What is Iorthim?
In our very first campaign back in Octoberish '04 (damn, that long, huh?) I posted a lot of shit about it here on the ole blog. That gave me a pretty solid reference to what I initially wanted the campaign to be, as well as to what the players should expect if they'd bothered to read it. I didn't do that as much with the 2nd campaign, instead modeling most of it around the characters the players created and taking on world construction sort of willy nilly as a problem arose. I still posted game things here for the 2nd campaign, but it tended to be more of a game report and only contained things the characters knew at the end of the session. Both were fun posts, and I hope both were fun reads. I don't know which got the players thinking about the game/setting more, mainly because my crew isn't one to give unprovoked feedback. (I sometimes think that none of my friends give unprovoked feedback, because NONE of us can take criticism very well, with me being one of the worse at knee jerk reactions despite eventually taking the feedback into consideration.) Regardless, in an effort to organize my thoughts a bit and hopefully get some[the] players excited about gaming again, I'm gonna do both again, starting with posting shit about the development of the new campaign as I come up with it. Hopefully I can get John and Nick (and whomever else wants to play) together while I'm developing shit to start testing out the rules variants we want to use.
Iorthim is the name I've tentatively given the world the campaign will take place in. (It's actually the third name I've tentatively given it.) Rather than continue on this path of describing the design process thus far, I'll try to give you a teaser in just a few paragraphs.
What is Iorthim?
Iorthim is a world that is coexistent with all of the planes of its multiverse (which isn't necessarily made up of any or all planes from the standard D&D multiverse). At any given time, these planes open onto each other at various points and it's possible to accidentally step into another plane. It's still highly unusual to be walking to grandma's and end up in the Selkie Courts beseeching the Fey princess Orsinfahl to return you home, but it's possible. Most of the time, a breech is accompanied by a sign of some sort; a shimmering in the air, a mist or fog, a change in vegetation, and sometimes even a blatant road sign warning travelers they are entering the Bachaanal Party Row. While things do come through, more often than not, influences are what pass through a breech. For instance, almost like clockwork, every 50 years the demiplane of Rage opens slightly onto Iorthim and the world erupts into great wars. Every millennium or so, the same demiplane opens more completely and releases a great horde of beasts upon the world - bent on complete and utter destruction.
This means that life on Iorthim has changed much over time. Religion has shifted from a trinity of deities that created everything to worship of regional dragons and is slightly shifting to worshiping of other things that have slipped through various breeches and contacted mortals. The dragon based religions are still the most prevalent, but a couple of actual nations have shifted to a more organized religion and theocracy. Magic is a constantly shifting study of chaos as well. Because of the all too common destruction of institutes of learning, magic and technology are a roller coaster of discovery and rediscovery. Most magical study of any path involves more exploring of ruins and contacting extraplanar beings than it does time spent in a musty library. As such, mastery of magic is a highly personal experience and most magic users practice a blend of bending arcane power to their will, praying for spells from their deity(s), pact magic, truename magic, etc. Despite the wide assortment of paths to magical proficiency, magic itself is still rare and viewed with much skepticism and distrust. To the common folk, magicians are either con artists, in league with devils, or outsiders from another plane that have stepped through a breech. None are to be trusted.
Races
There are four native races to Iorthim and two that have immigrated from other planes, either due to expansion or persecution (there are other races of course, but these are the six availabe as PCs). Of the native races, humans are the most wide spread, ruling over a couple of independant nations, populating many border towns and city states, and even working to create a unified land of all the races. Humans are orginally descended from elves, left as stewards when the majority of them were called home, but have since evolved so far from their elfish ancesterage they can no longer breed, ie no half-elves.
Elves are the least populous, exiled and banned from their traditional oceanic home. Most of the elves have been called back to the sea, so those remaining are stuck on land, either because of ancient pacts with former allies (ala what is now known as the ice elves and their giant masters in the artic regions) or because of transgressions and crimes against nature of some sort, generally many generations ago, and cursed to languish under a punishment bestowed upon their ancestors. The elves of land are rare, spread throughout the lands of other races, struggling to find an identity and a racial cohesiveness and purpose in a land that was once a kingdom they ruled, but is now nothing more than a prison.
The Turu are a barabaric, nomadic people living in the deserts, savannahs, and barren wastes of the as yet unnamed but populated continent. They have horns and head-tails, a passive form of ecolocation (developed from hunting in grass taller than they are) and their bodies are striped, vertically, with the coloration depending on their environment. They are highly accomplished horse people. The turu were once the chosen people and assistants to the Underlord (ruler of the dead and the dark underground) but hubris, laziness, a penchant for creating slave races of their own, and slave riots caused them to be cast out of the underground homelands, stripped of their racial memories, and misunderstood and hated by the residents of their new world. That all happened eons ago. The only ancestral memory the turu maintained is a strong affinity for shadow magic and the Plane of Shadow.
The Aranea are the first immigrants to cross a breech. Shapechanging spider people (from the Monster Manual), many are secretly hidden in several human settlements. They do have a small nation of their own, abutting the lands of the xenophobic Sternfalk (see below) and putting them in almost constant war with the avian people. The aranea came to Iorthim on a mission of colonization, not expecting it to be populated and not expecting the breech to close behind them. A breech to their homeworld has never happened again. None remember how long they've been here. *Note: Playing an aranea means taking levels in the aranea monster class. This isn't as big a deal as it might be, though, since we're using the gestalt character rules.*
The youngest race on Iorthim are the Sternfalk (Raptorians from Races of Wild). Fleeing racial persecution on their homeworld, a small group came through a breech, lost in heavy fog, and have since been unable to return (of course, they haven't really tried, either). Sternfalk are even more rare than elves worldwide, but unlike elves, they've established a tight hold on an area of mountains (just as unnamed as the main continent). While they have little in the way of city and the population, their alien tactics and magics have managed to repel all "invaders" for the thirty years they've been on Iorthim. As their first generation of people born on Iorthim comes of age, the migratory tendancies of the youth are slowly overriding the fear of persecution and the unknown brought with the original people. Sternfalk are just now starting to "adventure" into the world. In the areas around their "country" they are overcoming the fear they bred by attacking all interlopers and being met with acceptance. Farther away, though, they are met with the same distrust as any magic user and almost instantly assumed to be something that crossed through a breech.
Lizardfolk mostly inhabitant a collection of islands south of the main continent. (There are a few variants from the standard MM1 lizardfolk, but some require monster class levels.) I haven't yet developed their society, since part of me wants to make them a theocracy that is actually ruled by their deific dragon god. Unfortunately, that makes them a hard race to play. Adventuring lizardfolk would either have to be ambassadors, missionaries, outcasts or spies. All but the outcasts have an sizeable collection of in game issues that I have a tendancy to forget about (sort of like having a teifling in a primarily human and decidedly anti-fiend environment but people RARELY reacting to that, even in a HUGE port city no matter how metropolitan its attitudes). Hell, every societal idea I've cam up with so far makes them either very xenophobic or highly aggressive. Aztecan, Incan or Mayan would be fun, but again, it doesn't leave much room for a PC. Although.....it is possible that they're similar to a South American culture, BUT ALSO the only people with any real naval ability, meaning they're the Vikings of the setting; primarily traders, but occasionally raiding small fishing villages for slaves and sacrifices. They carry a lot of exotic goods from their swamp/jungle/volcano islands and also crazy amounts of fish and sea goods. Yeah, I'm liking this a lot.
Sorry
Ok, so that's more than a few paragraphs. Believe it or not, that actually was part of the development and I just made up a lot of shit I was hung up on. Let me know if this gets anyone jonesin to play.
Iorthim is the name I've tentatively given the world the campaign will take place in. (It's actually the third name I've tentatively given it.) Rather than continue on this path of describing the design process thus far, I'll try to give you a teaser in just a few paragraphs.
What is Iorthim?
Iorthim is a world that is coexistent with all of the planes of its multiverse (which isn't necessarily made up of any or all planes from the standard D&D multiverse). At any given time, these planes open onto each other at various points and it's possible to accidentally step into another plane. It's still highly unusual to be walking to grandma's and end up in the Selkie Courts beseeching the Fey princess Orsinfahl to return you home, but it's possible. Most of the time, a breech is accompanied by a sign of some sort; a shimmering in the air, a mist or fog, a change in vegetation, and sometimes even a blatant road sign warning travelers they are entering the Bachaanal Party Row. While things do come through, more often than not, influences are what pass through a breech. For instance, almost like clockwork, every 50 years the demiplane of Rage opens slightly onto Iorthim and the world erupts into great wars. Every millennium or so, the same demiplane opens more completely and releases a great horde of beasts upon the world - bent on complete and utter destruction.
This means that life on Iorthim has changed much over time. Religion has shifted from a trinity of deities that created everything to worship of regional dragons and is slightly shifting to worshiping of other things that have slipped through various breeches and contacted mortals. The dragon based religions are still the most prevalent, but a couple of actual nations have shifted to a more organized religion and theocracy. Magic is a constantly shifting study of chaos as well. Because of the all too common destruction of institutes of learning, magic and technology are a roller coaster of discovery and rediscovery. Most magical study of any path involves more exploring of ruins and contacting extraplanar beings than it does time spent in a musty library. As such, mastery of magic is a highly personal experience and most magic users practice a blend of bending arcane power to their will, praying for spells from their deity(s), pact magic, truename magic, etc. Despite the wide assortment of paths to magical proficiency, magic itself is still rare and viewed with much skepticism and distrust. To the common folk, magicians are either con artists, in league with devils, or outsiders from another plane that have stepped through a breech. None are to be trusted.
Races
There are four native races to Iorthim and two that have immigrated from other planes, either due to expansion or persecution (there are other races of course, but these are the six availabe as PCs). Of the native races, humans are the most wide spread, ruling over a couple of independant nations, populating many border towns and city states, and even working to create a unified land of all the races. Humans are orginally descended from elves, left as stewards when the majority of them were called home, but have since evolved so far from their elfish ancesterage they can no longer breed, ie no half-elves.
Elves are the least populous, exiled and banned from their traditional oceanic home. Most of the elves have been called back to the sea, so those remaining are stuck on land, either because of ancient pacts with former allies (ala what is now known as the ice elves and their giant masters in the artic regions) or because of transgressions and crimes against nature of some sort, generally many generations ago, and cursed to languish under a punishment bestowed upon their ancestors. The elves of land are rare, spread throughout the lands of other races, struggling to find an identity and a racial cohesiveness and purpose in a land that was once a kingdom they ruled, but is now nothing more than a prison.
The Turu are a barabaric, nomadic people living in the deserts, savannahs, and barren wastes of the as yet unnamed but populated continent. They have horns and head-tails, a passive form of ecolocation (developed from hunting in grass taller than they are) and their bodies are striped, vertically, with the coloration depending on their environment. They are highly accomplished horse people. The turu were once the chosen people and assistants to the Underlord (ruler of the dead and the dark underground) but hubris, laziness, a penchant for creating slave races of their own, and slave riots caused them to be cast out of the underground homelands, stripped of their racial memories, and misunderstood and hated by the residents of their new world. That all happened eons ago. The only ancestral memory the turu maintained is a strong affinity for shadow magic and the Plane of Shadow.
The Aranea are the first immigrants to cross a breech. Shapechanging spider people (from the Monster Manual), many are secretly hidden in several human settlements. They do have a small nation of their own, abutting the lands of the xenophobic Sternfalk (see below) and putting them in almost constant war with the avian people. The aranea came to Iorthim on a mission of colonization, not expecting it to be populated and not expecting the breech to close behind them. A breech to their homeworld has never happened again. None remember how long they've been here. *Note: Playing an aranea means taking levels in the aranea monster class. This isn't as big a deal as it might be, though, since we're using the gestalt character rules.*
The youngest race on Iorthim are the Sternfalk (Raptorians from Races of Wild). Fleeing racial persecution on their homeworld, a small group came through a breech, lost in heavy fog, and have since been unable to return (of course, they haven't really tried, either). Sternfalk are even more rare than elves worldwide, but unlike elves, they've established a tight hold on an area of mountains (just as unnamed as the main continent). While they have little in the way of city and the population, their alien tactics and magics have managed to repel all "invaders" for the thirty years they've been on Iorthim. As their first generation of people born on Iorthim comes of age, the migratory tendancies of the youth are slowly overriding the fear of persecution and the unknown brought with the original people. Sternfalk are just now starting to "adventure" into the world. In the areas around their "country" they are overcoming the fear they bred by attacking all interlopers and being met with acceptance. Farther away, though, they are met with the same distrust as any magic user and almost instantly assumed to be something that crossed through a breech.
Lizardfolk mostly inhabitant a collection of islands south of the main continent. (There are a few variants from the standard MM1 lizardfolk, but some require monster class levels.) I haven't yet developed their society, since part of me wants to make them a theocracy that is actually ruled by their deific dragon god. Unfortunately, that makes them a hard race to play. Adventuring lizardfolk would either have to be ambassadors, missionaries, outcasts or spies. All but the outcasts have an sizeable collection of in game issues that I have a tendancy to forget about (sort of like having a teifling in a primarily human and decidedly anti-fiend environment but people RARELY reacting to that, even in a HUGE port city no matter how metropolitan its attitudes). Hell, every societal idea I've cam up with so far makes them either very xenophobic or highly aggressive. Aztecan, Incan or Mayan would be fun, but again, it doesn't leave much room for a PC. Although.....it is possible that they're similar to a South American culture, BUT ALSO the only people with any real naval ability, meaning they're the Vikings of the setting; primarily traders, but occasionally raiding small fishing villages for slaves and sacrifices. They carry a lot of exotic goods from their swamp/jungle/volcano islands and also crazy amounts of fish and sea goods. Yeah, I'm liking this a lot.
Sorry
Ok, so that's more than a few paragraphs. Believe it or not, that actually was part of the development and I just made up a lot of shit I was hung up on. Let me know if this gets anyone jonesin to play.
posted by Amazing Shafeman at 1:03 PM
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