Barsburg Lore Ideas

[Oyster.]

Feel free to post your own below. I understand admins are writing up lore but I was just inspired to give my ideas towards Barsburg.

The idea is to create a compelling, sensible and sustainable concept in the world of E3 without too obviously being grounded in reality and with introducing actually new things that players might want to do instead of flavoring existing races/concepts.

Formatting may be haphazard as I just write as it comes to mind. It is not comprehensive or exhaustive. I'll keep it relatively small too since I don't want to feel like I'm overstepping on whoever's actually writing it.


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Barsburg

Government

I think a Byzantium-esque senate or whatever they had back then is already in the works so I'll work around that and instead focus on the government presence across Barsburg. The government would have complete control of its people despite frequent uprisings, utilizing its technology and forces on surveying the country and enforcing the law. The massive obelisks that power constructs double up as surveillance towers from which dozens of drones can escape, recording any wrong-doing.

The attitude for a commoner in Barsburg thus would be paranoid, though not completely despondent because as far as basic rights went they were all quite fulfilled by constructs/the Super Poor. now the Super Poor, they r fucked- basically slave labour.

Obelisks

The obelisks are towering buildings found across all of Barsburg cities, responsible for much of the defense and enforcement and infrastructure. Each obelisk is a marvel of magitech and constantly attended to by priests (ranks pending). From it thousands of mana chains extend, incorporeal threads that can only be seen by mana sight or similar and cannot be severed, extending out to the most basic of constructs. These constructs stand guard, do manual labour and fill in for much of what is done by the lowest class in countries like Esshar.

Religion

Creating a compelling religion is important to a new faction. I would like something not done before and something that emphasizes actual castes and conflicts rather than a broad 'we don't worship anything' or 'achieving our human potential!'.

Proposal: Convergence. The sacredness of magitech and the goal of perfecting the fusion of magitech and man to create an elevated lifeform (left vague by priests of course).

There is little seperation of government and religion. Those that lead the religion undoubtedly also lead the country. They do get into squabbles among each other on the best path to take both in normal matters and in projects to realize the Convergence.

The mantra to the people is that the goal of all life is to co-operate with the technomancers and to assist in any way possible; when the convergence comes all that were loyal and useful will be uplifted to new life, given infallible bodies and their every whim catered to.

For people actually in the know, there is more regarding the nature of magitech and the human soul but I won't write that up unless this is actually considered.

Magitech

All magitech in the empire is sacred and blessed by priests (name pending, technomancers maybe?). Creating your own magitech without approval of the government and the church  is heresy and people that create or use this stuff are called Rogues. (wow a pc hook!)

Magitech can take a great many forms.

- Basic constructs. These are mindless, either created purely through metal or sometimes in a twisted experiment involving humans that have committed crimes/are a burden on society. They are controlled purely through mana strings of the Obelisks or through sanctioned puppeteers (usually, but not always, technomancers).

- Advanced constructs. Made of stronger alloys, these may be homonculi, golems, anything like that. There are many different factories that create different types. Some level of sentience possesses them, either due to imprinting emotions and behavior at birth or through forbidden soul transference of the highest level technomancers or Rogues. This is your DnD warforged, your sexy doll girls, whatever.

- Magitech Drones. Constructs that are different in shape, like small discs, utilitarian in purpose yet less ubiquitous than the regular form. Often used by the wealthy purchased from the church. Their main use is as surveillance; looking to the grey skies of Barsburg, one is never not under scrutiny by one of these creations. They will quickly report to the nearest enforcement agency if you so much as think about infringing (or so the commoners are told).

- Guns. Of course, magitech guns. Maybe actual guns? Who knows.

- Mechs.

- Magitech abominations. War machines and such, varied forms, a culmulative effort to create.

- Household magitech. Typically for the rich, their houses involve all sorts of luxuries such as heating, all brought forth by magitech.

But wait- what is Magitech?

Only the technomancers know how to create it, only the highest above them understand the intricacies and they are loathe to share. It is a fusion of magic into inanimate parts underneath special ritual and conditions that bestows upon it power or limited autonomy. The greatest of magitech is rumored to involve manipulation of the soul that would leave necromancers envious, yet is not used to create undead.

Inanimate objects like guns are a lot easier to create than advanced magitech possessing a modicum of will.

Law Enforcement

There will be police, there will be secret police, and there will be even more secret police. I'm out of steam so I'll leave that here for now.

[Datura]

technomancers!
yes
yes
yes
yes.

[Oyster.]

just a title bro

[Datura]

I mean like, your rendition is what I’m saying yes to.

[rea]

i think it might be cool if there were purposeful magitek prosthetic that instead of being a band-aid over a nerf are, instead, buffs. replacing your arms with robot arms to make yourself be able to lift more, an enhancement in your spine to make your magic more powerful, etc.

i am also always a fan of "magitek is created because the people of this continent/country have a harder time in naturally using mana and so they've used technological advancements to supplement that", and replacing the parts of your body with More Powerful Parts to bring them up to the natural levels of magi would be something that i think people could get a lot out of.

[Jumpy]

a month ago

[Datura]

This is where a magic gem system would be dope because then we can let crafters in on the fun,

[rea]

coming back to this since it was linked to be the thread for what to look at for barsburg character ideas, i'm not really sure that i'm really on board for 'the magitek stuff is their religion', because that actually is going to just be what's been done a thousand times over. almost every single war on eternia has started as a clash of theologies. i don't think we ever need another faction at all that has religion tied in so tightly to it's government - think about ... literally any faction/race/etc that eternia has had at all outside of e1 cities fighting for land and crown and occultism bad, and they're all that way. 

'creating your own magitek is outlawed' is fine and cool, but 'it has to be church-sanctioned and by a specific group of religious people' probably is not really as cool as it sounds on paper and is just going to be executed in the same way that anything else with a well-documented religion has. 

worshipping nothing is boring, yeah, but i think the concept of the advancement of mankind isn't - they could, theoretically, even worship themselves. they're a society of people that have enhanced themselves and the world around them by power that no one but themselves gave them. they've achieved greater heights than man organically can- and, not because they're a magi from a strong bloodline or anything like tradition. with their followings and beliefs, anyone can be anything. they've risen above the Rest

[Datura]

A transhumanist society that feeds off of war to fuel an economy that would otherwise have crashed sounds cool, like, where the war machine isn't evil because it's just big-bad war guys but the Barsburg economy would just, die without war would be a cool tiwst.

[rea]

coming back to this since it was linked to be the thread for what to look at for barsburg character ideas, i'm not really sure that i'm really on board for 'the magitek stuff is their religion', because that actually is going to just be what's been done a thousand times over. almost every single war on eternia has started as a clash of theologies. i don't think we ever need another faction at all that has religion tied in so tightly to it's government - think about ... literally any faction/race/etc that eternia has had at all outside of e1 cities fighting for land and crown and occultism bad, and they're all that way. 

'creating your own magitek is outlawed' is fine and cool, but 'it has to be church-sanctioned and by a specific group of religious people' probably is not really as cool as it sounds on paper and is just going to be executed in the same way that anything else with a well-documented religion has. 

worshipping nothing is boring, yeah, but i think the concept of the advancement of mankind isn't - they could, theoretically, even worship themselves. they're a society of people that have enhanced themselves and the world around them by power that no one but themselves gave them. they've achieved greater heights than man organically can- and, not because they're a magi from a strong bloodline or anything like tradition. with their followings and beliefs, anyone can be anything. they've risen above the Rest

to elaborate on this, my reasoning of disliking the religion suggestion is that it makes the society too much about religion when it doesn't have a reason to be. the enemy being religious zealots is old and tired, even if it's crudaders spraypainted chrome with LED's stapled on. It also opens up too much room for "but we are the good guys because these are our views and we're actually doing nothing wrong at all", and having a faction that is introduced to be an enemy and give conflict having the mindset of 'we are right because our robot god wants us to become machines and everything about our society is very linked to the church' isn't going to lead to people being antagonists. 

while the church of celestialism has been moved out of the spotlight, it was something that was the bread and bones of the concept of esshar. having their first non-esshar enemy be one that is just as religious with faith and theaism and sacredness of the source of their power tied strongly into the government ... is just creating osrona, again. which - yeah, looking at the enemy and seeing a mirror is a good story beat, but not when we're trying to mix things up. 

i personally think it makes more sense for an antitheist faction that has discarded any reason for faith - be it that they believe all the gods have long since left this world or that they've created society and power that goes far beyond anything any angel or dragon or spirit or star or cat or wolf ever could.