Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JulesCARV 02-25-08, 04:36 PM	I'm thinking that in my campaign, there will be "Epoch Horizons," mysterious supernatural barriers between time periods. No one really understands them, such as why they exist, but their effects are basically that divination from one epoch cannot access information about a previous epoch. The basic effect is that there can be legendary figures and events from previous ages which are disputable -- i.e., putative heroes, battles, cities -- where divinations like "legend lore," "commune," "contact other plane," etc all tend to come up blank, even for basic questions like "did the legendary Prince Valium even exist?" Myths and legends can be transmitted across an Epoch Horizon, through mundane, non-magical means -- a book which survives, oral stories, heck, even an elf who was 200 years old when the epoch changed, saw a legendary event when she was 50, and survives 400 years into the new epoch. Of course, there are also dragons, etc, although asking them to tell you about a mighty human hero usually won't work -- they keep about as much track of human affairs as the humans of Watership Down keep track of rabbit affairs, and know as much about human "legends" as in-book humans know about the battle between General Woundwort and Bigwig. Legends from previous Epochs can become increasingly distorted over time, and questions like "who fired the first shot?" can be subject to unresolvable dispute. Within any given epoch, divinations like legend lore, contact other plane, etc, all work fine, but I'm thinking that this game might be set in a fairly "young" epoch (maybe 700-800 years old). Usually, the change of an epoch is accompianied by other world-historical events, like the fall of a once-dominant empire, the end of a once seemingly-eternal war, etc. However, it doesn't seem as though there's any supernatural "driver" or "zeitgeist" to history, which controls events. Rather, it just seems that history continues to happen in a mundane way, one damned thing after another, and Epoch Horizons seem to pop up in eras of great instability or transition. They have no effect other than blocking divination, and no one knows that one has arisen until they try to cast a divination that refers to the past. I'm thinking that maybe Epoch Horizons could come into effect retroactively -- i.e., 200 years into the new epoch, an Epoch Horizon comes into being which blocks divinations into events more than 200 years old, but 150 years into the new epoch, it was still possible to access events of the previous epoch (in fact, people would really have no way of knowing that they were in a new epoch until the Epoch Horizon came into being, although when things seem to be eventful, many people speculate (usually wrongly, sometimes rightly) that they're on the border of a new epoch).
Magrus 02-26-08, 01:05 PM	This seems interesting to be able to put into play with just about any game. Are you planning a game to use this with?
james_gaines 02-26-08, 01:36 PM	When I first saw this I thought they'd be physical barriers between areas separated by time. Like giant glass walls. Then I had a funny image of a modern guy trying to explain to a caveman about the wheel. Of course, no sound would get across, so he'd have to do it in pantomime. So, as to the real thing, my main question is: Why? Is it relevant to the storyline or is it just to block divinations?
JulesCARV 02-26-08, 02:58 PM	Basically, the purpose is to have a distant past which isn't accessible to divinations. For instance, if you come across ruins that have been uninhabited since the last epoch change (possibly for several epoch changes), you can't just ask "who lived here?" using a divination like commune, contact other plane, legend lore, etc. Finding out who built the ruins might require mundane archeology work, tracking down some lost stone tablet, or the like. They don't really serve any purpose in the overarching story of the setting as a whole -- they're mainly just a plot device to allow other stories to have unresolved mysteries about the distant past and such (ruins of which no one knows the original builder, legendary figures from the past who may or may not have been real, lost languages carved on stone tablets which can't be deciphered with comprehend languages, etc).
Patrick Draken-Korin 03-30-08, 07:51 PM	Interesting idea. But I've got to admit it sounds like a draw to create a time machine to me. Whoa, just got a weird thought like the caveman pantomime game. Civilizations understand the whole lost epoch thing right? An advanced magical civilization realizes that books and oral histories can be destroyed or intentionally lost; therefore a religion has sprung up to combat loss of history. One extremist faction sacrifices members to be resurrected at a later date, after an epoch wall shows up; first hand information to be written down. Here's the thing; the ritual where they die causes a contingent effect to resurrect them one century later. Each century the chosen ones resurrect, pass on their knowledge (to make sure the books are still accurate) and die in another ritual adding a couple members for the next century. this latest century, they appear and their order (both the extremists and all other history monks) are gone. Who knows where. And an epoch wall blocks everything more than 80 years old. Guess who the heroes are?