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<p>Tags: <a class="tag ap" href="/tags/ap.html">Apocrypha</a></p>
<h1 class=title>An Introduction to Apocrypha</h1>
<p>Apocrypha is a world of mystery and forgotten history, built from first principles and the realization that even simple truths have consequences.</p>
<p>My goal with building the world of Apocrypha is to create a generic fantasy world which is both suitable for books and for use with TRPGs, and is designed somewhere on the coherency spectrum between the Forgotten Realms and Discworld.</p>
<p>Though it is being designed to function with the 5th edition of <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons">Dungeons & Dragons</a> in mind, I am also haphazardly designing a TRPG of my own which may be abandoned along the way, but draws inspiration from Apocrypha as well as breathing life back into it. Over the last 2 months, I’ve found that working on one usually generates ideas that are applicable to the other, and overall energy for both projects benefits from this dynamic.</p>
<p>Occasionally Asked Questions</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>From a Forgotten Realms standpoint, “does the Weave still matter?”</li>
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<p>There is no Weave, nor are gods’ domains delineated in the same way as FR.</p>
<ol start="3" type="1">
<li>“Why in a D&D 5e-esque world have the elves and spellcasters not taken over despite the advanced age of the former and the quadratic power curve of the latter?”</li>
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<p>My previous answer to this was chopped up and dumped in several dumpsters in several different states, so I’ll expand below.</p>
<p>Creatures don’t have DNA. Alchemy is not chemistry because there are no chemicals. Plutonium isn’t an element: fire is.</p>
<p>All creatures share a common ancestry. From the primal elementals, to the mischievous fey, to the inscrutable nim, all are born by the spontaneous generation of the physical from an immortal and unchanging essence. I’m working on how they are all related, but their forms are determined by their essential natures.</p>
<p>The “planes” are just reality through a broken prism (in that they started out with a common starting place for the condition of the world, but since each has slightly different properties, due to the absence of certain things (like say, gravity) or their distortion (like the duration of magical effects lingering twice as long), they each have developed differently (and different kinds of creatures have been born there).</p>
<p>Magic comes in as many forms as creatures do.</p>
<p>Since creatures and magic and the elements and planes all have the same ancestry in the grand scheme of things.</p>
<p>Wizardry, specifically, is the capturing of a specific magical essence in the form of a spell.</p>
<p>This ‘bottling’ allows you to take magic with you from place to place. and release it. But the power of most non-wizardry magic ebbs and flows based on large geographical region (which I’m still working out, since I don’t have most of the other magic systems worked out yet). For example, druids can produce effects much more powerful than those of a wizard if they are within their grove. So high level wizards trying to take over an area and being repulsed by the locals is a fairly common trope.</p>
<p>As is practitioners of various regional magics attempting t extend their influence by changing the lands around them. The Song of Conquest is a kind of regional magic (or more like ancestral magic, because it comes from the people, not the land), that has spread quite far and is the power behind the empire (in addition to them discovering wizardry and having a big army and the largest navy).</p>
<p>So, the reason that elves/wizards haven’t taken over the Empire is because of the Song of Conquest (which only humans/halflings/faunus/orcs have access to) and the nation state (because it’s a #human empire which isn’t racist towards elves per se, but you know).</p>
<p>Also, “there’s always a bigger fish.” There are dragons and nim and patrons and icons that are more powerful than wizards, and gods above those.</p>
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<p>The content of this page is Copyright © 2017 <a href="mailto:ImFromNASA@gmail.com">Andrew Murrell</a>.</p>
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<p>Page source: <a href="anintroductiontoapocrypha.md">anintroductiontoapocrypha.md</a></p>
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