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.
An island drifts across the clouds. At its center, a singe noble spire rises, the seat of the ruling sorcerer queen. Nestled behind its walls a vibrant trading district bustles. Balloons and air ships rise from the merchant quarter, sailing over the walls and a narrow strip of pasture before skimming out over the edge of the shard.
The fracture of Eldross, typified by small, high altitude shards, is unified by a noble hierarchy which follows the concentration of magical blood in a slew of sorcerer families. Since sorcery tends to blossum only in women, matriarchy becomes a foregone conclusion. Thus the highest office belongs not to an emperor or a king, but to a high queen. Under the leadership of the royal family, House Valexa, the Eldtitch Isles resisted incursions from Thanatos and established colonies in the far off fracture of Averyll across the great divide.
Respectful of magic but open minded to technology, the people of Eldross were the first of the western fractures to practice modern science. Although not the inventors of black powder, they refined its use and produced the first effective firearms. The inventors of the Eldritch Isles also pioneered air travel and were the first to take to the skies without the aid of magic. Despite their early embrace of enlightenment values, however, as technology has risen to rival the power of sorcery, some noble houses have reacted with justified fear. On some shards nobles have gone so far as to to forbid experimentation and the intellectual salons where scientists discuss and refine their ideas. More commonly research is restricted to members of noble courts. The royal family is not immune to this apprehension regarding the elevating role of science and the fading importance of sorcery. Their edicts restrict the owning of firearms to members of the royal military, edicts often ignored in the far off colonies of Averyll.
Heaving jungles rise through the clouds, held aloft on a crumbling mass of ancient land which drifts through the sky. At the center of the shard, rising higher than even the tallest old growth grove, stands an ancient a ziggurat. Stone painted red by dyed clay and worn by centuries of weather forms a nearly perfect pyramid. A staff stands affixed at its apex, held by a man who simultaneously holds a knife at anothers throat. The knife flashes and blood spills. As the red liquid fills the basin at the base of the staff, it begins to glow. The crystal atop an artifact dead for thousands of years kindles with light so bright it illuminates the crowd gathered far below. As the blood rolls down the channels of the pyramid, they cheer.
Unlike other fractures which forbid the use of blood to power magic, Thanatos relies on it. A priestly class, the Archons, utilize the power locked in blood to reawaken ancient artifacts of the old world. With these remnants of the wizards of old, they forged an empire which overtook an entire fracture in the south. The shards of Thanatos tend to drift low in the atmosphere and with their altitude comes heat and humidity. The land hosts tropical rainforests almost exclusively providing the blood mages with a rich bounty of life from which to draw magical energy. Unfortunately, animals can only provide so much power and so the blood mages look to humans both within and outside their nation to provide the magic they require.
Raids by the blood mages were common in Eldross before the unity of the High Queen and they still continue along the peripheral eldritch isles and upon the colonies and native villages of Averyll. To transport their forces, blood mages, employ magical oared vessels. These cruel ships use barb-handed oars to coax the blood from slaves required to row their way across the skies. Sails threaded with silver also pick up some faint residual magic from sun and sky, relaying it to the ships enchantments. Within the nation, inquisitors provide an additional source of magic by rooting out sorcerers and 'removing their sin' by sacrifice.
Religion serves to unify Thanatos, for they view their 'blood mages' not as mages but as high priests. For them, magic is an afront to God, and their priests take this magic, as blood sacrifice, and return it to where it belongs: to the people. It matters little that the average Eldrossan or colonist, lacks any sorcerous talent. From their perspective, all other fractures are tainted with magic and must be purged. If in the process that magic can be used, then so be it. Thantosians hold the hidden ones in even deeper contempt. They view dragonbloods, skinwalkers, and changelings as demons and spill their potent blood with much fanfare.
Beyond the jagged teeth of the pallisade, the enemy begins to assemble, men and women bare-chested except for paint. Along the wall the colonists stand firm, even as the numbers of Wikani grow by the minute. They hold their rifles braced between the oaken points of the pallisade. Silence falls on the field between the two armies, an area once forested, now a morass of stumps and bramble. The silence breaks first beneath the howls of wolf-painted warriors, before they charge, spears in hand over the ruins of their ancestral home. Within moments it is answered on far by the crackling of musketfire.
Averyll, the frontier fracture, lay separated from Thanatos and Eldross by a wide span of aether and empty sky called The Great Divide. In recent centuries, however, Eldrossan Airships and Thanatosian Skyremes, have crossed this divide and established colonies. In this wild untamed land, they found people living in a way which appeared, to them, primitive. In reality the tribes of Averyll were masters of alchemy, in coaxing out the magic still to be found in the natural world. Their shamans can combine the saps of various plants to craft paint, potions and salves all of which confer temporary magical affects when applied or imbibed. This magic however makes the native Averyllians who call themselves the Wikani completely dependent on their forests for if a plant or animal goes extinct so to does the magic it provides. This dependency along with the Wikani's reverence for the nature leads to conflict between them and the Eldrossan and Thanatosian colonists.
The colonists on Averyll differ depending on their mother country. While the colonies of Thanatos are little more than slave camps, those of Eldross are living breathing communities. Some like New Verris are cities which rival the capitals of the old world. These colonists are independent, practical and distrustful of magic. After all, since few sorcerers bothered to rough it in the colonies, it was technology and grit not magic and breeding which tamed the wilderness. The colonial attitudes reflect this reality, many going so far as to ignore royal decrees and persist in the personal ownership of firearms.
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.
Villages burnt to a cinder, their populations consumed or turned to ash. Communities cowed by a roving monster, forced to hand over a budding young sorceress as an offering to the beast. Whole countrysides and entire shards devastated, castles rimmed with frost, towns wracked by lightning. Such are the deprivations of a wyrm.
Unlike the dragonbloods, wyrms revel in their draconic nature and most outright refuse to demean themselves by the adoption of human form. Ruthless and predatory, wyrms forever seek magic, both in the flesh of human and animal prey and in the enchanted material of artifacts. Like dragonbloods, wyrms keep hordes, but these are jealously guarded and usually in some secluded mountain cave rather than hidden under the noses of humans. Most wyrms therefore live on the fringes of human civilizations either on the edge of the frontier or on shards too frigid or hot for human habitation.
When wyrms begin to starve from lack of magic, they may become desperate and seek the wild magic of the aether to sustain them. Like all animals exposed to the chaotic energies, they are warped into nightmarish chimeric forms, multiheaded abberrations of dragonkind called hydra. Of all the monsters which can follow in the wake of a wendigo, the hydra are the most feared. They appear only in the greatest of these storms, wreaking havoc wherever the winds blow.
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.
DA RULZ
1) Don't shoehorn dumb crap into the game 2) Don't powerplay 3) Post at least once week, more for leading roles
Name: Home fracture: Home shard: Human guise: True form (dragon shape): History (character background): Knack (something you're particularly good at): Flaw (something you fail at): Gift [optional and only if you take an Impediment] (special advantage, physical, mental or otherwise): Impediment [optional and only if you take a gift] (special disadvantage, physical mental or otherwise): 0th post (a post of a paragraph or more which sets some background for your character):
Definitely getting in on this, I'll be posting a character soon!! However, I am curious as to the specifics of Magic and technology. You mentioned that firearms are present in this world, what era of weapons would they be? In regards to magic, are characters restricted to Elemental magic, or would things like familiars/conjuring be present in this setting as well?
@Too Old 4 This I guess my last question before I settle is going to be how old are we supposed to be? Would we remember the pre-sundering world?
Such an elder dragon may be possible but none known to the PCs. Want to keep the exact nature of what happened around the sundering a mystery for the moment.
Definitely getting in on this, I'll be posting a character soon!! However, I am curious as to the specifics of Magic and technology. You mentioned that firearms are present in this world, what era of weapons would they be? In regards to magic, are characters restricted to Elemental magic, or would things like familiars/conjuring be present in this setting as well?
Awesome!
I want to keep firearms limited to singleshot at least at the start. Muskets and flintlocks. Magic for dragons would always reflect their elemental nature, but apart from that be creative. A talented flame dragonblood may be able to conjure a fire based familiar.
To aid in character design, I've added lore for the three western fractures, Thanatos, Eldross and Averyll. Descriptions are loose and full of holes. I do this on purpose. I'm leaving the details for you to expand upon in your character backstories and for us to flesh out in game.
@Too Old 4 This Here is a WIP, I just need to hammer out the last couple of details of his history and then write up a zeroth post. Lemme know if anything won't fit with your story.
Name: Coz
Home fracture: Averyll
Home shard: The Kais, a large shard dominated by rocky grasslands and fields of flowers. The earth is peppered with cave systems that both Coz and the native Wikani call home. Several sizable herds of cows live amongst The Kais, large, wooly things highly valued for their furs and meat.
Human guise: Even in human form there is something decidedly off about Coz. His teeth are a little too predatory, his nails a little too sharp, and his skin is covered in rashes with the texture of rough scales. Coz, of course, doesn't particularly care himself as he is content to stay to himself. Yet, dispite his disfigerments, Coz is strong of body with thick limbs and a solid trunk. He towers over the native Wikani, being just over eight feet in size
True form: A twisted mass of scale and horn, Coz's true form has been corrupted by his brief brush with an Aether cloud in his youth.
History:
Knack: Tough As Nails, if Coz knows anything, it's how to survive. He may never thrive, but it'll take more than bad weather and a gut wound to keep something like Coz down.
Flaw: Brute, relying on strength and instinct to rule him, Coz is consequently not the most traditionally intelligent being and is quick to anger should he feel slighted.
Gift: Monsterous Strength, even by the standards of other Dragonbloods Coz is incredibly strong, able to snap the bones of dragons between his jaws as if they were little more than twigs. Even in human form his strength is great, able to manhandle the cows that herd around his territory without much trouble.
Impediment: Atrophied Wings, the same brush with aether that twisted his body took away his wings when he crashed into the Kais
@Too Old 4 This Here is a WIP, I just need to hammer out the last couple of details of his history and then write up a zeroth post. Lemme know if anything won't fit with your story.
Name: Coz
Home fracture: Averyll
Home shard: The Kais, a large shard dominated by rocky grasslands and fields of flowers. The earth is peppered with cave systems that both Coz and the native Wikani call home. Several sizable herds of cows live amongst The Kais, large, wooly things highly valued for their furs and meat.
Human guise: Even in human form there is something decidedly off about Coz. His teeth are a little too predatory, his nails a little too sharp, and his skin is covered in rashes with the texture of rough scales. Coz, of course, doesn't particularly care himself as he is content to stay to himself. Yet, dispite his disfigerments, Coz is strong of body with thick limbs and a solid trunk. He towers over the native Wikani, being just over eight feet in size
True form: A twisted mass of scale and horn, Coz's true form has been corrupted by his brief brush with an Aether cloud in his youth.
History:
Knack: Tough As Nails, if Coz knows anything, it's how to survive. He may never thrive, but it'll take more than bad weather and a gut wound to keep something like Coz down.
Flaw: Brute, relying on strength and instinct to rule him, Coz is consequently not the most traditionally intelligent being and is quick to anger should he feel slighted.
Gift: Monsterous Strength, even by the standards of other Dragonbloods Coz is incredibly strong, able to snap the bones of dragons between his jaws as if they were little more than twigs. Even in human form his strength is great, able to manhandle the cows that herd around his territory without much trouble.
Impediment: Atrophied Wings, the same brush with aether that twisted his body took away his wings when he crashed into the Kais
0th post:
Looks great. I like the idea of aetheric corruption in a dragonblood and it bleeding into his human form. Very creative. Hopefully we can get a few more CSs. I am willing to go with a small group on this one but I want at least two.
