Tessaract

Reforged

As one might expect humanity in its current form is the main racial group within the Holdings. Yet there are other sentient and not-so sentient creatures that exist in the Reclaimed World, the left over remnants of attempts to create new life either from altered flesh or steel. Acceptance is a hard word to use in a world where racial preconceptions still exist, but there is at the least more cases of mutual beneficial coexistence then there is without, especially now with stronger foundations of the Holdings taking place. In fact it may be more common for sectionalism to be a problem than racism do to the independent nature of the cities the settlements that make up the Holdings.

Races

H U M A N S

Humanity kind most easily be described as a tenacious bunch. They were the gods of the World Before and they will become the gods of the Reclaimed World if they have anything to say about it. The first to start to gather the technologies of the lost ages, it is upon their initial settlements that the great cities of the Holdings are built upon.

C E L L V A

The Cellva are a queer people that tend to favor the isolation of the forest and the jungles than they do the hustle and bustle of the cities. There most striking features of course is there skin which come in many varied shades, colors, textures, and their hair which forms in what can only be described as petals. For the Cellva are in fact plants or at least the blueprint of their creation was based upon plants. It is a common misconception that the Cellva draw their strength from the sun, where in the fact they are more similar to Fungi having to draw nutrients from the dead much like a human, through digestion and eating. While no exact lifespan of the Cellva is known for certain, the oldest of their kind those that survived Long Silence, several thousand years ago at this point, are just now beginning to die of old age.

The Cellva were one of the last races 'birthed' before the Long Silence, but hold their creation in a strange regard. They view their creators which they call the Makers, who they view as distinctive divine entities separate from today's humanity as gods who created them to continue their will was they were stricken down. And it is actually the teachings of the old Cellva faith, which created the fundamental ideology of the Priory and which is why many of its most exalted members are of their blood.

J O T U N

The Jotun are a genetically engineered variant of humanity, close enough to resemble them in feature but with a cultural identity distinctive enough to separate themselves. Originally bred as soldiers and manual laborers these tower colossus ranged anywhere from eight to twelve fight in height, they are naturally hairless and both males and females posses a pair of large horns that crest the tops of their heads. Most of Jotun live in wandering barbarian tribes in the World Beyond, those that live in the Holdings are typically descendants of tribes that ended up becoming krewes losing their nomadic ways in exchange for income and an easy source of living doing hard work they were typically accustomed to already.

Jotun culture is one traditional based upon the gaining and lose of honor and power. A fact that many a poor fool has learned when they accuse a Jotun of cheating or lying, a most terrible insult which most be answered only with the death of one who would say such baseless accusations without proof. A Jotun will never back down from a challenge, they will always want to face a threat with force of will rather than deceit, and they are some of the most stalwart companions a person can find. Just for heavens sake don't try and get into a drinking competition with them.

U K A N U Q

More commonly and derogatorily called Snag-Tooths, in their own language Ukanuq means Those of the Claw. The term compress all of the animal kind that was 'raised in sentience by humanity' Before the Long Silence, they were kept as exotic servants, companions and labors. These days, the Ukanuq are seen more as free-loading vagrants and wanderings. The shortest live races with the oldest of their kind living to a meager fifty years, though more often thaan not their lives are cut shorter. Though, they can be varied from fur, to scale, to feather they because of their disenfranchised place in society they tend to group together and all have a sense of unified kinship.

Much of the hatred for them comes from the Uknauq Wars some forty years prior, where the resentment and feelings of anger boiled over into full-blown armed conflict that while having been dealt with rather swiftly, many armed guerrilla groups still roam the wilderness intent to fight on for freedom and their place in the world. This of course leads to life for those that choose to coexist and dwell within the bounds of society as something of a general pain, as the actions of their kind make their lives worse, leading to many of them joining up with the guerrillas which only continues to prolong the problem longer. Like the Jotun many of them find work typically as hired-swords.

C L A N K S

Clanks is a catch all term for one of any race that has replaced part of their body with a robotic replacement. While the use of remnant technology is commonly accepted as it is the foundation for all of civilization, most cultures believe that the flesh is sacred. This comes from no small part due to the Priory's influence whose own beliefs are based on recovered documentation of conflicts with rogue AIs and other synthetics in the past. And so even in a world where robotic limbs are not that hard to come by, a man is much more likely to live with an amputated arm than he is to get a cybernetic replacement. Clanks as it were are even more ostracized than the Uknaqu, thought of as abominations whose souls have been stolen away by devils. Still doesn't stop people from doing it especially those in career paths where having a gatling gun arm might just be considered useful.

Reforged

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?

_{T H E H O L D I N G S}

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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.

The Eleven

Varkhym

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.

Kragpool

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.

Hektra

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.

Everbright

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.

Wessmound

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.

Gaerth

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.

Plent

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.

Vallstead

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.

Baroon

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.

Essrin

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.

Mournhold

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.

_{T H E W I L D S}

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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.

Some Places of Note

Ashfoot

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.

Tyrick Jungle

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.

The God Stone

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.

The Ventari Expanse

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.

The City in the Fog

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.

The Tear

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.

Tyel

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?

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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.

Reforged

_{A C T I: T O T H A T W I T H O U T B O U N D}

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In ancient times, men became gods, laid claim to the stars, and sought to solve the mysteries of the infinite. Yet as they became saviors, they also became their own damnation. For it was not divine intervention, plague, or cataclysms which brought there great and terrible histories to a close. No, in the end it was nothing more than simple hubris. And so their world came down, the threads frayed and their lives shattered. As time has moved onward and wounds thought too grievous have hence healed, much of the world before the Long Silence has been relegated to myth and scripture based on the remnants which remain.

As things are life today is too dangerous to dwell on a past that cannot be understood. So we excavate just enough to help us survive in the world which we must dwell. We know that energies and knowledge are suspended invisibly in the air, that reshaped continents of iron and glass—below, upon, and above the earth—hold vast treasures, and that secret doorways to stars and other dimensions and realms provide power and secrets and death. To call it magic, may just as well be truth for all of our understanding.

Upon the eastern expanse of the reclaimed world lies a loose confederation of city-states collectively called the Holdings. Each of these independently-minded entities has a ruler to call their own, but all are under the watchful gaze of the Priory, the central faith of the reclaimed world. A faith based upon the understanding of the past, treating its technology as divine and the Long Silence; the punishment for its abuses. Its leader, the Archon arguably being one of the most influential, if not thee most influential figure in all of the Holdings.

Yet beyond the Holdings, the world is still a wild and untamed place. What clusters of civilization exist do so as isolated islands avast uncharted lands filled with dangers. Here death lurks around every corner as monsters, the loose remnants of past attempts at creating life, roam the lands unchecked by the protective aura of civilization. Yet where there is danger there is also opportunity for wealth and power. These wild lands are the domains of krewes, teams of adventures for hire paid fair compensation for their work to plunder the ruins of old in search of technology. These brave souls are the lifeblood of existence, their blood allowing for civilization to flow.

It is the third day of the Budding Winds. After a long and hard winter, the Reclaimed World has begun to thaw. The great trade city of Mournhold is steeped in merriment and celebration admist the week long festival. Yet even as others drink and dance, there are those that are preparing to venture forth beyond the Reclaimed World and into the Beyond. A clergy caravan from the Priory set to bring supplies, scholars, and pilgrims to the excavation site at Ashfoot. Along with them travels two dozen of the mercenary krewe known as the Vigil, for the roads are long and filled with peril.

_{G E N E R A L G U I D E L I N E S}

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▲ Have fun. This arguably thing if any I'd love for you to take away from this. This about telling a story with some cool folks and having a fun time while doing it. There is no winning here in the conventional sense, but considered it a victory if you take out something from this that was worth your while.

▲ Don't be afraid to speak up. If you have question about anything or if something or somebody is making you uncomfortable, please, please, please speak up. As a GM it is my job to make an enjoyable story for you guys but I can only do that if you communicate with me.

▲ Don't post your sheets to the Character Tab until they are approved. This is a really simple one to comprehend right? Just don't do it. You may post/send a draft of your sheet to me if you want any opinions on it, but for the final review it is only fair that I do it in front of everybody, so when you post your sheet to the OOC, I'm going to consider that your submitted application unless otherwise noted.

▲ Post all the things. Posting guidelines go as follows. Preferably once a week and in such a manner that it displays effort on the part of the poster. Personally, I tend towards the longer side of things because I'm terrible at condensing down my verbal vomit. You may be the master of the written word and get as much detail in a single paragraph. So do by you. Also if you won't be able to post for some time please tell me or I will consider you gone and that won't be fun for anyone.

▲ I'm not God. I'm some twenty something trying to distract themselves from the perpetual horrors of medical school, through magical worlds. Yet it is you the players that breath life into these worlds, the GM is not God. I may be the referee, I may be your encyclopedia, but my job is not to control you or command you. My job is to facilitate a story in such a way that everyone can have an awesome time. Don't be afraid to critique me, that's the only way I learn.

▲ Do your best. Don't sweat it, everyone is just as worried and insecure as you are. No one is a perfect writer, I mean if you want to show me your Noble Prize than yes maybe we can talk. I for one suck at proofreading and there will probably never be a day, I don't have to edit a post to spell a word correctly. But I'm trying to make an effort to be better at it. That's what I'm asking you, to try your best.

Reforged: A low fantasy tale set in a science fantasy world

@Nariata
Depends on if your aiming at an essential plot character or not!

@vietmyke
Yeah sorry about the assholeness/snark of my reply, your question was tots vaild. It's not really an excuse for bad behavior but you caught me admist a rather shitty migraine and ny brain decided to take out on you :[

Anyway! Yeah laser blasts have a kinetic impact to them. You'll feel it when ypu get shot!

Also side note as everybody is thinking of all these ideas and concepts. In terms of equipment more specifically tech, to help enforce real functional tech's rarity. You'll only be allowed two pieces at the start one combat: blaster, hard light sword, et cetra. And one non-combat piece like a flashlight, or something like that. Clanks only get to pick either/or because they also have thier augs and Drafters our magically wizardry folk get none, because they already have tech and it allows them to throw fireballs and other cool shit. It'll make more sense once you see the character sheet, but it's really just there to enforce the fact that, you know all these people are actual medieval people that happen to have some advanced magic-lile tech instead of future people that just happen to act like barbarians. There might be some posssible exceptions to this rule but your gonna need a good reason for why!

@FoxFire
Interest acknowledged!

Reforged: A low fantasy tale set in a science fantasy world

@vietmyke
I'm not a physicists and I particularity don't like going into the nitty-gritty logistics of weaponry, especially since this is more fantasy than it is hard sci-fi. (The focus isn't on behind explaining the tech its about using the cool tech.) So I'm going to say Star Wars blasters, because everybody knows what those are and leave it at that. If you really want a more in-depth explanation you can PM me, but in short they go pewpew and people die. lol

Reforged: A low fantasy tale set in a science fantasy world

@Nariata
Yeah that's fine! Probably be more like a laser musket than anything else. Though a note on laser stuff, they tend to overheat a lot because the cooling cells that used to be built into them kinda are mostly shot by this point. So everything would be either single-shot or revolver style. As automatic laser weaponry kinda has a tendency to be used once than explode or melt or both!

Reforged: A low fantasy tale set in a science fantasy world

Thematically, with it being low fantasy, what would you say this is most akin to? Would a gunslinger be a feasible character type? Not necessarily old west, but around those lines in terms of style (revolvers and such)

@Za Warudo

<Snipped quote by Za Warudo>
That is a question I also wanted to ask. If someone, such as a clank, had the resources, could he feasibly own and operate an old style gun that was in operation around the time of the fall of civilization?

@Nariata

Well, the first thing that comes to mind really is Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, but with the Science Fiction elements highly present instead of just implied. I call it low fantasy really because of where I project it to be tonally and thematically. It isn't high fantasy, the scale and scope of conflict we are talking about here isn't huge, there is no evil dark lord trying to take over the world it's just a bunch of adventuring mercenaries trying to make ends meat. Good and evil are more subjective there aren't bad guys or good guys, just people with motives and reasons for those motives. Yet it isn't Dark fantasy either this is not a world of darkness and dread, the world ended but it got better. There is a place in time for both cynicism and optimism. And most importantly there is hope. That is what drives these people forward hope and persistence. They've all been knocked down but they sure as hell are going to try and get back up.

But yeah a gunslinger would be fine. Revolvers and such are totally fine though considering firearms haven't be "reinvented" yet by the Reclaimed World yet as they are still at very much a medieval level of their own technological development to put it into prospective they just figured out how to make simple blast furnaces again and the closet they have to guns are very basic cannons and ribauldequins, so a gunslingers weapons would be salvaged tech. Meaning instead of having say a revolver that shoots bullets, they would have a revolver that shoots well lasers or another form of a direct energy blast. Sure they can have an actual ballistics based weapon, but most of those during the period before the Long Silence were antiques then so finding one that actually works is rare and finding the parts to fix it well it is also kinda a problem.

@boomlover
I don't mind that much! I care more for the written description than I do the image that accompanies it!

Reforged: A low fantasy tale set in a science fantasy world

Are the Uknauq Humans with fur, scales, feathers? Or do they actually have animalistic features like talons, digigrade feet, beaks, etc.

@Tangletail

Ah well, the second as seen in the reference images provided in the last post!

To make a long story short humanity well old humanity before they blew themselves up took literal rats, dogs, cats, falcons, parrots, turtles, crocodiles, you name it and went up altering their DNA making them more humanish I.E making them bipedal and the like. Most if not all before the Long Silence served as 'pets' rather than those of say the Jotun who were used as soldiers. Some for simple companionship and others for well more let us say intimate relations. Many of those Uknaqu that did survive the cataclysm of the Long Silence, did so in the bunkers of their human owners and so the twisted dichotomy of ownership or at least its fundamental ideas persisted. There was hope for a time that these new circumstances could provided for hope or something new, a chance to prove themselves but such preconceptions are hard to shrug off and it is no real surprise that in the society of today they are still looked down upon. And after the Uknauq Wars many have given up on civilized society in its whole, seeing cooperation by this point being nothing more than a child's dream. To that end there suffering will only end once those that have caused them to suffer have all been killed or driven far away.

Those that do cooperate with the rest of the Reclaimed World, are ostracized by their own people the word in the Uknauq dialect for them is the same word for Lost. And yet they are also not really accepted in the civilized world either. Outsiders to both worlds. Kinda like the City Elves in Dragon Age if you ever played that series.

@vietmyke
They are an interesting bunch. They have the most outwardly displayed baggage at least and have the joyous honor of being the second most hated race in the Reclaimed World after the Clanks if you want to consider them a people group, which for all extents and purposes they basically are by this point. Sure the Cellva and the Jotun have their own problems, in terms of trying to established their own cultural identity and continued failures to unite or build a strong civilization as they are too busy killing themselves respectively. And hell even humanity is struggling to reclaim their lost glory after they've been set back millennia. But even then the Uknauq do get the short end of the stick, probably because the others are still probably pissed off from them trying to kill them all and burn down their cities. Though they did have a pretty good reason for it But oh well. History is a messy thing.

@Nariata
I mean that is one way to become a Clank. Sometimes it isn't a choice as more of a, "I must do this thing to live and now everybody is going to hate me. This is great."

@boomlover
Robot space knights are best space knights.

What Are You Listening To?

I think I may have found the secret to transcending this reality.

Reforged: A low fantasy tale set in a science fantasy world

@71452K


@vietmyke


@Vashonn
Alright, well hopefully we will all still be around when you get back!

@Tangletail
Hyper Light Drifter was cool so by simple logic your idea should be cool as well!

Alright onto your more important questions! Uknauq aren't really one species but a collective group of them that has banded together. There culture stands similar to the Great Sioux Nation during the American Indian Wars, or the Arverni people pre-Roman empire. They tend to live in outward tribes in a generally matriarchal system of governance. Those that have left their tribes and live in the Holdings may have lost some of that identity, but it still makes up an important part of their lives The unifying factor is that they are all what you would call "ascended animals". Reluctantly physiology depends on which of the three main subtypes, a Uknaqu falls into.

Feathered: They look like birds and are traditionally the shortest of the bunch standing with average height around the six foot range for males and females. They can't fly anymore because of their larger bodies, but they can perform some pretty incredible feats of acrobatics. Hunters, they are typically the most well-known of the Uknaqu as it is they that typically perform the guerrilla actions that they are feared for, hiding in the tree-branches and the shadows as they rain death down from above.

Scaled: Lizard people. They are cold-blooded, they are resistant to many natural toxins and poisons, and their hard scales provided a natural body armor. They are the largest of the Uknaqu subtypes with average height falling around ten feet in height. Because of this they naturally serve as front-line warriors if things come to that, but traditionally the crafts people of the Uknauq tribes, building their weapons, making the clothes, and patching the tents.

Furred: Mammalian in nature they can range from bear, to ape, to cat, and beyond. Hovering around the seven to eight feet mark in height they are not as small as their feathered breathen nor as tall as the scaled. They serve traditionally in diplomatic and leadership rules, if simply for the reason that the rest of the races of the Holdings find them the easiest to deal with. For this reason a larger majority of furred end up leaving their tribes than any others as it is the eaiset for them to intergrate into society, even if that society still holds racial prejudices against them.

In turns of lifespan which traditionally falls around fifty years for all subtypes. They do in fact reach maturity faster than most races where Humans and the rest typically reach maturity around eighteen or so, they reach maturity at about twelve.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask!

@Pariah
C'est la vie. The sacrifices we make for our art I suppose. lol

@Za Warudo

Gotcha!

@Nariata
Gotcha as well!

@boomlover
Well it can't be that bad!

Work has begun the OOC. Expect it sometime Saturday, but more realistically probably Sunday! Feel free to ask any other questions as we wait though!