People of the Land, also called Landers, is the term for NPCs in Elder Tale. Native to the world of Theldesia, they cover a wide range of professions and are much more plentiful than the Adventurers.
Overview[]
In the Elder Tale game, People of the Land were utilized in the game only to maintain shops and give out quests. After the Catastrophe, they became more like real people - with thoughts, dreams, desires, and needs. The number of Landers increased ten-fold and adventurers have commented on how they have seen more of them around.
Like Adventurers, People of the Land are capable of gaining levels, but they level up at a quarter the speed of an Adventurer at most. As a result, even many elderly Landers are only at level 60 at the highest. Furthermore, because they are unable to revive after death like Adventurers and monsters, they usually rely on Adventurers to keep the monsters at bay.
People of the Land speak a different language from Adventurers, but due to the automatic translation built into the game, no one had noticed. However, this language is likely akin to an evolution of the real-life languages spoken in the region; for example, the term for "Six Toppling Princesses" would be pronounced in real-life Japanese as "rokukeihime," but in the Yamato Lander language, it is pronounced "ruquinjé," but it is spelled the same way in either language. Later on, the translator refers to "music" as "42," since the 42-song limit that Landers were capable of creating became associated with music.
At the time of and before the Catastrophe, Landers were limited in capabilities. Along with being unable to create more than the 42 songs that already existed to them (theorized by fans to mean that Elder Tale had 42 tracks; the song the Lander orchestra at the Ancient Palace played was the Elder Tale opening song), Landers were incapable of conceptualizing the notion of creating items without using the menu. As a result, Lander society was technologically stagnant, as people were unable to develop new items or techniques.
After the Catastrophe, however, this rule broke. Once the Adventurers realized that they were not bound to the MMO rules and were able to create things that hadn't existed in the game before, the Landers quickly caught on. This led to a cultural and technological revolution that hadn't been seen on Theldesia in hundreds of years.