[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/AG9XsUt.png[/img][/center] [i]The Reclaimed World is the backdrop of a young civilization that has grown up amid the ruins of very old, very advanced forebears. In the time of the Reclaimed, the landmasses have rejoined to form a vast supercontinent, and a few scattered islands surrounded by seemingly endless seas with perilous storms. But did the world come to be in this march of time, or did humanity design it to be so? Certainly the ancient inhabitants of the previous worlds had the ability to shape their planet; as humanity's mark is a normal part of the topography. Islands of crystal float in the sky. Inverted mountains rise above plains of broken glass. Abandoned structures the size of kingdoms stretch across great distances, so enormous that they affect the weather. Massive machines, some still active, churn and hum. But for what purpose? [/i] [indent][h3][sub][sub][color=00FF7F][i]T H E H O L D I N G S[/i][/color][/sub][/sub][/h3][/indent][hr] [i]Along the eastern coast of this vast supercontient lay the Holdings. The Holdings comprises elven different city-states. Collectively, the rulers are often referred together as the Eleven Presiding. These kings, queens, princes, and councils share no love for one another and truthfully have no relationship except that each rules over a land whose people follow the Priory. Generally speaking, the Holding is more settled and civilized than the Wild, but it can be just as dangerous. Communities are isolated. Travel on the roads is risky and nearly unthinkable at night — but at least the roads actually exist.[/i] [hider=The Eleven][u][h3]Varkhym[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]The largest city in the Holdings and one of the most wealthy. Located off its northeastern shores, she is often called the Floating City for this particular reason. This of course is a misconception as Varkhym is in fact built atop of large ancient platforms that jut out from beneath the waves, and it is believed that they are in fact anchored to the sea-floor down below,. Yet the city does not rely on the waters to protect it. Varkhym projects an air of wealth and opulence, with large estates the dwellings of the rich merchant princes that call it there homes, and who do business sailing up and down the dangerous coast as traders. Rulership of the city occurs every two years when the Princes Council assembles and they elect a new High Prince. It isn't the worst place in the Holdings, and is a fairly accepting of you as long as you have the coin that is. Though because of their rather let us say often arrogant thoughts about themselves. They are often dislked and “Humble as a Varkhym merchant” is a saying in the Holding that almost always has implied negative connotations. Varkhym's merchant fleet is controlled directly by the Princes, who are at heart are sailors more than anything else. The fleet has more than 200 vessels that travel up and down the coast, trading goods and collecting money. The ships range in size from small coasters and cogs to multimasted caravels and carracks. These ships suffer heavily from piracy, and many are plated in synth or light metals to ward off attacks. Some carry weaponry as well, though this is usually only aboard their armed escort ships. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Kragpool[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Kragpool is the closet neighbor to Mournhold. Yet the main danger of Borscrek is not the monsters or barbarians, but the very winds themselves. It is Located on the edge of the vast Rust Sea, a large graveyard of machiens and parts that struches for miles in every direction. Occasionally without warning large storms of Nanites that sweep across the sea, consuming and reprocessing the refuse to rebuild it into something new, as part of the world's new "natural cycle", will become lost and end up washing coming towards Kragpool. As a result most of Kragpool is in fact located underground, within the remnants of a large mining complex that seems to stretch endless into the ground below. Geothermic energies powering the numerious system that have perpetually provided Kragpool with clean air and water. As new citizens come they city expands deeper and deeper. As a result the social structure of Kragpool has developed in such a way that the closer you are to surface, the more well off you are. The primarily lively hoods for many in Kragpool come in three forms. Pipe Menders - those that repair the large pipes that stretch all across the complex and bring water from far off places. Mushroom Farmers - Those that produce the priamrly foodstuff of Kragpool, and of course those risky and brave enough to go scavenging in the nearby Rust Sea. The leader of this underground metropolis is currently Queen Elphra, a young woman barely out of her teens. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Hektra[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]The centrally-located palatial city of Hektra, may be the most important of all the cities in the Holdings for one singular reason, it is home to the Priory. It is safe to say that in most cases the people make the city, but in the case of Hektra once could say it had a life of its own. It is a glided and brilliant city of towering spires of crystal, that shines with an awe-inspiring luminosity under the watchful eye of the high-noon sun. Besides Mournhold, it is arguably the most welcoming city to all the races. For Hektra is as much a holy city, as it is a place of knowledge. The home to the largest archives of recovered documents before the Long Silence and the Reclaimed World's history after it, and the largest repository of recovered technology in the world. It is a city without doors peculiarly enough, as all of the city is connected by the few remaining remnants of the world's once vast teleportation networks and one enters and leaves buildings through said portal nodes. If Hektra wanted to it could use its knowledge to conquer the rest, making armies appear in the middle of its victim cities. Yet all are quite lucky for instead of power hungry rulers, Hektra is watched over exclusively by the Priory. The ancient order has its largest and oldest cathedral here, along with the entrace to the University where its trains members of its order and all those that wish to seek knowledge. Hektra is the closet city to capture the splendor of the World Before, but even then it is a small spark in comparison of the powers that once were. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Everbright[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Everbright is a lonely city that sits atop a large plateau. (If you can only the risen mass of earth and steel, a plateau that is.) Most have never been to the city, but they have heard the legends. The Fall of Everbright is a popular tale told by many a traveling bard. It is filled with everything that you could ask for in a good tragedy: forbidden love, a mad king, divine intervention, death, and loss. Whether, you believe the bards tales or not what is known is that once long before the Holdings existed, Everbright stood at the heart of a great kingdom, but some sort of recovered technology was activated and wiped out every living thing within the walls of the city, leaving all the stone and steel intact. These days the small population that does still live within Everbright, do so within the area protected by the first of its two famed walls. The inner part of the city where the palace still stands and the innert device presumably still sits, lays untouched. It would not be without cause to call Everbright, a cursed city. Those that live there are sure to never be caught outside after dark, and they lock their doors tight. For there are rumors of wandering spirits flickering in and out of existence and the wandering lost dead, whose moans can be heard beyond the inner walls. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Wessmound[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Wessmound is a land of everlasting rain and thunder. The marshland city was built around the foundations for a large tower that stretched high into the sky, the top glowing like a large lighthouse. Created before the Long Silence, this tower was at least some sort of attempt at controlling the weather. Though with it's instructions lost long ago, and the mechanisms having been degraded with time, it has been constantly generating a storm system over the surrounding area for as long as anyone can remember, saturating what was once barren earth, into the swampy marshland that Wessmound now resides in. The people seem to be used to the constant downpour at least, thankful that while the storm doesn't do much it does keep the waters around them too dangerous to navigate save for their small and nimble wave-traders, high speed floating platforms built upon old tech that they use to naviagate the costal waters and the swamps without being slowed down. The citizens of Wessmound are lead by King Valrun in theory, but King Valrun is in fact still no more than a three old child, and so at the moment his cousin Queen Regent Alya governs things until it is time for the boy to come of age. The bounty of Wessmound comes particularity from the marshland itself, home to a wide variety of fauna and flora found nowhere else in the Reclaimed World. Particularly, a type of worm known as the Steel Thread Worm, who as the name implies can produced silk that when woven into clothes makes them almost like wearing a set of armor without the weight. The people of Wessmound guards these large beehive like worm hatcheries with their lives as they are the main source of their livelyhood.[/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Gaerth[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]The famed City of Blood. It was once a city perpetually fueled by the business of a large consortium of Slaver Kings. They sent out raiders to abduct or buy individuals from nearby villages and barbarian tribes and then sell them off all around the Holdings, making a tidy profit in the process. Slavery was then and still is just something that happened in the Holdings. A simple fact of the calculus of life in that the easiest way to get work done, was to keep others on a leash. For a time it was the wealthiest city in the lands and the most prominent behind Hektra. All of that changed with the Ukanuq wars. It was in Gaerth, that the wars had their beginnings and it was Gaerth's fall that prompted the other holdings to rally together the crush the rebellion before its fate would become theirs. A revolt ten years in the making broke up in the Slave Quarters, who as they tended to be were primary filled with Uknauq. When they escaped the cells and walls of their, as more slaves existed than regular citzens in Gaerth, they slowly began to overrun the city. The battle for the city was a brutal close quarters affair fought, house by house. In the end as the streets ran red with Blood, the Ukanuq claimed the day and would use Gaerth as their launching point for the rest of the war. In the end though, the combined armies of the Holdings would besiege Gaerth and in the end take her back, killing every rebel that lay within be it man, women, or child. Those that survived slip out into the surrounding wilderness, transforming into the roving bands of maunders and guerrillas known today. Gaerth for its part is still under military occupation after all these years, made up of a constant guard of small professional troops from each of the other cities, and prisoners conscripted to serve rather than face the headsman's axe. And still today they fight the same enemy, that they repulsed from its walls long ago. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Plent[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Plent, the so called City of Bridges lays suspended in the middle of the Byknew Canyon. The entire city seems to hover in midair. Connected on either side by two large bridges. These bridges in times of conflict and trouble are able to be retracted, making the city into somewhat of an impenetrable floating fortress, that hovers over the Byknew. Originally serving as a military outpost by the nearby Everbright, after its near destruction, Plent was able to grow into its own functioning and flourishing city. Most of the citizens work on the Canyon which has been turned into marvelous fields of farms. These fields are watch over by the Riders, who serve as protectors of the city and ride atop of great bird-like creatures called Arvens that they have domesticated. In fact Plent is more known as the agricultural capital of the Holdings, supplementing their own knowledge with recovered technology that help increase the growth rate of the plants. Plent is overseen by Queen Selphie, who was installed as ruler after a military coupe overthrew he old and dogmatic father King Robb, who was threanting to drop Plent into the Canyon below by disabling the grand mechanisms that keep it afloat, found in the subleves below the royal palace. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Vallstead[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Located in the frigid climes of the Far South, it is safe to say that Vallstead may be one of the few places where Jotun make up the largest members of the residing population. The city lay within the caldera of a long dead volcano, the remnant geothermic activity producing the many surrounding hot springs whose heat and warmth are used to make living in such a place bearable. Supposedly, the city was built upon the site of an ancient battleground, and has traditionally been since as a natural and somewhat holy location by the wandering Jotun tribes. In the ancient past, the place would be where the moots were held and a High King would be elected to lead the tribes. But the Jotun haven't had a High King in centuries, but the honor of the place still remains and no blood shall be shed upon it's land. In technicality, Vallstead is watched over by Lodge Master Corrin, an elderly Jotun who served the previous Lodge Master and the one before him. In reality though, Vallstead is very much a "free city" without much in the way of guards or rules. As the Jotun way expects people to be able to watch over themselves and do their own business. Much of said business that occurs is between traveling merchants and the tribes that occasionally stop in Vallstead, to rest and sell their bounties gained from conquest and raids.[/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Baroon[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]The citadel of Baroon has always been more of a military base than it has anything else. Built in the South long ago, originally as a bulwark against the Jotun Tribes, before the more recent times of peace. She appears almost like a strange cyst upon the Earth, a giant rising bubble of steel that within Contains the city. Despite its start as a military fortification, the defenses provided allowed the flourishment of a small communcity that has grown to one of the largest populations in the Holdings. Life in Baroon, is fine as long as you follow Duke Arnle's orders and decrees. Those that do, find life as a simple if comfortable affair. Those that don't are hung as an example. Baroon has the largest standing military of the holdings if you exclude Gaerth since it is an inter-city effort. They possess a rather hardy professional standing army and in times of war peasant levies are drafted to supplement these forces, each peasant required to spend at least two months of the non-harvest season in training camps to brush up upon their combat training so that the can fight when the time comes. Despite it's large armies and its rather intimidating appearance, Baroon is rather peaceful having strong diplomatic ties with many of the other Holdings, particularly Hektra do to the strong Priory presence in the city, as they use it is a expedition point for ventures into the Far South and nearby Vallstead who they have a close relationship with Vallstead trading metals and ores in exchange for food surplus from Baroon. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Essrin[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]The city of Essrin is built around the base of the large Tower of Essrin. A structure made of an unknown metal that stretches far above into the sky. There is a singular entrance into the tower at its base, but no successful attempts have ever ascended past the first floor. For in a peculiar case the interior of tower seems to be much vaster than the exterior, a strange land of constantly shifting metal and rising and falling platforms. The interior is protected by what the citizens call the Guardians, large robotic creatures that look like angels who attempt to kill any and all that enter their domain. But still hundreds enter the Tower each year chasing after the myths that if you reach the Top of the tower, you get a wish. The city itself is built in large circle around the tower. This circle is then split into sixteen Cores, and each Core is ruled by a guild. The guilds control Essrin and guild politics is a dangerous and deadly business of deceit and violence. As each guild wants to secure control over the city, so that they can launch an organized force into the tower to get their desired wish. Resultantly, Essrin is a city where information, not coin is the greatest of currencies and all who enter somehow or another end up being forced into its great and terrible game. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Mournhold[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Mournhold is the youngest of the Holdings and the furthest separated from its kin. Built out of the collapsed remnants of a large robot found on the edges of the Tyrick Jungle. The city is an amalgamation of wood, stone, and collected metals that juts out of the surrounding overgrowth, rising above the canopy. It has its origins as a small trading post used by Krewes as they ventured out into the Wilds. Overtime as more and more people came the small trading post evolved into a large and functioning city. Walls were erected, laws were put into place, and governance was found as the merchants elected a Viscount. Now Mournhold stands as its own breathing, alien like entity. In other civilized places they will lie to you and put restrictions, in Mournhold they go be a philosophy of "I don't care what you do, as you long as you pay me." Coin is the great equalizer and anything can be bought or sold in the city for the right price. Much of this wealth and income comes primarily from its major market, the many Krewes that use the city as a base of operations. They come back from the Wilds with treasures and technology which they sell to merchants in exchange for better weapons, food, and loading and in turn those merchants sell the technology to caravans that hall it back into the Holdings proper. It is a cycle that has fueled, the city's growth for generations and with all hope and luck would continue to do so. Though the wealth of the city makes it a target particularly for nearby raiders and barbarians looking to plunder its riches. As of recently though such problems have become less of an issue ever since the Viscount has hired a retinue of the Vigil, to help maintain order and train his guard.[/indent][/indent][/hider] [indent][h3][sub][sub][color=00FF7F][i]T H E W I L D S [/i][/color][/sub][/sub][/h3][/indent][hr] [i]The Wilds is a very Holding-centric term, used essentially to describe any area of the world that isn’t part of it. As the scope of the world known and understood by even the most learned scholars in the Holding is limited, however, what the Beyond technically includes are the lands south of the Vallstead, west of Mournhold , and north of Wessmound. The people of the Wild are even more disparate and isolated from one another than the folk of the Holdings are. Although these lands are full of would be rulers, most communities are truly independent. Many have little contact with the world outside their own limited bounds, and some have none at all. The scattered villages of the Wild are numerous but there numbers are unknown, the only ones upon which any certain can be found are those built around Prioy Enclaves. The Wilds as they are as mostly uncharted filled with dangers and secrets a like. Lost laboratories, colossal structures and other mysteries dot its landscape.[/i] [hider=Some Places of Note] [u][h3]Ashfoot[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Ashfoot can be seen far on the horizon if you look from the tallest building in Mournhold. It appears as a giant mountain that stretches far into the sky, above the clouds and keeps on ascending. It was not until recently that a Priory excavation time was able to make its way through the dangerous Tyrick Jungle and beyond, to get to the base of the mountain. When they got there they discovered something mircalous, something which turned Ashfoot into the greatest archaeological find of a century. The mountain was in fact not a mountain but the remnants of great floating city that had crashed into the ground during the Long Silence, and over time foliage and life had grown atop of it concealing its true nature. Since then the Priory has spent a considerable amount of resources excavating the site and sending research teams into the particularly well preserved city. A small community three hundred or so people currently live at the base camp at the base of the "mountain", and while they have been able to set up their own little farms and a functioning well, they still need the occasionally supply caravan to make the long trek to them.[/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Tyrick Jungle[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Most that know of the Tyrick, know of its outskrits where the city of Mournhold is built. Yet it stretches farther and its secrets are much darker than one could possibly imagine. Covering more than 500 square miles, the Tyrick Jungle is dense with trees, underbrush, rivers, fog, and rain. Natural and mechanical creatures stalk its shores, lie in wait along the branches, and wing their way down upon prey in the dark of night. Why go at all, then? Why enter its dark borders and risk life, limb, and sanity? The jungle has treasures to be found, ancient gods to be awoken, and wonders to be discovered. Makeshift camps have sprung up at various points around the edges of the jungle. Typically created by people who canceled their trek at the last minute, these camps are places of shelter and information sharing. They sell jungle maps that point out the locations of various gods and features, but every map is different from camp to camp (and sometimes even within the same camp). Explorers can also purchase slightly used tools, as well as great quantities of strange fruits that tantalize the tongue and unknown meats that spark with dozens of flavors. Though the most dangerous quantity of the Tyrick are those that live within it. First you have the Ukanuq tribe that call the Jungle home, and aren't too kind towards visitors. Beyond, that you have whispers of strange slug-like creatures that live in the deepest parts of the jungle where even the Ukanuq dare not to traverse. Here where the forest canopy is so dense that the sun never reaches the ground. The stories speak of strange dark magics and the ability to wrest the control of one's mind away from them. Though sightings of this creatures are thought to be little more than stories, those that do have to travel through the deeper parts of the Tyrick do so with great care and expedience. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]The God Stone[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]South of Vallstead admist a frozen wasteland and surrounding by beautiful pillars of ice lae, a strange rectangular object that juts out from the ground. The stone radiates heat and within a five meter radius of the God Stone, there is not snow upon the ground but the green of life. This stone has a great deal of importance to the Jotun people in their stories and history. The legends have that only those who are able to prove their strength may be able to approach the God Stone, a sign shown by the many frozen corpses that dot the approach to it. When the worthy approach the great monument, they may speak one question and whatever deity lays trapped within the Stone will answer the question for you, and that answer will always be correct. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]The Ventari Expanse[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Past the storms of Wessmound, the ground begins to dry out transitioning from fertile marshalnd to the vast Savannah that is the Ventari Expanse. The plains are vast only occasionally dotted by small towns and settlements. There are no cities though and the largest of settlements only has a population of maybe eighty or so souls at any given time. The people here grow foods of many kinds and are typically self-sufficient but trade with the caravans that occasionally leave from Wessmound. There are also nomadic tribes of hunters that erect temporary villages of hide tents and yurts on the plains. These tribes tame the strange buffalo-like beasts of the plains and ride them as mounts. Some of the nomads have turned to raiding more settled communities and even other tribes. The most peculiar thing about the Expanse, may in fact be their faith. Rather than following the orders and decrees of the Priory, the people of the Expanse following the so called Mother. The Mother is said to by the goddess in the skies who controls the sun and the life-giving rains. Throughout the Expanse, typically upon hills and other risen mounds that are closet to the sky, one can find temples and shrines run by strange priests, who posses strange magics that can do miraculous things like heal lost limbs. The Priory believes these shamans to be using some sort of technology, but from outward glances it seems they are nothing more than simple men and woman. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]The City in the Fog[/h3][/u] [indent][indent] A legend known by all Varkhym sailors. The City in the Mists speaks of a strange and rare occurrence, when on clear and cloudless nights, a fog thicker than the smoke of a raging fire will drift out over the sea. And in the distance if one watches one the horizon they will see light shining through. This is the fabled City in the Fog and it is a specter of death and destruction. For ships come from the City, ships of raiders seemingly impossible to kill. They never kill the crews but instead abduct them to transform them into whatever they have become, leaving only their empty vessels to slowly draft back to shore.[/indent][/indent] [u][h3]The Tear[/h3][/u] [indent][indent]Only one group has seen the tear and lived to tell the tale. Located far away from the Holdings, beyond vast stretches of dangerous land, it lays a hole in the ground that stretches for 1,000 feet from north to south and 800 feet wide and stretches down further than anyone can imagine. The area around the tear is broken, but not in the traditional sense but it seems that reality itself bends and folds around it. Gravity reverses itself, molecules rearrange themselves. It is a place of pure chaos and strange creatures that call it home. There are many rumors and ideas of what the Tear actually is, but the most accepted variation is the teaching of the Priory - that the Tear is the origin of the Long Silence itself. [/indent][/indent] [u][h3]Tyel[/h3][/u] [indent]In a quiet meadow seemingly untouched and forgotten by the world lays a tree that seems to be made of a white crystalline substance. This "tree" serves as the gateway to Tyel. When touched, the individual is transported to an extradimensional space. The interior of this space is a strange with the ground itself reminiscent of the same crystalline substance that the tree is made out of. While there is weather, there is no day or night with the sky fixed in what seems to be perpetual twilight. In this strange world within a world lays a city, a city called Tyrel where the rules are unwritten and mystery lays abound. Things seem to be controlled only be sheer force of will and thoughts can conjure entire buildings into existence. This strange paradise has been ruled by the Lady. While she looks human, she would have to be impossibly old which may very well be true for she seems to remember the Long Silence itself. The Lady is a benevolent ruler who seems to truly care for every one of her subjects and does all she can to make them comfortable and happy. Yet the Lady protects Tyrel and the secret of its existence and once you enter this strange world you are not allowed to leave again. But why leave paradise? [/indent][/hider] [indent][h3][sub][sub][color=00FF7F][i]T H E V I G I L [/i][/color][/sub][/sub][/h3][/indent][hr] Thirty years ago, a small group organized themselves into a Krewe calling themselves the Vigil. In the years since, the Vigil has grown into an international effort of associated krewes led by an elected council. Though the Vigil are generally well trained and supplied, their success can mostly be attributed to business branch - the administrators and representatives responsible for contract negotiations - who are perhaps even more ruthless than those in the field. The Vigil is not one singular outfit, but rather a conglomeration of dozens of smaller krewes who have submitted themselves to the authority and standards of the Leading Council. The benefits of signing with the Vigil are notoriety, access to requisitions at reduced cost, and the option of pooling together with another Vigil chapter to meet the requirements some of the larger contracts stipulate. That the Vigil typically sends the closest local chapter to fulfill a contract also helps protect the reputation of the organization. Krewes comprised mostly of locals helps mitigate some of the more disagreeable behaviors that foreign mercenaries might exhibit, especially when the land and people they are protecting are not their own. If all the local companies under the Vigil banner were to assemble, their numbers would surpass five-thousand. This, however, is a theoretical estimation that in reality would be virtually impossible without breaking dozens if not hundreds of ongoing contracts across the Holdings. The viscount in Mournhold has contracted a retainer of one-hundred Vigil soldiers to remain in the city to aid in training and transitioning military responsibilities to the viscount's footsoldiers. You are one of those one-hundred.