The Despaired Lands - A Land Reclaimed, 414 PDB

[MrSquiffy]

1,000 years ago the First Scourge came, and reality broke.

In the bowels of Vaqet, capital of the elven empire Vaqenna, occultists looking to usurp the powers of the gods themselves instead invited an unending tide of demons to the world. They swarmed the continent of Ondul as reality fought to mend itself, reweave its frayed threads. But, it did not reform whole, and the Corruption came to be. Vampires, werewolves, the undead, and all terrors of the night came to be, and as far as reality knew, always were. Many flocked to the banners of the demons, becoming a scourge of mortalkind, and doom seemed certain.

There was no grand alliance. There was no unity of the living and the light to fight the darkness that swarmed the land. The rulers and emperors were blinded to the darkness by the lantern’s lure of riches and selfish ambition. More content to wait in their castles and pick clean the corpses of their rival lands, they watched kingdoms burn, vampires stalk the night, and the restless dead rise from their crypts. One by one the flames of mortalkind were dimmed and extinguished, until the gods descended.

For the first time in millennia, since they first descended to free mortals from the yokes of the Titans, they returned to the mortal plane and gathered mortalkind together. The armies of mortalkind fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the gods they served, the Grand Alliance, and together fought back. On the plains outside Vaqet, where reality broke, the demons were defeated. Though some demons fled into hiding, and the Corruption unable to be undone, the continent once more knew peace.

For nearly 500 years the world knew prosperity under the guiding hands of the gods who now walked amongst them. The Higher Sciences of arcana grew to unfathomable new heights under the watchful eyes of the gods who now controlled its use, miracles of magic and divine will ubiquitous and ever-present. Every field was blessed with fertility, the bounty of every sea multiplied and thriving. Wonderful spires and devastating weapons were constructed alike, and though the continent was not without conflict, the gods protected all.

Then the Second Scourge came, and the gods were slaughtered.

They poured from the Karaenne Desert, once more bringing death and destruction upon the land. And, once more, the other nations of the world succumbed to greed and selfish drive. Once more they failed to let go of hate and xenophobia, of ancient grudges and petty slights. And while they feuded and backstabbed from their walled towers, the gods fell. Some believe they were all slaughtered protecting their mortal charges, trying to stymie the tide of death; others believe that they hid or fled, abandoning mortals out of fear, or as retribution for their disgust over mortalkind’s regression to cowardice. What is known is that when the banners of the Grand Alliance finally flew once more, mortalkind stood alone.

It was a bloody war of attrition, and though the losses of mortalkind were great, the Second Scourge was routed upon The Twins, the two isthmuses that bridge North and South Ondul. In the fires of battle, they were born anew: “Scourge’s End”. But, while the horde was defeated, the Dawn-Break, none would claim that the war was won.

With no gods to bless the fields or seas, to create new artefacts, or to bless mortals with the gift of magic, the world descended into ruin. Many crops withered and died, being sustained purely by magic, and those fields that could survive naturally could no longer feed the population and society built upon magic’s foundation. The population of wizards lay decimated from the war; many of those survivors lost their ability outright, and those that retained some were reduced to nought but the weakest of spells and rites, and were unable to pass their knowledge on. Many artefacts that remained were quickly used or siphoned of their magic to staunch the bleeding, but it was all for nought. Drought, disease, and famine wracked the world. Death followed in its wake, and undeath followed after. It was the Long Death, the Knell of Empires, the true scourge upon mortalkind.

But, the flame of mortalkind would not be so easily extinguished. From the ashes of the old empires rose new civilisations, civilisations that placed faith not in the higher sciences of arcana, but in the discoveries and technologies of the lower sciences. Beset upon by the undead, stalked in the night by creatures of the night, and beguiled by the demons and warlocks that lurked and secretly gathered power, over the next 300 years North Ondul slowly reforged itself anew. Across the Ulthan sea and the Dawn Bay, South Ondul remained dark and unknown, the land scarred by rampant magic, home only to the chittering of dark and unknowable things. All that remained was a despaired land.

Magic slowly returned to mortal hands, but it was not the gods who gifted them. First it was those of the old tradition, possessed of indomitable will, bludgeoning apart the shackles that bound the magic until they broke, but then came others. Sorcerers came to be, born naturally with the arcane spark, and then came the Godchosen: mortals through whom small aspects of the still-worshipped gods once more shone through. Through them a new science was born, a union of chemistry and physics and magic. Alchemy.

Though the miraculous magic of Before remained locked to mortalkind, society recovered rapidly, and through alchemy reached new heights of its own. But, soon the realms of mortalkind bulged at their seams once more, clawing over precious resources and arable land, and slow their eyes turned once more towards the Despaired Lands. The brave, the foolhardy, the wealthy, and the desperate gathered men and gold to chart the now-forgotten lands that lay across the Ulthan bay. Their missions were simple: to chart, to explore, and to discover. Plunging their torches into the darkness of the continent, these Torchbearers sought to claim the riches of an abandoned world for their masters. And, 305 years after the break of dawn against the Scourge, after decades of little reward threatening to consign the south to ruin forever, their efforts were rewarded, and the world was once more forever changed.

Radzieg torchbearers descended upon their ancestral city of Cirros Gwedan, and found a vast horde of something more precious than gold or gems: artefacts. Pre-Scourge magic, the likes of which removed from all living memory, existed once more. The news swept the continent like wildfire, and invigorated, launched their own fleets of explorers and settlers. For the descendants of those who fled, a chance to reclaim their ancestral homeland; for others, a chance for glory and power and all ambitions realised. One thing was clear: The Reclamation had begun.

It is the year 414 Post-Dawn Break. 99 years have passed since the discovery at Cirros Gwedan sparked The Reclamation, and the continent hovers on the brink of war once more. For 75 years the Treaty of the Seven has maintained an uneasy peace between the powers of North Ondul, regulating both the distribution of artefacts between its signatories, and the control of torchbearer expeditions and colonies. Through the Dawn City of Port Victory, the wealth of the world pours through its port, and a balance of power is maintained, but that insidious plague corruption has taken root, and now it rots from within.

Radzieg has seceded from the Treaty, and once more amasses its fleets and armies. The churning, corrupted cogs of Port Victory’s bureaucracy turn too slow, and once more people flock under the banners of their lieges and their country. From darkened laboratories alchemists work tirelessly, perfecting their craft of science and magic, and with the powerful artefacts at their disposal, create their ultimate weapons of war. When an explosion of unprecedented magical energy rocks the continent deep from the unexplored heart of the Hondaltz, all hands scramble to assemble expeditions. The banners fly, the horns sound, and the armies and expeditions march towards its epicentre, unsure if they will find riches, glory, or the spark that will ignite the continent in a storm of blood and fire.

Ondul is the setting of my 5e DnD campaign, a dark fantasy world that teeters on either the brink of collapse, or the brink of glory. Two Scourges, cataclysmic invasions of demons, have wracked the world, breaking reality and setting the Corruption firmly in the weave of reality. The age of sail is firmly upon the world: the institutions of knights and chivalry engulfed by the smoking plumes of the musket and the cannon. Alchemy, the union of science and magic, brings with it gunpowder and other wonderous inventions, and with every new discovery and technology, the iron maws and steel mills of industrial revolution loom ever-larger on the horizon.

The colonial powers march to an inevitable war as 75 years of peace buckle under the weight of corruption and bureaucracy, fuelled by the artefacts and fertile expanses of the Despaired Lands. Torchbearers, expeditionists and opportunists, illuminate the shadowy corners of this land, selling their finds to the highest bidder. Demon hunters fight a secret war with demons, devils, vampires and all other terrors of the night, fighting from the shadows to keep an unsuspecting world safe from the terrors that cling to the fringes of society.

To the north, the draconic Natha’az empire’s expansion stalls as its noble and trading houses fight amongst themselves, and every nation can do little but fan the flames of their fighting, and stall their ever-southwards expansion. Meanwhile, from the west come reports of strange ships landing upon Ondul’s shores, bringing with them stranger people, who bring tidings of a land far across the Alen Ocean, and a darkness that, without the help of Ondul, will surely consume them. The world is poised for greatness, or destruction, and there is no in-between.