Felix's D&D World

Age of Chaos

< -5000 BF

“Long ago, the chaos of the universe incarnate - the Pale dominated the Material Plane. The Gods themselves feared it and stayed away. The Pale came from the seas. It blocked out the skies, crept into the forests, up the mountains and changed all who it touched. Stories of children playing in the forest and never coming back or coming back bleached and drained circulated as boogeyman. Families and communities stuck close in the few pockets avoided by the Pale. Savagery and despotism thrived in the few communities left of civilization. This was a time of the godless races, those abandoned and detached from the other planes - the Aarakocra and the Lizardfolk. This was called the Age of Chaos."

Ancient Age

-5000 - -1000 BF

"After much suffering, a mysterious event known by the Aarakocra as the ‘Great Wind’ pushed back the Pale, allowing safe travel across the land and the coastal waters. And such the empires of the Aarakocra and the Lizardfolk boomed. The Lizardfolk ruled the jungles while the Aarakocra held the mountains. Aarakocra and the Lizardfolk were first cautious of each other but soon their great empires traded and boomed. At this point the Pale was thin in the colonised lands and the Great Lizard Empire started working towards a massive project. Chetzaxotol - ‘The Temple Of The Sun’. This temple was to be the largest building housing a city’s worth of people and at its centre a flame so intense as to outdo the sun. Never was it fully finished for reasons we’ll get to soon, but even at its peak of ⅓ its maximum, it was enough that the Gods noticed.

The Gods soon realised the Isola was free from the Pale and returned, praising the Lizardfolk. The Aarakocra, jealous, waged a bloody, long and massive conflict ‘Vashnulam’ - The Battle of the Heavens’ or as some scholars argue better translated ‘The final conflict echoed in the Heavens’. Most gods picked a side in the fight, some supporting the original Lizardfolk while others supporting the Mountain Aarakocra who offered the Mountains in return for victory. After a grand hateful war where the sky had been dyed red with the blood of Gods, the final day had come. What was to look like a sure final Aarakocra assault on the Chetzaxotol ended awfully. The Lizardfolk in one last defiance to fate, excited the Flame of Chetzaxotol, creating a massive shockwave, killing all armies immediately including all the Gods who took part in the final assault ‘Vashnulam Ragatar’ - The Cosmic Tragedy of Vashnulam.

This condensed magic of the Gods essence now freed, was scattered among the Isola and the latent magic of the world is said to still flow based on that event. This marked the end of the Ancient Age."

Age of Isolation

-1000 - 0 BF

"The few remaining Gods vowed never to repeat the mistake, especially since while the war raged, the Pale grew again, slowly but surely. The remaining Gods, as a sign of love, peace and prosperity, blessed the mountains, forests, plains, seas and skies with life, moulding the new ‘Blessed’ races, including the elves, dwarves, gnomes, Firbolgs, Eldarin, orcs, and Goliaths among other smaller races. They grew settlements, with great distances between them and large communities. They consisted of large city states and never formed together to the grandeur of the old empires. However their newly accessible magic led to many things. The discovery of ‘messis’ crystal fields that grew on mysterious soil could be used for many things like portable magic batteries which were needed for sorcerers imbued with this magic to cast spells. After a long time, the elves and dwarves both formalised magic into schools and disciplines. The elves had created bards, who weaved the fields of latent magic around them. While the dwarves created wizards who standardised magical practises and created academies for them. As this slowly spread, the gnomes found themselves combining Dwarven wizardry with their innate cleverness to create the artificer discipline. This was known as the Age of Isolation."

Age of Manifestation

> 0 SF

"By this point the Gods had taken inspiration from the mortals, empowered by their emotions and prayers, formalised the Heavens into multiple realms, each attuned to an astral alignment, sitting in a wheel around the Material plane. Gods who represented alignments radically ran these separate planes slowly turning more into their radical alignment. They then made blessed beings in their image, the celestials and fiends being the two main ones of whom the Aasimar and Tieflings came from. A second war in heaven, much more tame, started between these rivalling ‘good’ and ‘evil’ alignments. However, through war, one celestial and one fiend had found themselves falling in love, so they escaped the war to the Material Plane, but when the planes of Order found out, they struck a deal. The compromise of treason to their respective armies was banishment to the Material Plane and burning away any magic they had. They were known as the Akkadians and their children were called the humans. Humans, native but new to the Isola, quickly adapted. Their mythos developed around these two founding figures of their communities built the social idea of ‘Togetherness’. That humans must cling really close to survive - this was not different to the other races - but also that great leaders will one day come and behind them humans must rally to improve the lives of humans. Thus began the Age of Manifestation This was followed by a boom in the human population and nations, larger than city states being founded. The first was ‘Phaen’ or ‘Manifest’. It stood a long time and conquered nearby towns of other races, becoming a multicultural casted society, eventually collapsing due to internal strife. The dwarves and elves who were once slaves and servants in Phaen, took the philosophy of Togetherness and spread it far and wide, becoming a new axiom of society.

From this point the history of several rivalling nations played out many times until the North of the Isola was saturated with civilisation. The Sigilis Great Empire as we know it today was united through bloody conflict after bloody conflict as well as shrewd negotiation and a small amount of mutual alliances, we have come to own such a beautiful and vast country, ruled by her majesty, Margret Sigilis with an iron fist, the current Kaphale, who took the throne from her father 30 years ago and has done nothing but excel. Our Great Nation has one historical threat in recent times, against the KUS. The Klonomir Union of Syndicates. A closed dictatorial nation to the East with whom we’ve had a past conflict. ‘The Summer War’ was just 40 years ago, and lasted one summer. Our diplomats and theirs attempted trade talks which devolved into an argument of whose country is greatest and insults quickly turned into a brawl. Our army mobilised, so did theirs. Three skirmishes were fought, none of which had a decisive result. The armies were not prepared for such mass conflict and ran out of supplies before much fighting could be done, with many soldiers deserting and those still fighting were ambushed several times by dwarven guerilla fighters who were protecting their homeland between the SGE and KUS. By the end of Summer, both sides had signed the ‘Treaty of Common Interest’, where a buffer state was created to alleviate tensions and the State was to be given to the dwarves so as not to be biased. The new nation was called the ‘Neutral Federation’ and in the past 40 years, have heavily industrialised, militarised and prepared for war. This sets the stage for the modern day. What we say play out today in the ballrooms and alleyways will influence which capital armies will be marching through in the next few years. May the Gods enjoy the show.”

Time of Strife

> 330 SF A new time dawns on the horizon. With new technology allowing travel through the pale and discovering new isolas, along with an empire ready to manifest destiny, a war of repression began.

White Roses Campaign

The campaign takes place in 306SF, in the Sigilis Great Empire, one of two great powers on Phaeninora. The story follows a lowly group of heroes who were gathered to help the city of Callatis in its problems. Callatis is a border city near the Neutral Federation, a neutral state keeping peace between the two enemy countries. The power of Callatis was held between the Starfire Circle of Druids who extracted precious herbs from the nearby smouldering forest, and the Order of The Eternal Fire, a local religious sect of the Flamekeeper.

A local problem of missing individuals and a sea cult led the coalition of clerics and druids to ask a team of ratcatchers to solve this problem. In come the party:

• Cassius Cain, Deep Gnome Artificer, fellow of the Goldenforge guild.
• Therai Merdai, Tiefling Cleric of Trickery, Servant of Locklin.
• Jhank Blackscale, Lizardfolk Barbarian, in search for his family.
• Wither, Tabaxi Artificer, Great Engineer.

After many adventures, including draining the lake of Callatis by mistake when negotiating with the Sultan of The City of Brass, buying a castle with magical crystals only to be hunted by the SGE alternative to the CIA cross country, and attending the duke's party only to be framed for the murder of the forester's guildmaster, the party found a shrine a secret society named the white roses, members dedicated to the cosmic alignment of good, with their nemesis, the black roses, more entrenched and spreading the foulness of the evil alignment. Agents of either rose had rose tattoos on their forearms, either black or white. The party dedicated itself to the order of white roses and persued restarting the society, but many times was attacked and ambushed by agents of the Black Rose on their continued journey.

Eventually the party were local rulers of their own keep, and had been dragged into local politics. They had set up their keep as a base of operations for a white rose army to prevent black rose attacks. Their base proved needed when a black rose army took over Wesgruth, an NF city. The party raised their army and went to war, besieging Wesgruth, stopping their powerful lich lord and returning it to the hands of the dwarves after long battle and strategic plans. However the keep of Wesgruth remained a bastion of the dark forces, and so the heroes plunged sword first into the terrible place, only to find a secret tunnel. Here is where the first great trick of the black rose was enacted. A pool of dark water laid in an ornate altar, and Jhank, hero of Wesgruth, drank it. Unable to resist its foul magicks, his mind was at once corrupted and his White Rose tattoos replaced with black versions. He had been converted.

A great war broke out with Therai and Cassius fleeing for a long time. Many adventures continued in the lands of the NF and the rest of the SGE, with Therai becoming a chosen champion of his God, while Cassius attempted to wrestle with his loss of a great ally, and with Jhank taking over the old keep of his allies and converting it into a black rose den. He along with his cousin, Jerentein, coincidentally also a member of the black rose, consolidated power, and even prevented an attempted assassination by a second party of heroes, slaughtering two and capturing the rest, with only three making a daring escape later.

The campaign, the first half of an overarching campaign, concluded with Cassius, Therai and Jhank along with the local duke and white rose troops sieging the keep, taking back what was rightfully theirs, with Jhank fighting a defensive war. While soldiers clashed, a sneaking in attempt from Therai proved most useful, and in the end, Jhank was trapped in a magical ring, with Cassius hoping to save him again someday. With the keep recaptured for the White Roses, it was renamed Interforge by Cassius and deemed his head of operations in industry. A rebuilding effort was afoot, with many loses including the duke's commander.

Races for the Manifested Isolas other than Phaeninora, tl;dr: Butterfly people, Coral people, Yak people, Ice (with reptile origin) people, Hedgehog people.

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