I don't really know anything about Minecraft, except that my 10 year old nephew is a bit obsessed with it.
Minecraft is played by many kids, starting from 9-10. You will find experts in the most extensive modpack (Feed the Beast, IC2&GregTech) at ages from 12. Roleplay is dominated by more adult players and you may even find people in their forties on MMORPG servers. The roleplay servers also attract more female players.
Frankly, I'm afraid this diverges too much from canon for my tastes.
This maybe surprising, but: I have the same feeling about the story. Ideally I would like to rebuild Nikis' ICE31 map and start with 31 civ proven leader-players and many more carefully selected whitelisted other players, all mature and capable of roleplay. As we can only start with a very limited number of civ (nation) leaders and must also leave a lot of creative room for player base dynamics to fill in a lot of blanks wrt civ creation, city building, politics, etcetera, we need a lot of compromise. This is the main reason we could not settle for an 'easy in-canon' storyline, like starting on a part of Erebus.
We could state our storyline is non-canon from where it begins. It's simply a different stroyline, based on the preceding story provided by FfHII lore. Hence, in our world we may never have Sheaim, Sidar or Kuriotate or any other entity that was not on or around Erebus at the time of our Cataclysm.
I'm not a big fan of this cataclysm idea. It sounds like something that would violate the compact, unless the victims were already loyal to Ceridwen. When Bhall fell she was able to drag the good people of Braduk into the deepest hell with her, but this most likely could only happen because they had been her worshipers (and her personal property from the perspective of the gods).
It is interpreted as a major violation of the Compact. This is the reason why we even got Cassiel triggered to respond and Dagda to comply to Cassiel's call.
Kael has stated that the soul of Mulcarn was destroyed, completely annihilated. His soul did not pass through the ether into any other world known to any god. It does not exist, and cannot exist again unless The One Himself chooses to resurrect it. The only things of Mulcarn that survived are his precept (which has a will of its own, enough to seek out and seduce Auric to become its new master) and the tiny piece of his spirit that was given to Barnaxus in order to animate the golem. I don't really see much of a way for him to beg for help once the fatal blow is struck. I'm not even sure that he would want to do so. Mulcarn generally did not get along all that well with his fellow evil gods, and this would likely have been made worse once he saw them embrace his old enemy Bhall.
Yeah, good points. Though I did not know much of these from the Compendium. This is the reason why I asked you to reflect on our reflections, as you are the one in Kael's head.
So, we could maybe tweak it so that the precept chose another target in our storyline.
Mulcarn or his precept or whatever representative entity left over after the execution of Mulcarn by the Godslayer, can have called upon the other evil gods/precepts, just because these are the 'disloyal' ones. That may provide just the tiny motivation difference a 'loser' would need to call upon friends he would have rather not had.
It is unclear whether Dadga ever made a world. It seems hard to imagine a vault of balance without having it be made through opposing parties reaching compromises. Dadga is however responsible for the other gods cooperating on some planes. He first convinced the gods of opposite spheres to work together of worlds of contrast (sun and shadow, fire and ice, etc). He got them to admit that these were better than any plane dominated by a single precept, and then convinced them all to cooperate in the creation of Erebus. I like to consider Erebus itself the vault of Dagda. (There could still be other worlds of balance too though. At one point, Tebryn Arbandi was supposed to have come from another world very similar to Erebus but where magic played by somewhat different rules. I think that was been retconned out though.)
I had similar considerations, hence I chose to have the most neutral of the good gods and some neutral gods, all having proven mutual backgrounds in several events in FfHII lore, to cooperate in the creation of this vault. I now wonder if you have read the History of vesperus, or if your comments are solely based on what I have provided in this thread.
I'm not a fan of the name Nemesis ("retribution") for a vault made by Dagda either. It sounds more appropriate for a vault of Junil or Camulos, or even a world of contrast between their precepts.
Covered in another reply, see above.
Vesperus sounds much more like the vault of Esus than it does a creation of Ceridwen. Even the name (meaning "Evening") seems quite appropriate for a world ruled by Esus.
I was looking for a name that would both reflect the dawn and the dusk. Going through several texts I decided to pick the combined greek star-gods Aesperos-Hesperos as reference. My motivation: (Hesperos = greek god of twilight, between dawn (Eos) and dusk (Astreos), Vesperus being the latin name and nicely illiterating with Erebus (greek god of chaos); see:
http://www.theoi.com/Titan/AsterEosphoros.html).
It may be worth noting that Esus does not get along particularly well with his fellow evil gods. He has actively worked to thwart Ceridwen's plans to destroy the world. He hates the barrenness of the lowest hell (the ruins of Nyx), and does not like to associate with demons. He prefers to fill his realm with living beings, including some who were kidnapped from Erebus. His most loyal subjects could be given immortality in a world almost indistinguishable from their old home, never passing through the great machine of hell to become demons lords who might choose to serve another evil god.
This are very interesting, so worth noting indeed. It may provide us with some additional options to create further storylines. As a matter of fact, in Minecraft roleplay servers every now and then you need to add a new worldmap to play on ... so, you see?!
If I were having a 1st person perspective game set is primarily in a world resembling Erebus but different, where the characters had just escaped the tyranny of Mulcarn, I would do something rather different. I'd try to make it now Fall from Heaven, but Rise from Hell.
When Mulcarn ruled Erebus and his precept dominated it, he would have brought this primary world into closer contact with his own vault. The distinction between Erebus and the first layer of hell may have weakened enough that multitudes could be taken into Mulcarn's hell, or perhaps even wandered there unknowingly. (Kael has stated that this is one hell where living beings can actually survive.) The death of the god could have freed them from their bondage, but would not have restored them to the world their ancestors knew. I their attempt to find their way home they would climb the great mountain, and then find themselves in the world of Esus instead.
(You could of course also have players start in lower levels, or descend there. The City of Dis could be a major setting.)
We may discover that the playable characters are actually dead, and cannot so easily make it back to the world of the living. If they finally are able to escape the deceptions of Esus without giving up hope and choosing to embrace hell, they may find that they must settle for the dreamworld of Arawn. Here they may have to confront the forces of Laroth. It is possible to get back to the world of the living from there, but one must pass through the liminal realm of the Shadow Rift first. The Once-Elves of the city of Barathrum guard the portal atop the Malachite Palace, and will go to great lengths to prevent anything that uses the portal to escape the land of the dead from then passing through the Well of Shadows into Erebus itself.
Very nice. If you ever consider to have a taste of Minecraft, do come over and join us in creating this story/scenario and transferring it into a playworld.
I am guessing and hoping that when we have started with the first FfHII based server, predominantly with players who never played CivIV, let alone FfHII, we may have stimulated the interest and enthusiasm of our player base to such an extent that they would want more ... and then more story's / scenario's can follow. Even the complete rebuild of Erebus based on Nikis' map is possible and we could replay Armageddon as Sheaim and have Erebus infested with Infernals and Mercurians and add dragons like Eurabatres, Abashi and Acheron. All would require further development on the plugins
DukeofRealms and his mates are working on.
We may also extend our magic system, either make it comparable to the mana-driven system of FfHII or the magnificent version of Sephi (which I fancy a lot and think would be most convenient for use in Minecraft). Magic is allready an important part of our spell systems coupled to experience and class levelling.
Thank you very much for this extensive feedback MC!
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
