Its been exceedingly quiet here recently, but please don’t think that’s because nothing is happening. I’m working my way through the Germanic Gods, the Aesir at the moment. And I seem to suffer an inability to do a blog properly when I’m writing. It’s a strange quirk but it does mean that “no news” very likely means “good news” in that I’m beavering away on Lost Heroes RPG.
In the mean time, if you’re looking for Fudgy RPG stuff, why not check out what they’re doing over at sinisterforces:
Creatures & Monsters – A to Z: A is for Alicanto
A creature from the folklore of Chile, the Alicanto is a large nocturnal bird found in mountainous regions that devours sliver and gold in various forms. …
Or if that doesn’t get you’re goat, you can check out another one of my websites: the Irish Roleplaying and Gaming Wiki. There is a stellar amount of activity right now, a grand effort to catalogue the last 30 years of gaming history in Ireland! I’m pretty impressive with the effort that they’ve gone into so far and I hope they can keep it up. 
I finally managed to do a symbol for the “Aesir: Warrior Gods of Asgard” pantheon.
Aesir (Norse) Gods Symbol
I also created this image as well:
Lost Heroes Old Satyr Warrior
You can read more about this particular one on my personal blog.
So I’ve been playing around with Inkscape during my brief break and I put together theses fancy diagrams of some of the Family Trees and organizational details of the pantheons of Gods in Lost Heroes. Now please be aware, only gods and characters mentioned in Lost Heroes are included in this diagrams and are not intended to be academically correct. I’ve also not included a Legend for the colours or icons used in any of these diagrams. I’m not sure they need it, but it’s pretty simply to add.
This first one is about the Tuatha De Danann, the old Gaelic Celtic Gods. There isn’t much to go on, even Wikipedia, my last resort, didn’t have much more either.
The Family Tree of the Tuatha De Danann (Celtic) Gods
This next one displays the slightly complex hierarchy of the Angelic Choirs and the Four Towers of the Seraphim and their nearness to their one God. Originally I wanted to do this in a three dimensionally format but as it turns out I didn’t have enough information to do it.
Organizational chart of the Angelic Choirs
Despite the chaotic nature of the Legions of Hell, the hierarchy of Satan and his Demons is pretty basic.
Organizational chart of Satan and his Demons in Hell
Now when you take the Family Tree of the Olympians, things get interesting. This is the largest and possible the most interesting one of the four here. Shows you how much Zeus slept around too.
The Family Tree of the Olympian (Greek) Gods
Seeing I’m about to start working on the Aesir (Norse) pathenon, I haven’t done nay work yet on their Family Tree. I don’t think it’ll be as complex as the Olympian, but it should be just as interesting.
Update: And I’ve finally got around to doing the Norse pantheon!
This short narrative is taken from the introduction to the “Aesir: The Warrior Gods of Asgard” chapter setting from v0.18. As I prepare to start working on this chapter for v0.19, I found this fiction striking enough to share.
The first shell had killed the other men. Tommy had disappeared in the flash but the others fell back, their skin burned black in an instant, limbs partially amputated. After that every sound was muffled as if I was underwater.
I grabbed my rifle and started to shoot back, roaring in angry and rage but my screams were a distant whisper. As I shot, someone came out of the smoke and fell instantly to my bullet. Ha ha! I tried to roar aloud.
The second shell hit right beside me. I was flung over the upturned the jeep. I couldn’t hear anything then. I must have been missing my right leg for I felt only numbness from it while my left leg was in shearing pain. I know pain. Pain is a reminder of life.
I found it hard to hold the rifle, my hands didn’t feel like they were mine anymore but I managed to point it in the general direction. Another of the fuckers appeared from the smoke with his rifle already raised but so was mine. Somehow I hit him too and he went down.
“It is okay noble warrior, your time is over.” It was a woman’s voice. I heard it clearly through the silence. She was an apparition but as she came towards me she became more solid. She wore bright armour and carried a sword by her waist. Her hair fell in two blond plaits from her cow-horned helmet. She was a vision of an angel in this bloodshed. Her voice filled me with release, “I offer you this choice…”
“Lo, the days of Ragnarok are among us. Loki is breaking his fetters and soon all the worlds will lie in the gapping mouth of the dreaded serpent Jormungand or the terrible wolf Fenrir, foul offspring of Loki!”
After my last post, I’m now going back quite a bit. These are some of my earliest drawings/sketches I did for Lost Heroes prior to the very last version, v0.18. There is some ideas contained here that aren’t going to be in v0.19.
As I mentioned I just finished writing up the section/chapter on Olympians for v0.19 and I decided to take a short break before starting the next section (whatever that’ll be).
Oddly I realised an unexpected theme in my choice of mythos I’ve developing for Lost Heroes. I’ve chosen four mythos over the additional two “core” pantheons of Gods. These are split into six pantheons of Gods (which can contain multiple “races” of Gods).
- The Celtic mythos is split into Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorii.
- The Angelic mythos is split into Angels and Demons.
- The Greek mythos is one big unhappy family of Olympians, Titans and monsters.
- Likewise I will not be splitting up the Norse mythos. There will only be the Aesir and kin.
Each of these mythos cover the whole range of mythology, from world creation, the sea, afterlife to love and war. However when I finished the Olympians, I realised that the Olympians could be associated, albeit tenously, to the classical element of Air: rational, intellect, sky, etc. Zeus the rule of the Olympians is the God of lightening and thunder. The Hall of Mount Olympus high on a lofty mountain.
The Norse Aesir have always felt, well, “earthy” to me. With Thor and his hammer, frost giants, dwarfs in mountains and Loki buried underground. Which would associate them with the classic element of Earth, sort of.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
The Angels are called the Children of Fire and, well, Hell is associated with fire and lava. They are active, can bring great might to their battle and flaming radiance.
Which puts the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomori in the Water element, which fits as the Fomori are foul sea demons who live under the sea and the Tuatha Dé Danann have a very fluid relationship with the human world that flows like waves across the world.
It’s not something I’m going to make much of in the writing of Lost Heroes as each mythos is more than the individual element. Nearly every mythos has a God associated with Sea and another with Death for example. But I found the concept striking when I realised it. If I ever get a professional artist to do a “cover” for Lost Heroes, this could be quite useful as a visual conceptual symbolism.
So last Friday I finished writing up the Olympian Pantheon of Gods section for the setting. And now I’m procrastinating about what to start next.
Splitting the writing of the setting from the design of the system really started to pay off going through the Olympians. In the previous version v0.18, I was designing the details of the system as an extension of describing the setting. The descriptions and the rules described the world. Sometimes I found myself floundering for how a particular God’s Chosen’s abilities might be, relying on what I had done beforend just modifying it a bit. But this time round, I found it easy to describe what abilities and powers a God’s Chosen should have, rather that detail it in the rules.
Anyway, the Olympian section completed I wasn’t ready to start on the last section of the Gods, the Aesir. It’s been slow going through the Olympian section revising and reviewing my notes on each God and expanding and solidifying the concepts. I wasn’t read to start that process with the Aesir immediately. But now I’m floundering again, I tempted to finish the rest of the setting and then come back to the Aesir. Which would not be a bad thing to do at all. But now there is a third option: the Day Of Fudge and I considered jumping much further ahead in my “plan” and taking one of the adventures I wanted to write up for this version and make it a Fudge based adventure that didn’t require a big knowledge of the setting and then making it available now so that people could use it in the Day of Fudge. I don’t know if there would be an interest in this, so here’s a poll and you can tell me what you think:
What should I do next?
- Just get on with it and finish the setting! (100%, 2 Votes)
- A free adventure would rock - do that! (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 2
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Following on from my last post, I gathered up some of my older artwork, for the previous version of Lost Heroes v0.18 (which I never made public). Most of these ones are character-oriented and I used a lot of manga art-books as references.
This is a brief extract from the forthcoming public release v0.19. I’ve been endeavouring to keep the imaginative writing out of this version (and this is an example of that effort). I’ve found that doing so has help me be clear in my definitions and refine my vision. However the idea of the Godless City evokes some great images and concepts in my mind, that it is nearly bursting out of me. It is one of the multitude of realms described in Lost Heroes:
“Just outside Hell, in the Lands of the Dead, is a great ancient city. It has never earned itself a real name to its citizens but it is generally referred to as the City of the Dead (though Angels refer to it as the Godless City). Many souls rejected from Heaven but who refuse to go to Hell come to reside in this city. It holds many of the great thinkers, artists and scientists of ancient times that wouldn’t have gotten into Heaven at the time of their death. The city is cold and grey, full of towering buildings and thin bridges. There is an abiding sense of loneliness and emptiness in the colourless giant arches yet the city is plainly active and trades with many other Islands in the Dreamlands. There are no churches or places of worship in this city. No religion is permitted within its domain. The city is considered outside of Hell and the influence of Demons, though many Demons use it as a neutral ground. Many Angels also use the city in the same vein but also as a place to discuss things away from the Heavens and other Angels. Many Fallen Angels, who have not become Demons, make a place for themselves in this city.”
I’m currently working with a budget of near zero for the production of Lost Heroes and in one of my efforts to do-it-myself, I’ve attempted to do the artwork myself. However, I’m not really good enough, though I’ve been improving my drawing skills specifically because of Lost Heroes. Of course for a game like Lost Heroes based on classic mythologies I should able to source stock artwork and photography pretty easily (I hope). But to get decent images is down the line for me, I have get the writing and game design done first, right?
(Click the “Read More…” link for image ladened post)
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