Golemgame:Setting
From Fax Encyclopedicus
Flickerdart (Talk | contribs) |
Flickerdart (Talk | contribs) |
||
| Line 27: | Line 27: | ||
===Berkut=== | ===Berkut=== | ||
Berkut is a marvel of dwarven architecture, constructed with enormous flood gates that allow it to launch submersible ships without any outward signs. While this is no protection from aquatic golems, these ships can take mortal vessels by surprise. However, their small range and speed makes them useless for offensive action of most kinds. Berkut is incredibly hard to locate for even an experienced tracker, and the only possible way to infiltrate it is inside such a submersible.<br> | Berkut is a marvel of dwarven architecture, constructed with enormous flood gates that allow it to launch submersible ships without any outward signs. While this is no protection from aquatic golems, these ships can take mortal vessels by surprise. However, their small range and speed makes them useless for offensive action of most kinds. Berkut is incredibly hard to locate for even an experienced tracker, and the only possible way to infiltrate it is inside such a submersible.<br> | ||
| - | + | From Berkut, the Council of Elders rules the dwarves. The name is actually a misnomer of sorts - only the most esteemed of dwarves between the ages of 150 and 250 are allowed to serve on this council. When they age beyond that point, the Elders take up weapons and armour that they put down a century ago and go back out into the world, to seek death in battle as befits a dwarf. Famously, no Elder has ever died (or so the dwarves claim) while serving their term. Formally, the Elders serve as advisors and priests to Daguran, but since the ancient war machine does not make much of a head of state, Barad-Dai is functionally a theocracy, with this clergy at its head. The dwarves don't seem to care very much, one way or the other - the Council of Elders existed before Daguran was ever built, and so it is only fitting that they should rule now as they did back then, and if they do so in the name of an enormous death machine then all the better. | |
=The East= | =The East= | ||
| Line 70: | Line 70: | ||
==Unearthers== | ==Unearthers== | ||
The unearthers are not really an organization, in the traditional sense. While it cannot be denied that some group of individuals, indeterminate in number, has laboured since before the war to preserve - and later, restore - the arcane knowledge that has been lost to the world, no trace of any organized cooperation within this group has ever been discovered. Whenever someone is caught engaging in "typical" unearther activities (attempting to cast forbidden magic from grimoires long thought lost, usually with disastrous consequences) no one that they were known to ever associate with is ever found to have aided them in any way. | The unearthers are not really an organization, in the traditional sense. While it cannot be denied that some group of individuals, indeterminate in number, has laboured since before the war to preserve - and later, restore - the arcane knowledge that has been lost to the world, no trace of any organized cooperation within this group has ever been discovered. Whenever someone is caught engaging in "typical" unearther activities (attempting to cast forbidden magic from grimoires long thought lost, usually with disastrous consequences) no one that they were known to ever associate with is ever found to have aided them in any way. | ||
| + | |||
| + | =Origins of Species= | ||
| + | ==Warforged== | ||
| + | Before the golem war had taken a turn for the worse, the dwarves were working on an assassin just like their Namoki rivals, only instead of flesh and blood, they turned their knowledge of golemcraft towards this task. The result of this research was a dozen metal dwarves, all twelve in various stages of completion. While they could obey simple commands, these creatures (dubbed battle-forged) could not adapt to changing circumstances quickly enough to be effective assassins, and were far too expensive to produce en masse for use in the field. It was decided by the Dwarven Elders that the project be scrapped, and funding be directed to the Namoki assassin program, which was yielding considerable results by this point.<br> | ||
| + | Dwarven sentimentalism for their work being what it was, the battle-forged were given a warrior's burial, loaded into a boat that was then put out to sea and set ablaze. It is not known whether the battle-forged were able to put out the fire, or had merely washed up on some distant shores. What remains fact, however, is that shortly before the end of the war, several scouts from both nations reported "miniature Golems" wandering the countryside, as near as the rivers of the Tapestry, and as far as the easternmost reaches of the continent. When comparing these reports to the research of the dwarves, it is clear that the units were heavily modified, and by different hands - the nearer warforged were made taller and slimmer than their prototypes, with protruding arrays of devices and various grafted instruments, while those found further away were often considerably larger, with bodies of wood rather than metal. Some of these latter ones were even said to be able to speak, which didn't save them from annihilation but earned them a footnote in the history books. | ||
| + | ==Feral Humanoids== | ||
| + | The very first ferals were discovered in Faradan - mutated and vicious animals born of the inscrutable jungles. In rare cases, condition seemed to be contagious - and very swiftly fatal - to the elves of Faradan. Bas-Karakat transmuters spent many resources kidnapping infected creatures and elves and studying them, and eventually managed to reduce the condition from a rapid, violent and eventually fatal transformation to a gradual hereditary growth that resulted in a powerful, resilient and cunning soldier that was jokingly termed Knives, for their slight build when compared to the Orc warriors that composed the bulk of the armed forces. While the majority of these Knives were deployed immediately, the most promising specimens remained in the labs for further testing. The results of that research were forever lost when the lab itself was burned to the ground by enemy saboteurs.<br> | ||
| + | When it became clear that the war was lost by both sides, most of the Knives defected immediately, trying to blend in with the many refugees that were fleeing the warzones. Many of the others felt naturally drawn to Faradan, from where their breed originally came, and vanished into the jungles there. A rare handful of particularly devoted Knives continued the war, striking out at what they perceived as priority targets and stomping out what little remained of most wizarding traditions, as well as relentlessly tracking down the assassins of the Agan Empire. Without any source of intelligence, however, the reign of these marauders was blissfully short. | ||
