jasin
Explorer
A sort of a vignette meant to get across the general feel of a setting
that's been sitting in the back of my brain lately:
Those weak of faith name me blasphemer and warlock, but as the poet has
written, "if the Maker hath not desired that we should drink wine, he
would not have provided us with grapes". We praise the Four Pillars and
their Maker by using the gifts bestowed upon us, and the binding
patterns are my grapes, and the power of the elementals my wine!
-- Jalal al-Alim, in a letter to his sister and assistant, 689th Y.R.
835th Year of the Righteous: the Caliphate of Alam al-Rashidun is at the
height of its power thanks to the advances in magic, natural sciences
and philosophy rooted in harnessing the power of elementals, a technique
pioneered by Jalal al-Alim, the greatest elementalist in the history of
the Caliphate.
Al-Alim's death for his percieved impiety towards the servants of the
Four Pillars (and by extension, towards their Mreator) at the hands of
the Fedayeen sparked the short and bloody civl war that finally broke
the power of the Fedayeen warbands, a development many deemed inevitable
ever since the warbands had fulfilled their raison d'etre with the final
defeat of the Kurgan Empire in 524 Y.R.
Today, 143 years after the scholar's death, the Caliphate is a land of
trade and knowledge, and the elementalist clerics of the Four Pillars
healers, diplomats and scholars, working side by side with the secular
artificers, instead of the warrior-priests of old that rode against the
Kurgan hosts.
But the height of power is the beginning of decline: the Fedayeen
brotherhoods of the deep desert could never be eradicated and they're
dreaming of revenge, eyes beyond the borders fill with envy at the sight
of al-Rashidun's prosperity, and the shadows are stirring again in the
ruined Kurgan capital of Dar ul-Jihad...
Think of the Baghdad Caliphate c. 900 A.D.... but with artificers
instead of mathematicians and bound-elemental magic items, genies and
genasi, a (suitably renamed) shugenja priesthood! The PCs take the roles
of visionary scholars that try to rival the accomplishments of al-Alim,
or pious elementalist priests that strive to embody the virtues of their
Pillar, or grim desert warriors thirsty for revenge on the society that
they built with blood and steel and which rejected them, or delvers in
the forbidden shadow-lore of Kurgan...
Well, that's it so far.
How'd you like it? Does it make you want to
play?
that's been sitting in the back of my brain lately:
Those weak of faith name me blasphemer and warlock, but as the poet has
written, "if the Maker hath not desired that we should drink wine, he
would not have provided us with grapes". We praise the Four Pillars and
their Maker by using the gifts bestowed upon us, and the binding
patterns are my grapes, and the power of the elementals my wine!
-- Jalal al-Alim, in a letter to his sister and assistant, 689th Y.R.
835th Year of the Righteous: the Caliphate of Alam al-Rashidun is at the
height of its power thanks to the advances in magic, natural sciences
and philosophy rooted in harnessing the power of elementals, a technique
pioneered by Jalal al-Alim, the greatest elementalist in the history of
the Caliphate.
Al-Alim's death for his percieved impiety towards the servants of the
Four Pillars (and by extension, towards their Mreator) at the hands of
the Fedayeen sparked the short and bloody civl war that finally broke
the power of the Fedayeen warbands, a development many deemed inevitable
ever since the warbands had fulfilled their raison d'etre with the final
defeat of the Kurgan Empire in 524 Y.R.
Today, 143 years after the scholar's death, the Caliphate is a land of
trade and knowledge, and the elementalist clerics of the Four Pillars
healers, diplomats and scholars, working side by side with the secular
artificers, instead of the warrior-priests of old that rode against the
Kurgan hosts.
But the height of power is the beginning of decline: the Fedayeen
brotherhoods of the deep desert could never be eradicated and they're
dreaming of revenge, eyes beyond the borders fill with envy at the sight
of al-Rashidun's prosperity, and the shadows are stirring again in the
ruined Kurgan capital of Dar ul-Jihad...
Think of the Baghdad Caliphate c. 900 A.D.... but with artificers
instead of mathematicians and bound-elemental magic items, genies and
genasi, a (suitably renamed) shugenja priesthood! The PCs take the roles
of visionary scholars that try to rival the accomplishments of al-Alim,
or pious elementalist priests that strive to embody the virtues of their
Pillar, or grim desert warriors thirsty for revenge on the society that
they built with blood and steel and which rejected them, or delvers in
the forbidden shadow-lore of Kurgan...
Well, that's it so far.
How'd you like it? Does it make you want to play?
