Dirt

Dirt Cam­paign Set­ting

Fan­ta­sy set­ting with fla­vor from Earth­’s an­cients(Rome, Egyp­t, As­syr­i­an, Baby­lo­ni­an. iron-age tech, high­-­mag­ic, (some)ad­vanced cul­tures,

races | lan­guages | glos­sary | house rules {D­M}| thought­pile | `Top Sev­en List­s`{DM END}

====== The World ====== The “Known World” con­sists of two con­ti­nents and a few is­lands on one side of a small plan­et. Sim­i­lar­ly to how we call our plan­et “Earth” the res­i­dents of this one call it “Dirt” if they both­er to talk about it at al­l.

This plan­et lacks any dis­cernible moon­s. Al­though there is still a slight tidal ac­tion. The night sky is not com­plete­ly emp­ty .pelos:­cul­ture#The Sky

Dirt has very lit­tle ax­i­al tilt and a near­ly cir­cu­lar or­bit around it’s sun. There­for the cli­mate of a giv­en area is fair­ly con­sis­tent with lit­tle sea­son­al change. But cli­mate does vary over the years. What is arid bad­lands to­day might have been a ver­dant for­est a few cen­turies ago.

====== Time Line ====== Pelosian dates are giv­en as their .pelos:­cal­en­dar is the most wide­ly used. .fist:­con­tents|­Fist be­lieves the cur­rent year is 17968 and us­es a dif­fer­ent .fist:­cal­en­dar. No­body has any idea what Kjore or the Dwarves use. The var­i­ous un­civ­i­lized peo­ples aren’t so­phis­ti­cat­ed enough to record the pass­ing of time.

{D­M} — Zepre en­ter sys­tem in dyson sphere, at­tack their en­e­my “Demon­s”, get to­tal­ly blast­ed, lose abil­i­ty to move sphere. “Demon­s” get de­ves­tat­ed by nanovirus. — Mil­lion years pass. — Zepre be­come aware of sen­tience on sur­face. Start to med­dle out of bore­dom, com­pas­sion. — Var­i­ous species up­lift­ed. Zepre be­come “God­s.” — Elf Em­pire and Hu­man Em­pire p0wn all and love each oth­er. Wor­ship, be­lief­s, cul­ture all sim­i­lar. Even­tu­al­ly form East­ern and West­ern halves of unit­ed em­pire. — Great ad­vances in sci­en­tif­ic and mys­ti­cal art­s. — 1st breach (Cat­a­clysm) caused when hubris over­takes the Em­pires and they try to reach the god­s. Dev­as­tates both em­pires and all life on sur­face. {DM END}

— ??? The be­fore time… — ??? glos­sary#­Great Cat­a­clysm which tum­bled moun­tain­s, boiled the seas, and laied to waste what­ev­er civ­i­liza­tions ex­ist­ed at this time. — ??? glos­sary#The Twi­light many hun­dreds of years, per­haps thou­sand­s. Al­most noth­ing is known of the era af­ter the sen­tient races where brought low and clawed their way back to civ­i­liza­tion. — -80-0 Scat­tered men start to form what will be called the #Old King­dom. — 0 Found­ing of #Pe­los, #Old King­dom con­tin­ues to slow­ly re­for­m/rise. — ~150 Qa­trun dis­cov­er The glos­sary#S­tat­ue of Light. — 200 Qa­trun pop­u­la­tion ex­plodes, they mi­grate and ex­pand. Bring #Fist:mythol­o­gy with them. Uni­fy­ing var­i­ous no­mads and peo­ples of re­gion soon to be known as #Fist. — ~250 The glos­sary#S­tat­ue of Light grows dim and nev­er re­turn­s. — 267 The Sen­ate of #Pe­los is formed. — 450-650 #Fist ex­pands to it’s present bor­der­s. Many .babrem:­con­tents|Babrem aban­don thi­er no­madic life­style for the cities. — 525 Ex­is­tence of #Fist is “dis­cov­ered” trade be­tween it and the oth­er na­tions is rapid­ly es­tab­lished. Knowl­edge, tech­nol­o­gy and un­usu­al prod­ucts drive ad­vance­ment all around. — 550-860 #Pe­los and the #Old King­dom come to con­flict over and over. #Pe­los slow­ly gains the up­per hand. — 600 #Pe­los starts col­o­niz­ing, ris­es to pre­em­i­nence. — 749 Sunesh is con­quered and made part of the Pe­los Em­pire. — 777 Meli­nar builds his tow­er. — 837 First True Dwarf is spot in Pe­los. — 860 First known con­tact with and knowl­edge of #Kjore. De­struc­tion of Pelosian colony south of Sunesh. — 860-890 1st Kjore War. #Pe­los and #Old King­dom colonies are raid­ed, some are de­stroyed, many die. But the fight­ing nev­er reach­es the home ter­ri­to­ries. #Kjore is beat back and are un­seen for 50 years. But the #Old King­dom is se­vere­ly weak­ened and be­gins a pre­cip­i­tous de­cline. — 890 Pe­los civ­il war caused by dif­fi­cul­ties in fight­ing #1st Kjore War. Rise of Pe­los Mi­nor. — 892 #Sunesh breaks free of Pe­los Em­pire — 940-955 2nd Kjore War aka Great Kjore war starts when dozens of Kjo­ri­an death barges at­tack Boz­i, the #Old King­dom‘s cap­i­tal, which is soon over­run. The war quick­ly ex­pands to in­clude Ma­jor/Mi­nor #Pe­los, #Fist, #Old King­dom. Kjo­ri­ans dev­as­tate parts of Pe­los and what will be­come known as con­tents#The Wild­lands. The glos­sary#Lost Isle is cre­at­ed, most colonies are dev­as­tat­ed and aban­doned. #Old King­dom com­plete­ly shat­tered on­ly the #C­i­tys­tate of Dar­sis re­mains most­ly in­tac­t. — 1003 Fleet from #Far West sit­ed west of #Pe­los. — 1012 Fleet from #Far West leaves af­ter vis­it­ing most of the glos­sary#­Known World.. — 1022 #Fist starts a holy cru­sade against #Kjore. Some are call­ing this the 3rd Kjore War. — 1023 The cru­sade goes well. #Kjore is not ac­cus­tomed to fight­ing de­fen­sive­ly. The many Cults are not co­or­di­nat­ed and Hlark blessed war­riors cut through them. — 1024.3 The #Fist drives a spear ev­er deep­er in­to #Kjore. They seek the cen­ter, the source of this cor­rup­tion and mean to oblit­er­ate it. — 1024.5 NOW — 1024.8 The cru­sade stall­s, no cen­ter is found, the tip me­an­ders while all along the shaft at­tack af­ter at­tack is launched by Kjore. — 1025.2 Shaft is bro­ken, large num­bers of troops are trapped and lost {D­M} — 1025.6 A valiant ef­fort to res­cue the trapped troops suc­ceeds but less than 1/2 re­main to be saved. — 1025.7+ Fist con­ducts a fight­ing re­treat. — 1026 Fist cru­sades end in fail­ure. Many Kjore where killed but no land re­tak­en and no per­ma­nent dam­age. In the near fu­ture Fist sol­diers are faced with the hor­ror of fight­ing their re­an­i­mat­ed/re­cy­cled brethren. — 1028- 4th Kjore War, on­go­ing #Pe­los loos­es all re­main­ing colonies. — Fey(winged) get jacked by #Kjore. Join #Pe­los. — Sack­ing of Dar­sis. — Re­turn of Dwarves to fight #Kjore. — Meli­nars Jour­ney — Break up of the four. Ar­mor goes home, Brain gets picked up by his friend­s, Monk achieves The Way, Child re­mains as he al­ways had (re­turns to cen­ter) — If breach. #Kjore with many de­mon al­lies in­vades big time try­ing to slay god­s. — If no breach. {DM END}

====== Ma­jor Cul­tures ====== === Pe­los === .pelos:­names | .pelos:­cul­ture | .pelos:mythol­o­gy | .pelos:­cal­en­dar | .pelos:mil­i­tary

== Pe­los Ma­jor == .pelos:pe­los ma­jor|de­tails

Was ar­guably the grandest, most pow­er­ful em­pire since glos­sary#The Cat­a­clysm. Those glo­ri­ous times are in the past. Since then it has lost colonies to Kjore’s de­struc­tion, sub­ject na­tions have re­volt­ed, and part of the home ter­ri­to­ries, Pe­los Mi­nor, have se­ced­ed.

Pe­los Ma­jor is a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, and mag­i­cal­ly ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion. It is still the strong­est naval pow­er in the glos­sary#­Known World and al­though its land forces are small they are most­ly pow­er­ful cross­bow armed cal­vary with plen­ty of mag­i­cal en­hance­ments and sup­port. Law, or­der, and safe­ty are the norm through­out the home prov­inces. Mon­sters and su­per­nat­u­ral threats are vir­tu­al­ly un­known. This be­comes less true in the bor­der prov­inces and colonies esp those in­/n­ear glos­sary#The Wild­lands.

Pe­los has a pros­per­ous and vig­or­ous econ­o­my. Trade is very im­por­tant for it’s ap­petite for re­sources and ex­ot­ic goods is ev­er grow­ing. Most Pelosians are ed­u­cat­ed and don’t want for food or shel­ter. Many are wealthy and lead com­par­a­tive­ly deca­dent lives. They val­ue in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty and lib­er­ty. They are as a rule very adept with mag­ic mak­ing reg­u­lar use of it in their dai­ly lives.

The pop­u­la­tion con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of races#Pelosian|Pelosians and races#Pelosian Gnome|G­nomes.

== Pe­los Mi­nor == .pelos:pe­los mi­nor|de­tails

Pe­los Mi­nor split away from Pe­los 134 years ago. Af­ter a short civ­il war good re­la­tions were es­tab­lished. It is very sim­i­lar to Pe­los Ma­jor al­though not as large, pop­u­lous and eco­nom­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful. They are cer­tain­ly more mil­i­tant tak­ing the lead in the fight against Kjore and field­ing a larg­er army.

Pelosians here tend to be more com­bat­ive, cyn­i­cal, and prag­mat­ic than their north­ern cousin­s. The most­ly false view in Pe­los Ma­jor is that it’s erst­while south­ern prov­inces are a lit­tle rus­tic and not as so­phis­ti­cat­ed. While Pe­los Mi­nor thinks the North is deca­den­t, soft, and not re­al­is­tic about the Kjo­ri­an threat.

The pop­u­la­tion con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of races#Pelosian|Pelosians with few­er races#Pelosian Gnome|G­nomes and more races#­men than Pe­los Ma­jor.

== Pelosian Gnomes == .pelos:­names

Al­ter­na­tive­ly called halflings, dwarves(­by the ig­no­ran­t), or lit­tle peo­ple. They re­main one of the more pe­cu­liar races#Pelosian Gnome|races in the known world. About 10% of the Pelosian pop­u­la­tion con­sists of gnomes.

Not be­ing ex­plor­ers or con­querors they haven’t claimed much ter­ri­to­ry. They have fol­lowed Pelosians to wher­ev­er they have spread. Al­though, they tend to stick to­geth­er and form their own com­mu­ni­ties in­stead of in­ter­min­gling with Pelosian­s. Ex­cep­tions ex­ist of course.

The many “pack­s” of 1-6 thou­sand gnomes form a loose fed­er­a­tion that is semi-au­tonomous from and has good re­la­tions with Pe­los for cen­turies.

== Thyrel­lon == A of small races#Thyrel­lon|ava­ian race hu­manoid­s. No gov­ern­ment or civ­i­liza­tion to speak of. In­stead they form form small flocks of 20-80 in­di­vid­u­al­s. Prob­a­bly no more than a few thou­sand Thyrel­lons ex­ist.

They stick to their moun­tain rook­eries and de­sire lit­tle else than to be left alone. Pe­los has of­ten tried but failed to in­vite/bribe/­force in­to an al­liance against #Kjore.

{D­M} They re­fused but even­tu­al­ly get jacked by #Kjore. Then what’s left of them are ab­sorbed in­to Pe­los as refugees.{DM END}

=== Old King­dom === .old_k­ing­dom:­names | .old_k­ing­dom:­cul­ture | .pelos:mythol­o­gy | .pelos:­cal­en­dar

What was once called the Old King­dom ceased to be when it’s cap­i­tal was de­stroyed in the open­ing bat­tle of the 2nd Kjore War. All that re­mains are a few city states and dev­as­tat­ed Wild­land­s. Al­though peo­ple still re­fer to the area as the Old King­dom.

Pri­mar­i­ly in­hab­it­ed by races#­men. Though this re­gion has so of­ten been in­vad­ed, col­o­nized, cen­ter of trade, and refuge to the war rav­aged that one can find al­most any lin­eage be it Pelosian, Sunesh, Qa­trun, or gnomish. Amongst the many faces you may even run in­to spies and sabo­teurs from Kjore.

== Citys­tate of Dar­sis == .dar­sis:­con­tents|de­tails

Strong­est rem­nant of the Old King­dom which has fall­en far from its glo­ry days. Re­tains con­trol of sur­round­ing land­s, a few town­s, and colonies.

Some sim­i­lar­i­ties and many shared be­liefs with Pe­los. Such as cal­en­dar and many god­s. But not their gov­ern­men­t, tri­nary, or de­pen­dence on mag­ic.

== The Wild­lands == wild­land­s|de­tails

Parts of the Old King­dom be­yond Dar­sis’ con­trol. A few small­er city states, many town­ships and war­lords hold sway over small ar­eas. Pe­los and Dar­sis have both es­tab­lished colonies here and come to con­flict over them. But since the rise of Kjore both Dar­sis and Pe­los have bet­ter things to do than squab­ble over this poor land.

Many parts of the Wild­lands have been cor­rupt­ed by Kjo­ri­an depre­da­tions dur­ing the 2nd Kjore War. Even the more civ­i­lized ar­eas are dan­ger­ous. Filled with mon­sters and worse.

=== Peo­ples of the Deserts === The deserts in­clude the most arid lands in the glos­sary#­known world. From dune “seas” to grave­ly baked flat­land­s. The harsh en­vi­ron­ment has led to harsh peo­ple in­hab­it­ing it.

== Fist == .fist:­con­tents|de­tails | .fist:­names | .fist:­cul­ture | .fist:mythol­o­gy | .fist:­cal­en­dar

Pri­mar­i­ly in­hab­it­ed by the races#Qa­trun, a man­nish race, whose an­ces­tors stum­bled in­to an pre-­cat­a­clysm ru­in and dis­cov­ered an avatar of Hlark in the form of a stat­ue of light. For many years the stat­ue taught them the se­crets of civ­i­liza­tion agri­cul­ture, medicine, sci­ence, war. Es­pe­cial­ly war for the stat­ue told them of a ter­ri­ble en­e­my the would one day be called on to de­feat.

The Fist is ruled by Hlark,their god, through his mouth­s(high priest­s). In this theoc­ra­cy, re­li­gion is para­mount and re­li­gious law is strict­ly en­forced. But The Cho­sen as they call them­selves glad­ly obey. For Hlark and his laws brought them out of glos­sary#The Twi­light of bar­baris­m.

Ar­cane mag­ic is shunned and of­ten dealt with as a cor­rupt abom­i­na­tion. That is, it is oblit­er­at­ed.

== Babrem No­mads == .babrem:­con­tents|de­tails | .fist:­names

Many races#Babrem have civ­i­lized and now live in the cites of the races#Qa­trun. But a few tribes still roam the deserts and car­a­van routes. Some are faith­ful .fist:mythol­o­gy|­fol­low­ers of Hlark, many are not.

== Arite == These races#Arite|non-­men of the wastes have known the lands of Fist from since be­fore it was a desert. They per­sist along the fringes of his­to­ry their glo­ry days hav­ing long been swal­lowed by the sand­s.

Very lit­tle is known of them. The Babrem soon learned to leave them be and Fist con­sid­ers them no more than dan­ger­ous an­i­mals to be kept away from car­a­vans and cities.

{D­M} Since the rise of Fist and mi­gra­tion of peo­ples away from the deserts the Arite have grown to a de­gree not imag­ined in the high­-­tow­ers of Fist. Some be­lieve it is time to emerge from the sand and shad­ow. Re­mind man to fear the name Arite once again. {DM END}

=== The South­ern Con­ti­nent === == Sunesh == .sunesh:­con­tents|de­tails | .sunesh:­names | .sunesh:­con­tents|­cul­ture | .sunesh:­con­tents|mythol­o­gy | .sunesh:­con­tents|­cal­en­dar

Sunesh is less ad­vanced that the oth­er na­tions but still has civ­i­liza­tion. For a long time it was part of the Pe­los Em­pire. But it broke free af­ter the 1st Kjore War.

{D­M} == Paosh & Nesh­er == Egypt hid­den deep­er in the con­ti­nen­t, not as ad­vanced civ­il but around for 5000 years {DM END}

== Za­far, Ut­bah, and Ka’im Tribes == .tribes:­names

Un­civ­i­lized bar­bar­ian­s(orc­s) of the South­ern Con­ti­nen­t. They have a com­mon lan­guage and many cul­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ties. There are three main racial and cul­tur­al group­ings.

The Ka’im are friend­ly and most­ly agrar­i­an. Many are sub­jects of the Pelosian Em­pire and pre­vi­ous­ly The Old King­dom. They are con­cen­trat­ed in North­west­ern and West­ern re­gion­s.

The dark skinned Ut­bah are no­to­ri­ous pi­rates, slave trader­s, and mer­ce­nar­ies. The North­ern and East­ern shores as well as the many is­lands in those ar­eas are home to the Ut­bah.

The least civ­i­lized are the Za­far, no­madic herds­men uni­ver­sal­ly hos­tile to ev­ery­one in­clud­ing each oth­er. Luck­i­ly they are most­ly con­tained with­ing the in­te­ri­or of the con­ti­nen­t.

All three are prim­i­tive and trib­al lack­ing larg­er or­ga­ni­za­tion. Al­though, in the past strong in­di­vid­u­al­s, some­times for­eign­er­s, have unit­ed many of the tribes for some pur­pose.

=== Dwarves === .d­warves:­names

The True Dwarves had been lost for a 1000 years and near­ly for­got­ten.

Re­treat­ing un­der­ground dur­ing the cat­a­clysm. Many sep­a­rate clans of races#True Dwar­f| dwarves have sur­vived and pros­pered through­out the depths of Dirt. Their last king died long ago. Com­bined with the iso­la­tion of liv­ing in dif­fer­ent un­der­ground re­gions has cre­at­ed a ex­treme­ly clan ori­ent­ed and in­su­lar cul­ture.

Over the last few cen­turies a few Dwarves have sur­faced. No more than a thou­sand or so are be­lieved to up and about as it were. There is no good in­for­ma­tion on their to­tal pop­u­la­tion. Learned sages have giv­en num­bers from “no more than we see on the sur­face” to “mil­lion­s”.

=== Nip­ti­a/Seafolk === Named the races#Nip­ti­a___Seafolk|Nip­tia by Pelosians and races#Nip­ti­a___Seafolk|Seafolk by Dar­sisian­s. Their own name and lan­guage are not pro­nounce­able by air breath­ing vo­cal cord­s.

They form no uni­fied “na­tion”. In­stead or­ga­niz­ing them­selves in­to semi-no­madic and in­de­pen­dent “pod­s”. No rep­utable count has been made of their pop­u­la­tion, nor even the num­ber of pod­s. They them­selves are of no use an­swer­ing ques­tions of how many are in your fam­i­ly/pod/ with “e­nough”.

They claim to have lived in the wa­ters for thou­sands of years. Few be­lieve this as they don’t re­mem­ber glos­sary#The Cat­a­clysm.

=== Far West === .tu­an:­names

A few decades ago a Pelosian tri­maran pa­trolling just west of Pe­los Mi­nor en­coun­tered a stun­ning fleet of over 300 un­usu­al ships many of which were sev­er­al times larg­er than the largest Pelosian ship.

This fleet was helmed by un­usu­al men who claimed to have come from a land far across the glos­sary#End­less Sea and are con­duct­ing a peace­ful ex­plo­ration of the world on be­half of the Em­press of Tu’an, their ruler and home­land. With the goal of sail­ing East right round Dirt un­til they ar­rive back whence they start­ed.

Al­though, much of the Pelosian Navy was ac­ti­vat­ed in re­sponse to the ini­tial alarm they turned out to be true to their claim of peace­ful­ness. Sus­pi­cion and cau­tion were soon swept away by cu­rios­i­ty and prof­it. Their ships ar­rived heavy with all sorts of strange trade good­s, plants, an­i­mal­s, food­s, de­vices, and mag­ic. The same ships left heavy with goods from the known world.

Sev­er­al thou­sand of their num­ber stayed be­hind in Pe­los and Dar­sis. Philoso­pher­s, mys­tic­s, sages, mas­ters of strange art­s. They and their land tru­ly seem to be as civ­i­lized and ad­vanced as our own.

Pe­los and Fist ac­cept­ed in­vi­ta­tions to have their en­voys trans­port­ed back to their home­land and were re­ceived in the Im­pe­ri­al City by the Em­press her­self.

Since then sev­er­al voy­ages back and forth have been made and a small but con­sis­tent trade has been es­tab­lished.

Pe­los is try­ing not so sub­tly to ac­cess their mil­i­tary might and re­cruit them to fight against Kjore. So far with­out suc­cess. They haven’t met the Kjore be­fore and pro­fess in­ter­est on­ly in peace, trade, and diplo­ma­cy.

=== Kjore === {D­M}`.kjore:­names` | .kjore:­con­tents | `.kjore:mil­i­tary`{DM END}

Hav­ing de­stroyed and en­slaved the un­known lands far to the east and south .kjore:­con­tents#The Priest­ess Queen now drives the .kjore:­con­tents#De­mon Cults chaot­ic evil to­wards the glos­sary#­Known World.

Kjore is not so much a na­tion as a plague. Its ruler­s, High Priestess­es, each lead a cult ded­i­cat­ed to a dif­fer­ent vile de­mon. The men, hu­manoid­s, and mon­sters that make up its pop­u­la­tion are cor­rupt and taint­ed from wor­ship­ing these chaot­ic “god­s”. Kjore lays waste to where ev­er it spreads con­sum­ing all life, des­e­crat­ing the land and wa­ter­s.

{D­M} ====== Places of Note ======

=== Meli­nar’s Tow­er === Great­est liv­ing(ev­er?) Pelosian Ma­gus. Built colos­sal tow­er at the end of the An­cient Path near the Great Swirl.

=== Zouka’s Skull­mount ===

====== Ad­ven­tures ====== Meli­nars Jour­ney - The great wiz­ard is seek­ing the ad­ven­tur­ous for sev­er­al ex­pidi­tions to the mid­dle of Dirt. {DM END}