Hello and welcome to the formal thread for the War of Creation canon event proposal. The purpose of this thread is provide a dedicated avenue to document and discuss all aspects of the proposal, including its structure, its narrative significance, any secondary proposals, and the question of whether and how it should be implemented as a major canon event.
This original post will be continually updated with the latest draft of the proposal, incorporating any implemented additions, deletions, and revisions.
The basics: what’s missing right now?
To begin, a short discussion of the reason for the proposal and its basic premise. The Aurora canon is currently extremely short on foundational canon lore at the moment. Firstly, though there are several NPNs (Astjumreva, Jingowan, and Duruma), their characteristics, histories, and wider canon significance are too undeveloped at the moment to easily facilitate interaction with them. Secondly, there is no real basic timeline for Aurora. We are given dates like “anno 1101” in the map, but there is no existing lore concerning the wider history of Aurora; the event marking anno 0 is, for example, completely unknown, and we are missing clarity concerning things like whether anno 0 marks the beginning of the world or whether it is just the start of a new epoch. Thirdly, there are currently no major shared events or story points that roleplayers can engage with in order to help integrate their nations into the wider canon.
This proposal will make progress towards solving the second and third problems. In order to keep things at a manageable scope, the questions of the NPNs and of other significant events will be set aside for the moment.
“War of Creation” is a proposal for a major, canon-wide, shared historical event, similar to the Great War in Pacifica. The centerpiece of the proposal is the proposed event itself; however, it also incorporates several smaller supporting changes to help anchor the event in Aurora’s canon and establish its significance. The core goal of “War of Creation” is provide a foundational point through which roleplayers can integrate the backstory of important IC characters and story points such as national deities and powerful magical artifacts into the wider canon lore.
The idea: what are the details?
Point number one is a basic timeline for Aurora. This timeline is being proposed in order to give a rough idea of several important facts such as how long the War of Creation lasted and how long ago it was. In order to retain sufficient temporal space for history and leave the door open for more future canon events, I have opted for what I will refer to as the “two-event timeline”: that is, the War of Creation will be set before anno 0 and will thus keep that time period open for another story. Below is the proposed timeline with the War of Creation itself marked. All era lengths other than the Current Era are flexible.
- Before creation (undefined length)
- “First Days” (around 50-100 years long)
- War of Creation (around 100-200 years long) ← main event here
- “Ancient era” (around 1500-2500 years long; ends at anno 0)
- “Current years” (anno 0 to present)
Point number two is the implementation of the event listed as era three on the timeline: the War of Creation. This proposed event will take the form of cataclysmic, large-scale divine conflict between many or most of the deities, great spirits, and other powerful beings who created Terra Aurora or were otherwise present for its creation and begin as a conflict over control of the shape of the material world. It is proposed that the conflict be primarily comprised of three main sides based on domains of the world, which are enumerated below:
- Beings associated with the earth, ground, and/or the terrestrial and infernal realms.
- Beings associated with water, the oceans, and/or the abyssal depths.
- Beings associated with air, the sky, and/or the celestial realms.
It is further proposed that the above enumerated conflict end in a rough stalemate where the surviving participants agree to largely remain in the realms outside of Terra Aurora and only sparingly travel to the material world.
The benefits: why implement this?
Below is a list of core benefits that I believe would be realized by a successful implementation of the “War of Creation” proposal:
- The story points of the proposal as first written would provide a believable IC reason for why deities refrain from regularly residing on Terra Aurora or intervening directly in events there. This IC reason would serve as a story-based counterpart to the customary OOC prohibition on having deities or other ultra-powerful beings feature too heavily in roleplays.
- The War of Creation event itself would provide a ready-made avenue where roleplayers can have ultra-high-power-scale beings like deities, angelic/supernatural armies, and ancient mortal champions feature as major or main characters in stories, and where they can show great events like battles between deities. This is especially important to provide due to the aforementioned no-deities-regularly-running-around-on-Aurora rule.
- The War of Creation would provide an excellent origin or background story point for a great variety of things such as powerful magic artifacts and ancient monsters.
- The War of Creation would be a great starting point for story hooks like inter-deity disputes and long-lost magic artifacts that can then form a basis for other stories by roleplayers.
The final list
Below is a quick reference guide to all canon lore changes and additions proposed in the current draft of “War of Creation”. This is what will be updated as the draft is revised over time.
Show the list
- Timeline
- Implement a basic canon timeline composed of the following sequential, overarching eras and their durations: the First Days (71 years long), the War of Creation (179 years long), the ancient era (2386 years long, ends at anno 0), and the current years (anno 0 to present).
- War of Creation Event
- A foundational canon event called the War of Creation, consisting of a major inter-deity conflict occurring in the “War of Creation” era shown under the point 1 (timeline), will be implemented. This canon event will be treated similarly to the Great War of Pacifica in that it will be a shared overarching story made open for good-faith, lore-compatible participation by any roleplayer in Aurora who wishes to interact with it.
- The War of Creation will canonically involve many or most deities and other powerful beings present at the time as well as most of the mortals created by them (this shall not mandate participation by any roleplayer’s deities). Most of these participants will be organized into three primary sides representing 1) the terrestrial and infernal, 2) the aquatic and abyssal, and 3) the aerial and celestial.
- The War of Creation will end in a stalemate. As part of the settlement ending the conflict, the surviving deific participants agree to return to their various realms outside of the material world and refrain from making more than occasional direct interventions in mortal events.
Closing section
That’s the end of the proposal as it was drafted by me; I leave it open to feedback concerning whether it should be implemented and concerning any suggestions that people would like to make in the interest of improving it. It is my hope that this event, once properly hammered out and refined, will begin to fix several of the core problems which have hampered Aurora’s growth and help set it on the path to eventually becoming a lively, active TSPRP canon like Pacifica and A1-0.