A Tale of Two Empires

Every hero becomes a bore in the end

The World

A map of the campaign

The Amadai Alliance is a collection of minor nations-states that formed into a loose-knit Power, they stand between Namdara and Ticaldi and basically no longer exist as most of the land has been put to waste by soldiers and magic, by prayer and crusaders, until nothing remains of them but refugees. Namdara considers them “liberated”.

Arakon, the lands of mist. An nation carved out of swamp and mountains, Arakon has bred a hard and determined people whose willing practise of slavery puts them at odds with other empires who try and ignore it as best they can in order to acquire the various ores and minerals the empire has to offer. They take no sides in the Sundering War but rather serve both sides and supply anyone with coin with whatever they need.

Flath-innis, known as the Noble Land, An island creates and held together with magic, Flath-innis was once an empire long ago. Many stories claim that blood sacrifices are the mortar of the island, but such practices have been outlawed for a long time and the island became rather isolationist as it grew weary of conquest and eventually abandoned colonies and such for several centuries. Now it trades with the world at least from port cities only and remains closed off to outsiders. A formidable naval power, they are nevertheless not a large world player any longer.

Namdara, jewel of the north. The largest empire in the northern lands, Namdara is a place of plains and hills, swift rivers and deep magic. It is widely considered the cultural centre of the world (or at least the parts of it that matter) though scarcely 100 years ago it was shaken from its high perch by a storm of rocks from the heavens that laid waste to several cities, including the Imperial Seat. The empire recovered, but it was a changed place as a new religion sprang up into the world the followers of Ve. Believing the gods dwell in the land and not the sky, they work strange elemental mysteries and consider magic a perversion of the natural order of the world. Their attempted to get everyone else to believe that have led to conquest and a war that is drawing all nations into it, for or against them.
The lands called New Namdara are conquered nations north of the Empire.

Ticaldi, the garden land. the only southern empire, Ticaldi is carved out and part of forest and hills, a place of surpassing beauty where magic holds the lands together and permits travel and trade between the various cities and villages of the empire.

The Waste is a ruined land created long ago and stopping advancement into the rest of the continent. The Desert is a desert.

As the north has fallen to Namdara, Ticaldi is the only real Power in their way and has, with great reluctance, taken up arms against the invasion. The result has been - memorable - as the Ticaldi generals firmly believe that only when an enemy can no longer make war are they actually defeated. Everyone else in the world is caught between conversion to Ve and conscription into the war against Ve. And to make matters worse, people are discovering ways to access primal magics for unknown reasons and village idiots have begun spouting prophecies about dragons.

History

Three thousand years ago the world was mostly a scattering of tribes and small cities, each mostly only aware of immediate neighbours, a world it was generally too dangerous to travel and tribal warfare dominated the land. Hither came Vaen, a warlord being attacked by neighbours who returned the attack so viscously that Vaen swiftly became local legend and other tribes joined with as allies, and others surrendered as refugees brought news of the slaughter of entire tribes with them.

Vaen and The Horde, as they came to be known, moved north from what is now northern Ticaldi and desert barrens to strike at city after city and town after town, cementing freedom by the sword. Within twenty years they’d conquered the entire known lands and brought trade and roads to all the people they conquered by giving them access to the goods and ideas of lands they’d passed through, conquered, and learned from.It was mostly by accident that the other lands began to adopt the sky gods of the Horde, the belief that the gods dwelled far above the world, remote and distant, and cared not for the affairs of man.

The Horde’s strength lay in its adaptability: it is said of Vaen that he (or she, legends differ) never fought the same battle twice and was sometimes reckoned a god, and othertimes a monster, for the skill with which larger armies were defeated. The Horde travelled quick and light, nearly devoid of baggage trains, taking engineers to the cities they reached and building siege weapons on site, foraging as they went.

Vaen and the Horde allowed each town and city to rule itself as it wished and worship what they wished as long as they did not make war upon each other and owed loyalty to Vaen. Towns and people who broke with this were dealt with swiftly and brutally, sometimes leaving survivors to warn others, sometimes leaving nothing behind at all besides smoking ruins.

According to legend, the Waste was fashioned solely to stop Vaen’s expansion. Upon realizing this, Vaen (then nearing sixty) set out with the Horde again and they vanished into the east through the waste, never to be seen nor heard from again.

Most of the empires that sprang up with the passing of the Horde were ruled by the sons and daughters of Vaen. Indeed, some of the Branches of Ticaldi can still boast this. The passing of that empire led to trade routes and new nations and ocean trade with Faath-innis and some exploration of other lands, though few have returned from them. The result has been a world of tolerance for others foibles and an understanding of the richness of cultures trade can bring -- some now call it world where commerce is the god, but they have forgotten the value of trade and that what we can learn from others allows us to learn more about ourselves.

Religions & such

If you do good, you act in accordance with Ve, even if you do not know it. To do good is, in its purest form, to spread the Knowledge of Ve to others and convince them of the Truth to save others from the uncaring judgements of the sky gods and rains of fire without reason or pity: the old gods know nothing of mercy.

If you follow Ve, you return to the earth in all your aspects once you die, giving back to the earth the life it gave you and escaping from gods whose Judgement only happens after we die, who make the world a testing grounds for rebirth and little else and whose presence is noted in deafening silence. How does one know the sky gods exist? Because they keep disappearing when we try to find them.

The price of service to Ve is to save others. The reward is to be saved by Ve ourselves for the goods we do more than the evil we refrain from doing.

Since Ve is a god of earth, the Namdarans have created buildings dedicated to their god on sites deemed holy, often those where people had a vision and were Chosen, both blessing and curse. Ve is even said to be embodied in the earth in the form of “the prophet” somewhere in Namdara, but the location of the God-in-flesh remains a mystery.

The Chosen, touched by Ve, have the power to drawn energy from the “hidden roads in the world” and bend the elements to their will, even those of the sky gods! Due to the need of many Chosen to battle the magicians who disturb the balance of nature, the Chosen seldom live for a long time, but they burn bright when they do.

The sky gods

Belief in the sky gods is largely a result of the influenced of Vaen and other nomadic tribes that made of the Horde, derived somewhat from the understanding that if someone defeats you, their gods are more powerful than yours. The sky gods are often considered remote and dangerous, though there is no set dogma about them at all. Followers of the sky gods find the idea of Ve, that gods can be imprisoned in stone and words and that any place is more holy than any other to be rather absurd.

According to general belief, when you die the sky gods will judge you by the life you lived, by what you did with the twin gifts of life and death you were given. Some reincarnate, others never do; which is the blessing and which the curse depends upon the believer. By this understanding, the Namdarans are merely scared of judgement and want to be forgotten by all when they die, though there has been little real communication between both systems, as their are no priests for the sky gods and the Namdarans prefer to convert and kill than ask questions and talk; some say it is because they’re afraid words will destroy their belief in Ve, others that there are no questions they wish to ask those who don’t believe as they do.

Other gods

The other gods are mostly just tribal ones involved for protection and personal relief/blessing. Few people expect them, or any other, god to act in the world since our lives are our own affairs, our destinies ours to make despite Oracles and the like. The gods may offer aid in battle, the saying goes, but peace of mind and heart are our own concerns.

Creatures of myth and legend

Dragons

Dragons are very old, creatures of a long and long ago age who are only a memory in this one. All that remains is a lore of scales and fire and wings, and that dragons are terribly hard to kill and the most beautiful of all beings. Further, the legends claim that only one dragon has ever died, and from that death was born the rainbow as a pale reflection of the beauty that had passed forever from the world and diminished it in ways we can scarcely begin to grasp.

Other Creatures

Rumours exist of people who can take on the skin of animals or absorb the life from the living, but they are not known to have any basis in truth beyond legends from a long ago war between magicians wherein men were turned into monsters. According to the lore, the monsters are terribly powerful and devoid of sanity or morality, made immune to magic by being made of magic and can only be killed by a naked blade.

Magicians

There are many magicians in the world. Most of them aren’t all that powerful: throw enough people at a magician, drain their energy, and you’ve beaten them. These ones, of course, tend to amass followers (and protectors, often soldiers) to compensate for this. Quite a few of them rise into positions of power, often ruling cities and towns, or at least being important advisers to those who do. Give the power of magicians to bind and summon, just about every one can use their aid, especially in times of peace -- to say nothing of times of war, since they can also create and destroy.

The real magicians, however, don’t want temporal power. To them, it’s mostly an annoyance that gets into the way of real power, though what real magicians seek and yearn for are things not spoken of by even the stoutest of hearts. Knowledge, surely, but the method of it seldom matters: in their quest to know, the end justifies any means. These are wizards.

Wizards

Wizards are magicians taken to the next level. While magicians are best at binding and summoning, wizards are adept at all forms of magic and can see deeper and truer than a mere magician. Most of them have done terrible things in their quest for knowledge, enlightenment and, in some cases, becoming one with the gods. A few have even aspired to be gods, in their hubris. For a wizard, the secrets of creation are a riddle they intend to solve and most begin this by extending their lives, often to several thousands of years. Traditionally they ignore temporal power - and the world - as much as they can, and their places of power make them very, very dangerous. Only the most foolish and brave challenge a wizard in their home, or anywhere else if they can help it.