Hey, Leo here. For anyone who was still hoping to see Barriers: The Fallout continue, I’m afraid I kind of reached a dead end for that project. It wasn’t coming together like I had planned, so I decided that I might as well start fresh, and thus Terra Immortalium (which I’m going to call TI for short) was born!
“Terra Immortalium” is latin for Land of Immortals (note that I don’t know Latin, so don’t quote me on this!). As one might guess, you play an Immortal, to be more specific, a young demigod. However, demigods in this world (I’ve named the planet Ankhet after the Egyptian word for “life”) are not necessarily the blood children of gods; in fact, only about 1 percent of demigods are actually the children of a god. Most are just simple mortals chosen by the gods to regain humanity’s long lost immortality.
Backtracking to the lore: in the beginning, there was nothing. And then there was the Creator. (Man, woman, something else entirely…who knows? The gods sure aren’t telling!) The Creator, well, created. Stars, planets, dust. And finally, life. It created “children”: the first gods who gained a portion of its own divine power to create, change, and shape the very universe itself. These gods would eventually create “children” of their own: the demigods who inherited a portion of the gods’ divine power.
For the first time in thousands of years, the Creator spoke. It issued a warning: the Demigods must not attempt to create “children” of their own with the small portion of divine power they possessed or it would inevitably twist into something else entirely. The Demigods listened, for a time, content to expand their numbers through natural means and come up with new non-sentient lifeforms, but the temptation remained all the same. At last, a small group of rebel demigods attempted to create a sentient lifeform with their divine power. The resulting creature quickly turned on its overeager “parents.” Hundreds of demigods died in the year that was to follow before the creature and its brood was finally destroyed. This was the First War. These were the first deaths. This was the birth of fear, of hate, of sorrow, and their friends.
The Creator took away the demigods’ immortality and all but a fraction of their divine power for throwing the universe out of balance. (But wait, was it fair to take away the divinity of all demigods? No, but the Creator does not care about fairness, it only cares about life and balance.) The resulting mortals could not truly be called demigods. They were only human.
Centuries passed and the former demigods’ population rapidly expanded. The gods soon found themselves struggling. How were they - the few - to keep up with all of their devotees?
Solution: reinstate demigodhood to the worthy in exchange for their eternal devotion as an Emissary of the Gods.
Whew, okay, that brings me to the “present.” TI will center around Imm, city of Immortals, and the training grounds of future Emissaries. It is here at Imm that new demigods learn what it takes to be an Emissary and how best to serve their God for life! (Which is normally a very VERY long time by the way.) Emissary candidates are normally selected around the ages of 15-20 years old, but there are the odd 12 or 28 year old mortal that a god (or gods) took a special liking to and elevated to demigodhood anyway.
Demigods start out as an Acolyte in the Acolyte’s Circle (first five years at Imm) with generalized courses. The first five years at Imm are arguably the most important because five years is all you get to impress as many gods as you can. After those five years are up, the gods you impressed are the gods you can choose from to serve, and if you impressed no gods at all (which is hard to do since you had to at least show promise to one god to become a demigod in the first place!) then you become mortal once again. (Ouch.) Once the choice is made, the next five years as an Adept in the Adept’s Circle begins with courses unique to your chosen God. Finally, you have to pass the demigod version of “Finals,” before graduating to Emissary status!
So what do the Emissaries of Gods do? Well, that varies from god to god and from emissary to emissary. An Emissary of Keten (God of Health, Medicine, and Poison) might heal people who come to one of his temples. Or they might be a poison-specializing Assassin masquerading as a typical healer, eliminating the god’s enemies before they know what hit them. ~shrugs~ Gods find many uses for their Emissaries. Power, immortality, and a god who basically becomes the greatest uncle/aunt you could ever wish for aren’t a bad deal, eh? Of course, there are cons to immortality. Like you blink and fifty years have passed and you’ve “suddenly” become a great aunt.
Feel free to post anything you want while TI is still in the development stage: thoughts, opinions, questions, things you’d like to see, ideas… I want to hear from you!
Demo Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/n18ci14cdimjjk4/Terra%20Immortalium.html?dl=0
Date: 5/7/16