HOKAY this post feels like it needs to come with a fair warning that this is going to be Very Text Heavy and is going to be a Long Read (and probably a bit of a wild ride) but hopefully easy to follow!
Also fair warning, there is A Lot of Graphic Design is My Passion-ness up ahead (that’s on me – Dre).
We’ll also probably do a separate post to go more in-depth about the actual World History but what’s written up now should hopefully provide enough context for everything (-E.).
~ Dre + E.
While we were working on figuring out how to handle combat in the game (outside of the magical abilities), we started realizing that this was also proving to be a bit of a world building problem. With how immersive everything Ash and Flowers was turning out to be, it didn’t feel right to just have a game where we give the Players weapons and say “Because” as the reason. Just like with our world, weapons came into being for a reason: Hunting and Survival … which also meant we needed to figure out why they’d need weapons for hunting and survival to begin with because the game as we knew at the time was with everything already having had happened.
ENTER THE WORLD HISTORY TIMELINE
Doing this turned out to be useful for a number of reasons. For one, it helped us have a much better idea of how all of the Lineages likely related to each other. We knew that The Pucks being our Elves™ would be the oldest, but with how Orcs operated in the world with becoming Masters of War, it made sense that they also would have been around for a hell of a long time also.
ANYWAY, the main purpose of this was to also better understand why each of the Lineages would have weapons and what those weapons would even look like as a natural result of their history and experiences within the world.
PUCKS
Since – once again – Pucks are our Elves™, we knew that they would have started mostly existing around Woodlands and a lot of heavy forestry. Even though they’re non-playable, we wanted their weapons to look Sick As Hell which led us towards leaning more towards their weapons evolving from tools like Axes, Scythes and Machetes. They’re mostly one handed weapons that are agile in their usage since Pucks as a whole tend to be light footed and quick in their movement.
A lot of the weapons you’ll see that are Puck will also be the few that will likely have a lot of fancy ornamentation because of how High Society they appear in relationship to the rest of the Lineages in the world.
They’re not quite as heavy hitting as other weapons but they will likely come with added advantages like Bonuses to Dexterity based attacks and abilities that are geared towards playing characters built for causing as much damage as quickly as possible (i.e. DPS type attacking)
Gnomes
Gnomes are the third oldest Lineage that took part in the Old Wars and even though they’re tiny, they’re designed to be absolutely ruthless and cutting in Azraeém (literally the common saying for them that we came up with is “It’s easier to befriend a Stone than a Gnome”). Their weapons can either be one handed or two handed depending on your size in relationship to them but no matter what, they’re built to be especially piercing with the uniform intention of rendering opponents Bloodied for added bonus damage even if they are – similar to Puck weapons – not built to cause as much heavy damage when fighting.
A lot of their weapons are Slice and Dice-y looking because they made them mostly for self-defense to protect themselves against the usually Much Bigger Wildlife they’d come across throughout all of Azraeém while also built for reach to make sure that they can defend themselves against Foes that are much bigger than them as well without putting them at risk.
Seedlings
Seedlings are one of the Lineages whose backstories I’m (Dre) especially geeked out over because they literally came into being because the Old Wars were fucking up nature and the magic of the world made the literal Wilderness sentient to try and deal with it.
Their weapons for the most part are pretty predictable in that they’re made to mimic the kinds of weapons they saw the other Lineages have just… made from Rock and Wood. This means they’re made to be extremely Blunt in how they deal damage, so they’re a bit slower to use but are great for anyone looking to make a build that just wants to Hulk Smash anything.
Orcs
Orcs are… Interesting. The moment the Old War started, they basically realized that they just love war and started to get creative about what it meant to go to war. They originally live On Top of mountains in slightly wooden areas so their usual baseline weapons include what you’d expect like Heavy Axes and large Blades that are made to cut down trees but they also started inventing literal weapons that are just built to Kill as recklessly as possible.
This is also because they were heavily territorial and did the simple math that if you are good at killing, you have less of a problem to deal with when it comes to people trying to take your territory. This also adds an intimidation factor to their weapons since they’re just brutish in design.
Though, similar to Pucks, some of their weapons can come with beautiful ornamentation because of how much they respect and love the art of War and Fighting as a reflection for survival and the love of life and existing.
HUmans and Elves
Humans and Elves are interesting since they’re the cousins to Orcs and Pucks respectively with neither of them really present and established during the Old War. Their weapons often take cues from their respective covers with the biggest difference being that they are way more focused on portability and attacking over long distances.
This is in part because Orcs are terrifying and Pucks are fast so if they need to defend themselves, they realized that the easiest way to do that would be to make sure that they can either take them down as efficiently as possible or never have to get within 50 feet of them to save their own skin. They had the benefit of being able to witness the Old War from a distance which is part of where they came up with their inventions for weaponry since a lot of other baseline tools had already been invented.
Elves specifically took cues from the Pucks and modifying whatever tools they used for Hunt to be used for War by heavily focusing on bows and arrows. This made it easier for them to deal with the fact that Pucks are significantly faster than them on their feet. For Humans, they realized if they were going to be able to keep up with Orcs, they also had to get creative – especially if they ever found themselves in close quarter combat and needed to effectively defend themselves against their much bigger Cousins.
Draex
Draex came in during the New War because uh… they just kind of got offended watching everyone fighting? Their distant cousins are Dragons and they know damn well that Dragons used to rule over everything so their involvement was triggered in part by wanting to put other Lineages in their place for assuming that they were allowed to take a dominating claim over all of Azraeém.
Their weapons are carved from old Dragon fossils, heavily relying on their bones and claws so that they can literally stick their weapons into whoever they’re fighting and force them to fight free – causing them to deal intense piercing damage.
Dwarves
Dwarves are incredibly high on E’s list of favorite lineages. They lived underneath the mountains so even though they were around during the Old War, they basically stared at everything and stuck to the mountains, prioritizing operating purely offensively. They did, however, get significantly more involved during the New War because of how far spread everything was becoming since they live in places with especially rare materials that were highly sought after.
A lot of their weapons come from mining equipment and are not as flashy looking because they’re just built to literally break rocks, minerals and skulls.
Werefolk
Werefolk are another one of both Mine and E’s faves since they evolved from the creatures in the Wilds during The Great Calm. They basically saw what was happening and – similar to Seedlings – came into being to protect their territory and come with three forms – Canine, Feline and Avian.
We figured even though they have the ability to turn into animals, they’d likely want to make sure that whatever weapons they use when in their more Humanoid form mirrored how they were used to fighting and attacking in their animal forms so they’re never really caught off guard.
Any other weapons that they make that aren’t immediately focused on their ability to do hand to hand combat has some sort of animal imagery associated with them (and will likely come with added abilities based on the animal that’s represented).
Goblins
Goblins are another fave of mine (Dre) who are one of the older lineages but they didn’t really get more aggressively involved until the Minor Skirmishes and they also just got really fucking weird with it when it came to the weapons that they use. A lot of their weapons rely on repurposing scraps of metal and other hard materials into useful weapons to defend themselves including using them to do things like setting up booby-traps. A lot of the ways that they’d piece together weapons would later be used as reference for machinery developed in Azraeém.
Changelings
Even though Changelings were around for a really long time, they didn’t really get involved until the Skirmishes. For the most part, whatever damage they did was mostly focused on just relying on subversion. When they got involved during the Skirmishes, they stuck to operating in the shadows and used weapons that benefited that – really pointy knives or pick hammers that are good for quick and quiet damage that allows them to easily escape when and as is needed while also being effective for throwing.
Tieflings
And then… there are the weapons that Tieflings made when they got involved during the Skirmishes.
They… honestly just made their weapons to fuck with people? That’s about it? Like they saw what everyone else made and decided to make weapons that filled in the blanks while also having the added factor of making everyone go “What the fuck are you doing?” when they laid eyes on it. Tieflings on a whole were just indifferent to what was happening and treated it like this was just A Thing that everyone was doing and didn’t think much more deeply on it than that.
What kind of damage do they do? Who the fuck knows. They’ll probably be incredibly random and not at all uniform because they really went into these conflicts with the mindset that their goal was just To Kill and that’s it.
And that’s it for now? We’re leaning towards having specific kinds of weapons using specific dice to make it easier to handle (i.e. small weapons use 1d4, big weapons use 1d12, etc. etc.). These also aren’t the only kinds of weapons that will be available since more weapons were developed when people started exploring Azraeém and developing the Pursuits so there will be weapons that are made that are class specific (like Wands …actually yeah I think the only things that weren’t covered were Wands since those are way more linked to the Pursuits than anything else).
Anyhoo thanks for reading! We’ll be seeing you!
