In the Beginning... Part One

In the beginning...

Reinterpretations and mythological origins of settings to fit each of the big D&D 5e Adventures beyond the realms. Each one will account for and accommodate the basic races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings) and the basic classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard) plus some others beyond that.

Tyranny of Dragons -
The Great God Io spoke the Word and the Word was all the World. Then divided himself, and one half became the Sky, and was called Bahamut, and one half became the waters, as was called Tiamat. In the shape of great serpents they coupled and from their union was born the Earth.

Bahamut doted on the earth and it's creatures. He fashioned six children of the elements to attend to this world. Two he made from the wood of a great tree, and bade them watch over the Earth in his stead. Two he made from metal, and placed them in the belly of the great mountains and bade them delve deeply into the Earth, gather up its treasures and take measure of them. Two he made from water, and set them onto the rivers and bade them discover and explore all the Earth and sing of it's splendour. They were the Isu - the Elves, the
Anbar - the Dwarves, and the Nina, the Halflings.

From that day Tiamat knew no peace. After creation she had gone to sleep beneath the waves. But as the Isu sang sweet melodies in the forests, and the Anbar bellowed dirges in the depths of the earth, and the Nina whistled and hummed their travelling tunes as their ores lapped the waters she could never sleep. So she arose in fury and gave birth to eleven children of her own, in two generations.

First was Basmu, the Green Dragon, then Musmahhu the Black Dragon, called also the Hydra. Next came the furies Mushussu the White Dragon and Ugallu the Blue Dragon of Storms. Finally came Usumgallu, the Great Red Dragon and Tiamat’s general. These were created in her image and considered themselves her truest sons.

The next generation she fashioned not of her own blood and flesh but of the creatures of the earth. She made Lahmasu, who had the face of a man and body of a lion and who is often called the Manticore. Next, she made Uridimmu, the Mad Dog, the first Gnoll. Girtablullu was a giant scorpion with the torso and head of a man in place of the scorpion’s head, and Kulullu, whose people are now called the Sahuagin, was part fish and part man. Kusarikku was the Bull-Man, who walked on his hind legs and bore a great mace. Finally, she made the Umu Dabrutu, the Hobgoblins, the Fearsome Storms who was a single mind shared between a thousand bodies, each a warped mockery of humanity. They carried many cruel weapons and hungered always for battle.    

She bade these creations go over the world and harry the children of Bahamut, and so restore the world to silence. Her creatures dammed up the rivers, and flooded the mountains and razed the forests with flame. So Bahamut in his wrath made a fourth race fashioned of Earth baked in his Holy Flame. He named them the Ademu – the Humans. He taught them to strive for greatness and to overcome adversity, and he outfitted them with weapons and bade them drive back Tiamat’s horde. The other three races rallied to the side of the Ademu and all together fought for their freedom, until the horde was driven back. Then Bahamut gathered together the Wisest of each Race and taught them a sentence of the Ancient language of Creation. With this sentence, they created a spell to banish Tiamat to Abzu, the Abyss Beneath the Seas. So, it was done, and so the world was made.

But in her watery prison Tiamat, who knows no peace, rants and raves and rends at the walls of her cell with her mighty talons. In certain places her monstrous followers gather and listen, and decipher words of power from the raving and work magics of their own. For centuries now her most devoted servants have worked to craft their own sentence of Creation, a counter-spell to undo Bahamut’s spell and free their mistress, allowing her to bring peace, or rather, silence to the world once and for all. 

What the setting implies - 

• Magic are words of Creation taught to the living races by either Bahamut or Tiamat. Breaking down sentences into syllables and words and allowing them to be reorganised and respoken as spells with individual and distinct effects, which is an arduous and difficult process. Wizards then gain magic by memorising spells other people have written and eventually learning to compose their own variations on the theme. Bards, I feel, are a subset of magic user who have translated this process into a musical tradition which may be closer to how the Words of Creation were originally played. Sorcerers would then be rare and dangerous individuals, likely descended from dragons, who know the language innately. In a way the Language of Creation is their first language, and they have to translate their magical thoughts into normal languages to keep from tearing the world apart. I'm not sure Warlocks work, as though though this world largely lacks the enigmatic extra-planar patrons the class requires. Debatably Tiamat raving from the dark would be a good origin for a Great Old One Warlock but she's not really a patron per say as she is a primordial source of power, plus dark Wizards, particularly Necromancers should be able to have gained their knowledge of magic from listening to the blasphemous curses of the Mother of Monsters as well. If they are going to be included their patrons would likely be the Five Dragons, certainly Ušumgallu in his fiery glory would work nicely for an Infernal Pact. In any case it would demand considerable re-skinning of the class. 

• Necromancy would be tied closely with Tiamat's realm Abzu. Drawing upon the Mesopotamian influences running throughout this bit of world building again we know that the land of the Dead is Irkalla also called Kur or Ereshkigal and it is often personified as a dragon located immediately above Abzu, which we have placed here under water. So accordingly the underworld would be under water. Maybe Tiamat's ravings periodically disturb the dead from their rest in Irkalla and send them up to the Earth? Water is the conduit which means Halflings could be closely associated with them. I feel like watery undead calls for less of a zombie/skeleton type situation and more of a lost souls, wraiths and spirits kind of deal, and whilst certainly Human Necromancers would be all about binding souls to infernal contraptions and homunculi the Halflings might be like the Eberron Elves and have communication with the spirits of their ancestors as an integral part of their culture.  
  

• So what about divine magic? Effectively a cleric works the same way as a sorcerer once you get past the power source thing. In 5e they are different in the execution of their powers - clerics cannot do any of the fancy metamagic tricks, clerics may know all the spells but they have to prepare them. They do not have access to the terrifying damaging spells but more beneficial ones. Whilst we don't want to scrap clerics we can give them a position in the world: clerics are the Official magic users, children taken in by the Temple of Bahamut and taught Words of Creation, or perhaps like in Dragon Age, children who are manifesting magical abilities are sent away to the Temple to study. By this logic Sorcerers, Wizards and Warlocks are Unofficial magic users having to hide their powers to avoid being run out of town, or perhaps posing as clergymen. All this said, part of me once to scrap Wizards and Warlocks to establish a neat dichotomy between the Lawful clerics of Bahamut and the Chaotic wizards of Tiamat. Bards then fill a nice gap in between having bits of the cleric list and bits of the wizard list, fighting like a cleric but in less armour. The paladin can be justified as being a warrior first and a healer second, and you can't really have Bahamut as the central deity of your campaign without paladins. 

• Druids and rangers present another set of difficulties, likewise the paladin's Oath of Ancients since the world is so closely tied to the will of the two deities that doesn't leave a lot of room for, for example, primal spirits or faerie lords. It's possible to use the non-magic version of the ranger but it feels like a bit of a cop-out. My first instinct is to say that the ranger is operating as a druid-lite, with the same relationship to the druid as the paladin has to the cleric. Druidcraft is then the magic of the ancient Elves that predates Bahamut teaching the mortal races the Words of Creation. With that in mind I'm inclined to say that Elves can't be clerics or paladins, but ONLY Elves can be druids or rangers, but I'm not 100% on this yet. Aragorn has a long shadow and there may be some other races included that could have a similar connection to the natural world, particularly with regards to some of the specifically monstrous races of Tiamat like the Sahuagin and the Coastal circle of the moon druid. 

• One thing I like about drawing upon the Mesopotamian source material is the range of minions it gives the Cult of Tiamat. Suddenly rather then mainly Kobolds and marauders we have Gnolls, Minotaurs, Sahaugin, Scorpion-Men and Manticores plus a creepier take on Orcs as a godawful hive-mind of ape-things. Certainly the attack on the city in Hoard of the Dragon Queen becomes more colourful. Hulking Minotaurs hack at the gateways and entrances with axes and hammers whilst Manticores dive bomb defenders on the walls. Kobolds fit, I think, not as one of Tiamat's original creations but more like a horrible

  

  Kobolds are like this but whip-thin and snakelike
  with ape-like paws and there's hundreds of them. 

  dragon-thing that come swarming up out of the ground whenever a dragon wakes, a sign of the corruption one of Tiamat's Angels brings. Other monsters in Hoard can be substituted for one of Tiamat's Eleven. Manticores for Preyton's and Scorpion-Men for Ettercaps. The Sahuagin can stand in for Lizardmen and the Bullywugs I have a soft-spot for. I hate frogs, and some horrible frogmen leaping madly out of the mud to attack are always welcome. My personal taste is that Bullywugs are the result of a particularly dark curse. A crude form of polymorph, rather then turn the victim into a single toad they burst into a dozen fat slimy toads retaining a dark malignant shard of humanity in their horrible amphibian hearts. 

• My only problem is the Cloud Giant. Giants in my opinion are massive and charismatic enough to be an integral part of the mythos and if they appear in any numbers in the setting the world should rabidly be turning into Attack on Titan. This is very much the approach I plan on taking with The Storm King's Thunder. I've got that mythology pretty well fleshed out and it lies quite closely with the dragon-based one I have for Tyranny of Dragons, drawing upon Japanese mythology in the same broad way I've drawn upon Mesopotamian mythology for this. The dream scenario would be to combine the two into a monomyth that permits both Giants and Dragons. And now I can't get the idea of a terrifying Jotun-Shogun in a flying castle waited on by Oni from my mind. Regardless, I'm settling on leaning into the break in the concept. Giants - or Anunnaki - as strangers to the world. No one can really account for them in their theologies or histories, only that they once had a great and terrible empire that spanned the world, before the Binding of Tiamat. Now they are perishingly few and filled with a deep and ancient loathing for Dragonkind. 

• By way of playable races we have the Big Four, as per my Rules - Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings. The first question is which subraces are permissible. Humans I tend to favour the Variant over the standard version but I feel like everyone does. If I was going to have one subrace for everyone it would be Lightfoot Halflings, Wood Elves,

  

  Look the whole setting is going for a Antiquity kick,
  obvious it's the TES Babylon-come-Greek techno-dwarves.

  Mountain Dwarves and Variant Humans. This makes out of the gate Halflings the best rogues, Elves the best at the 'Elf-Specific' classes druid and ranger, Mountain Dwarves the best fighters and by process of elimination the ambitious, versatile Humans the best wizards and clerics.

• For the uncommon races we have to have, most obviously, Dragonborn - here literal half-dragons, viewed variously with fear and awe depending on the location. The lack of the diabolic in this setting rules out Tieflings, and the lack

  

  I always dug how their weapons are
  made of dragon-bone.

  of the faerie buggers Gnomes. Likewise, Half-Orcs are right out, since the Umū dabrūtu aren't really a unified functional "race" of people as much as they are demon Tyranids via Mordor. Half-Elves fill a niche so we can keep them. I like the idea that Half-Elves have a specific place in the world kind of like the Bretons in The Elder Scrolls. Arguably the absence of Half-Orcs frees up room for one of my favourite PC races the noble Minotaur but there is the fear that a STR bonus with a natural weapon and ties to the villains lets them cut too close to the Dragonborn. However as they are an entire race and not just half-breeds like the Dragonborn we can give them a distinctive place culturally. Minotaurs may well be one of the more civilised of Tiamat's creations, with an empire of maze-cities and Minotaurs with jobs like "baker" or "mason" rather then being exclusively labyrinth guardians, as well as Minotaurs who don't particularly want to drive the peoples of the earth into extinction in the name of the Dragon Queen, making them playable.
  
  I appreciate the Unearthed Arcana Krynn style Minotaurs having a choice of Wisdom or Intelligence as their second ability bonus but I think I'd make it a choice of just those two and make the Strength bonus +2. I'm also not MARRIED to the idea of Minotaurs as sailors and pirates, and whilst Viking/Minoan Minotaur is all very good and fun it's weird to assume they'd all know how to sail, I'd replace the vehicle proficiency with a skill proficiency, either Athletics
  
  or Intimidate I haven't decided yet.
• 
  For a fourth uncommon race I am drawn towards the Svirfneblin, the Deep Gnomes being weird enough to fit comfortably outside of the plans of both Tiamat and Bahamut, plus we could do with a high Int PC race. They still need an origin but their enigmatic nature means buys me some time to come up with something good. Perhaps they are associated with the Land of the Dead, or perhaps with the mysterious history of the Giant Empire. Of the top of my head my favourite theory would be a heretical belief that they are the lost fifth race Bahamut created. This makes sense, you might have noticed, since the "common" PC races broadly map to the five Chinese elements - Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. The belief would be then that rather then the extra special Humans being made of both Fire and Earth the Humans are made of Fire alone, whilst the Deep Gnomes are Earth. Rather then answer the call to fight back against Tiamat's monsters they went into hiding and effectively vanished from history, shunned by the races they refused to aid. 

• I'm thinking of leaning into the Mesopotamian setting. The campaign would centre around the Land of Two Rivers, ancient and civilised, home to great scholars and warriors, located broadly in the south of the world.
  
  Going off a Civ 6 campaign the other major nations would be pseudo-Egypt, pseudo-Rome, pseudo-Athens, pseudo-Sparta, pseudo-Scythia and possibly pseudo-India and pseudo-China off at the edge of the map. In general I'm gunning for an Iron Age vibe. Of course this is disrupted by the presence of, for example, monotheism in the form of Bahamut but I think I'm going to code it largely in terms of Zoroastrian dualism, Egyptian Aten-worship and the Mithraic mysteries rather then straight up Christianity, but those things are hard to get away from with the cleric and paladin classes. Hopefully it'll end up suitably Conanish in character, but with more Dragons and Manticores and Scorpion-Men. The history nerd that makes up the vast percentage of my personality acknowledges the absence of things like stirrups from this time period and elects to include them because the Death Dealer has them, and to generally acknowledge more riding horses into the world because of a personal belief that chariots look stupid and are hard to imagine being used, which kills a D&D game.
  
   I'll need to go through the equipment list and do some pruning as well, but plate armour is right out, and probably the greatsword though I'm willing to debate that. Half-plate can stay understood as lorica segmentata (lighter then chain-mail but costlier and harder to maintain). The longbow can be reskinned as a Scythian recurve bow or some Elven witchery. The crossbow stays but it is a strange and rightly feared weapon, rare and contraband. I'll have to comb the full equipment list at a later date. 

• The monk class I'm struggling with, and I'm tempted to cut. If I was going to roll out the monk they'd have to be part of faux-Rome's Mithraic take on Bahamut - warrior-ascetics fit nicely, but I think I'll leave them for now. I'm inclined to disallow arcane tricksters and eldritch
  
  knights, given that wizardry is taboo and being a cleric is a reserved profession (except, perhaps, for Deep Gnomes and Minotaurs, who can have their own traditions of magic outside of the Big Four races cultural hang ups).

Provisionally we are left with the following considerations for player characters. 

• 8 races to choose from in the shape of Variant Human, Wood Elf, Mountain Dwarf, Lightfoot Halfling, Dragonborn, Half-Elf, Deep Gnome and a lightly modified Minotaur to be listed elsewhere on this blog. 
• 9 classes - Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Ranger, Paladin. 
• Only Elves cannot be Clerics or Paladins but can be Druids and Rangers. Fighters and Rogues cannot be Eldritch Knights or Arcane Tricksters unless you are a Minotaur or Deep Gnome. 
• In terms of nationalities we have a faux-Mesopotamian one famed for it's learning and piety, a faux-Egyptian one famed for it's culture and mysticism, a faux-Roman one famed for it's efficiency and militarism, a culture of faux-Scythian nomadic horse-peoples famed for their ferocity and then a vaguely Ancient Greek milieu of feuding ideologically distinct city-states again to be detailed in a follow up. 

The New World

Back.

Astrata, capitol Antarth sits on the bank of the mighty
River Nephos as it flows into the inland Sea of Stars.
The stretch of river Astrata stands on is nearly six miles wide 

New edition and a year at uni have overhauled my setting.

Ichall is no longer the dominant power in the world, thousands of years ago the great magitech-cum-Macedonian sword and sorcery thalassocracy crumbled into the sea. It's colonies and client states revolted to form the Six Cities of the Endless Bay and the Curiate of Mir, which would go on to become the continent spanning Empire of Mirath. Ichall then suffered a minor magical apocalypse caused by some nasty business with a tidal wave and a band of Ettins. Currently Ichall's existence is a matter of debate.

The Bay States quickly fell into an easy rhythm that they have maintained to this day - trading with one another and the broader world, accumulating gods and fighting wars, either ineffectual gentlemanly affairs between the city states or vicious winner-takes-all mercenary wars that end badly for everyone except the man who hired the toughest thugs. Notable developments for the Bay include the establishment of Dater, a colony accidentally built in the path of a transient elf-city, and the city of Carcer going independent, forming the militaristic Carcerene Republic. Mir grew and propsered inland, separate from the Bay States becoming fascistic renaissance era pusedo-Rome with militaristic police-state - the thinking man's Sauron with legions of monstrous auxiliaries AND a handy grasp of the finer points of sanitation and architecture. Mirath - oppressing you straight up from the dark ages.

Accordingly Mirath fell when in much the same fashion Rome did, unwinnable wars, decadence, external threats and military revolts, but because Mirath's army contained a hell of a lot of hungry orcs and gnolls the sacking of the capitol had a lot less looting and a lot more eating.

Isolde Dryden, typical post-unification
Prynic knight.

Left in Mirath's wake are the following:

The Three Successor Kingdoms - Martial, slightly Frankish, very Prussian Vrancia, cultured and diplomatic vaguely Austrian Antarth and Pryn, the island nation where the orphaned Empress Corinna Phixia fled following the Mir's Fall bringing with her dozens of refugee noble houses and the fearsome Nothic Legion, essentially making it Britain but the Roman and Norman invasions where one and the same thing. Most of my games action is set in Pryn, under the general principle that it should start somewhere cliched and recognisable (wyrd-Britain where people have names like Edric, Garth and Anna) and then shit gets freaky the further you get from home.

The Barbarians - Kingdoms and countries that were either never conquered by Mir or where never completely Mirathized, maintaining their own culture and customs throughout. Of these we have the Coralisians of the northern prairie who managed to conquer Vrancia and Anarth for a time creating what some called the Second Mirathian Empire but most now simply refer to as the Boethian Dominion, refering to the ruling
Coralisian Dynasty, the Boethians. They are the Scythians and the Cumans but more Japanese.
To the South is Lhysnia. a fiercely independent little country, very mountainous and heavily forested and not at all Transylvania-cum-Scotland. More about them next time.

Zingria, most southerly of the Archonaes
like most of the Mire's cities is built on one
of the few patches of dry ground, or rather
"less waterlogged".

The Archonaes are the loose confederation of city-states that rise up out of the vast and expansive Turquoise Mire - bored and fatalistic Franco-Louisianan Mirathian nobles drifting around stately Egyptian looking cities made of turquoise stone, battling ennui, the Prynic and their native subject people's who are rugged and clever swamp-Gauls who are slowly retaking their country by becoming the nouveau riche. They have an eel god.

Typical Aemonican drengr -
a young untested warrior

Finally there is the North, properly called Thyglia, a vast island divided up between several different tribes and kingdoms. Vothgard was a Mirathian pirate port and after the Fall host to an influx of Mirish refugees, Artios is ancient and mysterious and a heart of northern culture. Aemonicans are fatalistic berserkers. The Ormish and the Lothine are nomands, they herd reindeer and breed wardogs and all of them have a bloody history as sea-raiders. They're vikings. They're all just fucking vikings okay?

Beyond that are the kingdoms of the south and east that never lived under the Mirathians or the Ichallesians - Tokar and Yorgor - vaguely Scandinavian India, Mu - a vast Empire of charioteering Mongols ruled by the Kas, Oklar, Cematia, Ror'Bekyr - story-telling desert nomads, Ror'Vhasat, revolutionary dragon-worshipping Phonecian-Arabs, Ror'Firat - continent spanning Afro-Chinese Empire, theocratic Bai ruled by the Three Eyed Hierophant, Ottene - the City of the Brazen Gates and Mer'Jormar - choral diabolists. These are the nations of men.

The World is a Supermarket AND ICHALL

One time my father and I had a fairly extensive conversation about how supermarket's in this madcap world of ours compare to civilizations and political structures of the ancient world. Because that's just something we do sometimes.
...
It runs in the family.

Anyway, of late I've kinda revamped my setting. It's basically the same except for all the ways it isn't. The only thing this really means is that the terrible map I drew is now basically defunct.

I'm taking the Supermarket/Civilizations thing and running with it and I came up with this. I will not be listing the Supermarkets themselves because it's barely relevant anyway. But these are the major world powers.

The Ichallesian Empire. They're expansionist and pseudo-Roman but not quite. They're kinda like the British Empire in that whilst they don't hold a whole lot of territory themselves they are a massive military and trading nation and a lot of nations serve them as client states, dependent on the Ichalles for protection. Much of Ichall is very decadent in a Sword and Sorcery kind of way. Gleaming towers rise up like teeth from the wine-dark sea, as the city dreams fitfully 'neath an amber moon and other such clichés.

This is the important thing to remember when I say "this made up civilization is like this actual civilization" it's not exact. The vibe I'm going for is sorta looser and anachronistic, like the pseudo-Roman bit is less like how actual Rome was and more like how a pulp fiction writer in the 30s thought Rome was, the more Arthurian/Charlemagne bits are less about what those times where actually like and more about how a 19th Romanticism thought that time was like. So the Vikings actually have horned helmets. Except they don't, because my Viking equivalents are Hobgoblins and my Hobgoblins just have actual horns.

I digress. The Empire is built around the Seven Cities of the Endless Bay Islands (Ichall - the old capitol, Icharion, Metyr, Ascia, Tarantion - the new capitol, Pelepion - formerly part of Pellix and the Lost City of Manath. Also Vothens, an independent citystate in the North founded by Ichallesian adventurers is close enough in culture it is sometimes counted as the Eighth City)  and from there they've annexed Pellix, are establishing colonies across the North (like in Pryn) where they talk about "civilizing the savage", and Agalus and Espen are dependent on their military for protection. They're less an actual military empire (though some would like to change that) and more a large trade alliance wherein the terms of contract are agreed at spear point. In terms of character the Ichalles are like the British and Roman Empires. They like to present themselves as being conservative, stoic down to earth businessmen, when actually in the background there's a lot of crime, corruption, decadence, opium smoking, industrialised whoring, rampant alcoholism in the working classes (think the Gin Craze) and general vacuous frivolity, with added sword and sorcery blood cults and orgiastic rituals to dark and blasphemous gods.

FUN FACTS ABOUT THE ICHALLESIAN EMPIRE

• The ruling class is mostly made up of sorcerers and magic users, and the Collegium is a semi-criminal faction/"gentleman's club" made up of the magic using nobility to ensure they stay in power and keep magic regulated throughout the empire. 
• Ichallesian politics is fraught and incredibly dangerous, with assassination and flash in the pan civil wars common. It takes either an iron willed tyrant, a political savant or a madman of the worst sought to hold the Emperor's throne for even a year. Needless to say these power hungry individuals have often sought help from a variety of supernatural forces, making Faustian pacts to aid them in their bloody if brief ascents. The marks of these unholy bargains linger across the cities to these days in the form of assorted compacts and superstitions that bind the citizens to this day. Such as:
• In Ichall the Rite of the Lizard and the Snake is observed. If a household sits down to eat a meal in the presence of a lizard, everyone dining must forgo meat for a year and a day. If they fail to abstain from animal flesh for the allocated time, a basilisk will emerge from the household's cistern, inevitably turning the household into stone. Ichall is overrun with the things now, and it is also called the City of Statues because petrified citizens are common sites on street corners and in back alleys. Specially bread blind mongooses are used to keep the basilisk numbers down.
• In Ascia it is said the wind demons will bring misfortune on those who do not carry their symbol, and as such all citizens wear bird-feathers, typically braided into their hair, to ward off bad luck. 
• In Metyr cats are forbidden and killed on sight. As is anyone who is thought to have brought a cat into the city. No one knows why the Metyrians fear cats so. They do not speak of it. 
• In Icharion the ground breaking of any given construction project must be done in the shadow of a virgin girl, lest the building collapse. 
• Across all cities it is said that to enter a house with the left foot first is to bring doom upon it.  
• Despite the lethal political climate of the Empire the current Emperor Rathari Malicild has managed to keep power for 45 years now, having killed every man sent to murder him, often with his own hands. He rules as a tyrant and heads up a very conservative faction who believes the Empire needs to stamp out internal decadence, immorality and general personal freedom so they, as a nation, can get down to the business of militarising properly and making everything that isn't Ichallesian Ichallesian. 
• Within the Empire the church of Athros has managed to gain significant power by backing the conservative factions. For nearly a hundred years now this influence has allowed the Athrosian clergy to elevate themselves above other cults and make claims like "Athros is the greatest god", "it is wrong to hold other gods before Athros" and even "Athros is the only True God". Whether or not any of this is true is immaterial, as these ideas are now accepted by a majority of the Empire's citizens, including the Emperor himself. 
• This has lead to the Emperor levying increasing restrictions against the cults and churches of other deities, both at home and in the provinces, particularly those seem as centres of immorality and ill repute. Recently this has climaxed with the full scale outlawing of the worship of VoraMyr, effectively declaring the popular androgynous Double God false. A lot of people where unhappy, both on religious grounds and as the outright outlawing of an entire faith as a violation of personal freedom. 
• This is the reason the capitol has moved from Ichall to Tarantion in the last decade. Ichall has become a warzone of revolutionary activity, eating itself in a wave of criminality and violence. 
• The Endless Bay Islands are bad country for horses. The countryside is either thick semi-tropical forest (most grain is imported and the farmers have a nomadic, slash and burn system) and rocky scrubland. Whilst there are horses bread in Ichall (one mad Emperor was a horse-fancier, in a disturbingly accurate sense. He imported a herd of piebald horses from Ichall for his... ahem... "personal" use, and their descendants roam semi-wild in the vast Serpentine Park at the cities centre) there is no real equestrian culture, and the military typically relies on auxilaries and mercenary troops for cavalry. What they do have, however, are these: 

Called "alce" or "keythongs", because they sound more fantasy then phorusrhacos, they are used as chariot animals, and breed with as much care as racehorses. Speaking of horses, they're terrified of them keythongs, because they eat them. Though chariots are now obsolete the world over, the tactical use of war-alce have proved effective at disrupting enemy cavalry. Fortunately for the Northern nations who depend on the horse, they are flimsy birds who don't do well in cold climates and even less well at sea. The Ichallesian army uses the feathers from these creatures in their helmet plumes to determine rank.

• The Ichalles have a patronymic naming system, wherein the surname is the father's first name with the added suffix -cild. To make things simpler many families only use a few names, cycling through the generations. 
• The Ichalles also consider trousers to be barbaric and effete. Typical dress for an Ichalles is a white tunic of varying length and cut, decorated with geometric black shapes.
• The Ichalles also have a great fondness for black and white as a motif and it features heavily in their artwork, fashion and society. The national standard is a giant black and white basilisk curling around a burning tower, and the Imperial standard is a black tiger with white stripes, now extinct. The skin of one serves as the Emperor's official cloak. 
• It is thought that the Seven Cities were once Hobgoblin in origin, which would explain the Hobgoblin nations particularly fierce hatred for the Ichalles. It burns even fiercer then the hatred they have for everyone else. This would explain a lot, as many parallels can be drawn between the ways Ichallesian and Hobgoblin politics, military and society are ordered. However, neither the Ichallesians nor the Hobgoblins admit to having founded the Seven Cities, suggesting that perhaps something older is at work. 

I might stop here. This is getting pretty long and I've already accidentally deleted it all twice, so I'll get it up and carry on with the other nations later. Cool? Cool. 

Dwarves

I'm gonna ramble about dwarves for a while okay? Okay.

Things we know about dwarves from literally everyfuckingthing ever. Dwarves never change. TV Tropes said so.

Google image dwarf.

First hit.

You could pretty much stop right there. Beard. Axe. Short guy. Pipe and/or booze. Kinda Viking.

Go a little further you get: lives underground. Miner. Into gold and crafting shit, which goes back to Norse myth. Honour bound, family, duty. Proud. Grudge bearing. Hardy yet gruff. We've done this. Move on.

But I LIKE dwarves. As a short hairy man myself I find a degree of kinship with the trite little bastards.

So this is my take on them. There's a little bit of the Dragon Age in the brain stew creating these dwarves and a little of the Warhammer Dwarfs as well as some crap from Invader Zim, Steampunk miscellanea, perhaps a dash of the trolls from Homestuck. All this filtered through the lens of the man who taught me what the fuck a dwarf was - Mr Terry Pratchett. Discworld rules.

Fuck yeah dwarf bread...

Oh. And actual Norse Mythology.

MY DWARVES. Let's get cooking.

I imagine the typical dwarf to be coming in at around 4 foot 5, with only a few certain exceptions the tallest dwarves coming to like, 5'2", but people will be like "by 'eck yer a biggun!" Talking in a Northern accent is a semi-official rule for playing a dwarf in one of my games. Other then that yeah they tend to be pretty wide set. I think a lot of my dwarves are more likely to be scrawnier looking though. Less bulging muscles and massive beer-bellies, more thin, sinews bodies with a deceptive resilience.

Young dwarves typically have course, dark grey skin which becomes smoother and paler as they age. Very old dwarves are described as being deathly pale and being almost corpselike in appearance.

All dwarves are born with either jet black or snow white hair, although some particularly in the North use a complex process steeped in old Dwarf-Talk (a form of spoken word sorcery blending magic and metalwork) to weave wires of bright metals like copper and gold into their hair and beards, which in time overtake the natural hair and grow as normal hair would.

There are female dwarves. They do not have beards.

Dwarves have pointy ears but not like an elf's pointy ears. Dwarven ears are kinda squarish and tend to stick out a little.

All dwarves speak two languages, some a third. The first language is a kind of trade tongue, if a human thinks they speak dwarvish this is what they are actually speaking. It's like a simplified version of the True Tongue, real dwarvish. Basically it's dwarf-words bastardized until they fit human social concepts. The True Tongue is the actual dwarf language. No one but dwarves speak it. It's a big deal. It's also pretty alien to us. It doesn't have concepts of things like "gender" for example (hur hur hur no female dwarves). Then there's Dwarf-Talk. Dwarf-Talk is the special kind of magic language they use in their crafting, a spoken form of Runecraft. I'm probably going to have to stat this up properly. It's like an artificer/engineer type magic with stuff from the Wizard of Earthsea, dwarf says something in Dwarf-Talk, it's probably going to become a Thing That Happens. Often it is used by grunt workers singing spells into the gear they fashion (Hi Ho...) but also like, for minor curses and wishes which are pretty hit and miss. You might manage to kill a rat with a curse in Dwarf-Talk, but it might take a few months and probably not the rat you wanted to kill. Dwarf-Talk forms the backbone of the social stratification of the dwarven people. The highest caste, the Nobles, all have total mastery over Dwarf-Talk and it's power, and about 10% of the lower-caste dwarves are born with an instinctive understanding of it but not really enough to do any real power, the few that are tend to be persecuted by the Nobles looking to maintain their position.

I think dwarves are pretty much euosocial assuming that word means what I think it means. What I think it means is "like ants, bees and naked mole rats and shit". But that's how their society is organised. There's a social stratification based along a caste system BUT NOT LIKE IN DRAGON AGE because my caste system is more to do with genetics then anything else. It's not a product of sociology but one of dwarven nature. There are physical differences between the castes.

Let's see what Jezirat has to say on the matter:

...

Me referring to Jezirat for things is kinda horribly obnoxious... it's just me writing things down but in a vaguely medievally way SHUT UP BILLY WE'VE DONE IT NOW.

"The dwarven peoples are not born as men are, for men though they made be thought of low or high or otherwise born apart from other men save in exceptional circumstances these places are determined and set only by the law of other men. Instead the dwarf is like the bee or ant, each is born into a position and place according to the will of the King or Queen, who rules the Hold, as best will serve them and the populace.

The lowliest kind, or such as they are considered, is what men call the Kobold or Gnome. They are small in stature, smaller even then other dwarves and often standing no taller than a young child. Likewise they are more diminutive then other dwarves, in general being of narrower frame and limb. Of all dwarves the men are

One end of the scale

most likely to go unbearded which earns them the disdain of their larger kinsmen. Their fingers are long and nimble and skilled at such intricate crafts as trapping, tailory and other such things. Some amongst them possess strange features, such as a tail like that of the rat, or hard growths like pebbles growing on the flesh. Some have short stub-horns such as that of the kid-goat. Their role in the hold is that of the hunters and the gatherers, in general they are responsible for the supply of food. Within the tunnels of the Hold they often hunt bats and similar vermin but more often they live apart from the main Dwarf-home, but instead live in venturing bands hunting larger game and gathering fruits and plants. Often they raid the settlements of men, stealing livestock and crops using much cunning and guile, which earns them the enmity of the surface dwelling peoples. It is said that if they are away from the Hold for too long in time they will go feral as a dog might, and may form savage barbarian raiding bands. The Gnome is the shortest lived of the dwarven castes, perhaps living out no longer then a human might, no longer then a three-score of years. 

Okay... less fey and more Steampunk via Incans and you have some Gnomes/Kobolds... Distressingly good-looking gnomes. If I was like two-feet shorter...

The next casteband of dwarf is the most numerous, the Miner or Worker caste. They are the commoners of the Hold and responsible for the building and expansion of the Hold and the acquisition of the precious metals the dwarves crave, yet most also labour as craftsmen and artisans, gaining much prestige and standing as metalworkers and armourers. They live longer then the Gnomes, perhaps expecting a hundred and then fifty years of life, though some may bear out to see the passage of two centuries. 

 Above them is the Warrior casteband.  They stand a full head higher than any of the Miner Caste, some

standing nearly as tall as a man. They are often possessed of greater strength then other dwarves and many train with arms from a young age. It is their duty to defend the Hold from enemies, though not all are warriors truly. Others make up the court of the King or Queen of the Hold, serving at their side as the lesser gentry serves the Kings of men, administrating the Hold and acting on their behalf. Even as they are larger then other dwarves they are also granted greater longevity, with many surpassing five hundred years of age before death.  

The Greatest and least populous caste is the caste of Kings and Queens elsewise called the Nobles. The Noble Dwarves are the tallest of the Dwarves, standing always as tall as a man or elf. In many ways they are more similar to the race of elves then to their underling dwarves, as they are often tall and slender-limbed and possessed of lives that may span into the millennia and also know the ancient languages that is the source of the strange Dwarven magics. A Dwarf-King may be able to shift his shape or command the raw elements of stone and fire, but his chief power is his ability to give a new "born" dwarf it's name. 

Though the Noble Dwarves reproduce in a manner like that of men and other animals Dwarves of other castes, when they generate, produce not a babe but a stone, no larger than a fist, like that which is called the geode for it is hollow. Such stones are presented before the Dwarf-King or other such Noble of his house who may act on his behalf, whereupon he speaks such words of power over it that the stone cracks as might an egg and from within issues the dwarf-child. Yet the words the Dwarf-King speaks are of great import, for they determine of which caste the child shall be. Most often should all things in the Hold be in balance the King will bring forth a child of the same caste as those who first birthed it, but in times of war may call forth instead many soldiers to serve the Hold, or many of the lowly Kobolds in times of famine." /endselfindulgentwank

Thus thanks to the Dwarf-Kings seemingly essential role as the literal giver of life members of that caste enjoy reverence as god-kings and Pharaohs, and many dwarves are happy with that. They work for their King and follow his will exactly, in return he gives them life.

Course it doesn't always play out like that. With the decline in the old dwarven Empire many lower-caste Speakers of Dwarf-Talk have been able to escape persecution and around them form more egalitarian settlements such as the Republican mining town of Ardun and Mad Moira's Moving Mountain (more on that later) with the handful of dwarves who know the words to bring life serving a role in the community part way between priest and midwife.

In terms of aesthetics I think there's a lot of Steampunk in the dwarves but not like in the typical Victorian way. I imagine more of a cog and clockwork Incan vibe, and they dress in robes and tunics borrowed from Klimt paintings, bold geometric patterns wrought in golden cloth. Perhaps they're somewhere between the classical vikingy dwarf and the crazy Ancient Astronaut's stuff.

Hey, now there's a bunch of different types of dwarf you can be... time for AN ELABORATE FUCKING actually this one is pretty straight forward.

3d6 - Castes

NOTE: No dwarf can become a mage, all dwarves can see in the Dark.

3 - Kobold
You are the size of a halfling and have all the associated size-based rules (no big weapons etc.)
+1 to DEX +1 to CON -1 to STR
+2 to save against Magic
+4 to save against Poison
+1 to Stealth checks
+1 to attempts to Spot and Disarm Traps
20% chance to know Dwarf-Talk (not yet made up)

4-14 - Miner
The standard Dwarf
+1 to CON -1 to CHA
+1 to hit with axes and picks
+1 to damage against goblins and orcs
+1 to Perception checks underground
-2 to hit & -1 to skill checks if in DIRECT sunlight
15% chance to know Dwarf-Talk

15-17 - Soldier
+1 to STR +2 to CON -1 to CHA
+2 to save against Magic and Poison
+1 to hit with axes, hammers and shortswords
+1 to damage against goblins and orcs
+1 to Perception checks underground
10% chance to know Dwarf-Talk

18 - King
IF SOME TIME FROM DATE OF PUBLISHING YOU ARE STILL READING THIS YOU ARE TO TRACK BILLY DOWN AND SLAP HIM IN THE FACE AS PUNISHMENT FOR NOT GETTING OFF HIS ARSE AND STATTING UP THE DWARF-KING WHICH WILL PROBABLY BE A RACE AS CLASS DEAL THAT WOULD ALSO COVER THE USAGE OF THE DWARF-TALK MAGIC. INSTEAD BE SATED WITH THIS RAD PICTURE AND A LITTLE BIT OF CRYPTIC HORSESHIT

"And the High-Kings, the Father's of our Race who slew the giant of many arms that is called Au'Garmir and so clinging to his corpse as maggots, traversed in his corpse from the Peak of Stars and the Underearth That Is Above to the place that is Aldthumbla and there was the People fashioned." 

Skills

This one is mostly for me. 

We're gonna use 2d6 from now on, like, I think Apocalypse World and Monster Heart and stuff.

Everyone modifies their rolls by ability score modifiers. Rogues get the edge because they get skill points as they level up, to spend on skills, and thereby become more skilled at the given skill. So it's kinda a hack of Apocalypse World and Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

So, you roll your 2d6. You crunch dem numbers.

If the result is less than 6 you have FAILED sirrah FAILED.

If the result is 7-9 you have succeeded but with some hitch, condition or consequence. Like, say you were having a check for some traps, you get an 8, I get to have a roll to see if you inadvertently set the trap off. Or, like just a general spot-check, you get a 9, so I'll say "you hear voices" or "you see a dark shape in the sky", had you gotten one higher I would say "you hear three voices conversing in what sounds like orcish" or "you see a dark shape in the sky. By its expansive wingspan and distinctive tail it looks like a FRICKEN' DRAGON". So yeah.

Oh! IF YOU TRY AND PICKPOCKET A GUY AND GET A 7 IT'S D20 MINUTES UNTIL THE MARK REALISES HE'S BEEN ROBBED.

But if the result is 10+ it's an unconditional success. Brava!

So let's have some exampley fun.

A fighter is trying to get the drop on a hobgoblin sentry, sneaking up behind him. He has a dexterity of 13 (so +1 to his checks). Cool. But he's still wearing his coat of mail, which is a -3 to a stealth check. He gets a 6, which, thanks to the penalties from his armour become a 4, so he's failed, clattering and clanking all over the place. The hobgoblin sees him. Awkwaaaard.

Had he stripped out of his metal armour beforehand the roll would have been a 7, he is successfully sneaking BUT it's a conditional success, so the hobgoblin gets to make a perception check back, he gets a 5, so he pricks his ears up for a second but then does the ole video game "Probably just a rat" and goes back to dreaming gentle dreams of callipygian hobgoblin women, the penultimate thing to go through his head. The last thing is probably gonna be the fighters axe.

But had our goblinoid friend rolled higher, and gotten a success, he would have grown wise to the fighters presence. The highest roll wins. In the event of a tie dice off. Cool? Cool.

But what if in the same situation everyone's favourite ailurophile alpha-bitch elf Kësa* was doing the sneaky sneak. Well for a start she'd probably just shoot the fucker BUT SHUT UP BILLY. She has a single point in Stealth plus her +2 from her high dexterity for a bonus of +3. Her armour is non-metallic so no worries there. She rolls a 7, totals up for a 10 and the guard doesn't know what's hit him.

So we're gonna try this out. 

*Seriously, take Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls, Arwen and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTTwcCVajAc this chick, and blend them  together and you've pretty much got her down.  

Al-Mi'raj

And I'm back.

LINGER NOT ON THE STAT BLOCK

 

Al-Mi’raj

When the scholar and mad priest Jezirat of Kemet first travelled the lands beyond the temple-cities of his homeland he documented many strange and fabulous things in parts of the world so close to the ken of eastern civilization yet so backward and isolated no-one saw fit to keep a record. Exactly what possessed Jezirat to venture into these backwater regions of the world none can say. He was mad.

But nevertheless of all the unusual creatures thought lost to folklore perhaps the most eerie Jezirat came across was what he called Al-Mi’raj. He wrote of it:

“Also in this place [The Isles of Nennyn] their lives an animal that is in form a very large hare or rabbit. However it has yellow fur and its head is stripped of all skin and flesh leaving it bone bare. Its eye sockets possess a deathly and unreal light that’s gaze, I’m told withers crops. Most strange of all however is the creature’s horn. From the centre of its forehead grows a single black and curved horn like that of a goat. The animal moves with great speed and although it takes the shape of a rabbit it takes great joy in flesh and will hunt game larger then itself, using its worrisome horn as a weapon. Upon occasion, as I’m told, one of the creatures will take the life of one of the pygmy Nennish Islanders and eat their flesh. 

Not only for this reason do the Nennish fear and hate the creature, but also because it is said to be a bringer of disease and plague. Whether this is true or not the Nennish treat it as such are quick to summon witches to dispatch the beast as few mortal trappers are willing to make the attempt, believing the beast to be cursed. Having witnessed one first hand attack, dismember and feed upon a kid-goat, I fear they may be right. 

It is further said that if cursed by the animal the only way to lift the curse is to devour a piece of the animals black heart, a dangerous act as if the folklore is true this part is very poisonous.

In truth I am beginning to suspect that these animals are not true creatures but the manifestation of some malign demon or god sent out to bring pestilence and chaos to the world. In many ways they are the ultimate inversion; a the body of a prey animal in a conspicuous tone, the body of a herbivore ingesting flesh and blood, a dead and rotten skull rising from a still living neck…” 

In his native tongue Al-Mi’raj means “The Ladder”. It is unknown exactly why Jezirat of Kemet chose to name the creature so but it is worth remembering he was not dubbed the Mad Priest for nothing. 

For reasons known only to them the native Nennish-halfling folk themselves refer to the sinister creature as the wopletinger.

Al-Mi’raj  (or Wopletinger)

Size:                       Small (3’ long)                                             

Move:                     18”

Armour Class:      14

Hit Dice:                1

Attacks:                 Horn

Damage:                 1d6

Saves:                     8             

                -6 penalties vs. magical attacks 

Al-Mi’raj can bestow quick and minor curses on their enemies with its baleful demon-eyes. Roll d6:

1.         1. -1d6 decrease to a random ability score

2.        2.    -4 penalty on attack rolls, saves, and checks (-2 for skills)

3.     3.   All food tastes like ash. All drink tastes like piss. Saving throw to stomach anything.

4.        4.     You become aware of the horrible true nature of al-mi’raj. Save or you are paralysed immediately with fear and suffer a -8 penalty to your saving throws so shaken up are you for the duration of the curse.

5.        5.    You stink. Sounds silly no? Well you stink so bad people need to make saving throws to be in the same room as you. You stink so bad flies think you’re dead and lay their eggs in you.

6.         6.    Al-Mi’raj has created an empathetic connection with you and when it dies it will try and take up possession of your body. Adventure in of itself.

These curses (except 6) last until the al-mi'raj is slain.