I have been asked at times what Aryathan Jiil means. So I have written a very brief overview of the origins of the name and what it means today.
Way back in my 2nd edition DMing days, I created
my own game world. I had maps of a big continent, with political boundaries and
races and cultures that lived in those places. City maps of kingdoms and cities
with details about who was there and who was in charge. Details about the
military of different places and the local economy, including names of local
coinage It had places like Gaylor-Chain, Charongale, and the Kingdom of Sapphira (a city
within a valley, houses on both hills and in the valley, and a local military of
griffon riders). Aryathan Jiil had some unusual characters like Tajch the
bariaur ranger, Vader the spell weaver, and Floifod Thlovoid (a bat-winged
vampire thief). And races like the Shield Elf and Fire Elf.
There had been a plane-spanning tournament of champions
called the Ektia Hovni Hov-E-Rankin (the sport’s founder’s name was Ektia
Hovni). This Hov-E-Rankin tournament pitted the champions from each material plane
world and plane against each other in single combat.
The main continent of the world (all of the known world at
the time) was called Aryathan (uh-RYE-uh-thun) after this world’s first
Hov-E-Rankin champion, Aryath (uh-RYE-uth). After a long time, a champion from
this world came from somewhere other than the continent of Aryathan—this other
champion came from a newly discovered smaller continent, and was named Jiil
(the first I is long and the second is silent). As I recall, Jiil had some armor
that was unusual and highly sought after, the Jiil armor. Legends said it made
the wearer invulnerable to damage, but you know how legends go.
So the whole game world became known by the name Aryathan
Jiil.
The final outcome of this game world was a cosmic battle on
the scale of an apocalypse. A sleeping overgod of entropy was awakening. It
called itself Sprug the Ungod, a sort of Anti-deity. It was not only immune to
any ability generated by a deity, it could also siphon off their powers to
awaken itself. Its purpose was to annihilate the gods and send mortals into a godless
world. Moradin was slain and a massive dwarven procession, carrying the body of
Moradin through the streets on a slab of stone marked the beginning of this
time. Gods went into hiding and some panicked. Some were captured and
imprisoned in Sprug’s Dungeon System, a prison for the gods. Some of the gods
sought mortal champions to fight this overgod. They turned over ancient secrets
and hidden caches of legendary weapons to their mortal champions, some here and
some there. Some deities were not allowed to die, and were tortured and drained
to collect secrets of the universe, most notably Oghma. One of the first things
that Sprug did was create a high priest for himself, a greater god named Bone,
who appeared as a skeletal horse with funeral tulips over its eyes. At random
times mortals would see this skeletal horse in the distance, watching their
activities. Bone’s purpose was to find the mortal champions and destroy them
before they could thwart Sprug’s awakening. The mortal champions did finally
defeat Bone, and then Sprug as well just as it was fully awakened and throwing
its Annihilagators at the group. The mortals were probably around 30s or 40s in
level. This ended my 2nd edition game that ran for about 4 years.
Sadly, I have very scant notes from those days. I once had
extensive notes about the people and places of Aryathan Jiil in a large binder,
all hand copied. But this has been lost and what survives today is only from
memory.
Aryathan Jiil 2.0
I attempted a second game world when I started playing 3.5 and tried to
incorporate as much as I could remember from the original games into the newer
game world. This was also called Aryathan Jiil, but it really bore little
resemblance to the original and it never really took off. I’m not even really a
fan of this Aryathan Jiil 2.0 myself either.
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1 comment:
I've only ever heard bits and pieces of this throughout the years I've know you but I kind of had a basic idea. I mean pretty much anything I get from you in terms of gaming goes into a folder with your game world title. I like this practice it helps me organize myself and focus on where content comes from and in what terms we are dealing. I do the same thing with my own work that basically gets lumped together into one name, most of which is related but not all.
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