Superstition holds that shadow is not merely the absence of light-- that your shadow is born with you and follows you to the grave, standing witness to all your actions and reciting them before your maker at the time of judgment. This tradition derives from the lesson of the god Oron, who governs law and death.

Created from the primordial darkness at the same instant that light first sprang into being, Oron watches over the gods. In that sense, he is shadow given form—the shadow of the creation of the other gods. The Black Warden, as he is sometimes called, watches over the rest of the pantheon and guards the souls of the dead until such time as Fire can return to judge them.

As protector of the dead, Oron is afforded more individual organized worship than most of the other gods. His clergy is large and powerful, despite his relatively minor role in the history of the world and the meddlings of the other deities. Based primarily out of the City of Chains, an independent city to the north of Tolmira and said to be built on the site of a great battle between Uulix and Oron, it is perhaps the most powerful monotheistic church in the known world. Followers of Oron preach an ordered existence, with obedience to those above you and protection to those below you.

The popular, but by no means universally accepted, image of the moments after death:

Immediately after the body dies, the soul awakens in the Gray Realm, a distorted, fog-shrouded mirror of the real world where the dead can still bear witness to the affairs of the living. The soul remains in the Gray Realm until The Words are spoken over the body. This alerts Oron to the death, and he sends his Takers to gather the soul and deliver it to the afterlife. This is why it is not uncommon to see soldiers recite a short-form version of the Words over their fallen enemies—the fear that the unmourned dead may have power and influence over the world of the living so long as they remain in the Gray Realm.

The exact nature of the afterlife beyond the Gray Realm is subject to greater debate, but it is generally believed that it is a static, unchanging place, which cares little for accomplishments in life. Those in the afterlife are said to await the return of the Sun God at the end of time, where all final judgments will be passed down.

RPGWatch has published the first installment of the producer diary for The Broken Hourglass, covering the theme of wishful thinking and dangerous questions.

Read all about it here.

On the fourth Monday of each month, we explore the code underneath The Broken Hourglass, the game environment called "WeiNGINE." This month, we explore the underpinnings of experience progression, the level path system.

Last week we discussed level paths in The Broken Hourglass from a player's perspective. As a follow-up, we will use this month's Inside the Engine department to consider how level paths work from an engine perspective, and show how to create a new one.

There are a number of engine functions which govern the spending of experience points on character abilities. _attribute_upgrade causes a character to spend XP to purchase points in a valid skill or attribute, while _toggle_trait adds a trait to that character. Supporting functions like _can_toggle_trait (to ensure that there are no unmet prerequisites for the trait) and _attribute_upgrade_cost can help us determine whether the purchases we want to make are possible.

But rather than reinvent the wheel and apply this logic every single time a character levels up, we have a function which performs the skill buying and experience bookkeeping automatically. This makes the creation of a new level path extremely easy by following just a few simple rules.

The function is called _generic_level_path and its arguments are listed below:

Praise and tangible rewards are two tried and true payoffs of the role-playing experience. The third is experience points, or XP. 

Experience is earned in four major ways in The Broken Hourglass:

-    Completing quests, or a portion of a quest
-    Defeating opponents in combat
-    Listening to dialogue
-    Exploring areas

Under the standard rules in The Broken Hourglass, when characters reach certain experience point thresholds, they become eligible to level up. The process is similar to the concepts of "classes" or "levels" in other systems, but with a twist reflecting the point-buy underpinnings of the system.

Advancement is managed with level "paths." These paths represent a template of study, behavior, or personal focus roughly analogous to a character "class." Paths include the Scout, the Diplomat, the Marauder, and the Soldier. Paths automatically buy traits and points in primarily attributes and secondary skills to reflect the priorities expressed by the path--for instance, characters following a Diplomat path invest heavily in social skills. The player character may employ any path the player wishes to follow (or no path at all--see below for more details).

Joinable NPCs, on the other hand, have certain preferences and opinions about the way they should manage their personal development. Halima, who has devoted most of her young life to the study and advancement of her magical talents, will not consent to follow the Soldier path--it is simply too far from her interests. Meanwhile, Nekos the gladiator has little interest in becoming a spellcaster. Some NPCs can be convinced to explore different paths as you get to know them and they see new opportunities for themselves, however.

Here's how a level path works: