Histories of Illusia
In the late 1990s I was involved with a game in development called “Illusia: Quest for the Eternals” which was being produced by Living Mask Productions. It was a tile-based RPG based loosely off the old tinyMUD programming scheme, and was among the first graphical MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) being created.
Towards the end of the game’s life cycle I became Lead Writer for the development team; unfortunately by then the game’s end was a foregone conclusion.
I did manage, in that brief time, to flesh out much of the ideas that had preceded my involvement. The races were only loosely defined, little more than a paragraph about each; I’d decided, as a writer, I personally needed more – more knowledge about the race I was playing, their motivations, their history and land. I began crafting histories for some of the playable races, so that others like myself could then use that information to further define their own characters – and hopefully infuse their own writings with this information.
I’d also decided to add some cohesion to the mythology of the world itself. There were odd non-playable characters scattered throughout the game world, and descriptions of haunted places with no history as to why those places existed. There was a pantheon of Gods, but nothing to give the “religious” a way to show their devotion – or even to understand the beings they’d decided to worship. To that end, I created a primer outlining the gods and mythologies of Illusia.
I never did get to finish all of the 10 playable races; I had especially looked forward to detailing the Centauri, Felzur, and Trollics (the latter two whom I started outlining, but have lost those documents over the years.) Still, I did manage to hang onto these – so for all you ex-Illusians: enjoy.
