Once magic flowed through the elements. A charge in the clouds which cast lightning in violet hue, a shimmer in the fog which made gray mist glitter, a soul in the fire which peered out from the flames. But magic faded from the world due to the folly of wizards. Greedy magicians and expensive spells sapped at the magic of the natural world until it began to run dry. Storms still thundered, fog still rolled, and fire still burned, but something was missing. The world went pale, spells began to fizzle at the fingertips of wizards and creatures of magic: elves, unicorns, even dragons, began to wither and die. Then the final death throes of magic came upon the world like a seizure of the earth itself. Massive cracks opened up over the now dead, dry ley lines as they collapsed into themselves. These cracks widened into great gulfs, swallowing up cities and countrysides whole. In the end, after the last rumbles of what would be forever called the Sundering, fell quiet, the world had been split apart. The once singular continent, Pangaea, lay shattered. Fractured lands called shards drifted across the void separated by clouds of wild magic, aether, the last out-gassing of the old ley lines.
Magic
Like water in a desert, magic in the modern post-sundering world is rare, valuable and highly sought after. Most remaining magic exists locked up within life itself. Living organisms all generate some degree of magical energy called charm and the more sentient the creature, the more charm its life-force creates. Such visceral magic is the only remaining sustenance for sorcerers and magical creatures alike. Blood-mages draw upon their own flesh or consume sacrifices to fuel their spells while rare sorcerers harness their own potent life essence. Meanwhile, those surviving magical creatures must consume at least some living flesh to feed their abilities or fade from the world like their forebears.
The only remaining magic outside the bounds of flesh, is to be found in the aether. Roiling, violet clouds that curtain the coast, they are a tantalizing but ultimately unobtainable enchanted resource. The charm embodied in the aether is too unpredictable to be harnessed to any useful purpose. Instead it represents an ever-present danger. Aethereal storms called Wendigos can assualt shards either from the coasts like hurricanes or from high above like devastating tornadoes. These disasters bring not only fierce winds and lightning but also horridly mutated beasts and insects called chimera which feed ravenously on living magic as long as the storm rages.
Player Characters
Dragons, once the eldest and most powerful monsters, like all their kindred, must now take refuge from the cold banal world. Like frogs out of water, they must find a way to shield themselves from the aridity or desiccate and die. Since the sundering, usable magic subsists only in the substance of living beings. The remaining dragons thus adapted to the new world by donning mundane living shapes, specifically human shapes. Their human forms shelter them from the harsh reality and although they can still resume their splendorous true forms, the act is costly and can only be sustained indefinitely by the consumption of flesh. Sometimes called dragonbloods or halfdragons, these beings are the last remnants of noble, civilized beasts who ruled the lands and skies of Pangaea for 100,000 years before the age of wizards. Wyrms, dragons who seek to resume their old power, turn to devouring humans so as to fuel their fantastic shapes. Some raid and pillage whole countrysides while others focus on hunting sorcerers of potent magical potential (stereotypically virginal females).
The player characters, unlike wyrms, are dragonbloods who seek a sustainable balance between their new human lives and their legendary heritage. Some may feed to fuel their abilities, but focus more often on livestock or the occasional bandit tribe. The general term for magical creatures which exist hidden behind human guise in this manner is Wight or Hidden One. Other wights include vampires, changelings and skinwalkers, the modern remnants of demons, fairies and beast-spirits respectively.
Setting Details
Many centuries have passed since the sundering and the cultures of the shards have diverged wildly. Three large fractures dominate the story's setting, a fracture being large complex of many shards drifting in close proximity much as the islands within an archipelago. Thanatos is a subtropical fracture ruled by ravenous blood mages and bent on conquest and enslavement of the surrounding lands. Eldross or the Eldritch Isles is a matriarchal monarchy ruled by sorcerers. It is a temperate fracture formed from a multitude of small shards many just large enough to hold a single castle aloft. Averyll or the Frontier is a savage fracture populated by wights and barbaric tribes. Its shards tend to be larger and harbor more varied, rugged terrain. Both Thanatos and Eldross have established colonies upon its shards, though the latter have been arguably more gentle in their civilizing of the natives.
The ultimate weapon of the dragons of old was their breath. It is believed by some scholars of the arcane that the power of the breath stems from the dragon's elemental soul. Pure magic channeled into elemental fury: frost, fire, storm, or thunder, this weapon today is costly indeed. When in their true forms few dragons apart from wyrms dare breath fourth their elemental nature. Instead, the breath is more likely to be used in human form, in small doses when helpful. A bit of flame to start a fire, some frost to chill and make brittle a door handle, or electricity to temporarily shock an enemy. While shifted a dragon is also more flexible in how they emit their element. Fire can be breathed or stem from the fingers or the fist. Luckily for the dragons, their immunity to their element extends into their human form so a storm dragon is not herself shocked when channeling electricity into a sword nor a fire dragon burned when wreathing themselves in flame. If goes without saying, however, that a dragon's clothes do not share her elemental resistance.
Although wyrms remain as narcissistic as the dragons of old, dragonbloods long ago learned they needed to put aside their legendary egos and work together to survive. Typical of most Wights, dragonbloods can sense others of their kind even in their human guise, sometimes even seeing ephemeral outlines of their true form, horns, spines or a spiked tail. Dragonblood society is organized into circles, on old term referring to the manner in which dragons flew together when migrating. A dragon circle contains four to eight dragonbloods whose territories border or, occasionally, overlap. Lairs are the centerpiece of any dragon circle and often contain a horde, a collection of enchanted items which raises the ambient magic, much in the way a fireplace raises the heat of a house. Still highly individualistic most dragons lead separate human lives outside the lair and some avoid all interaction with others of their kind for fear of exposure.
Although extinct, the wizards left behind powerful magical artifacts, rings, staves, wands, circlets, chalices, etc. Many are drained of charm and can only be powered, as with other spells, by blood. Others still contain some remnant of their power and radiate it into the banal world. Dragons, especially wyrms, are fond of stockpiling such artifacts in collections dubbed hordes. When a dragon concentrates so many enchanted objects, the resulting radiance allows the creature to assume its true form without being drained. Dragons keep their hordes in lairs. Traditionally these were caves inside ferrous rock which resisted the flow of magic and in so doing concentrated the magical ambiance of a horde. More modern dragons utilize steel warehouses or other structures to assume the same effect.
Traditionally dragons reproduced by laying clutches of eggs. One of the issues with their new humanoid forms is the lack of complementary reproductive anatomy. Hence, although dragon courtship often progressed under human guise, the laying of eggs required the transition to draconic form. Even more vital, the eggs themselves, as magical as any resplendent true dragon, would produce nothing greater than an omelette without the nurturing embrace of enchantment. Here the horde once more proves its prime importance to modern dragon life. Within the ambient magical warmth of a well stocked horde, eggs could be incubated. Once hatched young dragonlings remained within the lair until they could master their childish human forms and toddle out into the nonmagical world unharmed.
In the way that some materials conduct electricity better, charm (magical energy) moves more easily through some objects than others. Silver happens to be the most efficient common conductor of magic, hence its use not only as a tool for blood mages (the athame), but as a weapon against wights. Piercing a wight with a silver weapon be they vampire, skinwalker, or even a dragonblood, is like tapping a keg of beer. Magic flows out of the wight through the silver draining them of magic and potentially killing them. For this reason, Wights avoid the metal and those who hunt them use it to forge their weapons.
Some materials resist the flow of charm in the way some materials like rubber resist the flow of electricity. Chief among these is iron. Cold iron and, to a lesser degree, all ferrous materials block magic. In the time of legend, iron served not only as a way to slay beasts of magic but as a ward against the spellfire of wizards. Iron means little to Wights in their human guises, but when in their true forms, they become vulnerable to it once more.
Technological development varies from shard to shard and tends to be inversely proportional to the reliance on remnant magics like blood magic and sorcery. On those shards where the people have abandoned magic in favor of science and technology, steam power is common and weapons like rifles and revolvers can be purchased. Modern wight hunters often utilize such weapons in combination with silver bullets to deadly effect.
Elves and Dwarves shared two very different fates following the fall of magic. Dwarves, never having depended on magic, rose to become a world power in the wake of the sundering. They sold the secrets of metal smithing and steam power to humans in exchange for lucrative land deals and trading rights. Today dwarves own territory throughout Eldross and Averyll and more in the caverns beneath both these shards.
Unlike dwarves, elves depended on magic, but unlike purely magical creatures like fairies, draagons and demons, they could not wrap their ephemeral natures in human flesh. Instead elves suffered a plague called the Gray Death. Those few who survived were scoured of all emotion and feeling by the new unmagical world. Called Gray Elves, they continue to exist, often as trusted servitors to the royal sorcerers of Eldross, their inability to lie being of great value in such positions. There exist stories of other elves in Averyll who somehow avoided the Gray Death and retained their magical nature, but these have not been verified.
Many magical creatures sought to survive the sundering and more than a few hit on the idea of hiding within living flesh. Those masquerading as humans are called Wights or Hidden Ones. The most prevalent are the Vampires, remnants of demon-kind; the skin walkers, remnants of beast spirits; and the changelings, remnants of fairy-kind. Wights live a life of hiding from human hunters who carry silver weapons, modern industrialists who'd see them caged and blood mages who would drain them dry to fuel their spells. Most Wights only interact among their own kind. Dragonblooded only with other dragons, vampires only with other of the undead and changeling only with other fey. There are notable exceptions to this however and occasionally alliances among the hidden for the benefit of all.
In order to travel from shard to shard, people have invented floating vessels called air ships and plotted the periodically shifting passages through the aether. Travel within shards is often also by airship, but horses remain common. On those shards where more advanced steam technology is common, trains often enable quick, safe travel from coast to coast.
The only extant school of wizardry, blood magic draws its power from the substance of living beings, often humans. The magical donor can be the wizard himself or another subject, willing or unwilling. In fractures like Thanatos where blood magic dominates society, sacrificial thralls are stockpiled and used to cast potent spells or forge powerful artifacts rivaling those of old.
Magic has always been gendered in humans with men tending to be wizards and utilizing external sources of charm and women tending to be witches (sorcerers) and harnessing their own inherent magic. Although wizards were once the dominant mages of Pangea leading to a patriarchal civilization, with the sundering and evaporation of natural magic, sorcery supplanted wizardry as the dominant art. Sorcerers or witches can use their own internal magic to alter their forms or transmit magical effects through touch as a blessing or hex. Some modern sorcerers have taken the old role of wizards as heads of state, sorcerer queens rather than wizard lords. Others live as the witches have for eons, wise hermits of the deep wilderness sought by only the mad or the desperate. Young sorcerers in particular possess a potent and radiant magical energy. If not found first by another of their kind wights often feed on these unlucky souls. Wyrms in particular seek them out leading to the stereotype that dragons hunger for female virgins.
Since sorcery, unlike wizardry, is a largely inherited gift, hereditary nobility is a logical conclusion for the magically inclined people of Eldross. Here and within the Eldritch colonies on Averyll, noble houses defined by a particular magical talent rule over lands wielding the authority of the High Queen. Noble houses vary in their magical ability and within a house there is also much variation within a theme. For example within House Phorobos, the gift of pyromancy is common, though some minor knights with little of the orignal blood may struggle to light a candle with their power. Unfortunately for those gifted with concentrated magical blood and talent, the offset is inbreeding and a tendency toward poor health, insanity or both.
It begins small. A weird fly that you could have sworn purred like a cat. Then you see it out on the prairie, the tell tale sign, the jackelope, a twisted chimera of a rabbit with the antlers of a deer and the rattling tail of a venomous serpent. You grab the children and race for shelter but it's already too late. A purple column of raging aether descends in the distance and a misty miasma advances slowly before it. In the fog you see terrifying silhouettes of misshapen beasts lumbering. You reach the covered shed as the howling wind begins to pick up, lifting everything not nailed down. You push the children into the safety of the storm-cellar. Then the wind begins pulling at you. It keeps pulling. It pulls so hard you wince in pain. You look down, see the claws wrapped around your belly, the blood pouring out. It's not the wind. The children glimpse their terrified mother snatched by a bestial appendage before the doors slam shut on the storm and mute the howling winds. They sit huddled together waiting out the Wendigo.
Game Details
The game will consist of somewhere between four and eight players. I would prefer most PCs to be dragonblooded, but may be persuaded to allow one or two other character types assuming the write-up is good. The story will begin in Averyll in an industrial port city called New Verris with close ties to Eldross and the sorcerer nobility. Where the game goes from there is up to character choice. My only constriction is that players play true to their characters and attempt to keep the group together. Since I prefer a level of engagement intermediate between casual and advanced, I will post the IC on both. I will post a game thread if/when I see there is significant interest.
Cool to wake up and see more interest. I will post a general game thread soon. Hopefully we will get a few more in that time.
I added a new topic on dragon reproduction since that was a big lingering question mark. Essentially the horde is used a bit like a magical incubator to bring the eggs to hatching and keep them insulated against the nonmagic world.
