A few words about Earthdawn

“These are the Books of Harrow. They are our doom and our salvation. Learn from them, or we will all perish.”

Elianar Messias, elf scholar, 100 years before Throal

 

Imagine the world, where magic is everywhere and You can use it to everything, from cooking to spectacular fights. The world in which uncommon intelligent races fights powerful creatures from other dimensions. The world of great cities, underwater  kingdoms and mysterious ruins full of treasures and danger. I invite You to a journey after a bit forgotten world of Earthdawn.

The fate of Barsaive was stormy from the beginning. This Huge land was conglomeration of the tribes, which was fighting each other, making the alliances, breaking them, alternately jumping to they throats or cooperating on implementation of the greater goals.

On the North, in a beautiful, huge wood, which uprising is ascribe to the Passions, live the elves. Beautiful, long-lived and proud.

The Center of Barsaive, with the extensive mountain range of the Throal Mountains, was beginning of the dwarf kingdom. The dwarfs hollow with worship more and more huge and beautiful chambers, laying the foundations for the contemporary capital of the province.

The West part of the province belongs to two mighty kingdoms, orc’s Kara Fahd and human Landis.

Mountain peaks are inhabit of the Troll clans and the hearth of Barsaive, which is Serpent River, is a home for t’skrang.

If we go deep in a Gleenwood Deep we can meet windlings villages, and everywhere where the Name Givers lived we can met an Obsidiman, which, with the right for this race peace, will contemplate the reality that surrounds him, trying to remember all the details.

This state of wars and alliances lasted over the years until a great danger hung over the land. Scholar, Elianar Messias, translate fragments of the mysterious book, dating from before the magic awakening in the world, this scrap told him, that the huge disaster came to the world, it was called The Scourge. When magic reaches the critical level border between the real and astral world will be weakened and the voracious beasts will throw themselves into the world to kill and destroy.

The pale fear fell on the Name Giver all over the world.

Elianar paid with his life studying the books, but he has appropriate successors. In the Theran Empire, that is being formed, they elaborate magic rituals which role was to secure Name Givers before The Scourge and help them live it. The race against time began in provinces. Massive underground shelters, named the Kaers, were built and some cities were covered with domes, which creates citadels from them.

The Scourge fell into the world with a powerful wave. The beasts destroyed everything what they encountered on their way, distort the reality, changed faces of the creatures which stays on the ground and get to the citadels and kaers leaving behind only a streak of death, pain, suffering.

But the darkness must finally give a way.

Level of magic lay down displacing from the world most of the mighties Horrors, others pushing in the depths of destroyed habitats of the Name Givers. Barsaive, and then Thera, come back to life.

In that crucial moment the story of Heroes, Adepts in which players will play, begins.

 

Eatrhdawn is a fantasy – postapo system, wonderfully combining these two species. The system was published in 1993 by the FASA publishing house, and in 1998 it came to Poland thanks to the MAG publishing house. The first edition and a number of additions have been translated into the our native language. On the other hand, there were several original ones, including the newest one, the fourth one with a much changed mechanics and “Earthdawn: The Age of Legend” which is the conversion of the popular world of ED on the FU mechanics (freeform universal), which allows us for fast system acquisition and running of one shot stories and short campaigns. Mechanics of ED, depends on edition, uses the dice from D4 to D20. Players can choose from a range of Disciplines and very diverse promotion paths. The system emphasizes the character’s character development – we have here the meditation of talents and dependence on the Master of Your Discipline. But what attracts the most to Earthdawn is an extremely rich world. The creators of ED devoted a huge amount of attention to creating a universe that we will not meet anywhere else. The entire history of the world is carefully thought out and published in many textbooks.

We have here an unique races like Obsidimans (resembling humanoid stones), windlings (small, flying elves) or t’skrangs (humanoid lizards). We can play as a Warrior, Thief or Mage but we have found the disciplines that are characteristic only for this system like Horror Stalker, Songsmith, Windmaster or Sky Rider. And if it’s not enough for You, and You know english, there are a lot of Disciplines created by fans and there are a couple of really great ones among them.

Earthdawn is an heroic system. Adepts are unique group of Name Givers, whose mission is to restore the land of former glory. We can GM’ing it in many ways, depending on the preferences of the players. We can use strictly fantasy convention, fight monsters and save princesses, we can make traditional dungeon from ED focusing on exploring the forgotten kaers. You can play in the climate of horror, or have fun at court balls, take part in air battles or armed conflicts or even free the Death from under the Dead Sea and see what happens.

Believe me, that world will never bored You.

But if it happens that Barsaive will become too narrow for your Heroes, you can go to a distant Shosara, sail across The Aras Sea and discover the civilizations that follow him or, led by a powerful team Nethermancer, explore parallel worlds, on which passage you will find in the most inaccessible places.

Will You be tempted?