(08-19-2015, 05:53 PM)Shoshopu Wrote: Born in magic, the ancient city of Amdapor lived in splendor and died in agony. As the Fifth Astral Era gave way to the Sixth Umbral and the ensuing catastrophe, the agent of Amdapor's destruction slept. Now, the seal that has held so long is softening like windfallen fruit─and what blind worms writhe underneath the skin of the dead city?
Amdapor was not always thus afflicted. Indeed, the city once owed an age of prosperity to the benevolent art of white magic. But that was before the War of the Magi. It is told that the enemies of the Amdapori abandoned all caution in their pursuit of victory, and used their dark magicks to summon a king among demons. -E-Sumi-Yan
The civilization of Amdapor was the birthplace of White Magic, which I believe was developed as a counter to Shantotto's black magic. It was destroyed during the War of the Magi. The way the quotes I find tell it, Amdapor's enemies summoned Diabolos upon the city, where he was apparently sealed until the Calamity weakened the seal (which is where the player steps in for the dungeon), but only after royally screwing it up.
A friend of mine is really interested in Amdapor lore and although she doesn't remember exactly what the ingame sources of this information are, when I asked her, she said her impression of it was that the amount of the powerful back-and-forth of White and Black magic in the war devastated the area, including its aether, which allowed Diabolos to come through from the void in the first place- and it was also at that point the Elementals decided White Magic was being abused and sealed it, and the city, away, only allowing Padjal (and the player character, much later) to use White Magic. That might be a mix of some of her own headcanon though, she doesn't remember for sure, but it sounds pretty solid to me so I'm sharing it here. Take it with a grain of salt. But basically it sounds like a big, magical apocalypse event which led to the Sixth Umbral Era, and the Lost City of Amdapor is basically ground zero of the fallout. Sounsyy will probably roll by this thread eventually, or someone else with a more competent grasp on the lore than I have :X
As for how survivable it is- something that really struck me about the dungeon, at least in the area where you first enter, is that it looks a whole lot like a scene at the beginning of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (at least the movie, I forget where the manga starts exactly, but the same scene I believe) where a village has been overtaken by the "Toxic Jungle", a forest of enormous fungus spreading across the world, inhabited by... you guessed it, giant insects. In Nausicaa, as long as you don't go too deep into the Jungle, you can survive the toxic spores by wearing what are essentially gas masks, so if you ever have an IC trek into Amdapor your characters could employ something similar to that. Breathing in the spores without a mask would result in hella hemorrhaging of the lungs and a painful death. Not sure if Amdapor's spores are that extreme, though. NPCs don't really mention it, so probably not, but if it'd make the RP more dramatic and exciting, hey.
I also noticed the similarities between the Amdapor and Nausicaa (one of my favorite movies/manga). It quickly became one of my favorite dungeons. The idea of RPing with a gas mask is a really good one. If you have the goblin mask, you could probably use that.
