#fasagames

This is a pitch I gave to a fellow gamer on an RPG that is very near and dear to my heart: Earthdawn. I have some pretty good memories of this game and its outrageously well-developed setting. The actual playing of the game is a series of 'eh' memories, but the game itself is easily in my top three of all time. Honestly, with some revision, the pitch'd be better, but what isn't? It was off-the-cuff and only showed my how much of this damned game I've memorized over the years.  But I love it so. And I've brought more people into the fold! Anyway. There is a place Named Barsaive. Old and steeped in a rich history reaching back over a thousand years. It was a much more vibrant, lively place full of the light of wisdom and towering kingdoms. There was an empire, Thera, that ruled these lands and its people after years of growing need for magical resources. But that was before the Scourge, a time when unearthly, life-hungry Horrors flooded the world from the darkest parts of the Netherworlds and for four hundred years, the world was ravaged and changed as its inhabitants cowered below the earth in magically sealed kaers which protected some, but became the tombs of many as the Horrors were more cunning, more numerous, and more tenacious than anyone had ever predicted.  Magic permeates the whole world of Earthdawn. It literally defines you as a person. Everything has a Pattern. Magical items, your class (called, in and out of game, a Discipline), your Name, all is imbued with magic and your own ability to weave threads. In this world, magical items can grow out of your very own items you carry. Weaving a thread to an item--personal or an artifact of Legend--grows its own Legend or furthers an original one. The whole game is built around your own personal Legend. It grows as you grow and your name goes far and wide across towns, cities, Barsaive, perhaps even the wider, unknown world.  The Namegivers of the world (dwarfs, the most populous and forward thinking; orks, former chattel slaves and reclaiming their lost nation of Cara Fahd; humans, diverse and handy as ever; t'skrang, the flamboyant lizard folk of the Serpent River; obsidimen, the strange and wondrous elemental beings; elves, proud, old, and shattered as a cultural whole; trolls, noted raiders and philosophers; and windlings; two foot tall winged humanoids who find constant joy in all things) sheltered in their kaers and citadels, waiting out the horrors and Horrors for 400 years. The Theran Empire, the literal center of magical might in the world had given them the means to know when the world would become safe again--a simple spell, a ball of True earth suspended over True water, slowly descending as the magical flush of the world faded. Less magic meant less ability for the Horrors to sustain themselves in the world and thus driving them out, when suddenly, 400 years into what was thought to be 500 years of Scourge, the ball in each kaer had suddenly stopped. Hovering an inch over the water, the world's magical field stabilized.  People, cautious at first, broke into a fiercely changed and wounded world. Horrors still skittered about, feeding on the pain and suffering of Namegivers, but this was a world to be retaken. The regain the glories lost and to see the sun again. So, fast forward a century to the present day. War has settled on the land as Thera has come to reclaim its province and the mighty dwarven kingdom of Throal has rallied the province against their tyranny. There are kaers to rediscover; Horrors remain in the ruins of the world, waiting to feed, for souls to take; great national intrigues; a whole world to rediscover in Barsaive alone. What shall your Legend say of you in the centuries to come?