  IT IS?!
 
I meant medieval.

[Ninja D!]

Alright then. That makes a bit more sense. Then I would expect people who train and study magic to be very persecuted.

[Mason]

Prejudice and Conflict The tutors are hated by the common man. Farmers and fisherman are known to lynch a tutor every now and then, and in some cases, the child is thrown down a well or left to wolves, or some other such grizzly fate. Mostly because they are scared but also because the Ethereans spread propaganda against the tutors. The Ethereans are..well a little more complicated.

[Ninja D!]

Is it just the ignorant underclass, or is it more widespread?

[Mason]

Men with power and money fund many of the efforts to stamp out the existence of magic.

[Mason]

[ooc]
Working with power centers lately. Two cities came to mind, one the center of the world with a great mixture of cultures, peoples, and beliefs. It is a city split by a river, and factions. [/ooc]
[note=Under Construction]
  Time constraints have made it difficult to work on stuff lately. Please excuse the mess. If anything consider these entries almost a stream-of-consciousness style log. [/note]
 CAPOS
Roughly oval in shape, the city stretches across the lifeblood of the mainland, simply called The River. It is vital for trade, and for agriculture. The three cultures that make up the city are drastically different. The Idvarians from the east, the Relnese from Reln to the west, and the Loamish, from Loame to the south.

 Reln and Idvar were at one time a single, great nation. But that empire fell a thousand years ago. The reasons and the ultimate cause is lost. Over time they began speaking different dialects , worshiping different gods, and writing the old histories differently. There will be more on those details later, but for now the important thing is that they were once one nation, and now are separate.
 
 The city's most prominent features are the two citadels across the river from each other. On the east bank, the Idvarian fortress called the Augur. The Relnese have a similiar structure on the west bank called the Omex. (names on the fly..)
 So how does the city not tear itself apart? Well it does. Small scale skirmishes are common when one group stays too long in anothers section, but the power, the gold-movers, the men with money keep things in relative order. These are the clergy, backed by trading companies. Clergy are very useful in keeping a population docile, but also in riling people up. There are several sects of clergy (more later)






 

 The Loamish
 The Loamish come from the south, a vast wasteland of sand and storm. The people their are nomads, and the ones who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle to settle in Capos are treated as inferior by both the Idvarians and the Relnese. They are only able to find work in the vast tracks of agricultural fields, working the ships as just-above-slave labor or in the arenas. The have flocked to the southern quarter of the city, and built a sort of ghetto.

 The Loamish are, by nature nomads, and have had a difficult time adapting to permanent dwellings. They have created an amalgamation of the stone mansions of the Idvarians, and the block and timber method of the Relnese. All assortment of bastardization of these structures can be found in the Loamish quarter. Fires constantly plague the quarter, and the Loamish are left to deal with it as best they can.

 The Loamish have been promised many things by both northern countries, the clergy claiming they will find a better life through the various gods, the merchants promising them work and riches. More on this later.  

 

 

[Mason]

Social Experiment-Word Association

  [ic=Hello]
  So there are three distinct cultures floating around Capos, the focal point of civilization in this setting. Gathering ideas to clearly define there differences, I found the hardest distinction between Relnese and Idvarians. I had pictured the Idvarians as tough northern almost viking-like people with long flowing beards and huge weapons. I initially pictured the Relnese as far East Asian. So here is a little word association exercise. If anyone is interested in throwing out ideas for the cultures, just add whatever you would like in the appropriate column. Thank you for your time.
[/ic]

  RELN                              

*Dyed Fabrics*Fruit*Potions*Medicinal*Ancestors*Tactics*Intelligence*Jade

LOAME

Bones*Skins*Traders*Bartering*Ritual*Stories*Bandits*Nomadic*Wisdom*World*Stones*Slings*Archery

IDVAR

Furs*Metal*Iron*Longswords*Catapults*Meat*Alchemy?*Faith*Might*Honor*Territory