Fate of Duskengrim

A play-by-post game of Fate Core by Evil Hat, set in a world inspired by Vandel Arden's cartography of the same name. We shall herein invent the world.

Issues

The Second Coming of Heavenfall (Impending)

Three thousand years ago, Duskengrim eked its way out of a cataclysm through acts and deeds of a few. Now, as fragmented civilizations continue an uneasy peace, signs of a second Heavenfall are here. Balls of fire fall from the sky filling folk with dread. Worse terrors are rumored to pervade the area where these star fragments crack the earth. The earth trembles and there is talk of angered gods. Compel for troubling events that can radically and suddenly destabilize a situation, as well as when panic can affect crowds.

Ideals as Multied as the Color of Its People (Current) — subject to player approval

The Valley of Ashen Dreams is peopled by a hodgepodge of cultures and factions — survivors of many wars. A tenuous alliance of traders and merchant families exists, but it is a region filled with almost constant strife and turmoil and overrun by ideological and religious fanaticism — fighting for the supremacy of trade and watercourses amid constant primal perils present in the vast wilder-lands and threat of piracy, where life is difficult and only by clinging bitterly to ages-old feuds will someone climb to heights of power and influence and achieve a sense of worth. Mercenary companies hire out to the highest bidder, and neighboring cities can break out into war at the slightest provocation. Compel to show the devisive nature of the region’s many inhabitants.

Magic

The Ascending are a school of magic (if we do decide to use Schools of Power, could easily be written up that way) with a long history. They seem to have begun out of a devotion to learning and advancing magical knowledge, but over time they have become more insular and more dedicated to seizing power for its own sake. They might have caused the meteor storms (deliberately or as an unintended side effect of dangerous experiments), or they might just be trying to seize control of them for their own purposes. Their teachings over time have become more religious tinged and cult-like, with reports that they think they can become gods by gathering enough power--at least, those at the top of the order. (Credit: Civil Savage)

The Spirit Binders. I'm imagining a magical school that works by binding/controlling demons/spirits/whatever. Somewhere between the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud and The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. The binding prevents the things from running wild, but it also binds the mage to them and means the mage is in a perpetual struggle. These things are powerful, but hard to control--which fits well with the Schools of Power model where you only use magic when your mundane stuff can't work. Failures or success-at-cost results would reflect that the instruction left a loophole or the mage's will wasn't strong enough, and the thing was able to wreak havoc or subvert the intent of the command. (Credit: Civil Savage) work in progress

Culture

The Blade Oath is a widespread cultural touchstone that has transcended political borders by being celebrated in songs and epic poems. It's similar to noblese oblige--the idea being that anyone who picks up/wields a weapon by doing so is also picking up an obligation to defend those who cannot do so (too poor to own a weapon, too old/young/weak to wield one, etc.). In some of the poems it's a literal oath sworn the first time a weapon is picked up. More commonly it's a notion that people "ought" to behave that way--though of course, people respond in the full range from openly scoffing at how stupid it is, to ignoring it, to feeling guilty when they don't, to trying, to really committing. (Credit: Civil Savage)

Places

East Vornduhn

• Cursivad
• Felinor Mountains
• Ruins of Kargedokien

Jehrad Valley

• Daranward

Salamander Rim

Heshat Wilderness

Crimson Lake. A blasted land. Crimson Lake is relatively new, created in the apocalyptic event that destroyed the Duchy of Melarin. Those Melaren's who survived the devastation are scarred and haunted by the devestation snd erasure of everything they ever knew. Now the other nations have to wonder... who will be next? Credit: MrPrim

• Nevior. The dreams of Nevior are unquiet, it is a furtive place, huddled on the haunted shores of Crimson Lake. It is an ill-omened land, rumored to be home to saltwitches, gravespeakers, devilsnatchers, and, of course, incubomancers. Worshiping the Whispered Brothers, entities which only they seem to be aware of, incubomancers are respected if given a wide berth. The special teas they brew help to ease the haunt-plagues that ripple through Nevior each summer, an they are renowned as exorcists and wardens. They are also feared and mistrusted by those outside of Nevior, for their connection to the darkest recesses of the mind are dangerous. Incubomancers are said to be able to bend minds, to arouse fear and confuse the senses, to walk in dreams. Some say they can even make themselves like unto dreams or pull nightmares into reality. (Credit: MrPrim)
• Neraque Crater

Sachsnann Peaks

• Dessat

Wendiris Swamp

Stillwater Swamp

• Sandared
• Vanderghast

The Titan’s Abdomen

• Red Watch
• Bonshire. Capital of the Bonshire Thalassarchy. Historically, this empire controlled most of the lands the Titan's Abdomen and Bloodbay, as well as much of the territory inland from them, with the Free Cities the main hold out to its rule. A series of civil wars over the last century have left it considerably weakened. While it still controls a good deal of territory, many of the lands it once controlled are now independent. Its control of the sea is now challenged by growing numbers of pirates. (Credit: Muskrat)
• Telomen
• Grisgard
• Shirin

Erindor Forest. Land of the FAE. (Credit: Verenes Aeone)

• Lornathdur

Dorn Monastery

The Abbess of Dorn Monastery has been dead for three hundred years but still pulls the strings in the world beyond her island fortress (Credit: MrPrim). None have been seen leaving the old monastery, but someone must current reside within. A custom of different folk is to take a pilgrimage to the island and beg the occupant(s) to bless their endeavors, crops, families. Prophetic messages scrawled on stones are eventually cast down from a high broken window by an unseen tosser, most of which are said to come true. Recently, however, these messages are filled with doom and portend the coming of the next Heavenfall.

Bloodbay

The Free Cities. Not truly all cities, the territory includes a number of towns and villages as well. All are fiercely independent, from each other and from outsiders. They are united in a loose mutual defense confederacy that has kept them free from the Bonshire Thalassarchy and other would-be rulers. The free cities are variously republics, democracies, meritocracies, and kritarchies. Most of the free cities tend to think their own form of government is the best, but tolerate their neighbors' forms of governments as amusing eccentricities. What unites them is a rejection of the hereditary aristocracies that rule the Bonshire Thalassarchy and many of the other neighboring polities and a belief in the equality of all their citizens, though what exactly that equality means varies from free city to free city. (Credit: Muskrat)

• Titan’s Bridge
• Malachi. The city and the territory immediately around it are controlled by an exiled branch of the same dynasty that rules from Bonshire. They claim to be the rightful rulers of the Bonshire Thalassarchy. In truth, the matter is somewhat complicated, in that the Malachi branch of the dynaasty is descended from an older son of than that of the Bonshire branch, but the older son was an illegitimate child fathered by the king on a peasant woman. (Credit: Muskrat)
• Ohrimat
• Ferenach

Trummerdale

• Advallon

Faces

Hashati

The Hashat Wilderness is inhabited by a people (the Heshati) with a fairly egalitarian, democratic tribal society. The Heshat had a culture and language quite distinct and unrelated to the other peoples of the region. Over the span of the wars and slave revolts over the past few centuries, they have absorbed many refugees--runaway slaves, deserting soldiers, religious heretics fleeing from persecution. The Heshat retain much of their traditional culture, but it has been enriched by the traditions these newcomers brought and their language has absorbed a substantial foreign vocabulary.

(For point of reference, the inspiration here is the Seminole Indians, originally of Florida (now mostly in Oklahoma, who were displaced Creek Indians (from what is now Georgia) who also took in substantial numbers of runaway African-American slaves.)

The Heshat are good at living in harmony with the surrounding wilderness, practicing low impact agriculture and hunting and gathering. The wilderness, however, is inhabited by a number of large, dangerous animals, some of which are found nowhere else. Many of these animals are tribal totems, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous. Credit: Muskrat

The FAE

Fae are bound by laws, yes. Just as many as the mortal beings and objects. But their laws are different, based in story and contract, and the mixing of Fae and Mortal laws can be powerful indeed, giving mortal heroes of tale and legend items of great power, made with impossible material. But not all the tales and legends speak of glory. Some speak of the price paid for them.

The Fae do not take mere gold or silver, such things is worthless to them. They take what is hard or impossible for them to make. Mortal magic, both the arcane power of spells and the gentle warmth of memories, sell very well. Such things as True Love, or the Power of Friendship, they have little experience with making. But if you are willing to sell, you can buy items of such power.

A sword carved from a monster's tooth, harder and stronger than steel, and invulnerable to the magical rusting of a wizard or the invisible attraction of the metal lodestones a tinker or a thaumaturgist makes. A cloak woven of starlight and moonbeams can render you near invisible, and channels spells quite well. Bottled emotions can be used as the material component for powerful spells, making them less tiring to cast. A blade quenched in emotion attains extraordinary attributes and abilities.

Just be mindful of the cost. For many a mortal has made the trip to Erindor Forest, through land or trod, only for a misspoken word or poorly planned bargain to bind them into permanent service, or sell half their remembered life for a shiny trinket. (Credit: Verenes Aeone)