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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Default Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Trying something different from what I've usually been doing over all the years. I want to step back from revising and fine tuning a big continent scale world that combines all manner of things that I find really cool in fantasy, and instead create background material meant to give depth and weight to specific, small scale adventures of one or two parties of no-name treasure hunters.

    The Main Parameters
    I want to design this setting specifically for a campaign using the Old-School Essentials system, which is really just the 1981 Basic/Expert edition of Dungeons & Dragons, that is all about going into ancient dungeons in the wilderness and collecting a lot of treasure to gain XP for advancement. And they can continue doing that for their entire adventuring career.

    A setting like this ideally fits the following conditions: The world is full of dungeons. The dungeons are full of treasure and magic items. Most of the treasures have not been rediscovered yet. Magic items can be found in dungeons, but not bought in stores. Many monsters are in the way of getting to the treasures.

    Secondary conditions that I think are very helpful with supporting this type of campaign are: Civilization is small and dispersed. Most of the land is fairly lawless. There aren't any much more important things going on that adventurers should take care of instead.

    These secondary conditions can very well make a setting seem empty, sleepy, and boring. But that's also kind of a good thing because it reduces the workload of making the setting by a lot, and isn't distracting players away from the dungeons. To make the campaign that is actually being played exciting, I see the awe, wonder, and emotions to come from the dungeon environments and denizens themselves. I want to focus the content of the setting on stuff that matters in the her and now of the present moment to the PCs when they encounter it. I believe putting some real work into monster ecologies and the factions of specific local regions should be a priority, and something that actually provides a good bag for the buck.

    In random miscellanea: I was never super keen on clerics. And I quite like the idea of settings with distant gods and priests with no great special powers, and magic that isn't just supernatural but comes with a taste of unnatural. The healing abilities of cleric PCs can be addressed by alchemical healing potions and curing medicines that greatly boost the natural healing during resting. Everything else can just as well be summed up into the arcane powers.
    I'm probably going with a setting that is humans only. Any other humanoid creatures will be explicitly supernatural and exist completely separate from human society.

    The Setup, Layout, and Backstory
    The setting is a large stretch of land a few hundred miles wide, that runs from North to South, with an ocean in the West, and a great mountain range in the East. Super basic layout that provides a lot of different environments on a modest amount of space. The map consists of six primary lands.
    In the very North, there is a cold land of low snowy mountains and pine forests, which in winter gets frozen by great arctic storms from the Far North.
    Further south, the land turns into huge woodlands of giant trees for hundreds of miles.
    Below that, in the center of the map, lie great plains of farmland and prairies that see warm summers and mild winters.
    Between the woodlands, the plains, and the sea lies a smaller land of rocky hills and small mountains that is home to several small port cities.
    In the East, the plains rise up into rocky highlands that eventually turn into the great mountains that form the eastern edge of the known world.
    In the South, vast subtropical woodlands eventually turn into jungles that go further than anyone has ever explored.

    These six lands where once the six provinces of the Shattered Empire.
    800 years in the past, a powerful warlord managed for the first and only time to conquer most of the known lands and bring them under one rule. As a powerful sorcerer he reigned over this empire for 300 years, during which it produced untold wealth and riches, and the sorcerers of the court created many great magical wonders. But the riches only went to the empire's aristocracy while the conquered people toiled in the fields and mines, and the many magical tools were use to keep the people in line and crush any attempts at rebellion.
    This period came to an end when the emperor was killed by one of his generals, to whom he had given the six provinces of the empire. Revenge came swiftly as the other generals descended upon the murderous traitor. However, when the emperor's second, who had been with him the longest and who had been granted the most prosperous of the provinces, claimed the empire's throne for himself, the others did not agree and where united in their desire to dethrone the usurper. For thirty years the Four waged war against the False Emperor until the Imperial City was taken and razed, and he fell in battle. That day was the true end of the Shattered Empire, as the four generals immediately started fighting over the spoils and no attempt was ever made to decide on a new emperor. Seventy more years they fought until only two were left, and at that point they had been weakened so much that they eventually fell to a rebel uprising and an invasion by barbarian tribes from the mountains. During the chaotic wars of the pretenders, the warlords and the nobles of their realms hid away many of their treasures in secret vaults or buried it hidden tombs, to protect them from invading armies and roaming mercenaries, and to be recovered once it was safe. For most of them, that time never came, and the hoards remain forgotten in old tombs and ancient ruins.
    300 years have passed since the last remnants of the Shattered Empire had fallen, and its memory lives on only as a myth and dark tales of tyranny and bloodshed. Today, few people have any admiration for the empire, and it has become a grave warning against any small kings and local rulers who are turning their gaze towards visions of greater power. The people of the six lands are fiercely independent, and if an overly ambitious lords manage to avoid their people's fear of a tyrant, the tales of the Fallen Emperor still prove to be very effective of uniting their neighbors against them. For the time being, fear of a new empire maintain the balance of power between dozens of minor lords and independent cantons throughout the six lands. While few people believe the buried treasures of the Shattered Empire to be actually cursed, searching for the hidden vaults to increase their power and standing casts a very bad light on any lord, and as such many have remained unopened to this day, and even the existence of many old imperial strongholds, watchtowers, and villas has been nearly forgotten.
    It takes a special kind of people to go out into the wilderness and deliberately poke around in dark holes that are home to many things from a past age that most would prefer to remain forgotten. Arcane scholars in particular try to make the true nature of their journey through remote frontier villages not any more known than necessary.

    Technogically speaking, I think I will be going with broadly "Antiquity". A big inspiration for the Shattered Empire are Alexander's Persian Empire early in Antiquity, and the Western Roman Empire at the very end of Antiquity. But civilization as a whole is much smaller, without any of the industrial capacities of the Romans or Persians, and most of the setting is environmentally closer to Germania and Scythia.
    Last edited by Yora; 2021-12-09 at 03:22 AM.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Monsters of the Old World
    Before the Shattered Empire, the woods and hills where home to many ancient and powerful beings, which were driven back into the mountains and other far corners of the world by the emperor's armies. With the empire gone for several centuries, the ancients are slowly returning to their old homes. Many of them even still remembering their flight half a milennium ago.

    Giants are effectively hill giants with human intelligence and similar culture, but build like dwarves that stand 12 to 15 feet high. Unlike others of the ancient peoples, giants do not have any inherent magical powers, but their shamans have knowledge of many old and powerful spells. Giants live up to 300 years and remember many of the ancient stories of their ancestors, making giant shamans among the most knowledgable sages about the time before the Shattered Empire.

    Trolls are powerfully build and tall humanoids similar like ogers, with small horns, large fangs, and a wide range of skin snd hair colors. Many of them have sharp minds, but are also prone to arrogance and recklessness, which can cast great doubt about their wisdom. Trolls have a natural ability for magic and most of them know a few low level spells in addition to their great strength and prowess in battle. True troll sorcerers exist, and they extremely dangerous foes to deal with.

    Asura are the most human-like in appearance, but also the most magical of the ancient peoples. "They look like us, but they are not us." In stature they resemble humans but every one of them has a completely unique appearance. Asura have all kinds of horns, antlers, fangs, claws, or tails, and sometimes even wings. Their hair, skin, and eyes have all kinds of unpredictable colors but they have the power to cloak their appearance in illusions to look just like any ordinary mortal. In addition, they also have the powers to become completely invisible and to charm mortals.
    More often than not, asura are not openly hostile to mortals or seek to harm them, but they generaly lack in any kind of consideration for people who happen to be caught up in their chaotic actions by nothing but pure accident. Asura are dangerous and best avoided whenever possible, and little good seems to ever come from encounters with these unpredictable demons of the forest.

    Lagura are fishmen native to the sea, but also found in many large rivers and even some lakes that don't see regular traffic by ships. Lagura resemble large carps or catfish with arms and legs, who are covered in blue-green skin with pale red bellies. They appear to continue to slowly grow in size throughout most of their lives, with groups of hunters standing between 5 and 6 feet tall often being led but giants that reach heights of 8 or 9 feet. Communicating with lagura is difficult and what intelligible things they share about their people and their past is often difficult to male much sense of. But some sages who have managed to talk and learn from them believe that their people are far older than any of the cultures found on land.

    Derros are a wild mix of dwarves, gnomes, and goblins. They are small in stature and rarely grow taller than 4 feet high, with pale skin, white eyes, and wild manes of white-blond hair. They are only found in the deepest caves of the world or darkest fissures in the mountains and avoid the lighr of day under any circumstances. Despite their stature, they are wild and often violent creatures with little sense for mercy and compassion, but they are generally quite smart and not easily fooled in battle, When fighting intruders into their underground realms or raiding for supplies, they use their small size and agility to their best effect and rely on stealth and shoting arrows as much as possible. Derro seem to be very knowledgeable about the caves and tunnels that are their world, but otherwise have shared little about magic or other ancient peoples that has been of much interest to sages. Either derro care little about the past and other beings, or they are guarding their knowledge jealously.
    Last edited by Yora; 2021-12-06 at 11:52 AM.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Map of the Six Lands

    I made crude map, because I really don't want to go forward talking about where certain things are in the setting without having a simple image to point to.

    Spoiler
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    It's 1,200 miles from North to South and 400 miles from coast to mountains, resulting in a land area in the ballpark of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, or California, Oregon, and Washington. Not huge as fantasy worlds go, but actually still a vast area for people going from village to village on foot. For the stated goal of having a campaign that covers the needs for dungeon crawling campaigns, this is plenty enough space.
    The climate of the area goes from subartic in the North to subtropical in the South, with a wide stretch of prairie grasslands in the middle. An ocean in the West and a big mountain range in the East, and it really should have everything covered except arctic tundra, tropical jungles, and deserts. Which are all not needed in a setting based loosely on Central-Eastern Europe.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    It's 1,200 miles from North to South and 400 miles from coast to mountains, resulting in a land area in the ballpark of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, or California, Oregon, and Washington. Not huge as fantasy worlds go, but actually still a vast area for people going from village to village on foot. For the stated goal of having a campaign that covers the needs for dungeon crawling campaigns, this is plenty enough space.
    The climate of the area goes from subartic in the North to subtropical in the South, with a wide stretch of prairie grasslands in the middle. An ocean in the West and a big mountain range in the East, and it really should have everything covered except arctic tundra, tropical jungles, and deserts. Which are all not needed in a setting based loosely on Central-Eastern Europe.
    That's a pretty compressed latitudinal gradient you've got, from subarctic to subtropical in 1200 miles. That's not impossible, Japan arguably displays roughly this pattern from northern Hokkaido down to southern Kyushu, but it implies some pretty dramatic transitions. The best explanation is probably ocean currents, implying a somewhat chaotic system off the coast with a warm current from the equator in the south and a cold current from the arctic in the north. This actually helps justify the collapse of your empire, since the complex nautical dynamics of the shifting zone where the currents clash would require powerful ships and careful charts to work around (and perhaps weather taming magic), when the empire fell, the resources to sustain coastal trade and rapid transmission of information along the coast were lost, making control of the region by a single polity impossible.

    This also means you can use shipwrecks and abandoned coastal port facilities (lighthouses, etc.) as an additional dungeon category.
    Last edited by Mechalich; 2021-12-07 at 09:18 PM.
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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    It's the distance from Oslo to Rome. That works for me. Assume the lack of a gulf stream to warm up the northern coast in winter, and it should be pretty plausible. I also deliberately decided to not get any more detailed with this than having it somewhat plausible. The needs of gameplay take precedent over geosciences, and the degree of realism I've set for myself is "at least not as bad as Forgotte Realms geography". The width of land between a straight coast and paralel running mountains is also about double of what plate tectonics on Earth produce, but I plan to play on scales and use maps with a degree of detail where that shouldn't ever become noticable.
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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Map image isn't showing up for me. (Saving more substantive comments until I can maybe get a look at it.)
    Last edited by Catullus64; 2021-12-08 at 09:31 AM.
    The desire to appear clever often impedes actually being so.

    What makes the vanity of others offensive is the fact that it wounds our own.

    Quarrels don't last long if the fault is only on one side.

    Nothing is given so generously as advice.

    We hardly ever find anyone of good sense, except those who agree with us.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    The Rocky Mountains are quite distant from the California Coast. So much so that there are other mountain ranges between them. Mountain ranges are also excellent as climate barriers. Example, Washington's Western rainforest and Eastern dry plains. They are less than 100 miles apart.

    What kind of things can we help you with? Cultures and conflicts? Ancient wonders? The secrets of magic?

    Here's one:
    An ancient lich has gone mad and his once mighty armies have long since gone to dust, but he sits on a rotted throne overlooking a map of the ancient empire commanding his undead generals to undertake this or that offensive. They leave and after a while return to report failure, which angers the lich so that his temper tantrums shake the hill beneath which his pyramid tomb is buried.

    Locals say the region is haunted, and they are right. Incorporeal undead who swore in life to serve the would-be emperor now haunt the kingdom that remains under the control of the insane lich.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Yeah, I'm actually a little bit stuck, not quite knowing where to go from here. I think I could just make a town and a dungeon right now and start the first adventure tomorrow.

    I do have a good selection of deities and how I want to incorporate them into actual play. I think I just need to figure out their names to do a little writeup for them. I'm also currently working out a selection of wild monsters and animals to populate the wilderness, which I'm pretty happy with already. Probably I'll be able to share this later this week.
    I have three of the main cultures pretty clearly in mind and a good general idea for the fourth. Got something for the North, the Woodlands, the Coast, and the Hills. For the South I am considering some kind of lion people, who would be the exception from the others all being humans. The big question mark here is what kind of people to put on the grassland plains in the center, and I'll need to define those before going much further with the other cultures, as they directly boarder the Coast, Woodlands, and Hills. Maybe something Hunnic or Magyar inspired could work. Put some kind of open flat gap between the Hills and the Southwoods through which they could have migrated from further southeast beyond the edge of the map.
    Now that the idea is out there, I'll probably end up going with that.

    The Rocky Mountains and Andes both have a good 100 miles between the mountains and the sea. On this map, it's more like 400. That's quite clearly not a case of oceanic plate subduction. Not that I see any situation in which it could ever come up, but the arrangement could still be explained as a smaller plate pushing against the continent, as in the Himalayas, Alps, and Pyreneese. The coastal plate being mostly straight and of uniform width would be weird, but ancient maps are all massively distorted to fit on the paper anyway.

    Quote Originally Posted by Catullus64 View Post
    Map image isn't showing up for me. (Saving more substantive comments until I can maybe get a look at it.)
    That's probably a browser-side issue. If it doesn't load, opening the image directly might help.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora
    In random miscellanea: I was never super keen on clerics. And I quite like the idea of settings with distant gods and priests with no great special powers, and magic that isn't just supernatural but comes with a taste of unnatural. The healing abilities of cleric PCs can be addressed by alchemical healing potions and curing medicines that greatly boost the natural healing during resting. Everything else can just as well be summed up into the arcane powers.
    I'm probably going with a setting that is humans only. Any other humanoid creatures will be explicitly supernatural and exist completely separate from human society.
    This interests me. Magic as an innately sinister and unwholesome force is a great staple of sword-and-sorcery fantasy stories; in fact, your setting looks like it's shaping up to fit squarely in the sword-and-sorcery genre (focus on individual adventures rather than large-scale events, human-only, antiquity-to-low-middle-ages historical theming, a world of violence and danger) and I'm always enthused by that. I would say that you should still have priests with magical powers, but have the gods themselves be alien and terrible, and the rites necessary to receive their power be secretive and perverse.

    Working from what you already have (thanks for the map link), here's how I would divide and characterize the six lands:

    • Land #1 (Sample Name: Laescia) covers the outer, less wild stretches of the southern forest, and the central plains up to a northern boundary of that large river. They control much rich farmland. Their attempts to expand and settle further south are checked by the Asura. Because of their proximity to those terrible woodland folk, their religion has evolved to propitiate and ward off the Asura, and a limited amount of friendly exchange exists between them, though conflict is still commonplace. Because of this, the people of the other lands regard them as Asura-touched themselves, and half crazy.
    • Land #2 (Sample Name: Ithand) are sparsely populated across the central hills, with their major population centers along that highland lake. Their agriculture relies upon terraced farming; proximity to underground Derro cities has given them a particular knack for earthworks. Being so decentralized, they probably are governed not by one ruler, but by something like an annual law-making assembly of elders.
    • Land #3 (Sample Name: Lybaron) covers a very small area on the coast, between the mouths of those two rivers. They control the ancient capital of the empire, and though it's a dilapidated shell of its ancient splendor, the inhabitants still consider themselves the cultural heirs of the empire; they are perhaps less shy of monarchical government than others. Their petty-kings even style themselves Emperors, though it is but pretension. Because they command the mouths of the great rivers, they are also the richest from trade.
    • Land #4 (Sample Name: Rimmerlend) covers most of the northern portion of the plains, and some of the northern forest. The richness of the land has made them expert horse cultivators, and as such they have a powerful class of mounted warrior-aristocrats.
    • Land #5 (Sample Name: Teuthia) covers the coastal hills, a thin strip of land that runs between the northern forest and the sea, and a number of island chains that run along the coast. The sparse & rocky nature of their land forces them to look to the sea for sustenance, as raiders, settlers, traders, and fishers. Aside from that, most of their livelihood is in sheep & other livestock adapted to the hills. They clash frequently with the Lagura.
    • Land #6 (Sample Name: Caecar) is the great wide north, with most of the settlements clustered around the central river. Those that do not live near the river are nomadic, following the migrations of game herds across the tundra, an art they learned from the giants.


    Some of my favorite deity names, which I reuse and recycle frequently: Gadah (Agender), Gwithra (M), Elthuz (Agender), Dazudar (M), Runin (M), Gor (M), Ashmadu (F), Elusha (M), Neti (F), Modruna (F), Thalnis (M), Indwe (F)
    Last edited by Catullus64; 2021-12-08 at 12:55 PM.
    The desire to appear clever often impedes actually being so.

    What makes the vanity of others offensive is the fact that it wounds our own.

    Quarrels don't last long if the fault is only on one side.

    Nothing is given so generously as advice.

    We hardly ever find anyone of good sense, except those who agree with us.

    -Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    An important question: what is over the mountains/sea?

    Nothing is an answer. Ie, nobody ever comes over the mountains, and people who go too far into the mountains ... don't come back either.

    Similarly for the sea.

    Or, you could have vague contacts or long distance trade over both.

    In my points-of-light worldbuilding, I have a dangerous wilderness between settelments. These settlements use high power "hedge magic" to feed themselves, and are located at ley line nodes to fuel said magic. So you get high-intensity agriculture that can feed decent sized settlements without it being efficient (or required) to spread farms over lots of land.

    This also increases the urbanization ratio of the society to something a bit less alien to us.

    Small settlements can exist, but run the same problems as larger ones do, and have fewer defences.

    Hedge magic, like making monster-repelling walls, also lets you justify why the settlements aren't overrun despite the wilderness being dangerous.

    Roads would be protected by similar stuff, but not as strong. I imagine shrines along the road ways where travelers make sacrifices and prayers to reinforce the wards.
    Last edited by Yakk; 2021-12-08 at 03:32 PM.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    I had not planned to go Sword & Sorcery again, but there's definitely paralels to Elric and Kane as I imagine it. Though not necessarily quite as dreary and bleak from the perspective of more regular people.

    My goal is to put "4 to 8 people descend into a ruin in the wilderness" at the center of everything. For any give campaign, I don't think the fully mapped area will be much more then a central large town, a couple of villages, and numerous caves and ruins within a week of hiking through the wilderness. Maybe relocate to a similarly sized region once or twice if the campaign runs particularly long. The other five lands around the Woodlands are already "the stuff beyond the edges of the map". What lies north of the northlands, west beyond the sea, or east beyond the mountains is outside the scope of the game world I want to work on. I did that in the past and you can spend years on that without ever getting any ground level material to paper. Mostly I think there's really not much at all. Just more endless water, ice, and wilderness. There's probably more in the Southeast, but what exactly isn't really important.

    I plan to keep magic somewhat rare. Main reason being that there really isn't that much tomgo around to begin with. Spells are limited to wizard spells up to 5th level, and the B/X rules provide only a limited selection of those. With a few of them being removed for various reasons, I think the total spell list is just 50 spells over 5 levels. Sorcerers and warlocks (fighter/sorcerer hybrids) are the only spellcasters, and most of these only 1st to 4th level. The creation of new magic items is so slow and expensive that most that are in circulation are very old, from the time of the Shattered Empire and even earlier. And they are mostly quite basic stuff that isn't any more powerful than regular spells.
    Plundering imperial ruins to loot their magic items is a shady business, as it always looks a bit like someone might try to establish a new power base to gain a stronger position over neighbors, and that's calling for trouble. Sorcerers usually don't make a big deal about their arcane knowledge and often downplay it as a curious pastime rather than serious study and true ambition.
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    The Six Lands

    Venlat - The Northlands
    The northernmost region is one that I originally created for a completely different setting but never got to use. I'm just gonna use it here pretty much as it is.
    Venlat is a great river valley that lies north of the great woodlands and is shielded from the frozen arctic wastes by mountain range that forms its northern border and the end of the known world. It's a land of mild summers and freezing winters, covered in small pine forests and moorland. The people of Venlat are the Kuri, who are white skinned with very pale blond or silvery hair. Though their architecture, metalworking, and education is quite highly advanced, the Kuri don't worship the gods of the south, but pray to the spirits and follow their shamans like barbarians living in the mountains or darkest forests. They don't build many towns and instead live in loose clusters of villages belonging to a common clan. The notable exception is Halva, the largest city anywhere north of the Grasslands. Halva is an ancient mountain hold that had been an abandoned ruin for as long as the Kuri can remember. But when the empire disappeared from Venlat, the old ruins were claimed by the asura sorceress Meiv, who had come from beyond the mountains and was believed by the Kuri she encountered to be a daughter of the Northwind. They made Meiv their god-queen and under her guidance rebuild the crumbling white walls of Halva. Meiv is without doubt the single most powerful ruler in Venlat, and one of the strongest in all of the known world. But she only rules over a fraction of the Kuri, though a very seizeable one, and she and her followers are despised by the independent clans that continue to worship only the spirits of Venlat.
    Venlat was one of the last places that got conquered by the empire and also the first that was lost again, due tomits remote location. The empire's hold on the land was always tenuous and many Kuri clans claim their ancestors had never bowed to the invaders.

    Woodlands
    South of Venlat lie the Woodlands, a massive expanse of nearly unbroken forest, that covers some 400 miles on each side. Much of the Woodlands are quite hilly terrain, especially near the northern edge that borders Venlat and the eastern woods that rise up towards the Highlands. Several large rivers run through the Woodlands, eventually running west into the sea, or south into the Grassland. There are also a number of great roads build during imperial times, many of which are still being used. There are a good number of larger towns found at major crossroads and river crossings, which are surrounded by many small villages scattered around forest clearings, but much of the region is as wild as it had been during the empire and before that.
    The people of the Woodlands are loosely inspired by the Balts, such as the Latvians and Lithuanians and other ancient groups.

    The Coast
    The Coast is really a region of rugged hill next to the sea where the border between Woodlands and the Grasslands reaches the water. The rocky hills are rich in ores and have been mined for countless centuries, but especially during the time of the empire. The continuous need for slaves from newly conquered peoples was a great driver for the imperial expansion and the wealth they produced what enabled the rise of many great cities in the regions, some of which still retain most of their old grandeur.
    The Coast is modeled somewhat after Italy after the Fall of Rome, but takes great cultural inspirations from Byzantium, with the situation being somewhat comparable to that of the Byzantines about a thousand years after the main reference time frame. The cities directly on the coast fancy themselves as successors of the Shattered Empire and a continuation of its greatness. But not very far into the hills the goatherds and wild hill people think as poorly of the empire as everywhere else.

    Grasslands
    The Grasslands are located between the Woodlands and the Southlands, reaching as far east as the Highlands.The plains were one of the first places to fall under the rule of the emperor while he was still fighting some of the other coastal cities, and his control over the grain production from the river plains was what eventually brought the last resisting cities in line. The Grasslands saw most of the fighting in the Wars of the Pretenders and were heavily devastated for over a century.
    It was not long after the pretenders had reduced each other's holdings to rubble that a large migration of people from the East arrived, passing into the Grasslands through the great pass between the Highlands and the Southlands. (Not yet seen on the map.) They found the overgrown farmlands along the river to be great grazing for their herds and established themselves as the new rulers of the region. Relying on the endless pastures to feed their animals, the newcomers found little success in expanding further into the surrounding forests and hills, and had neither the numbers nor the strength to pose a real threat to the cities on the coast. There are still many villages and towns along the great rivers of the Grasslands, which are inhabited by relatives of the costal city people, but many of them pay tribute to the nomadic clans that outnumber them in many places in the current day.
    The nomads on the Grasslands are somewhat inspired by the Huns and Magyars, but they were never unified by a single strong leader, and simply moved into the plains when they found them abandoned by any strong ruler.

    Highlands
    While the eastern mountains rise pretty steeply over the coastal lowlands, there is one region of elevated rough hills on the eastern end of the Grasslands and the southeastern parts of the Woodlands. There are some small woodlands scattered throughout the many valleys, but mostly this region is covered in shrubs and hardy grasses. The Highlands are inhabited by tall and strong mountain people whose relatives are found scattered throughout the entire mountain range. The hills were conquered by the Shattered Empire when their richest mines on the coast declined in production and there is still a good amount of mining going on, though now fully under the control of the mountain peoples.
    This region is very loosely inspired by Northwestern Iran and Azerbaijan and their ancient peoples.

    Southlands
    The Southlands are the most vague for now, and I don't know how much work I want to put into them for the foreseeable future. It's a subtropical region mostly covered in woodlands, and I am considering making it the home to lion people, but I am not yet convinced to ave a non-human civilization in this setting.

    I think now I got a much better picture of the setting as a whole. Big progress made with this.
    Last edited by Yora; 2021-12-09 at 02:50 PM.
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    A lot has happened between my last post and this, though it has been less than 12 hours!

    Immediately following my last post you mentioned a central plains vacancy, and I have thought about it at work today, so if it's not too late, my Cossack inspired idea:

    The Tribes of the Plains

    Bands of bearded nomadic horse-men roam the open plains. They favor the lance and bow, survive through hunter-gatherer strategies, and are fiercely independant, both individually and culturally.

    Once kept enslaved by the empire, they fought for their freedom, and now would rather die, (or preferably kill,) to keep it. A tribesman may be a friend, but no amount of payment or coercion can get him to do anything he does not choose to do of his own free will.

    Pride is their most honored trait. Pride of self is being as self-sufficient as possible. Lazy or self-indulgent tribe members are cast out. Grooming and maintenance of one's gear is an important indicator of self-pride.

    Pride of family is the next level of honor. While no tribe member would ask for a handout, allowing one's grandparents, parents, siblings, spouse(s), children or grandchildren to be in need is the ultimate shame. Abandonment of family is a crime punishable by death.

    Pride of tribe is yet another level higher. Right or wrong, the tribe elders speak, the tribe obeys. Part of this level of pride is to insure that all in the tribe have what is needed to survive and thrive. A neighbor would never ask for help, so tribe members must look for opportunities, usually through gifts and feasts, to help a neighbor overcome hard times.

    Pride of culture is the highest form of honor. Tribes may fight among themselves, but when outsiders threaten they are suddenly one people united.

    A curious ceremony occurs when two tribes cross paths. They offer one another gifts with the goal of giving more than is received to demonstrate that they have too much success. A tale told of such an encounter had a young warrior give away everything he owned, only to earn even more wealth in the next year. When the tribes met again the chief of the tribe gave his daughter, (who had come up with the idea,) to the young warrior. He admitted that he had received more than he ever could give away, and the newlyweds soon became famous for their feasts.

    Oh, did I mention they are centaurs? I wanted to do the writeup so they could be of any race, but in my head they are centaurs.

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    The Grul

    Here and there among the high peaks of the Eastern Mountains there are fables of the Grul.

    They are described as tall, stout, and human-like in appearance. (Image of an 8 foot tall dwarf.) Their skin is smooth and either gray or brown. Some say they are made of stone while others say they bleed black blood when wounded.

    Trackers claim to have followed trails to the edge of sheer cliffs or other obstacles, or to the center of a snowfield where it simply ended. Very few of the living have credible tales of an encounter, but these tales usually involve a narrow escape from a grul that was hunting them.

    Grannies of the mountain folk warn children to behave or the grul will get them, and when folk vanish without a trace the grul are blamed. Lowlanders think of grul as fables, but the higher up the mountain one goes, the more certain the people are that they are real and that they prey upon people.

    One fable has a heroine surrounded by grul sing them to sleep to make her escape. Who knows? It might work. Only one way to find out!

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    That goes straight into the ideas stew pot. There might be something coming out of that

    And boy, oh boy, I just got something good.
    I plan to start a Discord/R20 campaign after Christmas with open attendance and no fixed schedule, so that might be of interest. Otherwise, here's some cool big spoiler stuff.
    Spoiler
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    The Society of the Luminous Eye
    When the Empire secured its newly conquered territories by building large numbers of castles in suitable locations, the engineers discovered that many of these sites had been used for fortifications for a long time before them. And a good number of these had ancient passages in their deepest chambers that led down into ancient ruins many times older than anything above. During the height of the emperor's reign, some engineers and scholars returned to take a closer look and explore the esoteric mysteries of the dark and silent depths.
    They discovered many ancient relics and tablets, but little explanation about their nature, and from their research evolved the Society of the Luminous Eye. They never made their work or even their existence much known to outsiders and quietly continued their work throughout the wars of the pretenders. As the empire was falling into ruins, the Society gathered its relics and their work of centuries in hidden underground vaults only known to them, to prevent their destruction in the razing of cities and castles. As the Empire disappeared, the Society of the Luminous Eye did not, though they no longer have the numbers or people in position of power than they used to have in the Empire. Their work continues, and has never ended, and due to their knowledge of secret imperial vaults and tombs handed down to them from their predecessors, they have already looted more funds than they could ever need. Their scholars have no interest in the gold and jewels found in many unlooted ruins. Their interest is entirely in what may lie beneath them.

    The main discovery of the Society is the existence of the Luminous Eye. Some people who have heard about them think they are an obscure or even heretical sect of the Moon cult of Temis. But the Luminous Eye is not the moon itself, but rather the reflection of the full moon's light on the surface of water. Many peoples in the known lands believe that the world beneath the sea and lakes is a realm of existence different and separate from the world of the living. And the Society believes that seeing the moon's light on the surface of the water is to be in the presence of a miracle more divine than even the gods themselves. What exactly this miracle entails or reveals might even be a mystery to the scholars themselves.

    The Society of the Luminous Eye consists entire of scholars of the occult. They often employ mercenaries or other hireling to assist them in their unending quest for ancient relics, but these are never members of the Society themselves or told about the true goals and identity of their employers. There is little value in revealing the Society's inner workings to lesser minds who could not contribute to their quest for knowledge. The Society is also fabulously wealthy and sees to that its members are supplied with the means to fully devote their time to their esoteric pursuits. As such, all of them are very rich, though given the secrecy of their Society, avoid drawing attention to themselves with extravagance or frivolous spending. But all of them are highly educated, and that is something that few of them can keep from reminding those they deal with on a regular basis.

    Luminous scholars are highly interested in ruins that have noteworthy remnants of the Ancients in their deepest depths, or in underground ruins that have only recently been discovered or opened and so far been unknown to them. Most find it easiest to not attempt any elaborate deceptions to hide that they are scholars with interest in the ruins, but will never reveal their allegiance to the Society of the Luminous Eye if it is in any way avoidable. Other pretend to be treasure hunters, but their usual disregard for gold and silver can quickly raise suspicion among true treasure seekers.
    Members of the Society are not generally evil or outright malicious towards others, but often have nothing but disregard for others outside their work of research, and little patience for those who get in their way. Some of the more sociable scholars will gladly agree to cooperate with treasure hunters if it serves their work and their true goals can be kept secret. The Society jealously guards its secrets and will go to great lengths to not allow any knowledge of their activities to escape. If access to relics and information that is of interest to them is denied, they will stop at nothing to attain it.
    Outwardly, there is little to identify a scholar of the Society of the Luminous Eye. They are usually educated people and often of somewhat high status, and typically appear as people of modest wealth. Being founded by nobles, engineers, and architects, the Society has little appreciation for hermits or wild shamans. Otherwise they have little to distinguish themselves from other scholars, other than their peculiar interest in a very specific kind of ruins and artifacts. As scholars of the arcane, nearly all of them are sorcerers, often of quite significant power. Like most sorcerers, they are discrete about their occult knowledge, and even those who allow their magical powers to be known only use the unique spells discovered by the Society when there will be no wittnesses.


    I've decided that the empire should be The Empire. There has only been one, and there's never any ambiguity about which one someone could mean.
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    Squire G'arold of Riverstone is a known collector of statuary. His cheese and wool industry has brought wealth to his family and his town, and he has spent his share on his gardens, his specially bred sheep and goats, and on ancient statues that he displays around his estate and at parks and gardens around the town.

    He maintains a scholar who, in addition to the supervision of the eduction of the children of the region, analyzes the antiquities gathered by the squire to determhne their age and origin.

    On occasion the squire will hire treasure hunters to seek out a particular artifact.

    None know that the squire and his scholar are connected with a mysterious cult of moon-worshippers, or that some of their hirelings are also cult members.

    None suspect that the squire is the guardian of a secret trove of antiquities which predate the founding of the empire, or that the Summer Residence, a small poorly-maintained fort high up in the alpine valley, is the vault's access.

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    The goal is to build bottom up, and so there always was going to be a point where the concept level stuff has to end and more specific ground level stuff needs to start. I just didn't expect it to be this early. I still can add more detail to the six peoples once I have names for all of them, but that's about it. From here on, it's more setting the stage for a specific campaign than building a world.

    Eastvale



    Eastvale is located at the meeting point of the Woodlands, the Highlands, and the Plains, and consists of a round valley of farmland some 30 miles across. The primary river in the region runs out of the Woodlands in the Northwest and then bends Southeast to flow into the Plains where it joins the large river network leading all the way to the see, over 300 miles to the West. An old imperial road runs follows the river through the vale and crosses all the way through the Woodlands to Venlad in the North, and connects to the cities on the great river further south. But running close to the eastern mountains, far away from the coast, where the imperial heartland was located, the road never saw much traffic and sees only very little use by a few traveling merchants these day. Another road splitting off and leading into the Highlands was never completed and simply ends among the rugged hills after some 30 miles.

    The people of Eastvale live around a central town in the middle of the vale, where the old Highland road crosses the river. Five other larger villages exist in the area, but most of the people live in tiny hamlets of just a few dozen people scattered around the vale.

    Northwest of Eastvale, beyond the lake, the forest is dominated by exceptionally tall trees, and simply called the Greatwoods by the locals.

    To the Southwest, the road enters the Plains, which in this area consists of a vast expanse of heath with numerous small stands of pines scattered around. This area has been home to goat herders for a very long time. Occasionally some steppe-folk riders come through the area, to hunt at the forest edge, but they generally avoid trouble with the local herders. However, there are a group of marauders in the area that raid merchants coming down the north road without sufficient protection.

    In the South lies a smaller stretch of woodland wedged between the heath and the edge of the Highlands. This area is avoided by the people of Eastvale, as the hills deeper in the woods are said to be the home of giants spiders and other poisonous horrors.

    In the Southeast, beyond a small but fast running river, the old road runs some 20 miles into the highlands before it suddenly stops in the middle of the wilderness. There used to be some mining being done here during the wars of the pretenders to fund the troops of the Woodland province, but the mines were given up once the empire disappeared from the region and there was not much local demand for the ores. Highland people occasionally roam in this area, but they don't have any regular settlements in the region and the rough terrain and barren ground does not have much use as pasture, even for their mountain goats. There is rumor of a dragon living in the area, but most people think such sightings are actually wyverns.

    The woods to the Northeast have a reputation of being strange. There are numerous local legends about all kinds of monsters and ghosts in those wooded hills and especially beneath the mounds, but nobody really knows which of those might have any truth to them.

    North of Eastvale, separated from the rest of the region by two large rivers, the woods are dark and gloomy, said to be home to old battlefields haunted by the dead, and ancient barbarian tombs much older than the empire.

    Overall, the region is some 90 miles across, which is actually pretty big. It turns out to be about the size of the mid-sized German states, and that's a lot of ground. The idea is that the PCs are the only adventurers in the region and more or less have all of this for themselves to explore. 1600 square miles for some 6 to 12 adventurers is a lot of ground to cover.
    Being roughly circular, distances in the area are not that long, though. The major villages in Eastvale can all be reached from the main town within a day, and from there pretty much any place is no more than three days through the wilderness away. I've chosen this layout specifically with an open West Marches campaign in mind, where new players can quickly make characters and go on one-shot adventures with no strings attached. Anything in the central vale can be reached from the town with a one day journey there and a one day journey back, resulting in 1 or 2 random wilderness encounters per adventure. To explore the six outer areas, players have to plan for the adventures to take three or four sittings, but players with higher level characters are going to be pretty regular players anyway, so scheduling shouldn't be that big of an issue. And they can always make a second character to go on low-level one shot adventures with irregular players to pass the time until the same party can get together again to continue an ongoing expedition.

    Nothing really too spectacular at this point, but it does feel very robust to me. I have to remember to add a good amount of magical strangeness to this and not fall into the trap of accidentally emulating The One Ring.
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    Doula Thrank, Eastvale herbalist and Councilwoman

    If there is anyone more respected in Eastvale than the Doula, they are in one of the local cemetaries.

    Born Lis Fairgarten, she married Golsen Thrank, then deputy, later sheriff of Eastvale. Their four sons manage Fairgarten Farms, a meat and dairy enterprise, but their widowed mother refuses to retire and continues to run her herb emporium, serve as councilwoman, and spend the first weeks of every newborn's life coaching and helping the mother.

    Into the Web-wood:
    Two arms of the mountain form ridges which bracket an isolated segment of ancient forest. The stream from that valley is cold, black, and devoid of fish, and it meanders through town to join the larger stream that flows to the river.

    The Coldrun is said to taste bitter, but its water is used to wash wounds and to sooth upset stomaches. The leathersmith uses it to cure hides.

    The Coldrun meanders through market gardens at the town's edge, upstream from which larger cash crop plots ase watered. Pastures border the Web-woods where the black stream comes out. Poorer goatherds forage their flocks there, under watchful eyes, and they are careful to secure them in sheds at night to defend them from prowling spiders.

    The Doula will buy spidersilk at 1gp per pound, (one cubic foot wound around a twig.) Most locals won't try to gather it. The fringe of the forest will yield about 100gp of web. More and better silk can be had deeper in, but tougher and larger spiders make them.

    There are a dozen crevasses, caves, and grottoes with boss monsters. Their treasure is largely that of unfortunate adventurers.

    The Psychedelic Spider:
    A horse-sized spider created a web coated with a grease-like slime. The main cables of the roughly six-acre web are strong and thick enough to support a suspension bridge. The web is laid flat about a foot above the ground, and the outer fringes of the web has gaps which allow victims to enter ever narrower passages that twist and turn and eventually become too narrow to progress without touching a web. Once the web is touched, the web builder can sense exactly where and comes to investigate. If the victim is stuck in the grease, the spider's abdomen pulses in many colors of light as it sinks its hindmost legs into the ground then touches the web strand leading to the victim with the bottom of its abdomen. The lights go out and a high voltage electric shock momentarily paralyzes the victim. The abdominal lights begin to pulse again as they get brighter until three rounds later it is able to shock again. All victims touching both web and ground, or in contact with one who is in contact in any configuration that forms a chain from web to ground suffers electrical damage and may become paralyzed. While a victim is paralyzed the spider darts forward to inject venom, then retreats until the victim is subdued. The venom is hallucinogenic, and flashing colored lights mesmerize the victim as the spider cocoons the victim and retreats to its dome-tent home in the center of the web where its mesmerized meals are hung until their turn as the main course at the spider's banquet.

    The spider queen and her princesses are giant spider/sorcerors who dominate the most inaccessible end of the valley. They are not evil, but they are alien intelligences which want only to be left alone.

    When giant spiders hatch they move away from larger spiders which will eat them. After 5 years they will have grown to about 3 feet in body size. All of the males and 90% of the females will reproduce and die. 10% will grow larger than 3 feet, and in 25 years will have grown to 6 feet and achieved animal level intelligence before the mating urge overcomes 90% of them. The remaining 10% grow to 12 feet and average human intellect by age 125, and by that time only 10% will resist the mating urge and become princess spiders which learn sorcery over the next 500 years. One in 10,000 spiders has the potential to become a spider queen. By age 3250 she will be dying whether she breeds or not.

    Strength and cunning determine much of the royal heirarchy, but the larger giant spiders cooperate in a sort of enlightened self interest as well. They are usually only cannibalistic of males unless overpopulation is threatening food supplies.

    The giant spiders cannot speak, but can communicate using their front four legs in a manner not unlike semaphore communication. They obviously don't spell out words in the common language. They can hear, so various magical means of communication will work.

    In this valley, where the two ridges come together was once a stone fort. Who made it and why have long been forgotten. It is now the home of the Spider Queen, who is not curious about its secrets.
    Last edited by brian 333; 2021-12-17 at 01:07 AM.

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    I've been working on the setting every day (or at least thinking about it), but somehow I've not really had anything at a point where it's ready to "put down to paper", so to speak. Mostly more details on stuff I already mentioned, but all of it still not completely finished. But I think I now got stuff worked out well enough to write some updated versions of the lands and their peoples in the following days.

    The Planes
    The planes of the setting were always meant to be a very simple and straightforward thing, but I really didn't have anything planned in this area until this week.

    The primary plane the ordinary world interacts with is the Shadow Plane. The Shadow Plane has all the basic traits of the Shadowfell, but it also has the trait of the Ethereal Plane that you can see living creatures moving around in the material plane, and all effects that relate to the Ethereal Plane are directed to the Shadow Plane itself.

    The Deep Ethereal regions of the Shadow Plane also serves the function of the Astral Plane to connect all other planes together, but doesn't have any of the other traits of the Astral Plane.

    The Deep Ethereal of the Shadow Plane is called the Void, as there really isn't anything there than seemingly infinite cold space and darkness. But through the Void lie paths to the Shadows of other planes. Other than the material plane, there is a large and probably infinite number of other planes, that can be treated as either outer planes or demiplanes. There's no meaningful difference between the two in this case. As a big fan of some less popular Planescape planes, I think using various layers from the Beastlabds, Ysgard, Pandemonium, Carceri, and Gehenna would be really cool. The darker and more hostile of these planes are together called the Underworld, but they are really not in any way inherently different from the ones that appear more like wild forests or mountains instead of caves, wastelands, and volacanoes.

    Most supernatural creatures in the Six Lands are actually native to the material plane, such as treants, spriggans, dragons, or manticores. But there are a few more alien ones, like aboleths, grell, and tsorchar, that come originally from the planes of the Underworld and have travelled through the Shadow Plane.
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    Would venturing into shadow require the traveller to leave something behind?

    I am imagining lost souls who have lost ambition and purpose, slowly fading into shadow stuff as they forget they were ever mortal.

    In this case, entering the plane requires an effort of will to remain focused and purposeful.

    Otherwise, what limits travel into and through Shadow?

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    It certainly should be an inhospitable place that isn't friendly towards living things. A place to pass through quickly, but not stay around any longer than necessary.

    I'm still not sure about the rules to accessing the Shadow Plane yet. There could perhaps be a higher level spell, like 4th level for example. Something that requires pretty advanced arcane power, but still potentially reachable for PCs in a normal campaign.

    But I think fixed portals should probably be the most common way. I think it could be cool to have a situation of "don't get off the path", with a considerable number of known portals in the material plane and various other worlds, but only a few known routes that connect two specific portals through the Deep Shadow. If you go through the Border Shadow, you can only move between places on the same plane, and the distance would not be massively shorter than going normally, though there might be some shortcuts that only exist in the Shadow. And you could just go roaming around in the Deep Shadow until you arrive in another Border Shadow and find a portal there, but that could take a very long time.
    Sounds like a new type of creatures: Travelers who got lost in the Deep Shadow but somehow didn't die, and keep aimlessly wandering around forever.
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    I like that, mostly because it lines up with some worldbuilding I did for another thread. There was a race of Moonlight folk who were primarily traders who had members of their clans with the ability to take shortcuts through an Etheral-like plane.

    I will think about it and if I can find the old post I'll link it.

    The next question is, how widespread is knowledge/use of the portals? There are many planar travel spells, and I'd consider using them, modified where necessary. But portals are certainly workable, and with more traffic there will likely be well marked trails and roads across the Shadowlands.

    What about destinations that are guarded/warded? For example, the demiplane of not-Sigil has tax-assessors at every portal but then it also has portals to and from everywhere. The plane of Hell has portals that only allow spirits without a mortal body to enter, but thereafter they can exit only via summoning. Utopia has a 'no visitors' policy. Powerful person's can penetrate the wards, with assistance from the inside, but only natives can come and go.

    Not sure how this kind of thing would work in your world, but food for thought.

    https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?549226-Cultures-Multiple-Pan-Asian-sources-in-a-WELL-DONE-quot-mashup-quot/page4

    The Twilight People are the ones I was recalling. Others had a lot to do with their creation while my contributions were primarily decorative.
    Last edited by brian 333; 2022-02-04 at 12:56 AM.

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    I got a new map. One so big I just link to it directly instead of trying to somehow make it fit here in a way that remains somewhat readable.

    It's not pretty at this stage, but I think the overall layout it pretty final. And I got a lot to write about most of these places, which will all be much easier to do when I can refer to a map about their locations.
    Last edited by Yora; 2022-02-20 at 06:40 AM. Reason: Updated with never version
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    I updated the map with a never version, and this one is actually good enough to show the main region for my planned campaign with some amount of detail.



    I intend to start the campaign in the area around Korla on the Edai river. Korla is a town of the Miskovai woodsfolk, which happens to lie along the overland route between the port cities Yerku and Leria. Yerku is the southernmost major settlement of the Kuri high elves, and a big haven for pirates and raiders who sell their loot from the southern seas and lands to Kuri merchants who are trading with the other cities of Venlat. Leria is one of the smaller and the most remote ports of Aktaras, and while they are less obviously to their necks deep in crime, the Aktaran merchants have a much stronger hold on the Miskovai traders.
    Merchants from Yarku and Leria are competing over control of trade in Korla, which to many of the local Miskovai feels a lot like imperial ambitions from their two much more powerful neighbors.
    Further southeast is Kreios, one of the three big Aktaran cities that are the only places that are the only remaining echos of the strength and wealth of the Shattered Empire. The city is largely under the control of a society of thieves and shadow mages, whose main rivals are the demon-possessed master assassins of Terakeion to the South.
    West of the Red Sea lies the Yondland peninsula, which is a desolate place even for the Six Lands. It is basically uninhabited and most ruins there are much older than the Shattered Empire.
    In the Northeast, past the Bone Fields and beyond the Mistwoods lie the Witchfens of Venlat, which are home to strange tribes that even the Miskovai regard as barbarians.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Where can we help? You seem to have broad strokes down, and ideas about the nature of your cultures.

    Here is an idea for the ruins of Yondland, which may explain why it remained desolate for so long:

    The Ghosts of Yondland

    Adventurers tell of ancient ruins in the peninsula that have been looted and looted again over the ages, but from time to time the curious, or avaricious, go there seeking what may have been overlooked. And from time to time, such adventurers vanish, never again to be seen.

    A few survivors, some from as far back as the dawn of the Old Empire, reported the sudden appearance of hordes of ghosts in the ruins. These vengeful spirits attack the living, and by dawn there is nothing left but their equipment.

    (DM info)
    The 'ghosts' are living people who in ancient times were cursed to exist until the end of time. The god who cursed them shifted them into a timeless shadow-plane but, to add to their torment, it allowed the shadow-plane to align with the real world on nights that the stars and moon are just right.

    Existing in a realm where nothing changes, the shadow-folk hunger for the new. When a conjunction occurs and a living person is within their grasp, they subdue and drag back to their realm the hapless mortal, whom they treat as royalty, begging tales of new things in the world until the teller wearies of the telling. Still, as the newest thing in their timeless realm, the hunger of the shadow-folk for their stories persists until the telling of them is a torment.

    By the time of the next alignment those taken from the real world have become 'ghosts' themselves, and will desperately grab anyone in the region both to relieve themselves of the burden of being the new guys, and to satisfy their own hunger for the new.

    If there are no living people, or if they are hidden from the shadow-folk, the shadow-folk will play at the things they did in life. Weavers will 'weave' on the dust that was once looms, smiths will work cold forges, etc.

    An epic mage or cleric might be able to escape, and some adventurers might be able to resist capture, but it otherwise requires divine intervention to get out once captured. To break the spell, (likely dumping a million 10,000 year old people back into the real world in present time,) would require god-like power and a deity willing to over-ride the decree of a long-forgotten god.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Magic
    Overall, the original goal for the setting still remains the same as it was three months ago, but there's been quite some changes to the plans since then. The biggest one being that I am now working with D&D 5th edition for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest ones being warlocks. Warlocks are just such a cool concept, and a while ago I had been pondering how a setting would work in which all or most spellcasters are warlocks. This setting feels like a perfect opportunity to put that into practice. Though in the end, I decided to go with warlocks, druids, and bards as the only forms of spellcasting.

    Warlocks are the typical wizard, sorcerers, and witches of the Six Lands. They study the supernatural mysteries of the cosmos and make contact with powerful beings from other worlds to gain their arcane knowledge. While the magic of warlocks is not universally seen as evil and corrupting, it is known to be very dangerous even when not meant to be used to cause death and destrution. It also was one of the main sources of power of the Shattered Empire, which makes warlocks not exactly popular in most places. Accordingly, most warlocks try to not draw much attention to their occult studies from outsiders, and most are primarily known in their towns or villages as nobles, merchants, sages, or priests. There are no typical ways to spot warlocks from a distance, as they dress typically for their station and keep their magic items out of sight. Some people might be known to have an interest in magial things, but the true extend of their magical knowledge and power is usually kept hidden.
    Most magic items are the work of warlocks, though they are most commonly made from the remains of powerful magical creatures that still retain some of the being's supernatural powers. The enchantments to turn them into magic items mostly just make these remnants of magical power accessible, and warlocks are limited to what powers are inherent to the objects. Warlocks usually use Intelligence as their stat to determine the strength of their magic powers, but using Charisma remains an option.

    Druids are in many ways quite similar to warlocks, but they gain their powers not from the spirits from other worlds, but the spirits of their own. Knowledge and the ability to interact with the spirits of the wilderness are the source of druids' power, but they don't have the special bond to any single being like warlocks do, but the s8x different traditions all have different spells learned from the specific spirits of their homelands. (The druids' home regions determine their circle: Arctic, Coast, Forest, Grasslands, Mountains, Swamp) Their ability to shapechange is a form of possession by animal spirits, and they always transform into creatures native to the environment they are in.
    Druids are the shamans of most barbarian tribes, with the exception of Venlat, where both the Kuri and the barbaric Kaska shamans are warlocks.

    Bards are the priests of the Six Lands. Most everyday rites and ceremonies are performed by village leaders or the heads of families, but temples are normally led by at least one bard (who people just call the priest). Bards are priests, teachers, and sages, and in many places also serve as judges and arbiters. They are people of high status and respect and almost always among the leaders of the villages and towns they reside it. But bards who travel the land as wandering mystics are also not a rare sight and often get particularly warm welcomes in small villages that don't have priests of their own. Bards serving in temples have a special relationship to the gods of the temple, but they are not specifically tied to any one deity that grants them their powers.
    Bardic music abilities are almost always in the form of chants and oration, as their mystic connection to the divine grants great power to their voices when they speak with conviction and truth.

    Gods
    Idain: The goddess of the fields, plants, and forests. She is one of the three main gods of the Miskovai and Shara, and also worshippee by Aktaran farmers. She is the goddess of the plains to the Taygurs and goddes of the mountains to the Kozai.
    Livas: The god of herds, animals, health, and vigilance. He is one of the three main gods of the Miskovai and chief god of the Kozai.
    Heotis: The goddess of homes, families, hospitality, and humility. She is one of the three main gods of the Miskovai and a minor but highly respected deity of the Kozai.
    Temis: The goddess of the Moon, enlightenment, and revelation. She is very important in the religions of Aktarans, Taygurs, and Shara.
    Sadon: God of the Sea and sailors. Temples of Sadon are found in almost every Aktaran city and town on the Red and Black Seas, but he has few worshippers in the other lands.
    Magdun: God of knowlege, learning, and wisdom. A respected god by sages, but with few major temples anywhere.
    Azuleira: A minor goddess of twilight, uncertainty, and deception. Few worshippers, but many of them warlocks.
    Nedaris: Goddess of the Night and Darkness and all hidden and secret things. She has a dark reputation as goddess of thieves and immorality, but is often evoked to protect from dangers in the dark and to guard over sleepers. She has few temples and is not much talked about, but is quietly prayed to almost everywhere.
    Turhaz: God of storms and strength. Prayed to by Aktarans, Kozai, and Taygurs, but rarely loved except by tyrants, mercenaries, and bandits.
    Akunas: God of hunting and wild beasts, worshipped by Miskovai, Kozai, and Shara for aid in hunts and protection from dangerous animals, but also distrusted as a god of monsters.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

    Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Does the change to 5e mean you're loosening up your "humans-only" focus?

    Also, what about eldritch knights and arcane tricksters? Are they reflavored to be drawing on a patron's power now?

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    The peoples of the six lands remain the same. The Miskovai of Miskoiya, the Aktarans of Aktaras, and the Taygurs of Vaikar are standard humans. But the Kuri of the Venlat Northlands use high elf stats, and the Kozai of Korenya Highlands use goliath stats. I always envisioned them that way, but the mechanical simplicity of B/X made it seem impractical and unnecessary to come up with some meaningful mechanical effects. In 5th edition, there are more numbers to fiddle with and there are already stats for high elves and goliaths, so I guess why not just use those? But as I see them, they aren't going to be any more different from the regular human peoples than say Melniboneans or Numenorians.
    I also decided to go through with making one exception for the Shara of the Mangal Southlands, who are explicitly fully nonuman and using tabaxi stats. (Though more inspired by the rakasta from The Isle of Dread.)

    Spellcasting is fully limited to warlocks, bards, and druids. I guess fighter-warlock and rogue-warlock characters should be easy enough to do with multiclassing.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    But as I see them, they aren't going to be any more different from the regular human peoples than say Melniboneans or Numenorians.
    I'm a little confused by this - do you mean that Melniboneans and humans are not that different? Because the works of those authors would suggest fairly significant differences (longer lifespans, easier use of magic which might translate to bonuses to Charisma, etc).

    I might just be misreading your point here, though. This is an interesting idea and I'd love to dig into it more!

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Spellcasting is fully limited to warlocks, bards, and druids. I guess fighter-warlock and rogue-warlock characters should be easy enough to do with multiclassing.
    That's cool! Depending on how eager a player was to play an eldritch knight or an arcane trickster, you might also just change the spellcasting ability to Charisma, remove the spell school restrictions, and swap the spell list for the warlock list. It might be easier than multiclassing. But I'd only do that if a player really wanted to play those specific subclasses for some reason.

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    Default Re: Ruins of the Shattered Empire

    If someone really wants to play in the campaign and really wants to play an eldritch knight despite the campaign pitch explicitly stating that this isn't possible, I might potentially put something together to create a fighter subclass with pact magic. If I feel like it at that moment. But I don't think it's too much to ask that players accept the restrictions of the campaign before signing on to it.

    I think Melniboneans and Numenorians are different enough to justify having different stats from regular humans, but they are otherwise very much human. Unlike tieflings, dragonborn, warforged, and such.

    I got this work in progress list of all the rules modifications I have planned for the campaign.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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