Pre-Flood world as a setting

Dear Veeky Forums,

Do you have any opinions or input on playing or DM'ing a campaign set in the "Antediluvian", aka, the pre-flood world? I've been reading about it as of late and it's an exceptionally interesting, conan-esque, sword and sorcery kind of setting:

>The world is completely overpopulated: Humans numbering 10 million at least (and growing) due to the 'purity' of their Eden genetics making disease unheard of and allowing them to live for 900 years easily unless they're killed or God literally takes them.
>Each progressive inbred generation becoming more impure- literally becoming more degenerate in every way.
>People live either by farming, hunting, or ranching, with most living in extremely cramped tent cities in complete and total debauchery where no act of sin is taboo or with consequence.
>Despite this, people still work mostly with stone, bronze, or very rarely iron tools.
>Nephilim(giants), the product of angels taking human wives also walked the earth: taking what they want, killing whoever they please, being both heroes and villains on a whim.

>The world's environment is completely different: four rivers stem from a fountain in the Garden of Eden to feed and water the rest of the world, the seas are shallow, mountains taller, with the landmasses much, much, larger, with the world uniformly warm & tropical.
>There is no rain, there is in fact no harsh weather or storms to speak of: water comes from misting vapors coming from below the ground and above from constant, humid, cloud coverage.
>Where resources haven't been stripped bare; the world remains flush with lush vegetation and all manner of monsters, beasts, and mythical creatures- constantly being refreshed or seeded by the Garden of Eden

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilmun
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth
sacred-texts.com/aus/mla/mla09.htm
sacred-texts.com/ane/chad/chad.htm
sacred-texts.com/jud/jftl/jftl05.htm
sacred-texts.com/bib/index.htm
sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bb20.htm
mediafire.com/?ew9u9tqr1h7kx
bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_races00.htm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Don't forget that rain wasn't a thing until the flood struck.

dont forget the tribes of degenerate decadants who will rape loot and burn in their slaneshi like pleasure chases.

Although I'm sure you've probably already heard of it (if it isn't entirely what peaked you're interest in this as a setting in the first place) there's a comic book series by Image called "The Goddamed" set in the pre-flood world. Haven't gotten round to reading it myself yet but I know people who rave about it. Hope it helps!

...

>if it isn't entirely what peaked you're interest in this as a setting in the first place

It's a decent 2/3rds.
The Goddamned is super good and I recommend it to anyone on Veeky Forums as it is excellent, but I hate how slow it updates and don't know if we'll ever see, like, more of it. I want more.

The movie 'Noah' is also motivating a little bit of this, but I wouldn't say it's 'good' per-say, just visually interesting.

>One armed
>Pissing into a death swamp
>Still holding your dick
You're outside! Why even bother?

The Goddamned came to mind here as well, yeah

I'd add stuff from the Sumerian King List's rulers: Alulim, Alalngar, En-men-lu-ana, En-men-gal-ana, Dumuzid the Shepherd, En-sipad-zid-ana, En-men-dur-ana, and Ubara-Tutu.

(And some have claimed that Alulim is roughly equivalent to Adam, Dumuzid or En-men-dur-ana with Enoch, and Ubara-Tutu with Lamech.)

After reading Enoch and Jubilees back in the day I wanted to give it a try. Even started writing up how arcane and divine magics came from Azazel and Semjaza and whatnot. Ended up scrapping stuff though.

The Bible never actually says or implies that.

The Bible never says or implies half the stuff you'd put in a campaign setting, you have to go to apocryphal works.

You mean because there were no rainbows before the flood?

I don't know if that necessarily implies no rain

Is there any decent place a man can just sit down and read up on as much pre-flood biblical lore as possible?
It seems far too interesting to be treated so briefly.

>"The Goddamed"
Just downloaded issues 1-4 thanks

Well, it depends how much conspiracy theory alien stuff you want to avoid.

Various wikipedia links that could be of interest:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilmun
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth

Ditch the iron. Iron is basically your setting's equivalent of adamantium or mithril. Iron has an extremely high melting point compared to copper, tin, or lead. The earliest known use of iron is just small bits of stuff from meteors. People didn't consider iron that was available in the ground to be anything but rock because you couldn't melt it with even the hottest of normal kilns whereas the other metals I mentioned melted rather easily when placed in fireplaces/kilns.

>Iron is basically your setting's equivalent of adamantium or mithril.

That's kind of the idea and it's been touched on here and there in some of the source and inspiration material:
-In The God Damned Iron is as rare as you'd expect it to be in the time period with only the direct descendants of Adam & Eve having knowledge of it. Noah possess Iron.

-In The Book of Enoch, Enoch mentions the fallen angel Azazel whom teaches men about WAR and instructs them on how to forge and craft weapons, arms, armors, and the use of stones- most likely to make cities and walls.

-In the Bible itself, they mention a direct descendant of Cain, a man named 'Tubal-cain' who was the "forger of all instruments of bronze and iron" and or "instructor of every artificer in brass and iron". So, he, as well, could have been a source of iron.

Not saying it would be common, but every once in a while you'd find remarkable people possessing iron works in the period.

Thought of adding other Flood myths? It is common for every agriculture-besides-a-river civilization to have a flood myth. Here's some:
sacred-texts.com/aus/mla/mla09.htm
sacred-texts.com/ane/chad/chad.htm
sacred-texts.com/jud/jftl/jftl05.htm


sacred-texts.com/bib/index.htm
sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bb20.htm

this looks amazing will have a look thx for the tip

>sacred-texts.com/bib/index.htm
>sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bb20.htm

Shit, these are great, thank you so much, user.
I've always been super curious about the stuff they didn't include in the bible, I understand they gotta save time and paper, but it's pretty fucking brief in some important parts.

You forgot about NOT!darkelves society with slaanesh tier decadence
also
>There is no rain, there is in fact no harsh weather or storms to speak of: water comes from misting vapors coming from below the ground and above from constant, humid, cloud coverage.
no

Well, general idea is, that those details werent important on the long run. Asides that Apocrypha are not included for other reasons, connected with inconsistency, or doubious content.
Anywho, if you want apocrypha about preflood universe, "Book of enoch" and "life of adam of eve" are two prime sources.

Azazel has been entombed under the Great Pyramids which has become the most evil tainted place on earth.

Since I really liked this comic I decided to upload the issues for you all:

mediafire.com/?ew9u9tqr1h7kx
Here's issues 1-5. I think that's all that's been produced so far.

The flood was both rain and flooding from the underground

>This is what happens when Bible Belt gets into RPG

Reddit/10

Made me reply

>peaked

It's "piqued", you fucking Mongoloids.

This is the edgiest comic I’ve read in a while. Also the swearing was so overused it just became kind of cringey.
>tell your mother to shut her whore mouth before I shove the nearest apple down her throat.

It's a literary tool

The more debased and removed from God the human, the more they swear

And also the more inhuman they look

What's wrong with swearing if they're supposed to be literal degenerates?

Oh! Are they meant to be debased human beings?

I thought, because the dinosaurs and megafauna were still around, they were just now-extinct hominids.

Stuff like “whore” is fine (I just thought it was silly imagining Adam saying it to Eve), but “shit” and “fuck” just kind of broke the immersion. It just sounded too modern

I'm not trying to bait too much; I will say I liked the art style

I just figured they're using their... unpolite equivalent of "feces" and "coitus" desu

Impolite, user, if you please.

>Oh! Are they meant to be debased human beings?
>I thought, because the dinosaurs and megafauna were still around, they were just now-extinct hominids.
Yeah, the dinosaurs are because this setting is riffing on the young-earth model of world history where today is only 6000 years since the beginning of creation. But all those humanoids are all debased humans descended from Adam and Eve.

So a debased man is bestial in form as well as function?

>The world is completely overpopulated: Humans numbering 10 million at least
user, do you know how many people are in the world today?

>user, do you know how many people are in the world today?

Meant to say 10 billion, can't believe you're the only person to point that out.

explain further please. i know that the banished angels procreated with humans to make giants but i could never figure out what happened to those angels on earth. were they eventually sent to hell?

Easy way to take care of that, pic related

They were drowned along with the rest of the world

Shit, sorry, it's late here.

wouldn't they be the god-kings of the world? wouldn't their giant children me their ultimate guards or warrior-enforcers? wouldn't they use angel/demon magic to survive the flood? how was azazel entombed under the pyramids? wouldn't the fallen angels teach some of the giants and humans angel/demon magic?

Depends on the setting. In ancient Jewish stories, most magic was actually being really knowledgeable about something, so presumably none of the angels knew how to breathe water because God never taught them how to do that.

So they were in fact, eventually sent to hell?

If just anyone could learn angel/demon magic,it wouldn't be angel/demon magic then, would it?

I don't know if Hell was invented yet

God captured all 200 of the fallen angels and bound and sealed them away into some other place where they couldn't bother anyone else. The angels, though, had already succeeded in teaching men all sorts of things: waging war, cosmetics, and sorcery (odd combination, I know, but whatever.).

Their children, though, the Nephilim did in fact miraculously survive the flood and continued to live in the post-flood world. I think it was some time during the exodus where Moses was told about Nephilim and Giants living in their promise land and it's generally regarded that most of the heroes of classical greek myth were Nephilim (Hercules, etc) and that they could be good, evil, but always impulsive.
The BIG deal, though, was that God confused the ways of the Nephilim so that they would constantly wage war and conflict with one another so as to prevent them from being great in number and consuming all the works of men- including men themselves.

well it would be the source. think paladins and clerics in fantasy rpgs. anyone *can* learn it, but it must come from the divine. in this example, it must come from the fallen angels.

Goliath was a descendant of one of the giants that survived the deluge. i think it;s said that moses even killed some giants himself

Is Hell where they were bound and sealed away? why did user mention azazel and the great pyramids?

But why would a fallen angel, a literal servant of Satan, give away bits and pieces of its own, (God-given, and presumably irreplaceable,) power to regular mortals?

>But why would a fallen angel, a literal servant of Satan, give away bits and pieces of its own, (God-given, and presumably irreplaceable,) power to regular mortals?
Well let's say you're waging a war on Heaven

You have 10,000 guns

Do you keep all 10,000 guns in your house, or do you arm 9,999 followers

because it would sow chaos and fuck with god's creations, annoying him. or the fallen could try to create an army to try and take over heaven again

>But why would a fallen angel, a literal servant of Satan, give away bits and pieces of its own, (God-given, and presumably irreplaceable,) power to regular mortals?

Sin works nearly exactly the same way as Evil does in Lord of The Rings, by that I mean Satan can't make anything new or create anything in a vacuum, but instead must corrupt the creations of God in order to see results.
So, to that effect: it's in Satan's best interest to teach Men sorceries, forbidden knowledge, and other various arcane secrets so that they can assist them in fucking up God's plans- even if it is ultimately futile.

If you're using 5e using the warlock class for those who side with the fallen angels would work. a campaign about siding with satan, invading heaven, and fighting angels would be badass. they're already in the monster manual.

Sometimes I see on here people want to do a stone age setting. I'd recommend they maybe run this instead.

> invading heaven to do battle with God
> as in, capital-G Abrahamic GOD
> as in, Jehovah, Yeshua, Elohim, Adonai, Yahweh, whatever you want to call Him, GOD
> as in, the entity that canonically created the entire universe, the laws of physics, and heaven and hell in six working days, via word of mouth
> invading heaven, to do with the battle with the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent G-O-D, GOD, spell it, GOD Almighty, Creator of All Things, Lord of Hosts, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, He who was, is, and is to come, GOD
> invading heaven to do battle with the GM of reality, and his legions of loyal angels which outnumber the fallen angels 2-1
> invading heaven with, best case scenario, a few tens of millions of cave men, a million, tops, proto-goliaths, a few thousands of angels and demons, and the Devil, an entity known for deceiving, corrupting, and manipulating so as to avoid doing direct battle with God
> all of this, with late stone age-early bronze age tech

You're ballsy, I'll give you that.

Yeah, it has more potential for actual roleplaying and more lore behind desu, besides it doesn't lend itself as much to unga-bunga shit.

It must be said, -some- degree of unga-bunga is essential for any stone age campaign, even if primitivity is not a center-stage piece of the setting.

I'm not at all religious but it always baffles me how people fail to understand that the power scale between America and God is greater than the power difference between an individual Ant and every human civilizations collective efforts + the lineup of Dragon Ball Z combined. I think, to an extent, people struggle to conceptualize an entity that can just choose to override reality at a whim, and is virtually all knowing

> and is virtually all knowing

In Abrahamic lore, there's no "virtually" about it.

Gotcha covered bro

Alien conspiracy bullshit is the best part.

bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_races00.htm

OT YHWH is kind of in a weird transitional state as far as power level goes. He didn't start out as omnipotent creator of the universe but as a canaanite war god and patron god of the tribe of Israel. He was powerful but fallible. He also was part of a larger cast of characters, mostly his siblings the Elohim ("Children/Sons of El", in reference to their collective Dad El Elyon), but as the Israelites started becoming more independent and separating themselves from their neighbors, they started literally demonizing the other tribes' gods and giving their deeds and titles to Yahweh, and eventually move completely from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism/monolatry

Cosmic force of righteousness mode comes quite a long time after, so it makes sense in a antediluvian, pre-bronze age campaign to deal more with the super ultra mega king Yahweh rather than absolute lord of existence YHWH

With Jesus added I would certainly agree, but (at least from when I was a bit younger), i heard a very good arguement about how pre-Jesus God wasnt

Isn't there also a sect of Gnosticism where the New Testament God is a completely different entity than the Old one?

Radical. What's with the axe?

Oh, I thought we were talking modern biblical text God, not OT Hebrew God. Yeah, but that's still quite ballsy.

Right right, you got a link/summary of the argument? We've had three politics threads today, might as well throw a bit of theology into the Noahic Flood setting thread.

>Radical. What's with the axe?

That's Noah, he knows how to forge iron.

>What's with the axe?
I might be a bit off here, but I think that after the fall of the first city (that Cain founded) the secret of iron was mostly lost other than through the line of Seth (Adam & Eve's third child). Noah knows how to make iron, which gives his people an edge.

I think some other people might know how to use iron at the same time, but it's really rare.

Quite a few, actually. Several non-gnostic sects too, and really a lot of American Protestantism gets close to just out and out saying that considering how often they say that the OT just doesn't count. I've seen several baptists and petecostals basically come to the conclusion that the OT god was basically an evil Jew demon god who tricked mankind until Jesus showed us the way.

>[W]hich gives his people an edge.

NT God is even MORE powerful than OT God.

Or, rather, He is portrayed as such.

No offense intended, Lord.

Basically the arguement went like this:

Being mortal, we cant understand what it's like to be infinite and unlimited. Conversly, an infinite being may not understand what its like to be limited and mortal; God would struggle with the idea of linearity because He has no beginning, no end, no limits. He would have no idea what it's like to die, or be scared, or helpless, because for Him that cant feasibly happen.

Jesus changes that, by giving Him mortal perspective. He got to "feel" what it was like to be occupied, to grow up with beloved (but fallible) family and friends, and intense, humiliating suffering. In otherwords, He got to experience the world from OUR level and perspective, with a beginning and end, which explains the personality shift between OT and NT.

>God would struggle

Stopped reading there.

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, desu. If he really wanted to he could just instantaneously become aware of the perspective and lived experience of every being in the universe without incarnating. Pretty much the only reason for JC that makes "sense" is for purposes of confusing jewish blood ritual

>drumpf

Good argument.

Always ignore /pol/tards

I'm wondering how equipment would work in this setting. We talked about iron being exceptionally rare so would you say that items that are normally iron (like a sword or armor) were instead brass and don't change item values, or would it be better to make normal equipment weaker and have the players more reliant on skill,magic, and trinkets ?

Stone and bone weapons for the most part; treat as regular weapons with a chance to break during combat? That's how Dark Sun did it.

How would corruption work if we're going on a world like ?
Would it be an active thing where the more you go against God the more mutated you become, or would it be the mutations just determine your race and that its static throughout the campaign?

Can someone explain why all manner of fantasty insists on using modern curse words like shit and fuck?

>Can someone explain why all manner of fantasty insists on using modern curse words like shit and fuck?
Yeah, talk about unrealistic. This whole thing should be written in Aramaic.

I would say there's only one race of playable characters (human) and your Good or Evil rating determines your appearance, with Good characters being more symmetrical and pleasing to the eye and Evil characters are more bestial and asymmetrical. Your Good rating could give you a bonus to defense and your Evil rating would give you a bonus to offense. PCs could choose to start within a window of Good-to-Evil, and then move one way or the other during the course of the game depending on their actions.

Stuff like the Nephilim would be NPC only.

just let players be goliaths for the nephilim. you know, like Goliath

You fucking mongoloid, confused retards.
YHWH is satan not God.
He created the fallen world we call our universe which in essence is a computer simulation.

The fallen angels who birthed the Nephelim, belonged to Ellohim kind, the most powerful beings back in the real world.
God sent them here to teach humanity about him because humanity had forgotten God. Unfortunately satan tricked them into creating a new more powerful species so that human souls could use that instead, in this fake world.
Those were the Nephelim.

Of course it didn't work because humans didn't have the right to possess such powerful bodies here.

go away, /x/

If going for D&D's races (since you mentioned goliath as a race) there's also the possibility of 4e's deva to represent the grigori.

grigori are the fallen angels, right?

The ones who fell to love of humanity. And yeah were the progenitors of the gibborim/nephilim.

So this'd be after their fall, punished for interfering with humanity, they've been cursed to a corporeal reincarnating existence.

Based user.

anyone want to storytime it on /co/?

If I wasn't mobile-posting in bed I would.

We storytime comics on Veeky Forums all the time

...

The way I see it, the point of Jesus was for humanity. As weak, fallible, limited beings, we just straight up may not be able to handle God Himself coming down. Any time he appears, either directly (I believe he appears to Moses and the Hebrews ask Moses to make it go away because it's really scary), as a burning bush or when he sends down an angel, it's terrifying. So, make a human with a direct link to the full thing, so we can handle it.

Well. That was edgy as fuck.

For a minute there I actually thought there was going to be a sorta happy ending.

Seems like a place to put this.