An Adventurer's Guide To Chevar (+)d

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
"The man called Rhun leads us through the forest deer trail up to a small rise before the land slopes downward and the Nine Rivers meet in the Bay of Parth. For several days we have trekked through hard country made overgrown by alternating days of rain and brilliant sunshine. I miss the clear skies and reliable seasons of my home, what these uplanders call The Sourthern Steppe, as if she has no true name, as if she isn't Anthalla. My mind wanders along twisting trails of it's own as we march, hidden by a dense foliage that makes me claustrophobic. I escape into the windswept grassland of memory, recalling the last hunt I enjoyed before this man asked me to accompany him, and my tribe's Druid, Boros, bade me follow.

Still, for all my discomfort, I am having an easier time of it than most of my new friends. Boriendiv moves like a great cat, even in his thick leather and steel armor, while Edgaard tramps through underbrush like an adolescent bull golat in season, shining plates of polished steel twinkling fleeting reflections of the dappled light that reaches us through to the canopy of the Greenwood. I know enough of the Alfar to know their peoples are something like cousins, but about as similar as the sun and the moon, or as the prowling panther and the tree is rests upon. Even with their differences, they've found a deep friendship on this long pilgrimage to the City of Nine Vesper Gates, Parth of the Great Dragon Houses. I grin at Boriendiv as I help him disentangle Edgaard from a seemingly capricious bramble, and grin wider at Edgaard when he scowls at me.

I catch up to Rhun as we reach the top of the rise, and the trees give way, and I stand next to him as the others clear the bush to make the short climb to join us. He smells of old leather and the sharp tang of air recently split by lightning. He needs to shave, and his black hair is longer than it was when we set out. He leans on his great spear and smiles at me as I join him, but I can see that he is preoccupied, so I say nothing, waiting for him to speak first, and I follow his gaze as it turns forward, and I find I have no breath to speak anyway.
Before us, a deep sloping valley rides down toward the see, two of the nine great rivers racing eachother to the bay within a mile of us on either side. The morning fog still clings in tendrils and whisps near the bay itself, seeming to frame the city like a jewel in a display. And the city itself glittered like a crown of jewels, each tower shining in the late morning sun, each minaret topped with gold or silver or bronze, it's stonework carved from some northern stone I have never seen before or since, dark blue, green, red, in other places white like polished ivory, streaked with black or veins of something like silver.

At each of the great gates a road named for one of the rivers enters the city, each at least a mile from it's neighbors, crossing over the river at an angle, and then sweeping inward toward the city center in a great spiral, intersected many times by the gate-roads, each drawing a straight line from the great outer gates an opposite gate across the city. All of these roads, nine river-roads and nine gate-roads, converge at the center, at the Dragon's Throne, and monolithic structure of white and silver stone encircled by eight towers of equal height, and looming over the city by way of a central tower easily twice the hieght of any other tower in the city. From this height I can see large parks, the three proud aerial towers and their anchors for sky ships, and the grand harbor with it's immense chains hidden deep below the surface to allow entry to the hundreds, thousands, of ships coming and going. The Pilgrim's Road leading into the Oldrun Gate on the southern side of the city was choked with pilgrims and traders seeking entry.

As Rhun turned to our companions to speak, one of them cries out in surprise and awe, and we all turn to watch a flight of dragon riders sweep over the mountains to the north of us, and into the valley toward the great tower aeries of their city. Their leader waves a command and breaks off, and sweeps toward and over us, banking impossibly as she passes to take a look at us. Rhun raises his spear in salute, and speaks softly in the dragon tongue, and the captain salutes with a barely audible laugh and her great purple and blue and silver dragon shakes it's spiney frills and lets out an immense roar like a hundred trumpets as they dive and flatten out over the slope of the valley, seeming to delight in the shouts and screams of delight, awe, and fear of the pilgrims seeing their first dragon up close, and then banking up and gaining altitude to clear the wall and seek rest upon one of the aerie towers.

Andreana laughs, breathless, and we all look at eacfhother, laughing in turn, and then turn to our leader, whose sober face reminds us why we have come, months along the Kings' Roads from the far south to the Northern Spire Coast and it's bejeweled city. Silent, we listen as he tells us the next steps we must take, and what to expect in the city.

And thus we came to our first sight of the greatest city in the world of Chevar, perhaps in all of the Nine Worlds, lead by a demigod from out of our myths, with tidings of war. "

-From the journals of Treanoka Sparrotyne, Hunter of The Ushamet Tribe, Captain of the Griffon Riders of Galhost, and Hero of The Vesper Wars, on his first journey away from his homeland.


Hello adventurers! Welcome to Chevar, a world of mysteries and great dangers, wonders and heroes, ancient curses and sleeping gods, and ruins of a thousand cultures over myriad centuries, because herein lies the crossroads of the Nine Worlds!

Chevar is a world largely unexplored by mortal folk, but home to folk from every world. A place of magic and scattered technology, where indoor plumbing is the norm but "modern" weaponry is quite rare, where the gods sometimes walk in disguise but rarely intervene, where legends have hidden thier greatest and most terrible treasures since the time before history.

Adventurers might be explorers looking for new places for mortal settlements, treasure hunters looking for a famous ruin that could make thier forture or spell their doom, champions of gods or other beings of power sent on a quest to recover a dangerous relic or rescue a beloved and valuable individual, or simply there to oppose the forces of chaos and etropy known as the First Gods.

Gunslingers, Warlocks, Knights, Assassins, Rangers, Investigators, and others, work together to explore the secrets of this lost world, and to keep it's people safe.



Quest For Chevar is a TTRPG originally designed for adventuring in a modern world with hidden supernatural worlds and forces. This offshoot is being designed to facilitate more classic fantasy play, with unique and engaging hooks that make Chevar different from nearly any other world and game out there.

This (+) thread is a place for me to throw ideas around and see if anyone bites.
 

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doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
So, the idea to make a “D&D version” of my game is actually older than the idea to make my own system. I made homebrew races and spells and magic items in high school, for 3.5, to play in the world of Chevar. But I didn’t actually like 3.5, and I never ended up running it.

Anyway, 10 years ago my wife and I created the first Quest for Chevar character while driving up California’s Pacific Coast Highway to Monterrey for our honeymoon, and a decade later the game I built for my friends is in its 4th major iteration, and I am planning on publishing it within the next couple years.

The setting is a multiverse of Nine Worlds, but the version I’m working on now is designed to just focus on the world of Chevar, the Crossroads of The Nine Worlds.

In short, it’s a world that has been the front line of many wars over millennia, between forces from many worlds and from the outer dark, a world littered with the ruins of wars and attempts at empire, but also a world of magic and wonder, where dragons dwell alongside mortals who have become more like the dragons they bond with over generations in the great city of Parth, and brave knights ride griffons to protect the farms and towns and rolling hills and dense woods of the Southern Kingdoms, where pre-industrial architecture juxtaposes with technology from earth and fairy magic.

And it’s a world with 13 moons, 8 tied to the other worlds while the other five are mysterious and possibly haunted. And ancient sleeping threats locked in deep stone to keep all worlds safe. And megafauna and megaflora extinct on Earth and elsewhere and some that never graced our world.

It’s ripe for adventure, and full of danger, wonder, excitement, heroism and villainy.

Where else can you take out Nazi remnants that have tanks while you ride in on dragons?
 

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