Note: This is a living document, that is always subject to change.
The Kharmlund Campaign continues. It's been going for almost two years now, and there's not much in the way of any indication that the players are getting bored. It helps enormously that my players aren't boring people to run games for, but that's another topic for another post. Today, I just wanted to get some of the 'lore' down, something I've kept loosey and goosey for the purpose of being able to slot in things that are and aren't needed. I like to use miniatures in my game and I pick and choose as I please what to include.
However.
The setting is meant to 'feel' very Greco and Roman, and I've massively increased my reading load since then, I am in fact reading The Illiad, and will continue with The Odyssey and The Aenid and various other things alongside many many many history books. For all of the hatred towards Dr. Beard, she has written Emperor of Rome, which is easily one of the best books about the Emperors, what the position entailed, etc that I've ever read. Mind you I've only read around ~15 books on Rome so who knows, I may be ignorant. There's more great books on Rome than I will ever read.
Anyway, let's go.
The Empire:
The Empire is Rome, for sure, and meant to feel like it in all but name only. However, it isn't called Rome, and doesn't have an official name besides Byzan which is kind of a word for cattle in the name of the Vosdht, the people that rule the Empire and benefit the most from it's conquests.
Byzan is ruled by the Khulmar, an Emperor-figure, and they are, in my current campaign, reaching the end of what can be fairly called the princeps model, a citizen-Emperor who is meant to seem(but isn't) accessible to the common man. Myths are put out about this all of the time, and there are overtures to being willing to listen to what you'd call a senate, however the Khulmar does whatever it wants and only needs to fear reprisals from assassinations and usurpers and uprisings and such, the Khulmar more or less just needs to balance the anger of the citizens versus the anger of the nobility and their own personal wants and needs. Not every Khulmar is a selfish bastard, but make no mistake, these are autocrats, and even the kindest Khulmar is a monster by most standards.
The Vosdht are orcs. In a pinch, Orcs are a great visual short-hand, however I sort of just designed them to be like the Aumaua from the Pillars franchise. They are very tall, averaging 6-8 feet. Large sharp teeth. Boisterous, deadly in combat, and deeply arrogant. Not as a racial trait mind you, but when you have the largest empire ever seen, well...
Byzan has managed to spread with a rapidity that impresses most, and they do so due to a mixture of slave labor, and the Dorfngir, or the Dwarves. As per my previous post, Dwarves are weird peoples, and care little else for anything but finding their bazngir and then working at it forever - they also live forever doing this, so like ant colonies, they eventually reach a critical mass of work to be done, and then future Dwarves born are sent out to the wide world to find work to do. The Vosdht are very okay with this, since to them, many of their infrastructure acheivements are just done by Dwarven hands. The Dwarves, toiling endlessly and happily has given the Vosdht a strong philosophical basis for the justification of slavery - look at the Dwarves, that's an entire people that exists to be a slave for others. The fact that Dwarves typically don't consider themselves slaves, and will do this work for basically anyone they come across isn't openly acknowledged, and Dwarves rarely bother to speak with other peoples except to place orders for materials, tools, bitch them out for erecting scaffolding incorrectly, etc.
So the Empire conquers. It spreads, and each successive Khulmar is required to be more aggressive, violent and conquest-lusty to stay in power. Where will it end?
The Forges:
Byzan built these all over their Empire, with the help of their Dwarven subjects. They are massive towers and approaching them is forbidden on pain of death. Important: they are generally assumed to be cursed by anyone that discusses them with the Empire, and nothing wipes a smile off the typically jovial Vosdht than bringing them up.
The Races of the Empire:
The Vosdht are the first and primary citizens of the Empire. They live everywhere, populate the regions they conquer with colonies, protection from their legions and so on. The second largest demographic is the Dorfngir, or Dwarves. They're anywhere they're a public works/engineering project, and they tend to form colonies around them. The average "inn on the road" is actually just a Dwarven colony that also services travelers while being built around servicing and maintaining several miles of road. These colonies are called kharmgir, or, "home for work" or "work-house" whatever you want. The Epigones(or Elves) are smattered everywhere. They will get their own post soon, but needless to say, the 'race' of Elves insert themselves everywhere. Halflings are more rare, and generally despised by other races, as most acknowledge them as being the 'children' of the moon, the evil god Lund. However, they are often enslaved as jesters and pets and other things. There are still some places here and there the Halflings simply live normal lives under the Imperial yolk, but their future is in doubt.
Finally, there are the Men. Men are wandering tribal bands of nomads. They have a shared language, religion (worshipping Radegh, the Keeper of Oaths) and generally find themselves doing merc work if they're not farming for the Empire. In many battles in these ages after several devastating plagues, some note there's more Men fighting in and against Byzan than anyone else!
The Eastern Provinces:
The East is a smattering of major cities and other provinces. Well developed Vosdht cities, many men live here, and the Empire is often called a different culture entirely. There's meant to be parallells here to the East of Rome, and they do have easterner allies that are constantly causing them problems, but there's no worshipping of the culture and philosophy of the people here. The Byzan did not write an Aenid which exists to prop up the legitimacy of them as some kind of super-successor state that also functions as a literal sequel to famous eastern poems. The East will be developed later, but that's the general idea.
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