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RefSteel

So I figured rather than continuing to spam the EitB Update thread below, I'd create a new thread just for 'pedia stuff so we can spam this thread instead!

There are still lots and lots of background/story/description entries that need filling in. I've copied Qgqqqqq's lists from the aforementioned thread, added a list for leaders, and struck through everything we've completed recently. I'll try to keep this up to date as more entries are written!

Units:

Heroes:

Buildings:

Wonders:

Leaders:

RefSteel

If you were paying really close attention, you may have noticed two items crossed off the list above that hadn't been posted anywhere yet. I figured the Summer and Winter Palaces were begging to have Elven descriptions, but then why are they different from the Ljosalfar and Svartalfar Palaces? Here's what I came up with: (Spoilered for length, though at least they're a lot shorter than the really long stories I've posted....)

Summer Palace Wrote:When the Compact of the Courts first was made among the elves, there was but a single palace, and the Queens of Summer and of Winter lived together there with their courts, taking their places of rule or of waiting in their due seasons. As time went by however and the nation of the elves grew wide and strong, the Queens and their courts grew apart in their visions of what their roles should be. So at last one year as spring approached, the Winter Queen Faeryl Viconia approached Arendel Phaedra who would soon be Summer Queen once more, and said, "It is a shame to see your beautiful summer court shivering here in our winter palace when the jungles of the south have such warm and pleasant weather. It were well to build another palace for you there, that when the chill of winter approaches, you might retire to a home better suited to your time of rule.

To this generous suggestion, Arendel willingly agreed, though she regretted being so far from her beloved Winter Queen and all the Courtesans of Winter whom she loved, in their time of power - but she consoled herself, knowing that the people of her court would be well pleased, that the people of the south would rejoice at seeing her Court so near even in the dormancy of its power - and that in the joyous warmth of summer they all should always be together once more.

So the Summer Palace of the elves was made in the land where it was ever summer, and so Faeryl Viconia arranged to be present with her Court and servants in the elven seat of power all year round, where she could build her network of schemes, spies, and assassins without interruption, and for half the year - and the half in which she held the greatest power - she could work without the slightest fear of interference or interruption from the Summer Queen.

Winter Palace Wrote:In a certain year in the Age of Magic, when the elven people had spread far across the north, Faeryl Viconia decided that she had little left to gain by spending all her strength within the great palace of the elves in Evermore. Her agents and assassins were in place around the city, her influence was as strong as she could reasonably expect it to be for a Queen who ruled but six months in every year, and the cloying cheerfulness of the Summer Court each year was beginning to wear upon her. So she approached the Summer Queen Arendel Phaedra, and said to her, "It is a pleasure to share my summers with your bright and beautiful court, but the palace grows crowded, and it seems unfit to me that the Winter Queen should disport herself in summer play at a time when in the north of our empire there is snow and cold little milder than what we call winter here. It would be wiser, in the summer months, for me to bring a part of my court to a palace built for the purpose in the far north, that I might see up close how the people of those harsh climes live, and bring the knowledge with me to the aid of the rest of our people when winter comes for a while to all our empire."

Arendel was deeply reluctant to agree, for she dearly loved the company of Faeryl and her court, but Faeryl returned to the subject again and again, reminding Arendel of how it would gladden the people of the north and help her best perform her winter duties, and though she could do so only in sorrow, the Summer Queen saw the wisdom in Faeryl's words. So at last, after many exhortations, she agreed, and the Winter Palace of the elves was built in the land where it was ever winter, and when it was finished at last, Faeryl Viconia and her Winter Court made it their summer residence, and she assisted the Summer Court by ruling those northern lands where the weather was always as cold as the season of her rule, almost as though in that place she were Queen still and had not performed the Rites of Spring - and when the time came to perform the Rites of Autumn, she left her hardiest lieutenants to maintain and strengthen her influence there in preparation for her return come spring - but the most deadly of her servants and secret attendants came never near the Winter Palace, for they had other secret duties to perform for her at the heart of the empire's power throughout the year.

Qgqqqqq · June 20th, 2014, 00:11

Thanks RefSteel! I was going to make a thread like this pretty soon anyway, but it's very appropriate for you to be the founder smile

Again, great entries. smile

RefSteel

Thanks, Q! And ... wait a minute ... wait ... wait ... Form of the Titan has no background entry?

Oh ... oh ... yes.

::maniacal laughter::

Form of the Titan Wrote:With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Our Titan vast, its trunk of bronze-clad stone,
Stands in the desert, high above the sand,
Titanic and unsinkable. Its frown
And furrowed lip and stare of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which cannot die, stamped on these deathless things,
And show the heart by which we all are led:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Camulos, the king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Ever shall it remain without decay -
For its colossal might, boundless as air,
Our city-studded lands revere each day.

[EDIT: One line changed (and missing words replaced) see below.]

(In case this isn't immediately recognizable, this is mostly derived from one of Percy Shelley's most famous works - apart from one line lifted straight from Emma Lazarus.)

Rivanna's entry is finished, and I've written her some diplo lines as well. I'll post at least the description later this weekend; for the moment, I'm thinking about her diplo AI. (And yes, I know that has nothing to do with game balance or an updated 'pedia, but I work on stuff I think will be fun.)

Qgqqqqq

Again, great work! I will suggest just one revision.
Oddly enough, considering the timescale with which the civilizations beneath you carry out, in FFH2 there's actually not much time going on, at most 300 years (and Varn is near the end of the recorded history we deal with) after the end of the Age of Winter. Not to mention, it's not exactly Varn's style to do that.
One possibility is:

Quote:"My name is Duin Halfmorn, the lord of lords:

What do you think?

#6 · June 22nd, 2014, 01:12

I'm not entirely certain, but going by the scenarios & some leader 'Pedia entries, the bulk of post-Age of Ice recorded FFH history takes place over the course of about 60 years. Capria is a young woman when the Bannor emerge from Hell shortly after the end of the AoI, and elderly by the time Hyborem is banished back to the underworld near the very end of the timeline. Each turn in the game is likely far less than one year in length- in some scenarios like the Momus, they can't possibly be more than a week.

Obviously none of the above applies to personal games, only for the general framework canon.

Qgqqqqq · June 22nd, 2014, 01:41

(June 22nd, 2014, 01:12)Bobchillingworth Wrote: I'm not entirely certain, but going by the scenarios & some leader 'Pedia entries, the bulk of post-Age of Ice recorded FFH history takes place over the course of about 60 years. Capria is a young woman when the Bannor emerge from Hell shortly after the end of the AoI, and elderly by the time Hyborem is banished back to the underworld near the very end of the timeline. Each turn in the game is likely far less than one year in length- in some scenarios like the Momus, they can't possibly be more than a week.

Obviously none of the above applies to personal games, only for the general framework canon.

True, but my impression was that none of the scenarios (/Capria escaping from hell) occur immediately after the fall of Mulcarn - I was thinking that it would take quite some time for civilizations to become re-established, having just gone through a apocalyptic-esque event. Although now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure there's mention that Auric Ulvin was conceived at the moment when Mulcarn fell, which lends credence to a maximum-100 year timetable.

Of course, the scope of realism within the mod is probably being over-exaggerated in the above.

RefSteel · June 22nd, 2014, 03:30

(June 22nd, 2014, 00:38)Qgqqqqq Wrote: Again, great work! I will suggest just one revision.

Sure; I only selected Varn Gosam because of the reference to sands and desert, and agree we could do better, but it needs to scan (stresses, not syllables) and rhyme with "...these deathless things" - so taking advantage of a certain poetic device much in use by real-life faiths, I would instead suggest:

Quote:"My name is Camulos, the King of kings:

(I wanted to use an actual Titan's name, but the only reference to one in FfH ... is the Wonder itself.)

Qgqqqqq · June 22nd, 2014, 04:11

That works smile

I thought mine might not work because of the various poetic devices.

RefSteel

Great - I like it better this way too! I just edited the Form of the Titan post again though - somehow the first several times I read it, I missed that the first line was missing the last two words. (It's the line borrowed from Emma Lazarus, so I think I just kept seeing the line I remembered instead of the one that was there.)

And since I wrote it, I might as well post what I have for Rivanna, even though it might have to be changed severely if her traits are changed. Don't feel bad if it ends up not being usable though (for this or other reasons). I like writing this stuff anyway.

Rivanna the Wraith Lord Wrote:No member of the army had ever seen the Court Swordmistress draw her blade, though her hand was often near the hilt. She would not engage in sparring or even teach her art as her subordinates would do, but it was rumored that in her secluded chambers, she met in secret with the Winter Court's greatest illusionists, where they designed horrific illusory beasts to battle her in seeming, for no true creature of the world could match her skill.

It may seem therefore less surprising than might otherwise be supposed that when she was forced to leave the Winter Court and the city she long had known with only a small company around her, the first companions Rivanna chose were not such champions as she had at her command but the most promising young adepts in the Court and a hand-picked pair of deeply secretive illusionists, the depths of whose power was sometimes suspected but nowhere known. Last, she chose just two lieutenants from among her private guard and left them to select the balance of her retinue, with clear instructions but without prejudice. Then, as her warriors and manservants were assembled on her behalf, she went to meet the Winter Queen.

Swordmistress Rivanna bowed low. "Majesty," she solemnly intoned, "I take my leave of you."

With a mocking smile, Faeryl Viconia asked, "Ready so soon?"

In answer, Rivanna bowed again. "All shall be in readiness by the time I return from this interview - unless you prefer that I stay by your side to help protect you?"

The Winter Queen locked eyes with her Swordmistress. "We must travel in small bands," she said, "out of necessity. My own might and name shall be protection enough, and it were shame to guard a single little band with so much strength as yours and mine combined when so many of my people must make do with so much less."

Their eyes held for a moment in silent communication that almost seemed a duel. The wisdom of Faeryl's intent was clear enough, whatever her words: Without the grand Court itself to divide between them but only a little band, how long could Rivanna suppress her ambitions and remain subordinate to her Queen even in name? For them to remain together when the Court began to dissolve would only invite destruction - upon more of their people, true, as Faeryl had warned aloud - but inevitably upon at least one of them as well, if not by the other's hand then by her cunning. "I bow to your wisdom," Rivanna said at last, and the interview was ended.

Within an hour, Rivanna and her following had left the city gates, marching in tight formation, a strict hierarchy already established among them, with each role clearly laid out, though the manservants and many of the adepts had as yet no military training and few had worked together in a close unit before. Rivanna established the structure, and no one questioned her. She delegated heavily and made her expectations clear, and saw every expectation met for her. She saw to it in every moment, in every action, with all her followers, that each knew her place as clearly and as surely as their manservants knew that their place was to serve.

Watching her go from a high tower window, Faeryl told her most secret advisor, "So passes Rivanna from our Court. Have we just given up our greatest asset, or have we turned aside our most deadly enemy?"

There came a long and thoughtful silence then, and even when it ended, "Perhaps," was the only answer she heard.

*

The snow fell thicker than ever, driven by a biting wind, and hunger gnawed at the party almost as sharply as the cold. Rivanna strode on, impassive, but her first lieutenant, Lady Andryl of the Blades, called out to her, "Is this where your adepts lead us, Swordmistress? Here to the base of this barren cliff? The forest gave better shelter and more chance of game to eat."

The others marched on behind as best they could, listening intently but without surprise. The hierarchy of their band had long since been established, and with it Lady Andryl's right - and hers alone unless there was one as well among the adepts with whom Rivanna was so often cloistered - to question the decisions of the Swordmistress herself. It was a novelty at first to hear a leader's choices challenged, but with the right to speak extended, in a chain of single steps, all the way down to the lowest warrior in the band, though none but Andryl and perhaps a picked illusionist would dare disturb Rivanna herself, all felt that their voices were heard - and many a fearful or daring voice indeed had come together to be heard in Lady Andryl's demand by the frozen slopes at the feet of Mount Thriel.

Rivanna barely glanced at her first lieutenant, striding on tirelessly. "They see further than you," she answered. "There is shelter ahead."

Lady Andryl frowned deeply, pulling the cowl of her fur hood even lower over her face as another terrible gust came down across the mountain slopes, but it was not Rivanna's rule that the voice of her following should speak once and then fall silent. When the howling wind subsided enough for her to make herself heard once more, Lady Andryl demanded, "Better shelter than we left to cross this frigid plain? And is it but for this that we turned aside from our path after you met at such length with your adepts? Is it this that you called the mere ghost of a hope at which we must nonetheless grasp?"

"Yes," Rivanna answered simply, and then with another glance back at her following - a glance in which some read pity or even compassion and others saw only disdain, depending more on the hearts and thoughts of those who saw it than on the sharpness of their eyes - she said, "Patience. Hope is ever slim in this frozen wilderness, but if it lives, it lies ahead."

There was silence then, until they came to the cave.

The entrance was blocked off completely, buried in fallen stones and and ice and snow, but Rivanna and her Svartalfar were no mere frostlings, orcs, or beasts of the snowy wastes. She organized her adepts and soldiers into tightly coordinated teams, melting and freezing portions of the avalanche by turns, hoisting and placing heavy stones to keep the bulk of ice and rock and snow supported in its place even as her people passed through. When their task was done, the blizzard was sealed outside the cave, beyond the frozen, high-piled rockfall, accessible only by the slender, curving ice-tunnel they had created as they moved - easily guarded by a single warrior or collapsed by a single adept who knew the arcane means of melting snow. Before them lay no natural cave, but a massive iron-bound door. They had come to the antechamber of an underground vault - a vault that by the markings and the carvings on the walls could only be an enormous tomb.

"What good does this place do us?" Lady Andryl hissed, her voice barely above a whisper in the antechamber's silence. "Have your adepts led us here so we may lie in state when we meet our doom?"

Rivanna didn't even bother to look back, her finger tracing the runework of the enormous iron door as she squinted to read it, a semicircle of adepts around her. Distractedly though, she answered, "You may bide a little while here." Her hand found the iron handle and carefully turned, pulling open the great vault doors by the span of a single hand. Beyond lay the darkness and the silence of the dead, and after peering into it for a silent moment, Rivanna at last looked back at her first lieutenant. "If you only knew it, this vault holds greater wealth for a starving, frozen band - greater wealth if we can claim it - than all the gold and jewels of a royal tomb."

*

They shared their feast together - the first they had held in unnumbered days - with cause to hope at last that the long dearth was at an end. A few superstitious Svartalfar huddled as far away as they could from the doors of the tomb, but none had the strength to refuse the food that their leaders had stolen from somewhere within.

"What I want to know," Lady Andryl told Maelsa, Rivanna's chief illusionist, when the evening meal was done, "is what happened to the food these dwarves left for their dead each night before we showed up to take it." She glanced at Rivanna, the first to finish her meal, already resting silently in a corner nearby, eyes shut in meditation, her sword in its scabbard resting across her knees.

Maelsa shrugged very slightly. "The question does not arise. The tradition is a new one we convinced them to adopt." Briefly, she told the plan Rivanna had developed with her adepts, when their far-gazing illusions had seen the battle and then the stand-off between the dwarves who lived beyond the tomb, deep in the earth, and a tribe of lizardmen who had fled underground to escape the winter snows. She told of the illusion they had made once they arrived, of a ghostly dwarven army: The wraiths of all the soldiers buried in the tomb, led by their chief-in-life, Lord Kromarth Rin. The wraiths had routed the lizardmen, leaving them injured, exhausted, and scattered, virtually helpless against the dwarves, and after the battle, Lord Kromarth had promised his aid and the aid of his army in the defense of the Underhome, so long as daily offerings of food and drink and fire-stones were left for them within the inner doors of their tomb. The dwarves had all in ready supply, thanks to the volcanic vents that warmed and fueled their Underhome, and there was deep respect among the dwarves for the wishes of their heroic dead, and there had been many incursions into their tunnels from creatures fleeing the winter cold, so the agreement was readily made.

Though some of her following marveled or laughed, Lady Andryl only frowned. "It sounds a mighty force indeed that you conjured from the air. Yet you and Syrella are only two, no matter how promising your young adepts may appear. What found you then inside that tomb that allowed you to create so mighty a seeming for the dwarves?" She watched Maelsa closely then, for she feared lest any curse her companions might bring down upon themselves in such a tomb might bring doom not only upon the tomb-breakers, but upon them all.

Maelsa only smiled though. "We found the vaults in which they were buried, the engravings of their names and deeds, and carvings of some of the greatest as they appeared - or as they wished they did - in life. We used them only by reading and looking as the most respectful visitor might do, to know their faces, ranks, and ways. As for the power to conjure the host..." and she smiled sidelong at the Swordmistress who had led them in. "I think the time is right to tell: That power is Rivanna's. Without her aid, it's true enough, our ghostly force would be but poor and frail. Though our pretty Kromarth Rin of course would never say it, the true Lord of our Wraith army is meditating there."

So came Rivanna, chief spellwright of the Winter Court, the truth of whose very power was long concealed by illusion and deep deception known to few even of the high arcane but the Winter Queen herself, hiding in plain sight as the Swordmistress who never drew her sword, to the title she would claim for the rest of her days. Yet it happens sometimes that even when a veil is drawn away from the greatest illusionist of an Age, the full truth of her nature does not stand wholly bare. So when asked to confirm Maelsa's tale, Rivanna answered, her dark and shadowy eyes on Maelsa herself, "We looked and read inscriptions, did we? Perhaps to your eyes, that was all. But I, your Wraith Lord, stood in the tomb of dwarven heroes who ever longed to protect their Underhome, and I had a way to fulfill their wish when their very bones lay under my hands. How think you I was able to make our illusions so convincing? On whom do you suppose our spells were cast, and how do you suppose I shaped them so even the Khazad of the Underhome accepted the aid that was offered them?" Her lips smiled - perhaps sweetly, perhaps cruelly, for which you would have seen depends upon your heart and not your eyes - and a faint gleam shone within her eyes and a ghostly glow appeared in each of her upturned palms as she said, "Have no fear of dwarven haunts who would watch over their tomb. I hold all their captive spirits in my hands."

(I've intentionally left the true nature of Rivanna's power ambiguous here. Of course the Svartalfar summons are all illusions, and she provides no extra bonus to undead that she doesn't for everything else, but I like the flavor - also reflected in the diplomatic lines I wrote for her, which I might post separately at some point - of the power she claims, of course without proof, over the undying spirits of the dead.)

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