Setting Idea: Wounded Gaia

[Shades of Green]

This is a campaign-world idea that has been floating around my head for a while:

"During the Age of Blossom nature's bounty was abundant, and the fields and orchards flourished. Civilization, too, has blossomed: mighty and magnificent empires of men, elves, dwarves, kobolds and hobgoblins grew out of the many kingdoms of the North; culture, philosophy, art, magic and the crafts reached unprecedented heights; and many new, wondrous machines were invented to make the lives of men, dwarves and kobolds easy.

But then came Winter. Suddenly, in the middle of the springs five hundred years ago, thick clouds gathered at night and showered snow. The Decade Without Spring followed, a horrible time of frost when the rapidly-growing glaciers and mountains of snow buried the great cities of the North. The Northern fields, once yielding fertile crops, withered and died in the unending winter, bringing widespread famine - the harbinger of civilization's fall. Strange creatures, once trapped in the frozen edges of the North, now roamed freely among frozen cities and frost-choked farms.

But not all was lost. The South, once dry and arid, has enjoyed heavy rains, giving rise to new forests and fertile lands where sparse woods and dry steppes have once existed. There, south of the edge of the continent-spanning glaciers, the remnants of men, dwarves, elves and many others found refuge from the howling winter blizzards and the savage, furry beasts of the once-glorious North. Even then, these survivors were tattered, mere shadows of the former civilization. And strange new creatures, unknown before, roamed the countryside, spreading terror and fear. Even nature, once bountiful, has taken a dark, cold twist. Soon, a barbaric new Dark Age took hold, an age where the sword reigned once more.

And you, adventurers, are sons and daughters of that age, out to reclaim the remnants of the glorious past, slay the beasts that guard them, and maybe even restore a little bit of the lost splendor."

---

The basic idea (which, of course, won't be known to most players at the beginning of the game) is that the world the game is set on is a living being, a divine being in fact, once the tame, pleasant nature/agriculture Mother Goddess of the Age of Blossom. However, a group of powerful magic users found a way to tap into the Mother Goddess' life-force and drew away a large amount of that life-force to feed the creation of an artificial Clockwork God. The Mother Goddess, greatly weakened, has retreated into a period of hibernation in order to heal, bringing about an abrupt ice-age. And in her slumber, she dreams up dark, twisted things. Meanwhile, the experiment was successful: the Clockwork God is alive in a vast manufacturing complex deep in the frozen northern mountains, building an army of automatons and golems and striving to form a Clockwork Paradise of steel, brass, cogs, gears and steam.

Nature itself, and those who follow it (druids, dryads, some faeries and so on) became as cold as the Mother Goddess. Only a few druids could muster enough inner strength to tap into the Mother Goddess' still warm heart; the others have become as cold as the northern winter. Forests tend to be dark and twisted and to contain strange beasts.

Both the Mother Goddess' strange dreams and a variety of magical experiments and accidents carried out during the last years of the Age of Blossom have spawned strange new monsters. These weird beasts, as well as terrors of old set free by the ice and the fall of civilization, terrorize the remaining population, inhabit the ruins of previous ages, and sometimes even form their own kingdoms.

If I'll decide to use alignments, the Mother Goddess was once Chaotic Good and is now Chaotic Neutral bordering on True Neutral (that is, wild as the vines choking a ruin bordering cold as the northern winter); the Clockwork God is Lawful Neutral. Neither is truly evil, though both are quite alien in their outlook. There are probably several other gods (sun god? moon god? immortals?). You could actually play a cleric of the Clockwork God or the Mother Goddess if you want (though the latter usually has druids rather than clerics). Powerful monsters could also act as gods of sorts but that's what cultists worship - not heroes!

The old technology got along more or less well with Lawful magics. In fact, I've imagined a perpetual steam-engine using bound fire and water elementals and channeling them through each other to produce a never-ceasing supply of steam; of course, that also means never-ceasing slavery and agony for the elementals... Once freed, they might be vengeful... :twisted:

The current society is feudal, primitively so, and quite brutal and barbaric. Wars between the various small baronies are common even if all barons have sworn allegiance to the same count, duke or king. Monsters sometimes become barons themselves or, alternatively, use human slaves for their own dark purposes away from the settled areas. Roads are dangerous as bandits and monsters are common and guards (far from settlements, that is) aren't. And the winter brings forth snow-orcs, riding winter-wolves, attacking under the cover of moonless blizzard nights.

Ruins are common. Even away from the glaciers, famine, disease and frequent violence greatly reduced the population, so many places are abandoned and thus become inviting for monsters, tyrants and bandits to dwell in. Under the glaciers, entire cities are buried, haunted by snow-orcs, clockwork automatons, ghosts and worse - but containing many priceless relics from the Age of Blossom.

The glaciers have their own monsters - Snow Orcs (furry, boar-faced, suffering only half damage from cold attacks), Winter Wolves (treat as Dire Wolves, but they receive only half damage from cold attacks), Mammoths, Woolly Rhinoceros, White Dragons, Sabertooth Cats, Polar Bears and undead - a lot of undead, especially in the buried cities. Mammoths, woolly rhinos and sabertooth cats also live in the forested areas or even grasslands south of the glaciers. Snow orcs riding winter wolves make deep raids into the south in the winter, and usually attack during snowstorms and blizzards.

[Gilladian]

This sounds like a very intriguing setting. What are you looking for from us? Advice, adventure ideas? New Gods?

Have you thought about creating a wiki to keep your creativity organized? It would also give you a place to show off your work. I'd love to see where your world goes from here.

Gilladian

[Shades of Green]

Originally Posted by Gilladian

This sounds like a very intriguing setting.

Thanks

Originally Posted by Gilladian

What are you looking for from us? Advice, adventure ideas? New Gods?

I'm looking for feedback, ideas and general brainstorming.

Have you thought about creating a wiki to keep your creativity organized? It would also give you a place to show off your work. I'd love to see where your world goes from here.

So far I have a general idea. If it'll develop further I'll possibly create a wiki for it - how do you create a wiki?

[Gilladian]

Well, just recently Enworld started providing wikis for their members, so you could check there - I happen to have been using pbwiki for a number of years. I'm not sure they're still providing free wikis for individuals, though. Just for education and business, I think. But they're very easy to use.

There are any number of variations on how you can do a wiki. Here's a site that describes and compares any number of different wikis and their options: WikiMatrix - Compare them all

I'd love to see some description of your campaign's current situation: what are the kingdoms, social groups, local history, etc... That would give me something to spin off of a bit.

[Shades of Green]

This setting idea was cooking around my mind for a while but I haven't written much for it yet so I'll develop it bit by bit. I'll try to create a large-scale map for this setting, then choose one area (about three kingdoms) to focus onand then focus on an even smaller scale - a setting characters could explore in their lower levels.

[Shades of Green]

I've generated world maps for both periods in both northern winter and summer using PlanetGen.

Age of Blossom, Northern Winter

By golan2072 at 2009-01-21

Age of Blossom, Northern Summer

By golan2072 at 2009-01-21

Frozen Age, Northern Winter*

By golan2072 at 2009-01-21

Frozen Age, Northern Summer*

By golan2072 at 2009-01-21

* Note the lower sea levels due to the massive amounts of water locked away in the enormous ice-caps.

[Shades of Green]

An idea I'm exploring is to make most druids a recent development. During the Age of Blossom, the Mother Goddess was Chaotic Good, and most of her priests were rural priests of agriculture, fertility and livestock. Now, in the Frozen Age, the wounded goddess is colder, wilder and Chaotic Neutral, and her followers are colder, wilder and far less civilized. And thus the druids grew from a rare cult venerating a small aspect of the blossoming goddess to become the majority of her followers.

[Shades of Green]

Judging from the maps I've generated so far, I think I'll have to change the history a bit: most Age of Blossom cities weren't completely buried under the ice, but rare rather covered by ice during the winter and uncovered during the summer. The summer climate, however, is still extremely cold (PlanetGen calls this "alpine" but it'll probably be more similar to somewhat wooded tundra) making agriculture far less productive in their areas, not to mention making life extremely uncomfortable during the winter.

So most of the cities were abandoned due to famine (the land could no longer feed as many people) rather than by getting covered by the advancing ice. A few cities, however, WILL be covered by permanent ice, including the Clockwork God's enormous citadel up north.

[Shades of Green]

the new coastal areas would be very interesting - you'll even find old shipwrecks and dried-out Sahuagin cities and even Aboleth citadels where the continental shelf once was. They were probably quite close to the surface during the Blossom Age (as the Devil Reef was in Lovecraft's Shadow over Innsmouth) so once the oceans receded some would be exposed, some would be in the middle of shallow swamps and some would be in lagoons or even lakes. And all of these would be covered by swamp vegetation and (in the flooded parts) mangrove forests. Great places to fight Sahuagin, Trolls, Will-O-Wisps, Lizardmen and Bullywags, I'd say.

I intend to take a small part of the global map and develop it in detail.

EDIT: Here are two possible candidates for the campaign area:

Candidate 1, Summer:

By golan2072 at 2009-01-25

Candidate 1, Winter:

By golan2072 at 2009-01-25

Candidate 2, Summer:

By golan2072 at 2009-01-25

Candidate 2, Winter:

By golan2072 at 2009-01-25

Once I'll decide on the area I'll probably create a more conventional (read: older-school) hex-map for it.

[Gilladian]

I love your maps. I think I liked region 1 choice slightly better, just on appearance, but region 2 looks possibly a little more diverse, terrain-wise, so really, it's a toss-up.

How big are these regions? Small continents? You mentioned 3 kingdoms in your focus area; that's a good number because it gives the ability to have alliances and enemies and such. Even numbers are never as much fun!

I look forward to seeing what you come up with...

[Shades of Green]

Thanks for the kind words

Anyhow, I've calculated things and these areas are about 3,000-5,000 kilometers across, so I'll probably have to choose part (a quarter or one-eighth) of one of them as a starting area to keep the scale reasonable.

[Shades of Green]

I've decided to change the default campaign area to make things more manageable. The following area is approximately 1,000 km by 1,000 km. Most of this area was above water even in the Age of Blossom, though the sea has receded enough even here to allow the cool adventure environment of the now-exposed continental shelf. Age of Blossom climate was Mediterranean with a very hot summer and a cool, rainy winter (especially in the mountains); Frozen Age climate is temperate, with the mountains shielding the bay from the worst of the frost coming from the northeast.

Winter:

By golan2072 at 2009-02-04

Summer:

By golan2072 at 2009-02-04

[Shades of Green]

Regarding Age of Blossom technology, due to the fast pace of advancement in the final few decades of that Age, technology varied greatly, as older devices were not yet completely superseded by newer developments being invented in an ever-growing rate. Furthermore, different people developed different ways to do the same thing - the Kobolds, for example, have perfected the repeating crossbow, while the Dwarves worked hard at developing firearms.

At the height of technology stood the Elemental Crucible - a magically-sealed chamber into which permanent portals have been opened into the Elemental Plains of Water and Fire. The violent reaction between the two opposing elements produced a massive amount of super-heated steam. A single Crucible could provide for all the heating and machine-running needs of a large industrial site (such as a Dwarven city). The main drawback of an Elemental Crucible was that powerful mages had to monitor it around the clock lest nasty creatures would siphon through the portals from their respective plains. When the Ice came and civilization fell, if the Crucible was not properly shut by a mage, the facility - and, indeed, the whole city in some occasions - became infested with hostile elemental creatures.

A more primitive application of elemental techno-magic was the Boiler of Endless Steam, forcibly finding a fire elemental and a water elemental into the same boiler to produce a constant supply of steam (and endless agony for both elementals). While the typical boilers f that kind were quite large and were used to power large vehicles or machines, more advanced (and expensive) versions were small enough to include in smaller clockwork devices such as automatons.

Firearms were common in the hands of Humans and Dwarves, and, in some cases, humanoid monsters. The most advanced - used by Dwarven military forces - were percussion weapons, in some cases built as revolvers (both pistols AND rifles) in order to allow repeating fire; the most common, however, were single-shot flintlocks, while some humanoids used primitive matchlocks. The main disadvantage of firearms was that in order to add magic to the attack you had to enchant each bullet - which was quite expensive as spent bullets were usually less recoverable than arrows or crossbow bolts. Another disadvantage was their relative cost to produce and operate.

Crossbows, too, reached a high level of development. Precise clockwork systems allowed Kobold marksman to fire massive volleys of bolts with great accuracy and speed without having to reload. While firearms had greater damage potential, crossbows were cheaper, and, more importantly for Kobold tactics, far quieter.

[Gilladian]

I'm enjoying your world so far. What is the major culture in this region like? Is it mainly human? What's the general social type? Feudal or tribal or democratic, or city-states? You mentioned having three nations in mind, right? What sort of religion do the survivors follow? Each nation has its own god, or is there a pantheon?

I'm not sure why, but those are the kinds of questions I have to settle first in my mind when I create a world.

[Shades of Green]

Keep in mind that society hasn't fully recovered from the apocalypse (to say the least), so society tends to be somewhere near the thin line between tribalism and feudalism. This is closer to the early Dark Ages than to the Age of Chivalry: things are chaotic, many roads (not to mention forests) are unsafe, and kingdoms resemble fragile alliances rather than centralized powers. The most powerful leader in the area usually gets to be king, with lesser leaders swearing fealty to him, and, in turn even weaker leaders swearing fealty to them. But this doesn't prevent them from fighting each other, and, if the king loses even a little bit of his power, some of his vassals are likely to try and grab the throne.

The majority of population has fled to the new fertile lands, and refugees from many cultures and races have settled in these areas. In these dark days necessity creates very strange bedfellows, such as goblin chiefs swearing fealty to a human king, or humans swearing fealty to a dragon lord. Anyhow, the starting barony would be human (with some dwarven and halfling settlements), neighboring an elven "barony" (actually a semi-tribal entity, with the tribal council swearing fealty to the king), and a hobgoblin barony. The king himself is human.

Nearby there is a dwarven kingdom ruling a few surviving mining-towns on the western slopes of the mountains (though the dwarf king has human vassals, too), a swampy area around the river where a water-fey (or water-nymph?) "rules" over (or, more accurately, advises to) a chaotic collection of lizardmen, fairies and treants, and a horde of all sorts of savage humanoids (orcs, kobolds, troglodytes, gnolls, trolls) and some other monsters ruled by some monster I haven't decided on yet (mind-flayer? dragon? high-level mage of some sort?).

Regarding religion, I haven't decided much yet, though I'd like to have more than one faith. It is still possible, especially in the fertile lands, to worship the warmer aspects of the Mother Goddess, though even then there would be a feral streak in the faith (which would be some kind of druidism). The Clockwork God has a cult, though I don't know how much of an inroad such an alien deity would make outside of the frozen lands. There would probably be other gods, and possibly a monotheistic faith.