Avaria - User contributions [en]

Origin

2022-01-01T00:39:31Z

72.209.163.118:

A character's '''origin''' is a fluid concept and may be somewhat subjective, as it can represent a person's land of birth or a place in which they have resided for some time. It is, essentially, the place that a character considers home, even if they don't presently live there.

Origin can correspond either to a single continent, such as [[Idiri]] or [[Ruvera]], or to an overarching entity spanning more than one landmass, as in the case of the [[Sirdabi Caliphate]] and [[Kalentoi Empire]]. Once an origin is selected in character generation, a sub-origin can then be chosen. Sub-origins are smaller political units (e.g., the province of [[Raziya Province|Raziya]], the kingdom of [[Ensor]]) or geographic regions (e.g., the [[Gilded Plain]], the [[High Hinterlands]]).

From an IC standpoint, origin will tend to strongly influence many of a character's fundamental values, beliefs, worldviews, and cultural practices. In character generation, origin will affect the heritages available for selection as well as the clothing and other gear with which a character starts. Characters may also choose a bonus skill based on their origin, representing some of the more common skills in which people from that region are proficient.

[[Category:Character Information]]

Personal story

2021-12-31T23:15:40Z

72.209.163.118: /* Identifying a story */

Playing out the twists and turns of your character's personal story is the principal pursuit in Song of Avaria. The world's wider events may touch your character's life in ways both large and small, but it is the experience of their own trials and tribulations, dreams and goals, joys and sorrows that lie at the center of the game. This playing out of the story of your character's life is reflected in Avaria's '''Story''' system. Not only is it a concrete way to chart meaningful events and aspirations in a character's life, but it is one of the chief means of gaining [[Experience|experience]]!

So how do you pursue a story?

==Identifying a story==

The first thing to do is think about something relevant to your character that you'd like to develop and play out in the world. This could be a dream or ambition, a personality trait, a hardship to overcome (or not!), or practically anything else. It can be as big or as small as you want; the only thing that matters is that it's meaningful to the character in some way. Just to give a few examples of the almost limitless possibilities, as your character you might:

*want to improve your derelict neighborhood.
*want to learn to read and write.
*have a phobia of deep water and never want to get on a ship for fear of drowning.
*be lonely and want to make more friends.
*scheme to smuggle forbidden texts into the city.
*be determined to achieve renown as a champion duellist.
*have once been mugged in a dark alley and now want to improve the lighting of city streets.
*have a chronic health problem that you wish could be healed.
*be desperately in love with someone and want to win their affections.
*want to earn enough money to buy a prize racing camel.
*have grown up apart from your people and want to reconnect with your heritage.
*feel uneasy about a current political situation but not know what to do about it.
*want to find the ingredients to brew the perfect cup of tea from your homeland.
*dream of one day visiting the hidden kingdom of the dwarves.
*want to devise the perfect prank to get back at a rival.
*want to join a local organization.
*be convinced that evil jinn are everywhere disguised as ordinary people and animals.
*yearn to develop a closer relationship with your deity.
*be terrified of scorpions and want to do something about it.
*want to make someone happy by finding or creating the ideal gift for them.
*struggle against deep feelings of melancholy.
*have inherited a strange object and want to learn more about it.

If you begin playing with a randomly generated character, they will come with a story "hook" that you are free to use as inspiration for a story to pursue. Your character could also be responding to in-game events they've witnessed or been a part of -- for example, maybe they had an odd [[Dream system|dream]] they'd like to understand, or they might have been present at a rally encouraging violent protest against local authorities, or maybe the town's bank was robbed and they want to get the money back. Again, the possibilities are nearly endless!

==Creating a story==

Whatever your motivation, you will start simply by recording it. You can do this by using the command STORY START and entering a short narrative about your new story. This should include some details about what your dream, scheme, fear, problem, or whatever else is, along with perhaps some background information about the motivations or circumstances underlying it. This will not only help you to remember how this particular story got started, it will also let staff know just what's going on with your character so that they can potentially choose to interact with your story in some way!

Once you have this information written up and submitted, that is the beginning of your new story arc, and hopefully many interesting experiences for your character!

==Pursuing a story==
A story arc can have many developments over time, which you can record using the STORY UPDATE command. You might also meet people along the way who impact a particular story arc or are connected to it in some way, so you can additionally attach [[Relationships|relationship]] impressions to developments. Logs of related events can similarly be attached to the story.

==Earning experience from stories==

Every five days, you will be able to receive experience from making a new story update. This doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't make updates in between as the circumstances arise. If you are heavily engaged with your character's story and show this with interesting updates, regardless of whether you receive xp there is always the chance for staff to respond to your character's experiences or to tie them in with the evolving story of the world around them.

You also shouldn't feel as if you're "missing out" if you ''don't'' make an update regularly. Your updates should be interesting to you and meaningful to your character; if you don't have anything you find interesting or meaningful to add just now, then simply don't. There are many ways to earn experience in Avaria, from developing [[Relationships|relationships]] with other characters, to writing vignettes and letters on the forums, to simply being rewarded by staff or nominated for an award by other players for engaging roleplay. The main point is just to have fun playing and developing your character!

[[Category:Roleplay]]

Setting

2021-12-31T23:13:51Z

72.209.163.118: /* Religion */

Avaria is a world much like Earth, with a host of cultures and countries spanning a large globe. Many of the various kingdoms, republics, and empires of Avaria have rough analogues within Earth's own history, though none are an exact match. The continent of [[Idiri]] can be considered to correspond roughly to Africa, [[Ruvera]] to Europe, [[Near]] and [[Far Ruleska]] to the Middle East and northern Asia, and [[Riendu]] to southeastern Asia. The island of [[Jalanjhur]], almost a continent in its own right, occupies something like the place of India and is a valued trading partner to some in Avaria and scarcely more than a rumor to others. More information can be found on each of these landmasses in the [[Geography]] section, along with descriptions of the diverse political entities that call these places home.

==Atmosphere==
Between the extremes of gritty realism and high fantasy, Avaria falls close to the middle. Most people in the world remain only lightly touched by the fantastic in their ordinary lives, and most magic that people are familiar with in their day-to-day existence is not terribly flashy. Injuries can be genuinely crippling, fighting can have potentially serious consequences, and though people have been rumored to return from the dead, for the vast majority, PCs and NPCs alike, death is truly the end of their sojourn in the mortal realm. But this is only part of the story. The weird and the whimsical are also abroad in the world, and politics, faith, and the beginnings of science mix freely with the supernatural, the arcane, and the world beyond. Powerful and monstrous beings, non-human peoples, and even extremely potent magic are all real, and strange and fantastical things just might happen to anyone.

==People==
Avaria is predominantly populated by human beings representing a wide range of different appearances and cultures, much like on Earth. Rather than choosing a race to play, players select a heritage for their character that represents that character's ethnic and cultural background. Fantastical races like dwarves, jinn, and others do in fact exist in the world, but most people would not be likely to encounter them through the course of their ordinary lives -- or if they did, they might not ever know it. The common run of Avarians accept the existence of such peoples as unquestioningly as they accept the existence of other far-flung races of humans, though few would claim to have any great knowledge of them, and much of what is "known" about these peoples is only legend and rumor.

==Time Period==
Avaria does not conform exactly to any one time period in Earth's history, particularly as social and political structures and technologies vary from one part of the world to another. But roughly speaking the world can be considered to fall between the late Middle Ages and the high Renaissance, with some flavor from both earlier and later periods. Mode of dress, the state of the arts and sciences, and predominant military technologies and tactics vary widely along this range and across regions. The heart of the Kalentoi Empire is the most classically medieval realm, due to the extreme conservatism of their philosophy and their focus on maintaining the status quo. The rest of the world, including some of the countries that are officially under the Empire's aegis, are more Renaissance in mindset and style. Everywhere, though, the world is in a state of flux as ideas and goods travel around the known world along increasingly vital and interconnected trade routes.

==Technology==
Like the overall time period, the state of technology in Avaria differs depending on where one happens to be but tends to fall generally within the medieval to Renaissance range. Shipbuilding and sailing technology lie more within a medieval frame due to the cataclysmic events surrounding the eruption of Mount Elemnis, which rendered ship travel within the once-friendly confines of the Adelantean Sea far more perilous. Avaria also boasts some sophisticated and fantasy-tinged clockwork technology, as well as the even more potentially powerful technology of phototech -- capturing the energy of the sun, moons, and stars to power a range of devices. Science is still in the fairly early stages in Avaria, but its discoveries are increasingly being used to fuel a variety of new projects in engineering, and, among certain circles, in magic use as well.

==Religion==
The dominant faiths in Avaria are monotheistic, with large segments of the population of Ruvera, Ruleska, and northeastern Idiri following some variety of worship of The One God. There are however a great many more localized religions scattered across the globe, particularly faith systems based on shamanism and the worship of ancestors and spirits. A few major deities and demigods, such as Nirzali and Nthanda, have followers throughout Idiri, and even the ancient pagan pantheon known as the Children of Dawn and Dusk still has some adherents in isolated parts of Ruvera and Far Ruleska. In the even more distant lands of Riendu and Jalanjhur still other gods and supernatural beings form the core of diverse worship.

The vast majority of Avarians believe quite matter-of-factly in some deity or pantheon or cosmic force, though there is wide variation in people's levels of piety. Generally the humbler people tend to be the most devout, though their observations of the faith may not always satisfy the most orthodox among the priesthood. The most culturally sophisticated circles -- members of the court, certain academicians, and the like -- tend to be less devout, being usually more willing to entertain doubts about some points of dogma, and to actively pursue intellectual and philosophical endeavors that sometimes clash with orthodoxy. However, only the most deeply cynical and disillusioned invdividuals would ever consider themselves atheists, and fewer still would actually openly express a full rejection of faith.

==Magic==
Magic in Avaria is very much like magic as it has been historically believed in and practiced on Earth. Large-scale magic and flashy spells are the fodder of stories and legends, generally taken with a grain of salt -- though there just may be more than a grain of truth in these tales. But the magic that most consider real is both different from this and amazingly diverse: weather magic, harvest rituals, charms and talismans, alchemy, divination, spells to cure maladies of the mind and body, voodoo magic, the evil eye, and a host of other things both helpful and malign. For many in Avaria, magic is also synonymous with religion -- priests are socially-approved magi, prayers are both invocation and evocation, miracles are at once magical and divine.

Starting out, no PC will have access to magical abilities in character generation. Knowledge and ability in magic is instead something that a character may gain over time, by pursuing certain storylines or developing their character in certain ways. Magic is not meant to be an all-powerful force and there may be trade-offs to pursuing the most potent forms of magic above all else, but characters that wish to will have the opportunity to develop unique abilities and become masters of their art with sufficient dedication.