: Out of Character :

In the Beginning
or, Kalos Mer’s first World-building Project
In September of 2000, I was a freshman in high school. I’d been playing around in second edition AD&D for five or six years (getting my start after reading about it in a Fox Trot comic strip and thinking it sounded cool), and on the advice of a fellow gamer I had finally updated to the 3rd Edition game rules. (At this point, I still scoffed at the d20 resolution mechanic as being too simple-minded, but I liked the loosening of racially based class restrictions and the new system for multiclassing.)
Around this time, I also began to want to run a campaign of my own. I’d done so before in the past, but they were usually short affairs (a middle-schooler has a short attention span) and usually set in Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, rather than my own settings. This time around, I wanted to build my own setting, using the new ruleset I’d just acquired.
Algorlund took me only about a month to build, and half of that was spent on the gods. Previously having played mostly in FR, I was a huge-pantheon enthusiast. I no longer have the complete list of gods, but the human pantheon had over 100 deities and most demi-human pantheons had upwards of 20. I was *proud* of this. (About 40 of these deities had actually been developed into something detailed, the rest were lists of names, portfolios, symbols, domains and favored weapons.) Some deities were lifted entirely from other souces. (Tharizdun, for instance, was imported from Greyhawk, though I recharacterized him a little bit.)
Designing the nations and drawing a map took me one weekend. The map too is lost, but as I recall it had four big continents arranged roughly in a circle around a central island. Most of the action took place on the north continent, which was standard medieval european. The west continent was marked with a big question-mark, the south continent had some asian influences but also some more european, and the east continent was a bunch of genie-run kingdoms roughly divided in four parts along elemental lines. The central island was dominated by dragons.
The history of the world took me one day to sketch out, though a year later I went back and did some revisions. Again, I no longer have the details but I know that, for instance, I imported Netheril almost unmodified from Forgotten Realms, and several other souces gave me additional ‘inspiration’ of that kind. (Henry V of England appeared in the history of one nation, renamed as Hanri V. His crucial battle took place at a field called Arjincur.) Algorlund appealed to what I thought was ‘cool’ at the time, but there was a lot in there that wasn’t ‘my own’.

Chronicles of the Fated
One day, I may write up parts of Chronicles of the Fated – the only campaign ever run in Algorlund - for the Crossroads. Both in-character and out-of-character, there are plenty of yarns that could be spun about the players and the characters, and their exploits. For now, summary should suffice.
After I had devised Algorlund, I immediately searched for a group to run it with. The group that I pulled together consisted of about 8 people at the outset, though only 5 or so would show to any given game session. (This percentage would be true throughout the long life of CotF.) The only RPG most of them were familiar with was the Final Fantasy line, though a couple had played Baldur’s Gate and two had played SOME D&D before.
The day that we were scheduled to begin the game, I was out sick from school, and the group elected to have someone else guest-DM the very first session. From later reports, I learned that he had started them off in a bar, where they’d gotten into a fight with some lumberjacks. The PCs had escaped with the help of a halfling slave who got them some horses. One of the PCs then killed the slave.
When I got back, I improvised my way into getting them back on the plot outline I had set up. The first adventure involved an attempt to investigate the disappearance of children in a small town. I don’t remember how the plot was supposed to end up, because halfway through, I got tired of it and had them teleported away to the city of Sigil. (The frequent inability of the party to fully complete quests would become a running gag for the group – they would either get distracted by their own problems or I’d get a new idea I wanted to test out.
The general idea of the campaign was that a raving mad, evil halfling superwizard was attempting to perform a magical ritual that would unleash a supreme primordial god of destruction on the world. The key to his ritual? He had to find the descendants of thirteen powerful heroes/monsters/demigods and sacrifice them. It just so happened that the PCs were some of those descendants. (Many more than 13 PCs participated in CotF – the total number is more than 25, in fact – but no more than 13 were ever active at one time, so there were some who had ‘duplicate’ bloodlines.)
The game ran more or less for the entirety of our high school careers, with occasional breaks of a month or two when people got busy. There was lots of drama inside the game and out – several romantic relationships were created between players, some of which are still surviving and some of which crashed and burned. When it ended, the players had never actually managed to defeat the superwizard – they were martialling armies and preparing to make a strike, though. They were around level 16-17, all had magical items appropriate to someone several levels higher and, in fact, they had all become divine-rank 0 quasigods. The game had in some ways become a bit of a self-parody: Oniwalu always made stupid one-liners, Bimpnottin always collected curious souvenirs, and despite my own general preference for low-power games, I handed out spell-like abilities and magic items like they were candy.

Tasothilos: A New Beginning
When high school ended, I got the sense that CotF was never going to actually be completed. In my mind, therefore, I created a conclusion to the story where they had all rallied together to destroy the superwizard, but in the process they had destroyed all of existence, absorbing it into their beings. When the battle was over, they became the gods of a brand-new world. It was originally supposed to be just a conclusion in my mind rather than actual 'canon'.
In summer 2004, however, after I'd already gone away to college, I began to plan to build a new campaign world. For six months, I simply sat on a bunch of concepts (naval theme, heavy politics, distant gods) and wrote up a few conlangs. It wasn't until mid-fall 2004, during my first semester of college, that the ideas began to really crystalize, largely in conversations with a friend of mine, the young woman who played the character of Emiome. Together, we worked out a bunch of ideas that we thought would be cool, and she deserves a good deal of credit for providing various inspirations and criticism along the way, although the vast majority of the actual construction has been mine.
The setting was first posted on the Wizards boards in October of 2004, where I acquired my second great critic and idea-man, Turin, as well as helpful insight from several other regulars. For the first six months or so I posted a great deal of material fairly regularly. After that, my posting got more infrequent, though I continued to work heavily on the setting. Ironically enough, actual concentrated effort on the setting probably ended some time around the time that our guild began, as schoolwork and real-life issues became too much to handle while giving so much time and energy to this creative endeavor.
In summer 2006, I spent about a week re-reading the entire Tasothilos thread on the wizards boards, and realizing how much my tone had changed and knowledge of things like religion and myth had improved (I've studied the subjects heavily in college.) I planned to do a major update and revise the setting, but the plan faltered when the fall 2006 semester began, and I returned to disorganized brainstorming as my primary means of thinking about the setting
Now, however, I've got some more resolve. I'm energized by a new map that seems more logical, several new theme ideas, a new take on several races, and perhaps most importantly, a new d20 system to work with. I'm excited about the project in a way I haven't been since those early days on the Wizards boards.
My pace may be a little slower than it was back then - my classes have gotten much harder and I'm balancing a girlfriend and an honors thesis project with this, but make no mistake, Tasothilos is a creative priority. Expect to see good things in the future, gang.

: Out of Character :

Alamir Galanodel was a half-dragon. He joined the party late – his player was a friend of Eldon’s player who got brought in. He was a very high-power gamer, which was alright in Chronicles of the Fated - since it was a high-power game. He was not exceptionally clever – at one point, he actually blew an attempted bluff by the party by asking aloud, in full view of the dragon they were conning, why they were lying to him. The Current Teaching section about him is actually pretty accurate – one day during meditation he found something very dark within himself. He probed too deep, and found a certain madness. Ever after that, he had occasional bouts of insanity, though whenever he found one he usually came back with a certain amount of insight. It WAS a fragment of the Great Enemy, as it turns out.

: Out of Character :

Ali is one of the most changed of the gods from her actual depiction as a PC, but I have good reason for her turn towards the despotic – her ‘bloodline ancestor’ was none other than the duke of the Nine Hells, Asmodeus himself. In actual play, she WAS a lieutenant in a great army, and she did have a firm belief in order – she was simply a little ‘softer’ than her divine incarnation has become. The player was the girlfriend of Rholerex’s player, and she joined somewhat late – she went to a different high school than most of us.

: Out of Character :

Anarina Tonande’s player was a friend of Emiome’s player – the three of us used to do MSTs of really bad fanfiction together over AIM on occasion. For whatever reason, he never got asked to join the game until very late. (A theme for most of the A-names, it seems!) When he did, he played a cleric who was a Song of Sakrata, a medium-ranking priestess of the god of prophecies with something of an Egyptian aesthetic. Oftentime, I would tell her cryptic clues that came to her in her sleep and it served as a good way of foreshadowing future events – I thoroughly enjoyed this use of the character.

: Out of Character :

Finally, one of the A-names who WAS a long-time member. Antiod Emberin’s was one of the two players who first took interest in joining – he, Rholerex’s player and I were in a Health class together every morning and we talked about the idea. When after the first six months the campaign moved to an online AIM format, he became fairly inactive – he was the kind of player who would participate in all the battles, and answered any questions posed to him directly, but otherwise didn’t say much. When the game began, he was in a relationship with Suphi’s player. When the game ended, he was with Olkhir’s player instead.

: Out of Character :

I first met Bimpnos’s player when we were both three years old in pre-school – we became good friends there. We then went to separate elementary schools and middle schools, but we reunited freshman year of high school. He was one of the original players, and also one of the ones with the most reliable attendance. Bimpy was in some ways an extension of his own personality (most of these characters were pretty close to their players in terms of identity). He spent a lot of time coming up with very elaborate pranks to play on some of the more ‘serious’ members of the party, though he also engaged in his fair share of heroics. Almost universally, he was one of the most beloved of the CotF characters.

: Out of Character :

Eldon’s player was Rholerex’s player’s cousin – he lived one town over, and went to the same high school as Alamir’s player. He joined at a medium point in the game – before Alamir or Ali, after Emiome and Maxinir. Eldon was his first character – a necromancer halfling – but he was the kind of fellow who could never make up his mind as to what character he wanted to play. He got Eldon killed off, then played a gargoyle-type character, then played a monk (or something) with a giant dire-bear companion, and finally he asked if he could play Eldon again – this time as a ghostly character. I agreed (it was late enough in the game that I could apply an ECL penalty for the ghost powers and still have a relatively balanced character).

Back when Tasothilos used alignments, I saw Eldon, Ali and Oniwalu as forming a triad. Ali represented Lawful Evil government, Oniwalu Lawful Good government, and Eldon Lawful Neutral government. Though I’ve dropped official alignments from the system, I keep some vestiges of that triad in the way the gods are portrayed.

: Out of Character :

I’ve known Emiome’s player since roughly the second grade. She went off to go to a private high school, but we stayed in touch through instant messenger and when the Chronicles of the Fated campaign moved to an online format, she was one of the first to join up. She was a time-traveling princess/sorceress who had been taken prisoner by a dragon and was rescued by the party. Joining with her pseudo-dragon familiar, she proceeded to bring a much-needed sarcastic and clever foil to Oniwalu’s dopey and earnest. It’s worth noting that there was a lot more sarcasm

I’ve lost touch with a lot of the Chronicles players, but Emiome’s player has actually played an active role in helping to shape Tasothilos – a conservatory student, she inspired most of the musical stuff in the world so far.

: Out of Character :

Maxinir’s player has the longest gaming history with me – I met her when her parents and mine were at an annual conference around the time that I was in fifth grade, and we saw each other yearly for about four years. She introduced me to Myria’s player, and to a group that they’d been running online with some friends of her family, run by Xandos’s player. I’ve played several campaigns with that group over the years, though I’ve almost completely lost touch with Maxinir’s player.
Maxinir joined some time around the time that Emiome did, though she was only with the group for a short time before participating in both my game and the other game became too much for her to handle. Her character made a lasting impression, however, and I have brought him back to fill a much-needed spot in the pantheon.

: Out of Character :

As I said before, Myria’s player was introduced to me by Maxinir’s player around the time I was in seventh grade (she’s a year older). I only met her in person twice, but she was one of my closest ‘online friends’, especially through the ups and downs high school. A bit of a crazy7 girl at times, but very sensible at others. She was also very, very good at gaming, and at figuring out puzzles.
One night after a game, I was telling her all about some of the fun things that had happened in the last Chronicles session, and she asked if she could join. She played a wandering knight type character, sort of a feminine al’Lan Mandragoran in that she was the last heir of an utterly destroyed kingdom. She and Emiome bonded well, and she was also pretty close with Bimpnos.

: Out of Character :

Volkir Amnesti, who would become Olkhir, was originally named Miliardo Peacecraft. The character’s name was changed once the rest of the party discovered that his player (who was an avid anime fan and general japanophile) had taken the name from some anime show called Gundam or such-like. (The Peacecrafter title remains as a nod to this development.) He was a brooding sort, though many of his in-character philosophical contributions turned out to be lyrics from songs he was listening to. He was part of the party from early times, though Volkir/Miliardo was not his first character – that was Aristarchus, a contemptible bastard (in the player’s own words) that got killed off when the party turned on him (with the player’s full consent.) Volkir turned out to be not much better, but at least he didn’t kill NPCs outright.

Most of the time.

: Out of Character :

It is wrong to speak of a protagonist for CotF, because I never saw it that way during the actual run of the game. But reading over the session logs from the past, I think that if the game were to have been a CRPG, then Onaleus (or Oniwalu, as he was originally named) would have been the central character. He began as a somewhat dopey Don Quixote knock-off but evolved into the pinnacle of the somewhat-slow-but-virtuous knight. In the era before Jessica Simpson’s chicken-of-the-sea extravaganza, he was famous for his hilariously dunce-like quotations (naming your favorite Oni-quote became a popular post-session event.) He was one of the founding characters and, though my records are inexact, he certainly had one of the highest if not the-highest attendance rate of anyone in the group. I believe that about a third of the PC dialogue was spoken by him, as well.

: Out of Character :

Rowe, as he was usually called by the party, was played by one of the two players who first inspired me to throw together Chronicles of the Fated. (The other was Antios). Originally, this player created a different elven druid called Neiden, but at some point after the campaign went online he decided he wanted to change to Rowe. I can’t remember why, now – because the characters were largely identical. It might have been a statistical redesign or something. He’s a good fellow who brought several of the other PCs into the group (including Eldon’s player and Ali’s.)

: Out of Character :

I had known Suphi’s player since about the 4th grade, and I played a few highly improvised, barely-by-the-rules games of D&D with her in middle school before I found my regular online crew. She was one of the first players in CotF, though her attendance was occasionally spotty she was there throughout. She created Suphi (originaly Suvj, pronounced Soovdge) as a prostitute/rogue, though she never actually had any customers.

: Out of Character :

Xandos had been a long –running DM of mine from about sixth grade onwards. He didn’t join the Chronicles of the Fated until extremely late, however, and he only joined for three or four gaming sessions. I kept the character as one of the fourteen gods, however, because his role as the archer god / god of youth fills an important vacancy and because it allows me to create a life-death-rebirth cycle, which my mythology had otherwise been lacking.