Mouseferatu
Hero
Seven decades ago, there were cities upon cities.
Kingdoms and nations; the remains of ancient empire. Cultures at war and cultures at trade. Humans, dwarves, elves, and others. Magic and monsters, rare but real. And so it was for millennia, through two dynamic ages the lorekeepers and scribes called Ascensions.
Until the world ended.
Most call it the Fall, but whatever term a given people choose to use, it marked the time when everything changed.
Nations crumbled. Races died. Magic sputtered. Nature sickened.
The dead woke.
Welcome to Zileska, a world ravaged by death and undeath.
Seven decades ago, the Second Ascension came to a brutal end in a worldwide cataclysm called the Fall. During this period of stark decline, magic began to fail, and as it did, the world's fallen began to rise from their graves. Whether because the doors to the Underworld flew from their hinges, or because the God of the Dead went mad (a popular theory), the end result was the same.
As the tide of death swept across the lands of Zileska, taking with it city after city, the remnants of each fractured culture and racial hold began to retreat to the same place of sanctuary — the mountain citadel of the dwarves, called Elldimek.
Seven decades is a long time, however. More than enough time to watch refugees become rulers; to see hosts become slaves in their own homes.
Elldimek is no more. It has become the city of Redoubt, so named and decreed in the Accord of Last Redoubt — a treaty of surviving human cultures. Under its terms, the dwarves were stripped of their claims to the city, and those dwarves who weren't executed or exiled became slaves to human masters. In the time since the Accord, some have earned back their freedom, but many still toil under indenture.
Stiflingly tyrannical where the rich and powerful dwell, hideously crime-ridden where want and poverty nest, and all around — sometimes within the walls themselves — the ever-hungry Dead. Redoubt is a city, a culture, possibly even an entire world, in what certainly seems to be its final hours.
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CA Suleiman, Jaym Gates, and I created The Lost Citadel a few years ago, starting with a fiction anthology. We wanted to examine the notion of high fantasy laid low--a Tolkien-esque or standard D&D-esque world subject to a disaster on every level, reduced to more of a gritty, Thieves' World- or Howard-esque aesthetic. We're thrilled to be working with the folks at Green Ronin, and a team of other great writers--including Keith Baker, Jesse Heinig, and Malcolm Sheppard--to develop not only the RPG side of Lost Citadel, but to bring the fiction to a wider audience.
(You may have seen this mentioned in other threads, but I realized there wasn't one specifically calling it out by name. And as one of the property's creators, but not an official rep of anyone, I figured it made most sense for me to do it.)
I hope you guys'll give it a look. And while I'm very limited in what I can say or what questions I can answer, I'm happy to address what I can.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/504269797/the-lost-citadel-post-apocalyptic-fantasy-roleplay
Kingdoms and nations; the remains of ancient empire. Cultures at war and cultures at trade. Humans, dwarves, elves, and others. Magic and monsters, rare but real. And so it was for millennia, through two dynamic ages the lorekeepers and scribes called Ascensions.
Until the world ended.
Most call it the Fall, but whatever term a given people choose to use, it marked the time when everything changed.
Nations crumbled. Races died. Magic sputtered. Nature sickened.
The dead woke.
Welcome to Zileska, a world ravaged by death and undeath.
Seven decades ago, the Second Ascension came to a brutal end in a worldwide cataclysm called the Fall. During this period of stark decline, magic began to fail, and as it did, the world's fallen began to rise from their graves. Whether because the doors to the Underworld flew from their hinges, or because the God of the Dead went mad (a popular theory), the end result was the same.
As the tide of death swept across the lands of Zileska, taking with it city after city, the remnants of each fractured culture and racial hold began to retreat to the same place of sanctuary — the mountain citadel of the dwarves, called Elldimek.
Seven decades is a long time, however. More than enough time to watch refugees become rulers; to see hosts become slaves in their own homes.
Elldimek is no more. It has become the city of Redoubt, so named and decreed in the Accord of Last Redoubt — a treaty of surviving human cultures. Under its terms, the dwarves were stripped of their claims to the city, and those dwarves who weren't executed or exiled became slaves to human masters. In the time since the Accord, some have earned back their freedom, but many still toil under indenture.
Stiflingly tyrannical where the rich and powerful dwell, hideously crime-ridden where want and poverty nest, and all around — sometimes within the walls themselves — the ever-hungry Dead. Redoubt is a city, a culture, possibly even an entire world, in what certainly seems to be its final hours.
----------
CA Suleiman, Jaym Gates, and I created The Lost Citadel a few years ago, starting with a fiction anthology. We wanted to examine the notion of high fantasy laid low--a Tolkien-esque or standard D&D-esque world subject to a disaster on every level, reduced to more of a gritty, Thieves' World- or Howard-esque aesthetic. We're thrilled to be working with the folks at Green Ronin, and a team of other great writers--including Keith Baker, Jesse Heinig, and Malcolm Sheppard--to develop not only the RPG side of Lost Citadel, but to bring the fiction to a wider audience.
(You may have seen this mentioned in other threads, but I realized there wasn't one specifically calling it out by name. And as one of the property's creators, but not an official rep of anyone, I figured it made most sense for me to do it.)
I hope you guys'll give it a look. And while I'm very limited in what I can say or what questions I can answer, I'm happy to address what I can.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/504269797/the-lost-citadel-post-apocalyptic-fantasy-roleplay
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