The Heretic's Guide to GemStone: The Graveyard - Episode 3: Shadow World
This is an historical exploration series for the massively multi-player online text based game GemStone IV. Each series explores the history or hidden subtleties of some aspect of GemStone.
(Disclaimer: This is a "best approximation" of the truth situation, only the creators of things know for sure what they intended.)
Episode 3: Shadow World, In Depth
In this first series, Xorus explores the Graveyard next to the Landing, one of the very oldest parts of GemStone III. The third episode is a "sub-textual" dive into the I.C.E. Age "deep context" of the Graveyard and its backstory, in terms of the original Shadow World setting and Rolemaster from Iron Crown Enterprises. There is uncertainty on how much of this material was intended to apply to the Graveyard.
In this episode we hold up parts of the I.C.E. source books that might be implicitly relevant in a deeper way, and ask what it would mean if those things were actually intended to matter. This is ironic as there is no way to be sure when the internal logic of the world setting matters and when it does not. There is material in books that may have not even been looked at by the GMs. The method is to take the parallels seriously, and seeing how far they can be pushed before breaking down.
The historical series explores the I.C.E. Age context of the Graveyard and its backstory, as well as constructing a theory about its "grand design." This includes a theory about the meaning of GemStone's original death mechanics, and an allegorical interpretation of the Graveyard.
Episode 3 Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
10:28 Empress Kadaena and the Unlife
20:23 OOC vs. IC Lore Documents
23:42 Servants of the Shadow
30:23 Archaic I.C.E. Books
34:00 Demons: Ordainers, the Void, and the Pale
45:07 The Crypt: Kingdom of Gethyra
46:53 The Crypt: Dead Gods of the Black Hel
1:06:04 Visions Across Time.
1:09:57 Lorgalis and the Iron Wind
1:28:55 Non-Canon Geography
1:30:38 Mocking Epitaphs
1:33:21 Conclusion
Errata:
4 minutes 36 seconds: The slide is an overstatement. The shadows/black altar room next to the crypt say there is an eastern wall and it encloses the Graveyard. But there cannot be a creek in the Graveyard if the walls actually do enclose it.
13 min 10 sec Library of Biblia now has a lore document. "Chronomage facility" is now an overstatement.
21 minutes 20 seconds: Something I neglected to mention are Vignettes. GMs sometimes post story scenes (or storyline epilogues or prologues) showing the first-person view of NPCs. This qualifies as OOCly objectively true and something players (but not characters) are allowed to know. It is comparatively "transient" and does not go through the same kind of QC process as a lore document. After this video was made it became standard practice to put OOC notes at the bottom of new lore documents.
22 min 30 sec These kinds of micro-edit "fixes" to lore have become more common since the Play website was ported to the Wiki.
25 minutes 20 seconds: Other Unlife cults are described in much later Shadow World books. But for the Jaiman continent, it's the Iron Wind. In the 1992 Master Atlas there is hedging language, where phrases like "servants of the Unlife" are including a lot of people who do not really understand they are serving the ultimate ends of the Unlife. "Absolutist" true servants of the Unlife are nihilists interested only in destruction. The Graveyard seems to instead have a feudalistic hierarchy for the forces of Unlife.
27 min 30 sec Melgorehn's footstool was also "strangely compelling."
46 min 30 sec This poem portal puzzle was not until the De-ICE later.
1 hour 4 minutes: The books in the crypt niche can be interpreted as standing up, out of reach, with their covers facing outward. This would be backwards from Nomikos, where most manuscripts lie flat, and the few upright on shelves probably face edge out. It is only a self-contradiction if the books are laid out on the niche.
1 hour 23 minutes: "Felwood" is in a room that was apparently added to Uthex's abode after the ICE Age, probably when the Sheruvian monastery was created. So the Forest of Dir and Shard connection is probably coincidental.
Historical Exploration Series 1: The Graveyard
Episode 1: Introduction - • The Heretic's Guide to GemStone: The Grave...
Episode 2: I.C.E. Orientation - • The Heretic's Guide to GemStone: The Grave...
Episode 3: Shadow World, In Depth - • The Heretic's Guide to GemStone: The Grave...
Episode 4: Death - • The Heretic's Guide to GemStone: The Grave...
Episode 5: Allegory - • The Heretic's Guide to GemStone: The Grave...