Connections & Contentions: Aldhaven Lore

This is a lore and setting summary for a city within an on going Freeform/Sandbox Play by Post I'm running called Connections & Contentions. You may recognize the name Aldhaven from a larger PbP known as Aldhaven: Vicious Betrayals by Rizban. It is the same city, however Connections and Contentions focuses more on the world Aldhaven is in instead of just the city, but the city still is a main cultural hubb, and so has need of elaboration. Rather than put all of it on the current OOC (which already has a bunch in it) I decided it might be a good idea to put this as a seperate thread.

This thread is to mainly provide information on the past and the present of this large city for the use of my characters, but anyone is welcome to comment!

Aldhaven

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheWombatOfDoom

Just was informed by Rizban that he'd prefer I not port most information from the wiki in the public forums, since he considers it copyrighted.

---

[redacted upon request from Rizban]

[redacted upon request from Rizban]

[redacted upon request from Rizban]

[redacted upon request from Rizban]

[redacted upon request from Rizban]

Aldhaven, in addition to the majority race of humans, has a small community of dwarves and gnomes due to being on friendly terms with the nearby dwarf/gnome alliance of times past. There still are a significant if small population of elves from back when the Mage's Quarter was a center of powerful magics.

There are two indigenous populations of less friendly humanoids that call Aldhaven home: the skulk Shadow Spider clan, which I believe we have decided was likely either wiped out or pushed out of Aldhaven before C&C times, and the kobold clans who originally called the land Aldhaven was built on home. The very spacious sewer system under Aldhaven had originally been the surface tunnels of the kobolds' warrens that have been paved over in an attempt to seal the kobolds off. Instead, the kobolds had overrun the sewers. 50 years prior to C&C, the kobold clan had been ruled by a grotesquely fat tyrant of a kobold with a penchant for gnome flesh known as the Big Boss. He claimed to be a dragonwrought kobold, but the only sort of dragon he could possibly share heritage with would be a "gluttony" dragon.

If the Big Boss is still alive, he'd be getting quite old for a kobold, though not unreasonably so.

*swiped* :smallsmile:

If anyone wants to go digging around on the previously secret DM-only wiki we set up for AVB to pull out nuggets of info, feel free. you'll want to be logging as username: planswalkerNCR password: declassified if you want to view the wiki.

Began a bit of it. Feel free to let me know if something seems off. Thanks for your help. A lot of it I was like, oh goody! :smallsmile: And then I click on the link, and there's no details list. Then I go. :smallannoyed:

yeah, it's only partially filled in. You see, we were supposed to be updating it as we created things while dm'ing. Problem was, we were so busy dm'ing and telling awesome stories that we weren't very good about putting full updates on the wiki. There is also a large portion of it which never made it to the wiki, for which I am mostly to blame. I was very bad about never updating the wiki. :smallredface:

I'll do my best to supply the hidden lore when I can think of it.

edit: speaking of which, first bit of lore:

Any noble of rank marquee or higher who leads their family may grant a single letter of marque which allows the holder to be considered a marqued agent for that family. Marqued agents cannot be directly prosecuted for any criminal acts done in the name of the nobility, as the noble granting it takes full responsibility for any actions taken by the marqued agent.

For those who end up with one, that makes them the next best thing to a law unto themselves. However, the noble who grants it may revoke it at any time to remove this protection if their agent becomes a liability and/or is abusing their position. The other method for removing a marqued agent, if the transgression is severe enough, is to press charges against the noble himself. If convicted of a crime that would be worthy of stripping their title away, the now ex-noble has lost the authority to grant a letter of marque and his agent no longer has any protections.

One major caveat to convicting a former marqued agent whose letter has been revoked is that only crimes currently being prosecuted may be charged against them. Any crimes committed before the letter is revoked that are not being actively charged to the agent at the time the letter is revoked remain under the protection of the noble, even if the link with the agent is discovered afterwords or the crime was not yet under investigation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by planswalker

yeah, it's only partially filled in. You see, we were supposed to be updating it as we created things while dm'ing. Problem was, we were so busy dm'ing and telling awesome stories that we weren't very good about putting full updates on the wiki. There is also a large portion of it which never made it to the wiki, for which I am mostly to blame. I was very bad about never updating the wiki. :smallredface:

I'll do my best to supply the hidden lore when I can think of it.

---

Noted and Thanks for that. Since you've run so many threads of AVB, you will be very much a help to this process.

Interesting project Wombat...read through the posts, not the original setting so I'm unsure as to whether this is covered somewhere, but wouldn't there be a special division of the Watch who are dedicated to 'Kobold watch'..?

If the little blighters are living under the city, then they're gonna be causing trouble, even if they're actively attempting to avoid such (not that this is remotely likely if there's a Gnomish presence in the city!). They're Kobolds, it's what they do!

The governance looks highly feudal, but I've not seen mention of any clergy or faiths. This is problematic, since much of the direct populace control in any feudal system comes from religious/philosophical restrictions. Education needs covering too, is there a recognisable collegiate or do these people still use a mentor/apprentice approach to professional training (they're not mutually exclusive but often a society has a preference).

religion had its own district in the city just for it, and most noble families paid homage to one faith or another. If you dig through the wiki, you'll see pieces of it all over the place. If any former players from AVB have any tidbits from their threads or elsewhere they'd like to fill in, that'd be lovely.

We're kinda back filling at the moment from the Wiki and history adaptations, but these are excellent things to keep in mind. If you want the rest of the world:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252223

Just was informed by Rizban that he'd prefer I not port most information from the wiki in the public forums, since he considers it copyrighted.