Above the world is Velandris, Home of Gods. Below the world is Gargathon, Cage of Chaos.
All heat from the world is generated by a giant snake eating its own tail encircling the border, so the further you get to the center, the colder it gets.
A Brief Theogony
In the beginning, there was nothing but Time and Fate.
Time and Fate gave birth to Chaos and Nature.
Chaos and Nature gave birth to Death and Desire.
Nature asked Time to banish Chaos because he was a bad husband. He lies in eternal torment under Pyresky Peak.
Time and Fate gave birth to Reason as a new husband for Nature.
Nature and Reason gave birth to Faith.
In other words:
Time - Fate ..........| Chaos - Nature – Reason ..........|............| Death - Desire | Faith
The Eleven Races
1) Slivers ()
2) Angels () 3) Demons ()
4) Vedalken () 5) Sphinxes ()
6) Wraiths () 7) Zombies ()
8) Nilbog () 9) Dragons ()
10) Treefolk () 11) Selkie ()
The Sliver Wastes
Long ago, a meteor full of Slivers struck the middle of the world and created the Sliver Wastes, a cold and desolate place infested with Slivers.
Slivers are the primary antagonists of this story. In my imagination of them, I took a lot of inspiration from the Zerg of StarCraft. The Sliver Queen gives birth to more and more Slivers. They come from another world. They live in the snow.
Sliver Hives consist primarily of Dormant Slivers. They all sleep in their hivemind, dreaming up new ways to evolve the Sliver. If you don't aggravate them, you're fine. But as soon as you attack one of them, the blood it spills congeals into a Whelp Sliver, which turns all the Slivers around it into draconic beasts.
Outside of Hives, Slivers roam in motley packs, each one taking on all the characteristics of the others. Some of them roam alone.
Highwind Tower
Highwind Tower Tower Vedalken, Enlightened Angels, and Silver Dragons
Tower Vedalken worship Faith and Reason. When they become enlightened, they are turned by Faith and Reason together into an Enlightened Angel.
Highwind Tower swarms with angels and dragons flying up and down its countless floors. Vedalken climb the steps of their ivory tower, desperate to ascend to angelhood as they cast their spells, do their research, and say their prayers.
At the peak of Highwind Tower roost the Silver Dragons. They sit on a counsel with the Enlightened Angels that controls Highwind Tower's political communication with Havensgard (Leafwing Angels), Deephollow (Mooncaller Selkie), Gallows Way (Gravetender Vedalken), and Auramyth (Gold Dragons). The leader of this counsel is Malia, the one who prays to Faith to banish Death. Her son is an enlightened angel named William, whose miraculous recovery sparks the drama of the story.
Memoria
Memoria Nightbringer wraiths, deathdealer vedalken, and blackfin selkie
Memoria lies between the Realm of Reason and the Realm of Death. A nightmarish place, it is always raining, and there is no sunlight.
Nightbringer wraiths
Whenever somebody commits suicide in Gandervell, they become a nightbringer wraith. Delivering nightmares to creatures all around the plane, these ephemeral creatures sulk in the shadows. They bring darkness wherever they go, and their magic can produce false memories in those it afflicts. Since they feed off of the fear of those they come across, they will often use illusion magic to make their surroundings seem far more scary than they already are.
Deathdealer vedalken
The most cold-hearted creatures in all of Gandervell, deathdealer vedalken often travel to Gallows Way to work as assassins. They are often quite neurotic, haven been driven insane by constant interactions with nightbringer wraiths. They are unparalleled throughout the plane in acts of guile, stealth, and killing. When a deathdealer vedalken dies, it becomes a mindless zombie for the Gallowan demons to control. These mindless are particularly valued by deathguard demons, because it still retains the muscle memory that made it such a skilled fighter in life.
Blackfin selkie
Living in the lakes and waterways of Memoria, blackfin selkie thrive in the night. When the moon is full, they participate in shadowy rituals to celebrate the high tide. In the underwater metropolis of Deephollow, the black market thrives on drugs delivered by the mire selkie in Direvine Forest. A city as vertical as it is horizontal, the selkie swim through the crypts.
Pirate selkie will often swim out into the Great Sea at night to commandeer vedalken ships traveling between Highwind Tower and Gallow's Way with food from Havensgard or treasures from Quicksilver Falls. They sell these magical trinkets in the black market of Deephollow, and hold the captive vedalken as ransom.
Doom's Path
Doom's Path Boggarts, burned wraiths, and doomreaver demons
Grixis without the blue. Boggarts (cousins of the Nilbog) roam the volcanic wastes.
The world is round, but literally encircled around its equator by a giant snake named Jormungand eating its own tail. No one can go south of Jormungand.
Doom's Path is where the head meets the tail. Giant bursts of fire erupt from Jormungand's nostrils, setting the entire southern portion of Gandervell on eternal blaze.
Boggarts are a lot like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. They're easily distracted by artifacts from Gallow's Way, and their intentions are always selfish and evil.
Doomreaver demons are giant fiery scythe-weilding monsters. They feed off of Boggarts.
Burned wraiths are the ghosts of anyone in Gallow's Way who was burned at the stake. Some are on a mission to kill those who sentenced them to that fate, while others simply want to continue the deeds that got them into that position in the first place.
The Badlands
The Badlands Dragon-fodder nilbog, boozetrunk treefolk, and witch doctor sphinxes
Dragon-fodder Nilbog
The Nilbog are Gandervell's goblins. They are albino in skin tone and look a lot like bats. With poor vision, they rely mostly on their impeccable smell and hearing. The Badlands are scattered with barbarian nilbog tribes. Vedalken cutthroats from Gallows Way and selkie from Direvine Forest make a living by slaughtering these nilbog and selling the meat to gold dragons on Pyresky Peak. Therefore, the primary term used to describe this type of barbarian nilbog is dragon fodder.
Boozetrunk treefolk
The boozetrunk treefolk produce alcohol in their trunks. They can ignite it in their throats and use it to breathe fire. The nilbog hunt them down for their booze, which is very important to them in their barbaric revelries. They usually roam the badlands as wandering ronin, avoiding the Nilbog. It takes several Nilbog to take down a single Treefolk, who uses fire breathing and a style of drunken boxing to take out the attackers.
Witch doctor sphinxes
Flying around the badlands like traveling medicine men, the witch doctor sphinxes are the Nilbog's link to the rest of the world. They bring them otherworldly gadgets from the forges of Ironwing, drugs from the bowels of Direvine Forest, and food from the groves of Havensgard. Usually not respected by more respectable fatewalker and vedalken merchants, these sphinx travel the world in search of the next most beautiful sight, interesting tale, or mind bending gadget.
Occasionally wild sphinxes are captured and enslaved by the Nilbog before they learn to speak. The Nilbog use them as mounts.
Havensgard
Havensgard Leafwing Angels, Grove Treefolk, and Fatewalker Zombies.
Havensgard is the region that lies between the Realm of Nature and the Realm of Faith. A sprawling farmland with grove treefolk and leafwing angels living in harmony, with fatewalker zombie merchants bartering for food in the countryside. The further north you go in Havensgard, the less prosperous the cities, the lest frequent and smaller the groves.
Leafwing angels are the keepers of the sacred groves of Havensgard. Havensgard has elaborate houses in the branches of its most colossal treefolk full of the flora and fauna that supply food for the kingdom of Gandervell, particularly Highwind Tower and Gallow's Way. In the Realm of Nature, nilbog from the Badlands attempt to ransack these groves. Leafwing Angels are the ones who defend them from attack. One is assigned to each grove when the first seed is ceremoniously planted, and stays bound to it for life.
The biggest grove, in the center of Havensgard, is called the Heart. It is a hub of international food trade. A council of the grove treefolk who comprise the base of the grove ecosystem run the Heart communally, with the leafwing angels acting as enforcers.
In the periphery around Havensgard proper, there are smaller groves scattered throughout the countryside. These donate their food to bazaars on the borders of Direvine Forest to the south and Pyresky Peak to the east.
Grove Treefolk society is structured primarily on how old a treefolk is. The elder the treefolk, the wider spread are your branches. Leafwing Angels live in the trees and protect the treefolk from harm in exchange for the flowers that grow on the treefolk's branches. When multiple treefolk live together in a city, this is called a grove.
Treefolk that are merely a few years old act as guides throughout the plains, staring with childlike wonder at every detail of their surroundings.
Fatewalker zombies are vedalken and selkie dead from Gallow's Way and Direvine Forest, respectively, who have had their consciousnesses restored as a gift from Faith and Nature. Some wander the countryside in nomadic bazaars, bartering away the flower of the treefolk that the angels crave so much to the selkie of Direvine Forest, who in turn take it to Gallow's Way through the waterways of the Sliver Wastes. Others work on farm communes closer to the Heart, supplying food for the rest of Gandervell, in particular Highwind Tower. The philosophers of Highwind Tower debate whether they are really conscious at all, or simply following the whispers of the messengers of Faith.
Gallow's Way
Gallows Way Deathguard demons, gravetender vedalken, mindless zombies.
Deathguard Demons
Gallows Way is the city atop the entrance to the Realm of Death. The staircase down to the place where all souls claimed by Death when they die (more than any other god) is guarded by deathguard demons, frightful lawful-evil creatures with groups of gravetender vedalken at their command. These demons are incredibly powerful persuaders to the weary traveler; they take you in and offer you marvelous hospitality in their mansions of ivory and bone, but they always demand a price. This can be offered in the form of money or blood.
If a death guard demon owns your soul, you become one of The Mindless when you die. In exchange for the riches offered by the demon during your wealthy vedalken lifespan, he gets to keep your body when it dies. The wraiths of these Vedalken sometimes go to the Realm of Faith, but more often than not to the Realm of Death.
Gravetender Vedalken
The gravetenders keep the city of Faith and Death smoothly operating. With back-alley hooligans trying to spare a dime, catch a fix of treefolk flower, or grab a line in the breadline from Havensgard, the aspect of ruthlessness is always on full display the closer in Gallows Way to the realm of death. As Havengard treefolk and angels dislike this depravity, most of Havensgard's food goes to Highwind Tower. But even though 85% of all the food is delegated there, the politician vedalken of Gallows Way have their methods to balance the scales, using cutthroat tactics the denizens of Highwind Tower would never consider. Remember, there are no Humans or Elves on Gandervell—besides the Vedalken, the only real mid-level players are the Selkie and the Nilbog—so Vedalken form the most powerful political class among medium-sized humanoid races.
The Mindless (Zombies)
The Mindless form the bottom of the economic chain in Gallows Way, functioning much like serfs or slaves. Under the command of gravetender vedalken, who in turn offer servitude to the deathguard barons, they form the slave labor that keeps the economy of Gallows Way running. They have no consciousness, and become dormant with no necromantic sorcerer to command them. The only way to keep a Mindless from ever coming back is to burn it; but then you'll have to deal with its wraith, which goes to Doom's Path.
Since Gallows Way is surrounded on either side by Doom's Path and Memoria, two of the most dangerous regions in Gandervell, they do not receive many visitors, and those who are born there seldom leave. When they do, they are treated as outcasts, as denizens of a city that is nothing more than cursed.
Direvine Forest
Direvine Forest Corpsecaller Selkie, Sporeshambler Zombies, and Poisontooth Nilbog
Corpsecaller Selkie raise Sporeshambler Zombies from the vedalken corpses who drown in the Great Sea. They also transport food and gadgets from Havensgard and Ironwing Roost, respectively, to the blackfin selkie in Memoria.
Poisontooth Nilbog are a lot like Orcs from D&D. They're bigger than your average nilbog, and will eat anything, but always survive. They can also be turned into Sporeshamblers.
The Slivers are most present here of any of the regions outside of the Sliver Wastes. They breed and breed in the biologically welcome warmth.
The Great Sea
The Great Sea Truthseeker Selkie, nomad angels, chronowing sphinxes
The Great Sea is more about what's under the water or in the sky than what's on land. Archapellagos may pop up, but they only amount to small wildwing family roosts.
Under the water, the truth seeker selkie seek enlightenment. They are worshippers of the gods Reason and Fate. Reason comes to them and delivers weavings of Fate's Tapestry as she weaves them. They use these to predict the future.
Nomad angels are angels from Havensgard whose groves have burned down. On the one hand, heartbroken and hopeless, and on the other, freed and relieved, depending on how these angels react to their fate indicates how close they get to the shores of Memoria to the south or Pyresky Peak to the north.
Chronowing sphinxes are the progeny of Time and Nature. When they fly overhead, time slows or speeds up depending on their mood.
Quicksilver Falls
Quicksilver Falls Artificer sphinxes, copper dragons, and artist wraiths
Quicksilver Falls is an icy vista of frozen waterfalls interlaced with sulfurous hotsprings. Deep within the mountains the artificer sprinxes build their sprawling cities, taking to the sky between them to deliver messages and schematics. Copper dragons roam these skies, eager to have a battle of wits with any traveling sphinxes. Wraiths of inspired vedalken artists or even the witch doctors of the nilbog drift from waterfall to waterfall, making the reflections in the ice glimmer ever so slightly brighter and more beautifully.
Artificer Sphinxes
The primary metropolis in Quicksilver Falls is Ironwing Roost, a giant mountain in the middle of the region that has been converted by the artificer sphinxes into a sprawling city. It is a spiraling wonder world of gadgets, imagination, and inspiration. Artificer Sphinxes—sometimes called Cave Sphinxes by other sphinxes who laugh at them for not taking the opportunity to fly more—take to the sky only when they need to, preferring the shelter of their marvelous caverns.
Copper Dragons
The most surefire way to get a Copper Dragon to fight on your side is to tell it a riddle it's never heard before. They are very whimsical, preferring to use illusions and time magic to deter the enemy rather than fight them head-on.
Artist Wraiths
When a creature in Gandervell dies, it always leads behind a wraith. The wraith passes on into one of the five Realms, depending on which god has the most claim to the soul. Undeath can be achieved by returning the wraith to the body of the slain. These are the wraiths of artists who never got to finish their masterwork, who died in bar fights, who never won the grand prize, and through the love of work undone are bound to the earth to make it more beautiful. Travelers through Quicksilver Falls often hear music echoing through the snowy hills—this is the work of the wraiths, singing their unearthly tune to the empty sky.
Pyresky Peak
Pyresky Peak Warden demons, walking torches, and gold dragons
Pyresky Peak is a giant mountain that was created to seal in the deathless god Chaos. The warden demons, inspired by Faith to shed their allegiance to Death, are the keepers of his prison. They guard the base.
No-one dare ascend the peak itself. It is littered with walking torches. These are zealous treefolk whose seeds only take root during the occasional forest fires in the country lands of Havensgard. They can even drift through the mires of Direvine Forest from the Badlands. As saplings, these treefolk migrate up the mountain, where they are set aflame by a gold dragon. Their flames don't go out for as long as they're alive.
At the peak of the mountain lies Auramyth, the fabled city of golden dragons. They live in beautifully constructed aeries, where the greater distance from the ground is equated with greater power. They horde treasure like nobody's business. But no-one can get there without getting through the warden demons and the walking torches guarding them from the peak of an Everest-sized mountain first.
_________________
Last edited by ParadOxymoron on Wed May 21, 2014 8:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5419 Location: somewhere btwn Achilles and the tortoise
Preferred Pronoun Set: ♀
I designed this world for my Magic: the Gathering project, but squinty_eyes encouraged me to come down to Play-by-Post and make a world. Well, here it is! How well does it port from Magic to D&D?
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5419 Location: somewhere btwn Achilles and the tortoise
Preferred Pronoun Set: ♀
I read the 3.5 Edition books obsessively as a kid. I never played the game, but I bought lots of GURPS books on dragons and fantastic creatures to add to my Monster Manual. So I've made a lot of characters and dreamt a lot about it, but never actually done it.
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 11309 Location: Asleep at the wheel
Preferred Pronoun Set: SE / squinty / squints
Well, I'm biased, but I'm a big fan of 3.X and Pathfinder. Personally, I like Pathfinder a bit more since it is completely free online minus a few things like deities, but most of that information can be found online easily. Pathfinder was created off of the Open Game License of 3.X, so it's incredibly similar but very, very accessible. I would consider starting there, but 3.5 is also good.
As far as the world goes, there are basic rules that the game follows, but those can be discussed as the game develops in your world. The biggest things for me about building a world (or a single city) is about figuring out how it works so the world can feel.... as close to realistic as possible. For example, the city I'm about to begin for my next game is a mountain city. I know almost nothing about plant-life, but I needed to know how the citizens of the city would survive, so I asked my wife, who is obsessed with botany. She told me berry bushes, leafy greens and gourds would be most easy to produce, as well as flax which not only could produce food but cloth as well. After that, how do they grow it? She told me that if it was carved in the stone mountain, I would have to develop a system to keep the farmland soil rich enough to produce the plants for longer than one season. We decided that bodily waste would have to be composted, but not the urine because it is too high in sodium and would kill the farmland. So, now every "bathroom" in the city has two chamber pots, one that everyone defecates in, and one they urinate in. They compose the fecal matter while channeling the urine out and away from the city. But this still won't solve the issues, so I had the water channel through more stone into the farmlands to pick up more minerals, and this got me closer. Still, we were lacking nitrates for the soil, so she told me that could be solved by harvesting fallen leaves from the forests below and composting them with the fecal matter. Lastly, based on crops, the soil would need to be five feet deep, so I went with ten feet deep since plants grow bigger in my world. And that allowed me to know the crops they would need.
(Oh, and they keep two copper pieces in crystal [glass] bowls of water so that the flies that would be attracted to the compost get confused due to compound eyes, they hand every 20 feet to prevent the city from becoming overrun, but that's just another issue that comes from the necessity of composting all of the fecal matter of the city in a central location)
And all of that was done without using any rules from any system, it was simply needed so the players could know what food was in the city and how it was cultivated due to its isolation of being up a mountain and the increased altitude. So, as long as you build your world to make sense, I feel like you have a higher chance it'll be fun to play in. I find it a lot less fun to play in a world where you ask: "What kind of crops do they have here?" and the DM answers with something like: "Umm, the usual for the region? I dunno."
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5419 Location: somewhere btwn Achilles and the tortoise
Preferred Pronoun Set: ♀
Well, the city I'm definitely the most interested in developing is Gallows Way. I really like my races though. Could I just invent them within the Pathfinder system? Or should I find a way to fit the seven classic D&D races into it?
Gallows Way Deathguard demons, gravetender vedalken, mindless zombies.
Deathguard Demons
Gallows Way is the city atop the entrance to the Realm of Death. The staircase down to the place where all souls claimed by Death when they die (more than any other god) is guarded by deathguard demons, frightful lawful-evil creatures with groups of gravetender vedalken at their command. These demons are incredibly powerful persuaders to the weary traveler; they take you in and offer you marvelous hospitality in their mansions of ivory and bone, but they always demand a price. This can be offered in the form of money or blood.
If a death guard demon owns your soul, you become one of The Mindless when you die. In exchange for the riches offered by the demon during your wealthy vedalken lifespan, he gets to keep your body when it dies. The wraiths of these Vedalken sometimes go to the Realm of Faith, but more often than not to the Realm of Death.
Gravetender Vedalken
The gravetenders keep the city of Faith and Death smoothly operating. With back-alley hooligans trying to spare a dime, catch a fix of treefolk flower, or grab a line in the breadline from Havensgard, the aspect of ruthlessness is always on full display the closer in Gallows Way to the realm of death. As Havengard treefolk and angels dislike this depravity, most of Havensgard's food goes to Highwind Tower. But even though 85% of all the food is delegated there, the politician vedalken of Gallows Way have their methods to balance the scales, using cutthroat tactics the denizens of Highwind Tower would never consider. Remember, there are no Humans or Elves on Gandervell—besides the Vedalken, the only real mid-level players are the Selkie and the Nilbog—so Vedalken form the most powerful political class among medium-sized humanoid races.
The Mindless (Zombies)
The Mindless form the bottom of the economic chain in Gallows Way, functioning much like serfs or slaves. Under the command of gravetender vedalken, who in turn offer servitude to the deathguard barons, they form the slave labor that keeps the economy of Gallows Way running. They have no consciousness, and become dormant with no necromantic sorcerer to command them. The only way to keep a Mindless from ever coming back is to burn it; but then you'll have to deal with its wraith, which goes to Doom's Path.
Since Gallows Way is surrounded on either side by Doom's Path and Memoria, two of the most dangerous regions in Gandervell, they do not receive many visitors, and those who are born there seldom leave. When they do, they are treated as outcasts, as denizens of a city that is nothing more than cursed.
Well, as far as races go, sure, you can build your own. The makers of Pathfinder even assumed you would, and they have given you this tool. Personally, I haven't given much thought to building new player races myself, but perhaps you'll find it useful. Now monsters.... heh, I've built some of those, but the campaign I'm running now is attempting psychological damage on my players, not physical.... oh, but I have used slivers. We can talk about their qualities later.
And as far as Gallows Way is concerned.... it's an entire region of death? A region no one visits and no one leaves? It's a cool concept, but if no one comes or goes, how would players interact with it? Why would they even want to? I mean, I guess if there was a mission, but even then, I'm sure the reputation would keep most sane people out. Although, most adventurers lead shockingly short lifespans, so maybe....
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