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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 5414616" data-attributes="member: 99">Hey folks.  I'll be starting a new game with the new year and I'm always open to hearing more ideas I can use.  We had a conversation a few weeks ago about what to play next and we decided that it would be fantasy, it would be Savage Worlds and I'd be the one running it.  After a bit of mulling things over and a dash of inspiration from my friend, Kiznit, I decided to do a Gothic Horror theme.  Here's the elevator pitch:So a long time ago the legends say that the land was covered by Darkness.  A group of guys who came to be called The Prophets came together and assembled this tome called The White Book and with it (plus an army they gradually gathered) they pushed back the Darkness to the far southeast to a place called the Greypeak Mountains.  There it seemed that the Darkness was defeated but also the Prophets and the White Book disappeared in the process.There followed a long period of growth and prosperity as the Velaedin Empire assimilated this vast new territory liberated from the Darkness.  The Elves and Dwarves, never very numerous, were pushed almost entirely to the west over the Mondarvi Mountains, beyond which lies a vast and endless ocean.  The Church of Light, the organization that had risen up around the Prophets during the Darkwar, ruled over all of this.  The Emperor is chosen from among the ranks of the Archbishops and each Emperor serves so long as the Church approves of his decrees.Over time however the Church has become divided over doctrine.  When the White Book and Prophets were lost, those still alive who had been closest to them each tried to recreate from memory exactly what was written in the book.  But this resulted in some different versions of the book and there have additionally been varying interpretations of identical passages from time to time.  In order to maintain power and hold the Empire together, the Church has maintained solidarity even despite sometimes heated disagreements over these doctrinal differences.  But recently something has happened to change that.First of course there were reports that the Darkness had returned, deep within the Greypeak Mountains.  This was naturally a concern to everybody but to call the Greypeaks a backwater is an insult to most backwaters and it was largely considered to be an exaggeration of a problem that was taking place far, far away and nothing that the average citizen need be terribly concerned about.  Attitudes began to change somewhat when it was rumored that an entire mountain had been ripped out of the ground and had begun to float above the area.  But still it was far away and might simply go away on its own.Meanwhile another event happened in a remote village.  For a period of one year, every child born in that village was an Albino (no Albinos had ever been seen prior to this).  The local Church of that Province declared this a miracle, sent by the Light and proclaimed that these babies were the Prophets Reborn to combat the Darkness again.  However the Emperor, backed by several of the other Archbishops, said that these children were not in fact the "Prophets Reborn" but instead Abominations that needed to be destroyed.  After all, they could not even stand the light of day and must therefore be affiliated with the Darkness.Years went by as a rhetorical battle raged in the Church over what exactly these children meant.  Three years ago however, they hit puberty and every single one of them began to manifest "powers" (keep in mind that nobody in the Church has ever manifested any such powers (unless derived externally from the animistic spirits)).  To the local Archbishop this solidified in his mind the claim that the children were the Prophets Reborn.  To the head Church this was decreed to be indisputable evidence of their link to the Darkness.  At that point the Province in question formally seceded from the Empire and civil war broke out.It is a time of political turmoil within the Empire as Provinces pick sides, Generals decide where their allegiances lay, the Spirits and their worshipers move more freely than ever with the eyes of the Church focused more inwardly and all the while the Darkness in the south creeps ever closer to the center of the Empire.I should probably revisit and clarify a couple things.The clergy of the Church of Light exhibit no "magical powers".  They derive no abilities from their worship.  They maintain power due to faith, tradition and vigilance, plus the fact that they essentially run the Empire.  They also have technology on their side including the engineering marvels that are their massive cathedrals as well as the science of Alchemy, exemplified by gunpowder weapons.The animistic spirits that inhabit the fringes of civilization are regarded with at least suspicion if not outright hostility (and many of them are malicious spirits worthy of such hostility).  But those spirits do have mystical powers and pacts with such spirits can grant similar powers to mortals.As for that floating mountain fortress, it is inhabited by The Vampire, who is sort of the Avatar of Darkness.  The PC's probably won't know anything much about him at first but I suspect that a showdown with him in some form is inevitable late in the campaign.Anyway, right now I'm sort of waiting for our next game night for the group to collectively make characters.  I feel like I'll know more about what kinds of adventures to design after I have the characters in hand.  Meanwhile I'm just sort of fishing for ideas that scream out "Gothic Horror Fantasy!" so if you have some then post them here.</blockquote>

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