With the limited release of the first four chapters (though not in it's final edited form), we now have a great amount of 'new' data to process, and things to fixate on. So, what is your favourite part of what you've read?

For me, I am ECSTATIC about all the teases about the 'Northern' and 'Western' lands beyond Khitan and the Sea of Lanterns. Additionally: Siren for Imperator!!

Learning the Elorii had issues with the Thousand Eyed Man before the coming of the PoM. It really ups the "what the heck?" quality of his cult. Only problem was there was no indication of how hard that is to know - I assume very.

Litera Scripta Manet ... obviously. Excuse me I'm off to go buy some new books!

I was a bit surprised to learn there is s pretender to the title of altheran embassador in the city. I'd suggest a duel for the title but I suspect an altheran embassador duel would involve a conference table and require strong stimulants for any spectators, so maybe not....

The game-statted incredible difficulty of knowing some of the facts in the BL book is not only in direct conflict with revealing those facts to every single player, but it also conflicts with the original tone in the Codex Arcanis of players' knowing things only from certain viewpoints rather than being told obscure facts point-blank. If something is so obscure that only a Tier IV-V character could possibly know it, and thus NO PCs in the campaign currently know and few NPCs, then as a player I'd rather learn material that is known to everyone even if it's less exciting and more mundane.

It would be interesting to calculate, based on ranks, the approximate Hero Tier required for knowledge of this material by a generalist and by a specialist. Also, it seems to me that if every elorii knows something, for example, then a synopsis of that information would gradually get out to people of other races who care about such things and not be limited to only a few experts. For my home campaign, I'll lower many of those required skill ranks.

And I strongly disagree. The tone is different, sure, but there's only so much time to become familiar with all the various elements and secrets to the game, that to expect they will all be shared through mods seems unlikely. The new story already requires a separation of player and character knowledge regarding the val'Inares for example. The book written this way also provides details that a GM running a home campaign can use to better understand the various cultures as well as provide fodder for stories.

Players have been clamoring for more information to understand the richness of the world and it's history. Why do the PCs have to know everything that we as players know? No other setting makes that a requirement as far as I'm aware. It's adjudicated more directly by the GM of whatever game's running, the only difference is that here there's a framework to indicate knowledge's relative obscurity and the box that discusses it states that any information revealed through a mod no longer has those requirements.

In terms of lessening the number of ranks, I'm curious as to why? For the Second War of Extinction which ended more than 8,000 years before current day what's the rationale for a character suddenly learning about it as a mid-tier hero without investigating it specifically which would trigger the clause for in game revealed knowledge? I can't imagine that there are much in the way of records that have survived from that time given that it was more than 1000 years before the Elorii even existed. There are no past memories to draw from, no recycled souls to interrogate. It is a time lost to memory. Finding enough scraps to get an accurate picture which the section represents means pulling together a ton of obscure bits of knowledge to rebuild that picture.

I haven't read through much of it so far, things have been busy, but am certainly looking forward to it and happy to use this thread to find interesting bits early.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

One thing that might help put things into perspective is to compare Arcanis to the real world. For instance Paul mentioned a date that was 8000 years ago. That puts it at 5984 BCE, back in the Stone Age. What do we know of that period? Not a lot all things considered. Sort of puts things into perspective. Just sayin

See, I disagree with that premise for several reasons

1. During the stone age, and even little art/construction. There was no writing, whereas there appears to have been a written language that far back (though what language has varied). This dramatically increases the longevity of data. We've found numerous ruins with material from that long ago in Arcanis, whereas there are essentially none in the real world.
2. Secondly, there have been effective immortals or verrrrry long lived individuals (2,000 year old Ssanu, undead, planar beings, etc) back that far as well as a lot more (Elorii, Valinor), more recently. While information coming from those sources might be rare, and biased, all it takes is for it to happen occasionally and be recorded in writing for it to be sustained much longer.
3. Everything seems to last longer in Arcanis. The Coryani Empire is 1,000 years old, which is huge, and it is short lived compared to the first empire or Ssethric empire. Long, stable governments lead to the survival of data better than the chaos of the middle ages, say
4. Magic can do a lot to reveal data. talking to ancient souls, time travel, psychometry, memory storage devices, statis devices, etc. there are innumberable amounts of ways magic can preserve data that doesn't exist in reality

Now, that said, I think information from long ago should be iffy, rarely known, etc., but I think it is virtually impossible to compare it to real world long term data propagation.

A few responses to that.

1) You are correct that that date isn't exactly representative, but it is indicative. Moving things along, without looking up anything (just from memory) can you personally list of Kings of Akkad or which Pharohs built the Pyramids? Hell, let us go even to more modern times and can you explain to me the details of the Protestant Reformation and its relationship to people like Moore, Erasmus, Luther, Zwigli, and Calvin? I doubt more than a few VERY learned scholars could perform such a feat, and even fewer with the lack of records we have available. Remember, the BL book says most of the records of the Eloran Empire were destroyed either taking the city, during the time of the Cleansing Flame (heresy!), or during the Elorii Reconquista. What records remain are probably in the Eloran cities in Malfela and Elonbe'.

2) You are correct that people who are long lived tend to remember things better than shorter lived people relying on written records. That said, how many 2,000 year old Elorii or Ssanu have you or your character talked to? Going another way, how would you know to ask that person about the various topics? I know from my own life talking to my Grandfather about his time in North Africa in the Second World War, even specific questions about the war didn't yield specific details about tactics, engineering, etc. Instead, he talked about the swimming competition he had with an Australian serviceman across the harbour of Tunis. He talked about his stay in Toronto where he learned to become a Radar operator. He talked about eating strange food in Cairo. He talked about HIS experiences, not the global or tactical or historical perspective. Hell, if pressed about actual combat he very much didn't want to talk about it, even though he wasn't really on the front lines himself. It was not a memory he wished to share.

As such, even if you could find SOMEONE who had living memory back then, finding someone who has the living memory of the event you want would be vanishingly rare. If you did find someone with that type of memory, you then have to convince them to part with that memory, and that is also going to be very rare and difficult. Lastly, if you find someone who lived that long ago, has the memory, and is willing to part with it, are you certain you will have both the material handy to record it and to pass it along? Even if you are a dedicated scribe, the vast majority of people (and Heroes) in this universe are ultimately nobodies and have no official standing. At BEST their accounts might be scribed on paper, velum, or papyrus and find there way into a private collection somewhere where they are infinately more likely to be lost to the world outside that private collection and eventually moulder away into dust. The only reason we have ANY records from ancient Near East beyond 500 BCE is that they wrote on clay tablets, and the fires which often destroyed their cities actually helped fire those tablets into a more durable form.

3) I heavily dispute your assertation that 'everything lasts longer in Arcanis' as it displays a very modern and very flawed understanding of history. Short-lived civilizations are actually a product of the MODERN age, and ancient cultures tended to have a much longer sense of continuity (though they dealt with periods of waxing and waning). Rome (as a united empire) lasted for some 500 years. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire lasted almost a THOUSAND years, the Ottomans who supplanted it lasted some 400 years. Hell, England has existed as a fairly continuous nation for about a thousand years! The Assyrians were a distinct civilization for almost TWO thousand years, and Egypt (with the exception of the Hyxos period) maintained local control and cultural consistency for the better part of THREE thousand years. These are all civilizations which were ancient, these were all civilizations founded by HUMANS.

4) And which specific spells are you referring to? Going though the list of spells available in ARPG and the Codex of Heroes it is actually very difficult to get more than basic information out of ancient spirits, and then it is usually "I'd go that way in the forest, not that other way" (Call Upon My Ancestors (Ta)). This is no longer D&D now that we have our own rules set, and PCI has consciously moved away from the tropes of that universe now that they are not using someone else's system. Time travel is actually VERY rare and has (if memory served) only happened twice in adventures, and one more time in the Lore, and even then the people involved seem to be those who wouldn't be in the position to pass that information along to the wider population. As to stasis. . . well, for reference as to how fast information passes from people of that sort, we STILL haven't gotten any information out of Hilur val'Mehan from his time in First Emperor Kael's Army, and he's been floating around the world now for some years. . .

Keeping in mind that I didn't have any problem with the knowledge requirements (though I might have applied total bonus rather than just ranks) limiter to knowledge as it was indicated in the books. My comment was on the arcane information that didn't indicate the knowledge difficulty. Also, I have no problem with the book presenting information our characters essentially couldn't possibly know, because the books are to help a GM run the universe, not just a player resource.

But a few response to yours are…

1. I suspect that a comparison to something like the reformation is probably too favorable, but maybe the Egyptians are in the right ballpark. I was never arguing that everyone knew everything about what happened so long ago, but the idea that there were numerous pharos, that they existed for many years, built the pyramids and fought Assyrians, etc. should be pretty easily known to the educated. And much, much more could be known by area-specific scholars.

2. I’m not saying that the immortals necessarily talked with us, but if they are even a resource to ask questions to, someone else may have written down what they learned from them. I’m not sure I’m worried about specific events, except for the civilization – crushing ones, which I would think most people from that time period would at least know about, even if they didn’t serve in the big battle themselves.

3. As for civilization length, you may be right about some of these, but I think it still talks to the advantage of civilizations vs anarchy, and excepting only the time of darkness – which the known human part of the Arcanis world very clearly is still digging out of, I think that long civilization with only short chaos in between (when one power takes over for another) is pretty much the norm.

4. I’m not just talking about character based spells, so it is unclear what from previous publications can still be done. But we’ve seen that priests can summon valinor to speak to. We have metagenti (mis-spelled, whatever the psionic crystal repositories are) in the game to hold 1,000 years of memories, we have undead to consult, we have astrology that sort of works, we have talking with spirits, we collected time travelers from the first emperium in the vault, we have people wander out of the maze of Larissa, we have people like Hilur, and the snake men of Zhun (or whatever it is in the Hinterlands) that possibly could serve as sources. And who knows what other kind of magic might be available off-screen? As PC’s we see every day that what we can do boggles compares to what is possible by others, even in current times. (I won't site references to avoid spoilers) So no, I don’t rule out finding ancient knowledge through divination magics. As for Hilur, I’ve been assuming someone, the Val’Mehan family or the Church of Sarish has gotten useful material out of him, and we just aren’t in the loop of need-to-know. If literally no one has gotten anything useful out of him in this time, kill him, as he is obviously a plant to try and drive us crazy, or just crazy himself.