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  1. - Top - End - #61
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    I've been thinking more about this today at work, and that one little mention of sorcerers really stuck with me. I had been thinking of them as an optional side thing, but it might actually be something to give a much more central position.

    One thing I realized that though I have a couple of ideas for various cities, the four of which i have somewhat clear images in mind and that I really want to see in action are all ruled by sorcerers. So what if large city states are only possible through sorcery? And other major settlements are really the castles of powerful local chiefs surrounded by major villages. Worshipping the spirits and living under their protection allows you to build Mycene, but sorcerery lets you build Thebes.

    And I also realized another thing: Sorcery as already established is the ultimate expression of nonsustainability. I got the idea of sorcery spreading into the environment, mutating animals, making people sick, and affected people spreading it around from playing Stalker, which is set in an environment where radioactive contamination is stacked on top of uncontrolled mad superscience. I had already been thinking about sorcerous corruption in terms of irradiation for years. And now it all comes perfectly back together.

    The small cities of the priest kings are dealing with the problem that being truly sustainable means being limited to lives in modesty. And in turn the large cities of the sorcerer kings deal with the problem of accepting environmental destructiion for immediate and short term wealth and luxury.
    It's not a contrast of one side wonderful and one side terrible. It's more nuanced with being a contrast between what prices people are willing to pay. Of course the sorcerers are still the bad ones who made the wrong choice, but doing the right thing and renouncing sorcery does come with its own costs and sacrifices. It will be better in the long run, but in the present the alternative is looking really tempting.

    I always liked the idea of sorcerer kings not being evil megalomaniacs with mustaches to twirl, but sometimes being people who have genuinly good intentions and believe that the costs of sorcerery are very much worth the potential benefits. Like nuclear power. There are still, or perhaps even again, scientists who seriously think that nuclear power plants with all their waste might be the neccessary evil to prevent a massive increase in coal and oil consumption in developing countries. And they have good arguments for it without denying any of the environmental damage caused by nuclear power. Regardless of what you think about this, it is an interesting conflict that depends very much on how you weigh the drawbacks and benefits of alternative options, which very much depends on how things are looking from your perspective. Wanting to stop a sorcerer, but not being able to justify killing him should make him a much more interesting antagonist. Or finding you have a common cause against a shared enemy with a group who are just horrible people who capture prisoners to sacrifice to their bloodthirsty gods of the hunt. But when they are going to attack a sorcerer's keep to stop his work, would you really want to try to stop them?

  2. - Top - End - #62
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    These places are not meant for people

    While I'm not exactly a fan of horror and this setting is meant to be an overall nice and beautiful place, I always find that all the best stories make generous use of many horror techniques. The key emotion informing this setting is awe. Magnificent, but intimidating. A giver of life, but also always a bringer of death. Growing up near the sea was certainly a strong influence on me. So much of our culture revolves around the sea, which is the provider of food and wealth, but also an incredible force of unstopable destruction. Getting the most out of the good parts and finding some way of arrangement with the bad ones is the overarching theme of Kaendor.

    I am the most fascinated by a world rules by spirits in how it makes people much smaller than they are usually made to be in fantasy. You can populate the wilderness with a lot of powerful savage monsters, but then it's the monsters that oppose the heroes, not the wilderness itself. Two years ago I was thinking about this in the context of alternative obstacles for a dungeon crawler, which I plan to almost entirely ditch in my next campaign, but a lot of those elements are just the things that should make players feel being unwellcome in an environment that isn't intended to be passable for people.

    The first thing is making use of heights and verticality. While humans are descended from tree dwellers and can still climb reasonably well, our brains have long since adapted to thinking in two dimensions, with movement fixed to the ground. But forests are very much three dimensional environments that include tall trees with interweaving branches and endless networks of underground tunnels. Almost all animals in a forest are able to fly or run up trees. Of those who can't, the smaller ones are all able to dig tunnels. Being used to oly walking on the ground puts people at a major disadvantage.
    But it doesn't just have to be the branches of trees and tunnels in the ground. You can also incorporate this disorienting and impeding aspect into the architecture of humanoid spirits. I just love making dungeons in the shape of huge towers. And you can also include plenty of huge vertical cliffs and chasms. And for bonus points carve ruined settlements into the cliffsides with mazes of tunnels, balconies, and walkways connecting different areas.
    And when the players run into hostile creatures, spirits, or barbarians, have them make full use of differences in height to stay out of reach of the heroes while being in a position to hurt them.

    Instead of facing the players with dangerous heights and threatening them from all directions at once, things get much worse than that when you really squeeze them in. Animal tunnels and natural passages can be made really narrow and low. So much that you can't stand upright, swing a sword, or hold a shield. Or all of the above. A classic example of this is the big cave sequence near the end of The Thirteenth Warrior (often called the most oldschool D&D movie ever made). And I believe there has been a whole wave of trapped in a cave horror movies a few years back. Then it's knife only in passages so narrow your body blocks the space between your attacker and your allies.

    However, dense forests and winding tunnels also have the advantage of providing plenty of cover and hiding places. On occasion it can be great to let the players know that there are hostile sentries, archers, and fliers nearby and then put large open areas between them and their goals.

    The opposite effect of this is making the players unable to see their opponents. Heavy fog is a classic, and for good reasons. Animals that sense by scent or spirits that simply see through fog gain a huge advantage when the heroes can barely see a few step in front of them. And one of the default recommendation for GMs in Apocalypse World whenever the action slows down or the players suffer complications is "separate them". Simply separating them in the fog seems actually much scarrier than separating them with a collapsed tunnel. The former just feels much more ominous and actively malicious.

    When you're dealing with fog to impede vision, you can make everything so much worse with darkness? Who would constantly change the torches every half hour in an abandoned castle and how would there be any light underground? Simply make sure the natural lighting is always stated explicitly. Or rather the lack of it. When the players suffer a complication in AW, a lamp being dropped or a torch going out is always an option. But there's always the highly popular softer option "announce future badness".
    "Your torch is starting to approach its end."

    And finally, the great miracle that is water. Water is great in so many ways. The simplest thing it does is to obscure vision. You can always hide pretty much everything below the murky surface. It doesn't even have to be deep. Reaching up to the knees or waists of the heroes is enough to put them at the mercy of anything hiding in it. Could be creatures, but could also be holes in the ground.
    Another great thing water does is keep people from breathing. So when putting water underground, make it so high that the heroes will have to dive to get to thw other side of passages. Which obviously they will have to do without lamps or torches. And then what do they do on the other side? A simple flooded dungeon tunnel can become a seemingly impassable barrier, even if it's only a few meters long, if you're playing a game without light or water breathing spells. Getting through might be easy, but things would need to be really desperate for players continuing onwards in complete darkness.*

    And actually, another nice obstacle came to my mind just now. Thick vegetation can be a really problematic barrier. The castle in Snow White is protected by a hedge of roses. And if you have ever been next to a wild patch of blackbarries, you might get an idea that these are actually impenetrable. It's like a giant heap of incrsdibly tangled barbed wire that would be very hard to cut with swords or machetes because it's super flexible. If you were wearing full plate armor you could ignore the viscious thorns, but then you'd still have to climb over a giant heap of non barbed wire. It's just not possible.
    To get into a ruin, slowly and painfully hacking a path through heavy brambles is entirely an option. But it will be a very different story when you have to make a hasty retreat. And even if you can make it back to your entrance, you might find the magical plant life already growing to close up the whole.

    Another different complication is wind. When wind gets strong enough, it interferes with hearing and becomes very dangerous when dealing with heights. It can also make arrows completely useless.

    While there's generally something edible to be around for capable heroes in a temperate forest, things change when you're in a wasteland like mountains or swamps. Or a forest that had been all out killed by corruption. Not quite sure how I would handle this in a game, especially AW, but facing players with the possibility of starvation when venturing into wastelands seems like something that could be really cool when handled well. They could bring provisions, but there's plenty of ways to lose them.

    In summary, even entirely natural environments can be very hostile and threatening when it faces players with the possibility of having to fight for their lives while they can not move or can not see.

    * Actually, glowing mushrooms would glow under water. But don't tell that to the players.
    Last edited by Yora; 2018-09-20 at 04:09 AM.

  3. - Top - End - #63
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    The Ancient Builders

    This is an updated version of something I wrote last year, though changed to reflect the diifferent nature of spirits and their homes in this setting.

    The forests of Kaendor are full of ancient overgrown ruins. Many of which had been occupied and build over by mortals at some point, but most of them were originally build by spirits. Just like the mortal peoples, various races of spirits have created a number of civilizations that build many great cities that were evenntually abandoned and fell into ruin. How they disappeared and why even the spirits do not remember. While they don't age like mortals do and many of them can not be killed by ordinary means, even spirits are impermanent beings and don't remain what they are forever. But given the long spans of time many spirits can remember, the ruins have to be truly ancient if their origins have been completely forgotten.

    Naga




    The naga are one of the races of spirits whose civilization still exist in the jungles of the south. But the locations of some of their ruins much farther north shows that at some point they ruled over many more lands than they do now. Naga ruins usually consists of one or more huge towering ziggurats that are surrounded by many smaller buildings that were the dwellings of slaves.

    Tower Builders




    The Tower Builders were a civilization of humanoid spirits whose ruins can be found all along the coasts now inhabited by the mortal peoples of Kaendor. Their palaces consist of massive square towers with angled walls that are build from huge square blocks of stone that are very tightly fitted together. Many of these towers are still very much intact, and some of them are still even inhabited by spirits, though it's not clear if they are their original builders or if they moved in later. Such spirit strongholds are always found far away from any mortal settlements, or rather the mortal people never settle anywhere near them.

    Rock Carvers




    The Rock Carvers were a civilization that build massive fortresses and cities. Not by stacking blocks of stones, but by carving them out of the solid rock. Often they are build into the sides of steep cliffs or inside large free standing spires of volcanic rock. While the surface ruins of Rock Carver cities look spectacular, most of them is actually hidden underground and inside the rock. The precission of their construction is far beyond anything that mortal miners and masons could ever dream to accomplish. Rooms and passage are always perfectly straight with precise angles, and surfaces are often polished mirror smooth. Larger ruins are usually constructed around massive ventilation shafts, which sometimes can be home to sudden and danngerous winds.

    Tree Weavers






    The Tree Waevers build their castles not out of stone but from the branches of massive living trees. They had the knowledge to grow interweaving branches into solid floors and walls and even entire closed rooms. Their buildings are not as sprawling and elaborate like those of the other ancient builders, but the unique nature of their construction makes them even more impressive. The giant trees can live for thousands of years and many castles are still in excelent shape, though the older ones tend to become more warped over time as they are no longer being maintained.

    Glas Makers




    Ruins of the glass makers are the most rare of them all, and many sages believe them to be by far the oldest. They are made entirely out of thick glass and are not constructed from individual blocks but appear to be made entirely out of a single massive piece. The glass is usually quite dark but often is slightly colored in green, blue, or purple. While the walls are exceptionally durable, all the ruins have some cracks or chipping of their suraces, which sometimes can be quite extensive.

  4. - Top - End - #64
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Scarcity

    The fundamental source of almost all conflicts is scarcity. Something is needed by mainy, but not available in the amounts that everyone wants. There are disagreements over who gets how much, and you have a conflict. Kaendor is for most intents and purposes a frontier setting, even though there isn't really much in the way of heartlands. In such settings it's often not about what people would like to have, but what they absolutely need to survive. This provides rooms for conflicts in which all sides can be reasonable and mean well, but stepping back to keep the peace is not an option either. Scarcity makes people do things they don't want to do and which they are not proud of. Scarcity also raises the stakes and urgency and makes people fight harder. All things that are great for building settings that are inherently prone to causing fights.

    However, nailing down the main scarcities in a temperate forest setting isn't as easy and takes somr additional thought. The main concern that people always have is access to sufficient food and water. But beyond that, the big idea behind Kaendor is that people are permanently at danger of natural disasters caused by spirits. Keeping the spirits of the land happy and keeping their protection from monsters is the other primary concern.

    So the first scarcity is farmland. Even though almost all land is forest, most of the land near the coast is pretty uneven rock with little soil above it. The only good places for grain fields are the lower valleys of major rivers. Since these are quite isolated from each other and barbarians are not interested in farming, having neighbours encroach on the borders and claiming land is not usually a problem. But once a city starts growing, all the possible farmland is pretty quickly claimed. The only way for farmers to get more land is to get it from other farmers.
    I don't have any desires to make a big deal about land disputes, but this makes a good reason why various leaders of the community are hostile towards each other. It's a source of infighting that causes complications for other more dramatic things the players can be doing that regard their home settlement. And NPCs might do all kinds of things that cause trouble because of hostilities that started as fights over land.

    The second scarcity is lifestock. While you can't get more fields to grow crops, you can get additional food by grazing goats and drohas in the hills of the forest. These can be really very valuable and you can never have enough of them, you always want more if you can somehow get them. And they have the wonderful drawback of being possible to kill and steal. This invites raiders and wild beasts to come from the wilderness and cause trouble for the settlement as they attempt to use the herders' resources for themselves. Herders also go outside the area that is explicity given to the people, which offers the potential to accidentally disturb spirits that then cause trouble for the settlement.

    The usual way to keep spirits happy is through offerings. Which means the third scarcity is offerings to the spirits. Though here I am admitedly still very uncertain what thia could mean in practice. Spirits don't really need stuff, but I think what mostly matters to them is the attention and respect they gain when people give them things that they could really use very much themselves. It's the fact that people put their respect for the spirits above their own immediate needs and comfort that really matters. But offerings of crops and goats wouldn't actually add anything new here. To get a next harvest you have to keep some grains to put in the ground and some to give to the spirits that you can't eat yourself. And the spirits probably don't care for huge amounts of foodstuff. It's just a part of economics, not really a different scarcity.
    Now with animals it can be a bit different. The specific individual to be offered can be selected long before the sacrifice. In the meantime it can be stolen, get lost, or fall victim to a disease, and it's impossible to get a replacement instead. If you can't get it ready for the scheduled time, the settlement is in huge trouble. And if you want to hurt your enemies, going for their sacred animal is a great option.

    (Very much related to this, the fourth scarcity is relics. Relics are unique objects with a significant history that are used in rituals and kept in shrines as tribute to its spirits. Offering the spirits a new relic greatly increases their favor, but failure to properly guard them is a grave negligence of respect. Stealing relics from other settlements is probably not something players would commonly do. But claming a new one to increase the failing favor of a spirit or retrieving a stolen one to regain it are worthy heroic tasks. However, when an enemy is actively threatening their settlement, then stealing their relics is a great way to tip the scales in their own favor and it isn't like they are preying on innocents for their own gain.

    There is also another scarcity, but I don't know what to do with it. The fifth scarcity is magical knowledge. Abandoned ruins oftenn contain lost pieces of knowledge and there are secret scrolls kept by priests and sorcerers, and there is also always the ancient knowledge possessed by spirits in the wilderness. All priests and sorcerers would want as much of it as they can get, and it could be useful to keeping their cities protected. And any resources that your enemies don't have makes them less of a threat to you, so there is a reason to keep it to yourself.
    The problem is that you can't simply treat a scroll or tablet as just a piece of treasure. Then it would only be a MacGuffin, a thing that characters treat as super umportant but that doesn't actually do anything. But on the other hand, when you spell out clearly what it says and what it can be used for, you kind of have to use it and can't store it away for safekeeping. And I don't think you can use an important magical ritual more then one or two times, otherwise it wouldn't feel like a rare treasure but a plot device. Ancient scrolls don't really appear to be a good form of underlying scarcity for a setting.
    )
    Last edited by Yora; 2018-09-22 at 04:56 AM.

  5. - Top - End - #65
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Contunuing where I left off:

    I decided that scarcity of relics and scarcity of arcane knowledge don't really work for what I intend to do. They are too specific and only really concern a very small number of people inhabiting the setting. They don't really play into the everyday life of ordinary people and having too look for a scroll or recover a relic is to fetch-questy for me. Tried that in the past, didn't lead to the experience I want to create. I want to go with much more player driven adventures about personal stakes and ambitions this time and set up the world accordingly.

    Yesterday I ran into a cool GDC presentation on post-apocalyptic settings and gameplay and there's a lot in it that strikes me as very applicable to my setting. Kaendor is not a world that suffered a singular global disaster that led to the almost complete loss and collapse of society and culture. But the environment in which the people live is very much comparable to the typical depiction of the aftermath of massive catastrophes: Society is small and fragmented, resources are very limited, there are plenty of remains from past civilizations, and the environment itself is an ongoing threat to their survival. The big difference is that Kaendor isn't dominated by a sense of loss and devastation. But the hardships and threats they are dealing with are very much the same, which makes post-apocalyptic game design very much applicable here. A different mood, but similar structures.

    There are two things in the video that really stuck with me. The first of which is the observation that the small and personal things become much more significant and meaningful when they exist within an environment and context that is devoid of big and global things. Invading armies, dark lords, demonic hordes, and approaching world-ending disasters are exiting in their own way, but in their face everything else doesn't just become secondary but irrelevant. Everyone and everything becomes expandable. Because if you fail at the big goal, then all the small accomplishments you made won't have mattered. By making the setting primarily about emptiness, you get the space in which you can focus on the smaller things that usually don't get looked at much in heroic fiction. I think in an RPG, this doesn't actually mean that you need to have less stuff in your adventures. But you can still emphasize that the things that are speficially shown and described are the only ones that exist in the current environment. There aren't hundreds of identical more littered around that just don't get mentioned because the players only need one. On the entire island there is only one tiny cluster of huts, and there is only one man who has the only boat that can take you back to the mainland. Getting that one boat, one way or another, can be made into a much more significant and tense than if there are several fishing villages with lots of boats.
    In a desolate setting, less is more. And I think that also goes for NPCs. Make groups of antagonists small so you can treat their members as individuals, describe them as such, and give them names. Interacting with them will be much more interesting and meaningful than if you have just one leader with faceless horde of generic goons behind him. And when NPCs become hostile to the players, don't have them immediately try to attack them with force. Instead you can build up to that over several encounters. And if you treat them as individuals instead of just one leader with goons, players can encounter one or two of them alone at different times, which can turn out very differently when they don't have particulary agressive or disciplined individuals with them. When eventually it comes to a fight and some of them are probably ending up dead, it will be much more meaningful.

    The other thing that stood out for me is that in truly post-apocalyptic settings there isn't anyone around to explain to the heroes what is really going on. There are no exposition-NPCs who can spell everything out in simple terms. Some people know more than others and can give hints or advice, but ultimately everyone is pretty much clueless of what exactly happend and what exactly all the strange stuff is that is going on now. And when people don't know what they are dealing with, they tend to make very bad decisions. This is something that pops up in my of the works that inspired me for this setting and almost becomes something of a catchphrase for the wiser characters. "I wish to see with eyes unclouded" in Princess Mononoke, and "One must do more than act without any thought or doubt" in Metro 2033. And pretty much everything between Luke and Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back.
    Spoiler
    Show
    "I am loking for a great warrior."
    "Great warrior? Wars not make one great."

    "I won't fail you. I'm not afraid."
    "You will be... You will be."

    "What will I find in there?"
    "Only what you take with you. Your weapons, you won't need them."

    "I don't believe it!"
    "That is why you fail."

    And I think this is just the way you can have a scarcity of understanding. Unlike other scarcities, understanding is not a resource that exist in limited amounts and that people are fighting over. They don't even know what they don't understand. People believe that they are making reasonable decisions and take sensible actions while some of the things they do don't actually help or only make things worse. And this makes it a source of conflict. These unnoticed mistakes lead to situations where people become desperate and resort to hostile actions against each other. I am not a fan of conflicts that are just accidental misunderstandings and both sides reconciliate once the error is pointed out. But this can be avoided when the opposing side doesn't understand the true situation either. In that case simply coming together and talk and clearing up the facts won't solve the conflict.
    This lack of understanding applies primarily to the wilderness, spirits, and magic. The minds of spirits are truly alien and just plain make no sense to humans. Sometimes spirits want a thing, but it's impossible to understand what they need it for. Sometimes they show up in a place and there's no explanation why here and why now. And sometimes they just don't care for something that is happening right in their presence even though one would expect some kind of reaction. And in regard to the wilderness, strange things often just appear in random places with no specific cause why they are there. Something has caused it, but there's no way for mortals to find out what it was. But there's a big difference to the GM just shrugging and offering no explanation at all. What makes the lack of understanding a scarcity that drives conflict is that there are lots of NPCs who think they know what's going on. They are certain they are right and are more than happy to share it with the players. And ideally there are several of them and they all contradict each other. It's left up entirely to the players to decide who they think is making well educated guesses and who is making completely random guesses. Or who is outright lying to them to manipulate them for their own goals.
    I find it most useful to start such mysteries and ambiguities with a foundation of solid and objectively true facts that the players can learn if they are investigating enough. NPC A did kidnap NPC B to sacrifice to a spirit in a specific place, because he wanted to get a specific boon to further a specific goal. But on top of that you can put a heavy layer of evocative but random fluff that doesn't really mean anything. What's the deal with the symbols carved in the trees around the sacrifice site? Who was that ghost that pointed the players to the hidden corpse. What's up with all the other old corpses lying in the same hole? (It certainly wasn't NPC A who put them there.) What caused the fire that burned down the house of NPC A? Players won't be getting all the hard facts straight and overlook and misinterprete some of them. And they will also include some of the meaningless things into their theories of what happend or is going on. And there will be some details left ofter of which they just can't make any sense, either because there isn't any to them, or they just failed to make a right connection. And here I think the choice of game system really matters. Not so much because of the rules themselves, but because of the expectations that come with them. When you play D&D, players will expect a final boss battle and assume that an adventure is not over until all the villains are accounted for. There isn't the expectation that you can say "Well, we got what we came for. Let's hurry home where people are needing us. We'll collapse the entrance to this cave and hope nobody ever opens it again." In other games where PCs are set up to be involved in the management of their home, this would be a completely different story.

    Only somewhat related to this, I also came up with the idea of a scarcity of allies. Kaendor is not a setting where one has to expect that everyone you encounter in the wilderness stab you in the back and start eating your flesh at the first opportunity. But it can very much be a setting in which people don't usually share their resources or risk their safety to help others. Players might want to do that, but they won't getting it in return, and when they do it it won't be very rewarding for them. One good deed is appreciated, but it doesn't make others trust you or iffering their help. Having people you know are commited to helping you when you need it is incredibly valuable, precisely because it's so difficult to get. Gaining allies takes a lot of work and also time, you first have to build a relationship with those people.
    When offering help to others, they will be very cautious about such a very unexpected offer and suspect that there is much more to it than just compassion. But once NPCs start to believe that they can rely on the players' help in the future, this becomes a huge bonus in interactions with them. They will go to considerable efforts to keep the players happy and not waste the opportunity to gain a reliable ally. Once you have made allies, stating your own name or who is sending you is a very powerful tool at your disposal. The scarcity of allies is not a source of conflict, but rather a motivation to go to great length to improve your own situation.

  6. - Top - End - #66
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    I am once more happy to have everything spelled out for this thread and recorded to be able to read it again. After these weeks of fully working out the finer details of AW and doing a lot of theoretical work on campaign structure, I had lost sight of the weird wonder that inspired me at the very beginning. As the structure became more clear, the details in my mind faded to something more generic. There is still the instinctive tendecy to make the world the most pretty and nice I can think of, but that goes directly against what make a setting conductive to interesting stuff happening.
    Nice is the opposite of exciting.

    Looking back at the first post, two things that I didn't really pick up on are the exotic grandness of Dark Sun and the mystical gravitas of Dark Souls. While the situation in settled areas is important, it's the threats that can come out of the wilderness that are supposed to be the stars of the show. And I have not really created much of that so far. Distinctive architectural styles for ruins and exotic farm animals is barely a start.

    One thing I am pondering right now is to go back to an old idea and base the wilderness on some of my favorite places from the Planescape setting: The endless wilderness of the Beastlands and Arborea, the endles chaotic caves of Pandemonium, and the dark and stormy volcanoes of Gehenna. It's certainly a starting point.

    What I think is really missing and needed is a solid systematic foundation for the spirits. Making them up at random case by case is not going to do it. Mystery and ambiguity are good and needed, but if people are meant to see themselves in the middle of the food chain, there needs to be at least an impression of a hierarchy of power extending above them. Not a divine beurocracy, but a general pecking order. People don't matter in the bigger picture, but there has to be something that does matter to the spirits. I think it's better if that something is beyond mortal understanding, but there needs to an impression of something being there.

    I don't have a lot there yet:
    I am ambivalent about having dragons. If I use them, then they would be like Chinese lung, not European dragons. Each one a lesser deity in its own right. Dragons don't talk. If they are to communicate with mortals at all, it would be purely telepathically. But maybe not even that.
    I definitely want to have nymphs, including dryads, neirids, and oreads. They will also be pretty powerful and can be the local gods of smaller towns. Their true bodies are rivers, mountains, or ancient trees, but they have an ability to manifest humanoid bodies to interact with mortals. But such interactions should still be weird.
    Naga are another must have. I think they should be mortal to make sense as a distant civilization, but very long lived and with magical powers.
    I really like sidhe as spirits that look humanoid but are really quite alien in mind. I can see them as being common relative to the other much more rare and unseen spirits, but don't have a specific culture for them yet. They would be the ones to inhabit the non-ruined castles in the wilderness. But I don't want them to have full towns or cities and having to rely on farming. I'll see what I can come up with.
    I think I want to have giants, trolls, and harpies in some way, but making them explicitly spirits and giving them some magical powers should really make them much more interesting. Particularly in a campaign where NPCs don't have individual stats. I like the idea of trolls seeing mortals as somewhat equal beinga to themselves, talking normally, visiting towns, and occasionally taking mercenary work. But they also would have to be odd in ways that don't make them simply explaining everything about the world of spirits to mortals.
    With the Spirits of Beneath and Beyond, I think they should appear so rarely that each of them can be pretty much unique. And they are so completely alien that mortals aren't even able to tell if one of them is effectivly an animal or hyper intelligent. To them, all mortals are harmless critters that can be ignored unless they want to eat them or become a nuisance.
    I think with working these out to more detail and adding some magical animals, it would already be a decent starting selection.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Today I've been looking at two older things I wrote some while bacl, which summed up my extensive thoughts on forests as an agressive force and the sea as an alien realm. The Green Hell and the Circle of Life and Death and The Deep Blue Under.

    I think they still are both great approaches to give this setting some spice and unique style.

    The first idea is that the world has an overaboundance of life. Things grow and spread, and it's impossible to rein them in. The fundamental processes of life are feeding and reproduction, neither of which is pretty or pleasant. Aside from some bacteria, all living things need to consume dead matter to stay alive and produce new life. You don't have to kill it yourself, but for you to live, something else must die. Our culture treats growth as amazing and wonderful, but when you look at all the things that make up life, it is also terrifying and revolting. Not least because it also tells us that there are many things that are waiting for us to die and to consume us, so that they may live and reproduce.
    If this can be translated into monsters and phenomenons, I think it would be an amazing thing to make nature intimidating.

    The other idea is that below the surface of the water is very much another world, separate from our own. A world with little light, barely any gravity or warmth, and no air at all. A world that exists in three dimensions instead of two. Home to creatures that are much more unlike us than other mammals, reptiles, amohibians, and even birds. Many of which get much larger than anything on land or in the sky. We can swim on the surface and take peaks into it that fade into a dark blue haze almost immediately. But we can not really enter the extend of this world and everything that passes below the surface will be gone forever. What goes up must always come down. But what goes down will always stay down below. The sea is part of the Realm Beneath and Beyond, just like the underground world and space. Within that context, travelling across the sea in ships should be a strange and frightening experience. You are trapped on a fragile construction that is the only thing that keeps you from being pulled into a hostile alien world forever. Surface fish are still just animals, like the ones that live in rivers and lakes (which are also ambigous places), but the creatures of the deep sea are effectively demons.
    I think it also makes isolated islands great candidates for being very strange places. They are different worlds from the familiar world of the mainland. They look like land, but they are rising out of the sea. You clearly can not trust them.
    I definitely want to include a race of fish men. Like Deep Ones, kuo-toa, and murlocs. And they would need to be really alien and not trading or cooperating with surface peoples. They are inteligent and have a culture, seen using spears, knives, nets, and other tools, and having priests and unfathomable religions. But surface people can not really interact with them as equals. If someone communication with a priest can be established, their motives and behaviors would be as alien and incomprehensible as those of spirits.

    These are two aspects that I think should really be expanded on extensively, and I'd be happy about any thoughts and suggestions you might have to share. The numbers indiscate that people are still reading here.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I think it also makes isolated islands great candidates for being very strange places. They are different worlds from the familiar world of the mainland. They look like land, but they are rising out of the sea. You clearly can not trust them.
    It’s always nice to see more posts from you Yora. This is an interesting setting and it’s cool to its progression.

    If the sea is its own alien place, then maybe islands can be like the safe areas in the coast, a small place where the spirits have allowed mortals to live. This could make for a really interesting relationship.

    Spirits already have all the power in their deals with mortals, if you displease them than you’ll lose your meager villages. This could be even worse for islanders. If they displease the ocean spirits, then they will just sink the island back into the sea, a la Atlantis.

    I imagine this could make for very paranoid and xenophobic villagers. At least the villagers on land might be able to find a new spirit in the wilds willing to accommodate them, islanders will just drown.

    An interesting idea to go along with this would be a group of Viking-esque raiders who assault the coastal villages of Kaendor, who assault the villages not because they want to but because their spirit has ordered them too. The particular sea spirit hates the coastal spirits, and would love to sink the coast into the sea, but the spirits are too evenly matched. So the spirit cultivates an island of mortals, and commands them to assault the coast, as a way of harming the land dwelling spirits by proxy. Maybe the fish-men are just normal humans, transformed by their spirit in order to terrify the populace. Maybe this is a way of making the insult stick, since you said spirits don’t normally recognize mortals, without a mask or some such.
    Last edited by flyinglemur; 2018-10-04 at 05:34 PM.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    There's something xenophobic about it, but I really quite love the idea of island peoples being stranger and more dangerous than mainlanders. I think as long as I don't make them dark with bones in their hair, it should be fine, though. In short, don't be "Drums on Fire Mountain".

    And then, the world isn't meant to be fantasy paradise. People being prejudiced and hostile to foreigners they don't understand is a valid element. They don't need to be perverted cannnibals, but their ways should be strange enough to mainlanders to be unsettling and make it easy to accidentally start hostilities. But they don't have to be default villains. If the players proceed carefully, islanders could become allies.

    Still have to think this over for more days, but making a clear social distinction between mainlanders and islanders seems to have some real potential.

    --

    I also had a fun idea last night, that I had not thought of this morning:

    I saw this post a few days back about defining traits of humans to distinguish them from other humanoids. I had long been thinking about making the Kaendorians similar to humans, but not exactly humans. And reading what I wrote last year about nature as a hostile force again yesterday, I suddenly had this idea.

    When I was in school, we were still being taught the evolutionary model of K-strategists and R-strategists. It's somewhat obsolete now because there are much more elaborate models that build on it, but the general idea is that there are two main ways in which a species can adapt to survive in a hostile environment (which is any kind of natural environment). The K-strategy is to spend a lot of time and resources on raising individuals that are so big, tough, and dangerous that almost nothing will be able to threaten it. It's what we have in elephants, whales, tigers, and also humans. In contrast, the R-strategy is to not really bother with protecting individuals and instead just reproduce faster than they can be killed. That's rabbits, ants, small fish, and so on. Basically K-strategy is Protoss and R-strategy is Zerg, to use an outdated reference.
    K-strategy is already the default for humans, while R-strategy would lead to a very bleak and horrifying setting. But in reality it's much more of a continuum (which is why the model is pretty obsolete) and I was thinking what kind of animals we would have between the two extremes. Some kinds of mid-level predators. And the first two that came to my mind are weasels and foxes. Which is brilliant! Both animals are associated with being very clever and sneaky, not really dangerous to humans but vicious when threatened. I think that's a wonderful example for what ecological niche the Kaendorians could occupy in an ecology that includes spirits (and maybe dragons) that are clearly much more dangerous than themselves.

    So one rough idea I have is that mortals mostly try to stay out of sight and clear of spirits, attempting to appear nonthreatening and just generallly not drawing attention to them. That would be the natural way of life of the barbarians living in the forest and on the islands. For the city states it's a completely different story though, because they have sorcery! They are not concerned with staying inconspicous. Instead they are thrilled to display their splendor. At least, as long as they are within the sorcerous wards that protect their city states. If they have to go into the wilderness or out on the sea, they suddenly become very quiet and anxious, even more than the people used to living in the shadows of the spirits.
    Going with the idea that the core of Kaendor is "Dark Sun in green", and really quite liking the baroqueness of Dark Sun, Morrowind, and similiar settings, I think the city states should be extravagant, flamboyant, and grotesque, and overall decadent. After all, their splendor is founded on sorcery, which is inherently corrupt.
    Last edited by Yora; 2018-10-05 at 02:16 PM.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    To Do List
    By this point I would say that most of the setting already exists as general ideas in my head. And I probably could start running a campaign in it right now. (Though recent changes in my career planning have pushed that out to next spring.) But there is a lot of stuff that I think would be really useful to prepare at much greater detail in advance so that I can pull it out whenever it might come up and don't have to make them up on the spot.

    • Describing the six humanoid cultures.
    • Describing the four great cities and their sorcerer kings.
    • Outlining the nine minor city states.
    • Detailing the four main religions.
    • Describing the naga and the sidhe.
    • Working out the basic economic networks between the city states.
    • Preparing a quick reference list for chaotic weather.
    • Preparing a quick reference list for supernatural phenomenons.
    • Preparing a quick reference for ruin features.
    • Working out the usual behavioral patterns of the most common creatures.
    • Refining the available character types. (Probably no telepaths, but adding a hunter.)


    It's all stuff that I have a decent general idea of, but none of them really need to be nailed down right now so that I can continue with other things that depend on them. So nothing absolutely requires immediate attention. If you have any preferences what you would like to hear more about in greater detail, you can just throw it in and I could go with that.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Agriculture and Economy

    Since this is something that is mostly done already, let's start with that. In most RPGs economy is entirely irrelevant, as it never comes up in the things players are actually interacting with. But in a campaign in which PCs can be community leader and most internal conflicts and mad schemes are based on limited resources, I find it something that has to be worked out with at least basic detail.

    The main food crops are rice in the south and barley in the north, with potatoes being a common secondary crop. Rice is great and somewhat exotic and fits into coastal marshlands. Barley is the less boring and generic alternative to wheat, which is really associated with Mesopotamia and Egypt, and it also makes a good base for beer. And potatoes are just such an awesome plant that it just would be a shame not to have them. And since we're at it, let's also have grapes because it's hard to imagine an ancient setting without wine. And finally there's mushrooms being farmed at large scale wherever there are available caves with the right climate.
    Crops are usually not exported and produced locally, as few places have a large enough surplus to trade away. The exception is wine, and barley for making beer.

    The main farming animals everywhere are goats, which produce milk and cheese and also meat and leather. There are also small stocky reptiles called taung that are kept like pigs. Geese and pheasants are kept for eggs, meat, and feathers. In northern lands, people also fish large numbers of cod that are dried and salted and exported in huge amounts as food on ships.

    Another important food source is honey, which is harvested from the hives of hand sized insects that nest on cave walls. It's the main source of sugar and a major export good.

    Also in the realm of food is salt used for preserving food, which is extremely important for the city states, as chaotic whether and disasters can massively disrupt their regular food production. Without salt, the days of a city are numbered. It is by far the single most important resource.

    If there are any contenders it is tin. The main ingredient for bronze is copper, which is somewhat more common, but the required addition of the rare tin is always the true bottleneck in bronze production. Since the population of Kaendor doesn't grow and bronze can very efficiently be recycled, the amount of tin needed to replace lost bronze tools and weapons is relatively small. Which means having only one or two known tin mines in the entire world wouldn't be implausible.
    Finally there is silver. Most trade between cities and tribes is barter of goods while most internal exchanges work on credit and workers pay mostly consists of food. Where this is not feasible or inconvenient, silver is a high value resource that can be very easily stored and transported and traded for anything else without problem. Silver is measured by weight. In what shapes and sizes it comes is irrelevant. There is also gold, but it's of such a high value that it's almost exclusively used in business between city states.

    Wood has almost no value in trade. That stuff keeps growing back faster than people can cut it down and nobody ever runs out of even the most specific pieces of lumber needed for speciak purposes.

    Economy in towns is very centralized, with craftsmen usually being employed by the local lord who is responsible for trading the raw materials and finished goods with other lords and distributing the products among his servants and the heads of the land owning families who pay the palace back with food. People in towns and villages have very little silver as everything they need is provided by the lord of the palace or head of the family for whom they work. Travelling merchants mostly do business with these and primarily trade for goods, but anyone with some silver can buy small things from them for themselves.
    The city states are more urban in nature and there are many independent craftsmen that sell directly to individual customers. Cities use standardized coins to speed up the weighing of silver, but they are different in each city. Most people have some coins, but the distribution of bread, barley, and rice is usually run by the palace and the main expense of the tax income.

    When detailing the city states, I plan to work out the salt and tin trade networks to greater detail, as these are the things that determine power and international relations, and are the stuff people go to war for. There certainly will be a salt city and a tin city, and I also have a good idea for the primary cod exporter.
    There are of course also various spices, textiles, dies, and drugs that merchants make huge profits with, but I don't think these make much of a difference when it comes to the dependencies and power structures between settlements. As such, I don't think they need to be spelled out.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Not been writing much here because I am somewhat at a loss what you would want to read, but work is constantly continuing.

    Civilization, Wilderness, and Blights

    One thing I've been pondering a lot is the mismatch between my wish to create a world that is amazing and wondrous, and my natural instinct to envision adventures that are balanced just between heroic and desperately intense in bleak environments. But I think I now found a possible solution for this. In the Hero's Journey of all places. I have a strong aversion against making things too formulaic and the Hero's Journey in particular is much too simplistic for my taste, but it includes the concepts of the Threshold and the Return, which I find quite useful. It basically just says that the home place and the adventure site are two distinctively different places. Separated not only by distance, but by different rules of reality. And it's not a gradual change, but a sudden one that has a clear border. One that might be invisible, but the heroes sense when they reach it and are aware of the action to cross it. This separation already exists in the setting with the patches of settled land and the wilderness. The wilderness is a strange and dangerous place that works by different and alien rules. This is analogous to what the seminal text of Oldschool Roleplaying "Philotemy's Musings" calles the Mythic Underworld.

    However, going from the Shire straight into all out Mordor would create the appearance of civilization under constant siege and make the settled areas not at all pleasant places where people live mostly peaceful lives. But this separation can be further divided by the way of Hill Canton's Corelands, Borderlands, and the Weird, an article that I frequently refered to over the past years. There is a familiar world, a strange world, and a bizarre alien world. I think this three layered approach might be the solution to my problem.
    Settled lands are corelands. This is where the majority of people live and where things are the definition of what common people consider "normal". The entire wilderness that makes up almost all the rest of the world is the borderlands under this categorization, though that term is somewhat misleading when it's the natural state of the world. I want the contrast between settled lands and the wilderness to be pretty stark one, with the wilderness already being a very strange and unfamiliar place. Once you reach the edge of the fields, there there be monsters. Don't leave the path.
    But to indulge my craving for nightmarish haunted wastelands, my plan is to introduce the third category of the weird with Blights. Blights are clearly outlined areas where everything has gone to hell. They are devastated and corrupted by malevolent supernatural forces and all out terrible. The Zone, Silent Hill, Area X, Boletaria, Yharnam, these kinds of places. They are terrible and harrowing, but they are localized nightmares. Whatever horrors are happening inside won't be coming out and threaten the rest of the world. Again, the term borderlands is misleading as it doesn't separate settled lands from blights. Blights can appear right in the middle of settled lands. When this happens it sucks for the locals, but it's not a threat that other places have to worry about. When characters enter a blight, they might have a chance to exorcise the corruption at a great threat to themselves, but if they fail it won't upset the world as a whole. Life goes on, just with one town or city less. Which is the accepted way of the world. It already happens all the time, whether corruption is involved or not.

    I think this approach offers a nice balance between having advetures that are high stakes and intense, and not ending up with a bleak campaign where everything is doomed to suck regardless of the heroes actions. And neither success nor failure fundamantally changes the status quo of the world as a whole. At the end, the heroes either perish in appropriately dramatic ways, or they win and can climb back out into the sunlight.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Peoples of Kaendor

    I really should have written this as one of the very first things right after the initial concept. But I've always hated coming up with names that sound like they are actual names, fit their culture, and don't sound like generic Standard Fantasy Setting names. Like Borgor, Aruin, or Lorion. And you can't really write about something without having a name for it. I finally managed to come up with some names that I feel are not completely terrible and I just go with them. With enough use they eventually start feeling right most of the time, and if something really doesn't sit right I can still always change it later.

    The peoples of Kaendor are all different species of the same genus. They have distinctively different appearances but share the same basic anatomy and all interbreed with each other. There are only minor differences in their physical abilities, but a trained eye can easily tell them apart just by their bones.
    The people of Kaendor are very similar to humans but their eyes are adapted to lower levels of light, as they are native to thick forests, and have a much better sense of smell. Most are adapt at climbing and they frequently reach 120 years of age or more.

    Fenhail
    The Fenhail inhabit the central coast and are the most numerous of the various people. They are lean of stature with deeply tanned skin and dark brown to black hair.
    Fenhail cities tend to be on the smaller side and primarily rely on natural fortifications like cliffs or building their settlements on lake islands. Most of them live in clusters of villages that are ruled by assemblies of elders from each village. Their buildings and fortifications are overwhelmingly made from wood but are known to be exceptionally sturdy and durable constructions build from massive timbers. Fenhail use every small patch of suitable land to grow barley and otherwise rely on potatoes and various roots. They also herd goats and the pig-like tauns.
    With the Fenhail I am going for a somewhat Iron Age Celtic wood elves style. Nothing too radical, except that they have domesticated dinosaur pigs and dinosaur camels on their farms and also sail the seas.

    Murya
    The Murya are native to the southern coast where most of the larger cities are located. Murya have brown skin and jet black hair and are similar in stature to the Fenhail. Their architecture and technology is the most sophisticated and their ships regularly travel to all the ports along the entire coast of Kaendor and the inhabited islands.
    All the largest cities of Kaendor are inhabited by Murya and are ruled by powerful sorcerers. They are build from yellow sandstone that is also found in most of the surrounding villages. Houses have flat wooden roofs that serve as living spaces and are only covered by simple wooden or straw shades. Cities and most villages are surrounded by massive rice fields where farmers wear large straw hats that reach almost down to their eyes to protect themselves from the sun in the absence of trees to provide sufficient shade. But even then it's too bright to work during the midday.
    With the Murya I admit to drawing heavily from the Dunmer from The Elder Scrolls. So something somewhat Egyptian or Persian influenced, and also inspired by Dark Sun. This is where I want to make the Hellenistic influences the most prominent.

    Yao
    The Yao inhabit the mountains and highlands that separate the central and southern coasts and live between the Fenhail and the Murya. Yao are almost always rather tall and the heviest build of all the races. Their skin ranges between shades of earthen brown or ocher and they all share black eyes and thick hair. Despite their size they are just as nimble climbers as the Fenhail and among the best runners.
    Yao settlements are always arranged around a central fortress located on mountains or rocky hills. Their homelands have little space for farming and they rely primarily on goat herds for food and the fruits of various hardy shrubs and trees. Their mountains are home to many mines and they trade their tin and silver to the coastal cities for grain and wine.
    The style for the Yao is a kind of mountain people. I have some vague idea of Nepalese orcs.

    Kuri
    The Kuri are the people of the northern forests and hils, beyond the lands of the Fenhail. Kuri are easily spotted by their white skin and light gray or blond hair. They tend to be on the taller side with narrow stature but are quite hardy in their own way. They are regarded as stoic and reserved people in the south but see themselves more as collected and level headed. They highly value manners but rarely seek the company of strangers.
    The Kuri make their homes on the shores of the many lakes that cover their lands and live in log houses. However their nobles live in ancient castles made from white stone whose builders have been long forgotten, but which are meticulously kept in good repair. There is only one major city in the lands of the Kui, and it is the home of an ancient sorceress that towers a head over everyone else and according to her subjects was not born as one of their own but simply appeared from the wilds centuries ago.
    The Kuri are directly inspired by early medieval peoples from northeast Europe who live between the Scandinavians and the Slavs.

    Kaska
    The Kaska are a small people living in the forests, marshes, and heaths of the northern coast. Most people of the other lands regard them as savages. Their skin is a pale gray and their gray eyes and bluish black hair give them an unsettling appearance in the eyes of most other people. Kaska rarely mingle or trade with the other people but frequently raid the bordering lands of the Fenhail and Kuri. Few clans allow foreigners into their villages, but very often they are not much more welcoming to most other clans either.
    Kaska villages are relatively small and they build no cities. Their houses are made from wood or roughly cut stones, with low roofs that are often covered by a layer of gras. Kaska homes are cramped and dark to the point of resembling caves, but provide a surprising degree of comfort that many people wouldn't expect to find in the cold and wet landscape they inhabit. The only crop that grows in such an inhospitable place are small and tough potatoes, but the main source of food is a combination of keeping goats and hunting.
    The Kaska are barbarians from the grim cold north. Though I want to go with something more mysteriously creepy than violently insane. They have poor relations with the other people but aren't exactly evil. They are sneaky than brawny.

    Sui
    The Sui are the smallest of the people of Kaendor and are home on a small number of islands off the southern coast. Of all the peoples they stand apart the most, as they clearly possess the blood of spirits of the sea. Sui are of slender and occasionally frail build and rarely grow beyond the average height of the other people. They immediately stand out because of the bluish-gray shade of their skin that is highly sensitive to the sun, but their most remarkable trait is their unmatched ability to dive on a single breath for many minutes. Compared to the other people they appear often as somewhat clumsy climbers but are very skilled swimmers by birth. Sui children usually swim long before they walk. In their tropical homelands Sui usually dress very lightly but only go out in the open with hooded linen cloaks during the height of the day to avoid sunburn.
    The only farming practiced by the Sui is the planting and care of fruit trees around their villages. All their other food they get from the sea.
    I deny nothing: The Sui are Quarians from Mass Effect. That's the whole story.

    Admittedly this isn't very much, but I think it's sufficient to start a campaign. I have some general ideas for their overall style, but those are difficult to write down as specific facts about the peoples. And I think a lot of the finer details will establish themselves during play.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Don't have anything constructive to add, but I love how the whole setting has come together so cohesively. It feels very... layered?
    Very impressed with your work, and if I ever get around to running a campaign, I will definitely come back to this for inspiration.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    I'm sorry if this has already been addressed, but I had an idea about how you might make the forests more interesting.

    When I lived in Malaysia I talked with a man once who would go hunting out in the jungle. He said that before you entered the jungle you had to ask it for permission. When you downed your prey you needed to thank the jungle for allowing you to do so. When you left the jungle again you needed to thank it for keeping you safe.

    It might be interesting if, in your game, this was more of a continuous process. The forest spirits would need to be placated every so often or might assign the party tasks.
    Quote Originally Posted by Flickerdart View Post
    Why be Evil when you can be Lawful?

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    That's a really good suggestion. It doesn't have to be any strict system, but the players' attitude towards the wilderness and consideration of its spirits can be taken into account when deciding how the environment reacts to their actions. The backlash for failed rolls can be made more agressive and painful for characters who don't show respect and caution for the wilderness.
    That fits very well with the Scarcity of Understanding, as an overall theme of people setting off dangerous events out of ignorance and lack of desire to reconsider their beliefs.

    Hard for me to judge the depth of the material I've written down here so far. To me, it all looks very fragmented and incoherent and not well describing the ideas I have. But these are ideas I've tinkered with, thrown out, and reconsidered several times over the past years, and the stuff that's left now is the best pieces in their latest revisions. Hearing that it seems to make sense and comes across as highly evocative is really appreciated.

    I just got the micro campaign setting Cinderheim, and I am really quite fascinated by the way it presents information. It's a setting presented almost in bullet points and it works quite well in giving you clear impressions of how things look and feel, and what you need to know to use them in a campaign. I want to try out describing one region, its people, and some prominent NPCs that way and see how that goes.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Super nerdy stuff, completely irrelevant to the setting. But I know a bit about astronomy and I did the calculations, so here are the numbers.

    Spoiler: Accurate Astronomy
    Show

    I started with two assumptions:
    The star is a K-type orange dwarf star with 80% the mass of the Sun.
    The planet is the same size as Earth.
    The moon is a gas dwarf planet with 200% the mass of Earth.

    At a distance equal to 80% from the Earth to the Sun, the smaller star would appear at 84% the area in the sky of the Sun. We also get a year of 292 days.
    The effects on the climate actually depend on the atmosphere of the planet, and the radiation from the star depends on the magnetic field of the planet much more than the amount of radiation from the star. So I ignored this and just assume that the planet has just the right amount of greenhouse gases and a magnetic field to make conditions on its surface equal to those on Earth. Regarding the brightness of daylight, the human eye adjust very accurately for different conditions, which has the side effect of making us almost completely oblivious to different levels of brightness. A full moon on a clear night seems really bright, but a noon sun on a clear day is 400,000 times brighter. A cloud in front of the sun can make the amount of light drop by factors of hundreds or even thousands, which we barely see because the eye and brain automatically adjust. Because of that, the sun and daylight on Kaendor looks just the same to the people as to humans on Earth.

    The gas dwarf however is much more bigger than the Moon, covering up an area in the sky 72 times bigger (and roughly 100 times larger than the star). That's about the size of a fist at arm's length. (Shorter arms mean proportionally smaller hands.) Reflection should be much better than of the Moon, which combined with the larger size means a lot more light. But again, eyes adjusting to light conditions cancel that out.
    I put the gas dwarf as close as possible without the planet stopping to rotate because of tidal locking, which results in a length of a month of 16 days. That is 18 months per year, but every fourth year is a leap year with only 17 months.

    When total solar eclipses happen, they can last for half an hour.

    Even though eyes are well adapted to adjust to different light conditions, almost all land is covered by large trees, which makes most people unused to standing in direct sunlight. Work in the fields stops over noon and farmers are easily recognized by large straw hats that are worn deep into the face. Ports and market places are always constructed with lots of shade, but siesta times are part of the culture everywhere, even in colder regions.
    Being out at sea is even worse. Sailors wear light and loose clothing and often turbans with shawls, but even so they can often be pointed out by their darker skin. The glaring sun is as much a source of missery for passengers as sea sickness.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    I have a question about your world. You mentioned that the main gods can be depicted in different forms. Is there some common theme or symbol that will allow people to tell who they are? I'm thinking about something like how depictions of Catholic Saints can be quite different from each other, but they'll be holding an item, or something of that nature, which makes their identity clear.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    That's a really good suggestion. It doesn't have to be any strict system, but the players' attitude towards the wilderness and consideration of its spirits can be taken into account when deciding how the environment reacts to their actions. The backlash for failed rolls can be made more agressive and painful for characters who don't show respect and caution for the wilderness.
    That fits very well with the Scarcity of Understanding, as an overall theme of people setting off dangerous events out of ignorance and lack of desire to reconsider their beliefs.
    You could also have the spirits be protective of certain creatures or plants. Maybe the party is in an area where only those sorts of things are. They have to decide between eating and annoying the spirits, or hoping they can hold out long enough to get to some other supply of food. You could also go the Greek tragedy route and have spirit number one trick the party into harming something special to spirit number two.
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    I have four major religions in mind, which I have not worked out much yet.

    The cult of the Three Keepers always depicts its gods as a group, with one of them having symbols of a goatherd, one with grain or farming tools, and for the third probably something with a fireplace or just flames. But since they are representative of the core values of society, they are always shown as people.

    For the cult of the moon it seems appropriate to never depict it as a person. I think a light blue circle should do fine.

    Not so sure about the cult of the sea. I favor the sea as an almost abstract force instead of an individual being. Not sure how to represent it in imagery.

    The fourth religion is more of a meditative philosophical school that a cult of worship. I think they should be represented as an abstract symbol. I don't have anything in mind yet.

    The Three Keepers are probably the easiest to develop further. It's a religion centered around farming life. But I do want to make it something that is interesting and has some depth to it. With the Moon cult and the meditating monks I'll have to find some ways to clearly differentiate them. So far my ideas are that the monks are about inner peace and harmonious communal relationships, while the Moon cult is about opening the mind to the mysteries of the greater universe. Monks are interested in making happy communities, and the moon priests are exploring personal mysticism.
    The Sea cult is the most difficult, as I want to make the sea into something that is to be simultaneously loved and feared. A generous provider who also is a massive force of blind destruction.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post

    Not so sure about the cult of the sea. I favor the sea as an almost abstract force instead of an individual being. Not sure how to represent it in imagery.
    Maybe you don't represent the sea in imagery. Make it a religion of oral traditions and secret ceremonies. Something ancient and poorly understood, separate but deeply linked with regular life, known to few and shared with fewer.
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    My intention is to make it a major religion of sailors and port cities, with large public rituals. Though I think various small regional mystery cults are also very fitting for the setting.
    Perhaps I have the sea god represented as some giant sea monster. That's not uncommon in ancient religions.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    I was doing some testing with a practical short form of presentation for my information and the result looks like this.

    Fenhail
    Appearance: Medium height and build. Tanned skin and dark brown to black hair.
    Clothing: Linen, wool, and leather died in shades of brown, green, and red. Tunics, trousers, and skirts with simple, practical cuts.
    Society: Communities are governed by councils of elders from the all the villages. Farming consists of growing barley and cave mushrooms and keeping goats and tauns, with additional food comming from fishing and hunting and harvesting cave honey from giant bees.
    Settlements: Villages consists of large wooden farmhouses often constructed partially or fully on posts over water, protected by simple wooden pallisades. Usually located on river banks or lake shores, on small islands, or on top of natural cliffs.
    Religion: Worship of the spirits of the lakes and rivers outside the villages, rites performed by priests of the Keepers.

    Kuri
    Appearance: Tall and slender build, pale white skin and light gray to blond hair.
    Clothing: Wool tunics, trousers, skirts, and cloaks died blue, gray, or reddish brown. Square topped woolen caps, long scarves, and fur anoraks for winter.
    Society: Villages are governed by an elected headsman, castles by a noble family. Main crops are barley and potatoes with main food sources being fishing and hunting. Dried salted fish is produced in huge numbers for winter storage and being sold to visiting sailors. They highly value manners and politeness but don't usually seek talk with strangers.
    Settlements: Villages consists of log houses next to rivers and lakes. Nobles live in ancient but well maintained castles of white stone of unknown origin.
    Religion: Worship of the spirits of the wind, mountains, and lakes, rites performed by family heads or village headsmen. Occassional small informal shrines of the Moon Cult.
    This is really very short. But I also feel like it says everything there is to say and it's very easy to look up quickly and get all the relevant facts when you want to check them later during play.
    I've seen setting books spend easily twenty or thirty times as many words on describing a culture, but do they really contain any more information that is relevant in the game? These are just quick draws and I think good descriptions should include one or two distinguishing quirks that stand out. But that's putting more thought into the culture, not creating a greater volume of text.
    What do you think about this scope and density of information? It's certainly useful for me to remember all my ideas during play. But I also think it makes each described element much more convenient to be lifted out or used as the whole package by other GMs who would want to use it. If you were to run a campaign in the setting as written, I don't think you would need any greater degree of detail or have any use for it.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Just wanting to share a new bunch of reference pictures, to give you more of an impression of how I see the world.

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    Only tangentially related, I realized that I am a huge fan of both masks and lamps in fantasy art. Not only are they something that you see used terribly often, there's also an interesting contrast between them. One reveals, the other conceals. This just asks to be turned into some kind of overarching symbolism. Especially when knowledge and understanding are already strong thematic elements.

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    biggrin Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    The Mundanity of Settled Lands

    A good setting should be easily accessible to new players and I also have the additional goal of making the supernatural things in the wilderness feel really strange and alien. I think for both these ends it makes sense to make life in the settled lands actually rather mundane and familiar. I always have this love for Morrowind and Planescape and have heard great things about Tekumel and Glorantha. But I think it might not be a good idea to deliberately try to make the everyday life of the common cultures particularly weird and different. Players should immediately have a decent general idea of what is what inside the settled lands, and should be able to realize that the stuff they encounter in the wilderness is different.

    At the current, loosely defined state of the cultures, there isn't actually that much strange or suprising about them. People have funny looking horses and funny looking pigs, and in addition to barley and rice fields they also tend to mushroom caves and honey caves. Villages have a temple with a priest who is praying to the spirits for good weather and protection from natural disasters. As ordinary life for people is, there isn't anything overly surprising or mind bending for players about it.

    With government, a regular feudal system with a hierarchy of lords at different levels doesn'r seem like a good fit. But the system of Greek city states governed either by an assembly of wealthy men or a minor king is also nothig new to most people that would require any kind of additional explaination. Either there is a lord and the lord's men maintain the peace, or the assembly appointed a constable who commands a militia that maintains the peace.
    And you might have the local priest who has the influence to get the people revolt against particularly unpopular orders by the rulers.

    Having slightly exotic agriculture through the simple addition of some local color seems sufficient for me. But in regard to social order, I feel things are looking a bit boring. I think about making a distinction between free subsistence farmers and rich slave owners who are living in villas/plantations. I think it might surprise players at first to see that a large farm has a family of 10, 20 servants, and 40 slaves, as it's not something you would expect in Ye Olde Medieval England. But it also shouldn't lead to any amount of confusion or disruption. Players should take this in stride without flinching. But while this seems like a nice addition to Murya an Kuri culture, I don't think I want to make it universal. It doesn't feel quite right for my vision of the Fenhail and Yao. But making them egalitarian farmer societies would be dull. There needs to be some extra spice there.

    Another thing I am reconsidering is people's view of the world and their place inside it. I had the idea of a world in which humanoid mortals are explicitly not the masters of the world or at the top of the food chain. I like the idea of a setting in which people are humbled in their small role in the greater picture of things. But now I think, even when the world is made to work on this assumption, and a great number of fantasy worlds are really noy, this doesn't mean that the people inhabiting them also see it that way. The cliche of the magical natives who live in harmony with nature is a racist carricature of other cultures in it's own way, even if it's not used to be deregatory. (It still paints them as primitive, even if it's admired.) And if you want to see characters humbled, it's pride that comes before the fall. Pride and the refusal to acknowlege one's lack of real understanding are meant to be major themes of the setting. This probably works much better when the world is full of people who ignorantly believe themselves to have much more power and control over nature than they do. All societies of Kaendor were founded by people who had suffered the destructive capabilities of nature and managed to find shelter from its forces in a new home. And they established traditions and customs to not go outside the safe lands and into the wilderness. Later generations would mostly stick to those customs, but eventually lots of people would no longer believe the strange mysteries and dangers of the wilds. All the life they know is inside the settled lands, where they indeed seem to be masters over everything and barely anything really bad ever comes from the wilds. But this is because of the priests' continuous work to keep the supernatural away with the help of the gods of the land. This can be an interesting division of society between traditionalists who merely observe the old customs, and faithful who see the rituals and taboos as necessary for survivial. Which also could lead to interesting situations because traditionalists would be more relaxed and flexible about the letter of inconvenient laws, while faithful would likely be more nitpicky and insistent. Though of course, not every custom might turn out to be actually necessary or even relevant for survival. In the end, the main theme is not being too sure of what you think you know, so both sides can be wrong at different times, or at the same time, and players always have to investigate more themselves before they can trust their own judgement.

    Reminds me of one of my favorite minor characters in Mass Effect, who is the only leader pushing for peace but also the most infuriating conservative who absolutely loathes your party members faction. When you want to convince your friends of their mistake, your only supporter is the biggest pain in the ass who would gladly stab you in the back.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post

    Only tangentially related, I realized that I am a huge fan of both masks and lamps in fantasy art. Not only are they something that you see used terribly often, there's also an interesting contrast between them. One reveals, the other conceals. This just asks to be turned into some kind of overarching symbolism. Especially when knowledge and understanding are already strong thematic elements.
    Could someone who angered the spirits in someway try to escape their wrath by wearing a mask? It protects them from supernatural harm, but also singles them out as a cursed person, someone who breaks the rules and should be avoided by all good members of society.

    This would dilute the powers of the spirits, so maybe it would only work on certain ones or be of limited utility.
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Wearing ritual masks outside of ritual situations would certainly look very shifty to other people.
    For high ranking priests or known sorcerers of high station it might be socially acceptible. But it would still add to make people feel uneasy around them. It's a visible symbol of them being removed from the ordinary realm and more closer to the supernatural.

    Yet at the same time, taking off a mask makes it harder for spirits to track you. If proper masks with real power are not easy to come by, characters might be reluctant to put them on because a spirit is looking for them. And if they switch to a new mask, friendly spirits would not recognize them.

    I also like the idea of enchanted masks that make it impossible for other people to identify the wearer by any other means than recognizing the face.

    And spontaneously I get the idea of masks being in some contexts an accepted way of getting around certain social rules that nobody can socially afford to ignore. If someone is wearing the right mask for the right occasion, different traditional customs have to be obeyed. For example to temporarily protect someone who is asking for a death sentence to be repealed. Or allow someone to do things that are ordinarily a previlege to an exclusive group, but it's better for society if occasional exceptions are being made. Carnival has its origin in such a Roman tradition, though I don't know if masks and costumes were added later.

    The ability to switch identity in the eyes of law, or to the perception of spirits certainly has a lot of far reaching potential. It shouldn't be too difficult to make masks a major motif.
    Not quite sure what to do with lamps, but the ability to reveal hidden spirits and keep them away is also a good start. The main reason I want them is actually my love for neo-noir imagery. Stained glass lamps are just as good as neon lights, and completely bronze age fantasy compatible. Giving them an in-universe cultural role is just a nice bonus, but I love the contrast they create with masks.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Not quite sure what to do with lamps, but the ability to reveal hidden spirits and keep them away is also a good start. The main reason I want them is actually my love for neo-noir imagery. Stained glass lamps are just as good as neon lights, and completely bronze age fantasy compatible. Giving them an in-universe cultural role is just a nice bonus, but I love the contrast they create with masks.
    Perhaps certain everyday tasks can only be accomplished at night when some of the spirits are "sleeping" and others are now "awake." For instance say there's a spirit that hates when charms or wards are renewed. It will attack anyone who attempts to do so. But this spirit goes dormant at night, allowing people to work by lamplight at the necessary rituals.
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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Not much new this week, though I have been thinking a lot about spirits. Making the supernatural beings of the wilds enigmatic is one thing, but I think they need to be a lot more than just unexplained and random. The deeper motives that drive spirits to do the things they do can be ultimately incomprehensible and make no sense to mortals, but there need to be general patterns and consistencies in their short term behavior. And with ecology being a theme, I think they can't just exist in a vacuum in isolation from each other, but all need to be connected in various ways. Beneficial relationships and hostilities, and things like that.

    So far, the extend of any system I have is very rudimentary:
    The Spirits of Nature are the spirits of forests, mountains, swamps, rivers, and lakes. They control the weather, the environment, and the animals of the wilderness. The Spirits of Beneath and Beyond are not native to these environments and are primarily associated with places deep beneath the surface or at the bottom of the sea, but also with other worlds far out in the night sky. Their world is of fire and darkness and they are so alien that they never visit in corporeal forms, if they even have such a thing in their own realms.

    My concept for the Spirits of Beneath and Beyond (I love that term, very catchy) is based on the Quori of Eberron and the Daedra from The Elder Scrolls, with some influence from the demons of Dragon Age. When they are encountered it's either in the form of possession or as an elusive malevolent presence haunting places corrupted by blight. I intend to keep them very rare and the concept already feels prett complete to me.

    It's the nature spirits that still elude me. There are a number of creatures from myth and fantasy that I really like, and which I am all considering of using in some way.

    Long, giant flying divine serpents who control the weather from China.
    Treants, huge ancient trees that think and walk.
    Nymphs, as minor place deities from Greece.
    Naga, half-human snakes native to rivers from India.
    Shie, immortal eldritch elves from Ireland.
    Oni, magical ogres from Japan.
    Aboleths, ancient giant intelligent telepathic fish from Dungeons & Dragons.
    Harpies, cannibalistic bird women from Greece.
    Deep Ones, fish men created by Lovecraft. (kuo-toa, murlocs).
    Goblins/Gnomes, as odd little men living underground.
    Spriggan, a maybe-humanoid, maybe-plant looking protector of forests from Ireland.

    I don't intend to use them straight out of a monster manual. Most of them are actually pretty generic monsters by now, while everything else about the setting is designed to be very much nonstandard, or at least fitting into a small niche occupied by Morrowind, Tekumel, and Dark Sun. I actually like their traditionally established looks and I think it's not a bad thing if they remain easilynrecognizable archetypes. But I don't want them to be just the generic thing, but creatures that feel like they are products of the setting and deeply interconnected with it.

    Long, treants, and nymphs are the most godlike, and I feel they are the easiest to adapt and integrate into the world. The only real adjustment is that they are seen by mortals and other spirits as actual gods, can control the environment and command its creatures, and are almost immortal. The bodies of nymphs are almost illusory manifestations of spirits of the land and can easily be replaced if destroyed, and long and treants are so big and powerful that they can't be harmed by weapons or the magic powers of priests or sorcerers. (Though elaborate rituals with long preparations might.)

    Right on the other end, fish men and harpies are also pretty simple. Animal people who are reclusive and generally hostile, with basic intelligence but a fierce savagery. They are strange and distant because they have intelligence but are also wild predators who consider people edible. Not necessarily attack on sight to the death, but when they are hungry and it looks like an essy fight, they see no reason not to. Interacting with them requires appearing not like an easy lunch. They aren't mad, it's just what they do. I find that alien enough.

    The difficult ones are those in the middle. Particularly naga, sidhe, and oni. For goblin-gnomes i have a pretty good idea what to do with them, and aboleths are already pretty alien. I intent to remove the evil slave master aspect and just make them giant ancient fish with incredibly long memories who consider mortals as nothing more than primitive critters. That's a decent weird spirit already.
    But naga, sidhe, and oni are all extremely human-like and basically people with magic powers. The generic image that comes to mind is humanoids with more strength and intelligence who are perhaps somewhat excentric but more or less think like people. They are people, and I think that's not a good fit for the serting.
    Oni I can imagine as much more ogre than demon, with human intelligence and only very minor magic powers. I kind of like the idea of oni living as hermits near a village or being elite bodyguards for sorcerers. Making them very human but emotionally removed and capable of terrifying violence strikes me as actually quite interesting. It's a rare case of the wilds entering the society of mortals, which works more or less well, but they are still baffling and inscuitable to most people. Even at its most human-like, the wilds are still odd and unsettling.
    But for naga and sidhe I really need more. These have to be alien and scary. I am toying with the idea of making them both manifestations of insanity. With sidhe being extremely volatile and erratic and lacking concern for the wellbeing of mortals, and naga perhaps being pure emotionless cold cruelty. But this does feel somewhat at odds with my wish to give the setting an overall sense of real dignity. There are plenty og extremely creative settings being written on the internet now and over the past years, but a very large portion of them is inherently and deliberately silly. The are very serious artistic works with very deep thought put into them, but they embrace silly nonsense as a virtue. That doesn't work for me. It's not my style. Crazy humans is not enough to give the sidhe an alien strangeness and subtle dangerousness that they would need for this setting.

    Being ultimately civilized people, the sidhe and naga also need to have some form of civilization. The naga I can place far away in the south, but sidhe would be located more close to home. Giving them a culture without adding new cities like those of mortals is quite challenging.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Sidhe


    They look like us, but they are not us.

    They look like people, and they talk like people. But they don’t think like people, and they don’t feel like people.

    They are unable to feel compassion for mortals, and they are selfish beings, rarely thinking of anyone else. They are volatile and erratic, but not easily harmed, and strike out at each other without thought. When they get agitated, things get broken. And they get agitated easily.

    They are always dangerous to be around, even when they like you. They are proud and easy to anger, but you must never go with them.

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    Default Re: Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Sidhe


    They look like us, but they are not us.

    They look like people, and they talk like people. But they don’t think like people, and they don’t feel like people.

    They are unable to feel compassion for mortals, and they are selfish beings, rarely thinking of anyone else. They are volatile and erratic, but not easily harmed, and strike out at each other without thought. When they get agitated, things get broken. And they get agitated easily.

    They are always dangerous to be around, even when they like you. They are proud and easy to anger, but you must never go with them.
    Ooh, that's evocative. And it reminds me of another game with a large helping of The Other: SJGames's In Nomine, about angels & demons on contemporary earth.
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    They are very much like us.

    Some seek to do good, others corrupt and destroy.

    Some set out to do one thing, but accomplish another.

    Some are fiercely devoted to their work.

    Some doubt that they really make a difference.

    And some wonder, in the small hours of the night, if they picked the right side.

    They have great powers for good and evil, but they are merely pawns of greater powers still.

    They are very much like us.
    You've captured that Otherness almost perfectly.

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