Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

[Yora]

I have started preparations on a new fantasy campaign that's probably still a good way off, and that of course means putting together a new setting for it. This one is going to make use of many of my favorite themes and will include various elements that I had created for previous campaigns but that ended up not getting any actual use. However, this time I want to make something different, designed for a somewhat different type of campaign. In the past I have worked on settings build around barbarian tribes and designed for wilderness expedition campaigns. And I have to admit that this approach never produced a result that really satisfied me as a designer. This new setting is meant for campaigns about uncovering the burried supernatural secrets of really big ancient ruins. Not quite in the style of oldschool dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls with detailed mapping and resource management, but something more investigative in nature with aspects of seeking knowledge about the mysteries of the cosmos.

Inspirations and Influences

• The Hellenistic Kingdoms: This is one of the strangest periods in European history that is pretty much completely ignored in western education, because most of it actually takes place in Asia and Africa. While he probably doesn't come up in school history either, most people with passing interest in the field have at least heard of Alexander the Great, who managed to start with just the soldiers of a small Greek kingdom and ended up conquering the entire Persian Empire during his 20s. (Of which most people also know nothing, even though it was by far the biggest empire the world had ever seen by that point and later was the arch rivals of the Romans.) But what most people generally don't know is that this campaign went all the way to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that after Alexander's very early death his generals formed their own kingdoms out of the Persian Empire and had some huge wars with each other. The most fascinating part of this is that Greek aristocrats ended up ruling over Iranians, Arab and Turkic peoples, amd Egyptians. The only one of these Greek aristocrats who is well known is Kleopatra, who was totally Greek with a totally Greek name. The palaces of these Hellenistic Kingdoms were blends of Greek and local culture and I think it's the perfect base to create a setting that is simultaneously foreign and exotic but also strangely familiar. And cultures being displaced and ending up integrating in completely different places also lines up nicely with some of the major themes I want to build into the setting.
• Hyperborea: Hyperborea is the setting of several stories by Clark Ashton Smith, who was active in the same circles as Robert Howard and Lovecraft but even more exotic and weird. I always envisoned it as somewhat ancient and west-Asian in style and the stories all revolve around encountering strange supernatural things in the ruins of even older ages. Just my cup of tea.
• Dark Sun: In many ways this setting is just like Dark Sun, just not set in a desert but on a coast bordered by endless forest that constantly threatens to swallow the city states, many of which are ruled by immortals and sorcerers. And the wildlife is just as exotic and alien.
• Dark Souls: Dark Souls has always affected and inspired me greatly, but with this setting I want to make this influence much more specific than I ever did before. This world is home to numerous city states that are geographically isolated from each other and end up getting cut off, falling into ruin, and at some point resettled again every couple of hundred years. And it's not just that their economy collapses, but that their entire society is erroded away by supernatural forces coming from the unknown lands beyond the coast. Or out of the sea, below the earth, or beyond the stars. These fallen cities are at the center of the concept and the primary focus of the campaign.
• The Witcher and Legacy of Kain: While the environment and aesthetics are completely different, these two series just feels like the perfect reference for the overall tone and the way characters think and act. At least in the places that are experiencing the approaching collapse of their city states, and among the adventurers, priests, and sorcerers that make up the tiny transient populations of the ruins.
• Stalker and Metro: Again huge stylistic mismatch, but I really love the way these games approach ruined wastelands with corrupted laws of nature. I find them to be great references for ruins and the anomalies are the template for the Blight caused by the overuse of sorcery.
• Against the Wicked City, Hill Cantons, and Monsters and Manuals: These are all amazing sources for campaigns in exotic, wondrous, and highly magical settings. They all directly inspired me to do something similar.

The Basics
I guess this setting falls very much under what one would call High Concept. When I was at university, I became fascinated with two conflicting concepts that advanced civilizations always seem to take for granted. Humans are superior beings and nature is better than civilization. Both are in a way First World Prolems by people who don't know anything about life in the wilderness. When wr think we are visiting naturr, we are almost always in places that have been cleared of all threats centuries ago and only a few hours away from nice warm and dry houses, guaranteed sources of available food, and highly sophisticated medical aid. And I became fascinated by the idea of fantasy worlds where this is explicitly not the case and people know it. The two core ideas are "Nature is heartless and terrifying" and "Humans are not at the top of the food chain". Everything else builds on these ideas.
To make the world coherent and maintain consistency with all the details, there are a handful of primary rules that give the world its specific identity.

1. The world is ruled by spirits. Spirits control the weather, the growth of plants, the populations of animals, and natural disasters.
2. Spirits don't care about people: They don't perceive them as any different from all the other animals and don't consider their individual needs and wishes. They don't intend to cause them harm, but the wellbeing of people is of no concern to them.
3. Agriculture and cities can only exist under the protection of the god of the land: In rare cases a powerful spirit take notice of mortals and can be persuaded to a pact that provides stable weather and safety from disasters in exchange for worship and offerings. Since these domains are limited, kingdoms can never grow beyond city states.
4. Such pacts never last: Eventually there always comes a time when the people fail to perform the proper rites and offerings or the spirit loses the ability or the will to maintain stability throughout their domain. When this happens harvests start to fail and natural disasters become more frequent until eventually farming becomes impossible, the surviving people flee, and the cities fall into ruin.
5. Magic is limited to summoning, divination, and mind reading: Mortal Magic is entirely mental. Even the summoning of spirits relies primarily on telepathic communication. Spirits also have these powers, as well as the ability to guide the forces of nature, which they might be persuaded to use to the benefit of the summoner. There are also many potions made from various natural substances with amazing properties. The only truly magic objects are the remains of spirits that still contain some of their powers.
6. Iron and salt block spirits and magic.
7. The Primordial Chaos can reshape nature: While spirits of nature only have control over nature, there are also Spirits Not Of Nature whose powers work differently and can produce results that should be impossible. Contacting these beings and using their power to change the environment or creatures is called Sorcery.
8. Sorcery is always corrupting: While sorcery appears to be in theory limitless, neither sorcerers nor the spirits of below and beneath have a true understanding of nature the way that nature spirits do. Whenever they use sorcerous powers to alter things, they also cause severe damage that might not even be immediately apparent. The use of sorcery causes sickness, madness, and mutations in all and everything touched by it. Eventually it covers the land in Blight and can ultimately turn creatures into the undead. Sorcery is always feared, but there are enough people who think it a danger that can be controlled and whose benefits are worth the price that comes with them.
9. The source of all troubles are greed, hatred, and pride: Sometimes spirits simply lose the ability to protect prople from the wild forces of nature. But even then everything is made much worse by people acting on these flaws that are the doom of all mortal existence.

[brian 333]

Looks interesting.

How would Timor i Lang fit in this setting?

[Yora]

Not much, I think. He was a steppe nomad and I want to go with a naval culture. He also was about bringing territory together, while I am more interesting in separation.

[Mechalich]

[*]Agriculture and cities can only exist under the protection of the god of the land: In rare cases a powerful spirit take notice of mortals and can be persuaded to a pact that provides stable weather and safety from disasters in exchange for worship and offerings. Since these domains are limited, kingdoms can never grow beyond city states.[*]Such pacts never last: Eventually there always comes a time when the people fail to perform the proper rites and offerings or the spirit loses the ability or the will to maintain stability throughout their domain. When this happens harvests start to fail and natural disasters become more frequent until eventually farming becomes impossible, the surviving people flee, and the cities fall into ruin.

This seems tricky. Natural conditions sufficiently stable for sustained agriculture are prevalent across much of earth's tropical and temperate zones, if they weren't plants couldn't grow properly. While pre-industrial strains of crop plants were significantly less functional than modern ones and therefore much more vulnerable to crop failure, agriculture remained viable even in highly marginal areas, and even without agriculture pastoralist and hunter-gatherer populations (not to mention migratory animals) depend upon consistent cycles to survive.

I think you want to develop a different mechanism to mediate this effect. Perhaps something to do with soil degradation - most high-productivity agricultural practices (as opposed to low-level integrated agriculture at the subsistence level) used by societies induce significant soil degradation over time, something that even directly impacted the Hellenistic Kingdoms, especially in North Africa and parts of the Levant. Loss of soil productivity and the degradation of soil-based ecosystems seems like the kind of thing that would anger the land spirits and require propitiation to sustain over the long term.

It would also make sense that as localized strain increased or more soil is lost the land god is unable to hold back the influence of spirits related to degradation and pollution (salt, refuse, heavy metals such as lead, etc.) and therefore cities eventually fall no matter how much blood and treasure they heap upon the land. This ties in to having iron and salt block spirits and magic - since it means any city-state is likely to be dumping considerable quantities of both (and the by-products of their production, such as sulfur) onto their land, with the inherent problems that result.

The two core ideas are "Nature is heartless and terrifying" and "Humans are not at the top of the food chain". Everything else builds on these ideas.

While the former of these two ideas is relatively easy to achieve the latter is more difficult. Unless your spirits are part of the food chain, humans remain at the top. The historical reality is that humans - and possibly even their evolutionary forebears - have ruthlessly slaughtered any and all animals capable of threatening them regardless of size and forced them into marginal refugia in short order. Making them bigger generally doesn't help that much either, it sure didn't help Pleistocene megafauna. Generally in order to make this sort of thing work you have to convert animals into monsters by either providing them with advanced intelligence or giving them supernatural abilities.

[Yora]

For a naturalistic setting this is all true. But the aim here is to go for an explicitly supernatural ecosystem. The weather does whatever the spirits right now want it to do and plants grow when and how much they want them to grow. And this ecology includes things like dragons, manticores, basilisks, and hydras.
The intent is to make a really mythic setting that actually opperates on the believes of ancient peoples. Magic isn't tacked on. It's how the entire environnment works.

[Saintheart]

First thing I can think of are the limits that iron and salt impose on spirits and magic. These could be very interesting controls on the spirits otherwise making the realm their playground. Do iron and salt block magical effects, or do they block just the causes of natural effects? If they block a spirit and all the shenanigans that spirit can do to the weather in a given area, for example, then the City of Ironwall is going to be the go-to place for agriculture in the world.

Depending on how effective it is, salt becomes one of the most valuable things in the world, since it allows a great degree of regularity to agriculture or even to block out the wrath of the spirits depending on how far its effects travel. Can the farmer who salt-bags his garden raise a middle finger to the spirits who would otherwise drown his onions in a rainstorm?

Similar things can be said about iron. Armour itself now protects against physical and mental threats. Magneto's trick works in a literal sense - an iron helmet stops you from reading his mind, or presumably divining the future as it relates to him.

[Yora]

And now I realized that this idea made a lot more sense when I was working on a Bronze Age setting where there is no iron armor and very few iron weapons.
The idea was that iron chains supress the powers of witches and sorcerers and that iron talismans keep spirits away. But the consequence is that they can't wear armor and that spirits won't be touching any warrior. That's not at all what I intend. Maybe replacing iron with silver would work as an alternative.

Blocking spirits out entirely from your lands with huge circles of salt might probably work. Then your land would be safe from disasters, but it also would be dead. Spirits don't mess with natural forces, they are the natural forces.

I think salt is being used to temporarily discourage spirits from approaching a small area, like a house or a room. Which is being done when you think a spirit is specifically targeting you. It buys you more time, but doesn't solve the problem.
Silver talismans make you uncomfortable for spirits to approach, so you have better odds of not getting bothered by them. But it doesn't force them to stay away nor completely negates their telepathic powers. If for some reason they become angry with you specifically, they still can attack. It just makes it less likely to get randomly hurt by them. But silver is also an important component in many more advanced magical defences against spirits that witches and sorcerers can create.
And silver chains around the neck prevent them from using telepathic powers or using powers of divination.

[Saintheart]

Blocking spirits out entirely from your lands with huge circles of salt might probably work. Then your land would be safe from disasters, but it also would be dead. Spirits don't mess with natural forces, they are the natural forces.

Then assuming you can get around the problem of fire - if fire still works in a salt-circled area - every major military installation or crucial infrastructure not related to agriculture is surrounded by salt. A castle that can't be fogged in, rained on, snowed on, or have its well poisoned by magical means is a rather good set of fortifications to be holding, and a fantastic strongpoint for the hapless villagers being pursued by an irritated spirit with a thunderstorm. Build a castle, run a line of salt around it, and hey presto, no earthquake can knock it down, no storm can touch it, not even a tornado can come within its boundaries.

Same goes for roads and bridges - all are lined with salt. Now your roads can't be washed out, your bridges can't collapse from weather or flooding, and they'll last forever since they're physically or at least geologically inert because no spirit can work its natural forces on the cobblestones.

[Yora]

You are making this a lot more complicated than I meant to.
But good to have these questions asked now before I create hard to solve contradictions halfway through the campaign.

So let's say instead that you don't need spirits to make anything happen, but you really want them to take care of natural processes. They sometimes do things that are really inconvenient or catastrophic for farmers, which you want to limit as much as you can by appeasing the most powerful spirit in the area, but they actually do a lot of the micro-managing of the environment that one is not usually aware of. Which is the reason why sorcery is so destructive. Sorcery is the deliberate attempt to overrule the activities of spirits completely and manage everything yourself, but there are so many unknown details and variables that the spirits normally take care of that the result always comes with a lot of really bad side effects.
Another problem is that a salt circle does not actually force spirits out, but only keeps them from crossing. If you would try to put one around an entire farm or city (assuming you can get that much salt in the first place) you still have to deal with all the spirits that were already inside of it. It's only a practical, and good idea when you have one hostile spirit that is deliberately targeting you. Either put the circle around you to protect yourself, or trap the spirit inside of it so it can't get to anyone outside of it.

[Saintheart]

You are making this a lot more complicated than I meant to.
But good to have these questions asked now before I create hard to solve contradictions halfway through the campaign.

So let's say instead that you don't need spirits to make anything happen, but you really want them to take care of natural processes. They sometimes do things that are really inconvenient or catastrophic for farmers, which you want to limit as much as you can by appeasing the most powerful spirit in the area, but they actually do a lot of the micro-managing of the environment that one is not usually aware of. Which is the reason why sorcery is so destructive. Sorcery is the deliberate attempt to overrule the activities of spirits completely and manage everything yourself, but there are so many unknown details and variables that the spirits normally take care of that the result always comes with a lot of really bad side effects.
Another problem is that a salt circle does not actually force spirits out, but only keeps them from crossing. If you would try to put one around an entire farm or city (assuming you can get that much salt in the first place) you still have to deal with all the spirits that were already inside of it. It's only a practical, and good idea when you have one hostile spirit that is deliberately targeting you. Either put the circle around you to protect yourself, or trap the spirit inside of it so it can't get to anyone outside of it.

Also could function as holding a spirit to ransom. Want to get a spirit to do something for you? Throw a circle of salt around a location and then demand the spirit does stuff for you, or you'll never free it from its place of bondage.

[thorr-kan]

Hey, guys, Yora's back worldbuiding again! Great!

While I don't contribute much, I have enjoyed reading prior threads.

Alexander and his successors are a great inspiration. Their shenanigans across Middle and Far East are the kind of stories that any good fiction editor would throw out as too unlikely. Hours and hours of inspirations.

[Yora]

The big open question I am still very much undecided on is what type of people the players will actually be playing in this world. The campaign will be exploring ruins and partially figuring out their history, but I don't know yet what kind of people living in this world are generally doing such things. Mercenaries looking for riches is right out, that doesn't really line up with the themes I am interested in. I had considered making them lower ranking aristocrats whose heroic traits get them send to find means to defend the city state against various threats that arise, but I also discarded that as being to "flashy" for the intended mood.
Though it is already clear that they will have to have certain qualities. They have to have a knowledge about monsters and magic that goes well beyond that of the common farmers and even average aristocrats. Priests and sorcerers will recognize them as people in the know and not of the superstitious and uneducated masses. They might not all have magic powers or be great sages of the supernatural, but they have a general understanding of what they will encounter in the wilderness and ruins and what they have to expect when interacting with spirits and monsters. This will obviously be less the case in the first adventure, but I think the players should quickly grasp the basics.
Secondly, they have of course to be not afraid to venture beyond th borders of civilization and brave the dangers of the wilds.
And thirdly, they should have a desire to learn about the world beyond their cities which is even much stranger than what common people think it is.

At least one type of character I can see fitting very well, but I don't think all players will be very enthusiastic about, are basically a kind of monks who wish to expand their knowledge of the supernatural world to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the universe. They are treasure hunters in a way, but their treasures are not in gold but occult knowledge.
Dissatisfied aristocrats who want to dedicate their lives to a greater goal instead of managing estates could also work, but that is rather specific and narrow.

But speaking of which: These sages I mentioned might perhaps better be called mystics and philosophers. They are not into cataloging knowledge but pursue a much more personal goal of uncovering the mysteries of the universe.

I guess scoundrels, who have discovered that mystics will reward very handsomely anyone who brings them unknown ancient scrolls or relics with magical powers that have been lost in disasters that brought an end to cities of the past, would also be quite happy to team up with other seekers of knowledge who are already going to the same places. But that would really be background fluff. Players would still be playing for the enjoyment of exploration and the rewards not have any mechanical relevance. I want to run the campaign in Barbarians of Lemuria, which doesn't track wealth anyway.

[brian 333]

You show a preference for monks and mystics, but why not combine them?

Let's assume a guild of sorts which trains teams of explorers. These explorers tithe to support the guild and the guild offers starting points and background information to explorers.

They would offer infdividual instruction for characters in each class, culminating in the assignment of PCs to an Exploration Team of multiple classes, ideally combined to optomize the skills available to the team as a whole. Attrition might result in new teammates becoming available as their original teams lose key members. Successful teams might be given progressively more difficult missions.

One might imagine a PrC, if those are used, which offers bonus knowledge skills without penalizing the current class abilities. This PrC would represent progression in the higher echelons of the guild, and maxing out level progression in the PrC would indicate the achievement of Master status in the guild hierarchy.

[TheStranger]

Like everything else in this setting, it could come back to the spirits. Will recovering relics or knowledge from the ruins let you placate the local spirits to ensure a good harvest? Is there an ongoing effort to discover new city sites or revisit old city sites to see if the spirits are amenable to settlers, or to scout out travel routes where the spirits will allow traders to pass?

Actually, it seems like encounters with spirits would be as important a part of this setting as encounters with monsters or NPCs. Minor spirits in the wilderness could be threats, but could also provide plot hooks or be bargained with for a safe haven. Maybe you bring an offering to the spirit of a fir tree in exchange for a campsite magically hidden under its branches. Maybe the goblins you're pursuing somehow convinced the spirit of a stream to flood after they crossed, washing out the only safe trail. The lore of how to interact with these spirits to stay safe in the wilderness and interact with the spirits in a rational rather than a superstitious way is a big part of what sets the PCs apart, I think.

[Lleban]

Hey Yora I really like what you've done so far but could you describe these spirits of "Not of Nature" and how they're different from nature spirits, I'm a bit confused.

Also early iron age is prob better than bronze in this case because widespread use of bronze tends to mean the presence of well developed reliable long distance trade which might undermine the untamed nature theme you're going for.

[Yora]

Spirits
Spirits come in a great range of different forms. By nature they are immaterial and immortal beings but they are bound to various features in the environment. Every tree and rock has a spirit but these have no awareness of their surroundings and no real ability to react to it. Most spirits people have interactions with belong to larger features like hills, lakes, caves, or particularly huge and ancient trees. These spirits have the ability to manifest in physical forms that appear like living beings, but destroying these bodies does not cause any permanent harm to them. Still above them are spirits of mountains, rivers, or entire valleys. These rarely take physical forms as they perceive the world at a much larger scale and different perspective and normally don't take notice of individual people. These are the spirits that are worshipped as gods by the people who live on the shores of their lakes or in the shadows of their mountains, as they have the ability to rein in the lesser spirits and maintain a stable environment to farm and raise large herds of animals.

The spirits people are almost exclusively dealing with are the spirits of the forest, of mountains, and and of rivers, lakes, and the sea. They are the spirits of nature who are controlling the environment they are sharing with mortals. They are the Spirits of Nature. There are however also spirits that exist in other parts of the universe that are not part of the living environments of plants and animals. They are believed to dwell in places below the earth and beyond the sky. They are Spirits Not of Nature, or the Spirits from Beneath and Beyond. They are not part of the living environment and they know or care little about it. They appear in the natural world only very rarely and it is usually the result of sorcerers having made contact with them. They have no place in the living world and their very presence has a corrupting effect on anything around them. Their minds are even more alien and inscrutable and they are seen as absolutely terrifying beings by most people.
But just like Spirits of Tree, Mountain, and See, they are not inherently evil or seeking to do harm. Some people believe that they can be communicated with and that their powers can be of great value. Spirits of Beneath and Below are often associated with fire and darkness and other people believe that they are not opposites of the natural world but rather an aspect of the greater universe that is not well understood. They regard them as an important part in gaining true understanding of the hidden mysteries of the world. Such groups are normally seen with suspiscion at best and as great threats at worst, so they usually stay out of sight.

Types of spirits:
Treant
Dragon
Kraken
Manticore
Nayad
Dryad
Spriggan
Elementals
Animal Spirits
Wisp

Lesser Spirits
There are also a number of creatures living in the wilds that have magical powers but are not immortal and are bound to a physical body. However, most people treat them as spirits and while they do have some of their vulnerabilities they can ignore many of the means used to keep true spirits at bay.

Giants
Trolls
Naga
Harpies
Fishmen

[Max_Killjoy]

This is related to your "bronze age" thread in the other subforum?

[Max_Killjoy]

Hey Yora I really like what you've done so far but could you describe these spirits of "Not of Nature" and how they're different from nature spirits, I'm a bit confused.

Also early iron age is prob better than bronze in this case because widespread use of bronze tends to mean the presence of well developed reliable long distance trade which might undermine the untamed nature theme you're going for.

Hmmm... If we're looking at a setting where there used to be a more robust interconnectedness, where the city-states and remote shrine/fortress/monasteries used to be more connected, but now things are more isolated, then maybe looking at that early iron age, where bronze objects are treasured, old and new alike, and any ruined bronze object is carefully recycled, because this new iron stuff is cheap but kinda inferior.

[Dusk Raven]

[*]The source of all troubles are greed, hatred, and pride: Sometimes spirits simply lose the ability to protect prople from the wild forces of nature. But even then everything is made much worse by people acting on these flaws that are the doom of all mortal existence.[/LIST]

I have to say, I find the implications of this particular point interesting. The people of this world live in a setting where natural is a powerful and terrifying force, where impersonal spirits can literally make or break civilization... yet for them, the greatest evil comes from very personal, human sources. It's as though they expect nature to be very alien and unforgiving, and don't blame them for it, yet humans have the power to make good or bad choices - and are judged harshly for the latter. If the spirits turn on a city, it's not the spirits who are blamed, but the humans whose laziness and lack of respect caused the spirits to withdraw their favor. Despite the fact that the Spirits of Nature are alien and indifferent, they are very predictable in some ways - what are they supposed to do when humans don't show them the proper respect? It's not like they're running charities!

Anyway, you were wondering what kinds of characters players would want to play in this setting. I can say what speaks to me in this setting - a character who seeks out and forms bonds with spirits. I assume spirits can form pacts with individuals just as they can with domains or cities, so perhaps some people go out to commune with spirits, believing the best way to exist is to live fully in the company of nature spirits rather than in a transient civilization that ultimately depends on spirits to exist anyway. The shaman or druid archetype, I feel, would work well in this setting - or, alternatively, warriors who seek pacts with spirits not to live in the wilderness, but to protect them in battle against any sort of foe.

(As someone with a very strong love of animism and related concepts, a world controlled by spirits very much appeals to me)

Hmmm... If we're looking at a setting where there used to be a more robust interconnectedness, where the city-states and remote shrine/fortress/monasteries used to be more connected, but now things are more isolated, then maybe looking at that early iron age, where bronze objects are treasured, old and new alike, and any ruined bronze object is carefully recycled, because this new iron stuff is cheap but kinda inferior.

On top of that, perhaps bronze weapons can be enchanted, whereas iron is (for better and for worse) magically dead.

[Yora]

This is related to your "bronze age" thread in the other subforum?

Yes, that was browsing for additional ideas to consider.

Hmmm... If we're looking at a setting where there used to be a more robust interconnectedness, where the city-states and remote shrine/fortress/monasteries used to be more connected, but now things are more isolated, then maybe looking at that early iron age, where bronze objects are treasured, old and new alike, and any ruined bronze object is carefully recycled, because this new iron stuff is cheap but kinda inferior.

I have this idea of making it seem like the world is in a repeating cycle with people having no real sense that things were different in the past or that there will be advances and improvements in the future. I think that's quite significant for the overall theme that mortals are not the center of everything.

I have to say, I find the implications of this particular point interesting. The people of this world live in a setting where natural is a powerful and terrifying force, where impersonal spirits can literally make or break civilization... yet for them, the greatest evil comes from very personal, human sources. It's as though they expect nature to be very alien and unforgiving, and don't blame them for it, yet humans have the power to make good or bad choices - and are judged harshly for the latter. If the spirits turn on a city, it's not the spirits who are blamed, but the humans whose laziness and lack of respect caused the spirits to withdraw their favor. Despite the fact that the Spirits of Nature are alien and indifferent, they are very predictable in some ways - what are they supposed to do when humans don't show them the proper respect? It's not like they're running charities!

Sometimes thing really happen outside of the control of any person. But in their own perception, everything has to be somebody's fault. Normally, things seem to always stay the same, and when they don't it must be because somebody did something.
For adventures, I think it's also a nice alternative approach to the concept of evil. I want to go with nothing really being inherently bad by nature, just as nothing is inherently good. When people are feared or despised, it's because of things they do, or at the very least things people think they do.

[Max_Killjoy]

I have this idea of making it seem like the world is in a repeating cycle with people having no real sense that things were different in the past or that there will be advances and improvements in the future. I think that's quite significant for the overall theme that mortals are not the center of everything.

At least when I was in college, there was an idea I kept coming across that traditionalism sees the world as "cyclical" with humanity part of whatever seasonal, temporal, and cosmic cycles are believed in by a culture, while modernism sees the world as "linear" with humanity able to shape the future and control its own destiny.

[Grim Portent]

So where do humans live in the time blocks after a civilization falls but before a new one rises? If each civilization fails to uphold their part of the spirit bargains and falls to ruin only to be resettled after some time passes where are the new humans from? Are there smaller settlements or nomads who live outside each cycle's cities or are the survivors of the previous pass just unable to keep things like culture and technology when they flee their crumbling homes?

[Yora]

In other city states. There's always one or two dozen of them at any time. There are also always many smaller towns that manage to get by with just a few 10.000 of people in smaller regions. And barbarian clans that don't rely on farming, though people from city states very much avoid trying to join them if in any way possible.

And any anti-modernistic patterns in the themes of in the setting are non-coincidental.

[flyinglemur]

While spirits don't value human lives, do they value each others? How do spirits treat each other? An interesting idea could be conflict between two or more spirits, particularly if they embody more destructive aspects of nature, like wildfires or invasive species. Depending on how much interaction the players have with the spirits that could work as an adventure hook. The local spirit of their city wants them investigate a dangerous spirit encroaching on its territory, maybe use salt against the rival, which the spirit can't directly do on its own.

[KatteLars]

Was there supposed to have been larger civilizations once? One(s) that supplied all the huge ruins that the players will be exploring? Because if so, I know I would love playing a scholar trying to find out what changed, since it seems impossible for such civilizations to exist today :)

[Yora]

Some recycling of old creations here:

Map



This is an old map I made last year for a different setting I didn't pursue further, but I like the general geographic arrangement. It's not a terribly big area. Most of Europe would fit into that image at the same scale. The dots are major cities of the various different peoples, but I think I want to make it even a couple more.

The Sky and Seasons
I love fantasy worlds that feel more like different planets than alternate Earths and put quite a bit of work into figuring out the basics for the moons and planets in this setting. I actually created a simulation of the sun, the planet, and the moon to figure out approximate sizes, distances, and speeds that could actually exist in a star system. Which is really pointless and even the most pedantic sci-fi fans wouldn't check such things, but I still like knowing that this stuff in the sky doesn't violate physics.

The setting has a large orange sun and a huge moon covered in blue and beige clouds and is actually a small gas planets only three times as massive as the world itself. The moon is 8 times as wide as ours, which gives it a visible surface 72 times larger. It can be covered with an outstretched hand, but compared to our moon that's still massive. There is also a second smaller white moon that is much farther away and looks considerably smaller than our moon. In addition, there are also frequent green polar lights that are understood to be omens of tummults among the spirits.

Actual sizes and distance.

The year has 384 days organized into 24 months of 16 days, though every 16th year is a leap year that has only 23 months.
With the moon being so much larger than the sun in the sky, solar eclipses are common and usually happen once or twice every year in any places of the setting. Usually in spring and fall but always at the start or end of the month. They also last up to 30 minutes. During eclipses, the spirits are believed to be especially wild and unpredictable and normal people try to wait them out inside their houses.

The climate of the region covered by the setting is generally temperately warm, roughly comparable to Southern France, North Italy, and the Balkans. However, winter brings a lot of cold air from the large landmasses to the north and east so freezing temperatures and snow are quite common everywhere but on the southern coast and islands that always remain very mild even during the harshest winters. The mountains on the other hand are quite high and have even colder weather than the coastal woodlands to the north, similar to the Pyrenees and Caucasus.

While spirits don't value human lives, do they value each others? How do spirits treat each other? An interesting idea could be conflict between two or more spirits, particularly if they embody more destructive aspects of nature, like wildfires or invasive species. Depending on how much interaction the players have with the spirits that could work as an adventure hook. The local spirit of their city wants them investigate a dangerous spirit encroaching on its territory, maybe use salt against the rival, which the spirit can't directly do on its own.

Actually a great idea. I really have to take some time to think about this, but I think it seems very much like something that would be a great addition I had not considered myself before.

Was there supposed to have been larger civilizations once? One(s) that supplied all the huge ruins that the players will be exploring? Because if so, I know I would love playing a scholar trying to find out what changed, since it seems impossible for such civilizations to exist today :)

No. That has been done a thousand times before. I specifically wanted to do something different from the start. All the ruins are remains of previous city states.

[GaelofDarkness]

Then assuming you can get around the problem of fire - if fire still works in a salt-circled area.

OK, I know this isn't necessarily what this setting is going for, but the image of all the candles snuffing out once a salt circle is completed is sooo cool to me and I couldn't help but chime in. There's the potential for some really weird and imo fun stuff here.

Maybe you run the risk of locking certain kinds of nature spirits out of a salt circle when you make it - especially when you make it rather small. The villagers can protect their family home with a salt circle but they might unintentionally lock out the spirits who manage specific natural processes. If it's the spirits who have been causing dry rot in the walls - who cares - but what if it was the spirits that let you rejuvenate with rest? What if you could eat while in the salt circle, but the spirits that cause digestion are absent? If you were really unlucky maybe you made a really small salt circle and locked out the spirits that allow for respiration - meaning that you start to suffocate while still being able to breathe... that's maybe a bit too dark though.

Obviously being unable to breathe is also a pretty big problem for anyone who wants to use a salt circle. Maybe processes that are more common have a greater density of spirits managing them? So it's very likely that you'll be able to breathe in a salt circle but less likely that you'll get a good night's sleep. The larger the salt circle is, the more likely you'll get the beneficial spirits inside and the more likely you'll get some nasty ones in there too. Perhaps you made a large salt circle and managed to capture a spirit of colds or hay fever? Maybe by capturing a spirit of fungus and mold, the potentially harmful growths starts to spread quickly - creeping to fill a room in a matter of hours.

Even if there was the right kind of spirits inside the salt circle, they wouldn't appreciate being trapped. The longer the salt circle is up especially, the less patient certain spirits might become. Maybe the sleep spirits continue to allow you to rest and recover, but they start sending progressively worse nightmares if you try to bunker down for more than a day or two? Maybe you benefited from your lunch but your dinner is now causing some painful digestive distress because the spirits want out? This could actually mirror the effect of running out of oxygen with the breathe spirits becoming less helpful until they aren't providing any support at all.

If certain kinds of diseases or poisons are the result of natural processes managed by spirits, it could be possible to buy time to save a dying patient by surrounding them with a small salt circle. In so doing you run all the risks above, so it's only done in the most dire of circumstances. It will probably only buy a few hours and at best might buy an extra day, but that could be a great plot hook to get your players searching for the right ingredients in the Full-of-Monsters woods or to perform a ritual to call on the right kind of spirit for aid in healing them. This would also have a fairly narrow range of uses being completely useless in helping with, say, a punctured lung or blood loss.

It shouldn't be too hard to sketch out a 1 - 100 chart that you could roll percentile dice on to see what effect your players making a salt circle. You could skew it one way or another if they make it large or small and of course, there's always a good chance that nothing special happens. You could use the same chart to tell you which spirits are getting impatient - resulting in a more minor but gradually building effect if the salt circle persists for too long.

[Yora]

Some visual references I am using for setting the tone:

Spoiler

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[Max_Killjoy]

Some of those visual references are strikingly similar to what I was using for parts of the setting from my "4th BCE" thread.

The history, cosmology, and cultures are quite different, but there's a common thread that's kinda cool.

[Yora]

Spoiler: Part 2: Character Art

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