Shardworld - the Game (Guide thread)

[Amaterasu]

Lore and History of the Shardworld

Considering that the Shardworld is a small world with hundreds of background-story-threads which are slowly coming together in a single universe, it would need a small library or a wikia site to house all the information without causing your PC to explode when you open a spoiler. As a result, the most important bits are saved here.

More may come as people discover fragments of lore, unveil lies and discover the truth, make connections and overall assemble the puzzle. Stories may be found in books such as diaries, ancient tomes, logbooks and other written recordings, on scrolls, maps, paintings, engravings, by visiting archeological sites and museums, speaking to eyewitnesses... there are numerous sources.

The Story:
[spoiler]The world of Adalor used to be a magnificient land where magic and technology coexisted peacefully. Humankind lived alongside with the elves, dwarves, goblins, non-human animals and a few types of mythical beasts, though they coexisted in relative peace - there was of course the occasional quarrel over land and the like but never anything of grand scale.

That is, until the Gods descended upon the planet. At first they only observed, but then they began to desire worship and obediance and started to command the inhabitants of Adalor to do so. They rapidly crushed any opposition from the populace using enormous magical powers. It was later revealed that these powers come from the so-called Elder Shards, which are items supposedly created by the Elder Deities, which created and shaped the universe and all that live on it, and were tools to shape the universe before they grew experienced enough to not need them anymore. However, these items still hold a notable fraction of the Elder Deities' power, to the point that simply owning them empowers the wearer, turning them immortal and granting them immense magical powers and resistances. In essence, the wielder of one of the Elder Shards initially is as strong as a mortal, but with every passing day they become more powerful, eventually reaching godhood status.

Adalor happened to be the planet where the Gods had left the most powerful artifact of all, known as Shardstone, although nobody had ever found it. This is why the gods were drawn to Adalor in the first place, after having collected the eleven other artifacts across their respective homeworlds and longing for even more power. They required servants to find the Shardstone of course, this is why they demanded worship.

And of course, it didn't take long for the gods to start fighting each other as they laid claim to entire races, trying to convert the inhabitants of Adalor to their own religion and clashing as their followers collided in search of the Shardstone. Fights turned into battles, battles into wars, and wars into an all-out God War which ravaged the lands far and wide and dragged even those not worshipping any gods into it as they battled for survival.

One day, a couple of worshippers of the self-proclaimed God of Order got lost as they escaped from a group of pursuers and came across a temple hidden deep underground. In the innermost sanctum of that temple they found a large item resting on a pedestal, and though they had never seen it before they knew immediately that this was the Shardstone. When one of them that approached the stone he accidentally awoke the stone's guardian, a mighty golem who swiftly killed the one that had come too close. The other of the two escaped and returned to his God to guide him to the temple along with a part of his army. However, even with the power of his best soldiers and his own considerable might, the God was only barely able to slay the creature and take the Shardstone for himself.

Days later, he returned to the surface, wielding the Mindstaff (which he called the Orderly Staff) and the Shardstone together - two of the Elder Shards. In an effort to put an end to the God War, he slammed the Staff down and drew upon his power that he had gained through the Shardstone. But he had severely underestimated the immense power granted to him by the Shardstone: he had intended to separate the god's encampments from the rest of the world by creating islands out of the pieces of land they were on and sending them hurtling into space. Instead his strike split the very fabric of reality and shattered not only the entire planet of Adalor, but the fabric of reality that the dimension rested on.

Shocked by what he had done, the God of Order scrambled around in a desperate attempt to undo what he had done, or at least mitigate the damage. Before the pieces of the dimension could drift apart, never to be rejoined again, he drew upon his powers once more to try to force them back together. He only managed to loosely attach them back to each other, using dimensional chains which, much like a ship is anchored to the seafloor, would prevent the shards from drifting apart from each other too much. This huge amount of effort was too much for him however, and knowing about his impending death he hid the Mindstaff and the Shardstone in separate places using what he had left from his magic power.

As a result of the Reality Shatter, as the event is known to this day, Adalor or, as it was renamed, the Shardworld, is a highly unstable place. The Reality Chains keep the world together, but cannot keep it from constantly rearranging itself in a seemingly random fashion. The central shard, the biggest shard from where the God of Order split the world, is the most stable location and due to the large number of worshippers of the Order religion who were there during the Reality Shatter it has been kept in relatively good shape. There is a central city, a no-man's land built around the temple where the Shardstone was once kept, which is considered a non-combat zone - the other gods silently agree not to fight here. The other shards dock and separate themselves from the central shard and each other in irregular intervals, sometimes staying together for years, other times drifting back apart after a week or two.

There are hundreds of shards, of which a number holds one god encampment each - where that god's worshippers have their fortress, palace, church or whatever it may be. If two of those shards meet or an unoccupied shard collides with that of a god-shard, large fights may break out though due to the gods being similarly powerful no real winner is ever set - control merely shifts back and forth. Other shards are peaceful, such as the cities of the godless ones which fend off attackers but don't go on the offensive themselves. Interestingly, the godless people are much stronger than any of the god factions (without factoring in the strength of their respective god, that is) and thus are actually harder to attack than any of the god-shards.

There are some dwarven-design airships which can bring people back and forth between the shards for a fee (the currency in the Shardworld is gold coins), as well as a God-Ship on the central shard which is dedicated to traveling to the god-shard.


Now, recent findings at the temple where the Shardstone was kept seem to indicate that the Shardstone's presence in these halls has empowered the guardian golem to be able to not only wound, but also absorb the power of the gods it strikes, as was indicated by the God of Order. Traces of his magic have been found in the golem's remains. And the contents of the room, its walls and ground, even the pebbles lying on the ground, have all gained this power. It is believed that the other Elder Shards have a similar effect on the items they are around of, and that discovery has led the gods to outfit their most trusted soldiers with empowered weapons, whilst the godless have bought large amounts of empowered materials from the people on the central shard. Indeed, using an item empowered with this effect seems to enable its wielder to steal a god's power by attacking them with it, and ascending to godhood themselves by killing that god, even without owning an Elder Shard. And while the gods have grown comfortable and laid-back on their thrones in the safety of their shards, what if this discovery led to the rise of new gods? ... only one way to find out.[/spoiler]