Nurn, After the Fall

[Felix]

The Fir Island Pirates

The southern archipelligo takes its name from the dominant trees of the area. Being one of the few species that survived the geographic upheaval of the Fall, they now cover most of the Islands.

Those few who lives so far south who survived did so by becoming the only thing they could: fishermen. Fishing villages dot the coasts and in the past 100 years, a modicum of trade has sprung up. On the whole, these villages while self-sufficient are very poor and backward compared to the empires of Subartha and the Paalen League. They have, however, produced one remarkable group known throughout the island chain: the Fir Island Pirates have recently made a name for themselves around the sailing world.

They are a relatively small band of cutthroats, but they have proven effective. Indeed, they might be one of the biggest blocks between the fragile truce that lies between Subartha and the League. Neither empire wishes to expend the resources necessary to remove them, and both believe the pirates to be the other’s responsibility.

The most daring pirate captain, Giovanni Puccini, has raided ships and towns as far north as southern League cities, and as far inland as Subartha. Unlike may of his crew and fellow captains, Puccini only wishes for “his” villages of the Fir Islands to become wealthy and support a comfortable life for his “subjects”. To do so, he takes cargos bound for some destinations back to one particular village hoping they will use their newfound riches to grow and forge a real nation. True, much of the haul is divided among his eager crew, and his cabin holds some priceless works of art, some of them pre-Fall.

When he attacks, he hoists his flag, a field of green with crossed silver rapier and main gauche, and hopefully the merchant captain yields his cargo bloodlessly. This has become somewhat easier in the past few seasons as he slew many captains in duels who would not yield without a fight. His success is part because of his skill, and also to the fact that he wields a rapier that makes him appear to move faster than humanly possible. His crew and many of the inhabitants of the Fir Islands are not as hateful of magic as the rest of the world; magic helps them become rich men.

As a user of magic, Giovanni is known to the small enclave that resides on one of the islands. He sometimes is in their employ, and they enjoy a fair flow of information about the outside world for their diviners to use. This enclave is run by diviners, searching for the lost monolith and is coincidently one which has more than a few human wizards, trained from the local populace, and as such possess the human spirit of action. They are perhaps the best informed and most active enclaves. While not employing spies in all of civilization, they are beginning to do so. They soon hope to gain knowledge of the monoliths resting place.
This union of pirate braggadocio and wizardly curiosity has created a group of sailors whose names are at the top of the empire’s hit list.

 

[Felix]

The Wilderness (for real this time)

Druids saw the destruction of much of the world, and remember. Nurn still bears many scars, but on the whole druids believe that the Fall was a good thing. Now there are no more gods trying to exert their dominance. NO more interference with the natural world. The 800 year absence of world-spanning empires was a time of contemplation and healing for the druids.

However, humans being what they are, two powerful empires have arisen, and the druids suspect that a return to the corrupting influence of “civilization” is inevitable. They also know that those surviving enclaves of wizards seek the monolith and the power held within. Some of the more energetic druids have been arguing within their hierarchy that nature needs to take a proactive stance of defending Nurn from the terrors of ambitious humans and wizards.

 

[Felix]

Druidic Hierarchy

At the center of what they consider to be their lands lies the Bole. It has been a meeting place for thousands of years for the druids, but more recently it has been fortified and braced against assault.

The Bole is a small hillock where the mortal remains of Galadeimus, the first Archdruid, lay. They lay there because he requested at his death to be buried underneath the branches of the Worldtree. The Worldtree was a redwood so magnificent that is rose out of the forest top like a living tower. It did not survive the Fall, so the Bole has become a burial site for both the druid and the tree he loved. And still the Council of Galadeimus meets at this dual tomb.

The council has no set number of members. All that is required for entry is for an aspiring druid to be able to take the form of the four elements and best the newest member of the council in combat. The combat can be mortal if the challenger so chooses. Also, there is no ritualized place or time for this combat. This serves as a reminder to council members that danger is ever present and may come at any time. For mortal combat the challenger must lay a burial wreath in front of the challenged druid’s dwelling at least a week before he strikes.

There are four untouchable members of the council, each representing one of the elements. They are awarded this honor by the holder of the title at the time of their death.

The council rules over the Wilderness with an iron fist. Thought their contact with nature they are aware of anything foreign in their land. The Water Druid is responsible for the borders on the oceans and the aquatic spies in their employ. The Earth druid builds their fastnesses in the mountains, and has intermittent contact with the drow and the dwarves. His spy network includes burrowing animals of all kinds, everywhere. The Air Druid controls the birds of the sky and the weather above the Wilderness. The Fire Druid is charged with ferreting out spies and rebels within the Wilderness and submitting them to the desserts of treachery. Their forests are full of goblins whom the druids regard as useful “invisible” slaves that are able to penetrate most security as servants. They are useful spies.

Besides the offices of the Prime Druids, the council trains its legions of Hobgoblin soldiers in readiness for war. Gnolls are employed as the Border Guard, and as scouts for the army. For years, outlanders have been able to penetrate a few miles into the forests of the Wilderness, but at some point the invaders are not allowed to leave. Once the Border Guard notifies the druids a response team is dispatched. They prepare several possible ambushes sites. Once the offenders camp too far inside the Wilderness’ borders they are destroyed completely, save for a few taken back as sources of information.

Besides the Bole, there is no real city in the Wilderness. For a nation spanning so much ground they have few numbers. One reason being they are not farmers and the wild cannot support many dedicated hunters without soon running out of game. Yet the numbers they do have are worth their salt.

 

[Felix]

The Plateau

This is a relatively large city state on the western continent nestled in a ring of mountains. It controls the only known pass into the plateau, and because of that the inhabitants of this land have been safe from both invasion and from the development of new technologies; they are a backward nation. Their arms and armor are Bronze age stuff and while their weapons are not as effective their maintenance of the defence of the pass more than makes up for that shortcoming.

They haven’t been assaulted for quite some time however, and their discipline has worn a little thin. Regardless, petty politicians desire more power and they are thinking about establishing settlements over the whole of the continent: bring civilization to the savage, as it were. The generals, not having been tested in combat for quite some time (except for the occasional civil war) are eager to exit their secure home and meet others in open warfare.

The whole reason for the Plateau opening is the enclave nestled in the mountains not far from the pass. The blockade has placed something of a stranglehold on information coming in. They wish for a flow of goods and people to acquire the the goods they need for their magical rites. To this end, they have contacted some of the powerful men in the Plateau and suggested that if they were to conquer the Known World they would be the wealthiest and most powerful men in history. Thus, the army began to mobilize.

 

[Felix]

Eastern Swamps

After the Fall, the rift in the earth was filled from the sea, flooding the plains in the east of the main continent. It has become a festering salt water marsh, uninhabitable by most. But the small band of lizardmen that survived the Fall have grown to become the major power in the area. They currently threaten the northeastern cities of Subartha.

 

[Felix]

Portals

A world ruined by incredible amounts of magic. They’ve had to have made portals before the cataclysm, right? Well, they did.

The great empires of the past had portals commissioned for a great number of reasons: troop transport, escape for the nobility, methods of going to the prince’s favorite vacation spot. Mages created these things to transport them to their sanctum sanctorum. All of these portals could only be used one way; they commonly had a returning portal nearby. The great cities possessed portals for any and all to use.

Then, the Fall.

The magic bound to these archways was not destroyed in the initial blast, but the open gates fell to the wrath of the mob – or ceased functioning when the companion portal was destroyed. The large portals used most often (and thus well known) would be mobbed by the angry populace bent on destroying magic. When a portal’s encasing archway was breached the result was an explosion. The size of the explosion depended upon the size of the archway, and the larger ones devastated the entire surrounding area, charring the earth.

Yet, some still exist and still function. Those wizards with enough foresight to know what would happen to magic users after the Fall and wise enough to conceal their creations bestowed to their apprentices a means of traveling (and escaping). Some enclaves were constructed around these devices, building off from the former master’s sanctum.

The creation of these gates is largely a craft lost to antiquity; although there are those that still live who possess the ability. It is also understandably unpopular to build there things in sight of people: mobs will likely appear to stop you. Then kill you.
Portals are a reality; a reality not to be used lightly. While the method of creating the gates prevent a portal from transporting you into solid rock or to somewhere without a companion archway the masses are understandably agitated by people springing out of thin air. That, and any map that used to exist telling where each portal went is no longer around.

 

[Felix]

The Cracked Ice

The Cracked Ice is the name of the northernmost continent as well as the name of the vast expanse of permanently frozen tundra in the northern regions of that land. People still eek out a living on the tundra, and a few coastal cities exist as well. Their technology is geared towards one thing: keeping warm. Fortunately, many large mammals survived the Fall and filled the ecosystem with enough fur and hide to keep the indigenes well supplied.

Humans are not indigenous to this land; they came as part of colonization efforts made by the pre-Fall empires. The first came on ships, so they have retained something of a shipbuilding sector, although it usually makes fishing boats unfit for long voyages. (Icebergs roam south during the summer and many rivers freeze in the wintertime. Most of the population came through portals, promised a new life by the empires; it was an attempt to simultaneously acquire more resources and remove the less desirable elements from their home cities. It worked fairly well, the mines were started, and exportation of goods was about to commence with the building of a return portal, but the Fall rudely interrupted that.

During the Fall many mines were lost and coastal cities were flooded. But not all was lost. To support the local population without a drain of food on the mainland the first settlers were farmers and hunters. They set up a very successful irrigation system pulling the runoff from the mountains southward where agriculture was feasible. Many of those farmlands survived, if not all of them, and they feed the locals.

After the farmers came the miners and engineers to delve the virgin mountains for gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, among others. What they found was better: truesilver. Stronger than tempered steel and lighter than tin, truesilver became the status symbol back in the Empire as wizards were tasked to teleport some back. It was also terribly difficult to forge. The dwarves were intrigued by this new metal and many volunteered to go to this wild land to shape truesilver for the glory of their clan, and for dwarves. They founds something completely different under the frozen mountains. (more on that later…)

The colonization process had gotten underway successfully. The exploitation was just beginning. Skirmishes between the Imperial colonies, often more savage than the fights on the mainland, had flared up, each trying to find larger veins of ore. The Fall changed everything.

No one had crossed to the Cracked Ice by boat in 200 years. The portals into the lands didn’t function. The portals out hadn’t been finished. The repeated earthquakes racked the world and buried the mines under the mountains. Icebergs the size of which had never been heard of were seen drifting south having been freed from the arctic drifts. Irrigation systems were damaged. Competing colonies blamed each other, and they all blamed magic. And yet, they survived. Hunting bands were formed and sent north to return with all the food they could find. Merchants previously hawking forged goods now trafficked in dung: the only thing that would burn in a virtually forestless land.

Over time, the old ties to the Empires were forgotten, although the animosity between the newly arisen cities was not. The ingenuity of the mining engineers was well repaid; towns developed recessed into the ground where they were safe from the arctic winds that blew down from the Cracked Ice. (This also saved them from hunting for wood to build their dwellings.) After a few hundred years stonemasons began quarrying the mountains for stones with which to build, although only the dwarves had the courage to begin delving the mountains to look for the old buried dwarven mines. Only recently have these searches produced any fruit. Truesilver has been found. And contact with… something dwarven… has been made.

 

[Felix]

The Drow and the Underdark

As it has been described elsewhere, a great rift in the clans of elves forced one clan underground, following their goddess’s retreat into the dark places of the earth. A matriarchical society was forged, as Evil as the black heart of Lloth. They spread out under the continents secure in their fastness that none could challenge them for dominance. Some even spoke of returning to the surface in splendor to rule the whole of Nurn. It was not to be. The plans made by Lloth and the great Demons and Devils and other Evil gods were thwarted. It wreaked more destruction upon the denizens of the underdark than elsewhere. It collapsed upon itself. Whole cities were covered by tons upon tons of falling earth. Some house wards held momentarily, or even for days, but there was nowhere for those trapped inside to go: known refuges in the underdark had been erased and few mages dared teleport themselves to the surface. Those that did found it to be as inhospitable a place as they’d expected.

Some Drow cities survived the Fall. And yet it could not have gone much worse for them. When Lloth was destroyed, the female clerics wielding incredible power ceased to have it. No longer was there a goddess to grant them anything. For a moment, society froze, in terror of the falling ceilings and of the sudden impotence of their matrons. And when this pause was over the males realized the barrier to real power in drow society had been removed.

House wizards, still in full possession of their arcane powers, stood before the matron mothers, many of whom had been driven insane, and smiled as they eliminated the matron’s precious daughters in front of their eyes before reducing the mother to a fine dust. Husbands soon followed suit by beating their wives for all the pain and suffering they’d endured, and also because they could. All the while, drow caverns collapsed.

Some underdark creatures survived.

This is what the dwarves of the Cracked Ice found when they delved deeply for truesilver: a society of viscous drow elves. And then came the chaos of the Fall. Yet the wards under the Ice held although Shaduul (the Drow city) lost more than 85% of its inhabitants from cave ins, insanity, rioting, and the male wizards just beginning to assert themselves for the first time.

Some dwarves survived with them; enough, actually, to avoid being made a slave race. The dwarves at first did not know their peril: they had not heard of Drow on the surface, although admittedly the Elves would not have told many of their friends about the exiled Drow, and the Dwarves were not counted among the Elves’ friends. Enough stout dwarves lived to dissuade the Drow form attacking, and so few Drow survived they decided they had more important matters to attend to.
800 years have passed and the change upon the two races is remarkable. The Drow have become as dour and droll as the dwarves, if not quite as industrious, while the dwarves had become more devious to survive long with crafty elves. As well, the dwarves themselves physically adapted to living a life without the sun.

 

[Felix]

Antagonists

Perhaps it’s always this way, but any great power in the world can be either the enemy or the patron. Eventually, the PC’s must confront them and try to stop what they’re doing; perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Who are they supposed to believe? Who can they trust? At any rate, here are some of the big names the PC’s will run into over the course of their travels.

Silmoon Oakleaf

He is an elf druid amassing considerable sway in the Wilderness. For years he has been vocal about how the druids must be active in their defense of nature’s balance. He presses for widespread use of magic to “contain” the corrupting influence of the growing civilizations. He still maintains his beliefs that civilization must be destroyed wholesale, but his orations have become more moderate for him to influence a greater number of the druidic order. His goal is to reshape the druidic hierarchy into his own vision and cover the lands in woods and natural environs. He would be fighting the Paalen League, Subartha, the Langolans and any Enclave he comes across. His philosophy on magic is that it should only be in the hands of those who know how to use it properly, i.e. druids. He would take the monolith fragments and utterly destroy them to prevent the return of powers foreign to Nurn. Probably LN in alignment.

---

Roland de Chanson

The Patron of the Chanson Academy of Music, Roland is an old vampire. He detests the opulence of the Paalen League, but understands that they allow him to work on his compositions. He believes that magic is a natural expression, like music, and when found the ability to use magic should be nurtured. The greatest works of magic must be elegant as well as powerful; he regards the Fall as an example of the inelegance of the devout and the power hungry wizards. He does have incentive to keep the enclave happy and supplied with information because the enclaves have discovered his secret of undeath. So an uneasy truce has formed between the enclaves and Roland: neither reveals the true nature of the other and there is a generally free flow of information both ways. This truce is maintained as long as both parties are more useful to the other alive, and there is no possibility of destroying the other without destroying one’s self. <<Vampires are not destroyed by the sun, making them like Bram Stoker’s vampires. Everything done in sunlight is subjected to a -6 circumstance penalty.>> His view of the monolith is one of curiosity; he wonders what kind of beautiful music he could make were he to possess divine powers. He is CE, although he’s Evil only by a hair’s breadth.

---

General Phaedon

He is the most experienced and wily of the Subarthan commanders. He holds influence in Subartha, but refrains from using it thinking that it is not a general’s place to dictate policy, only to execute it. He has on his plate the expansion of his Empire to the west, the defense from possible Paalen assault. Recently he has had to worry about the raids of Giovanni Puccini and other pirates and has offered a reward for the capture of the rogue. He has assigned a lower general to guard the border with the eastern swamps since lizardmen incursions have been more frequent of late. He views magic as a coward’s tool and uses none himself, and permits none of his subordinates to use it. <<Since Subartha is geared towards war, masterwork weapons are more common, costing only 1/3 the listed price for citizens.>> Only rumors have reached his ears about the monolith and thinks it a good thing that all those magical beings were destroyed. He has no personal goals other than to be the exemplar of what a Subarthan should be.

---

Alec Crowley

One of the merchant princes of the Paalen League. He is the youngest and most eager merchant, always supporting the League’s expansion and their efforts of opening trade routes wherever possible. While he supports expansion in general, his main area of interest is in exploring the western continent of the Plateau. He dislikes the Subarthans, but they do not threaten his interests yet, so he isn’t too worried. He respects Giovanni Puccini and enjoys hearing stories of his rivals’ ships being plundered; Giovanni just better not plunder Alec’s ships! He is a pragmatist when it comes to magic. If it can help him, it’s a good thing. To this end he has gotten the interest of one enclave and they are using each other to gain power in the Plateau. Both would like to see then enclaves there destroyed and their wealth of magic plundered. Only recently has he considered what bearing a monolith fragment might do for him: he could crush his rivals and set himself up as the most powerful man in the world. He has begun to employ spies and assassins to gather information about the monolith. One such assassin failed in his mission to get information from Roland de Chanson. Roland knows who sent the assassin, but Alec doesn’t know how the assassin failed: he was made a vampire spawn and sent back to infiltrate Alec’s spy network. Alec is probably LE or NE.

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Brimblegook Flappyfeet

This goblin is more than a little agitated when someone asks him about his name, but he knows enough not to kill you unless he was sent for that purpose. He was for a long time a spy for the Wilderness, but has now struck out on his own. He has the most extensive network of spies in the world. All of the goblin spies belong to him, and he has them everywhere. How does he pay them? He charges a large sum for the information he can provide; it’s not cheap to get information from a wily old coot like Brimblegook. He entered the information service to get away from what was sure to be a life of slavery in the Wilderness and found that he was very good at it. His residence is near the Wilderness, but not so near so as do discourage anyone from coming to see him. He enjoys the challenge of finding information and cares little for what’s done with it. As such, the monolith is fascinating but not consuming. He most certainly uses magic. (N or NE)

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I like it.