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FFXII was the awesome. Looks like XIII is going to be good, too, and that's almost the feel I was more thinking of.

Sounds interesting... though we'll have to have some reasons for the abandonment of some places. I mean if it is a technology/magic combo people wouldn't just up and leave them unless there was good cause. i mean we got so many people now that moving the cities out would overcrowd tremendously the rest of the places. We'll need some type of population decimation in the past.

Hmmm... could be something like a global conflict that decimated the population, or maybe a biological plague, or maybe a technological disaster like some type of major radiation event that caused death and mass migration from the cities that spawned it.

Any of those sound good to you all, or can you think of something else?

I also thought a plague when you first said that. Maybe a magical one that only attacks intelligent creatures? That way, whatever races we include other than humans would also be affected. And one day, the plague just seemed to disappear. Even with it gone, though, the world is still recovering.

But there's the possibility of treasure left behind in the plagued places, which gives you the basic motives for an adventure. And having the spirits of the unburied remaining leaves possibilities open for ghosts and such...

And if the plague was magical, then it might have been caused by an overuse of magic in the world, which would explain why people are wary of magic now.

So something like this:

Magical plagues are phenomena that occurred at various points in the history of the world. The exact causes of them are not fully known, but atleast some of them (like the Black Death) was caused by excessive use of magic. These magical plagues take various forms and each has been completely different from the previous ones (as far as recorded history shows us). During the Black Death the magical nature of it caused some of the victims to not be killed, but fundamentally changed into another type of being (ghouls and vampires specifically). All that is known is that after their coming, they only last for short periods of time and then disappear completely from the world. Occasionally after one of these plagues a natural variation of the plague sprouts up to become a presence in the world, but they have lost the magical volatility and transformation nature of the original. It is like they are but a shadow of the original plague.

Well I never said the animal couldn't be considered intelligent creatures. I actually like that idea... maybe they are just hiding it from regular people so that they can achieve their own goals. Like the squirrels... they look cute and stuff, but their actually the front line spies and informants keeping some of the other animals in the know of what's really going on with us monkeys. twisted I mean why do you think magi use animals as familiars, because they are intelligent and we 'people' tend to ignore 'lesser beings' like animals. In reality I think some of them are probably more intelligent than us, it's just a matter of where the intelligence lies.

Now I would say that some plagues affect some animals, just like reality its a matter of DNA and how close some of it is to the ones 'targeted' by the plague. Course there is also always the possibility that some 'higher' being releases these things every so often to cleanse the world somewhat and as part of some unknown scheme or just for fun to see what we do. I mean you can always take things from what is 'known' about it and push it out all over.

I just had a mental image of a vampiric squirrel running around... damn funny!

Personally, the part I've always had issues with was DND's "Animals are ALWAYS neutral!" bit. Obviously the the pople at WotC don't have cats. *glances at hers* ...Yea, Chaotic alignment defined...

And the idea of the plagues causing the differences between the races is a good one. Maybe the last plague was different and more magical than the others, so the undead are a fairly "new" race that's abnormal relative to the others? People tend to be afraid of things they don't understand, after all, and creatures created from a plague with different effects than those previous wouldn't be understood, for sure.

No idea. Never played Dark Sun.

Maybe elves came from a lesser strain of the same plague that created fey?