I see the Angels, Black Angels in shells of metal swimming through the night. They are coming... Coming to devour us! Run! Run and hide! No man can stand before them and live! RUN!
Last words of Rutgar, 'Prophet' of Kelenburg
And so The God perceived the Armies of the Enemy, and They perceived Him, for He was terrible to behold in His Wrath. Unfazed by His Divinity, the Dark Ones tried to shatter Him, to throw down the Light, and plunge the Faithful into the Old Night. For one Day and one Night they battled, and the burning Carcasses of the Dark Ones smote the Land and burned all those to ashes whose Hearts were not True.
from Godefell, The Book of Three Flames
So the Gods gathered their Heroes, each his own, and met the enemy, head on. They fought hard, harder than ever, for this one time they were one, not many, and they did not fight for conquest, but to protect. And still they died. One by one they were dragged down and butchered by their faceless enemies until there were none left, except Harod the Father, who jumped on the enemy and tore him down to the earth until they both shattered on the mountains. Thus were we spared, to remember their sacrifice and mourn their passing.
A Skald's tale, told around the fire.
Who cares about how the world began, when you're sure you know how it will end?
This is the attitude of many people, when confronted with the stories and efforts of a travelling preacher, provided they are not entertaining. After all, they knew the gods are dead, fallen in battle against a shadowy foe. You don't have much time to contemplate the needs of your immortal soul, when the needs of your rather mortal flesh are more pressing. After all, the days are getting shorter, the nights longer and even the plants seem to be getting more and more hostile.
I'm not going to bore you with ten pages of creation myth, so here's...
(In the nutshells, I'll use some of the common clichés, they'll be explained later)
[spoiler=History in a nutshell:]
Three hundred years ago, the lands of Oreanna were a good place to live. Maybe the King was a weakling and the Barons prone to infighting, but that's the way things had always been.
Then came Enok the Undying, The Uniter, with his army of savages and Orks, who blew up the king and brought the Barons to their knees. By and large, he was a good ruler, if a bit on the unforgiving side. But he had a vision. He even managed to wake some of the Dragons for their slumber, making him something like a True King. His vision lived through the War of Shadows against the Fae-kin, but it died with him, when the Witch Queen's poison reached his heart, even as she lay dead at his feet. His Second-in-Command managed to hold the North for some time, until he vanished with his wife and the two Dragons they had sworn to protect. Fifty years later, his grandson died, along with the last Dragon, in battle against the giant Grond, who named himself Dragonslayer and King of the North. Then it all went to hell.
The battle of the gods, the Godefell, took only one day and night, but in this short time, three quarters of Oreanna's populace was burned, crushed or drowned. It changed the land, the coastline and even the shape of the mountains. Two hundred years later, the days are getting shorter, the nights are long and lightless and winter brings a night that lasts for three months. The creatures of the lands have changed, the currents of the Fae are still in turmoil, and huge tracts of land are completely uninhabitable.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Races in a nutshell:]
There's still a lot of humans, so as the largest demographic, they go first and for now all the races are called by the names the Midland humans use. They are not self-referential.
Humans come in a lot of different shapes and colours. The Northeners are Tall, Fair and Handsome (at least two out of three), the Mountain Men are less handsome, but have darker hair and the Greyskins have dark skin and reddish or blond hair (nope, that's not evolved naturally). They are less farmers and more Proud Warrior Race Guys (and Girls). The Midlanders tend to be pale and blond.
Second biggest demographic are the Dwarves. They get along well with the Midlanders and look basically like Ye Olde Dwarfe, i.e. short and hairy. They still retain most technological knowledge of their pre-Fall kin, but lack the means to put it into practice.
The Beakies are small humanoids that look like a cross between a halfling and a raven. Can't fly, but don't tend to be Small Annoying Creatures.
Ratmen are less rat, more mole x human, live underground and make a living by scavenging dwarven mines and making good firearms. Archrivals of the Dwarves
Orks: Tall, lean, muscled, extroverted, have fangs but no nose. Brown skin, black hair, long fingernails. They are pretty rare, but small tribes can sometimes be hired as soldiers. Very disciplined in battle. Proud Warrior Race Guys.
Ticks: Artificial Humans, made of metal and clockwork. It's unknown if they are the soul of a human bound to a construct or if someone truly crated life. They themselves can't answer this question, as they loose their memories, when they are badly damaged. These are extremely rare, but they make the best bodyguards, so they are highly prized by powerful people.
Non-Player Races:
Goblins: Come in the peaceful Forest-Goblin version and in the not-so-peaceful Swamp-Goblin version.
The Traders are a Mystery wrapped in an Enigma. Nobody really knows what they look like, since they are always clothed head to toe and hide their features behind identical, faceless masks. They trade a lot and get along with most races.
Fallen: the drawer labeled Misc. Everything that's been around only since the Godefell and doesn't have pointy ears.
Fae-Kin: Not a race per se, more a generalization. Everything with pointy ears and a gift for Fae-Working that isn't downright elfin. Some humans can be Fae-Kin. (And some PCs, too.)
Night-Kin: Another generalization, Night-Kin are touched by the Old Night. Always Chaotic Evil, this is more an affliction like an actual race.
The Others: Uh-oh, you musn't speak of them... They can hear you, hear your THOUGHTS! And then they'll come for you, and cut open your body and your mind and DEVOUR you![/spoiler]
[spoiler=Magic in a Nutshell:]
Fae-Working is the art of channeling and forming the mysterious force called Fae. Common use of the word is Faerie - 'born of the Fae' and fey - 'strange, but beautiful'.
Some humans are born with the Gift, they can see and feel the currents of the Fae and some can even shape them. These are viewed with some suspicion by the ungifted. (The gift is rare, so as a rule of thumb, not more then 1 in 5 PCs should have it and not more than 1 in 100 NPCs.)
Fun fact: Every living thing shapes the Fae around themselves, albeit subconsciously. So if you really, with all your heart, believe there's a monster under your bed, you might just have put one there.
Fae-Working is not without danger, as the currents are prone to eddies, rapids and even maelstroms. These can burn out the Worker, kill him or wound him severely. Those who have studied the Fae think that it is what makes us humans and all the other races tick. It is basically the Spark of Life. And it seems to be somewhat self-aware. One thing it can not do is heal mundane injuries. (That's right, healing magic is rare.) One thing it CAN do is animate objects, both constructs and dead creatures. People who die gruesome, violent deaths sometimes rise as undead. Their soul is gone, but their fear, pain and will to live has drawn a portion of the Fae into their body that animates it and tries to take revenge.
A skilled Worker can do this to himself, substituting the surrounding Fae for his own lifeforce. This process is excruciatingly painful and may shatter the Worker's sanity, but that's a small price for immortality, isn't it...?
Some creatures are called Fae-Born, because there is no rational explanation for there existence, which often can defy the law of Fysiks. Best example are the True Dragons, cottage-sized, six limbed creatures who could fly for days and whose breath could melt steel.
Another example are the creatures people call Demons. They don't have to be malign, but they always have great powers and their own agendas...[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Religion in a Nutshell:]
Player Knowledge: The Gods are dead. The church of the Four-Faced God say otherwise, but they are fanatics, albeit with a lot of followers. Some people say the gods couldn't die, since they were gods. Noone really knows, but still people tend to pray, mostly to some nebulous benign forces.
DM Knowledge, aka Creation Myth Time. [spoiler:You can skip this if you don't want to know.^^]
A long time ago, someone or something used this world to imprison an entity of great power, called the Old Night. They built a multidimensional prison anchored on Oreanna's north pole to contain the Night and had some guardians stationed there. Over the time, ebbs and flows in the Fae created periods where the prison was weakend, and the Old Night devoured (I like that word) its guards.
Slowly, it began to influence the mortal races. Fast forward a long time. At roughly the same time as Grond Dragonslayer killed the las Dragonlord, the Old Night's plan succeeded: A catspaw had unearthed a device to call the Night's minions.
Now, Oreanna had had gods all along. They were created by the people's belief and didn't interfere much.
Then came the Godefell. The Night's minions arrived, not by magic, but with a fleet of spaceships, pursued by their enemies who were hell-bent on keeping the Old Night imprisoned. The fleets battled over the planet, and the shots that missed, along with crashing wrecks initiated Oreanna's private Apocalypse. The battle ended, when the last defending ship rammed the enemy mothership and caused it to crash on the South Pole. (Would you have guessed that?)
Then something strange happed. With a lot of believers dead and the others thinking the gods had just died, the belief ended, and with it the gods really died.
The Lords of Judgement
When an intelligent creature dies, their soul must overcome a series of challenges, before they come before the Tribunal, where it is decided if they were good or evil. If they were neither, they get reincarnated, otherwise they are shipped to the afterlife they deserve.
What the Tribunal is exactly is unknown (I use the vestiges from tome of magic), but they are generally just.
The Remnants
Demigods, Nature Spirits or what remains of the gods, these beings Walk The Earth, aiding or hindering at a whim.
That's it for religion. I have a lot more on the church of the Four-Faced god, which survived rather intact. The second quote at the beginning of this post is from their bible, so you can guess why. :)[/spoiler]
This is very much a Work in Progress, nothing is finalized, especially not the names. It would really help me to have some third-party input, since I want to reveal the mysteries of the world one at a time to my group. :)
Your flavourtext is very nicely apocalyptic in tone. I like.
Overall concept seems pretty sound, but I'd like to see more details on... well, on just about everything, really. It does look to be a very promising setting.
I like the premise. Very creative and it really hooks you.
I'm curious just what you'd do with fey considering the terminology you used for magic.
so... after a long silence and working on the wiki entry, some more thoughts (unsorted, i'm just rambling on^^):
fey equals fae-born, creatures that did not come into being normally and that don't have to obey the natural laws (floating, shapechanging, etc). this is a good place to confess that i did not make up the terminology and some of the quirks of this kind of magic, the original creator of these is c.s. friedman whose Coldfire Trilogy greatly inspired me. (although the setting itself is quite different). i don't want to plagiarize, but pay homage to a really great work of fiction.
one thing i am undecided on is the general level of technology. the rural backwaters, especially in the north, have been thrown back into the bronze age, since they have no means of mining or processing iron ore. their only source of iron and steel is trade, and this kind of recources is extremely expensive, resulting in most people being armed with spears or daggers made from animal claws or stingers.
on the other hand, enterprising people, especially the armand, have sold a small number of advanced weapons to the northernes, notably crossbows (traditional and bolt throwers), firearms (muzzle loaders, percussion or flintlock) and flamespears, a sort of flamethrower used for pest control and "weeding".
the tech level in the south is much higher, since the city states are ruled or at least supported by mages and mage lords, who in turn are the driving forces of innovation. here is the point i'm thinking about most:
before the godefell (if you wonder why i talk about this like it was real: my group played various campaigns throughout the last 500 years of world history), magicians had developed a way of binding the fae to clockwork so it rewinds itself and developed the process until they could bind spirits into machinery that were able to carry out simple orders. these machines were called animated automatons, in short "animatons" or golems. now, 300 years later with a lot less restrictions on research, animatons *could* have replaced humans as a work force, at least for powerful mages. the tocks are product of some older research, but an exception to the rule that animatons are not free-willed.
the question: how big a part should technology play in everyday life?
i'm envisioning the city states as something like an arcology. they are self-contained, being built over underground rivers or lakes, and since the mutation of the flora and fauna has begun, mankind has started to cultivate a number of edible fungi. the two most important things to keep a city going are.
-sunstones: they provide a light similar to natural sunlight and are used in underground living quarters. especially the smaller northern communities could no survive without at least one sunstone, since it makes it possible to grow food even during the three-month winter night.
-water stills: these alchemical devices ranging in size from that of a wagon to a three-story house purify water and remove any harmful germs or spores in it. bigger ones can even be used to recycle liquid waste.
the stills are the most valuable piece of technology in the midlands since they enable a mage lord to increase the size of his city's population. thus, small wars have broken out over newly discovered stills.
stills can only be found and are far too preciuos to be taken apart and experimented on.
[ic]The Journey had been long and ardurous. None of your companions is without injuries and malnutrition has carved deep lines into your faces. You shudder as you momentarily think of the desperate battles you had to fight in the Waste Lands and how only the death of half your party had saved the other half from starvation. Pulling back your hood you gaze into the distance, where the goal of your travels is slowly appearing in the late morning gloom:
From the shallow bowl of a valley covered in mist rises a spire of rock, broad and round, it is jagged like the splintered trunk of an old tree. Near its top a low dome has been built, seemingly small from this distance, but you know it to be more than half a mile wide. Its white shape makes a stark contrast to the mountains greygreen slate, giving it an air of otherworldlyness. From the rim of the dome where it overhangs the sheer drop, slender bridges arc out into the void, docking places for the airships that stop here on their way to other cities.
Pulling your hood back up, you urge your gorse onward. Almost home.[/ic]
the domed cities are a relic of the time of the godefell, where meteors would frequently strike the countryside. Most likely they were erected through fae-working and all share the same basic construction:
a flattened hemisphere or partial sphere is built around a natural spire of rock that serves as a central pillar. either the city state consists of one big dome or several smaller ones. Some of them have big translucent panes of an unknown material set into the walls that act as windows. most domes were uilt on low mountains, but some were built directly into a cliff.
the city states are the only intact settlements from before the godefell, tho not all of them survived it. should the dome of a city be destroyed, the inhabitants will flee in panic, as their worlds sky seems to crumble. it is possible to find abandonded domes, but they are full of dangers not only architectural in nature.
most domes are topped by a tower or citadel built as an extension of the central pillar. here the local lord, mage or not, resides.
the cities can be reached in several ways:
on foot you have to climb a small winding path only wide enough to ride in single file. this is very dangerous during a storm or when the people at the top don't want you to come up. the guards usually just toss stones down the mountain to discourage wannabe raiders.
elevators: most cities have elevator platforms to haul bulk cargo or livestock. spending hours being carried up the mountainside on a rickety wood construction is not a fun pastime when you are prone to seasickness.
airship: this is the easiest way and the only way to actually attack a city state. foreign airships have to dock at the end of long but narrow gantries (again, this is a defensive measure), while the cities own ships can dock safely under the rim of the dome.
to get back to the techlevel question: i don't want the average sword and sorcery fantasy, there are enough published settings about that. i'm a big fan of wondrous tech that blurrs the difference between machine and magic. i also like airships, even before they became mainstream. on top of that, i'm against fantasy gun control, and i know that the invention of the firearm didn't make the armoured nights obsolete from one second to another. :)
that's it for now. please comment :)
oh, btw: "gorse" in the fluff text is not a typo. gorses are a kind of big, omnivorous, highly intelligent mountain goat that serve as riding animals. THey have, unlike horses, survived the godefell very well and are prospering. horses have more or less died out. The name is not very creative, but it is easy to remember. goat+horse=gorse. i could have named them something like she'calmeranas, but i hate this kind of naming and my group would have made fun of it anyway.^^