Mood and Themes
Mood[edit]
Adventurous and Dangerous is our moods we're going for. In Search of the Unknown is a game that is significantly more serious than Heroic Earth but a good deal more light-hearted than Eberron. Alfein is a fantasy setting where death is real and an immediate problem, crime is rampant, the courts and nobility are totally corrupt, and there's no resurrection spells (though revival is possible for a few minutes after death). There's a good number of foreign spies in the city and plenty of potential with simmering racial tensions plus unpleasant Hellish monsters lying underneath the city just waiting to spring out to kidnap children in the dead of night.
What is different is the fact that Winterweir has survived ten million years and it is almost certainly going to survive another such whether our player characters live or die. No Rajahs exist in the game and the Terra'ssar survivors have loftier concerns than us. If there was a plot to acquire four elemental orbs and save the world from Chaos, then some other guys handled it last month. If there is an attack on the city, it will be a one time affair and something well beyond our heroes to do much beyond participate. The City is bigger than our heroes, let alone the world that its a part of.
With this reduced focus, there's significantly more interest in low-scale heroing. A single murder or a string of them in Alfein is big news and this game encourages player characters to strengthen their ties to the city. It's a place where relatives can get endangered or one can reasonably be concerned about having one's job threatened. Player characters should think about what is important to them and why they're interested in helping the world be a nicer place than it started.
Themes[edit]
Corruption: The city is one that runs on bribery and malfiseance. The nobility in the city can get away with nearly anything despite the reforms done and a lot of people attempt to take the law into their own hands.
Crime - People will kill for coin in Winterweir and there's a lot of coin to be had by the right people. The underground industries of gladiator fighting, drug peddling (especially Soyomas), slavery work alongside the legal vice industries still controlled by crime.
Intrigue: A lot of blackmail, bribery, and murder is going on related to the monarch's current appointment and her progressive attitudes towards the non-humans/hardline approach to foreign nations. Cloak and Dagger adventures are very appropriate.
Racism: Xenophobia between the various species is tremendous in certain quarters. While our heroes are part of the more cosmopolitan sections. There's a few hate groups that deeply desire to drive out the unlike.
The most discriminated against are Lilin and Trow.
Sleeping Evils: Just because there's no Great Old Ones under Alfein doesn't mean there's not Demons, Fallen Celestials, Mutants, Hordes of Wererats, and God knows what else in the Caverns beneath Winterweir. There's some genuinely EVIL EVIL out there and it thrives on the petty evils rather than world dominating plots.
As I mentioned, when children in Winterweir go missing, it's not exactly a joke to blame the Boogeyman or Fae.
Gods[edit]
Just to try something different, despite this not being the case in canonical Winterweir, the gods are actually real. To prevent Deus Ex Machina from occurring, the gods only work through intermediaries and an encounter with one is a rather terrifying experience....if you recognize them. Bizarrely, the gods in Winterweir are also rather interested in mortal affairs. Dreams and portents where the gods visit individuals occur but Kaalon might actually visit someone's bedside as a Doctor to speak with them while they're dying or Sybus might take in a show with her husband Heton (Neil Gaiman's Dream and Death are a good example for how they behave).
Regarding the level issue. Winterweir's gods would pretty much find smiting beneath them. Likewise, nothing a player character could do could possibly threaten them as they are products of human consciousness on Winterweir. Thus, there's no level grind since they have no actual interest in confronting mortals physically.
Alchemy, Technology, and Magic[edit]
Magic is correspondingly rarer in Winterweir than in Eberron. There is no House Cannith and science is the product of individual inventors and the Children of the Divine Spark (who function more as a guild of mad scientists than anyone). There's numerous magical works of art and devices in the city but they're mostly one of a kind items. No one has ever succeeded in mass producing magical items and if a train is ever constructed in Winterweir, it'd probably be out of steam. The exception to this lack of magical marvels is Airships, which are the main export of Lartan. Otherwise, Alfein is about Renaissance levels of technology with the added benefit of Roman plumbing and running water. This means that Muskets and Canon do exist, they're just mostly the products of the military.
Alchemy, on the other hand, does exist. Fundamentally, the biggest problem with it is that one never really knows if technology created by Alchemists will function without their creator (since literally, a lot of it is held together by their wills). Thus, Winterweir has numerous Frankenstein and Submersible style experiments in the work well ahead of regular technology. None of it is likely to be mass produced either. Instead, Alchemists are mostly comissioned on a individual device basis by the wealthy.
The exception is Scrolls and Potions. It's actually much easier in Winterweir to get a Potion of Healing rather than actually get a priest who can work miracles to lay their hands on you. This is mostly due to Alchemists and Priests performing ceremonies to create healing in bulk over artifacts on holy days from magical fountains (and other such nonsense). Frankly, they're very stingy with them and Alchemists tend to sell them for prices in a hundred gold or more (in a bronze coin based economy).
Finally, the issue for the prevalence of Wizards and Magic users. Wizards are considered something of a specialist education and there's probably two hundred or so trained ones in the city. They're constantly on the look out for new members but one should note that the Grand Arcanum tends to only accept those candidates who are able to meet their rigorous (and honestly pointless) academic standards. Sorcerers and Clerics are about equal in number, bringing the total to about six hundred total in Alfein. If this seems like a lot, take note its about equal to the number of genuinely trained Doctors or other specialists. Also, there's a vast number of fakes in the city as well.
Of the six hundred magic users in the city, perhaps six or so are above 9th level. Including the Archwizard of the Grand Arcanum.
