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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BookTenTiger" data-source="post: 8528640" data-attributes="member: 6685541">Campaign World As I build the physical setting itself, I return over and over again to the central conflict of optimism vs corruption. What does corruption look like in a D&D setting? I can see the governing bodies of towns and cities literally corrupted by fiends and aberrations, trading their souls (and the fate of their communities) for power. I can see once bountiful forests or fields corrupted by undead blight, mischievous fey, or strange mutations. I can see once powerful cities reduced to ruin as greed and tribalism sundered the community. Returning to the idea that this is Medieval Americana… A lot of early American storytelling involves small communities tied financially and culturally to a large city. You have frontier towns, farming communities, and other small outposts, all with roads or rivers leading to New York or Chicago or San Francisco. I’m going to center this campaign setting around a single fallen city. Vaulten Hall was once known as the City of Memories. Its fabled towers held libraries, museums, temples, and schools in which nobility and scholars studied under mentors both mortal and magical. Vaulten Hall was a city with a strict hierarchy: only royal families and wealthy landowners could attend the schools and access the great libraries. Over time, a fierce rivalry built up between the three Great Towers of Vaulten Hall: the Tower of the Mind, the Tower of the Heart, and the Tower of the Soul. Meanwhile, the small towns and villages outside of Vaulten Hall were full of hard-working people producing the ore, lumber, and food needed by the merchants, scholars, and nobility of the city. These frontier villages were often harassed by fey, beasts, and monstrosities of the wild. Mercenary adventurers were expensive, and some landowners abandoned their tenant farmers to the forces of the wild rather than spend their precious gold. Then came the war. Armies of undead, fiends, and aberrations appeared from across the sea, over the mountains, and out of the minds of powerful mortals. The wealthy city of Vaulten Hall fought back, often with soldiers drafted from frontier villages. But after decades of war, the Great Towers were conquered, and Vaulten Hall fell to the outside forces. Now the city of Vaulten Hall is a ruin, patrolled by fiends, undead, and aberrations. The three Great Towers are portals to realms beyond this world. The Tower of the Mind has become a portal to the Far Realms. The Tower of the Heart is portal to the Nine Hells. The Tower of the Soul is a portal to the Shadowfell. The frontier villages outside of the city face their own strife. Decades of war drained their resources, ruined their fields, and killed off a generation of men and women. The new masters of Vaulten Hall are not interested in governance. There is no standing army to defend the villages, and there is no law to keep the peace. In this power vacuum have risen warlords, cultists, and zealots, powerful villains empowered by the fiends, undead, or aberrations. Communities once subsisting on mining, farming, or lumber are now pillaged for slaves, gold, and souls. At the same time, the very land has been corrupted by the presence of these outsider forces. The forests teem with mutated beasts and plants. Farms produce poisoned crops, and the waters are fouled with the slime of strange tentacled creatures. Into this world step the adventurers. Adventurers carry within them the seeds of hope. Through their might, the corruption can be fought back, and a new world grown. This is the campaign world of Amnesis.</blockquote>

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