World of Terra — Roleplayer Guild

cross a sulfur-yellow skyline, a lightning bolt strikes a black, bubbling pools. It is nearly out of sight, just 				
below
												the horizon.

A few yards from the pools, there grew a short, irradiated shrub, and though it seemed to be living in the otherwise toxic environment, nothing else did. These were the Badlands, were even Greens dared not tread. The air was a miasma of burning fumes that seemed to grip one's throat from the inside, seeping out of sable pools of nuclear waste that dotted the Earth like tiny wounds. One of the pools of toxic waste, the darker and farther of the two, began to bubble with an aggressive vigor, as if something thrashed about under the surface. The ground shook for a moment. A tiny red arm peeked out of a hole in the ground some fifty yards away, closing a hatch that had been hidden by debris. Whatever was attached to that arm realized something horrible had happened. Thunder boomed, and the sulfur yellow sky began to slowly change to a darker copper color. Before long, a shower of acid rain had picked up, hitting the ground and evaporating instantaneously into steam. The pool bubbled once again, thrashing worse than it had before. Without warning, an oily black creature erupted from the pool. It twisted about in the air like a fish pulled out of the water, thrashing against the irradiated muck it found itself in, and shrieking a most horrible shriek. It pulled itself to the edge of its toxic pool and lifted itself out with two great, long arms that reached out of the blackness like a spider.

The Badlands were otherwise quiet, with a soft backdrop of acid rain against the poisoned desert. The creature's pained shrieking pierced through this -- It did not sound like any animal. It did not sound like a beastfolk, or a green, or any thing. It was an otherworldly sound, only half-comparable to a hundred rusty hinges swinging at once, or perhaps a troupe of howler monkeys dropped into boiling water. It was truly the worst noise anyone could have ever heard, if anybody had dared venture out onto such an irradiated surface. The creature's screeching began to subside, fading lower and lower into a growl. It shook itself for a moment, flinging toxic waste off of itself, standing still for the acid rain to wash away the remnants of its recent birth from Terra. It opened two yellow eyes and surveyed the landscape.

"Excellent."

The Badlands

It is currently halfway through the wet months, though it has not been an especially fruitful season. Usable rain has been overshadowed by the year's strong prevalence of acid rain showers, the shelter they necessitate, the crops they destroy, and the water they pollute. Needless to say, things have been bad in the Badlands. The tensions caused by the acid rainfall has brought a rise in the number of bandits, be they water thieves on the highway, legions of well-armed fighters taking over isolated towns, or simple spree killers. With this rise in crime, there have been many well-intentioned Goodlanders poking about, seeking adventure and a chance to make the planet -- though, the parts they do not see -- a little better.

The Goodlands

Autumn is ending, and with it comes the Great Harvest Festival within the human city Edenhold. Because this year's harvest has been especially bountiful, the city's mayor has extended invitations to peaceable Goodlanders by way of a message on the tailfeathers of his Dire-Eagle, displayed in the sky. Aside from the usual festive activities you're skimming through to look for -- vendors, games, and music -- there is a warrior's tourney with a sizable, mysterious prize being offered.

♫

In the beginning, there was Terra. Certainly, its inhabitants may have called it something else; perhaps their word for "Blue" after the sky, or perhaps their word for "home", or simply "place". All the same, just as it is now, there was Terra. According to its wisest scholars and historians, Terra has seen three ages, each divided by Terra's slumbering for a hundred-hundred years. Though our oldest history is lost to time, modern advancements made in the field of archaeology tell us much about Terra's past cycles -- Denizens of the first age were each extraordinary builders and architects, constructing great stone homes and fortresses, while their descendants of the second age were skilled scientists who engineered the ancestors of today's races. The races of the Third Age.

Ours has been an age of peace. There are Kings, but not so many that they have yet fought over lands. There are warriors, but no armies yet to join. There are demons, but none so foolhardy to wake them. Terra, for all its forgotten ruins and ancient mystics, is a relatively new world. The radiation of yesteryear has long since settled to the dark corners of the world, and life has flourished in its absence. Pockets of civilization exist, but they are few, far-between, and rightly fearful of the world outside their high walls. Terra is a land where ancient horrors dwell in the glowing seas, where fearsome giants pillage small villages with impunity, and where the weak are picked off by harpies if they cannot protect themselves with a sufficient fort, sword, or spell.

Humans
Despite being the rarest peoples, humans are actually believed to have been the first race on Terra. Humans are extremely sensitive to radiation and are the weakest, shortest-lived, and least magically-inclined of Terra's four great races, but they are the most intelligent and the most dextrous. Humans possess opposable, multi-jointed digits on either end of their arms, capable of using delicate machinery, playing a variety of instruments, and manually cleaning the insides of their ears and noses. Using these digits, humans have invented a variety of tools and devices to assist them in these and other labors.

◈ Rot-touched humans are a subspecies of human, who are not born mutants, but have had their genes mutated through direct exposure to very high amounts of radiation very quickly. They are ageless, require no water, and despite a popular myth that states otherwise, can be killed through conventional means. They resemble living corpses and are slowly deteriorated by direct sunlight, leading many to seek shelter underground.

◈ Halfbeasts are the unholy spawn of humans and beastfolk. They usually resemble humans with scant animal features, such as tails, ears, or wings. Some see them and find them attractive, others see them and picture their sinful parents copulating. Whatever the case may be, they are rarer than humans and are frequently performers in circuses and exotic clubs. The only colony of halfbeasts are the mermaids, who are pretty absent in the affairs of non-mermaids.

Beastfolk
The beastfolk are the most diverse, and perhaps most loosely organized of the four great races. Whether or not the beastfolk are the oldest race in Terra is largely a one-sided debate between the beastfolk, who submit the notion that the beastfolk are Terra's oldest race, and the rest of the world, who favor the tangible, much older records of humanity in the debate. In spite of this, the beastfolk are generally a proud, bull-headed people, depending on their exact species. To be fair, the most bull-headed of them are the bullmen.

◈ Plantfolk, while not "beasts", exist all the same. They have a lot of in-fighting and rivalries only they are able to remember and differentiate, such as a bitter, long-standing racial hatred between leekfolk and radishfolk. Because of their integral bond with nature, many live in harsh, isolated regions.

◈ The fishfolk, also colloquially called The Awful Fishfolk, are the most widely-hated subspecies on Terra. There is no one reason, but a slew of factors that go into this -- They reek, no matter the breed of fish, speak in a language only they can speak, and they steal things. They steal like it is going out of fashion, right in front of you if they have to. They also cannibalize their dead almost immediately.

Greens
The Greens -- Orcs, Ogres, Trolls, Hobgoblins, Goblins, Ghouls, and all manner of nefarious hoopajoops -- are a universally tusked, pointy-eared, viridescent peoples. Some are small and quick, such as those in the goblin families, whereas others, such as the ogres and orcs, are large and muscled. Because their appearances are so widely varying, many members of other races, such as mutant humans and particularly stout lizardfolk, are often mistaken for Greens and discriminated as such. The Greens evolved from humans who have adapted to high levels of radiation.

◈ Sky goblins, despite their name, are not goblins and cannot fly. Their short tails make them imps, and while they cannot fly in the true sense, they can jump the same distances, proportionately, as a flea. Their wide, padded feet help them glide as they fall downward and kick at prey with their powerful legs. They eat mostly birds, young harpies, and other sky goblins.

◈ While commonly believed to be members of the extinct Dwarf race, tappers are the most common subspecies of troll. They can be distinguished from dwarves and trolls alike by their dark green skin and gray beards. Many signal to one another when they sense cave-ins by tapping their single, long index finger on the cave walls, which gives them their name.

Elves
Where the beastfolk were made brash and dim-witted by the radiation, and the greens made hideous and deformed, the Elves were given what they call "Elfspeak" -- The ability to communicate ideas to other living beings psychically. Because of the use of telepathy and psychic empathy is so widespread in their cultures, they generally almost never speak. <Elves sound like this> While powerful wizards and other elves can shut off their minds to Elfspeech, humans, beastfolk, and greens cannot.
<As you can imagine, this does not help their popularity>

◈ Forest elves are the elves most attuned to Elfspeech, and are said to have invented it. They lack mouths, instead communicating entirely with their minds, photosynthesizing in order to give themselves nutrients when necessary. Some say they can use Elfspeech to communicate with trees, though they aren't keen about discussing the matter with non forest elves.

◈ High elves, as their name would suggest, are the tallest of the elves. They are known for their impressive fortresses and a lesser known facet of Elfspeech known as Elflistening, where they are made privy to the thoughts and emotions of others. Most use this for political scheming and other underhanded means.

There is very little empirical data recorded about Terra's history, so historical knowledge varies very strongly from place to place. Some universities have tomes that chronicle each age in detail, some villages think the planet is about a hundred years old. Most people don't know very much about ancient history, and they don't really care. There are pterodactyls trying to eat them, and giant mushrooms they can use to bounce across chasms. The fun parts of the world -- the parts we're writing in -- don't know about world history, and neither should your character.

The First Age

The First Age, or, The Yester-yesteryears, are the most ancient and mysterious of Terra's ages. It is the time when the most ancient creatures laid their eggs miles beneath the planet, when the mightiest of the talking trees were little more than high-pitched acorns, and when the ancient structures around Terra were first raised. Denizens of the first age currently living -- the most decrepit and ancient of the Rot-Touched, Treefolk, and similar very long-lived beings -- all have twinkling, murky memories of this time, if any. Life for the First Agers was a utopia aided largely by machines and architecturally ingenious structures that protected them from a world that lacked radiation, magic, or nonhumans. The few remaining records of First Agers depict an unintimidating, fleshy people with a proclivity for unfashionable hats.

The Second Age

The Second Age, or The Yesteryears, was the shortest period of Terra's history, occurring after the First Fire. The second age is responsible for the first generation of Rot-Touched, the creation of the Greens, Elves, and Dwarves, as well as the Machinefolk. The oldest dynasties were also founded during this time, such as the Great Pack, the Elven Dream-Council, and the Celestial Republic. The Second Age was ended by the Final Fire, an event as equally mysterious as its predecessor.

The Third Age

The Third Age is Terra's current age. It was marked by the extinction of the Dwarves, as well as the emergence of Beastfolk. Machines, while not extinct, have become extraordinarily rare, while magic has become more and more common. The world is loosely divided into territories, though it has not been so fully explored as to have an accurate map.

As you have seen, there are a lot of terms being thrown around here -- Rot, Radiation, First Fire, Magic, etc. The prevalence of magic has been the biggest question, so I'm here to answer it straight: This setting employs magic through radiation. Think of the two as equally volatile and uncommon to see being used in day-to-day settings. If someone pulled out a magical orb from their backpack, you would respond as if they pulled a glowing hunk of uranium -- You'd be distrustful, and probably run in the opposite direction. Magic used by the players is of a low level. Magic used by some NPCs might show the higher scale of magic, but the golden rule here is always that magic is really misinterpreted science. That being said, if your magic cannot be explained with a pseudo-scientific explanation, it is too powerful. This strikes the creation of matter off of the list, as well as things like teleportation or flight. Think Tolkien magic.

Magic - An unnatural force found throughout the world that allows practitioners to break or bend natural laws. It has a strong correlation to radiation and nuclear waste, leading many foolhardy hopefuls to willingly expose themselves to it. Nearly all develop illnesses, but some develop incredible gifts, keeping fascination and fear of magic a widespread phenomenon.

The First Fire - A worldwide fire that ended the First Age.

The Final Fire - A worldwide fire that ended the Second Age.

Demons - Dormant creatures, thought to either be descendants of Rot-Touched or Dwarves, with strong affinities for magic and unspeakable evil. Fortunately, none are currently awake.

Elfspeech - A telepathic communication elves can use between each other, or at non-elves. Non-elves receive Elfspeech if it is the elf's intention, but they cannot speak with it.

Rot - Those exposed to the First and Final fires received a type of radiation that is no longer found, known as Rot. Those who are "Rot-Touched" cease aging, but appear corpselike and cannot be exposed to sunlight. 

Charactername, The Race/Subrace

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Rival - A beastfolk who crossed paths with Firstname many years ago, who stole the coveted Plotdevice Crystal Firstname has been looking for.

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