Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

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Marullus
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Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#1 Post by Marullus »

The focus of this game is on the Northern Marches, or Northern Wastes - what was here, what is here, and what can be built here with the blood, sweat, and tears of the player characters.

Every character in the game comes from somewhere else, however, somewhere further south. Each comes with their own story. While these are not core to the Northern Marches gameplay, they can be as impactful to inter-character roleplay as each player decides to make them.

This entire process is optional - all characters arrive in the Northern Marches on equal footing and without rank, prestige, or power from their far-flung former homes. For those players who wish to embellish their roleplay, this gives a way to share this opportunity and link with others.
  • The character creation rules will point to this thread for anyone looking for optional inspiration.
  • I will post any basic facts relevant to the gameworld and setting.
  • After your character is approved, feel free to post your own facts about external cultures, norms, and beliefs from your character's background here as they might apply to other characters (not simply reposting your character's background). Keep it succinct.
  • This list operates on a "yes, and" model. There is as much variety in outside lands as we desire. New characters can choose to link to things already listed here or develop their own.
Facts about the Southern Kingdoms
  • Dwarves live about twice as long as humans. Elves only live three times as long as humans.
  • The Iron Hills lies to the east of the Southern Kingdoms and are home to innumerable dwarven holds engaged in complex clan-based struggle between them and unified action by them against the dragons that seem to proliferate there. (details generated by players as necessary)
  • The Midnight Forests lie to the west of the southern kingdoms and hold a variety of elven communities and sub-cultures. (details generated by players as necessary)
  • Far to the west beyond the elves, along the coast of the Great Sea, are the Khalorrim, humans of an entirely different linguistic group. With sub-groups of both coastal raiders and inland horselords, they have strong ties to Law and sun-worship, but their own peculiar forms of jurisprudence and justice.
  • There are demi-human enclaves throughout all of the southlands (details generated by players as necessary).
  • There are three Deities whose worship has widely spread through the human kingdoms - Baudh, Gwanwen, and Euranna.
  • History "began" again 2,020 years ago, a date chosen by the Priests of Baudh roughly coinciding with the crowning of the first human king with divine sanction.
  • It is known that a magical cataclysm occurred some thousands of years earlier, nearly destroying life and from which the world still is recovering. The Gods do not discuss it, and no records are known.
  • There are a number of human kings and kingdoms in the Southern lands, each ruling by divine right granted by the god, Baudh, who predominates in cities and cultural centers. Worship of Gwanwen predominates in more rural regions. Euranna's followers move everywhere, particularly among the dispossessed and disenfranchised, without any particular locus.
  • Each deity has an Order for its faithful -- those who have shown their mettle in the struggles of the world and dedicated themselves to the cause of that deity. The Order of Knights, common among nobility, require rites to Baudh. The Reapers of the Harvest, or Reapers, follow Gwanwen. The Poor Fellows of the Temple, or Templars, swear vows to Euranna.
  • ArchDuke Gaul was an ambitious minor noble in the southern kingdoms and sent north, granted title over the "northern wastes" with little expectation of success.
  • The ArchDuke's offer of wealth and opportunity to any who come north and seek it was communicated through all cathedrals of Baudh throughout the southlands.
  • The Songs of Gaul are public knowledge - the result of minstrels and bards passing the tales, legends, and excitement occurring in the north across the south, and are considered fair-game for any new arriving player character to have heard before arrival.
Cultural Views of Magic
  • The previous world ended in magical cataclysm, and displays of powerful magic make most normal people uneasy or outright fearful.
  • Magic is inherent in the world and naturally occurs when souls impact on places and things; most people have seen this low-intensity magic and regard it as normal.
  • Magic Users are considered "willworkers," able to use the same principles and their own potent soul to impose more powerful impacts on the world.
  • Demonology allows impacts on the world through the channeling of extraplanar energy through one's soul, but is tainted to evil by the nature of that energy. Infernal influence is "easy power" for the seduceable and desperate and commonly feared by the population.
  • Gwanwen, who governs the natural balance, defines willworking itself as unnatural and unbalanced. Rural communities therefore often conflate Magic Users and the Infernal as "witches," dealing with them similarly.
  • Baudh, who governs power and law, differentiates and supports willworking Magic Users who use their considerable discipline for the cause of order. Thus, codified Schools of Magic exist in urban settings.
  • Eruanna, who governs truth and mercy, is the tireless foe of all things infernal as they are diametrically opposed to her domain. She differentiates and supports willworking Magic Users who act with their own souls for the cause of good.
  • Elves, by virtue of their innate magic and their attunement to nature itself, generally do not consider their actions to be "willworking" but instead as a natural extension of harmony with the laws of the world. Using magic against the cause of harmony or nature is considered abhorrent among elven culture as a result.

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Keehnelf
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Re: Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#2 Post by Keehnelf »

Durrnberger and the Barony of Whents

Far, far to the south, a short section of ruggedly mountainous oceanic coast was transformed many centuries ago into a small monastic enclave known as Durrnberger, which means roughly, in the tongue of that land, "Durrn's Mountain". Before that, it was known colloquially as Durrnbergerschwanz, which referred to a long, bulbous, rocky ridge extending northward into a region of fertile farmland from the northernmost and most prominent of that area's mountains. That name is considered by most to be "untranslatable".

Eventually, the local monastery gave rise to a coastal village, which began trading all up and down the region's coasts and slowly prospered into a well-defended trading port. This town, also eventually known as Durrnberger, is heavily caste-driven, with members of the minor nobility clearly distinguishable even casually from "true" nobility, and a proud tradition of knights errant, and public fairs and carnivals.

The titular head of this area is the Baron of Whents, a holding that technically does not lie within the bounds of the barony encompassing Durrnberber, but which is the ancestral seat of the current baron's family, held for seventy nine years by the mortal enemies of the Whentses, the Cardoms. The barony of Whents has little political clout, though it is a moderately successful and prosperous trading hub, and well-protected from invasion or conquest, though it owes nominal fealty to the territory's higher powers in exchange for improved access to other trading locales.

The House of Malmstein Rosemont

The Malmstein Rosemont Family (technically the Malmstein-Rosemonts, a union of two extremely minor noble families centuries earlier) is one of the oldest and least noble of the noble houses of Durrnberger. They have been present on the region's soil since it was first incorporated as a trading settlement, primarily occupied as book-keepers, accountants and moneylenders, though a significant minority of the family has historically served as clerks or scribes for the upper nobility. The seat of their power is Durrnberger proper, and in recent generations the family's patriarchs have served as magistrates and barristers within the city's limits, often taking exorbitant bribes in exchange for dispensation of appropriate justice in mercantile matters. This has advanced the family's fortunes significantly in recent decades. The holdings of the Malmstein-Rosemonts, however, lie in the upper reaches of the northern Durrnberger chain, near the previously-mentioned (unmentionable) Durrnbergerschwanz. The northern side of the chain is notoriously wet and unpleasant, and the nearly-twin castles of the Malmstein-Rosemont family lying on facing sides of a pair of mountains, overlooking a smaller third, lie almost perpetually under the pall of a persistent drizzle. It is from this, and the family founder's belief in the triumph of persistence over any adversity, that he took the three mountains and the stormcloud against a gray field as his heraldry.

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Keehnelf
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Re: Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#3 Post by Keehnelf »

The Attilanciary Cycle and the Seven True Stories

The famous historian Kikkeros is most well-known for publishing a series of weighty tomes of history based on records and site-based observation of the ancient Kingdom of Attilan. This series, known as the Attilanciary Cycle, is the foundation of much modern political philosophy and understanding of the norms and conventions of that portion of the world historically. It was the most thorough and clearly-presented work extant for a very long time, and as such enjoys a particular place in the consciousness of the educated classes of the southern kingdoms.

Like any comprehensive history, the texts contain genealogies, dry descriptions of military expansions and contractions, alliances and defeats, accountings of crop harvests and livestock production, booms and busts, the elimination and regrowth of forests, and along with it all a running commentary on the rise and fall of religious powers and factions. This makes it an invaluable resource for educating especially the noble youth, but over time it has become a veritable gold-mine of nuggets of inspiration for cultural producers of all kinds.

Most specifically, many adventurous tales and extrapolated romances have been extracted from the nineteen-book sequence and converted to dramatic poems, songs, folk tales and even dramatic re-enactments and puppet shows or mummery. Thus, much of the oldest history of the land, its major personages and interesting side-notes, have entered the consciousness of the uneducated masses in a garbled and intensified form, such that many children by age four have learned of the first King of Attilancia, Attilan the Pure, who became the chosen of the Golden God by purifying the Chapel of Saint Horatio after it had been overrun by ogres and their kin, then marrying Princess Ilyuva and thus laying the foundations of the historic kingdom.

Of course, there is generally a lot more to most of these stories in terms of historical or political nuance than makes it into the popular legends, but the simple fact is that even the least-educated serf of the southlands has a repertoire of dozens of such tales rattling around in her or his head by adolescence. Many of these have been specifically popularized in modern times by a standardized retelling in oral form penned by the bard Uglorios the Glorious, dubbed Seven True Stories. A full retelling often takes several days, but is a highly popular feature of outdoor festivals or carnivals and talented performers are in high demand to know and be able to present the Seven True Stories in court or at other high occasions.

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Marullus
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Re: Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#4 Post by Marullus »

While many small performing groups move and ply their trade throughout the Southlands, the largest is known as the Midnight Circus. A large circus with captive creatures, strange sights, and talented performers, their show centered on the titillation and fear surrounding the magical cataclysm. A number of their acts claim "lost magics from the Ancient Kingdom," strange creatures (the most famous of which being an old, broken-winged Chimera with parts of lion, goat, and red dragon), and the like. Most of their acts are easily ascribable to simple natural-magics that people were accustomed to, but which were cleverly used, or of illusion magic and non-magical prestidigitation. While their acts are generally well-accepted by the townsfolk and churches of Baudh, their stays tend to be short in such lawful areas. Rural folk in the farms and countryside are often more curious of their acts (being less exposed to magical claims than townsfolk) but are occasionally spooked by magic that seems "too real" and run off the performers as evil willworkers rather than just charlatans.

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Re: Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#5 Post by Marullus »

Dwarves

General Knowledge of dwarves in the Human Southlands
  • Dwarves live about twice as long as humans. Elves only live three times as long as humans.
  • The Iron Hills lies to the east of the Southern Kingdoms and are home to innumerable dwarven holds engaged in complex clan-based struggle between them and unified action by them against the dragons that seem to proliferate there. (details generated by players as necessary)
Human folklore and fairytales are not very kind to dwarves as a whole. They are replete with stories of magnificent dwarven works sought and used by human heroes, and also of bitter dwarven villains vilified for returning to wreck havoc on the children or grandchildren unfairly.

Most humans know or know of an individual dwarf somewhere working as a mercenary, smith, or architect. They are usually conceded to be curmudgeonly, but fine workmen.

Specific Knowledge of dwarves, known to those familiar specifically with dwarves
(This includes anyone who speaks Dwarven and all Dwarf PCs.)

Dwarves regard blood legacy as paramount. All children inherit the legacies of their parents and pass their own legacies on to their children. The unbroken chain of patrilineal descent is treated with immense respect. They assume the same of other races (often incorrectly), and think nothing of holding descendants responsible for their forebear's deeds. There are no statutes of limitation on crimes for dwarves, and justice carries from father to son until resolved.

Dwarven culture includes a complex network of oaths and grudges sworn to and against each other. It is generally considered to require more than one human lifetime's work to try and unravel this network through scholarship. The Oathkeepers are dwarven scholars who are experts in this and they exist in every hold. Any oath sworn before an Oathkeeper is considered binding until fulfilled upon the swearing dwarf and all descendants. This baseline influences everything in dwarven society from alliances to blood feuds, family relationships and who one may marry, to the endless internectine battles of the Iron Hills. There is a reason that all dwarves are both skilled laborers and warriors - their lives constantly require both.

Human law has liberal salvage rights (see rules here). Dwarven law acts under a slightly different set of suppositions. Under dwarven law:
  • Goods transfer ownership by conquest, i.e. the right and fair defeat of another by feats of arms. Transfer of ownership by thievery, salvage (which is a form of thievery), treachery, or magic (which is a form of treachery) are illegitimate. (Interpretation of "right and fair defeat" is often subjective and is the genesis of numerous blood feuds.)
  • Goods may be sold or gifted at a dwarf's option. Sold items are generally new, where any item with legacy is typically transmitted only by gift or loan.
  • Terms of a loan are normally understood among dwarves without needing to be stated - an item can be granted for use, but ownership does not change, with the rightful owner retaining perpetual claim to have the item returned to them.
  • All rights to possessions are passed down by bloodline, oldest male heir to oldest male heir. This heir will often gift items within the family to ensure the peace, but items are only gifted outside the blood in exceptional circumstances. Paper wills (as used by humans) are not valid under dwarven law.

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Re: Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#6 Post by Marullus »

An Adventurer's Guide to Dragons
(Stolen from Keehnelf.)


What scholars do know about dragons is this:

Dragons are not born capable of speech or in possession of a significant level of intelligence. From birth (and potentially during their entire lives) they possess the intellect of an animal, cunning but not clever, driven primarily by hunger, fear of pain, and a powerful natural curiosity. If a dragon remains in the wild, surrounded by wild things, it can remain in this state perpetually as it grows and becomes stronger and more dangerous, and its need for larger territory for hunting grows along with it.

However, an uncanny thing happens if a dragon encounters something crafted by the hands of the lesser races--a tool, some coins, a statue, even polished and cut gems. Its natural curiosity becomes a powerful obsession, and it is driven to seek out the source of these manufactured or worked items, and destroy it. As a dragon learns more about the world of artifice, its curiosity, its intelligence, its jealousy and its natural desire for destruction expand almost exponentially until some dragons rampage through the land seeking out habitations to ravage almost single-mindedly.

Scholars suggest that this is related to a dragon's natural inability to create. Even when their form is shifted to that of a being with the physical capacities of craftsmanship (and they love such metamorphoses), they are unable to create anything lasting or functional. They can shape mud into balls or sticks into a rough cone, and that is the extent of it. Even when they conjure or create items through magic, those things seem tinny and two-dimensional, prone to collapse or corrosion even if they should be permanent. As a species, they are almost entirely sterile, requiring precise conditions and a lot of support in order to successfully breed. Extrapolating from this, scholars have concluded that dragons, jealous and proud as they are, are enraged by the prolific creativeness of the "lesser races" more and more as they learn the true extent of their limitation. They hoard the most precious and ornate of creations from those they destroy, seek out those who made them and end them--almost without fail.

These experiences with the things of humanoid creation do not just leave a psychological mark on the dragon--they also influence, over time, the physical qualities of the dragon as much as its environment. In their early years especially, dragons are mutable and impressionable creatures both mentally and physically. Thus, no two adult dragons are ever quite alike, solitary as they are, because each has been shaped by its own experiences.

All dragons remain, fundamentally, creatures of Chaos, bent on ruin and destruction, though there are some among the species who have been considered the allies of the lesser races. Lyzanthus and his brood, for example, were a line of gold-skinned dragons that allied with the Knights of Gryth in an era long past and allowed the greatest of their number to ride them into battle against Gryth's enemies. The Emperor of Gryth paid a heavy toll in gifts of tribute to Lyzanthus and his brood, but they offered him military power unrivaled in that time. Of course, it was Polydox, one of Lyzanthus' own children, who brought this era to an end and was personally responsible for the destruction of the Emperor's palace at Zond, but so it goes when you deal with dragons.

Bestial Dragons possess the following abilities and characteristics:

All but a few possess massive wings allowing flight
Most can breathe underwater
They can speak only a crude cave-man form of Draconic, which they know from birth
They possess a projectile breath weapon of a form suited to their habitat (most common are fire, wind, ice, water, acid, shards of razor-sharp stone or metal, or lightning). Most dragons cannot use this ability more than three times in a day.
Their scales are thick and difficult to pierce, becoming more difficult as the dragon ages.
They are ferocious and tenacious hunters and adversaries.

Intelligent Dragons possess the qualities above with the following modifications and additions:

Their powers of speech (Draconic and most other civilized languages) are significant.
They are highly intelligent and tend to become more intelligent as they age (as a direct result of access to the creations of civilized beings).
They often possess the ability to use magic, and this ability grows as they age.
Their scales are more durable and resilient than those of their bestial kin as gems and coins becomes embedded in their flesh from decades and centuries of contact. This effect also grows with age.
They are extremely manipulative and territorial, and will often use their intelligence in service of the ruin of others, even when they seem to be dealing fairly.
These dragons exhibit an obsessive and paranoid quality of speech and behavior if exposed to any of their distinctive "triggers" (often based on personal history and exposures). Related to this, dragons bear unthinkably long and intense grudges. It is not wise to cross a dragon unless you think you can withstand its wrath (which will likely last longer than you do.)

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Re: Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#7 Post by Jernau35 »

The Garrett Family and the City of Porthgain

The Garrett family are an extremely minor family of nobility from the harbor city of Porthgain, hundreds of leagues to the south and west of Gaul, on the Gulf of Sternor. About 600 years ago, the Garretts were the captains of the king's bodyguard, but the family have long since lost their prestige, the last of the family in royal service having died 300 years ago.

However, despite their slide into obscurity, or perhaps because of it, the family has clung tightly to the tales of their historical glory. Denying the evidence of their decline, the family boasts loudly of their noble blood, their coat of arms, their glorious name, and their superior social position.

Traditionally, the first two heirs to the family title enter military service. The third-in-line is encouraged to devote his/her life to the service of Baudh. As the sea-trade routes through the Gulf of Sternor are plagued with piracy, and the caravan routes to the cities of the interior sometimes attract brigands, it is not uncommon for clerics of Baudh in Porthgain to be attached to local military forces who are sent to quell these raiders.
Chance of being Suprised: 33%

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Marullus
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Re: Backgrounds: Places of the Southern Lands

#8 Post by Marullus »

The Alignment of Churches
Zhym wrote:Marullus uses the full 3x3 alignment grid from AD&D, though. When "good" and "evil" are actual alignment points, the law/chaos axis is about something different.
So, we ARE using the 9-alignments over the 3-alignments.

All three deities and cultures that reign in the southlands are fundamentally "good" varieties aligned to their singular aspects of law/chaos, but there are are variations.
  • Eruanna, as Chaotic Good, is fundamentally a "good at all cost" model. The impact to society and order is not a factor in ensuring a good outcome. She varies in her worshipers who come from "any good."
  • Gwanwen, as Neutral, seeks balance and is primarily concerned for the proper operation of birth and death. The main agricultural churches of the southlands are Neutral Good, with a focus on the prosperity of the whole community together. We have true-neutral Monks and neutral-evil Assassins as sub-sects within this group, though.
  • Baudh is the god of Law. In the southlands (and thus also in Gaul) this is primarily Lawful Good - it wants to promote both good and law. That's considered the base-normal. Followers obviously vary in good/evil (not all Kings and Lords who patron the Baudic church for its support of Law are themselves Good).
Since this is particularly relevant right now, with Baudic clerics coming from Gaul to the White Tower and observing different doctrinal emphasis, I'll share what I wrote to Rusty on his private forum previously (quoted below). Those who adventured in the White Tower lands saw the Khollorim "horse lords" worshipping Baudon, which is a Lawful Neutral emphasis. The White Tower worships Baudh but is run by the sect of the Knights of Baudhil, who came northward when Bremen established it. They differ from the main church in that they're a monastic-knight theocracy seeking "back to basics" religious rule without Kings being differentiated. (Thus, Lord Commander Bremen being elevated by divine right rather than southron succession under the Archduke, then establishing an "alliance" with the Archduke.)
Marullus wrote:Baudh is the God of Law. Baudh, Baudhon, and Baudhil are seen as local cultural variations of the same doctrine. Baudh is the dominant name as it is the homogeneous culture spread throughout the southlands. Baudhon is what the Khallorim (and thus the northlands horsemen) call him. Baudhil is a southlands offshoot that came up here to take root -- they're a "back to basics" movement. Secular authority of the King/Duke system deviates too far from pure religious practice and so a Theocratic Rule is needed. Think of it like Anglican (English Aristocracy based), Presbetyrian (Scottish refusal of English Aristocracy), and Methodist (English commoner revivalists). One God, one book/doctrine of law, one island to live on, one language, but different cultural views on the subject.

The "Followers of Baudhil" are followers of Baudh. Being evil isn't heretical; it's just a different interpretation of the same Baudhic law. The Southeron traditions of "Baudh" are generally lawful good. Pure consideration of Baudh's law (including the back-to-basics Theocratic rule) would generally be Lawful Neutral. The NPC Knights of Baudhil espouse Lawful Neutral but act Lawful neutral/evil, which would become apparent with prolonged exposure at the White Tower.

Baudhic Laws are deliberately written to allow this spectrum (as there are certainly faithful, evil, Baudh-following rulers in the southlands).
Decretum of Dominion: The strong bear responsibility for protection over all weaker than they, ensuring the care and well-being of the community.
Good: Emphasis on the "protection" and "care." The strong must ensure the well-being of the weak as a form of compassion.
Evil: Emphasis on the "Dominion." A more pure might-is-right approach, where the weak are servile to their beneficient lords.
Decretum of the Just: Those who break the laws must pay the price. Penance forges strength and ensures justice, and justice applies to all from peasant to king.
Good: Emphasis on Just Action, takes into account the intention and circumstances of the act as well as the letter of the law to ensure fairness before the law.
Neutral: Emphasis on "Fairness before the law." i.e. "Lady Justice is Blind." The circumstances of the individual are not relevant to the pure application of "the letter of the law."
Evil: Emphasis on the penance. The rule of dominion applies foremost to the judge, who is the arbiter of what is Just and ensures justice through penance. The more penance, the more strength forged.
Decretum of the Light: To remain in light, a follower must ever move against darkness. Dispelling evil, injustice, undeath, and bringing the law to the uncultured all are compelling needs for a follower of Baudh.
Good: Emphasis on fighting evil.
Evil: Emphasis on bringing law to the "uncultured."

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