Kandric world discussion

[Kyle Aarons]

[Special Note: The new website is now live. As a result the links throughout this thread are invalid except for the latest posting to the thread. All of Kyle's story can now be found at Kyle Aarons]

This thread is here to give readers a chance to ask questions. I will not answer things that are yet to be revealed but will answer history questions, economic questions, guild ranking questions, social caste questions, spell questions, weapon questions, guild power and authority questions, kingdom questions, race questions.... yeah that should give some ideas: I will even answer background questions on most characters. If something comes up that I plan to be part of the story I will simply tell the person he or she has to hold ooff...

[roger0002]

Just a suggestion, but how about a little insight as to the geography of the realms. For me, at least, it would help to understand some of the locations a little better.

[Kyle Aarons]

hope this will help you on that some

[Zergrinch]

One thing that bugs me about the world's age-equivalency system.  As written, it appears to be based solely on physical development, as your story states elves age about 4x slower than humans, and half-elves somewhere in between.  

 

Isn't it then a tad unfair for everyone's prowess (not just physical) to be gauged on age-equivalency?  For example, that comes up when some characters (I forgot which ones specifically) were discussing the ascension to Master-level proficiency having an age limit.  My reasoning goes like this:

 

Let's assume a ten-year old human and his elf equivalent (40 years old) start to be trained by the same teacher.  They are trained until they are the equivalent of age 12.  The human had two years to practice, but the elf had eight.  The human will never be able to surpass the elf if they are evaluated when they're at an age-equivalent level.

[Kyle Aarons]

Zergrinch

a whole lot of it does have to do with physicdevelopment to be sure. However, it also has a great deal to do with the way magic interacts with the various races. One of the things I tried to point out was when Kaylaria talking about the fact her children had seen and herd much and while they looked you they had lived into the swamps and had seen much more than an average swamp dwelling kid of the same age equivalent. The races who live longer tend to have two things the sorter living ones don't wisdom and patience this also means they tend to have an innate built in bias to slow down and less of a drive to learn quickly. Also, while the races such as Aplhar, GarmGram, Dwarf, and Elf live longer and have more magic, it takes longer for the magic to manifest. The problem with Kayla Ria's kids is they didn't have the chance to grow up slow. They were all pretty much thrust into fending for tthemselves so the innate disre to take things slower and gain wisdom along with gaining in magical prowess of their fields and subfields was crushed by survival needs. And like I pointed out ovey early with KKendrick, hands on dangerous practice increases skill levels way faster then that of book learning. Most Elven boys would be content to pump a billow for the first few years while ththeir human counterparts started beating on the metal and started to make things for instance. Most Elvin boys would look and consider the human boys foolish because they will make way more mistakes but they will learn faster. To most Elves this is the fool's way. Kendrick, Aster, Conner, and the others didn't really get that chance to sit back and let time teach however.

[Ricky]

An interesting concept Kyle. So it's a mindset as well as adaptive age.

I look forward to the next installment.

[roger0002]

Thanks for the maps. They actually help a lot

[Tyler]

Great story .. and thanks for the maps

[Kyle Aarons]

Glad the maps helped, Roger & Tyler

 

Ricky And anyone else who really wants to get down to the nuts and bolts of age equivalency ratings:

 

age equivalency is something I spent a long time figuring out before I could even start writing Kandric and it is a whole host of things so it is more than just a mindset. I built an RPG based on this world and in the game concept the longer it takes for a person to age the more experience he/she needs to advance within the echelon framework I set up. In simple terms a person with a longer lifespan needs more magic to fill his or her pool  of magic than someone with a shorter lifespan.

 

Wen I first started trying to conceptualize this concept I came up with a way my brain can fully understand it so I will try to explain it here in the same way.

 

Think of each race as having an inner pool to start with. Everyone starts with some magic at the bottom of his or her pool. The more magic a person starts with the more innately talented they are. However, unless someone trains to utilize this magical pool the pool starts to dry out and is totally empty by the time a person is the human age equivalent of 25, but between the ages of 16 to 25 the base talent line dwindles so for every 2 years past the equivalent age of 16 the pool forever looses 25% of the being's base line talent. This doesn't mean the being cannot start to train and work to start filling the pool up, but it means he or she starts with less magic than he or she would have otherwise had available at a younger age. By the time a being reaches 25 the pool is empty and cannot be filled at all this person is now totally mundane.

 

Once fully trained, however, the being can then work to pour more magic into his or her pool. This is done though book learning, apprenticeship, or using the magic within the pool in the real lto gain needed understating of the magic to pour more in and thus advance. In simple terms the pool is getting fuller though learning.

 

Now, with this in mind, let me go back to races.

 

I want you to think of the Echelons as an upside-down stepped pyramid (look up Djoser if you do not know what a step pyramid is) each step needs to be filled before a being has enough knowledge and ability to advance to the next Echelon. However, on the path to the next Echelon, there is some advancement in abilities and magic, this is the steps within the Echelon.

 

The longer living a race is the bigger their pool is to start out with. The longer living races tend to have more magic inside them from the start. For instance a Garm or Alphar spell caster starts out with considerably more casting force than a Human. In simple terms their upside-down pyramid is bigger to start with. To understand this think of it in terms of filling up a container. If you have ten square containers each with a different sized bottom, but each starts with a single centimeter of water at the bottom, the one with the biggest bottom will have more water, but will also take more water to fill it up. At the point the container is full, it is time to "graduate" to filling up the next container which is even larger than the first one. In this case it is magic, not water, but the same thing applies.

 

And this is where the age equivalency ratings come into play in advancement as well as in physical development: Because the longer living races have a bigger upside-down pyramid to start so it takes longer to fill it up to get to the next stage of advancement. While the average Human can get fully trained in five years, an Elf needs longer and an Alphar needs much longer. It is because of this the vast majority of longer living beings take their time and learn at a pace more in line with how fast they physically age.

 

I am going to put this in game terms so you can all see numbers:

 

 human who is in training gains experience as he or she works under his or her Teacher and slowly gains extra magic to fill his or her pool until the Training Echelon is totally full at 11 points of experience. When the 12th point is gained he or she breaks out of Training Echelon to become Primary Echelon, or fully trained (at which point he or she is no longer considered a child as well) however along the way, ever 2 experience points, the apprentice gains a step within the Training Echelon as the magic within his or her pool increases.

 

Now lets take a look at an Alphar.

 

An Alphar who is in training also gains experience as he or she works under a teacher and gains extra magic to fill up his or her pool until the Training Echelon pool is filled, but they have a bigger pool and it takes longer to fill so they need 21 experience points to totally fill up their Training Echelon pool until at 22 points it overflows and they become primary Echelon. While this looks like it would only take twice as long, it actually takes longer because the base line mindset gets in the way.

 

Think of a Metal Worker Subfield Apprentice at a forge: Those who are around other races see a human progressing faster and my be jealous at first but then they see all the mistakes, all the rushed work, and see their counterpart growing up so much faster and they roll their eyes and shrug. They have plenty of time to learn and the Human's work is so rushed and shoddy. Wouldn't it be better to spend an extra couple of years pumping the billows and lean how not to have the hot sparks burn your arms by watching those older and stronger? Besides, pumping the billows builds strong arms needed for the harder work to come. The Alphar's slow aging also means slow body development, so until he or she is old and strong enough to pick up a forge hammer and really work on the metal , what is the rush?

 

This is further reinforced if they are only around their own kind. Life doesn't need to be rushed. There is time to do perfect work. For does it really matter if a suit of armor takes an extra couple of months to make when one will be wearing it for decades if not longer? Why make it flawed. You will be wearing it for a century or two if you really do it right and take care of it. So make it comfortable, pretty, and functional all at the same time, for protecting one's self is not the only thing armor is good for.

 

On the other hand, there is nothing really stopping an Elf, Dwarf, Garm, or Alphar from jumping in and taking the hot sparks to the arms and learning from mistakes. It still takes more life expericne to fill up the pool to break into the next Echelon, but they can do it quickly. It would normally be frowned upon in communities of their own kinds and could easily end up as being seen as "trouble makers" and find themselves without a teacher. Conner, Aster, Kandric, and many of the others in the Kandric Saga didn't have people telling them they needed to slow down and learn some wisdowm. They had people pushing them while they also pushed themselves.

 

Also and equally important, when one defeats someone in the Kandric world, even if they only subdue and not kill, they "earn" a gifting of magic from the defeated being in the form of a magical and knowledge grant. This normally does not mean the winning person knows something about the defeated person, but gains some "insights" into what that person knows about magic and magical force. So,  when someone who is lower than his or her enemy in Echelon and ability takes down someone more powerful the "gifting" gives considerably more magic to fill the pool while if they defeat someone below their ability, there is very little to be learned so the gifting is much smaller. Also a very high power defeated being can gift part of himself to the winner as a way of showing respect and by making the person stronger it makes it look like the fight was more even than it really was. This saves some face since the person instantly becomes a much more fierce opponent and thus is seen by others as being deserving of credit as well. However, this is not something commonly known since it is exceedingly rare for it to happen. Instead many see such gifting's as a "bow of deference" to a superior being which keeps the mystique of the defeated powerful foe intact.

 

Thus someone who walks around picking on Mundanes all day long will gain almost no experience while a person who manages to take on and defeat a demon is likely to get a couple of really big waves of knowledge which causes faster advancement as the inner pool gets buckets of magic dumped into it.

 

Besting a Dragon, especially a Great Dragon... well there is a sure fire way to get a gushing of magical understanding and experience beyond the reach of all but a very very few and will also get the given gifting from the Dragon because, let's face it, no Dragon wants to be seen as being bested by some scrub. For even in death Dragons have a hell of an ego.

 

Now does this make more sense or did I just totally muddy the pool

[wjd98382]

Thanks for clarifying how the whole age equivalency thing works.

Will

[Zergrinch]

That actually explains a lot of things. When I was in the middle of chapter 6 or so, I was thinking that this world can actually support an RPG. Might even be commercialized in the mainstream if some more morally objectionable elements (such as slavery, view of children as chattel, and depictions of underage sex) are sanitized. (Note: I don't mind these elements, but the mainstream people likely would.)

Much of my experience with role playing games are with scripted jRPGs like Final Fantasy. The way magical leveling works here seems to be similar to Final Fantasy 2... the more you do something, the better you grow at it.

The addition of a fully fledged race and job class system, complete with limited multi-classing (the sub fields), the presence of halflings, and the 24 hour magic refresh is reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons. I only played 4e via play by post but the similarities are still there.  The similarity was the reason why I decided to roleplay as a changeling in your Ask a Character topic though obviously they don't quite exist (yet???) in your world.  D&D races that appeared in Kandric incude: Dragons, Humans, Elves, Half-Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs, Half-Orcs, Halflings, Dragonborn (aka Dragonling), Drow, High Elf/Eladrin (aka Alphar), Gnolls, Hobgoblins, and Kobolds.  (I have yet to see Illorcs and Garm anywhere else.)

Now that I think of it, the echelons of Teaching, Master and Legendary corresponds nicely to D&D's Heroic, Paragon and Legendary tiers of play.

So I guess Kandric is a hybrid of sorts. Generally from western RPGs except magic works in terms of MP which you call magical force.  Instead of having X uses of spell Y as is tradition, you have a pool of force to cast whatever you want, with higher-tier spells taking more force. As far as I know in D&D, magic users can cast certain spells a reason amount of times, except at-wills ("autospells") like Magic Missile.

Three comments about the maps:
1. Impressive that you actually generated the world map. Did you share this with Lord Roland who is writing the tie in?
2. There are two references to Odin. Lord of the mythlings I guess!
3. So the Silver Spine Mountains go up to a plateau, and then there are even more mountains up north? That's some plate tectonics there (or a magician did it!)

[Kyle Aarons]

Zergrinch,

Roland has the maps and a whole lot more about the Kandic world

Odin is not and never was a Mythling Instead he was one of the first non-Mythlings to found a kingdom and was a constant thorn in the side of the gods/mythlings/and other major powers. He caused so much problems, even after wiping out his kingdom at least twice he brought together an army and killed untold numbers of Mythling. Some Ruinseekers even say it was Odin who lead the final assault on the Mythling Capitol and caused to to fall. One thing is certain, his name stopped appearing in history at the end of the Mythling wars.

The Deathland Mountain Range.... well this is a place that existed on maps before the Mythling Wars and it was a place of fear even back then. Rumor, and this is only rumor, the Range was created when the gods the preceeding the ones the Mythlings and Mythlets orverthrew took over fromthe gods before them. The Dethland Mountain Range as Rumore has it is where those vetremely acient gods fought thier last battles and perished. Some think they were created at that time, others think they were already there. Now they are home to both the Garm and the Alphar and even those races consider the areas in their own lands too dangerous to go into.

It is one of the places where after all this time there has only been one pass found through them, one, and it is not safe for even the strongest. The Being credited with finding the pass is none other than Odin by the way

[Zergrinch]

Hmmm, why exactly would crossing the Deathland Pass be unsafe even for the strongest? Is it due to dangerous fauna? Inhospitable terrain? Weather conditions? Or is there some kind of nasty magical residue that permeates the place?  (Or gasp!  All of the above?!)

I have a few more world building questions, if you don't mind

1. Does the world have an official name that the inhabitants use? For example, Gaia, Earth...

2. Does the main continent have a name, e.g. Odinland?

3. How much of the world is inhabited by sapient beings?

4. Does the dominion of the King (his name evades me right now) extend throughout the continent? Does the kingdom have an official name? (I guess I'm kind of asking for a political map, hehe)

5. Not geographically related, but how do gods and goddesses work? Since they can be killed off, and seem to be every bit as capricious as a mortal, what distinguishes them from a really powerful omega-level legendary echelon mortal?

[Kyle Aarons]

Deathland Mountain Range: A combination of many, many areas Focal and Dispersment points, Flora, Fauna, Weather, Terrain, and worst of all random special rifts are known to exist here

 

1) the world itself does not have a "common name" most people simply refer to the kingdom or barony they are in.

 

2) the "main" continent is most often refered to as Kronar, the old kingdom that encompassed the entire continent

 

3) if you mean the base meaning of "sapient" meaning wise, pretty much all of it. If you are meaning "Sapient" as meaning human then 65% give or take, but there are pockets all over the place

 

4) Eagleonia is the official name of the kingdom, although the city of Eagleonia is not within the kingdom...

 

5) the gods have full access to the outer realms and they gained enough extra power by being worshiping them to push their abilities to become immortal and pass back some of their powers back to their priests and priestesses though the gods spirits. (which in turn gets them more worshipers...)

[Ricky]

Just out of curiosity, did you create a set of rules for your new world in it's creation?

As an example, Tears Of The Dragon Boy, one of my stories, Time was to only be measured in moons or seasons. No electricity but common animal driven technology. The world had two syncroniss moons that would travel our equivalentcy of n and South and one sun east to west perceived. But was designated as sun-path or moon-path. I had other rules that pertained to name sounds and the intent of the characters but unrelated to the world.

Did you create a set of rules for your world?

[Kyle Aarons]

Ricky,

 

I have rules on top of rules on top of rules.

 

What type of rules are you wanting to know about?

 

Magic, Advancement, Guilds, Time, History, Races, Social Castes, Trade? Kind of hard to answer what you are going after without some kind of direction.

[Ricky]

I think I was looking for environmental, generic rules of the basic world that defines the parameters of the world before you even consider characters or storyline. Tell me the rules you set for the rock that seperates it from our own world.

[Kyle Aarons]

Ricky:

 

First off I went digging through mythos of various cultures and combined what I liked about each. Therefore the gods have traits of several different cultures. I then did the same thing with Fields and Subfields. I have extensive rules on all the Fields and Subfields along with advancement in each and what powers/abilities are available at what level of training (echelons). I then moved on to races, and there are lots of them. I put together percentage within each race who are trainable (meaning they start with a base talent of at least 65 out of 100) I set up character sheets and broke down stats and how they would work in the world. I then developed a baseline magic for Fields, Subfields, and races.

 

Once I had the character creation and how they fit into the world established, I moved on to the world itself. How does time work (13 lunar cycles is a year) what are the measurements of the world. How educated is the world as a whole, who is in charge and why, and how does magic define the world.

 

with this information I established the gods and the demons where they came from and how they interact with those who worship them

 

It was until I had all this did I start to map out the world and place key points in it. As I did this, I built the history that made all this possible.

 

Finally I focused on what I was going to write.

 

Does that answer your question?

[Zergrinch]

Holy carp. No wonder it takes so long to write a chapter. You have essentially created a mmorpg and are writing out rpg scenarios. Please tell me you don't do this for all your stories!

[Kyle Aarons]

I could let others answer that for me, but basically, yes. Brile and O'Connell have that degree of would building and so does Defenders and Re-E. Destiny is to a lesser degree, and I still think the main reason I was brought into the RU was because I like to build worlds and my services were desired primarily for that reason. The world with the least detail of all my stories is AQ, and I still have world maps, backgrounds, psionic power charts, wormhole tech specs, and that sort of thing

[Ricky]

That answer it perfectly thank you. And WOW. That is just incredible. No wonder it is SO good.

[roger0002]

It is also why we readers tend to spend a lot of time patiently waiting for the next installment on a lot of our favorite stories here. 

[Zergrinch]

Would it be to much of a spoiler to ask to see character sheets, say, for Kandric and Aster (1) when the saga started, and (2) the latest one?

[roger0002]

I'd be interested in that myself.

[Kyle Aarons]

I used up my quota for putting in docs but let me see what I can do: real pain since I can't copy and paste.