SOTDL: Setting
This page details the gameworld, noting key locations and describing the peoples that inhabit those locations. There is also a summary of both the Shadowwalkers (PC heroes) and the Wraith (the main supernatural element opposing the PCs}.
Lands of the Salt Coast
The Salt Coast is divided into six (6) distinct regions: the western forestlands, the central mountain range, the eastern plains, the coast, the archipelago, and the southern waste.
More than 85% of the population live on the coast itself with the remaining 15% scattered throughout the plains, mountains, forest, and isles.
Clanclave
The plains between the mountains and the coast as well as the coast itself is known as the Clanlands and is home to the Corsair and their great cities.
Gates and Kir
Cities
Hartshorn
Gates and Kir
Halls
Inner Isles
Gates
Settlements
People of the Salt Coast
Corsair'Na and Corsair'Ja
Though they live under the same name, the corsair are a divided people, more a moiety than a society.
The corsair'na are the city builders and shipbuilders, inhabiting the coast itself, while the corsair'ja are farmers and rivermen and herders and hunters and make their home throughout the plains between the mountains and the sea.
Appearance: Corsair tend to be compact and stocky folk with weathered to light brown skin and dark hair. Their eyes are almost always brown or green.
Government: Every settlement and town has its elders and councils, but the heart of corsair government is to be found in their cities and heavily influenced - controlled - by the five High Houses.
- The Five High Houses:
- House d'Ruvyen -
- House d'Amasku -
- House Sceva -
- House Jaala -
- House Grey -
Religion
Economy/Trade
Metalcraft, and Grain
Druidan
Appearance
Government
Religion
Economy/Trade
Lumber and Horseflesh
Islanders
Appearance
Government
Religion
Economy/Trade
Exotic Fruit and Fish
Kindred
Appearance
Government
Religion
Economy/Trade
Shadowwalkers and Wraith
Shadowwalkers
You became aware of your true nature the first time you died. It was a real death. An awful death. A painful death.
And it didn't take.
You woke in the dry lands between life and death and were forced to fight your way back.
It was there that you gained a horrible understanding of what the high magics of the fallen age had held at bay. An understanding that those ancient powers were finally failing. Little by little, the darkness the great wards once restrained was slipping free to taint the mortal realm.
Now awakened, the lingering magic of your lineage burns in your blood. You can do things that - in this age - mortals just can't do. You can sense the darkness where it rises. The Wraith.
You can also sense other Shadowwalkers when they are near.
And you can feel the lingering spectre of death at your shoulder, patiently waiting for her chance to take you again.
Wraith
The Wraith are bodiless spirits of great malevolence. Bound in the earth for endless ages, they strain to slip through the cracks in their eternal prison and visit havoc on the realm of man.
However, millennia in the long dark has left them vulnerable. They cannot abide the light of the sun in spirit form. They must break the minds and *possess the bodies of mortals to walk the world once more, but once they have done so, they are indistinguishable from any other mortal save for their actions - though they may be plainly seen for what they are by the eyes of the shadowwalkers.
* Shadowwalkers cannot be possessed by the wraith. Mortals who are possessed never return to themselves even if the wraith inhabiting them flees, remaining mindless husks until time or some merciful hand ends them.
Three things a wraith without a body cannot cross: stone, salt, and *steel. A person standing on any of these cannot be possessed by a wraith.
Embodied, these things do not impede the wraith in the least.
* Any significant amount of iron or iron alloy (such as steel).
'Two things can kill a wraith: the sun if it is without a body, or the death of its host when it cannot flee.
A common tactic for killing a wraith is once it has possessed a person to herd that person onto stone and slay them there, trapping it within the host as it dies.
One thing can stop the wraith from continuing to pour into the mortal realm; the restoration of the ancient wards - but the magics needed to accomplish this seem lost to time.