Aard_Rinn
2013-05-15, 02:44 PM
If you are a member of the Searching for Mercy game, go away. This is spoilers!
So, this is a campain world I have been working on for a long time - it was originally supposed to be a book, but I couldn't make it work, and I eventually decided it made a more interesting game, anyways. I am copying these notes out of a hand-written notebook, so it may take me a while to get it all copied, but here's the basic outline:
The world of Fidel was never intended to exist. Indeed, in this universe, life was never intended to begin - and when it did, it all too often shattered, swiftly, like a crumpling pane of glass. In the beginning, there was chaos, and there was order, and nothing else, and they existed apart for a timeless infinity.
But then, in a single point, chaos and order touched - gently, ever so briefly - but where they touched, they mixed, and change was brought to the void, and that change was time.
With time arose life - the first gods, abstract concepts of what was to come, beings of madness and crushing, despairing sanity, and these creatures fought over this perfect, first world, and in their fighting destroyed it and themselves.
Where the chaos and order were now mixed and muddied by destruction and pain and greed, a second world formed, but it was imperfect, and no life bloomed across its surface. It was a dead world, and the things that did exist within it were aberrations, beasts lost within their own minds, torn between twin drives to order and to chaos.
But some beings remained from that first, more perfect, world, beings of pure order and pure chaos, and they saw fit to end this monsterous world, and wipe clean all but a handful of the abominations that it had brought into existence.
The third world was an accident. Aeons passed, and in time the swirls and eddies of order and chaos once more mingled, mixing in the ruins of the second. In time, this last, greatest world formed, part chaos, part order, and part madness. Life once again arose, weakened and diluted but also stablized by the mixing of order and chaos, and in time the third world was populated by animals and mortal creatures of all sorts.
The aberrations, too, existed in this world, forced by their own natures to hide in the wild places of the land – places of savage, unpredictable magic and brutal vitality.
And the first beings, that handful of surviving Gods, found places in this world as well, folding themselves into the planes that surrounded it. They divided themselves, lawful and chaotic, and when the creatures of the world below – fragile, mortal things, to know such concepts! – created ideas of Good and Evil, they divided themselves in this way as well.
Millennia passed in relative harmony, the balance preserved by mutual self-preservation, if nothing else.
And then, one day, that shattered, and there was war.
No one knew why it started. But the balance was upset, and soon an all-out war waged between the old gods.
The mortals prayed, of course, but their prayers only fueled the god’s rages. The planar entities were dragged into battle, and soon it was a four-way war, Good against Evil, Order against Chaos.
The world strained to breaking, but in the end, perhaps it’s prayers were heard…
They burned in the sky like fire, the equal of any gods. Two beings, incarnations of pure Chaos and Order – the Phoenix and the Kirin. It was they who brought an end to the Godsfall War, drenched as it was in the blood of those selfsame gods. In the end, they lighted on the barren ground, and poured their existences into the world itself, sustaining and repairing what the gods had destroyed.
Together, it is said that they left alive not one god in a hundred; the scattered gods that rule Fidel now being those mighty enough to survive or crafty enough to hide.
So, too, did the war ravage the planes, leaving what is now the Planar Chasm rent across the Hardorn Plain; the very rift through which the gods did battle.
But at least the war was over, and the world once more began to heal itself. The mortal races grew and spread, mingling with the gods and the planar beings, learning to control the bits and pieces of Order and Chaos within themselves. The first mages appeared, and magic spread like flashfire across the world. Cities followed, and civilization and soon enough strife followed those.
Where the gods had first laid tracks, now mortals followed the path to war.
If anything good were to be said for it, they were the last and the best at it. They perfected fighting, honed it and mastered it over a thousand years of intermittent war. Humanity divided itself by ten, and ten again, over and over until the land itself was stained with blood and tears. Generations lived and died, never knowing peace.
And then, one day, a new army arose, an army too young to fight, barely old enough to raise arms, for the last and most brutal war - The Children’s War.
Those who were there say it began with a bard. He was young, to wander the world, but many children did – parents dead, burned from their homes by invading armies. He was beautiful, they say – long brown hair and dark, warm eyes, and a smile that made you hope he was smiling for you.
At his side walked a fighter, when he entered the town that day. Over her shoulder, she carried a scythe, the handle stained with blood. He called himself Liliander, and his companion was Arram.
He stayed in town for only two nights, but when he left, the children of that town followed, with no reason to stay, and nowhere to go.
By the time they reached a thousand, they were hardened dogs of war. No race or creed bound them, save their hatred. They hated the war, hated the gods…
Arram led them to battle, and they loved her.
On the battlefield, she was their God, their leader, their savior. The wounded prayed to her for salvation; the tired, for the strength to go on fighting. With Liliander at her side, she led the Children’s army across the continent, gathering the powerful to her side – the other Heroes of the Children's War.
And then, Liliander died.
A lucky, mortal wound. A single shot, through the heart, and then Arram was screaming and the world was alight in pain and a dragon’s fire.
Those veterans who were there do not speak to outsiders of what happened that day on the Issin See. They speak quietly of it together, sometimes, but it is for them only; a sacred, secret memory better forgotten and yet unforgettable, burned into flesh and memory.
After that battle, she was Arram no more. From that day forth, her soldiers called her their Arrada’ankaar, their judge-defender.
It was four more years until the war ended. It ended in fire and in pain. There was no mercy, no kindness, save that of a swift death. Only twenty years of war…
Those who had been with her from the very start, her most loyal and beloved, rallied to their Arrada’ankaar and left with her to form the citadel of Kyrellnhalk. The rest scattered, returning to long-destroyed villages and beginning, once more, to rebuild…
Thirty years after the end of the Mortal Wars, the scars of the Children's War still crisscross the land. Many who are now adults fought as children, and the memories of their actions and the war have driven some to madness, while others emerged into peacetime seemingly unchanged by the war. The Arranclancy have withdrawn from the world almost entirely - a few walk the earth on missions given to them by the Arada'ancaar, but for the most part, they dwell entirely within the citadel at Tenebris, content to ignore the outside world. The Abaratii, once feared soldiers and mercenaries, now fly the skies as guardians, defending the peoples of Fidel and aiding in the long recovery, and the other mortal races have taken steps to reclaim their own ancestral lands and rebuild their ruined homelands.
Many of the races still dwell together, though - the world is a mixed place, with many cities being as much elven as they are dwarvish, remnants of the mixed and everchanging alliances of the Mortal's War. It seems that peace might last, this time - but mortals are not the only ones with a hand in play at this table, even with the gods gone.
So, this is a campain world I have been working on for a long time - it was originally supposed to be a book, but I couldn't make it work, and I eventually decided it made a more interesting game, anyways. I am copying these notes out of a hand-written notebook, so it may take me a while to get it all copied, but here's the basic outline:
The world of Fidel was never intended to exist. Indeed, in this universe, life was never intended to begin - and when it did, it all too often shattered, swiftly, like a crumpling pane of glass. In the beginning, there was chaos, and there was order, and nothing else, and they existed apart for a timeless infinity.
But then, in a single point, chaos and order touched - gently, ever so briefly - but where they touched, they mixed, and change was brought to the void, and that change was time.
With time arose life - the first gods, abstract concepts of what was to come, beings of madness and crushing, despairing sanity, and these creatures fought over this perfect, first world, and in their fighting destroyed it and themselves.
Where the chaos and order were now mixed and muddied by destruction and pain and greed, a second world formed, but it was imperfect, and no life bloomed across its surface. It was a dead world, and the things that did exist within it were aberrations, beasts lost within their own minds, torn between twin drives to order and to chaos.
But some beings remained from that first, more perfect, world, beings of pure order and pure chaos, and they saw fit to end this monsterous world, and wipe clean all but a handful of the abominations that it had brought into existence.
The third world was an accident. Aeons passed, and in time the swirls and eddies of order and chaos once more mingled, mixing in the ruins of the second. In time, this last, greatest world formed, part chaos, part order, and part madness. Life once again arose, weakened and diluted but also stablized by the mixing of order and chaos, and in time the third world was populated by animals and mortal creatures of all sorts.
The aberrations, too, existed in this world, forced by their own natures to hide in the wild places of the land – places of savage, unpredictable magic and brutal vitality.
And the first beings, that handful of surviving Gods, found places in this world as well, folding themselves into the planes that surrounded it. They divided themselves, lawful and chaotic, and when the creatures of the world below – fragile, mortal things, to know such concepts! – created ideas of Good and Evil, they divided themselves in this way as well.
Millennia passed in relative harmony, the balance preserved by mutual self-preservation, if nothing else.
And then, one day, that shattered, and there was war.
No one knew why it started. But the balance was upset, and soon an all-out war waged between the old gods.
The mortals prayed, of course, but their prayers only fueled the god’s rages. The planar entities were dragged into battle, and soon it was a four-way war, Good against Evil, Order against Chaos.
The world strained to breaking, but in the end, perhaps it’s prayers were heard…
They burned in the sky like fire, the equal of any gods. Two beings, incarnations of pure Chaos and Order – the Phoenix and the Kirin. It was they who brought an end to the Godsfall War, drenched as it was in the blood of those selfsame gods. In the end, they lighted on the barren ground, and poured their existences into the world itself, sustaining and repairing what the gods had destroyed.
Together, it is said that they left alive not one god in a hundred; the scattered gods that rule Fidel now being those mighty enough to survive or crafty enough to hide.
So, too, did the war ravage the planes, leaving what is now the Planar Chasm rent across the Hardorn Plain; the very rift through which the gods did battle.
But at least the war was over, and the world once more began to heal itself. The mortal races grew and spread, mingling with the gods and the planar beings, learning to control the bits and pieces of Order and Chaos within themselves. The first mages appeared, and magic spread like flashfire across the world. Cities followed, and civilization and soon enough strife followed those.
Where the gods had first laid tracks, now mortals followed the path to war.
If anything good were to be said for it, they were the last and the best at it. They perfected fighting, honed it and mastered it over a thousand years of intermittent war. Humanity divided itself by ten, and ten again, over and over until the land itself was stained with blood and tears. Generations lived and died, never knowing peace.
And then, one day, a new army arose, an army too young to fight, barely old enough to raise arms, for the last and most brutal war - The Children’s War.
Those who were there say it began with a bard. He was young, to wander the world, but many children did – parents dead, burned from their homes by invading armies. He was beautiful, they say – long brown hair and dark, warm eyes, and a smile that made you hope he was smiling for you.
At his side walked a fighter, when he entered the town that day. Over her shoulder, she carried a scythe, the handle stained with blood. He called himself Liliander, and his companion was Arram.
He stayed in town for only two nights, but when he left, the children of that town followed, with no reason to stay, and nowhere to go.
By the time they reached a thousand, they were hardened dogs of war. No race or creed bound them, save their hatred. They hated the war, hated the gods…
Arram led them to battle, and they loved her.
On the battlefield, she was their God, their leader, their savior. The wounded prayed to her for salvation; the tired, for the strength to go on fighting. With Liliander at her side, she led the Children’s army across the continent, gathering the powerful to her side – the other Heroes of the Children's War.
And then, Liliander died.
A lucky, mortal wound. A single shot, through the heart, and then Arram was screaming and the world was alight in pain and a dragon’s fire.
Those veterans who were there do not speak to outsiders of what happened that day on the Issin See. They speak quietly of it together, sometimes, but it is for them only; a sacred, secret memory better forgotten and yet unforgettable, burned into flesh and memory.
After that battle, she was Arram no more. From that day forth, her soldiers called her their Arrada’ankaar, their judge-defender.
It was four more years until the war ended. It ended in fire and in pain. There was no mercy, no kindness, save that of a swift death. Only twenty years of war…
Those who had been with her from the very start, her most loyal and beloved, rallied to their Arrada’ankaar and left with her to form the citadel of Kyrellnhalk. The rest scattered, returning to long-destroyed villages and beginning, once more, to rebuild…
Thirty years after the end of the Mortal Wars, the scars of the Children's War still crisscross the land. Many who are now adults fought as children, and the memories of their actions and the war have driven some to madness, while others emerged into peacetime seemingly unchanged by the war. The Arranclancy have withdrawn from the world almost entirely - a few walk the earth on missions given to them by the Arada'ancaar, but for the most part, they dwell entirely within the citadel at Tenebris, content to ignore the outside world. The Abaratii, once feared soldiers and mercenaries, now fly the skies as guardians, defending the peoples of Fidel and aiding in the long recovery, and the other mortal races have taken steps to reclaim their own ancestral lands and rebuild their ruined homelands.
Many of the races still dwell together, though - the world is a mixed place, with many cities being as much elven as they are dwarvish, remnants of the mixed and everchanging alliances of the Mortal's War. It seems that peace might last, this time - but mortals are not the only ones with a hand in play at this table, even with the gods gone.