Category: Dev Diary

Before the dev diary begins in earnest, I think it worth clarifying that the lore pages are not written with an omniscient perspective. By the language used, I tried to imply that they were being written by the hand of a historian of the period’s perspective on the world. Obviously, Yazatas are not the “slaves” of Ahura Mazda, and Shiva is not the “brother” of Vishnu. However, a scholar working off of second or third-hand accounts, generally skeptical and possibly somewhat prejudiced, would naturally attempt to rationalize other worldviews and attempt to cram all the nuance into a framework that fits with said scholars pre-existing knowledge. I will most certainly, when doing second passes in future lore pages focused on specific regions and cultures, have a much more nuanced take on matters (including religion, but other aspects of culture and society as well), likely written from indigenous (or near enough) perspectives.

With that out of the way, time to talk about gods for real.

Let’s say it’s just around the dawn of the European bronze age, over three and a half thousand years ago. You are descended from some of the warlord settlers who have conquered their way south from the banks of the Danube to the hills and mountains of Attica. Their fire for pushing new frontiers lives on in you, and you abandon your life as a Mycenaean aristocrat for a ship, the sea, and the stars. In short, you are a ranger, and a high level one at that. You have sailed west, past where the stone corpse of Atlas lies reputedly slain by your kinsman the king Perseus, and saw there beyond the stone cities (which you name “Atlantis” but the locals call “Chichen Itza”) beyond that nearly endless sea. You have gone east to face the titan progenitors of the Varanidae (Karbash) on the island known in myth as “Komodo”. You have gone beyond even that, sailing the entire coast of Serica, and further to stop at mysterious and wondrous lands you would never have known would one day be called California, Panama, Peru, and Chile. When you return home with all of your treasures, your magic items, and your experience, you become an instant legend. You are nigh-invincible; you have defeated monsters of CR 20 and above; everyone will remember the name Hermehas. When you pass, your legends become myths, and somewhere down the line, your tribe eventually decides that your feats could not have been done by a mere human, and thus is your godhood born in the minds of your descendants.

Does this count as becoming a god “for real”? There is a modern and Abrahamic-normative perception of gods as omniscient, omnipotent (or near enough), and eternal, each aspect of which was not necessarily considered an absolute in the eyes of the ancients. Osiris and Odin have been known to die (though admittedly not permanently), Ahura Mazda requires the assistance of the human Saoshyant to defeat Angra Mainyu, and the Olympians notoriously punished the kings who outwitted them. Often, the line between people and gods is blurred, especially where Pharaohs are worshipped as gods in the flesh and emperors in the Cultus Imperialis are considered to have ascended to godhood in death. In short, what separates a god from a person, so long as said person has enough power to hold the life and death of civilizations in their hands? On the scale of us mere mortals, an adventurer or a dragon might seem worthy enough of worshipful servitude (if only to avoid the consequences of refusing).

If you are the sort who considers such a rationale unreasonable, then I suppose from your perspective Ecumene is a decidedly atheistic setting. There is no power behind the coursing of rivers or the falling of rain, no guiding hand regulating the spark and flow of magic, nothing except the fundamental laws of (fantasy) physics. This is why divine magic would not be compatible with the world; it requires that the prayers of a cleric must be heard by an intelligent power, which then must intelligently grant that cleric the power they seek, and reward or punish them according to their whims. I, personally, cannot imagine anyone or thing having the time for that. Perhaps this makes the world feel cold and purposeless, which is understandable, but look on the bright side; killing a god for your lv 20 quest has never been easier.

Next update will be the start of an ambitious new project, depicting the first sample dungeon for the setting, with some insight into how the world is meant to be played in.

This entry will be rather unfocused, as there are a lot of things regarding ancestries and classes I feel must be mentioned, few of them having much relation to each other. However, if stray thoughts, concerns, and ideas can be gotten out of the way here, the next entries can be much more cohesive, and therefore fun.

To begin, wherever the word “tribe” comes up in lore pages, it is generally meant in the sense of the Latin “gens”, which would translate back to “people” or “ancestry”. It also handily avoids having to use the term “race”, although some English translations of classical texts have used that phrasing. Furthermore, the term “clan” has been used to denote smaller groupings of a tribe (i.e. “the Corvidae clans of Africa Proconsularis” or “the Sahalia clans of Mesopotamia”), despite them not necessarily being of a clan or kinship per se. It is important to note that there is no “segregation” between ancestries, such that it is unreasonable for some polities to be known as “x tribe polities” (i.e. “the Rodens city of Velutonia”, in the case of Velutonia being majority-Rodentes and ruled by a hereditary Rodens dynasty). It can be safely assumed that every ancestry is represented in every city or state of sufficient size and connection to the wider world, especially in a fantasy world where one may ride a hippogryph or teleport.

One of the major fantasy staples I distinctly did not want to include in Ecumene were the conventional fantasy ancestries such as elves, dwarves, orcs, and goblins. While I did consider during the very early stages populating the world with them, I ultimately decided against this course of action on account of concerns that they were drawn primarily from Germanic mythology (which was Tolkien’s passion and area of expertise), and thus fitting them into the world would have meant bending the entire world to fit a Germanic mythological framework. Instead, the running theme among the ancestries represented is human-animal hybrids. Catfolk, Ratfolk, Grippli, and Tengu make their appearance under different names and slightly different appearances, which I have distributed about the world according to some personal judgements regarding the native distribution of the animals on which they were based. It is Herodotus who has the best perspective on the origin of the various ancestries, with every non-human having some humanity imbued within them by ancient sorcerers, and thus they would adopt a vaguely humanoid form, no matter how jarring the transition between their original species is.

Regarding class, it is worth mentioning first the role of gods in Ecumene (for some classes depend on the worship or patronage of gods and similar powers). This will be expanded on in the next dev diary, but safe to say there are either many gods of little “godly” power, or there are no gods at all. Thus, I would recommend not allowing players to choose any class that forces them to depend on a higher power for class features, including Witches, Clerics, Oracles, and Champions. Some class options for other classes should not be chosen as well, including the Monk’s Sacred Ki or the Angelic bloodline for Sorcerers. Ecumene will also take a more nuanced perspective on morality, expressed not as a cosmic battle of ideologies between manifestations of the cosmic order, but rather individual decisions based on fickle and mortal minds, more in line with how humanity behaves in the real world.

That is not to say religion is without its place in Ecumene. In fact, religion might be a more important component to the lives of those in the 4th century than in other fantasy settings where gods are both real and active. During this age, the greatest upheaval in the social order was one of religion. The spread of Manicheanism and Christianity, the suppression of Buddhism by Hindu powers, and the intellectual fortification of the Cultus Deorum and Zoroastrianism before much of their theology was intentionally destroyed. Germanic kings would be expected to keep a Bardic skald to sing their praises, itinerant Monks study the Jain Dharma across India, and the Neoplatonic School is always ready to teach new Wizards. Even without Clerics smiting the enemies of gods with divine lightning, religion is of singular importance to the world and its people.

Lore and Dev Diary #3 will expand more on the religions of Ecumene, including some further insight on the nature of gods.

-Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and India in the 4th century, according to Ollie Bye

“Ecumene” is a Latinization of the Greek term “Oικουμένη (Oikoumeni)”, and refers to the breadth of the world as the Greeks knew it. Within the breadth of this setting, magic may lift the great stones that assembled the Great Pyramids of Giza, a champion, sword in hand, may cleave through a century, and dragons may guise themselves in the forms of men and demand worship from the people under assumed names as “Freya”, “Osiris”, and “Demeter”. The world of Ecumene will be grounded in the beautiful and diverse world of our real history, but dotted near and far with monsters to slay, dungeons to delve, and heroism to achieve that we all love from our Pathfinder (and other tabletop) experiences.

For historians of the immediate following centuries looking back on this time, it often would have seemed to them to have been the beginning of the end of civilization. That is one of many reasons why I have chosen this particular period to represent. In three centuries, two of the four great empires shown on the map above will have disappeared, and the remaining two will have been diminished to mere wisps of what they once were. The descendants of those who lived in this time will, for a millennium or more, look back on this era as the sunset upon a “Golden Age” of humanity, that they will then desperately attempt to claim and reclaim until the days of Napoleon.

Although our real civilizations are built by humans and continued by humans alone, Ecumene will have no shortage of ancestry options for any player character. The humanity of Ecumene has coexisted with many intelligent kin, from the befurred gnolls along the Horn of Africa to the brightly-scaled nagaji of southern India to golden-maned catfolk of the Greek peninsula. People of all shapes, colors, and stripes may appear in many unexpected locations and hold unexpected status in any part of the world, at least if archaeological evidence is to be believed. Do not feel as if you must “limit” yourself to “likely” options as a compromise for having fun and making the character you want; stranger things have happened in reality, and in the magic-rich setting of Ecumene, stranger things may happen still.

Lore and Dev Diary #2 will deal with ancestries and society’s perception of them, as well as the role character classes will play in a world that mirrors our own.