A Work Intensive Approach to World Creation

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

I find this fascinating because I find this method similar to my own, though I place less importance on geography and more on religion and politics.

Geography determines politics, from what I've noticed. Borders USED to go along rivers, mountain ranges, etc. So I make sure my geography is down.

But trust me, you haven't seen the politics and religion really get in force. That comes after the small kingdom designs.

I'm curious as to how granular this gets before you get to a point where you can call it "done," Tim.

Who knows how far it'll go.

Anyway, ideas have perked, time to get busy.

First up, some mapping, IF I can CC2 to do what I want.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

OK, if you haven't downloaded the viewer from http://www.profantasy.com you need to, since it's about that time, boys, girls and herms. We'll be moving into the nitpicking.

Now, we have to provide one of the classic components of writing. And it does translate over to D&D. Conflict.

You have to have multiple levels of conflict.

There's global. That's man against nature, man against self, man against society.

We need to address these points on our little map.

So, I added in five kingdoms.

First thing I did was add the MAJOR rivers. Two of them, each of which fork once. Now, the rivers disappear into the forest. To see them, you simply go to the sheets menu, and hide the forest. That should leave our settlements there, but remove the forest hiding settlements and the river.

Now, we have 5 kingdoms. One is a standard D&D kingdom magic and racially.

BUT, let's do something interesting.

Machevel
Government: Divine Monarchy
Caste System: Yes.

• Royal Family
• Nobility/Upper Clergy
• Merchants/Lesser Clergy
• Military
• Craftsmen
• Yeomen/Freemen/Commoner (In order)
• Slave
• Untouchable

Resources: Iron, copper, tin, hardwood, softwood, peat, fishing, whaling, spices, salt, gems, gold, silver, platinum.
Exports: Spices, salt, cotton clothing, glassworks, hardwood, gems.
Imports: Spices, silk, perfumes, marble
Architecture: Gothic
Mode of Dress: Roman
National Language: Yes, Machevel Common, Royal Machevel.
Age of Kingdom: 450 years
Population: 1,154,000 (est.)
A powerful coastal nation, Machevel is primarily powered through a powerful military that is backed by a robust economy and well tapped resources. The King is a Divine Being (Rank Zero Diety, D&DmG's) as well as his family (Plane touched at least, Half-Celestial at most) and are worshipped by the population as the Son of Pelor (True) and protector of the people.

Now, we'll give it an eclectic bunch of peoples.

Dwarves: There are dwarven settlements, mostly in the northern hills, but there are dwarven enclaves in the larger cities. There are two known dwarven halls in the northern mountains: Shieldember Hall and Deepforge Hall. Both of them are known to have populations numbering in excess of 10,000. (Hmmm, lets not go with Dwarves as a dying race, how about a vibrant, living race, that is clannish and insular out of piety and fear of shaming thier clan with social embarassment. Each dwarf percieves himself as a diplomat for his entire race)
Elves: Many elves live in the cities further inland. The Elves of Machevel appear to be afraid of water, never using ferries and only using the large, heavy, stone bridges. Many of them are outcasts, or disaffected citizens of the Elven nation to the West. The Elves are found in all levels, but secretly are incensed that they cannot become nobility.
Gnomes: Found in the northern hills, the gnomes hold a virtual monopoly on the gem trade, despite attempts of the guilds to break it. Gnomes are friendly, and often seen as rich (No gnomish burrow would allow a gnome to be seen in anything less than finery) debutants and layabouts. Adventuring gnomes are fairly common, often looking for new markets for gems, both cut and raw.
Half-Elves: Half-elves began cropping up roughly 20 years after the nation's founding, and many women claimed rape. These claims led to the abortive Firetree War some 400 years ago. Now, it is fairly common for a half-elf to be born, and there is even a noble family of half-elves (All god touched or half-celestial), but much to regular elves chagrin, they only breed within the noble families.
Half-Orcs: Hailing mostly from northern towns and settlements, half-orcs are uncommon but not rare in the kingdom. With a reputation for brutality and stupidity, half-orcs are barely considered commoners or yeomen, and most often considered untouchable.
Halflings: Merchants and caravan masters, the halfling enclave of Springbrook is nearly a nation unto itself, being overseen by a noble sheriff and having a voice on the council of a King appointed noble.
Human: Humans make up 60% of the racial mix, and are responsible for the founding of the kingdom.

Military
The Kingdom is protected by three different levels of military might. Pelor's Own is the Royal Guard, highly trained and well equipped, this is a combination of archers, knights, heavy infantry, war wizards, and calvary. Pelor's Own answer only to the king. Next is the Legions of Pelor, of which there are 11 legions. These legions are infantry, and are career, often former slaves, criminals, or untouchables, who joined the Legions of Pelor rather than continue with thier lives. Should a slave join the military, and serve for a whole year, he is considered a freeman. Lastly is the Knights of the Sun, which is nothing but calvary. Light and heavy, archer and lance. These are maintained and supplied by the nobility. There are 14 100's of the Knights of the Sun.

Nobility
Spoiled, pampered, and lazy, the nobles only charge is collecting taxes, maintaining defenses, and maintaining local Knights of the Sun. Most nobles have no clue what life is like outside of a guarded and manicured manor, and the majority of thier time is spent trying to figure out how to discredit rivals and just how close thier bloodline is to the King's in case of the King's death.

Currently, the King, Xavier Augustus, has no heirs, and is not married. He is a fairly young 22 years old, and has been on the throne for only 3 years.

Slavery
Slavery is common. Slaves are seen as status symbols: The fancier and more pampered your slaves, the richer and more powerful you are seen as being. Slaves are taken from conquered nations, the last having been Jungula 5 years ago. If a slave can run away for a year and a day, they are free. If a slave can join the military before his master can catch him, and serves an entire year, he is free.

Children born to slaves are considered slaves.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Avellerum Empire​

According to legend and elvish claims, this is the spot where Eden once stood, and they guard the gates to thier paradise (False) from all who would dare desecrate it. The elves claim that the Empire is over 10,000 years old (true) and was the first civilization on the face of the world. (False)

1,200 years ago, drow from Wee-Jas arrived on ships and torched, burned, looted, and murdered across the shore for approximately 250 years. WIth Corellon not answering thier prayers, they attempted to convince a sea god to protect thier shore, by sacrificing several hundred mermen to him.

Posidean grew angry and ravaged the coast with hurricane after hurricane, destroying trees, causing the rivers to flow backwards, and tearing apart the elven cities. For 100 years any elf who came near the shore was devoured by a sea predator, no matter how unlikely. (A travelling halfling merchant once saw a Great White Shark leap out of a mudpuddle, snap an elf in half, and disappear into a gutter. Stirring the gutter with a stick produced no shark, and the halfling swore off alcohol and pipe weed for the remainder of his life.)

Elves claim that the sea air chaps and damages thier skin. (False, but Posidean takes malicious glee in sending elven sailors on strange voyages)

500 years ago, humans crossed the mountains, and the elves watched as the humans moved into the lands that Posidean's wrath had destroyed. The storms lessened and stopped, and the land was liveable again, much to the elves jealousy.

After 450 years, a son was born to a woman who claimed to have been visited by Pelor in the night, repeatedly, for over a month (true) and this babe grew rapidly from infancy to full adult within a week (False, it was actually 5 years) This person, Machevel the First, combined the settlements under his banner, and took war to the elves who were supposedly raping human women. (False, it was Corellon, who would get drunk at a local tavern in human guise, pick up a woman, and, well, you know)

Within 20 years, the forest had been burned back to the present levels, and many thousands of elves were slaughtered. Human steel had proven the equal of elven magic again, and reluctantly, the elves had to adopt steel.

That was within a generation, so many of the older elves still stew bitterly about the fact that some trumped up mortal who didn't even live 100 years crushed thier military so thoroughly, and many plot to destabalize the human kingdoms around them.

Non-elves are scorned and looked down upon by the elves of this land. Despite the fires and axes of the human armies, the elves of this Empire still live in tree cities.

The Empire is ruled by the Emporer, who comes from the Imperial Family. The nobles are all elected on the basis of wealth donated to the church of Corellon every 50 years, ensuring that only the wealthy and powerful have wealth and power.

With the example of human kingdoms, many of the younger, and even middle aged, elves of the Empire are leaving to see what they can make of themselves. Recently (20 years ago), the Emporer decreed that any elf gone longer than 20 years is no longer a citizen of the Empire. This decision was highly unpopular.

Currently the Emporer plans on having himself declared a God.

Relations with Machevel are strained at best, with the embargo of wood to that nation irritating the God-King to no end.

This kingdom uses Japanese Architecture in thier tree cities, and dress in the style of the late Incans.

Elven is the only language allowed to be spoken by people within the Empire. Those that speak anything else, as per a law passed some 15 years ago, are imprisoned and eventually ejected across the border.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

OK, it's time to do a pic of what we have so far, and upload the map.

Only one kingdom is currently filled in, but we'll fill in the others, and place a few shore-line cities on other continents.

Here's the pictures, and the map so far.

Jungula is intended to be a shattered kingdom that is now little better than city states, ruins, and the like. Perfect for PC's to go into.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Jungula
Former Republic, now anarchy
Population: 74,000

Jungula recently went to war with Machevel over trade rights to the river. Machevel wanted untaxed/no-tarriff use of the river for everyone, Jungula wanted to be able to levy tariffs and fees according to thier whim.

15 years ago this came to blows, and the great City-States of the Jungula paid the price for evading taxes and responsibilities when it came to thier walls and thier militaries. Within 10 years the war was over, with Machevel having absorbed over half of Jungula's pre-War land, and having smashed many of it's City States, including the great capital, known as the City of 1000 Fountains.

Those Fountains didn't save the Capital or the Senate from Machevel's militaries, and only the interference of the Creelian Guilds convinced Machevel from overrunning Jungula compeltely.

In the last 5 years little to nothing has been done to repair the vast ruins that cover the former nation. Famine and disease run rampant outside the great city-states, and indeed, many of the city-states have to deal with famine, as the farms lie untended for the last 5 years.

Recently, wild Orcs, Kobolds, Goblins, and far worse have begun to move into the ruins, and more and more of the creatures summoned during the war have been spotted outside the ruins.



THERE! We have our area to adventure.

First, we need a base. How about a non-aligned, free "city", but not too big, we don't want to have to use crowbars to get the PC's out of it. There's a castle directly across the river from a ruin, complete with a ruined bridge.

We can station the PC's there.

How about we name the castle...

Narsky Castle.

The woods surrounding it is called: Gnaskell Forest.

Before the war, it was a primary producer of soft and hard wood for Jungula, now it is infested with ghouls that came to feed off of the fallen soldiers and killed refugees as they fled the ruins of...

Strasky. That's the name of the ruin.

Now, I'll place that on the names sheet, and hit "Hide" again.

OK, shall we now map the Keep, a section of the forest, and the Ruins of Strasky?

OK, if you have an idea of how to get PC's started on an adventure here, speak now before I get to it or hold your damn peace.

PS-Any way someone can make FCW valid upload files so I can quit RARing and Zipping them?

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

I considered the work we did on the first area, and realized something.

There's nothing that fun. No ancient ruins to explore, full of wonder and danger. All recent crap.

Soooo, let's crack open our map and pick a spot tommorrow evening.

If anyone has any suggestions, post em now. When I get home from school, (8:30 PM PST) we'll go over it and see what we get.

We might want to consider a few things.

Progeniter races. Any? If so, let's not go with standard uber-magic lizardmen, it's been done to death.

Why are there ruins?

How did the PC's get there?

Shall we take a page from "Playing the Crazed Wizard of the Party" and have it be the New World, only add in a base camp: IE: Plymoth Rock or New Amsterdam, and let the PC's have the lovely jobs of exploring the region?

Any ideas? Where, how, why, and who?

 

[Wolv0rine]

*Chuckles* Is this a test, or did you really do this map this fast?

Okay, first note the two gold lines. #1 and #2.

#1: Why does the river take this rather sudden, and rather sharp pair of direction changes? What is nearby that is affecting this particular change in the course of the river? Sure rivers meander, but this is a sharp and notable change. Something’s up here.

#2: Another notable change in the course of the river, but this time it looks like something’s missing. Note I added a big gray block marked “Mountains”. The river’s course here suggests to me that a mountain chain goes here. This chain suggests some things…

1) Migration from the south must come north either to the east of this mountain chain, along the coast, or along the much longer western path, leading into Jormun Shires (or, depending on how much more west the chain stretches, the Arghost Empire). The path of least resistance is *apparently* the eastern route.
2) This region of kingdoms is, to an extent, sandwiched between two mountain chains to the N and S and a series of small islands and reefs to the east, meaning that to a pretty good degree, the rulers of this region have a pretty free hand as to how they want to run things, because influence from other kingdoms and/or a “High King” is going to be far between and slow to arrive.
3) These kingdoms are probably relatively new, or very old (because of the difficulty in getting to the region). From what you’ve written, they’re relatively new.

*1) Just looking at the map (starting with the pattern of the forest, then looking at the kingdom borders, then adding them together) I’d say it’s possible that we can say Why Jungula is a shattered kingdom of city-states. It was crushed between the Jormun Shires and Machevel. I’d guess Creelian used to be the SE portion of the Jormun Shires until Jungula was crushed, at which point they broke off from the Shires and declared themselves a power onto themselves with their closer access to the corpse of Jungula and the southern coastal pass (as assumed by the mountain chain I added). I’d suggest that relations between the Jormun Shires and Creelian are strained at best.
*2) In NW Machevel there’s a section of forest that dips inward toward the mountains. This looks like the result of human logging and expansion to me, not the natural borders of the forest. The Machevelans have been pushing northward for a generation or two, slowly but obviously steadily. The deeper they go, the more ruins they are going to find. You want long-lost locales, look north in the area where the forest meets the northern mountains. I’d point to that one volcano that’s smoking in the map as to one (but not the only) reason for the former civilization to have disappeared.

Hmm, and I’m tapped for the moment. Not exactly what you were looking for, but it’s what I saw.

 

[Wolv0rine]

It's Bump-a-licious!

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Well, we're back again.

And some changes have been made.

The river empties into a huge lake, and then flows outwards. The Theocracy sits atop a HUGE mesa, created by thier God to lift thier lands above the infedel.

We need someone for them to worship, and I figure, how about this...

We go with:

Deneerian Theocracy
The Egyptian Pantheon.
Roman customs
Western European weapons and armor
Renissance Era French clothing


The Deneerian Theocracy is very pious as far as thier dieties go, with symbols for the gods prominantly displayed on everything from clothing to dinner ware, to inscribed on doorways and fired into clay bricks.

The Deneerian Theocracy was invaded at one point by the elves to the east, the formerly pacificistic nation nearly overrun, until Osiris himself lifted the land up, in some places over a hundred feet into the air.

Since that time, the Deneerian Theocracy trains monks, paladins, and clerics to guard thier borders and towns.

A Paladin has the same legal authority as a judge, as do monks and clerics. Even merchants will give way to the judgement of a Paladin, Cleric or Monk.

Paladins, Clerics, and Monks of the Deneerian Empire display tattoes of thier chosen Gods, and even the dark God Set possesses Paladin orders to make sure that no infedel EVER destroys one of his temples again. (A raid by the worshippers of a rival diety of the Pharoahnic Pantheon is OK, within reason)

The Kingdom to south has following:

Shingar Dominion
Asgardian Pantheon
Ramses II Era Egyptian Architecture
Japanese Customs
Western Europe weapons and armor
Rome (circa 300 AD) Style dress

For the most part, the people of the Shingar Dominion stick next to the river, which runs between a long section of hills that extends from the mountain range to the coast. The mix of people's is rather eclectic mix of roughly even numbers.

The elves of the Shingar Dominion do not believe the creation rumors, instead insisting that they were created by Valkyries bearing the children of heroes in eons past. (True) The elves of the Shingar Dominion have fair skin, blond or copper shaggy hair, bright blue eyes, freckles, and are more muscular and prone to violence than the other races called elves.

(Game modifiers: The elves of the Shingar dominion are considered to have the "aasimar bloodline", either light or just for looks)

The dwarves of the Shingar Dominion claim to have been created by Skadi to search out the secrets of the Earth, supposedly birthed by chosen nomadic women after a visit by Skadi. (True). The dwarves of the Shingar Dominion are thinner, have fair skin, long brown or red hair, sharp noses, and brown eyes.

The people of the Shingar Dominion claim to have existed within the desert for eons (true) and that they predate many of the races there. (True to an extant)

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Arghost Empire
Worship: Standard D&D Pantheon
Mode of Dress: American Indian Plains Tribes, with the Cliff Dwellings being put into the sides of trees rather than canyons or Mesas.
Method of Construction: Gothic
Customs: Charlemagne Empire

The Arghost Empire is a vast woodland Empire. Three hundred years prior, the Emperor Yemelle built his legacy by ordering the Imperial Legions out to build roads. He set his whole kingdom, and his treasury, into building roads, and is responsible for many of the roads that crisscross the "Inland Empire" section of the world.

The buildings are built in the trees, as there is a cultural taboo about building a permanent structure other than a road upon the ground. The local legends have it that four armed demons of great might will destroy any structure built upon the ground, and that the foundation will run with blood. (Partially true)



Jormun Shires
Mode of Dress: Western European, circa 1700's
Weaponry: Oriental
Architecture: "Tolken-esque" Burrows
Government: Republic, with each "Shire" contributing 1 leader
Religion: Standard D&D Halfling Pantheon

The Jormun Shires are made up of 15 different halfling communities, each one called a Shire and covering another 3-6 settlements.

The races are primarily halfling, with only 20% being gnomes and 3% being other races.


OK, here's the Map.

once again, you'll need the viewer from www.profantasy.com

Tommorrow, we'll add the Magocracy, and do a little interlocked history with our kingdoms.

I'd like a vote, by Sunday: Shall I PDF the data we have so far, as a free download, or shall we wait awhile longer?