In short, it is a low magic, politically-charged world that is entirely humanocentric. Some of the more interesting facets of the game revolve around a great internal war that has torn asunder one of the most influential and resource rich nations in the known world. The nation of Aglador struggles against the foreign nation of Goth Moran, as as secret cloak and dagger civil war rages within its own borders. As I pride myself on the little details, the three major faiths is both rich and familiar - particularly the faith of the Divine Source. It combines the foundations of monotheistic Christianity into the faith of three primary gods - the Steward, the Martyr and the Learner.
Key Conceits
Magic
Magic, or
Sorcery as it is known, is extraordinarily. It takes a rare individual to be able to command the powers of
The Weave. Sorcerers, as Wizards are called, tend to hide their abilities. Even the most remote of indication of the supernatural amongst folk is enough to either send them running for the hills or in the worst case, gather a host against the "dark power". Even to that effect, it still takes a unique individual to take hold of sorcery and make of it as she will. Sorcery consumes; even the most knowledgable of adepts have succumbed to the
Higher Mysteries. Even the most sharpest of minds is vulnerable to the most "common" or paltry of sorcerous tricks. Madness and melancholy often go hand in hand with the vast resources the Weave can offer the merest of adepts. More often than not, those few rare Sorcerers who've lived an age or two is either consumed by his abilities, or takes his own life. To understand Sorcery is to understand death, and to understand death one must look beyond into the
Well of Souls.
Deismaar and the Well of Souls
Our world of Deismaar, while defined by our understanding of science as elemental, is not the only world we as men understand. Deismaar connects directly to one, and only one, other plane. This plane is called the
Well of Souls. This "shadow world" reflects the mortal world, but in strange facsimile. Everything is dark and an air of emptiness hangs heavily, as if everything has been long-abandoned. Details change between one glance to the next; a building might remain the same, but a wagon parked beside it might be in a slightly different place, or gone, and a door that stood open might close. The more ephemeral a thing is in the real world, the more its position or condition might change – the less firm its reflection. Ancient relics, long since torn down, may still stand in the Well of Souls. When a mortal being dies, its soul "wakes" in the Well of Souls and begins its journey towards the home of its patron god. Each spirit instinctively feels the direction in which it must travel to reach the end of its journey; the strength and accuracy of this pull is proportional to the soul's devotion to the ideas of its patron deity. Spirits that have little or no association with a patron are believed to be doomed to wander both Deismaar and the Well of Souls in parallel in what is called
Ba'ator until they forget their sense of self and fade into oblivion.
Between the Well of Souls and Deismaar is a thinv veil called
The Weave that acts as both a barrier and a gate between raw sorcery and Deismaar. With the Weave in place, mortals can access magic and are protected from the harmful effects of contacting raw magic while still able to tap its refined energy. The Weave is present in everything in Deismaar, whether living, dead, undead, inanimate, solid, liquid, or gas. It permeates the soil, suffuses the deeps of the seas, and stretches to the limits of the air in the sky and beyond. The Weave is like a great base fabric upon which the substance of the world is embroidered, a web upon which mortals walk like spiders, a great ocean upon which all objects float. At the same time, it is an aspect of Olorin, and it is by His will that the Weave reaches where it does. Spellcasters, knowingly or not, cause spells to work by drawing power from the Weave, adjusting the balance of energy so that the power of the Weave comes forth and is shaped by their actions and will. When the Weave is damaged by reckless sorcery or disaster, it can be torn, shredded, or destroyed, leaving areas that the laws of physics do not apply. This is the case where breaches through the Weave directly into the aether can be found and hauntings such as in the case of
Baileen Abbey.
Gods and Spellcasting
Gods do not grant spells. Sorcery is elemental, as stated above. Spellcasting "priests" do not exist in the same way they do in standard D&D. Rather, Gods do not take an immediate enough interest in mortals as to grant them god-like abilities. Men from the past have proclaimed that their abilities were given to them by "Those-Upon-High". Generally, this is either a case of the person attempting to justify their actions to common folk by invoking terror/fear/admonition/worship, or the person was truly insane and had no true understanding of where their powers originated from.
The gods are feared. The gods don't really care all that much about the smallest of men. The gods rarely grant miracles, or cure the sick, or make men fabulously weathy, or restore lovers from the dead (more on that later). But yes, the gods are positively real. How is it that great
Masser, burning bright in the daytime sky, does not come crashing down into
Deismaar upon its own accord? What of
Mandos, the great mirror of light that waxes and wanes with the passage of stars and seasons does not simply wink out? The why is in that Aldernon and the Founder create and destroy, while the
Firstborn gods adjudicate the laws of the universe through their strength amongst their followers. Mankind understands science, but attributes a greater power behind the origin of nature and the order of the universe. To many, there simply are many inexplicable and strange things in Deismaar that nothing other than the will of distant beings could have instilled such order amongst beasts and men.
"Monsters" and the Menagerie of Fairytales
Monsters are real. Well, real enough at least to have been recognized most prevalently during the
First Age, some of the
Second Age, and rarely, if ever, seen during the
Third Age. The thought is that these First Age "beasts" came out of history as Aldernon set out to create what we know as life, and Bhaelos twisted his creations into abominations. A side effect of this has been that what was once seen a just and "goodly" creatures (such as the
Lammasu amongst the
Olorinites) corrupted over time, and passed into the Well of Souls.
On Death
People die, and they tend to die at a young age. A child amongst most cultures is consirered a man by fifteen years of age, and generally married by the time he's sixteen. He will likely die by the time his children become men from sickness; only the rarest of individuals manage to cheat death and live past the age of 50. For that matter, people die from disease, festering wounds, perish in war, have their appendages hacked off and die of old age Ressurection, Raise Dead, Cure Disease - these common tropes of the Dungeons and Dragons world simply do not exist on a massive scale in
Deismaar. However, as mankind realizes that the Well of Souls exists in a paradoxical parallel to Deismaar, he also knows that the dead are a mere touch away from our world. Men murmur of the
Hurmasti, restless spirits that dwell between here and there, barely touching either the railings of Deismaar or the Well of Souls. They walk along the razor of the Weave, coexisting in both life and oblivion.
Typical Fantasy Races
Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, etc...they're real, but not in the same sort of ways that we've become to believe in the fantasy world. These "Lost Folk" are known by many different names, but all have two things in common - they're xenophobic, and extraordinarily dangerous. The deadly
Siabran and
Carbaen folk, wicker mask-bearing worshippers of death, protect their sanctuaries with a cold neutrality and have never traded goods or met under the flag of peace with mankind. Even then, it's not like they're inviting folk to stumble into their extremely remote settlements...
Mankind and Humanity
Humanity is abound. The races of men inhabit a diverse variety of locales; from the
Dunmen of
Dunbrude, to the
Gothric of the vast country of
Goth Moran all the way to the remote ancient
Zahara, the mannish races rule Deismaar. As creations by Aldernon in the image of his Firstborn children, mankind truly rules this world. They fight back the wilderness, they conquer stone mountains, they burn and build and destroy the living world - all the while, fighting each other. One has to look no further than the
Andals (and their children the
Aradain and
Dalefolk) to understand the impact that humans have had upon this fair world.
Politics and War
Politics is the core of the setting. There is no escaping the crook and cudgel of the branches of the
Divine Source faith, no more so than the sword and shield of the
Fifth House. Whereas the faith of mankind rules the spirit of our fair world, it is the same that government, ranging from kings, barons, counts and even pretender priest-kings, would call themselves the ruler of mankind.
War is everywhere. Ranging from the civil war amongst the loggers and the abolitionists of
Walstania, to the inter-political house warfare of the
Aradain in
Aglador, to even the fight amonst the
Fomorian for the tinyest rock within their barbarian kingdoms, if there was anything to be said about Deismaar, it is that war drives mankind. War drives commerce, war drives alliance, war drives war. There is no country that has been untouched by the hand of war generals, even the idyllic countrysides of
Rhovania boils with hatred, prejudice and murder.
