Help with a pre-story for a modded race

It's nice and generally sound. Not really to my taste ( to be honest, whole back story to the game doesn't sit well with me ), but tastes differ and stuff you have can work. If I was to give any suggestions it would be

1)

This is actually quite horrid. You can't imprison (by accident or design) someones will/ambition etc. You can imprint it, you can corrupt with it, but imprison? Hell no, that would be some really weird lobotomy Going further - the kind of madness you describe probably excludes higher purpose.

And if we're at this bit - consider having the titan willingly corrupt the shard with some sort of mental construct given parts of his knowledge and tasked with opening him a way back. Makes the bad guy look more like a scheming genius and less like a sorry looser :]

2)

Terribly dramatic this. And if you made it part of a species it would give you some heretics to hunt.

3)

This doesn't stick. If your 'will' is mad, it can't convince, it can take over and spread insanity sure, but not scheme and reason. Would you believe a raving, loony, kind of a ghost you saw in a vision? :] And besides why would species X want to rule the world? That's a huge jump of ambition from 'hey, let's try to use a shard to make a living'. To propose a solution that ties up with the engineering motif - I'd have the thing in the shard give them technology that needs to be powered by the shards in a way only the 'thing' understands. Would give the faction the motivation to get more shards (more technology to power) and copy the 'thing' into them.

4)

Nah, just make it a result of gap in knowledge. The thing in the shard describes how to do stuff using many wonderful terms species X never heard before (imagine trying to explain quantum physics to a guest from XIIth century). So they guess, approximate, use probably equivalent materials and techniques and surprisingly most of the time it works. And rest of the time it explodes. Simple.

5)

This should actually be a form of master quest. Either do a game over when the summoning succeeds, or make summoned titan a (very though) target to kill and have him rampage over the map.

Ok, don't sue me, just saying how I'd implement it if this was mine. Agreement is not compulsory.

The idea is that when the titans were banished, one titan in particular (to be named) tried to avoid banishment by binding himself to a shard. For the most part, this did not succeed - the titan was banished, but he had succeeded in some small measure. The titan's will, his ambition, his purpose, had become imprisoned within the shard. So the will of the titan can't escape the shard, and while the world slowly starts to rebuild, the titan's will grows mad, and eventually corrupts the shard (bends it to his will) while trying (and failing) to escape.

Cases:

Body banished, no mind. The mind "attached" to the magic flow of the Shard.

Body dead for all purposes unless the other Titans in their pocket universe are fond of keeping vegetal bodies alive. Considering what we know of the Titans, I vote for dead body. The original mind is in the flow of the Shard, having lose (most if not all) part of its own power and getting the ability to manipulate the flow of the Shard (affecting the power that can be obtained from it).

Like the previous point but we keep the body alive. Why? The Titans know what happened to the Titan and keep the body to try to use it as a way to come back to Elemental or something like that. This option is only interesting if it can be developed through the game (quests, events...).

Body banished, mind intact in it. Copy of the mind "attached" to the magic flow of the Shard.

The Titan does whatever Titans do in their world. The mind in the Shard is like previous case with the difference that it may be conscious of being a "clone" or not.

Body destroyed. The mind (copy or not) "attached" to the magic flow of the Shard.

The mind in the shard may know or not about the destruction of the body and/or about if it's a clone. In any case, works like in the first case.

In any case, considering how long lived Titans are, maybe it doesn't go mad per se (frustrated on the other hand...). In any case, his objectives would fall in the line of: get a body (real or manifestation?) and control the power of the Shards. You can twist those objectives and/or the way of obtaining them but I'd say that those would be the most expected objectives for him to achieve. Ok, maybe world destruction if he goes totally nuts.

At this point, species X comes along. They have, of course, heard stories about channelers bringing the power of the shards to work for them and recreate civilization. Eagerly, they make the necessary preparations, but as their fledgling channeler tries to tap into the shard, the titan's will is found instead. The titan's will then convinces the species X that he will teach them all the wonders of the old times - specifically engineering (that was the titan's speciality). The titan's will uses the magic within the shard to bring power to a basic technological society. The titan's will tells species X that they can become more powerful than anybody else, if they combine this engineering with his power to control all the shards in the world.

Being trapped for so long in a Shard and being (what is left of) a Titan, it would be possible that when the Sovereign tries to tap into that Shard... Well, bye bye Sovereign. Hello Titan. It does not need to happen instantly (especially because it would be the first time that a Channeler tries to use his Shard) but could slowly happen (in gameplay terms, it could actually happen to anny of the Channelers of that faction). After all, Channeler do channel the magic flow from the Shards so in this case, it would be like inviting the Titan to enter their bodies (temporarily though). It may not take possesion of the Channelers, but I'd say that it would have at least some corrupting effect the more they enter in contact with the "tainted" flow from the Titan Shard.

The goal of the titan's will remains the same - to conquer all and harvest the shards for himself. The species sees the power of the shard used for a measure of good, in the beginning. They believe that the titan's will can help them create a better world, perhaps not even just for themselves but for everyone.

Yep, yep. Don't forget the body. Shards are attached to the world so unless there is some kind of "magic plane" he can dwell in, he surely would want to walk free over Elemental.

The gimmick of the species will be engineering and chaos (randomness). Their spells are as likely to work for them as it is against them. The idea is to have abilities that can blow up in their faces, or just generally do random things to everyone. I haven't decided on the source of this randomness - either it is because the titan's will is now mad, or it is because the will of a titan lacks the real power of a titan and thus the power he lends to his subjects is not really within his control. New shards will be corrupted by the titan's will to feed the society growing. As the society grows more powerful, the dangers of the randomness will go up (but also their powers). Perhaps the titan's will has problems managing all the power, or perhaps he just likes to see his minions bleed.

I designed a magic (theoretical) system (for Elemental) based on some randomness. The idea in my case was that magic was very powerful but the magic users were the first ones so there were no tutors or books to learn the tricks. Which meant many magic users exploding or worse.

For your case I would go for the Titan's will being able to control the flow from the Shards under his influence. That would allow the faction to actually wield more powerful magics than other factions. Problem is: they are still the same people with "advanced magical weaponry". Each spell learn by the faction is more powerful than the average but has a chance of backfire. The more powerful the spell, the bigger the chance of backfire.

As example, lets suppose a Teleport. As a "basic" spell, it would work normally but with a very small chance of backfiring (in this case, it would cost mana and you wouldn't teleport). Later a new and improved version of Teleport is discovered (lets say that it allows you to Teleport anywhere except in enemy territory) but it also comes with an higher chance of backfire (in this case, the army ends in a random tile). Later again, another improved version of Teleport is developed (allows you to teleport anywhere) with an even higher chance of backfire (lose the army, including Sovereign if in it).

Obviously, magic users of the faction would research techniques to reduce risks of backfire (meaning that they start learning to control the increased power that the Titan grants) but the most powerful spells would always have some risk.

I mention this because altough it has randomness built in, it feels better than just randomness. But it's just an idea trying to... er... validate why would the faction have problems controlling their magic.

Eventually, if enough shards are corrupted, the titan's will can attempt to summon his body and power back to the world. As that would be at the very high end of the power spectrum, it would have a very low success rate, and would more often summon various hostile monsters that would go rampage across the empire. However, it should be possible to summon the body back. Some alternate mechanic would be in place here, like allowing the user to control him two turns, then four turns of madness.

Summmoning a new body (or the old one) or taking control of the poor Sovereign (or a poor Channeler Champion). I don't think it's bad to get a Titan controllable the same as you can get a Dragon. It could affect negtively the magic performance as the wouldn't be part of the Shard... or maybe not, depending on the effects of being free from the Shard (and how selfish he is, my precious...) and which ties remains.

I've dumbed down the "story" a bit after I read your posts (not dumbed down for you, for the users).

Now the idea is just that the mind was imprisoned (body destroyed) and the mind carries the grudge against the channelers (who banished them) until the shard gets found. The first thing the mind sees after being "released" is... a channeler. Normally the titan would just wtfpwn someone as noob as that, but he's tied to the shard so he comes up with a "plot". He needs all the power of the shards to recreate his body, but he still has a grudge against the channelers so he decides to have a little fun with his followers. Fun, in this meaning, implies randomness and pain for others. Preferably the whole world.

The empire species, which of course (like any naive population) believes the god to be good-willed, can't imagine that the source of chaos and destruction in their society is the mind of the titan. Like any shamanistic religion, they think that the problems occur because they don't use it right / perform the necessary preparations / say the right prayers.

Anyway.

Titan's mind imprisoned in shard

Shard found, evil mind inside

Evil mind corrupts society, bends it to his will

Society sets out to conquer world

???

Titan reborn, user wins.

There's one problem though. The player plays a channeler, not a mind of the titan. See, there's a split purpose there. The channeler wants what's best for his society. But the PLAYER knows they've been corrupted and if they take over the world, it will be hell forever.

So right now I'm feeling really dumb for having created this topic, because I realize that the plot the mind has come up with, should not have been unveiled for the player until he won.

Btw that tie in with the spell of making was a great idea. Instead of the spell of making, I'll just make it a new spell where a new body is summoned. Since it should be on equal footing with the spell of making - IE victory for user - the titan can have pretty much unlimited powers.

Edit: Thanks for the feedback!

Edit2: Oh yeah, engineering/steampunk. That's been moved over to the original species. It didn't make any sense for the titan, a being of pure magic (I think) to teach a species about construction. So now the original species was a nomad race of tinkerers, just starting to find out about things like magnetism and electricity. Along comes the titan and plugs in the power of the corrupted shard into their... "batteries". The power output goes "WOOOOOOOM" and a new society is born. (there will be a form of resource for the society that allows them to build super-special buildings like additional health to units trained there, but it will be limited by the amount of corrupted shards and powerplants the player controls). Edit3: Oooh... I could make the caravans lay down powerlines between the cities.

Not really a problem. You just have to add one more step to the writeup - 

Titan's mind imprisoned in shard

Shard found, evil mind inside

Evil mind takes over the channeler

Evil mind corrupts society, bends it to his will

Society sets out to conquer world

Titan reborn, user wins.

Make evil mind and the channeler one and the same. This will push the faction to be more evil than empires, but hey, duped fanatics, unwittingly bringing forward doom to all that is, do have certain charm :]

The player can decide which path to follow: a "good" one or the "Titan" one. Research trees are a good opportunity to allow the player to pick up techs that would give them more power but at the cost of getting more and  more corrupted by the Titan. Although the tech tree would be the same, it would have paths to reflect the path to "salvation" and the path to "damnation" (some different units/buildings). The end can be common though: the Titan can be summoned (be it part of master quest-style or not) but in the "salvation" path he is under the total control of the Sovereign ("Watch my new pet!! Muahahahaha!!!" - Happy Sovereign) while in the "damnation" he would be "Guess who has spent years in a Shard and is going to kill everybody?".

Or the focus for this faction would be simply that of the unfortunate Sovereign that gets corrupted by the Titan in the first encounter and from there, road to hell all the way, baby! So the Sovereign that the player creates (if it doesn't come with one by default) is nothing but the future vessel of the Titan. Body snatchers rock.

Just some semi random ideas.

No choice for these guys. I want them to be tragic. They were always fated to get destroyed.

If I can actually keep this from the player and only reveal it when the faction "wins", all the better.

Edit: I don't like the idea of the mind entering the channeler. If the mind could just escape from the shard into the first channeler, then it's not much of a prison. It's also a balance issue - in my mind, the whole "titan" thing should be something special. To give the player direct control of that is not, I think, acceptable lore-wise.

It would be like playing a warhammer RPG and giving the player control over the emperor in day 3. And THEN telling him to go research hammers and fireballs.

That would be what I'd say as well. Channelers are naturally drawn to the magic of the shards, and if the mind of the titan was stuck in the shard, it could "reach out" as it were and lure a suitably powerful Channeler to it. Once the Channeler came to the shard, the mind of the Titan twisted him (or her). The Channeler, or course, can't realize the ultimate goal, and doesn't even have to be aware that he's essentially mind controlled. In his mind (and the player's), he just found a shard of great power, and naturally wants to build up his strength and find all the other shards. Obviously controlling all the shards requires conquering the world, so both the player's and the channeler's wants are pretty much satisfied. Little does the channeler and his subjects know that he is actually influenced by the mind of the Titan (and thus, his "kingdom" is also influenced), and don't realize that what they're doing is going to end up allowing the Titan to be reborn and kill them all

Obviously the titan's mind has some influence, I just don't want the channeler to be the mind.

Oh I wasn't saying that the Titan transfers his mind into the Channeler's, that doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons (the Titan's being much more powerful for one). It's a lot more plausible (as far as plausible goes in fantasy :P) that the Titan's mind is so much more powerful, it can easily twist the Channeler's without him realizing it. For the channeler, it's like getting a taste of great power from the shard, and wanting more. He has no way to realize that the desire for more comes from mind of the Titan within the shard, and not his own mind. This, I think, would satisfy your need to have a tragic ending. The "race" has absolutely no idea and no hints that what they're doing will lead to their own destruction. As far as they're concerned, they're doing what any other race wants to do - expand their power and influence. Only when the Titan is reborn they realize what they've done, and that their Sovereign was unwittingly serving the Titan's will, and as thanks the Titan kills them all

I get your point. Let's try this then. [I'll put a gameplay suggestions below referenced by numbers in square brackets]

Species X finds a shard, let's make it an earth shard - nature's bounty and all that [1]. It's big, full of magic and gives them hope for the future. Initially all goes well, they tap into it with a channeller, they revive land, multiply harvest, ward of diseases and find a way to use it for powering machines. The original channeller initially feels something is off, but can't put a finger to it, so he puts worries aside and forgets for a while.[2]

After some time, when the population is to big and to dependent to survive without a shard, when almost everyone had at least passing contact with the effects of the magic[3] everything goes wrong. The evil mind lurking in the shard comes out of hiding with terrible ultimatum[4] - it has subverted the shard long ago, now everyone and everything that ever came into contact with is magic is cursed, and the mind can bring doom onto it. It wants its body back, it needs more shards to achieve that, so it'll require servants and slaves to get them. The ultimatum is simple - submit or perish. And to drill the point home the mind partially activates the curse - every third machine ceases to work in a spectacular way, every third person is struck with a terrible illness.[5]

Species X submits. For now at least, secretly harbouring a hope of finding a way to regain freedom.

[1]The faction should have a guaranteed earth shard near the first city. And that's spawned after city construction, not on starting location.

[2]Some cryptic, vague events and descriptions in the early game should help build mood

[3]When the player reaches certain tech or certain tech level in magic and technology

[4]The big reveal - you put a shotgun to the players head. You show him a way out ( some sort of master quest to purge the shard ) and a way deeper into darkness ( spell of making to summon the titan )

[5]Every third might be too much, but destroy a sizeable portion of items, units and improvements.

Sounds interesting, but it's not what I envisioned for this race.