Gods in AoC
Mitra is the most common god worshipped in Hyboria, and is the chief deity in almost all Hyborian kingdoms, including Aquilonia, Ophir, Nemedia, Brythunia, Corinthia, and even Zingara.
Mitra's name was recognized by Xaltotun, an Acheronian who lived around 13000 BC. Mitraism's real ascendancy probably began about 1400 years after Acheron's empire fall, when the Hyborian lands were once again menaced by the shadow of Set, and were largely saved through the efforts of the Mitraic prophet-hero Epemetrius the Sage. One of the earliest nations to embrace Mitra was Koth, around 11000 BC.
Crom is the head of the Cimmerian pantheon of cruel gods, sending forth dooms and death from his seat on the great mountain of Mount Crom, or Ben Morgh, the holiest place in Cimmeria.
Set, the Old Serpent, is Mitra's arch-enemy, and the ancient god revered and worshiped mainly in Stygia, and is known and worshiped as Damballah in the Black Kingdoms.
A goddess of fertility and lust originally worshipped in Shem, Derketo can be found among the pantheons of many southern kingdoms, particularly Stygia and Kush. In Stygia, Derketo is a decadent, licentious deity, serving as the religious counterpoint to the strict and humourless devotions of Set, the Great Serpent.
The Stygians are a swarthy race of snake worshippers dabbling in vile magic and evil religions. The country of Stygia resembles a dark, twisted Egypto-Babylonian culture and mostly features deserts dotted by beautiful, ancient cities...
Abilities are the combos, the spells and the stances that you will acquire through leveling. As you gain new levels you will be able to find shopkeepers who sell spell scrolls, and some might even be found through adventuring. The stances and combos, however, will be automatically granted to you as you level up.
Quick Jab: You stab your foe several times inflicting massive damage.
I'm not quite sure what to make of this, except I love it. Sitting Duck Radio has a vision: "The vision that we have for the DUCK is for it to become your online gaming radio station. No matter what game you are playing online, we want you to turn to the DUCK for your radio listening pleasure." I love this in many, many ways. First, is the simple fact that this kind of specialized media is possible at all. Thank god for the net. But for the purposes of this blog, I love that these sorts of developments bespeak the emergence of social lives in virtual worlds that are important enough to the participants to warrant their own radio station! So, not only do we have the textual news reports of Alphaville Herald and Hamlet Linden, now we have virtual world radio. If we work very hard, perhaps we can be like Korea and get TV devoted to it.
After noting Ted's post on The Alpahville Herald, I had a look at their mission statement. Very interesting, especially (at least for me) inasmuch as they're doing something very different from us here: they're documenting the social history of one world and indeed one shard of that world. In years to come social historians, theorists, statisticians, economists, etc etc etc will all give thanks for resources such as these: deeply embedded accounts of what actually happens in-world. As Ted has noted elsewhere, it's really really hard to do research in these worlds, because they're so opaque to non-participant inveestigation. Which leads me to ask whether there are other local histories or social accounts of various worlds. Where does one go to find out, for example, about the economic system of AC2, the social stratification of AO, the politics of There?
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