Official Update #16
Greeting Backers!
We hope you are all enjoying your time off school and work, should you be of course. Apologies for not posting this update last night. Our area was hit with a freak storm which knocked out our power till the early hours of the morning.
For this update, we wanted to share some more of E.o.E.'s lore. Below you will find details on the "Indar" which are powerful creatures that live in the World of Rivera. Each Indar has their own corresponding month of the year in which they are in control. We hope you enjoy reading about them and please let us know which of them appeal to you! There are 12 in all, so we plan to release a little information on a few over the next couple updates.
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Rivera has a winter, spring, summer, and fall. The legend goes that when Reia created Rivera, she created twelve caretakers of the world. These were the Indar. In the Time of Harmony, the Indar shepherded the world through its seasons. When mankind brought the world to the brink of destruction, Reia created the Great Eirin which granted man the power to save themselves. Unfortunately, man misused the power and the world fell into the Dark Period. The Great Eirin were sealed away from man, save for the Eternal Maiden. Four of the Indar were bound to the Great Eirin, one for each element to test and guide an Eternal Maiden through the pilgrimage she undertakes to gain their power.
The ties that bound the other Indar to their cycle broke, and they wandered the world causing added mayhem and destruction. Worst of these was The Stygian, the Lord of Death who ruled over winter. As the legend goes, he remained unconquered until the Eternal Maiden Gwendoline the Good finally subjugated him in 0 E.O.E. at the cost of her own life.
It is said that the four Great Magi created a kind of magic user called SUMMONER, whose task would be to regain control over the Indar and bind them to their original tasks. However, the powers of the Great Magi were sealed away before they had a chance to give summoners total mastery and ability to contain the Indar. Through the years, some would be born with the power to bind and control the Indar. It made little difference. Destroying them offered no hope, either. Any time the Indar were defeated, their bodies would dissipate, but in time they would reform, emerge, and continue to wreck havoc.
As the Dark Period raged on, an Eternal Maiden named Hexia created the oubliette - a prison which once again bound the Indar to the cycle of the planet and kept them locked into it. Twelve oubliettes were created and twelve of them were ultimately filled. It is not known what role the Indar have in the cycle of the world now or really ever did. How much of this is legend? How much of this is fact? The chaos and the tragedy of the Dark Period is such that none can say. All that is known is that the Indar do exist, as do the oubliettes which contain them.
The spirits of the lesser Indar can be evoked by any born with the summoner power. The others have to be found and their spirits tapped into directly, a process often times fatal to the summoner. This tends to keep those greater Indar contained and left alone. These summons are called aspects - for they are not truly the Indar, but rather reflections of the actual beings. Make no mistake: the aspects themselves are still perilously potent in power. Summoning is a dangerous art and too many calamities in this era can be laid at the feet of summoners who used their power for ill or lost control of their aspects. The most powerful Indar and the very worst, such as The Stygian, were hidden away and none living today know where their oubliettes are to be found. This is a good thing, and it is a fool or madman who says otherwise.
Arkady the Magnificent, first Emperor of the Basque Empire, established a calendar based on the cycle of legend. It is the standard for the world, even in Fornal (at least so far as those from outside that untamed land can tell).
Since we are still in the fall, here are a list of the fall months in Rivera and a description of their affiliated Indar:
FALL MONTHS
Erditu
Kalabaza
Segalari
FALL INDAR
Name: Erditu
Power: Earth Magic
One of the Three Sisters of Harvest, she is oriented toward the right and wields a pitchfork. Erditu’s call is the battle cry to all to begin preparing for the harvest and making preparations for winter. Destruction and fighting at such a delicate time is abhorrent to her, as she firmly believes all will must be bent toward survival.
Name: Kalabaza
Power: Fire Magic
The Artist Who Paints With Fire, Kalabaza appears as a painter waving a brush in the air. The brush has a head of flame and trails fire behind it. It is said that originally, when the time came, the land simply turned over toward winter without any sign. Kalabaza’s heart wept at such loss, and dedicated himself to creating beauty and grace for the final moments of nature’s cycle. It is Kalabaza who paints the leaves and landscapes different colors, using a painter’s brush made of flame to create different colors and effects.
Name: Segalari
Power: Air Magic
Segalari appears as a black cloaked hooded figure, though no limbs or extremities can be seen. Segalari is the end of things, and was once considered a pair with The Stygian. The myth goes that Segalari walks the land, breathing in all life (the last of fall), and then leaving behind him a trail of decay (the first days of winter). Uncorrupted like The Stygian, Segalari is neither good nor evil. He is simply an indifferent force of nature doing what he must.
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Attached is another screen shot showing some town and continued forest tileset. Let us know how it looks and give us any suggestions or feedback you may have. Here (http://imageshack.us/a/img854/745/eoetowntest.png) is an external link to the same screen shot just incase the way that the Kickstarter website displays pictures looks strange to anyone!
Edit: Kickstarter DOES make this screenshot look bad, so please refer to the external link posted above to view it unaltered.
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Everything is progressing well with development and we are still on schedule for all our internal "Due Dates." We really do appreciate how patient you have all been. We are really busy everyday working on E.o.E. that whole months seem to slip by without talking to you all!
That's it for this update. Look for our next update sometime before the end of this year. We will try very hard to have more things to show you!
