April Foundry - Fisher's Island (Week Two)
I kept at it for another week - read on to learn more about Fisher's Island and the Jewelsea.
April 7 - Create a d6 table of environmental hazards one might encounter in your setting.
- Rockfall - Fisher’s Island is quite rugged, especially in the regions nearest the central peak that contains the City of the First Moment. This landscape can be treacherous, sending boulders tumbling toward those below.
- Storm surge - while the old empire left behind pylons, devices that tend to moderate and guide the weather, the complex tides created by the three great moons combined with large storms can still combine to swamp low lying settlements or those foolish enough to camp near shore.
- Earthquake - while Fisher’s Island is not volcanic, the Jewelsea is a tectonically active region. Not only are the quakes themselves a hazard, but the tsunami they may set off is dangerous as well.
- Wildfire - during the dry season, even a slight spark might be able to light a fire that can sweep through prairie, forest, and farmland alike.
- Heat wave - as a near-equatorial island, it can get quite hot in regions that aren’t exposed to the sea breezes that regulate temperature on most of the island.
- Blue flare - the smaller of the two suns is a blue dwarf flare star. Whenever it flares, old things tend to wake up and spells and rituals behave unpredictably. Most recommend not traveling until this dies down.
April 8 - Describe whether conflict is prevalent in your setting?
The Jewelsea is, unfortunately, a region that’s undergone severe upheavals over the last half century following an impact winter, famine, the collapse of most of the major existing powers, and the rise of new ones.
The various leagues and alliances of the Archipelago formed in the wake of the thalassocracy’s collapse constantly jockey for position with one another. The greatest of these leagues currently holds sway in Metal City, with most of the leaders of its oligarchic republic in their pocket, though the city has yet to formally join the league.
In the river valleys, the young king of the largest city has recently died unexpectedly. His wife, his family, and the other cities of the valleys are all moving to secure their positions and seize as much power as they can.
April 9 - Describe one or two modes of travel in your setting.
The most common method of travel in the Jewelsea is, as always, the reliable human foot - good for walking a dozen or two miles per day in good conditions, most often accompanied by mules, horses, camels, or great goats, though more unusual beasts of burden do exist in some places.
Trade is mostly conducted via ship on both river and sea. There are a panoply of different types of ship, ranging from military vessels with firing platforms and large rams driven by oars to merchant ships with deep keels. Many different patterns of rigging exist depending on where and how a ship plans to travel and ships built using mortise and tenon, clinker, and carvel techniques can all be found.
The old empire left behind a number of massive structures, spindly metal spires reaching into the stratosphere. Those who possess a key may use them to travel instantaneously to the destination listed on their key; however, the teleportation index on Fisher’s Island that once sat at the peak of the great mountain above the City of the First Moment has fallen over, no longer useful for its purpose.
April 10 - Does religion play a role in your setting? If so, describe the role. If not, elaborate on the lack thereof.
Religion is everywhere in the ancient world and I’ve spent an enormous amount of time thinking about it and writing down ideas about how it works, but I unfortunately have not taken the time necessary to develop those ideas into distinctive religions with practices and doctrines yet. Suffice it to say that religion is not an aspect of life that is separate from other aspects as many practice it today, it’s the reification of cultural concepts that might otherwise be abstract. It encompasses and envelops everything, even the smallest routines.
The predominant religion of this region of the archipelago is a polytheistic one, but less emphasis is placed on the gods themselves and more on the actions and state of mind necessary to live a good life. One thing that I want to emphasize is that while some gods are shared by culturally or linguistically similar areas, every city, town, and village is going to have its own set that will resemble its neighbors but have its own distinct versions of those gods along with a few unique additions.
April 11 - Does your setting contain remnants of previous civilizations?
One of the few things everyone agrees on is that there was an old empire - its leavings can be found scattered around the landscape across the Jewelsea - but asking five scholars what exactly it was and why it collapsed will give you six different opinions. A small number of people are able to read the inscriptions it left behind, but any who attempt to speak them out loud vanish into nothingness almost immediately.
The City of the First Moment is the greatest of the old empire ruins in the Jewelsea, but there are hundreds or thousands of them scattered across the landscape, dotting both the islands of the archipelago and both the eastern and western continents. A scholar from Center/Core, the chief city of the former thalassocracy, is currently plotting to map and catalog what lies within the labyrinthine city under the mountain.
There are also many other ruins that can be found dating to different eras, belonging to both the states that rose and fell after the old empire and to the impossibly ancient remnants of the frost age that likely predated the old empire.
April 12 - List/Describe one or more races present in your setting.
The Jewelsea is a human-centric setting - there aren’t any civilizations based on any sapient entities other than humans. Those non-human beings that can be found are either those that live alone, like dragons, or are those that have found their way into the Jewelsea from elsewhere on the planes.
There are many cultural groupings in the Jewelsea, including the societies that have produced great empires, like the river valleys of Thek, the Archipelago, and the Riverlands, more minor states like the Sunset Kingdoms, the Tradelands, and the Unconquered Kingdoms, and the non-state societies on their fringes including the herders of the western continent, the steppe nomads of the northeast, and the hillfolk of the south. The borders between them are porous - they’re a continuum of language, religion, and culture, with each settlement typically sharing most but not all aspects with the next one down the road.
The closest thing that exists to fantasy “races” are the fiendblooded and the paragons, those with tells that mark them as unusual in some way and believed to be cursed by many. They live within society just like any other person, though.
April 13 - Choose one biome from your setting and create a d6 table of creatures that players might encounter while traveling over the terrain.
We’re headed to the City of the First Moment today -
- Explorer - there are a number of reasons humans might be in what’s left of this ancient city: explorers funded by Thek, tomb robbers here for loot, locals here to root out monster nests that threaten their villages
- Devouring Codex - these books eat speech that occurs near them, making anyone who talks regret it - they can no longer use any of the words they spoke unless the Codex is killed. They flap about and attempt to eat any written text, which helps them grow stronger.
- Dreaming corpse - created by vile rituals, these dead bodies project a version of themselves as they were in life. All dreaming corpses are monomaniacally obsessed with something; you’d best help them get it or it will go ill for you.
- Flash ghost - animated shadows left behind when someone is killed by particularly energetic spells or other eldritch disasters. They can only move along surfaces, but they can drain anything whose shadow touches them. Their ability to be affected by spells has been burned away, only destroying the surface they are on can harm them.
- Threadmind - a biomechanical computer, created by exposing starfall threads to certain pieces of old empire detritus. The threads slowly wind their way through the environment to link more and more pieces and bring them together. They are limited in their mobility, but have great mental powers making approaching them dangerous.
- Mask lich - these horrible masks possess anyone who puts them on, closely conforming to their face. Their hosts age at five to ten times the normal rate, so they must regularly find new victims to continue their vile half-lives into the future.