The House of §trange

Okay, so I have a rough outline of the real history of how the Nightlands came into existence, and want to lay it out.

( The Three Stars, the Sun War and the Fall of Night )


That is a rough outline of Nightlands pre-history, how they really came to exist, and the part the Three Sisters had in it. Most common folk, both Human and Middle Elven, don't know this story. Nightfall is so far back (probably about ten thousand years before Current Era) that the events have become legend and myth. Some vague idea does remain in the stories of ancient magical wars, or Moon Goddess verses Sun God, but they have drifted far off the truth. The High Elves remember, as do the Queens of the two Fae Courts, but in the case of all those groups, they tend to keep the truth to themselves.

I don't have names for all the players involved either, and those I do have tend to be cribbed straight from LotR and RB-verse, as is language, with the Quendár language taking straight from Quenya and Kessír more from Sindarin.

I have a developing idea of another concept, though it does not contain nearly as much detail as the Nightlands one.

The basic idea is of a society that has, at some point in it's past, a divine war that resulted in all the gods being thrown out of the divine planes, and relegated to living as mortals, reincarnating over and over again.

The first and biggest effect of this is that any demi-god child and their descendants for several generations have a measure of divine ability - more commonly known as magic. Their magic also tends to follow what their divine ancestor is patron of - a water god will spawn water mages, a fire god will spawn fire mages, etc.
There are exceptions, but they are very rare. Magic pre-existed the divine war, but it was rare for humans to be able to channel it, with most magic-using being more people using magical objects or priests and clerics receiving divine aid.
However there has always been a goddess of magic, and her descendants can defy common patterns of reducing magical ability, with a mage being born four or more generations after the goddess but having demi-god strength. Descendants of the goddess of magic also have no perceptible alignment in their magic, potentially being able to cast anything and everything.

The second issue is that some of the gods can cause trouble when they become aware of their divine nature. This more than the issue of parenting mages has given rise to an order of Watchers who have taken up the task of keeping track of the gods when they incarnate, and if they start to cause trouble for normal people, kill them.

Some gods incarnate in certain family lines - usually the more reliable and predictable ones. Some have a tendency to incarnate in certain areas - a forest god gets born near a forest, a sea god is born in a coastal or island village, even a god of Justice tends to be born in a city because that is where law courts and universities that teach law are located. These gods are slightly more difficult to track, but often can be found before they reach puberty.

But the ones the Watchers are most concerned with are the ones with less definite patterns - random parentage, random location of birth.

Some Watchers have become so prejudiced about the gods they would prefer to kill them on sight and will find any excuse to get rid of them.

Meanwhile there are some gods who want to live unassuming lives, playing at being mortal, and then there are some who are vicious, violent, or scheming plotters who inevitably want to grab power and rule as tyrants. The former get misunderstood by prejudiced Watchers, when something drives them to defend themselves - like loggers trying to log the forest that is home to a forest deity and the deity trying to stop them - while often Watchers cite the latter as reason why all of the gods are dangerous, all of the time.

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( And now for PLOT! )