Saturday, April 1, 2023

Hwaet! (5e setting, classes)

Source: I made it up





















    Ha! Moron. I just said this was 5e to get the bots to click on this post and make my view count go up so I can feel happiness. Let's take a look at the actual title now:





Hwaet! (Unfinished World Rock Opera)


    Well folks, you're in for a real treat this year. I've spared no expense. This year's spring project is even more absurd and over-the-top than can I usually swing. With (a lot of) help from a $1,800,000 endowment from the Canada Cultural Investment Fund, and all my genuine real-life in-person friends in the U.S. music industry, I've created a complete 10-hour long rock opera portraying the rise, agonized existence and fall of the Unfinished World, the setting which has been my major focus these past few GLOG-y years.

    I'd like to thank my family, the Academy, and you, the reader. I'd like to, but you didn't help. At best you have clicked on my post. You can listen to the whole thing on Spotify, but to be safe I'm also sharing links to each individual song in this post. Kind of like, you know, album liner notes or something. Like in a rock opera. Do you know how much of the plot of The Protomen is present in the lyrics and music of The Protomen? Or should I say; how little?





Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth



    It's an old story, one that everyone knows, so I won't bother retelling it in depth. Magolg created Ka and bade him to build the world but make no intelligent things; Ka disobeyed and created the Heroine; Magolg punished them; Heroine killed Magolg in His sleep. It's a long way down from here.
  1. A Noble Custom
  2. Ka Worked as he Willed
  3. In the Branches of a Mighty Tree

Intermission: Making Masks


Kritya Yuga, the Age of Accomplishment


    With the departure of their parents, the Five Brothers (Alden, Owain, Timotheos and the immortal Saul), mysterious beings who shaped the rivers, sculpted the mountains, and peopled the world with strange creatures that walked upright and killed each other with swords, were now left alone to make the world.
  1. 3 of Wands
  2. The Wild Parts of the World Began to Fill with Towns and Roads
  3. 4 of Cups
  4. 10 of Swords

Intermission: The Cataclysm


Preta Yuga, the Age of Hunger


     The Brothers taught metallurgy, music and art, the calendar, and ruled as fair as G_ds can for Ages. Then they left. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
  1. Worlds Not Built to Last 
  2. The One Who is Far Below
  3. Who Leaves the Path of Wisdom Dwells in the Congregation of the Dead Forever 
  4. Friends in High Places
  5. Death is Making Us His Food

Intermission: Orphan


Kali Yuga, the Age of Strife


    Aeshe, the Great Sage, the Lord of Mercy, the Last Prophet and the First of the Latter-Day Servants of G_d, the Model of Excellent Conduct and Merit, was born in the prison-orphanage of Karn. As a child growing up in a time of chaos and collapse Aeshe (pbuh) saw the worst mankind had to offer. As an adult he preached defiance to the Secular orders of the time. For his troubles, he was tortured by the old Empire; they gelded him and flayed him, they cut off his fingers past the first knuckle, and severed the tendons of his limbs; they pulled out his teeth, burned out his eyes, and slit his tongue so he would not again preach their sins.
    After all this, as a last act of cruelty, the Powers That Be bolted a steel mask on Aeshe's face such that he could move his head or open his mouth, and abandoned him in the gutters. There he was rescued by Jovan, a tavernkeep, who tended to his wounds. Jovan was Aeshe's voice for the fifty days it took for the Great Sage to starve to death.
    Of course, Aeshe's was not the only important tale of the 4th Age.
  1. The Lord of Mercy
  2. Unknown, Thankfully
  3. Jovan, a Common Man
  4. The Greatest Sinner of the Age
  5. Nosam, a Gladiator
  6. The Demagogue Speaks 
  7. Nosam's Cabal Slays the High Priest Johnathan with Burning Knives
  8. Riding North, Alone
  9. Information Deliberately Concealed
  10. Technically, Slavery
  11. Sources Differ
  12. By Process of Elimination 
  13. He Burned All His Commentaries and Notes, and Left
  14. Virginia, a Sage
  15. Shaped Like a Friend
  16. Marshal, a Prophetess (?)
  17. New Roads Through Res Nullius 

Intermission: Grail Quest


Maitreya Yuga, the Age of the Mahdi (the Ready One, the Rightly-Guided, the Good Friend, the Master)


    The Green Heretics have a lot of prophecies about him (?), they're waiting for a lot of signs. They'll know it when they see it. When the Messiah comes, you won't have much time left. Very few will escape.
  1. Born Under a Bad Sign
  2. What Thoughts Play Behind Those Eerie, Inhuman Eyes?
  3. Favor of All Five
  4. Shining Eyes
  5. Rejected by Secular Authority
  6. His (?) Last Action Depicted is to Dig a Very Large Hole 
  7. Drawing the Sword from the Stone
  8. The World Liquefies 
  9. Two of Every Kind of Animal 

Intermission: Rope and Old Lumber City


Samudrolanghana Yuga, the Age of Sail


    This Age defies easy description. How do you describe a world with no world? The last loyal hound will be abandoned in Hell, or so the prophets say, and the black water will swallow up the sun, and the great egg of the universe will shatter, and we will have all gotten what we had coming.
  1. Without the Continuity of Thought, Without the Passing of Time, No Breath can be Taken