For nearly 1,000 years, the continent of Sethia – a massive shelf of land that dominates the upper half of Malzaria – was dominated by three empires: Jlantria (a highly-religious matriarchy, highly advanced in science, magic and warfare), Den’nar (a loose confederation of desert nomads and shamans), and Meldoar (a twisted witchocracy of dark magic, thaumaturgy and terrifying experiments). While the power shifted frequently between these three forces, it was not until the Black Wars that hostilities finally came to a head.
When war did come, it arrived in the form of a revolution led by a powerful sorceress named Carastena Vlagoth: the Blood Queen. Possessed of such intense power and motivated by dark intelligences, this Blood Queen and her followers -- battle-trained Bloodspeakers, the mechanically gifted giants known as the Cruj, the barbaric marauders called the Gorgoloth, and the incomprehensible Eidolos -- cut a swath of destruction through lower Jlantria and upper Den’nar. Meldoar joined the devastating war on the side of the Blood Queen, unleashing their foul clockwork horrors and time-bending magic on the rest of Sethia.
The horror brought by the continent-wide war was unimaginable. Hordes of Gorgoloth armed with Crujian war technology stormed through western Jlantria in a tide of black steel. Crujian shock troops unleashed waves of burning gas, self-detonating golems and towers of detonating shrapnel that killed thousands. Deadly units of battle-trained Bloodspeakers used spatial rips to strike at strategic locations and assassinate key leaders. The Blood Queen led her armies from Chul Gaerog, a black mountain that existed between dimensions and that could take its commander to wherever she desired to go. The war raged for thirty years. The world shook as the seas filled with blood and the land took on the gray pallor of death. Meldoar’s Witch Knights worked with the dark engineers of Meledrakkar and jointly labored on a deadly vortex bomb called the Zero Engine, which was to end the war once and for all.
Eventually, at the battle of Crucifix Point, a concentrated effort was launched on Chul Gaerog that led to the Blood Queen’s bloody demise. Chul Gaerog exploded in a shower of black fire, cold stone and steaming blood. With it went the Zero Engine, which either detonated with no effect or else failed to go off entirely.
THE BLACK DAWN
The depths of the damage done to the world by the Blood Queen’s campaign would not become clear for another three decades, when the Zero Engine truly exploded.
Rebuilding had given the world both hope and an uneasy unity. Thirty years had passed since the disastrous War had ended. Change was in the air: the Empires’ control over their holdings had begun to wane, new forces were rising from the ashes of the war, and the public faith in their leaders had been permanently shaken. The threat of further conflict loomed. Dangerous creatures emerged from the wilderness and the uncharted seas, and the population of the already volatile Black Scar Prison swelled. People wanted change, and they embraced who they thought would bring it: rebels, criminals, killers.
And then, out of nowhere some ten years ago, on a cold morning that would later be known as the Black Dawn, the explosion came.
A true vortex bomb ignored both spatial and temporal limitations: the Engine had been constructed within and resided in a dimensional fold, a liminal space between times, places, and physical realities. When Chul Gaerog was destroyed, the Zero Engine did indeed detonate, but the effects of its devastation were released into the temporality thirty years in the future, and its effects were widespread, as the Engine seemed to co-detonate in several widely distanced locations simultaneously.
Much of Sethia was ravaged. Jlantria and Den’nar were both devastated, their cities laid to waste in silent explosions of concussive force that literally bent the air and sent ripples through flesh and ground that tore the fabric of reality to shreds. Meldoar suffered equally hard losses, though having helped design the Engine, the Witch Knights were afforded some measure of forewarning, and they managed to shield the capital city of Rath from the worst of the effects. Tidal waves swept apart most of the ships in the sea; great rifts and valleys formed in the earth, some of them miles deep. Debris and resonant foul magic from Chul Gaerog rained down from the sky, creating dismal and cursed locales such as the Wormwood and the Carrion Rift.
No conquerors came to claim victory after the explosion occurred; no master plan was hatched that capitalized on Sethia’s sudden devastation and vulnerability. The blast had simply come, and it brought the world to its knees.
NEW KOTH
In the wake of the Black Dawn, the denizens of Sethia have been hard-pressed with the issue of survival. With no centralized government, few resources, and a landscape polluted by foul magic, shattered structures and with dwindling supplies, the survivors of the Black Dawn have had little choice but to gather, and rebuild.
One of the last military fortresses left standing was a ramshackle structure called Fort Hightower, originally part of a blockage against the hostile western Reach. Before long, refugees from all across the ruins of Jlantria began to congregate there, and what had once been a small town grew into a much larger settlement that would eventually be known as New Koth. It had been a miracle that Hightower had survived at all – upon the detonation of the Zero Engine, a massive rip had pulled the small city apart.
New Koth today stands as a city divided by a mile-wide canyon that reaches at least two miles deep. Dark magic and the ruins of ancient civilization have been uncovered in the depths of the tear, now called the Carrion Rift, but this very threat has also become a salvation, for the exploration of the Rift has fueled the city’s economy, granting it goods to trade with other settlements, and a draw for would-be treasure hunters, scientists, and explorers from wherever they may be. And while an evil force has congregated in the smaller section of the city -- resulting in a constant and small scale war – New Koth has become something of a bastion of civilization in the blasted aftermath of the Empire.
While numerous other city-states have risen to put their imprint on Sethia, New Koth is unquestionably the most powerful, and likely the most dangerous. And it is to this dark, shattered place that your characters are bound, and where your fate awaits you.
NEW KOTH
In the wake of the Black Dawn, the denizens of Sethia have been hard-pressed with the issue of survival. With no centralized government, few resources, and a landscape polluted by foul magic, shattered structures and with dwindling supplies, the survivors of the Black Dawn have had little choice but to gather, and rebuild.
One of the last military fortresses left standing was a ramshackle structure called Fort Hightower, originally part of a blockage against the hostile western Reach. Before long, refugees from all across the ruins of Jlantria began to congregate there, and what had once been a small town grew into a much larger settlement that would eventually be known as New Koth. It had been a miracle that Hightower had survived at all – upon the detonation of the Zero Engine, a massive rip had pulled the small city apart.
New Koth today stands as a city divided by a mile-wide canyon that reaches at least two miles deep. Dark magic and the ruins of ancient civilization have been uncovered in the depths of the tear, now called the Carrion Rift, but this very threat has also become a salvation, for the exploration of the Rift has fueled the city’s economy, granting it goods to trade with other settlements, and a draw for would-be treasure hunters, scientists, and explorers from wherever they may be. And while an evil force has congregated in the smaller section of the city -- resulting in a constant and small scale war – New Koth has become something of a bastion of civilization in the blasted aftermath of the Empire.
While numerous other city-states have risen to put their imprint on Sethia, New Koth is unquestionably the most powerful, and likely the most dangerous. And it is to this dark, shattered place that your characters are bound, and where your fate awaits you.
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