The Land of Skara
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and the Songtale of the Breaking
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and the Songtale of the Breaking
The word for world is rock, and the word for rock is Skara. It is the foundation. It is the difference between up and down, order and chaos, darkness and light, cold and warmth – for the near-stars cannot pierce it, cannot blind the world from below, cannot through it melt the ice and snow.
About the Game
This is a new setting, so please bring original content and characters.
Characters should be primarily good at one thing, but they may have a secret thing we learn they excel at as their story progresses.
To start, players’ characters will make the pilgrimage to Lundros for the Festival of the Breaking, a once-in-a-generation event that, likely being young, they have never experienced before, but have heard of from their parents and grandparents. It is intended to bode times of prosperity, good harvests, and bountiful trade.
As such, this is an adventure RP of between 5 and 15 people where our characters travel the dangerous land of Skara to reach their destination, some of us meeting one another along the way and making friends or enemies! It is mid-fantasy, medieval, and the climate is cold so wear lots of layers. Once we reach Lundros, we'll participate in the games of the Festival, and when the Event Itself occurs, new opportunities will open up for our characters to explore and exploit!
About the Land of Skara
Towns are rustic and primitive, built using a timber or stave-style motif while more elegant houses employ plaster infills. Cities inspire a sense of awe and grandeur, built of commonplace and abundant black basalt in an architecture reminiscent of the Mudéjar or Asturian styles. Rumors swirl that more grand structures in cities and ruins long-since abandoned are from a time-lost civilization whispered as the Age of the Broken God. Skara is generally cold and snowy, with pine and birch forests, oak groves, and treacherous white-capped mountains; however, there is a great deal of geothermal activity, which gives life to springs and oases around which towns and cities grow. The mountains to the northwest of Lundros are perpetually covered in ice and snow, as are the northern seas.
There is a great deal of integration of the various creatures, intelligent and otherwise, who live in Skara, due to the many cycles of civilization ascending and collapsing. So talking hares may live side-by-side with humans. It is now in the late spring of this cycle, with ancient knowledge mostly lost or buried under rubble.
Festival of the Breaking
Predicted by the star sages to come when, in the sky, the two near-stars mate, the Color of the World changes, and their love melts the ice along the northern coast. Normally, two near-stars light the world of Skara, one blue and one yellow. The Breaking occurs when they eclipse one-another, forming a single, green star, that changes the color of the world and focuses the light of both on the planet, warming it enough to break apart the otherwise endless ice of the northern seas.
State of Technology
Technology is pre-industrial, with no firearms nor capacity for rifling; potentially gunpowder exists, but is only used by alchemists for fireworks or magic displays. Overall, the tone is rustic, quiet, and exhibits a oneness with nature. Information is not printed nor mass-distributed, but passed around via illuminated hand-written encyclicals or word-of-mouth. While commoners know how to read, there is much divergence of dialect, actual books are expensive and hard to come – particularly due to the gatekeepers of folk magic. Thus, most individuals' exposure to the written word is in deeds, notes of sale, or leaflets that often include misspellings and regional vernacular. Books that do exist are often magical, preserving their ancient power in leather-bound volumes vouchsafed in the hides of thinking, feeling, sophisticated beings to best-preserve their mystic energy.
Magic Foci
Magic is budding and mysterious, with enchanted forests, harts peering into the soul, fae seducing the arrogant in deadly groves, etc. But words can transform and through them power can manifest, be it through an infamous name or a compelling story; this is known as fable magic. However, due to the power of stories, dreams, and ideas, gatekeepers exist who repress books, stories, and disappear troubadours and bards with tongues too loose for their liking. Giving something care, a face, love, and a name can bring it to life, but without any of those things, that creation may wither away unless it finds its own reason to exist in a journal of self-discovery.
- Primal, the magic of fae, tanooki, dryad, nymph, and other magic beasts.
- Fable magic, the power spun of tales, heroism, and infamy that is written of in secret tomes and sung of by bold bards. However, books are rare, and their access limited by the gatekeepers (do we want to name this sect something else?), whose mysterious motives evade the light. There is also danger in this magic, for words contain the power to influence mood, imagination, and action. Town elders often warn against malicious fable-spinners whose evil songs cause the sad to despair and seek death – and, when a stranger’s voice deepens in song, claim safety lies in plugged ears and silence.
- Hereditary magic, the power of vitality passed from generation to generation. While rare to be born under such a sign and fortuitous to be of such a line, this power need not be limited to those individuals, for there is profit to be made in the trade of moon blood, life blood, and mood blood, reagents which can be bottled and employed in various learned arts.
- Learned magic, the study of other forms of magic, of pacts between mortals and the ultramundane, of alchemy and artistry – this is a dangerous form of magic, and often takes a lifetime to master.
Areas of Interest
- Isnida, a mysterious and as-yet unvisited land.
- Nidaros, pirates, merchants, and travelers tell tall tales of a city of necromancers across the ocean.
- Islund
- Lundros, a metropolis tucked several kilometers inland from the ice-bound inhospitable northern coast of Islund and situated between the banks of the rivers Frosvin and Koltvin. At its center is a basalt citadel and in the air magic wafts with as vague an impression but, for some, as potent an effect as pollen. Wealthy and prosperous, it is home to many guilds, businesses, and even an academy of mystic arts. Peace is maintained by the Guards of Kol and, as times require, hired mercenaries loyal only to the purse. It is in Lundros that travelers from all across Skara gather for the astrological festival known as the Breaking.
- Luminae Magic Academy
- The Starburst Chamber, where the elites of Lundros known as the God-Colored Council – merchant guildmasters, mercenary generals, head bankers, and magic academy deans – meet and decide Islund’s policy, taxation rates, food distribution, and so forth, has a beautiful dome stained glass ceiling that paints the interior of the chamber in beautiful colors.
- Fyrkat, an unexceptional village merely an eight-day journey by peddler’s wagon to arrive from Stavkat; by bearback, merely five days.
- Stavkat, an unexceptional village.
- Grykat, a small town on the edge of civilization. Its inhabitants are primarily impoverished, living in squalor and dirt. Houses are mud-huts, the people barbarians of a way. The ground is infertile, and the people live primarily from raiding neighboring towns and villages, pillaging what they can. The hometown of Cerwin, a high status man in Lundros.
- Lundros, a metropolis tucked several kilometers inland from the ice-bound inhospitable northern coast of Islund and situated between the banks of the rivers Frosvin and Koltvin. At its center is a basalt citadel and in the air magic wafts with as vague an impression but, for some, as potent an effect as pollen. Wealthy and prosperous, it is home to many guilds, businesses, and even an academy of mystic arts. Peace is maintained by the Guards of Kol and, as times require, hired mercenaries loyal only to the purse. It is in Lundros that travelers from all across Skara gather for the astrological festival known as the Breaking.
- Roh, a section of a city or town with its own culture, policing, and government; these pay taxes to Lundros in the form of grain and gold in exchange for the city’s army maintaining peace, centralized grain storage and distribution network that ensures survival throughout long winters, and hub of learned magic professionals who visit Rohs as necessary to address more nuanced concerns or plagues.
- Niþroh, the row of crows, the section where crowfolk, also known as Kroca, live, characterized by eyries, teetering towers, and feather-thatched roofs.
- Faeroh, the row of fae, where magic creatures who enjoy communing with more material creatures, given over to nature, flowers, and trees ensorceled together to form domiciles.
- Menroh, the row of humans, the largest part of any town, often subdivided into districts for commerce, education, and so forth.
Commonplace Fantastic Creatures
Almost any magical creature you can think of will be in this setting! Intelligent talking beasts, fae, sprites, hobbits, elves, dwarves, lizardmen, koblods, ghosts! All living together in mostly-harmony! A good reference for ideas is anything CR3 and below on this page: Pathfinder Bestiary: Monsters by CR.
Kroca, a type of crowfolk, who can walk upright, talk, but for them flight is rather rough.
Slimes, a group of organisms that are made up of a round slimy material, hence the name. Their location dictates their biology. Can be found more frequently in humid areas and when it rains.
Naming Conventions
For thematic consistency in place names, the prefix for islands is -is. Meanwhile, other geographic features employ a suffix, which for rivers is -vin, for cities is -ros, for towns is -kat, and for boroughs or districts within cities and towns it is -roh. Often, cities and towns will have identical -rohs, as in rows of houses, meaning familial or racial houses, due to the self-sorting of the fantastic creatures who dwell within them, fae with fae, human with human, dwarf with dwarf; there is, after all, a great deal of comfort in familiarity. Local vernacular often drops the suffix, meaning, for example, the villagers of Fyrkat may simply refer to their hometown as Fyr.
Example Character Submission
Played by Circ, Skolt & Pite, brother and sister, are Kroca children of fishers from Fyrkat. Their mother's fishing boat is shaped like a dragon and can talk, because it was brought to life by her love after she spent months crafting it and caring for it. However, neither child is interested in fishing. Pite is an herbalist, but not the healing kind; the oracular kind who can make teas or read the leaves for visions or unwanted pregnancies. Skolt is a troubadour, a brawler, and a cloud-dreamer who protects those in need with his Macuahuitl, a flat club with obsidian plates in the side-grooves, both a weapon and a xylophone-like instrument; its obsidian blades are normally held rigid, but by sliding out a thin reed from the center of the club, they loosen enough for musical vibration. The twins share a secret language and possess bonded minds.
Expected Level of Effort
At least a paragraph or two, as is befitting of the Casual section, of at least 150 words per-post. No mega-posts, as those can be intimidating to others and time consuming for people to read, so nothing in excess of a page or so, think under 1,000 words.
Power Scaling
If you're familiar with TTPRGs, such as D&D and Pathfinder, think between levels 1-5 for your characters. Our characters can't travel to different planes or teleport around the world (yet), but we can use magic to help guide us through a forest or light up dark places.
Visual Aids
Lundros
Fyrkat
Stavkat
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