Samloyal23
Adventurer
Some introductory background notes for the campaign I am working on. The campaign starts a thousand years after the Age of Cataclysms, in which a long series of horrible quakes and tsunamis sank most of a continent into the sea piece by piece, starting with the capital of the most powerful empire in the region's history...
The Kironan Empire
The centaur tribes of the central plains were late in becoming civilised and forming a nation, but once the great chieftain Kiron, said to the son of Zeus, found his capital and began building a standing army out of the disparate tribes of his savage race it did not take long for the nomadic warriors to start settling into more permanent communities. Over the course of several centuries, the city of Kironos became a kingdom, then an empire, conquering neighbouring powers from mysterious Thosia in the East, to green and fair Albion in the West.
Tying city after city together with roads and fortresses, the Kironans united most of the nations west of the Shoulders of Atlas, the vast and impenetrable mountains that split the world in two. Thanks to their unifying force and obsessive organisation, the legions of Kironos brought civilisation to the continent at the end of a lance.
At the peak of their power came the Fall, a cataclysmic earthquake that destroyed the city of Kironos, the sea swallowing the land as it rippled and folded seemingly under its own weight. Chaos spread through the known world. With the emperor, then Pericles VII, dead, refugees streaming away from the unstable region’s yawning volcanic rifts, and no descendant of the emperor to take the throne, every ambitious noble and general in the empire jockeyed for position to seize power. Soon the empire collapsed into civil war, with every local despot grabbing whatever piece of land could be taken and held.
In the midst of war more cataclysms shook the continent and whole nations were swallowed by Gaia’s bleeding wounds, huge volcanic rifts where the land fell into seeming abysses. The sea poured into the gaps, flooding huge tracts of land and turning mountains into islands. It seemed as if the gods themselves were at war, that this was the Apocalypse. Rumour spread that the king of the gods, All-Mighty Zeus, had been slain. It was the end of all that the Kironans knew…
The Sea of the Fallen
Where the mighty Kironan Empire had once stretched across thousands of miles and united a hundred kingdoms under one rule, bringing order and the rule of reason to teeming millions, what had been the greatest civilisation ever known, there is now a sea. The tips of mountains toppled in the Age of Cataclysm are now rocky islands that barely break the surface of the roiling waters. To the East is a scant shore where the waves lap against the Shoulders of Atlas, a vast range of mountains few have ever crossed and lived to tell the tale. Northward is the White Waste, an arctic land of savage trolls covered in glaciers. To the South, just past Flint Island, a long finger of rock frequently flooded by the tides, is the Boiling Sea, where the wounds of Gaia still fester, a region of ash and lava and steam. But to the West is the Last Land, a green and pleasant refuge for the remnants of the nations that fell beneath the sea.
The Sea of the Fallen is treacherous, full of sharp rocks and young reefs teeming with sharks. Quieter now than in ages past, volcanoes still erupt beneath the sea. But more dangerous still are the Fallen, the hungry ghosts of the millions of people who died in the Age of Cataclysms, victims of the wars in Heaven. Woe to the seaman who sees the shades of the ancient dead…
The Kironan Empire
The centaur tribes of the central plains were late in becoming civilised and forming a nation, but once the great chieftain Kiron, said to the son of Zeus, found his capital and began building a standing army out of the disparate tribes of his savage race it did not take long for the nomadic warriors to start settling into more permanent communities. Over the course of several centuries, the city of Kironos became a kingdom, then an empire, conquering neighbouring powers from mysterious Thosia in the East, to green and fair Albion in the West.
Tying city after city together with roads and fortresses, the Kironans united most of the nations west of the Shoulders of Atlas, the vast and impenetrable mountains that split the world in two. Thanks to their unifying force and obsessive organisation, the legions of Kironos brought civilisation to the continent at the end of a lance.
At the peak of their power came the Fall, a cataclysmic earthquake that destroyed the city of Kironos, the sea swallowing the land as it rippled and folded seemingly under its own weight. Chaos spread through the known world. With the emperor, then Pericles VII, dead, refugees streaming away from the unstable region’s yawning volcanic rifts, and no descendant of the emperor to take the throne, every ambitious noble and general in the empire jockeyed for position to seize power. Soon the empire collapsed into civil war, with every local despot grabbing whatever piece of land could be taken and held.
In the midst of war more cataclysms shook the continent and whole nations were swallowed by Gaia’s bleeding wounds, huge volcanic rifts where the land fell into seeming abysses. The sea poured into the gaps, flooding huge tracts of land and turning mountains into islands. It seemed as if the gods themselves were at war, that this was the Apocalypse. Rumour spread that the king of the gods, All-Mighty Zeus, had been slain. It was the end of all that the Kironans knew…
The Sea of the Fallen
Where the mighty Kironan Empire had once stretched across thousands of miles and united a hundred kingdoms under one rule, bringing order and the rule of reason to teeming millions, what had been the greatest civilisation ever known, there is now a sea. The tips of mountains toppled in the Age of Cataclysm are now rocky islands that barely break the surface of the roiling waters. To the East is a scant shore where the waves lap against the Shoulders of Atlas, a vast range of mountains few have ever crossed and lived to tell the tale. Northward is the White Waste, an arctic land of savage trolls covered in glaciers. To the South, just past Flint Island, a long finger of rock frequently flooded by the tides, is the Boiling Sea, where the wounds of Gaia still fester, a region of ash and lava and steam. But to the West is the Last Land, a green and pleasant refuge for the remnants of the nations that fell beneath the sea.
The Sea of the Fallen is treacherous, full of sharp rocks and young reefs teeming with sharks. Quieter now than in ages past, volcanoes still erupt beneath the sea. But more dangerous still are the Fallen, the hungry ghosts of the millions of people who died in the Age of Cataclysms, victims of the wars in Heaven. Woe to the seaman who sees the shades of the ancient dead…
