Tabletop Game / Eon

Eon is a Swedish fantasy RPG set in the world of Mundana, which is essentially a Standard Fantasy Setting, but with a surprising amount of nuances. Every race, nation, and individual described has a perfectly reasonable explanation for what they do, and no one is ever in it For the Evulz. There is no good or evil, there are just sides. Unlike Dungeons & Dragons Eon relies heavily on world description and story hooks rather than rule expansions, and there are very little "crunch" in all but the core books. This has over the years resulted in a very detailed and complex setting that can't quite decide whether it wants to be down-to-earth or High Fantasy; in practice, it's a mix of both, somewhat like A Song of Ice and Fire.

The rules are vaguely BRP-based and very detailed and gritty with a lot of bookkeeping, and a common complaint is that combat resolution takes too much time, although later editions has made the rules much more stream-lined and introduced various options for simplifying stuff. An unusual feature is the "scientific" system for how magic works, with the rules corresponding closely to a broad range of "magic theories" in the intellectual traditions of the gaming world. The rules in particular make Eon somewhat like a hot potato on the Swedish gaming scene; it's a love-or-hate thing.

For Greg Bear's novel Eon, see The Way Series.

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Eon contains examples of:

• Abusive Precursors: The Kamorfs, a race of über-intelligent Lizard Folk.
• All Genes Are Codominant: Averted in the case of half-elves. Humans and elves are the only main races who can produce viable offspring . The main difference between elves and humans is the elvish curse and a half-human child has exactly 50% chance to inherit the curse, making it elvish, or not, making it human. That said, elves with one human parent tend to be slightly stockier and have more body hair than elves with two elvish parents, and vice versa.

• Always Chaotic Evil: Averted; capital-E "Evil" does not exist in Eon.
• Ancient Conspiracy: "The Society", "The Order of the Star", "The Path of Illumination", "Priori con Sabriean", "The Council of the Lily" and many, many more.
• Anyone Can Die: The rules for pain and injuries are, generally, very unforgiving. Eon uses a system of "unlimited dice" where any roll of a 6 is rerolled with two new dice which may in turn be sixes and thus rerolled with two new dice each, which makes certain that even dragons may die from a single wounding hit, although it is extremely unlikely. (It has reportedly occurred at least once in the game's existence). A note here, the "6" doesn't STAY a six, it's converted to two new dice, so you don't easily get numbers in their hundreds even with dozens of'em.
• A Storm Is Coming: Very much so. In Eon, civilization exists in cycles of 10,000 years, whereupon The End of the World as We Know It occurs by way of demon invasion. The game starts in the year... 10,000.
• Automatic Crossbows: The Dwarves have semi-automatic versions of these.
• Barbarian Tribe: The Kragg, the Rauns, the Tiraks and many others. In the case of the Tiraks, only the Frakk are really true barbarians. The Marnakh live and work in human cities, and the Bazirk are generally out at sea most of the time. Sure, some Bazirk might settle down and start tribes on the island of Takalorr, but for the most part they're just merchants, fishermen and pirates.
• Beast Man: The Wulfen, the Lizard Folk, the Minotaurs. Arachnids and Insectoids are a borderline example.
• Berserk Button: The first Misslas are, according to legend, said to have come to Mundana by falling through a hole in the sky unto the tent of some Kragg barbarians. After the initial, mutual surprise and confusion had settled, the Misslas introduced themselves with the phrase "Hina, misla-ni tani" (Hi, we're Misslas). By coincidence, the word "misla" means "godsent" in the Kragg tribe's language, and though the Misslas have tried to explain this misunderstanding many times over the course of the last 2000 years, abusing a Missla in the presence of a Kragg is still a surprisingly effective way to get oneself soundly thrashed by a two-metre tall barbarian in a blind berserk rage.
• BFS: The above-mentioned Kragg tribe use 180 cm, massively heavy swords as their signature weapon. Then again, the average height of a Kragg is two metres. Then there's the lyfali, the Absurdly Sharp Blade of the Sanari elves. It's basically a 170 cm razor with a diamond core. Common users of these swords include two-metre elves.
• Boxed Crook / You All Meet in a Cell: The beginning of the adventure De Fördömdas Sista Hopp.
• The Butcher: The former Grand Prince of Damaria Pelgrin the Butcher and his son, Pelgrin son of the Butcher.
• Catchphrase: For the Dwarves, it's "I stand here". Depending on context it can mean anything from "My mind is made up." to "No retreat, no quarter, no surrender!"
• Cephalothorax: The Hyggelmonster, a creature consisting of two sturdy legs, a sharp-toothed, acid dribbling mouth, two acid-spitting tentacles on the top, and not much else. Their eggs are prized by alchemists.
• Church Militant: The church of Daak has multiple orders of Warrior Monks and Crusader Knights. The Samori faith has the Order of Zorián. The temples of Cirza and Imay both have special temple warriors.
• Civilized Animal: The Ulvs are a race of direwolves who differ from regular wolves by their huge size, intellegence and possesion of a soul. Their mentallity and culture is wolf-like.
• Covers Always Lie: Well, not always. But in many of the earlier modules the covers featured fantasy art not specifically drawn for the modules in question, such as covers made by Keith Parkinson for The Elenium. Even if they are not directly irrelevant or contradictory to the material in the books, you occasionally need some imagination to make them fit the text within.
• Cursed with Awesome: The elves call themselves "the people of the curse", which refer to the magical effect that all elves have that differentiate them from humans. The curse grants them longer lifespans, the ability to sense if someone is watching them and to stop their own bleeding if they get hurt. However, the fact that elves starts to experience the passing of time more and more intensely as they grow older and usually become clinically depressed and catatonic sometime around 200 to 300 years of age explain why they consider this to be a curse.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Daak faith and to a more limited degree, the Samorian faith.
  • The Mhîm's law religion could be seen as a Crystal Dragon Allah, but the similarities between the religion and Islam is almost completely "cosmetic", it's theology almost being closer to certain forms of Hinduism.
• Cute Monster Girl: Female Gûrds (the smallest race of Tiraks) have claws, fangs and some fur but are considered a lot more attractive and intelligent than other Tiraks or male Gûrds by humans.
• Darkest Africa: Notably averted; there are highly civilized black cultures in Eon, who even send missionaries to the whiteys.
• Decadent Court: Many of them, but the imperial court of Jargia and the court of the notoriously paranoid Grand Prince Thamas of Damaria stands out.
• Dragon Rider: Some elves and humans ride the relatively small and unintelligent Heavé-dragons. Then there are the immortal Dragonguardians, who are soul-bound to a true dragon that they occasionally ride.

• Dream Within a Dream:Ultimately, the universe exists entirely inside the dreams of Aeon, the Enity of Time. If he were to ever wake up then everything, including Aeon, would cease to be.
• Dungeon Crawling: The system does not really favor it, but many of the official adventures include at least some elements of this.
• Eldritch Abomination: Many demons and creatures from the Abyss.
• Eldritch Location: The Shadowland, the surreal home of the Fair Folk that might be located somewhere between the real world and the world of dreams.
• Elves vs. Dwarves: In this case, it is explained by the fact that the elves and dwarfs have fought five highly destructive "great wars" against one another. According to legend, the first one ironically started when the dwarfs accidentally made a terrible diplomatic faux pas by laying down their weapons in front of the elvish negotiatior. In elven culture, this is a declaration of war ("Now, the only thing that can be between us is arms!"). The conflict is easily fueled by the extreme differences in mentality and culture. Elves are famous for flowery language and long greetings. For dwarves, spoken language is for conveying information, and the subtleties are expressed with tone and body language.
• The Empire: The Jargian Empire and Menon-Aun have aspects of this. Thalamur is technically a magocracy, but still fits this trope.
• Expanded Universe: A number of novels taking place in Mundana has been published during the years:
  • "The Drakväktar trilogy" by Adreas Roman
    • "Drakväktare"
    • "Dräparen"
    • "Demonen"
  • "Vargen och kättaren" by Adreas Roman. Available for free on the author's homepage here.
  • "Korset och tronen" by Tobias Landström
  • "Stormens vandrare" by Dan Hörning
  • "Svärdsspel i Hadarlon" by Dan Hörning
  • The canceled video game "EON - The Face of Deception".
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong:
  • The basilisk reproduces by turning other creatures into stone, laying an egg in the petrified persons mouth and then remove the petrification. Later on the baby basilisk emerges from the stomach of the host as a Chest Burster.
  • This is also the case with the Satyrs and the Minotaurs, two examples of all-male races, who can only reproduce with other humanoids.
  • Some Demons and Shadowcreatures can breed with humanoids, creating a Half-Human Hybrid (who usually end up mostly human).
• The Fair Folk: The Shadowpeople.
• Fantastic Caste System: Elvish society was supposed to be this, if you ask the Sanari. The idea was that the Sanari (sorcerer-kings) would be at the top, followed by the Thism (warriors), and the Kiriya (artists), Pyar (traders), Henéa (hunters and woodsmen) and Léaràm (craftsmen) would be at a mutual third. However, the castes soon became tribes and split up. Furthermore, the Léaràm are so bloody-minded they will only grudgingly obey their own leaders and tell any Thism or Sanari who tries to boss them around to stick an egg up their nose on general principle, Pyar are far more likely to identify with whatever human culture they live immersed in than any pan-Elvish identity, and Henéa kill Thism on sight. The end result was that the Kiriya ended up alone at the bottom of the "pan-Elvish" totem pole, while the Henéa and Léaràm formed their own societies and nations and Pyar integrated to human societies. The Kiriya are mostly too easy-going to care, and the ones that do figure that you can keep the Thism and Sanari happy by kowtowing when they're looking and do whatever you were going to do anyway when they aren't.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Obvious in many cases, but others less so:
  • Tokon = Ireland
  • Consaber = England/France
    • By extension, Alarinn is Scotland, complete with clans, swords, tartan greatkilts, caber-tossing and separatism.
  • The Jargian Empire = Roman/Byzantine empire
  • Rauns = Mongolians/Huns
  • Damaria = Romania/the Balkans
  • Soldarn = Scandinavia in many aspects (the politics in particular)
  • Mûhad = Arabia/Persia
  • Veddo = Yupik/Inuits
  • Ausians = Nomadic Native Americans
• Functional Magic: Taken to a mechanical extreme; magic is ingrained into the physics of the world, and is treated the same as the real world treats, well, science.
• The Federation: The semi-democratic federal republics of Asharia and Västmark somewhat fits this trope.

• Grail in the Garbage: In the Drakväktar- trilogy of novels, a narrative intermission describes how the highly sought after artifact The Imperial Staff of the Colonian Empire currently lies on a beach, were it has become a plaything of some local children who completely fail to realise its value and significance.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: And HOW! Gods exist, but are not measured by "alignment", instead different religions have different teachings, often seen as wrong and evil by the followers of other faiths, and judgment is based on that. Not even most demon- or death-worshipping cults consider themselves bad people, it's the "good guys" that are wrong.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: One of the improvised weapons that have been given stats are Gûrds, a smaller species of Tirak. However, they are very heavy and don't do much damage, making them pretty useless weapons.
• The Grim Reaper: Dibuk, the god of death is often depicted like this. He even carries a Sinister Scythe and likes to play games with his intended victims.
• Harmless Villain: Driobutus the Diabolical, a boastful and arrogant necromancer who likes to dress in black, to spend his nights writing dark poetry and who has drunkenly claimed to be "the most evil man in Asharia". Beside once creating a zombie, he has constantly failed to do anything even slightly diabolical.
• Hidden Elf Village: Some of the more isolationist Elves and Dwarfs. Also, the empire of Menon-Aun.
• Hit Points: A rather unorthodox version. Pain, physical trauma, blood loss and rate of bleeding are tracked separately, as is exhaustion. Only physical trauma and blood loss can outright kill you, though, and you don't die "at zero hit points", but instead begin making saving throws vs. death after the damage reaches a certain threshold. The rules concerning broken bones, dismemberment etc. also don't factor in the hit points of the target, beyond the penalties it takes to saving throws. This can, naturally, get messy.
• Hive Mind: The god Xinu has multiple avatars in different parts of the world who are all part of him.
• Hobbits: The Misslas are the setting's stand-ins for hobbits. The main differences between them and Tolkien's halflings lie in their slightly "elfish" looks and incredibly cheerful personality.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The Black Forest of Kirath, The Coast of Shipwrecks, the Dead Forest and others.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: The Elves are effectively immortal thanks to an inherent biotropic (life magic) field. However, this field is weakened by pregnancy and compensates by reducing fertility. The Dwarves merely have a low sex drive.

• Language Equals Thought: Elvish grammar does not recognize a difference between verbs and adjectives, and consider human recognition of a difference to be a sign of the human tendency to nitpick and over-analyze things rather than use and enjoy them.
• Law Enforcement, Inc.: Many, one example is the pirate-hunters in the Order of the Seahorses.
• Living Shadow: There are both demonic and undead creatures that looks like this.
• Lizard Folk: The Kamorfs and... well, the Lizard Folk.
• The Magnificent: The mage Max Guilk who styles himself Maxander the Magnificent. He is the only one who thinks this.

• Man-Eating Plant: The Skogsrå is a malicious, soul-sucking monster that looks like a tree and can create powerful illusions to ensnare its victims.
• Medieval Stasis: Mundana suffers under a pretty extreme case of this trope. For the last 10.000 years, technology and science has moved forvard, but only from bronze-age technology to late medieval. There is some logic to it though, as Magic is the stand-in for this world's physics, so scientists generally focus on researching magical fields and their effects on people instead of inventing new ways to harness electricity. Unfortunate, yes, but also reasonable.
• No Woman's Land: Most human nations are male-dominated, but often less so than many real-life medieval equivalents. There are, hovever, a few extremely patriarchal societys, for example Sindarea and Miam before the Aunurian invasion. Inverted by Momolan, which runs on what is essentially gender-flipped sharia law.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: They are short, stocky humanoids. Both sexes are bearded and they mostly live in great underground cities were they drink a lot of beer. They are honest, honorable, industrious, grumpy and really don't like Elves. However, the Drezin clan are mostly known for sorcery, reclusiveness, and clandestine alliances with the Tiraks. Clan Zolod are known for living above ground and trading.
  • A notable difference between Eon-dwarves and most dwarves is that while Eon-dwarves generally don't like magic, seeing it as unpredictable and dangerous, they have a huge amount of respect for wizards. The way they see it, anyone brave enough to dedicate their life to harnessing something as dangerous and unpredictable as magic and intelligent enough to learn how to do it and get it right most of the time without dying in the process is clearly worthy of great respect.
    • Another difference is that dwarves in Eon are not in any way Scottish. The Scottish Fantasy Counterpart Culture are in fact elves (Alarinn elves, to be exact).
• Our Dragons Are Different: They're subtly based on the Vorlons and Shadows of Babylon 5, with one kind, Lumian, being benevolent and intellectual, and the other, Mortuach, chaotic and brutal, but both kinds work in their own way to salvage the world from the End of the World as We Know It.

• Our Orcs Are Different: Very much so, the settings Orc stand-ins are the Tiraks, a race of cultured politicians and merchants mixed with fishing or pirate villages ruled in a violent form of matriarchal democracy, combined with very primitive tribe societies working with a philosophy similar to natural selection. The entire race consisting of three separate sub-races (Gûrd, Tirak, Trukh) and three different "families" (Marnakh, Bazirk, Frakk), all having extremely different views of life and existence. Completely possible to be played as savage nobles, psychotic assassins, farmers, priests, dockworkers or traders without anyone raising an eyebrow as of why. But they do excel in warfare, however. It's worth noting that the basic structure of the races has more in common with the Dungeons & Dragons goblinoids than anything else, where goblins and gûrds, hobgoblins and tiraks and bugbears and trukhs correspond quite closely to one another in their societal roles and behaviour.
• Our Souls Are Different: They very much obey a Cartesian model of souls, that is, most animals lack souls and only humanoids and certain other creatures such as ulvs have them. A trained medium can make her soul leave the body and try to possess other creatures or drive the soul out of another ensouled being. Without a soul, an ensouled creature die, but shamans use tame souls who temporary possess their bodies while they are away. Creatures without souls can still be intelligent and have feelings, but their personality and memories stop existing at death. When a soul leaves the body, it travels trough the plane of spirits, which is also the home of unmanifested demons, gods and ghosts.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The Lamias are quasi-undead and mostly female servants of the mysterious goddess called The Queen of the Night, who constantly whisper in the ears of her undead followers. They create new vampires by ritually bleed the recruit to death and then feeding them the blood of other Lamias. All loyal lamias belong to one of three religious orders who worships their goddess. The non-loyalists mainly hang out in the underground desert cities of Momolan, keeping slaves and living nobles' lives.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: They are a race of savage humanoids who can change between a human and a wolf/human hybrid form at will. Their most obvious giveaway is their inability to speak human languages.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Instead of being raised from the dead by a spell, undead are created by alchemy. Take a large tub, add a few choice ingredients, summon a dash of necromantic energy, and presto! You now have an undead servant. You can create stronger undead by finding new recipes, or experiment with creating your own recipe variations. You can also trap elementals inside the dead body, or sacrifice souls to the Abyss for special effects.
• Planet of Hats: Used straight at first, but just as quickly subverted. The game supplies a stereotype for every nation and racial group, then goes out of it's way to provide you with exceptions.

• Revive Kills Zombie: Due to how the magic system works, healing any undead neutralizes some of it's necromantic energy, effectively damaging it.
• She Is the King: The title of the leader of a dwarf stronghold is always translated into non-dwarven languages as "king", even if the ruler in question is female. This is mostly the result of the dwarven language lacking grammatical gender, the fact that dwarves fail to see a reason to differentiate between male and female rulers and of the problems non-dwarves has when it comes to recognize the gender of any given dwarf.
• Shout-Out: Delenn and Kosh are both words in elvish, meaning ambassador and riddle, respectively.
  • The most common incantation for casting a fireball is apparently "Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul."
  • A common curse in Consaber is "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!"

• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: In-universe example. The Dwarves make a strong cultural distinction between Chronicle and History. A Chronicle is a piece of historic fiction, intended to glorify the participants in a particular event, whereas a History is a bare-bones account of the facts surrounding an event. For example, the Kharzim Chronicle stated that Kharzim drove back a Tirak horde so large that "grass no longer grew where it marched" from the gates of Hazr at the cost of his own life. The History states "Skirmish with Tiraks at Hazr, Kharzim and 68 others dead. Enemy dead uncounted, but not exceeding 200. Supplies running low, negotiations with humans concerning construction of trading post at Hazr in progress." The fun begins when well-meaning but clueless scholars from other cultures start taking Chronicles at face value.
• The Von Trope Family: Most of the noble houses of Damaria in general and the van Culnar family in particular.
• Überwald: Damaria has some tendencies of this, especially the countship of Culnar.
• Warrior Monk: The White Monastery, the monks of Sung and some of the orders in the Church of Daak.
• Whatevermancy: Or rather Whatevertropy. As of the 4th edition, the mages of Eon sort magic into 7 schools containing 24 aspects of magic: Elemental Forces, which include Pyrotropy, Geotropy, Hydrotropy and Pneumotropy; Fundamental Forces, which include Termotropy, Cryotropy, Phototropy and Skototropy; Celestial Forces, which include Heliotropy, Selenotropy, Astrotropy and Kosmotropy; Primal Forces, which include Nomotropy, Ataxatropy, Chronotropy and Topotropy; Life Forces, which include Biotropy and Necrotropy; Spiritual Forces, which include Psychotropy, Oneirotropy, Theotropy and Daimotropy; and, finally, Sybol Forces, which include Ikonotropy and Semotropy. On top of these, there are also some anti-aspects to some established ones as well as some as of yet scientifically unproven aspects. Players are encouraged to explore the possibilities as any scentifically driven person during The Enlightenment would have.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Immortality is generally seen as a pretty bad thing that slowly makes people go mad from depression and boredom. The most obvious example are the Elves, who because of their immortality call themselves "The People of the Curse". Other examples include the Lamias, Emperor Jargius and Koch Katre.

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