Chronicles of the Fifth Cycliad
Scenario Overview
A motley crew of mismatched adventurers wandering the fifteen-millennia-year-old Venerable Autocracy of Sakara
Helpful Resources
Mechanical Game Information
Active Characters
| Player | Character | Race | Essence | Refresh | Stress | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glyptodont | Radan Aratta | Human | Inexperienced young student from privilege ready to put theory into practice | 5/5 | Physical [1][2]; Mental [1][2][3]; Status [1][2][3][4]; Wealth [1][2][3][4] | |
| NightGoblyn | Stasia Valoren | Human | Orphan raised by the Swords of Dawn, a warrior cult of Lord Regos | 4/3 | Physical [][][][]; Mental [][][][]; Status [][][][]; Wealth [][][][] | |
| Caiphon | Tuja Alza-Balde | Human | Qali Alchemist Practicing Medicine and Dialectics | 3/3 | Physical [][][][]; Mental [][][][]; Status [][][][]; Wealth [][][][] | |
| Astronocky | Pavani Tenehiti | Human (Mukhari) | Daringly adventurous cat burglar | 5/5 | Physical [][][]; Mental [][][]; Status [][][]; Wealth [][][] |
Important Places
Please note: Many place names refer to canonical locations in the Fifth Cycliad, but details may vary... considerably.
Andalas
A peaceful farming and lumber town of five thousand people on the banks of the Lower Timosia River, little happens here beyond the regular arrivals and departures of the barges of the river people tracking up and down from distant Typhon. Under the watchful eye of its Manumarch, Andalas still seems remarkably successful at ignoring the great political events happening elsewhere in the Empire.
Kados
Kados is the greatest city in the world, the vast and timeless capital of the Venerable Autocracy of Sakara, oldest of the Springtide Civilisations. It’s been here since before time began: first in its twin citadels of Old Hespin and Crystal Origen, and then in the “Battle Walls” which enclosed the city precincts north and south of the Ethereal Strait during and after the Time of Snows. The city as it exists today has been here for fifteen thousand years; rebuilt every Cycliad, it’s now well overdue, an ancient and crumbling metropolis stretching kilometre after kilometre, with ruins, rubble-strewn pasture, and even stony croplands within its walls. It’s a city centred on unfathomable structures of the Ancients in its citadels, whose function and purpose, even construction and materials, are no longer fully understood. There are glowing stones in Old Hespin which light the streets at night which not even the Artificers of Khosht can explain. A city of over a million souls, yet which feels empty and abandoned in places. In others, humans, jeniri, and esteri teem like ants over cyclopean structures
Korudav
Great City of Korudav, this ancient metropolis predates the Time of Snows and even the Empire of Splendid Tlan, and is said to feature in several key myths of the Armageddon of the Gods. Its sky-scraping spires and towers and its leviathan walls of unfathomable smooth grey material, neither metal nor stone, give Korudav perhaps its most famous sobriquet – “The City of Leaden Walls”. At the Citadel’s heart stand the exotic Botanical Gardens, the miraculous spires of the Autarchal Palace, and the mysterious Syleen Monolith, said to control the fabled Palace Shield.
Or did - because much of the city now lies in ruins after the catastrophic Firefall. Its shattered, once mighty precincts are now the dwellings of squatters, and death traps for foolish fortune hunters.
Sapedra
Affectionately known as The Great Whore of the North, this city of ten thousand souls has the dubious reputation of possessing the largest provincial slave market outside the city of Korudav. The principal city of the Plutarchy of Sapedra, its wharves and markets deal with transporting the produce of all of the slave plantations of the Timosian Properties via the Grand Sapedra Canal to the Provincial Capital and also downriver into the Provincial Heartlands of the Lower Timosia and thence to the city of Typhon, as well as the crucial caravan trade over the Jeneset Wilderness to Amadorad. It’s a thriving mercantile center with a pronounced mean streak, and like many places in Hivernium currently teeming with mercenaries. Certainly not a place to be without friends and money – “Sell your soul to Sapedra” say the Sakari, and throw away your guilt and conscience forever.
Timosia River
The Timosia River is the principle riverine traderoute of western Korudav, navigable from the town of Sapedra down to Great Typhon at the river’s mouth. Huge slave plantations stretch the length of the Upper Timosia River as far as the Tower of Virigu. These “Timosian Properties” are a byword for grasping, thieving merchants, pitiless slavers, and cruel plantation owners. The Properties produce a large proportion of the Hivernian ketel grain consumed by the Autarchy. Few people linger there longer than they have to.
Typhon
The poet Macabrial, writing in 2500CV, called Typhon the “Smoke-belching father of Monsters”, a description which is just as appropriate today.
The city contains some of the very few still functioning mines in the Autocracy. The principal lodes were exhausted millennia ago, but traces still remain deep underground and in hard-to-extract ores. The Artificers of Khosht, strong in this town, know secret techniques to extract the priceless metals from the very rocks, and Typhon is one of the few producers of metal in the entire Middle Sea region (the Ing Shu have other techniques, and claim to even produce metal from sea water!).
As dark and grim as Calamis is pleasant, a large proportion of the Korudav slave trade passes through this city en route to the Timosian Properties far upriver in the fabled and dreaded “Black Ships of Typhon”. Calamis and Typhon are often referred to together as “the Twins”, and are also the names of two noticeable stars in the night sky.
Important People
- Enessi XXI, Avatar of the Venerable Autocrator, eternally re-incarnating ruler of Sakara and living god
