the genesis
the world is [unnamed]. an elder pantheon of gods created [unnamed world] and bound primal elements into the fabric of the world. for a time, the world flourished until the elemental princes began to reveal the little deceptions they had worked into the making of the world. angered at the gods mortal creations and each other, they worked to undo the world. for everything they gave to the land, they created need.
the water princes granted great oceans but demanded tribute in the form of endless thirst. the earth elementals gave bountiful riches but created greed. among the princes of air, skies surrounded the fragile lands but the breath of life was at their command. finally, the selfish lords of fire gave the world warmth but also unchecked ambition and passion. the uncontrollable fires that swept over water and stone were freebies.
since all these needs had been woven into the creation of the world, no mortal could long dismiss the princes' power.
as for the world itself, twin sun goddesses dance in the daytime sky, while the moon is a goddess who is the mother of all evil in the world. dozens of gods claim power in the physical world, while totems and animistic spirits oversee the natural order. in fact, druids gain some minor extra power based on their totem.
the setting
the main continent is dominated by the saeshella, a highly magical inland sea said to hold several undersea kingdoms. the remnants of the once-great aesachean empire of men dot the area, having collasped in a religious civil war over a hundred years ago. refugees fleeing the fighting have wandered the length and breadth of the land for 3 generations, each family passing the legacy of the vagabond on to the next. the current climate is one of banditry, slavery, religious entrenchment and brewing peasant rebellion but, inside that gloom, small groups of disenfrachised knights struggle to keep the peace, clerics save villages from plague and small heroics happen every day.
enter the pcs... but more on that later.
a'kaarse is the main focus of the campaign. the furthest great city of now-collasped aesachean empire, it sits upon the grat inland sea of the saeshella. the city dominates the northwestern river routes, maintaining a stranglehold on trade in the area.
a'kaarse is very similar to constantinople in design; it has a decidely exotic look, being built on the ruins of an older, forgotten city-state. as it occupies the mouth of a major (and magically enhanced) trade river and the saeshella, hanging gardens have covered the old city for as long as anyone can remember. only the most recent noble towers and the temple of paele athene in the harbor stand above the greenery.
as a side note, the area is highly magical - duh - with the hanging vines providing significant protection against scrying, detection magics and the like. as a result, many contracts - both mercantile and murderous - are made inside the walls of the city.
until recently, a full 1/3 of the ancient city had been submerged in the harbor, prompting high port fees as only experienced guides could negotiate the underwater hazards. the discovery (by the characters, naturally) of some very holy items allowed for the raising of the underwater city along the shore. right now, the city is in an uproar over the divine act of eminent domain, the loss of port fees v. the increased acreage, the sudden appearance of pilgrimages and the arrival of refugee trains still roaming the countryside generations after the civil war.
a'kaarse has a rival in the city-state of ounghaum, a lawless settlement on the southern shores of the saeshella. ounghaum is ruled by dark voundoun cultists and the press gangs. their chief exports are piracy and black magic.
races:
the elves are based on gaelic mythology and are from faerie. subdivisions are based more on allegiance to the seelie or unseelie court than actual metatype. the elves of the world are tragic victims of the wars against the followers of lolth, having been stranded and separated from faerie while pursuing the renegade drow onto this plane of existence. eventually, they can return... one at a time.
dwarves were once a slave race under the last great giant empires. their mythology holds that they are the final protectors of this world and the only survivors of the last one. millenia ago, moradin received a vision of a second fall, a second ragnarok. since then, the dwarves have been preparing for their role with typical dwarven resolve (and fatalism). alongside the tortles, they are the true historians of the world. upon the cliffs of mag zhoruln, the dwarves labor to carve every great deed of man and god in the rock, a living history of stone stretching leagues.
orcs are vile perversions whose breeding habits i won't detail here - but there are no female orcs. i wanted a common evil race that pcs could hate and obliterate without moral qualms and orcs are just nasty. no half-orcs either. and all orcs in the world are tanarruk (sp?) from the fr material.
men are divided into seven tribes of man, one being the vashaar - pretty much out of monte cook's book of vile darkness. their culture is evil to the extreme - more like they inherited all the worst sins of man than any demonic beginnings. centuries of demonic breeding along bloodlines has produced the current race. they live on a volcanically active hostile plateau, using alchemically treated woods to build their cities.
the malboge are a race of cambion sorcerors beyond the western seas. they're modeled upon the melniboneans, but entirely removed form the affairs of the younger world - for now.
the players:
tel'lakhir
an elven warrior priest of labelas enoreth. scorned by his more scholarly church superiors, he is about to have a spiritual reawakening.
orick
a monk of a disbanded order once pledged to serve the kings of the late empire, he works to follow his master's teachings in an era where his path is unclear. and people hate and fear him, because the order was one of the chief forces in the civil war.
tearlach
a bear of a man, a warrior whose skill at arms has won him many coins and kept him from a life of deprivation and hunger.
kizoul
a dwarven master forger and arcanist, she has joined the band of late, seeking to further her arcane knowledge.
fain cleverwrath
reluctant swordsman and warrior and professor at the bardic college. the bard spends much of his time researching his own findings and dodging the affections of his comely young students.
laita
um... she's dead. a priestess of paele athene (athena without the war emphasis) who caught the business end of a giant's bone club -several times - but she might get better.
damn, that's a lot of material. there's tons more too.
