The Campaign Builder's Guild

[ooc]They are building an empire out of their fancy and the dreams of the dead. It is a worthy dream and I do not begrudge them. But it is going to burn. Where it does not burn, familiar beings will come in ones and twos out of forward and former time to pluck at its foundations as upon a tuned string and thereby shake the world apart.

Humans
They often call themselves simply 'people'. You will say 'I am like them'. You are quick to ally yourselves with shallow resemblances.

Dire Folk
They eschew all clothing and are immune to diseases that would kill human beings, whom they superficially resemble. They are grey or gangrenous or utterly without colour and their teeth are like surgeon's needles. They are not naturally villainous but they sometimes eat their own young. They will eat yours if you let them. Because of this, and because pestilence often hangs on them like a beloved garment, human beings call them animals. Being animals, they do not care what humans call them.

Old Folk
They are thin and tall and black with tangled hair or hair that floats in some unplaceable wind. They laugh at laughter and scowl at tears. I do not think they understand wrath, and so they are its easy victims. Because their magic is effortless humans often try to capture them, but they can make themselves so thin as to hide in the fissures of this rundown age. Their cities are at the pale and blasted edges of the world, where the sun sets and rises.

Still Folk
They have sat so long in the corridors of their valleys and their descending mountain halls that you may be forgiven thinking they were never alive at all. Sometimes thieves delve into those silent places and plunder their untended wealth. The more vindictive thieves may even shatter them. The still folk have the allegiance of demons, whose vengeance shall outlast the sky.

Necromancy
Because the dead cannot speak, practitioners must cut out their tongues. Because the dead cannot see, they will later remove their eyes. By such sacrifice they can enter the bodies of the dead and cause them to move perversely, and they wear imagined faces, and toy with the dreams of the living, and prevent future births, and cause things to happen that could never have occurred because their inspirations were lost in the waste beyond human memory.

Low Magic
There is magic that transforms a flower into a butterfly. The butterfly seeks out the sorcerer's lover and once again becomes a flower. There is an incantation to conceal a serpent as a sword, and another to conceal a sword as a serpent. There are messages that can be written upon living bones and revealed only when the flesh is cooked or carved or boiled away. All of these things and others comprise a single art. Some that are called beautiful are thought hateful by others. There is no consensus.

And there are yet other ways to do sorcery.

The Anarch
They (for it is called as a monarch is called) have come with gifts, and with a challenge. Upon Their head is a gleaming mitre. But They say that it is God's own head that They wear.

Tempest and Lust and the Joyful One
They are the lords of the dire folk. It is strange that such an unseemly people would have the favour of the highest spirits. Perhaps it is only just.

Fundamentals
They are at the bottom of the world. They are the shapes from which all succeeding creations were composed. In their long seclusion they have come to know themselves. Now they rise re-imagined and self-created.

Entropy
The situation decays not by virtue of human action but in the flowering of heavenly and monstrous things that will not conform to our imaginings.

Mystery
Of course the world is filled with secrets. If it is not then it cannot properly be called a world. Eventually they are all uncovered, and the mystery, then, is why they protagonists went this way instead of that, and heeded this revelation but spurned the other... and players are indeed surpassingly strange.

Triumph
Either the protagonists have doomed the world by their deliberate action or they have saved it. There will be no more to say about this place and we will go on to tell stories of other places.[/ooc]
[ooc]I am returning to a rather old setting format and with it a more classical (at least for me) method of setting creation.

The system is ORE. It includes a madness meter, which I intend to modify to reflect the moral decay of individuals and nations alike, and comprehensive rules for the creation of all sorts of organisations, including countries.

The races are standard fantasy races. That isn't what I'm calling them, but honestly, that is what they are.

ALSO: with a handful of exceptions, any setting I create is designed with a clear and readily achievable end. This does not require an apocalypse... but there's usually an apocalypse.[/ooc]

While all your worlds have a certain poetry to them, I think few of them could handle to be distilled into a complete setting. So much of what they are is based on reading between the lines and only ever knowing half of the truth. This on the other hand, an example of a more classical approach as you mention yourself, actually has the potential to grow into something bigger. Personally, I would love to see a new full-fledged setting by you.

This has a lot of potential and I like the melancholic and delirious tones and themes it seems to draw upon. Probably partly due to the names, this makes me think of Russian folk tales.
I love this line:

Quote from: Him of Many NamesBecause of this, and because pestilence often hangs on them like a beloved garment, human beings call them animals. Being animals, they do not care what humans call them.

I sincerely hope you won't give up on this project! Although the setting title does continue the trend of starting with a synonym for Broken (not that I'm any less guilty on that account).

Just wanted to pipe in and say that I absolutely love your writing, and this is no different. It has, as SC mentioned, a very poetic tone to it. I love how things aren't clear cut being instead almost fashioned as the ramblings of an ancient wiseman.

I was thinking of how that Necromancy would play out.  A nice twist on something that can lose the creepiness from overuse.

In the Book of Images it is a disc of stone, but that book is old beyond reckoning and the Earth that it remembers is not ours. There was once a country of lakes and twining rivers that covered a third of the world. Its people dwelled in the rivers, spurning the land and mocking the gods, and so fully did they love the water that they called to Ocean to swallow their vast country, which it did.

Nevertheless, should you invoke Earth's complete image within the ancient book it will reveal the power that all true Icons possess. Perhaps God sees the fullness of even decayed things.

It is divided into two parts. Inner Ocean is bound by the crescent Earth along much of its circumference. Sailors do not stray far from the coast, even though the farthest lands are thousands of miles away, because Inner Ocean belongs to the Lost People and not to human beings. The few men who venture further inward do so only at the bidding of gods or of their own insistent dreams.

Outer Ocean envelops the crescent Earth. It has no rulers, but its waves often assume familiar shapes '" of lovers, of monsters, of memories '" to strike at the hearts of trespassers while it tears their ships apart.

There are also many smaller seas, defined by the involutions of the coasts. These seas are governed by men with difficulty.

A giant-king called Brigah wagered the fate of half the world against the toss of a coin. Seeking to forestall the outcome, the gods fixed that massive object in the sky. One day Moon shall complete its course and we will know the fortune of the lands that Brigah set his eye upon.

This legend is told in jest among gamblers in the lowlands of Drugli. It cannot be fact because there have never been giants on this or any other world, and because people came from Moon long ago and burned their images into the mountains. These people are more rarely glimpsed on Earth than even the Silk People, but they are seen, and remembered.

Moon's two faces are called Scintilla and Adumbra. The former fears the latter as all men fear their most familiar darkness.

Might 1 '" Territory 4 '" Sovereignty 2 '" Treasure 1 '" Influence 1

In the roving-tongue, that word names the sound a man makes when his neck is cut and the wound froths with rosy spit. It is an appropriate name. The general Takuan brought his army west into these lowlands and levelled half its cities and the other half he made into brothel-houses ringed around with severed heads. He dammed up Drugli's rivers with corpses and burned the fields and forests.

Now that his emperor is dead, Takuan has returned to Lamarteah, and the plainsmen have their country again. But those defeated men are shamed and inwardly raging, and they work their rage upon their children and their wives, or upon old rivals and new-made enemies discovered on the road. There are more bandits now than there have ever been. Women are wandering the streets alone and all doors are shut to them because they have been sullied by the lusts of soldiers. They are not whores, but they are being made so by the night.

Mure
This was always a criminal city. It was founded on the sacred oaths of four chieftains, who resolved at once to kill their blood-sworn confederates. In the end all four were strung up at the gibbet and faraway merchants of Mannecht became its master. Thus the proudest city in Drugli is not a lowlander city at all. It has fallen out of Mannecht's hands many times, and every time the plainsfolk swear that they will keep it, but Mannecht does not relinquish what it claims. There is always a magistrate of Mannecht scheming in the city. When the current magistrate is not the master of Mure, he whispers in the ear of the fool that calls himself so.

Today Mure's streets are filled with orphans and transient sellswords and necromancers naming the war's endless dead in croaking singsong voices. They are watched over by deputations of sour-faced Mannecht soldiers who have no love for this client country and who are in subtle ways more terrible than Takuan's own horde.

Pavernanh
He is the current magistrate of Mure. He is very young and eerily cunning, and there is a scar across his belly where his predecessor opened up his bowels. Now he keeps that man's head in a chest in his chambers and sometimes in the deep of night he subjects it to horrid interrogations.

Autlig
She is the mother of all rivers, and her breasts swell not with milk but endlessly coursing water. There were many statues to her in Drugli's villages, and both fishermen and new mothers praised her. Most of those statues were destroyed in the war, but there is one in Mure whose face is only damaged, and its base is joined through an ingenious machine to the river Elen so that it lactates in the manner of the goddess. At the height of Takuan's invasion the statue coursed black, for the river itself was black with the dead.

Giants of the Plain
Many bones were discovered when the plains and forests were burned away. Sometimes they are dislodged from river soil. There are no skulls, no pelvises, no complete ribcages or extremities; so perhaps they are not the bones of giants. But soldiers and hunters say: 'I know a human bone when I see one'. In the old legends, Autlig herself was a giant. So too was ravenous Kednkur, but he is no longer worshipped by the sane.

Kednkur
He is this country's abominable father and his priests fled into the wilderness long ago. He imparts magics of the earth, and his miracles are seldom discovered within the course of a single human life. In the Book of Images he is a gigantic lizard, his mouth filled with human bones.

River Witches
Before Kednkur fell from humanity's esteem both he and Autlig were beloved by the lowland people. Women learned witchcraft at the river-mother's altar, and men studied at the foot of the devourer. Then Kednkur became a villain, and both men and women were forced to gain their secrets from Autlig. When Takuan came, the men took their magic with them into battle. None of them remain, and men's magic is largely forgotten. All the river witches are women now and they travel in groups for safety. This is unnatural to most lowlanders, who trust roving bands of women little more than they would gangs of youths.

Aknl
During the war she and her coterie defended several villages by the desperate and blasphemous misuse of their magic. As a consequence they owe favours to many spirits and four of her companions have already turned corrupt in the completion of those duties. She has hired mercenaries to aid her in pursuit of her erstwhile comrades, but with growing rumours of the ravenous god's return she fears that his priests may soon be arrayed against her.

Brata, Grungi and Lutk
Of the many minor gods of Drugli these three are the most revered. Brata was once called the rain-god, but now he is called the lord of clouds. He is a bird or a serpent and by his invocation such creatures can be summoned, as can rain and the darkening of the sky. Grungi is a daughter of the Flowering God, whom earthen Kednkur tricked into his cooking fire. She is called the queen of the crooked folk, and those people get their sorcery from her. She gives no magic to human beings, but she provides fertile earth and that is miracle enough. Lutk is the shadow springing from the feet of all mortals. All the shame and darkness of living beings is part of Lutk. Lutk is known by many names in many countries.

Crooked Folk
Out in the plains where much of the land is bare from burning there are lonely loping figures, thin as saplings, black and scarred from Takuan's fires. The tall grass was their home and they crept through it like cats and never troubled human beings. Now the land is dead and they stand awkwardly upright in imitation of men, who once knew them as simple legends but now often mistake them for dire folk and slay them on account of that other people's crimes. The crooked folk know old plant magic and sorceries of the soil.

I like this a lot. The only thing I don't quite get is why the initial flavour-text deserves to be the first thing read about the setting. It's very good, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't really seem to encapsulate or prefigure any of the other stuff you've put...

EDIT: I absolutely, utterly, love this statement; "Of course the world is filled with secrets. If it is not then it cannot properly be called a world."

The text served as the inspiration for the setting (and is representative of the setting's folklore, gnder roles, etc.). By old tradition, I place the germinating text at the very beginning.

You're right, though, it isn't evocative of the setting. I'll replace it when I can.

EDIT: in fact, I figure I'll just remove it for now.

No, no, keep it! It's good, I like it! Just maybe not as like the very first thing you read.