Legends of Belariath

What Am I Doing Here?

What is this place?

What am I doing here?

Who am I?

All quite reasonable questions if this is your first visit and you don't, to the best of your knowledge, suffer any recognised psychiatric illnesses. (For the present terms of reference, a fascination with playing out, or seeing others get involved in, the fantasy rape and enslavement of non-existent beings is considered perfectly normal.)

So, assuming that you are relatively sane for the purposes of our little rolpelay, here's a brief overview. If this doesn't put you off, you will find much more detailed information in the rest of the site.

Belariath is a fantasy world that takes as it's background a fairly standard environment which should be familiar to anyone who has read Tolkein, Fritz Lieber or any of the other classic fantasy authors. A somewhat medieval appearance to the place is combined with a lack of technology and the presence of magic. This allows us to gloss over the realities of actual medieval life with it's poor diet, low life expectancy, disease and lack of opportunity for all but the few. It also allows us to introduce numerous fantasy races taken from various sources and bring them together into a fairly cohesive whole.

So OK, what you see is a rather typical fantasy-based roleplay, such as you can find in hundreds of other places online, to say nothing of computer games, table-top, paper and card games? Why bother making another one?

Well each one of those is a bit different and we like to think we are a bit different too, even though you will find here the traditional aspects of developing a character, fighting others, getting drunk, chasing dragons and living to brag about it. We have put a lot of effort into making a unique world rather than just a clone and that applies right across the roleplay, not just because we don't sweep sex under the carpet.

If that hasn't put you off, you will find out about the varied races and the different ways you can define and develop your character elsewhere. Suffice to say that there are many options. This isn't a two-dimensional game in which players endlessly repeat the same actions without any coherent existence for their characters. It is a fully (well, almost fully) developed world in which those characters interact in many ways. What you do impacts on those around you and what they do impacts on your own character. It isn't all forgotten the next time you drop by.

The actual roleplay takes place in a number of rooms within the IRC chat network. These represent a small part of the world of Belariath, principally the central points of a relatively obscure empire - The Lonely Inn, the town of Nanthalion and it's surroundings. Using IRC enables numerous players to be in real-time contact with each other and for the play to procede with a sense of immediacy missing from other options such as play-by-mail.

I think that's all you need to know for now, except for my reassurance that you will never be required to take part in online sex when you don't want to. While your character may hate being ravaged, you, the player, should only be experiencing that because it is a fantasy you enjoy playing out in safety.

It just remains for me to either welcome you to Belariath, or smile farewell and accept this isn't for everyone, wishing you a safe journey in your search for an experience that suits your needs better.

Stormbringer