World-BuildingThe forum for discussion about designing and building campaign settings. Come participate in a community creation or show off your own work to the forum world-builders!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
You're welcome to. It should be fun. I might end up running two games, because I've seen some great applications and I don't want to turn pretty much everyone away.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Now that we have some faction ideas for the Vallheim, let's hike south, towards the wide-open plains and heliolatric theocracy of Soleh.
I can think of four major factions off the top of my head.
1. The church hierarchy. They are also the government, and collect the taxes, operate the courts, manage the infrastructure and command the armies. This represents pretty much everyone in power.
*Note: make a hierarchy chart of ranks in the church. Also, come up with a name for the god.
2. The merchants. These could be buyers and sellers of stuff from Sunshan, the Vallheim and the Dotze Affariata, or leaders of the guilds of craftsmen. (Surprise, a culture focused on worship of fire as a manifestation of their god is good at forging things), or farm barons who manage large tracts of land, despite not being officials of the church. (Bishops are the equivalent of a feudal lord). They could have tensions with the church and their high taxes.
3. The underclass. Some may be loyal followers of the church, others may have seen their daughters raped and their sons killed by priests. They range from fishermen along the coast to farmers inland, and shifting into herders of sheep, cows and horses further to the west, as the ground becomes arable. Piety also decreases the further West one goes. This group includes the low-ranked priests, who have a....different philosophy than the cardinals and archbishops, the cults and the thieving crews that patrol the large cities.
4. The westerners. The westernmost parts of the country are rolling plains and foothills of the Foresthold Mountains. The people there live a fairly nomadic life, following their herds of sheep and cattle. They have, unlike many westerners, good regard for the church, as church-controlled armies have been protecting them from Goliath raids recently, and their doctors and educators have been increasing public health and the literacy rate. This in turn has led to many elite medium and light cavalry soldiers from the area joining the Solerian armies as scouts and cavalry.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Sub-Factions in the perpetually crusading feudal dictatorship happy shiny land without any problems of Soleh!
1. Church Lady's Crew.
*The hunters of heretics who use demonic magic, who have the rights of judge, jury and executioner. They tend to have a good 15% success rate. That is, about 15 out of a hundred people burned at the stake by them are actually heretics. The rest may have pissed someone off, or simply been and old lady who happens to like cats.
*The Dawnbringers. A select group of the most elite and devoted bishops who undergo painfully disfiguring rituals, including burning of the skin in patterns using sunlight refracted through giant lenses, to enhance their connection to Tuhan Sun-Father. This allows them to see into the hearts of men, and bend them to their will. They are used to test the loyalty of the priests of the border areas, where being a priest means you give a speech once a week and collect the taxes, and not much else. There are only rarely more than a dozen of these guys around at once, and they are some of the most powerful casters Soleh has.
*The Council of Hadivaikas. (Archbishops) This is the group of religious/political leaders who, at the death of one of their number, select a replacement. They have nothing in the way of checks or balances, though the Zuel-Karalius (King-Pope-Thing) wields the right to make decisions unfettered by the will of the others. They work similar to a presidential cabinet and a Congress in a room of twenty elderly men.
*The Zuel-Karalius. The absolute leader of Soleh. He is considered to be the living puppet of Tuhan Sun-Father. He is generally the oldest living member of the Council of Hadivaikas, but the strength he wields is not one of a young strong sword-arm. His name is always ritually obliterated from public record, as he is no longer a man but a living god. Anyone caught spreading his given name is buried alive, as being given to Tuhan Sun-Father is too good a fate for them.
2. Merchants
*Slave Traders. Gnome slaves are expensive in Soleh, but valued as miners, street-sweepers, and other menial laborers. They tend to die quickly, within about five years, so those who sell them have a constantly renewed market to sell to.
*Guild Leaders. The Forgemaster's, Leatherworker's, Glassblower's, Bookbinder's, Cartographer's, Potter's and Weaver's Guild and various other merchant organizations band together to resist the demands made by the church for a larger percentage of their purchases, low-cost bulk commissions (5,000 winter blankets, suits of chainmail, arrowheads, and swords for the army, books and bottle of medicine for the Westerners, etc.) that eat into the guild's profits.
*Land Barons. Some laymen have acquired large tracts of land and begun renting it out to commoners, despite their lack of the required church title. Imagine the controversy.
3. Underclass.
*Commoners. The everyday laborers, skilled or unskilled, in Soleh. They're treated better than they are in Sunshan, but still have little in the way of sociopolitical rights. Church attendance is mandatory.
*Thieving Crews. Some bands of commoners in large cities have taken to stealing from the church. Whether it's breaking into churches and stealing from the vaults there or raiding the grain caravans bringing taxes to the urban centers, stealing from the church is rather lucrative. Some have touched upon powers that the church would consider demonic to aid them, powers of shadow and the mists.
*Cults. Despite legislation and death threats to the contrary, not every commoner is a devoted churchgoer. Many attend for posterity, but then return to worship any of an extensive variety of fringe beliefs, among them the animistic spirituality of the Vallheim, the teachings of the Good God in the Dotze Affariata, the ancestral beliefs of Sunshan, or the Affariata's Old Gods. There are other, more minor faiths, but these are generally very locally contained and have little to no organization on anything but the village level.
4. Westerners.
*The Piloti. Native horsemen of the western plains, they patrol the borders, north, south and west, for Vallheimers, Goliath raiders and escaping Sunshani Torei. In return, the church builds schools, hospitals and roads across the west.
*The Nomads. Many westerners live a life very different from the more sedentary easterners, in that they follow their herds of cattle, sheep and other livestock across the plains. The westerners try to build schools and hospitals, but each party of Nomads, from whom the Piloti are drawn, only crosses paths with a single school or hospital perhaps once a year. As such, the schools and hospitals serve more as learning centers where a healer or teacher can train for a couple years before returning to their caravan to practice their arts. The older generation sometimes fails to see the value of this.
There we go, factions of Soleh.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
I feel bad about giving you guys a wall of text in recent days, so here's some tasty pictures, vaguely sorted by region.
Vallheim:
Spoiler
Let's start off with a Wolf Clan woman with realistic armor. Because I like it like that.
Slightly less realistic armor...
Some badasses training to take their second levels of badass...
Soleh:
Spoiler
The guys wearing the white horse on green are Piloti. Those with sun motifs are Tuhani priests, soldiers or priest-soldiers
Here's why I wish we had clerics... He's probably a remixed fighter of some sort.
Beautiful Church-Thing
Here's our first Piloti rider...
Our second...
A mix of Piloti and Solerian Knights. I love this picture.
These statues line the rocky coast from the middle of Soleh up to the edge of the coast in norther Vallheim. They were carved shortly after the first empire arrived, and before the time of clouds, about 1900-1850 years ago. Did they protect the new land from something?
Sunshan:
Spoiler
Here's Yamanoda, a secret Grey Palm monastery and their headquarters, up high in the mountains that separate Sunshan from the Dotze Affariata.
Remember that island chain off the coast of Sunshan, where the mountains sink into the sea? This is what they look like.
Spoiler
I see a Grey Palm Assassin...
Here's a Phoenix Temple in the middle of a rite.
Possibly a Phoenix Monk, possibly a noble warrior. Maybe just a wandering swordsman.
Dotze Affariata:
Spoiler
Long, slender sword, corset-type thing, both say Dotze Affariata.
The ears? Feytouched.
Another good picture.
Generic:
Spoiler
Let's look at mages. Note that this is a particlarly blatant use of magic on all their counts.
First we have a Red Mage.
Spoiler
I have no idea what that little snow-guy is doing in the background. Either way, we're going blue.
And a Green Mage lady saying "Hell no" to mundane ranged.
Sadly I don't have a Black one. If you see a good earth-magic using gish, lemme know.
Lightwood Rangers
Wild hunter dude. Wolf Clan? Lightwood Ranger? Escaped Torei?
Other Races:
Spoiler
A fey girl. What's through the arch? Care to find out?
A gnome village. There's not many of these, and they stand deserted for months out of a year, until the little caravans reunite to intermarry, trade and swap stories.
Spoiler
Here's an arch made by our northern friends, the giants! Honestly, who doesn't want to go here? Perfect adventurin' place. Look at that hero with the red cloak. He doesn't need a party. Rockin it solo like a BAWS
That's all I have for now. Thanks for looking it over!
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Last edited by Wyntonian : 02-22-2012 at 11:19 PM.
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
You mentioned in the recruiting thread that we were supposed to use our imaginations when it came to the menfolk of the Dotze Affariata? I went to the Assassin's Creed wiki instead:
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
I have a major test in a little bit, but you can soon expect a list and short description of the major Fey lords and ladies. I'mma have some fun with this and shamelessly steal some from British authors.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Ok, outright plagiarism of my favorite British authors, interspersed with a couple fits of creativity away!
The Fey Lords:
Each of the following of the fey lords, ladies and strange a-/multi-/pan-sexual honorific beings rules over a fey court of varying size. Their title comparative to other feudal titles is meaningless, by the way. It is more or less impossible for sane humans to understand the geography of the Hedge, so an analysis of borders and neighbors of each Lord's fief is pretty much meaningless, ever-shifting and entirely subjective. The Hedge is kinda like that.
The Raven King:
Spoiler
The Raven King is one of the most powerful Fey Lords. He commands a large court and is possibly the most powerful living spellcaster in Patria of any race. His magic, somewhat unlike that of some other Lords and Ladies, is very subtle. He is affiliated with ruined houses returning to the earth, flying creatures (Especially ravens) and with old age. He was an ally of the First People, but if he carries resentment towards the humans of Patria, he is excellent at hiding it. Of all the Fey Lords, he has the most mortal servants.
He has a rather unusual proclivity towards treating with humans, and, unlike many of his counterparts, generally does not deliberately misinterpret his treaties and contracts. This does not mean, however, that treating with him is entirely safe. While he won't twist a contract after it is made, he has no qualms about making his deals favor him immensely. As such, most mortals looking for aid look elsewhere.
Lord Portico:
Spoiler
Lord Portico, as if a contrast to the Raven King, holds but a small court. Despite its size, however, it has great goals and substantial power. Tired of the infighting, periodic wars and ancient grudges that restrict the Fey Courts, Portico has dreams of uniting the Courts, ending the strife and creating a New World Order of the Fey, which could then aid the other races of Patria in following their example and improve their own situation. Most other Fey Lords and Ladies find this idea rather quaint and a somewhat pleasant daydream.
His magic is potent but limited. He and his court have the power to make things open. Generally, this means doors, whether they're there or not, cannot resist him. He can travel across the Hedge, through the Veil and ignores the concept of distance in the Mortal Realm. This can have other applications, as well. He can open the hearts of men to him, or lock them against the intrusions of others. He can open doors within mens minds, which can drive them insane through self-knowledge. Or, if he feels like it's nessecary, he can open their skulls or torso to the air.
Portico is generally fascinated with humans, and enjoys a chance to talk to them. He's fairly generous, by Fey standards, with his deals with human supplicants. His policies have made many other Fey Lords and Ladies, including the powerful Raven King, angry with him, but he has a couple powerful allies and is small enough of a threat that nobody has bothered to wipe him out yet.
This was a surprising amount of work. I'll do more later. Oh, right, Sunshani Sub-factions. That's next.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Ok, the afore-promised Sunshani sub-factions.
Torei - Subjugated underclass. They can't technically be bought and sold, but... In some areas, such as mining, their labors are slowly being replaced by gnome slaves.
Sub-Factions: Torei have little communication beyond word of mouth, most are illiterate, and have almost nothing in the way of coordination.
*Escapees - Some Torei try to make a break north, through Soleh to the Vallheim, or south, over the mountains towards the Dotze Affariata. They sometimes band together into small groups to ease their travels, but this makes them much easier to track.
*Commoners - These are the everyday sleep, eat, work, sleep folks. There's lots of them.
Nobles - I'll include freedmen, servants, bodyguards, etc. here.
Sub-Factions
*The nobles, the Assassin/Bodyguard/Samurai schools, archivists, poets, and various other skilled craftsmen, as well as Torei-hunters, gnome slave traders, overseers, etc.
Monasteries
Sub-factions
The Neutral Folks, who want to stay out of it, the ivory-tower Phoenix, the blood and guts Grey Palm and the "let's just help folks get out" Unending Road.
Really, that's about it. Sunshan is pretty cut-and-dried.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
First cinqtuple post! Yay!
A couple new Fey Lords, then on to the Dotze Affariata sub-factions. I assume that will be slightly more fertile ground than Sunshan.
Mister Thistledown:
Spoiler
Mister Thistledown is rather peculiar in that he, like Lord Portico, have a powerful attraction to humans. His intentions, however, are less than entirely pure. He holds no court of Fey, though he has the ear of many other important Lords and Ladies, and holds a title.
Mister Thistledown frequently appears to nonmagical mortals in his truest form, a man dressed in classy clothes with an upper-class manner and a rather remarkable intrest in his subject. He consantly compliments thier beauty, talent, bearing, height, eye color, skin tone, and the way the blink. A royal blink, if he ever saw one himself! He calls on them in the evenings, when most everyone else is asleep, and converses with them in rooms of their house that may or may not have been there before. He offers them gifts, presents and various little favors if they will simply continue speaking with him. If they attempt to tell anyone else of their conversations, they find themselves giving an incredibly educated-sounding lecture on a completely separate, generally irrelevant subject.
Eventually, Thistledown offers his subject a position as a minor Fey noble under him. If they accept, they are made into changelings and given a small fief of their own. If they refuse, Thistledown is very apologetic, utterly polite, and, as a token of apology, reveals himself to the subject's family and leads them up to the highest point nearby (a belfry, a tall hill next to a cliff, a castle wall) for a little picnic. The children are generally the first to hit the ground. Thistledown is not one to take such rudeness lightly.
Thistledown's magic lies primarily in enchantment of others, and his ability to somehow always find land for his friends, despite having none of his own.
Lady Libriana:
Spoiler
Lady Libriana is considered by many to be an ascended Dryad or nymph, who amassed much land and power under herself during the time of the First People. She now holds a fief that rivals the Raven King's. The two are good friends and allies, and it is only his solitary and cold nature that keeps her from suggesting marriage.
Her power is that of beauty, and her large number of followers compose that majority of Fey artists and such. They have a tendency to give... gifts to unsuspecting humans, like a child made more beautiful (green is a beautiful color), or a horse painted in sparkling pastel colors.
Some of her servants include those who she has stripped of their beauty, mortals and fey alike. Altered by her magics, they hunger for things of elegance, fine art and the flesh of beautiful people. With herself as the most perfect dealer of such a drug, they are utterly in her power.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Sounds just fine! I'm digging the info on these Fey lord, by the way.
One of the only criticisms I have is that it seems like you could benefit from formatting your factions with the[list] tags. If you want to have a few different levels within the tag, just start a new[list] tag inside the original tag.
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Calling all co-contributors...
Thanks to Eldest, I stumbled upon this post, and felt that it was cool enough I just had to give it some thought. I'm now pondering how to apply it.
I've already considered doing something like the Hedge with mirrors, inspired by Suzanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, in which the first English Magician, the Raven King (Yes, I liked that name enough to steal it), created a series of roads by which he and his followers could travel through mirrors, entering one with the proper spells to go into a giant house sort of thing, with the odd tree growing in it, or a creek running through it, and lots of odd bridges. Think an Escher-style house, where the geometry is odd and the angles all seem wrong. That's sorta similar to the concept above, but it's different and complex enough to warrant an entirely separate post and discussion.
As for the Mythic Geography, I was thinking about something beyond the little Fey-Paths, which a mortal can stumble along for short distances and with great risk.
Y'know that moment when a story just starts writing itself? Yeah, that just happened.
The Fogbound River? The First People didn't just block off the Western Lands. They actually moved them. The Fog is a barrier between the Spirit Realm and the Mortal Lands. The magic of the first people carried their lands away, and the Veil swelled in the fill the gap. Spirits get lost sometimes around the edge of the barrier, so the deep forest seems haunted.
When a person's soul departs, they leave for the Spirit Realm, across the river. They may leave an imprint, a piece of themselves in the hearts and souls of their family and those who share the same values and dreams (A great hunter may be called upon by other hunters, a mother by other mothers), but they, themselves, depart. They may keep an eye on their kids, and be able to give them a hand if they help on their end (A binder using pact magic to contact an ancestral or other spirit), but maintaining a strong connection is something only the most powerful can do alone.
This has been boiling around the edge of my consciousness for a while, thanks to Eldest's link I finally figured it out.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
I'm a big fan of that post, and that blog in general. My Blackwood setting actually started out as an attempt to apply the concept of Mythic Geography, but it's since grown into something different.
The only potential issue I see is the prevalence of mirrors in your idea. When I hear "jump through a mirror and end up in a wacky house," my mind immediately jumps to Alice in Wonderland, circa 1800s. You'd have to take care to craft the flavor of this element carefully, but if you do it could be a very cool addition.
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Yeah, I'll have to watch that. I didn't realize the the "Through the Looking-Glass" reference until afterwards.
What do you think about the new take on the Fogbound River? It used to be just an enchanted wall of fog that kept people from going West to mess with the First People, but I like this more.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Well, yeah, as a whole they kinda were. Remember their council of elders allowing themselves to be slaughtered so their blood could run into the river? That's pretty epic, if not level 20+ Epic.
__________________
Guess who's good at avatars? Thormag. That's who.
A Campaign Setting more than a year in the making, Patria!
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
Yes~ I've been busy with various things, but the Great Animals legend (re)building is inforce.
As for the vampire thing a page or so ago, I'll admit that I love vampires, but my take is normally that they are magical perversions of a existing sanguinevore race. Said race isn't evil, or even reliant on humanoid blood. They just require protiens from blood that they cannot produce themselves sort of thing.
HEre's a cookie~
Spoiler
Elk
The descendants of the Great Elk can be seen in the stables of the king, cared for and treated as royally as their chosen riders. Greater than their elk cousins, they honour the ancient pact between their kind and the elk clan.
Greatfather Silverhoof was the first of the Great Animals that took the floundering humans in under his protection. He taught them harmony, and the value of order. The other Great Animals honoured him and his decision, for not even the Great Bear or the Great Wolf could harm him. Just as he kept the forest in order, so too does the Elk clan, rightful heirs to leadership.
__________________ My schedule is fairly irregular, but I tend towards the later hours of the day.
Generation 9
The first time you see this in a signature, put it in your own signature and add one to the number. This is a social experiment.
RSS Feeds: 
Re: A complete N00bz first try at world-building...
