Virigoth’s Spiral

What is Spireal?! (pronounced: spire-al)

Technical Stuff:
Spireal will be played using a 2d client program that connects to a Spireal server.  The player can interact with other players (20-100 per server) and form groups of up to 3 players to journey out into the danger.  A portion of the world will be static and shared with all other players. Majority of combat areas will be randomly generated when first entered and private to the adventuring party/group.

Premise of the Game:
The World of Spireal is a flat disk carried upon a white elephant through the void of space with the sun and the moon circling about it. At the center of the world is Spire City named after the tower at it’s center. At the tip of the Spire is the Astral Plane, home of the Immortals.

Goal of the Game
The goal of the game is to become the most powerful, famous and interesting Immortal in the Astral Plane.

The player of Spireal starts the game as an immortal being who has just become self aware. It can interact with other Immortal and has powers to give itself any form, items, and abilities. Ultimately the player’s Immortal can even create its own small world.

Even though the player’s Immortal has all these powers, at the start it lacks the Merit to use most of them.

What is Merit and how do you get it?
Merit represents the power of your Immortal. It can be thought of as manna, faith, prestige, influence etc. You gain merit through the actions of your Avatars. When Avatars who follow the Immortal perform actions that benefit their diety (the Immortal who caused their birth), they generate merit for the Immortal and themselves.

What is an Avatar and how does an Immortal get one?
An Avatar is a mortal hero who works for benefit of an Immortal. Each Immortal has number of Avatars who’s goal is to reach the 50th level and eventually Ascend and become one with their Immortal diety.

An Immortal creates an Avatar by reincarnating a portion of their mind on the mortal plane. They choose the race, profession and various traits that the newborn will eventually acquire. They also choose at what age the Avatar will awaken to their mission and begin their work for their Immortal.

How does an Avatar gain levels in order to Ascend?
The player can either control his Immortal or one of its mortal Avatars. When the player chooses to control an Avatar he can travel (as the particular Avatar) across the world of Spireal and visit various locations, perform quests, and most importantly enter Dungeons. By adventuring inside, solving quests and slaying various nasties, the Avatars gain merit. With enough merit gained for their Immortal they are granted higher levels along with new skills, powers etc.

What does it mean to Ascend?
When the Avatar ascends his consciousness rejoins the Immortal which reincarnated it on the mortal plane giving the Immortal knowledge of all of the Avatar’s experiences. From this point on the Immortal may use the form, items, skills, powers, monsters and environments (the tiles that dungeons are made off) that the Avatar has used, killed, or been in. The Immortal can also at any time assume the form of that Avatar and re-enter all the dungeons that the Avatar has cleansed.

What are Dungeons?
The world of Spireal is composed of two types of environments:

• Overworld which is shared by all players, never changes and represents the world of Spireal and the cities and locations on it.
• Dungeons which are randomly generated and are accessible only to the Avatar and his companions. The dungeons represent Places of Power that must be cleansed in order for your Avatar and Immortal to gain merit. The dungeons are created the first time your Avatar enters them, from then on they stay static and you can revisit them anytime.

What are Places of Power and why should I want to get to them?
Places of Power are at the bottom of dungeons, they are the reason why all the nasty monsters create a dungeon at given place. When cleansed by an Avatar they generate an enormous amount of merit for both your Avatar and Immortal. They are the actual reason for entering a dungeon, and the main way for your Avatar to gain levels.

Summary:
You play as an Immortal being who interacts with other Immortals on the Astral Plane.

You can have actual abilities to give yourself any form, items, abilities and to actually create your own small world.  You can interact with and enter other Immortal’s worlds.  You can fight other Immortals if you’ve ascended as a Player vs Player enabled Avatar.

In order to actually use your abilities you need merit.  To gain merit you reincarnate a portion of yourself (you can only have X Avatars at given level of Merit as an Immortal) and create Avatars who live and adventure on the mortal plane of Spireal.

The Avatars perform quests, slay monsters, and cleanse Places of Power in the Overland and in Dungeons below the ground.   By doing this they gain merit for both themselves and their Immortal. As they acquire more and more merit they gain levels until they reach the 50th level.   At this point an option to Ascend is open to them.

The advantage of Ascending is that it unlocks things that your Immortal can create themselves and their world with.  It also ’saves’ the Avatar allowing the Immortal to take it’s forms and visit it’s dungeons.
The disadvantage is that many of the most interesting things on Spireal can only be reached or found by a 50th level Avatar due to the level of danger. Thus most level 50 players will not immediately Ascend after gaining the last level.

Death
When an Avatar dies he can use up some of his merit to pray to his Immortal for resurrection. Doing this avoids any negative consequences of death (loss of statistics or equipment etc). Dying with negative or negligible merit causes the player to possibly suffer some sort of loss of equipment or statistics.

Player vs Player
An Avatar can at some point in his career make a choice to be able to attack and be attacked by other Avatars. This allows him to find and learn unique skills meant for Player vs Player which are made available to his Immortal when the Avatar ascends. Furthermore, when an Immortal ‘morphs’ into a form of an ascendant who has participated in PK combat, he can enter the Astral Arena and fight other Immortals with this form.