The world of Valestia, in the past, was often considered to be the crowned jewels of the three realms: divine, demonic and mortal. It was a world full with many creatures both sentient and not - A world of opportunity, glory, beauty and adventure.
For countless years had the status quo continued, but everything is bound to end sooner or later. A terrible war, spread through the lands, demons and gods waged their war through Valestia, dragging the mortal races with them. None was left alone in the growing whirlpool of madness, until the unthinkable happened. In their arrogance the demons and the gods failed to remember the ancient warnings from before the dawn of time. For before the three realms were created, existed beings of unimaginable powers. Existences that were buried in the passage of time.
On the fated day which later became known as the day where the world died, those forgotten creatures awoke, disturbed by the conflict of the demons and gods. None expected it, none was prepared for it. The ancient creatures swarmed from beyond the dark vastness of space and onto the unsuspecting world. Giant, crazed, mindless, as a pack of savage beasts they fell upon the 3 realms. Each enough to swallow the mere planet the mortals considered their home, but their pray was not Valestia. The primordial creatures who just awoken from untold eons of slumber were starving and a mere planet was not enough for them. Some passed through the mortal realm and straight into that of the gods, devouring everything on their path, other did the same to the demon world. One beast stood behind it’s kind though, it hungered for something else. With eyes different from the other of his kind, it passed Valestia and descended straight on the sun, which shined upon this world. The monster’s mere presence was enough to cause cataclysms on Valestia. The ground shook and terrible earthquakes happened, that buried whole cities. After that followed tidal waves that swept the surface… countless more lives were lost, finally at the end of it all he Sun vanished from the skies. In matter of moments darkness swallowed the world…
Without the sun, the surface quickly became lifeless cold wasteland. In desperation, mortals swarmed towards the depths of the earth, away from the icy surface. The following decades were filled with bloodshed over the remaining scarce resources, but with time the situation improved little by little as everyone discovered that even underground there were resourced to substitute for what they lost. Mushrooms, mosses and many more strange plants were discovered to serve as food. The greatest discovery was the sunstones, a type of glowing crystals that allowed for surface plants to be cultivated even underground… Still everything was in chaos. Thus the 500 years following the great disaster passed without many historical records and as the time passed, the surface started to become myth for those with shorter lifespan as humans. In those 500 years of darkness the survivors began setting up settlements, far away form each others. Few knew exactly where the other villages were and even fewer dared to travel the tunnels full with monsters to reach other towns.
~~~~~~~Present day – 715 years after the world died~~~~~~~
It is at this point where this adventure begins, at the small town of Shezze. This small village is situated at relatively small cavern that lacks even a sunstone. Here the main food supply comes from mushrooms and milk, produced by the few cattle that are around. The town is considered mostly abandoned by it’s larger neighbors as it’s population is ruled by fear and superstitions.
The players will be the ones who venture out into the unexplored tunnels for a reasons of their own. Some for glory, some from desperations or just for the thrill, that’s known only by themselves.
The starting region:
Well the lore has pretty much been summaries in the initial intro. Still I feel more information is a must so here we go. The starting area for this RP is what’s known as the United settlements – a network of 3 big cities and 4 smaller villages. The tunnels and roads between those 7 settlements are pretty safe to travel between. As such people often journey to trade as the resources produce from each place are usually pretty hard to come by at another town. Different settlements are as follow:
•Belizarius – The biggest of the 3 cities. It’s the center of the union and most influential. It’s ruler is also the informal ruler of all of the settlements around. It’s main produce are potions and other alchemical products. In addition the fact this city possess a great mushroom field, means it’s constantly well supplied with food. It is also the seat of the Church of Light.
•Astaras – The second city and the one considered the most beautiful one. Astaras is the location of the current only known magician’s academy. Despite being smaller than Belizarius, it’s a place of culture, architecture, magic and science.
•Ess’zia’zalu – This is the third city and also the smallest one. It’s name comes from the writing carved into stone upon the main pillar. Scholars have tried to learn it’s meaning since the day the sun vanished, but so far no one has managed to learn it’s meaning. What’s known is that this place was once inhabited by lizard like race. Current main export is steel. Zalu as it’s often called for short posses the biggest mine and forges within the explored region.
•Valka – This is the biggest of the villages within the union. It has both the size to compare almost to Zalu, but population big enough to rival even Astaras. It’s considered a village instead of a city because within it are still located most dark arts users such as witches, warlocks and other unregistered sorcerers. The Church of Light makes often attempts to have this ‘place of sin’ vanquished, but it’s natural deposits of minerals, a natural occurring mushroom cave and close position to Astaras stops their advances.
•Bori – Bori’s a seemingly unassuming village at the edge of the explored region, but in fact harbors a great strategic position for Belizarius. This village has since long ago been under the direct protection of the main city. Mainly because just outside this village is located the path leading towards one of the biggest deposits of iron found within the region. Currently despite Bori being under the protection of Belizarius, the iron deposits stay unused because of dispute over them between Belizarius and Zalu.
•Garden. – Despite being rather small settlement, Garden actually possess the biggest herds of cattle animals within the explored regions. Within it’s boundaries is located an unusual mushroom field that grows extremely fast. Since the mushrooms of this field are rather tasteless and even after cooking near impossible to consume for humans, it was found that cattle actually quite well digest them. As such the entire village has been turned into one giant farm.
•Shezze – This is the smallest of all settlements within the explored region. It lacks in near every aspects. It’s residents are barely able to feed themselves, there are no metal mines around, no great mushroom fields or any good way for the village to prosper. In fact it’s been near abandoned from it’s neighbors. The only reason the bigger villages and cities even still help them is because from Shezze start the biggest tunnels out into the endless unexplored tunnels. As monsters occasionally surge from those tunnels, it’s been decided to keep Shezze on the map as a frontline garrison/meatshield in case of attack. Token amount of troops are always located there.
Culture and survival:
In the long centuries since the world upside ended, the underground has been a complete chaos for a long time. Many things were lost within the chaotic passage of time during the first centuries of darkness and confusion. Since then things have normalized and slowly the people have taken to organizing their lives again.
Over the centuries religion had started to vanished with the fall of the gods and demons. Prayers of even the holiest of priests fell unanswered. Cults had fallen apart as their infernal masters no longer answered. Eventually though from the ashes of the old religions a new one sprung forth.
In the endless darkness of the underworld, light was the most precious of resource. Initially light was only created through magic, alchemy and burning fires, but the discovery of something more precious than any treasure was done. At the location of Belizarius, before the town was created, an expedition found an unexpected thing. While mining for ore and coal, they stumbled upon a crystal. At first the crystal laid dormant, dim, unmovable. It was giant! When they tried to dig around it, they found it spanned dozens of meters! Then suddenly while the miners were trying to dig around it a ray of light appeared, then followed by another and another as suddenly the whole crystal lit up like the sun. Many of the miners who were there were left blind, but the news reached the other survivors.
Eventually under this giant source of light a settlement was created, slowly expanded outwards as the crystal shone periodically as if imitating the once day and night cycle. Eventually with time 2 more such crystals were found and those location became the 3 main cities. Also with this discovery the Church of Light was born. Believing those giant crystals were a fragments of a god, they were considered holy. As such the church kept a close rule over them. No settlements were allowed to have a Sun shard as they came to be called unless the church allowed it to. Small fragments were broken off and given to rulers to keep in their castles.
Beside the city of Astares and the village of Valka, the rest of the settlements within the union are heavily governed by fear of magic and paranoia. People see creatures of horrors and dangers in every and any person. Witch hunts are a common thing to happen especially in Belizarius where the church makes it a public spectacle. Magic users are encouraged to either keep quiet about their powers or find the protection of a lord or in the worst of cases stay at the academy.
Another crucial discovery were the countless types of mushroom preciously unknown to the surface. They ranged from simple edible ones that could be turned into type of flour after dried and ground to magical ones that made for potent healing potions or any other types of effects. Found were huge mushrooms who’s stumps were as hard as wood and made for great firewood and countless others.
The Church of Light:
The Church of Light is currently the only official religion within the starting area. Though some cults may still exist they are way way into hiding and consist of but a few memebers. The church itself follows the Sun God. He has no other name beside that one.
The main goals of the church is the purge of any darkness tained fiends. Like this most magic users are considered evil and a danger as even normal mages can harness dark magic. They believe that eventually the sun shards would reform back into the body of hte sun god and he will lead them back to the surface and resume his position as the sun.
At least that's what it appeares on teh surface of the things. In reality hte church is almost as corrupt as the political courts of hte settlements if not even more. The church basically runs Basilius and the ruler of Basilius basically is a dog of the church. That's not to say all the church's men and women are corrupt, but enough are. That's another reason why the church is in conflict with the magic academy where science, magic, truth and equality is taught.
The ranks of it's members are as follows: Prelate> Archbishop> Bishop> Archpriests> Priests> Innitates.
So this is an RP idea I've had for a good while now and frankly I can’t even believe it actually got enough interest and as such I’m really grateful to all who liked the idea and decided to throw their hats in and attempt to make it a running RP with me.
Now let’s get to the serious stuff.
For the characters themselves, I will leave it pretty open to the players to decide races, classes and so forth, but of course within reason. For example no liches in the starting party as we will be starting within human settlement. Additionally do consider this will be a dark RP. People will die, be maimed and most probably will not reach any safe haven beyond the endless tunnels. I will not throw possible death events all the time, but you’ve been warned. No character would be safe if things turn to the worst, even mine.
Now for the requirements. Two well developed paragraphs will be the minimum I will demand. I know sometimes inspiration lacks sometimes it’s just hard to react to the things given to you by other players, but two decent paragraphs are easy enough to write. No one liners… Some people like to roleplay through one liners, but not me.
RULES:
-No godmodding
-No arguments within the OOC. Sort this out through PMs.
-Most decisions will pass by me and while I will be opened to discussion I have the final say.
-If you need to vanish for a while that is fine, just leave a message and tag me in it so I don't miss it by any chance.
-Also no tags from the players within the IC posts. Tags will be used only by me in story updates posts and so forth. I’ve noticed people tend to not read the posts they aren’t tagged in if tags are being in use. I need everyone to read all the posts that happen. Tags with the story update posts are mostly to inform you that the story update is up.
-The Char section is only for accepted characters, do not post chars there without first them being approved.
-You must wait for at least 2 people to post before you can post again.
Remove the dots from the [hr.] and replace the ???? with the color code you wish to use. Standard white is for the NPCs I will be controlling whenever the need arises so it’s not for use by players.
