When the world finally consumes you, yours will be a most beautiful death indeed.
It was a prosperous time for the world of Zenith. The Intercontinental Coalition had finally brought peace to a vast majority of the warring population. The formation of the ICC had been lobbied against, but here it was proving its mettle only a few years beyond its birth. People celebrated with one another and those who only knew war and bloodshed thought they might finally learn what it was to settle down. As it turned out, these dreams were truly borne of naivety and false hope. It was then that the Catastrophe struck.
The inexplicable nature of the Catastrophe did not defer the destruction it wrought on the world. Monsters, creatures, and supernatural beings stormed into reality and exacted their rage on any living thing and any standing structure. Towns and villages were among the first wiped out which gave just enough time for armies all across the globe to gather and fail spectacularly at defending their area of residence. The sudden appearance of these hordes was the defining factor in the slaughter of warriors once considered elite and highly trained. The beasts followed no known pattern of offense and did not practice discrimination in their choosing of victims. In the first few years of the onslaughts, all was thought to be lost. It was then that scholars and those who spent their years acquiring vast amounts of knowledge made the discovery that something else had appeared alongside the innumerable amount of beings seemingly sent to end humanity; an energy source, one never seen before, was found to hold to key to humankind's salvation. Lacking time for proper analysis and naming conventions, the knowledgeable risked everything to learn that individuals could harness the energy and use it to unleash ungodly power against their foes. Magic had been gifted to society.
"The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and the other begins?" ~
Edgar Allen Poe
Two thousand years later, the world of Zenith is a dark place. The behemoths and twisted beings that entered this plane of existence long ago still roam the now uncivilized parts of the world. Ruins now replace once glorious and populated cities and convoluted forests have sprung up where pasture and meadows ought to have been. Humanity has also been corrupted after being subjected to such harsh times. Few are to be trusted and just traveling on well worn and distinct roads is a dangerous affair. The ICC is a broken version of itself though it still holds the word of law in its grasp and commands the only official army around. Certain individuals, those who feel the call of adventure, venture beyond the relative safety of bandits and murderers to explore the newly christened lands only the beasts are familiar with. The world has become a fragmented and hostile territory rife with opportunity for death at every turn outside city walls and sometimes even within. There is no true sanctuary and there is no true comfort in a world like this. And, in the case of this particular story, there is no true salvation.
When the world finally consumes you, yours will be a most beautiful death indeed.
As the world settled into its new status quo, legends spread as they are wont to do. With the arrival of magic came the ability to do extraordinary things, but at an equally extraordinary cost. It was discovered that continuous absorption and usage of the mysterious energy in the body alone caused the internal organs to fail after an unspecified number of years and before that several painful and agonizing symptoms appeared; magic was revealed to be poisonous to the human body essentially. As it often did, humanity scrambled to find a way around this new problem and found they could solidify and crystallize the energy through the use of alchemy. These crystals were then embedded into weaponry that could then be used to fend off the beasts that were slowly devouring the population and devastating whole cities. This was how humanity eventually pushed the onslaught back enough to find a way to live once more.
Legends began to spread that there were those who were immune to the poisonous effects of magic. These stories told of beings likened to gods through their indiscriminate use of magic. However, these same stories also warned that the methods used to gain this immunity were so vile that they could not be spoken about. And it was then that the world over became obsessed with learning the secret to magical immunity. The ICC decreed that whosoever would learn the secret and share it with them would be rewarded beyond measure. Unofficial rulers of cities trying to rebuild made the same decree.
Your story begins in the only untouched city in the world which is also the home of the governing body, the ICC. Regardless of your background, you have chosen to join a travelling group being formed by the government in order to discover the secret of magical immunity. With official backing, this band of travelers will scour the world in search of answers, encountering all manner of inhuman events and sightings that will test the psyche of even the strongest of mind.
The world of Zenith is fairly large spanning five continents and a variety of locations within each. The era is very clearly set in a period where swords and other melee weaponry and magic reigned supreme. Long travel is usually conducted on a horse or a horse and carriage for multiple passengers. It's an era where it can take days and weeks to get from one city to the next although this was before The Catastrophe. Now that the world is overrun with monsters and rebuilding itself, there is only a few really large cities left with the rest of the population still living in towns or villages that are trying to regain the bustle they had before.
There is a map that is going to be made, but in the meanwhile here is a list of the current locations:
Azra
The biggest and most politically driven continent, Azra is home to the capital city Armistice which is often nicknamed the "Capital of the World". Armistice is the birthplace of the Intercontinental Coalition and is the only untouched city from The Catastrophe. Why this is no one knows, but the ICC uses this fact as a way to entice people to move into its walls as the more people move in, the more taxpayer money there is to play around with. Azra is also home to the merchant city of Cirella, a city that used to distribute an overwhelming majority of goods across the world. Now the city is the trade and commerce central of Zenith despite the fact that most places how their own merchant districts.
Eteria
Eteria is the eastern neighbor of Azra, but it is also half the size. In pre-Catastrophe times, it was a continent that didn't concern itself with politics much though they still had someone elected to the ICC to serve the few interests they did have. Sorei is the capital though the walls are now gone and the entire city is under martial law. This began as the result of a coup that was successful due to the beast attacks. Of course, this "military" that holds the city in martial law is really composed of mercenaries, former soldiers, bandits, and thugs who took advantage of the situation to gain power over an entire city. Orpheius is a small--yet big for a town--town located on the other side of the continent.
Scion
Scion is south of Eteria and southeast of Azra and is roughly the size of Eteria. It is where scholars are born and thought to congregate. Their political prowess is just under Azra and that is only because they lack the sheer number of people Azra is home to. Scion Prime is the captial city and, though it was partially destroyed during the beast attacks, it was rebuilt remarkably quickly. This diligence is due to the fact that Scion never employed a true military because they knew it would only promote war and this decision actually allowed them to avoid most of what they called the pointless wars of the older times. The Outer Ring is name given to a ring of residential areas surrounding Scion Prime where those who aren't as mentally gifted reside.
These people are looked down upon by those who live in Scion Prime and the class division between the two still exists even in the present age.
Goro
Goro is west of Azra and was home to one sprawling kingdom before the onslaughts. Taurus is the capital, and only, city remaining on the entire continent. Taurus used to be home to the strongest military in all of Zenith, but they were completely eviscerated at the hands of the beasts when the attacks first began. The arrogance of the people and their status never made them any allies and when the attacks first broke out in the area, no one was willing to help because they it'd simply be a contained attack on Goro alone. Taurus is now simply a ruin of what was once a sprawling stone metropolis. There are a few who have traveled to Goro in an attempt to begin a restoration of Taurus at least, but no one has heard from these few again.
Markovia
Markovia is southwest of Goro and the furthest away from Azra, but it is Azra's direct rival in war and size. Markovia is just a bit smaller than Azra as a whole, but there are far more people there and the area is a bit more dense than the lands of Azra. Though Markovia holds political interest, they have mostly expressed themselves through war with Azra. They were slated to be the original birthplace of the ICC until plans were changed and the people were incensed. Emeril City is the capital and rivals Armistice in size. Since the military there is no longer sanctioned by the ICC, it is not official, but it also rivals that of Armistice.
The Centre is an institution near Emeril City that is just big enough to call itself a city. It functioned as a military academy of sorts before the wars, but now it is a ruin in the style of Taurus. Completely abandoned by people, The Centre became overrun with various creatures and plant life. There are those who still venture out to acquire the books and scrolls left there after hundreds of years, but none of them ever seem to return.
Rian is a relatively new city in Markovia. It is currently being built to serve as a replacement capital for Emeril City. After the beast attacks, Markovians realized how vulnerable they were and sought to build a place that could stand up to such attacks should they happen again. However, because of the lack of resources and the collapse of the overall economy there, in the years since the city began being built, there is not much work done. It is livable at the moment, but nowhere near as grand as Emeril City.
Welcome to your beautiful death
Welcome to my roleplay, The Reavers. This is an RP inspired by games like Dark Souls, books like The Witcher, and works by Edgar Allen Poe and is my entry into a darker, more serious kind of fantasy narrative. This is also my attempt at building a world that can be expanded on by the players. Despite this light interest check, there are multiple locations and mechanics that all to help to create a vast experience. In short, you will play characters that, at first, are traveling to discover the secret of being immune to magical poisoning, but before long are forced to take on a new task that spirals into something much larger than anyone can conceive.
My intent for this RP is for it be a more grounded and realistic sort of game. Realistic characters, realistic combat, and a gritty reality replace exaggerated characters that jump fifty feet and punch dragons in the face (not that punching dragons in the face isn't cool or anything). I also hope to have players who would like the idea of creating their own additions to the world be it locations or beasts for the bestiary. I would call this my love letter to the oft overlooked dark fantasy genre which exists underneath high fantasy epics such as Lord of the Rings.
Who would be interested in this?
