Overview
Imagine a diadem of world-shards in orbit around a sun, strung not by any material line but by sparkling lines of magical force. The shards spin slowly, creating night and day. The light from the Sun possesses a healing and nourishing effect, restoring magical energy to the magicians of these worlds, but it is opposed by the Endless Night which seeks to drain that energy away into the inky void and turn the worlds into cold, dead stone.
The central kingdom of Avatars is named Tasavar, one near to the Sun and thus blessed with more magical energy - enough to allow it a Victorian level of technology, except with magic used in place of science. Great flying airships ferry passengers from one town to another, carved from giant tree trunks, lofted by levistones extracted from another.
The Players' Role
Players take the role of "Links" - characters who wake up one day to discover they have formed a connection to a Guardian Spirit. Some Guardian Spirits take the form of pets or beasts - an Avatar - and others appear as armor or weapons forming out of thin air to equip their wearer for battle - an Augment. These Guardian Spirits know as little as the player character (PC) does about where they came from, but they feel a deep attachment to their masters and will fight fiercely to protect them.
It isn't mandated that players take up arms against the Endless Night immediately - in fact, new players are encouraged to explore, to get some adventures under their belt and make themselves better acquainted with their newfound friends.
New for Avatars 2.0: in what is probably the worst-marketed expansion ever for a VR game, when Avatars finally came back online after the Breakdown of 2065, players mysteriously found themselves to choose a third type of character - a Mage. Up to this time, Grey Mages had been regarded as suspicious and potential allies of the Endless Night - they claimed, heretically, that the Sun was merely a source of energy, and that there were other types of energies to be harnessed. Now, with the Empire of Stars growing in strength, Tasavalta is willing to pay the Grey Mages for their help and not look too deeply into their methods.
History
In the beginning, Tasavar had been ruled over by a wise, old king, Solomon, but early in the history of Avatars, he died, and it was up to the scattered heroes to search out his successor, and to hold the land together in the face of an invasion from the Endless Night as they struck in the moment of Tasavar's weakness. Shockingly, not one but two successors of equal eligibility were found, inaugurating a civil war between the North and South, and only recently has the land been reunited as the Southern King yielded to the Northern King, driven by the more important threat of the Empire of Stars which is seeking to unify all the worlds of the Diadem under its despotic rule.
New for Avatars 2.0: the Empire of Stars has succeeded in conquering the Sentinel Shards and claims titular ownership of the Shipwreck, though in practice the Duke of Ships merely pays lip service and a modest tribute in exchange for the Empire sanctioning pirate activities as "privateers".
- AvatarsGuardianSpirits - about the Guardian Spirits
- AvatarsPlayerCharacters - about playing a hero in Avatars
- AvatarsMythos - about the magic that permeates the worlds of Avatars
- AvatarsShards - about the Shards of the Diadem
