the Jester
Legend
The triple walls yet stand. Despite everything, Fandelose endures.
The Sword Empire of Thrush is no more. The cities of humanity are crumbling ruins. No music nor laughter sounds in the elven tree-kingdoms. The clangor of the dwarven thanedoms has gone silent.
It all began with the victory of Chaos over Law at the end of the Great War of Ethics. That was the death knell of civilization, for what is civilization but the imposition of order on the chaotic dance of nature?
Those heroes who won the Great War of Ethics put two of their own on thrones and built a great empire. For thousands of years they held off the fall, but when they themselves were gone, what they had built could not last. A great alliance formed- the Six-Fingered Hand, which united orcs, gnolls, kobolds, lizardfolk, goblinoids, and ogres into a tremendous force under the leadership of a cabal of mighty death knights led by Arawn the Black. The armies of the Hand swept through land after land, burning and slaying everything.
But one city stood, championed by a group of unlikely heroes. Fandelose, with her triple walls, was the bastion upon which the Six-Fingered Hand would break. A five-year siege of the city, at last broken by the heroes, was followed by a desperate attack on Arawn himself. And when fell Arawn, so fell the Hand itself. Without his leadership, the disparate forces united by his will collapsed into in-fighting, turning on each other. Inevitably, the Six-Fingered Hand dissolved.
And Fandelose stood, alone- or nearly so- in the whole world.
Constantly beset by remnant humanoid tribes, the city has no real outlying towns, for people outside the walls are prey for the monsters and evil humanoids that lurk in the countryside. There is no trade by road nor river, for there is no one to trade with. To feed itself, the city has converted the former estates of the nobility into huge fields of rice paddies, intercut with canals, but one bad year could kill the entire city.
This is Fandelose, soot-smudged city lit by firestone, last outpost of civilization, an unsustainable aberration in a world overcome by chaos, a point of light in the darkness.
This is Fandelose, the final city.
The air is always smoky here. It is, generally speaking, not wood that burns; it is firestone, mined by the dwarves who dwell in the Black Gorge just outside the city. The smoke hangs over every part of the city- the Upper District, where the farmers live amongst the rice fields, struggling to be heard by the city's political apparatus and increasingly enserfed; the Bronze District, now home to the city's upper crust and the wealthier businesses; and the Lower District, comprising the majority of the city, where the poor dwell crammed together in urban filth
It is four decades, more or less, after the fall of civilization. During the crisis period, it had been ruled by General Argus, and ever since, its government has swung back and forth between military dictatorship and civilian representative democracy. But when the civilian Bronze Council rules, it inevitably endangers the city by allowing too much freedom. The farmers cannot be allowed to leave, and those that do- and attempt to set up an outlying town, such as Red Bank- are inevitably captured or killed by monsters or members of the races of the Hand. For a time, one of the Heroes of Fandelose- Heimall Heinrickson- served as the city's military dictator, now titled the Argos; but his time is past. After another few swings of the pendulum, Heimall's son Otto has ascended.
The old heroes are largely retired or out of sight. It is a time for new heroes to rise.
The Sword Empire of Thrush is no more. The cities of humanity are crumbling ruins. No music nor laughter sounds in the elven tree-kingdoms. The clangor of the dwarven thanedoms has gone silent.
It all began with the victory of Chaos over Law at the end of the Great War of Ethics. That was the death knell of civilization, for what is civilization but the imposition of order on the chaotic dance of nature?
Those heroes who won the Great War of Ethics put two of their own on thrones and built a great empire. For thousands of years they held off the fall, but when they themselves were gone, what they had built could not last. A great alliance formed- the Six-Fingered Hand, which united orcs, gnolls, kobolds, lizardfolk, goblinoids, and ogres into a tremendous force under the leadership of a cabal of mighty death knights led by Arawn the Black. The armies of the Hand swept through land after land, burning and slaying everything.
But one city stood, championed by a group of unlikely heroes. Fandelose, with her triple walls, was the bastion upon which the Six-Fingered Hand would break. A five-year siege of the city, at last broken by the heroes, was followed by a desperate attack on Arawn himself. And when fell Arawn, so fell the Hand itself. Without his leadership, the disparate forces united by his will collapsed into in-fighting, turning on each other. Inevitably, the Six-Fingered Hand dissolved.
And Fandelose stood, alone- or nearly so- in the whole world.
Constantly beset by remnant humanoid tribes, the city has no real outlying towns, for people outside the walls are prey for the monsters and evil humanoids that lurk in the countryside. There is no trade by road nor river, for there is no one to trade with. To feed itself, the city has converted the former estates of the nobility into huge fields of rice paddies, intercut with canals, but one bad year could kill the entire city.
This is Fandelose, soot-smudged city lit by firestone, last outpost of civilization, an unsustainable aberration in a world overcome by chaos, a point of light in the darkness.
This is Fandelose, the final city.
The air is always smoky here. It is, generally speaking, not wood that burns; it is firestone, mined by the dwarves who dwell in the Black Gorge just outside the city. The smoke hangs over every part of the city- the Upper District, where the farmers live amongst the rice fields, struggling to be heard by the city's political apparatus and increasingly enserfed; the Bronze District, now home to the city's upper crust and the wealthier businesses; and the Lower District, comprising the majority of the city, where the poor dwell crammed together in urban filth
It is four decades, more or less, after the fall of civilization. During the crisis period, it had been ruled by General Argus, and ever since, its government has swung back and forth between military dictatorship and civilian representative democracy. But when the civilian Bronze Council rules, it inevitably endangers the city by allowing too much freedom. The farmers cannot be allowed to leave, and those that do- and attempt to set up an outlying town, such as Red Bank- are inevitably captured or killed by monsters or members of the races of the Hand. For a time, one of the Heroes of Fandelose- Heimall Heinrickson- served as the city's military dictator, now titled the Argos; but his time is past. After another few swings of the pendulum, Heimall's son Otto has ascended.
The old heroes are largely retired or out of sight. It is a time for new heroes to rise.