Setting Forge · Legacy archive
Steampunk Setting ("New Setting, Which To Choose")
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Centas Development and Ideas
#41Hey Captain,what do you think of a vast,techno-magikal weapon prototype that goes awry after developing a mind of it's own? It might even be endowed with the ability to bend other machines to it's will. Given the steam punkish nature of your new world,this might blend in well. -
Centas Development and Ideas
#42Perhaps.
I'm not sure about that one, but hold on a while... -
Centas Development and Ideas
#43Y'know... I think I might start over with this. Not all the ideas, mind you. But right now I'm not sure I like the way it's going... I've kind of lost my way. -
Centas Development and Ideas
#44ANNOUNCEMENT!
This thread is now the development area for ideas and stuff for Centas, which is now the setting thread where official crap is.
Please note that Centas is being essentially rebuilt from the top down. I may or may not keep some of the things in this thread; all ideas before this post are hereby considered preliminary (except for the adventure log, which I can't really take back :) ).
I may or may not put in other races, I may or may not still use the whole Dark Empire thing.
Stay tuned, and remember...
IF YOU'VE GOT AN IDEA, POST IT, AND POST IT HERE! -
Centas Development and Ideas
#45To come:
Descriptions of such major cities as:
Simblios
Lufthald
Xhiklus
Oool Klash
Sarnath
And cities in various regions (Zam Aroog, Jaxhab, Yaag Tibosh, High Ailori, Peplios, Kortaltaz, Corpal, Thant, Hab Broke, and so on, organized by region)
Races of Centas (Humans, Unmen, Surash, and Monroi)
The Howler, Howl Dig, and the fall of the Old Kingdom -
Centas Development and Ideas
#46If there is one specific event which defines the history of Centas, it is the legendary war which slew the Old Kingdom and sent the Centasi fleeing into thousands of city-states, that catastrophic struggle engendered by...
The Howler
Nobody truly knows where the Howler's legacy began.
Perhaps, as some believe, he was just one among many of the Old Kingdom's wandering black mages, walking the songlines of Centas with a necromancer's spotted dog on his heels.
Or, perhaps, as some of the pious say, he was the only (mis)begotten son of the Shadow Himself, or even the Shadow come to walk upon the Earth, in defiance of God's rightness.
Or, maybe, just maybe, as some of the more bleeding-edge professors of the Triple Colleges of Oool Klash, the Howler was the foully-disfigured heir of the Throne of Kadessa, the spurned prince who would have been lord of the Old Kingdom.
But whatever the Howler had been before, it was what he became which is relevant to history, for the terror he engendered in his day was unimaginable.
The events recounted here are the stuff of ancient legend to Centasi; as antique to them as would be to us the stories of the Roman Empire, or the Bible. The dates herein are counted backwards to the year 0, when the final battle against the Howler was fought at Howl Dig.
The first stirrings of the War Against the Howler were seen in the rebellions which burst through the Old Kingdom in the years before his emergence. The Kingdom, crippled by economic depression, famines, droughts, and the dabblings of ineffectual rulers, rose up in revolt against the Khortara Dynasty which had ruled the continent. The panicked Khortara King demanded solutions from the Vibos Club, the secretive inner circle of generals and lords who were the true rulers, and in response, the Club began the Pogroms of the Year 12, unleashing thirteen disparate armies into various corners of the Kingdom to brutally root out and destroy sedition.
But it was unsuccessful; the period of years 11-9 saw revolution after revolution, until, finally, the Vibos Club revealed themselves to a stunned public, and overthrew the Khortara King, banishing him to the southern seas, where it is said he and the Royal Family fled to Meshor, the Great White South, and were never seen again.
But within two years of rule of the Vibos Club, the hidden threat of the Howler was revealed. In the year 6, an army arrayed in black armor attacked Royal columns on the outskirts of the Oxhidaizhen Plains, destroying them to a man. Soon after, thousands of cities across the Old Kingdom marked attacks from the now-legendary Shadowsquads, who rode the ghosts of horses to attack Old Kingdom targets and afterward spilt their own blood in great pools amidst the corpses of their enemies.
On the final day of year 6, the Howler himself was revealed, as he marched with an army on Kadessa, the Royal City and capitol of the Old Kingdom, and sacked it, burning it to the ground and crucifying all but three members of the Vibos Club upon the Grand Square amidst the ashes of their citizens.
The war against the Howler was long and desperate. The various cities of the Old Kingdom exhausted every resource available to them battling his fearful armies of black soldiers, arrayed in fearmasks, wielding screaming swords and toothbombs; marching ranks of Sark-warriors, clanking undead who apologized heart-rendingly to each man they slew; and darker things, insane things dredged up from the bottom of hidden places, things which soldiers of the Kingdom spoke of in mad ravings.
The Howler was a formidable warlord, a strategic genius in every respect, and a logistical mastermind. In addition, he was a great inventor, and created thousands of mysterious and arcane technologies which techists still puzzle over. But most of all, the Howler was a dark sorceror, a wielder of ancient and powerful magic the likes of which had not been seen for centuries in the Old Kingdom.
It was said that the Howler had a purpose in his war against the Kingdom; some say that he was an idealist, who believed that the Kingdom was an evil empire which had to be layed low to bring freedom to the people, though he damn his soul doing it. Others say that he sought to bring an end to all people, that he was a devotee of frightful and hideous Lord Sarku, Master of the Undead.
But in the end, the Master of Treacheries was undone by the only one more treacherous than himself: three days before the legendary Battle of Howl Dig, the Hint, the Howler's lover and a member of the Cabal, his inner circle of lieutenants, came to Ghasthares, the leader of the Kingdom army and last surviving member of the Vibos Club, and told him of the secrets of Howl Dig.
On that last day, it is said that when they took the Howler's head, casting it to the bloody and blackened stone surrounding the vast blighted crater of Howl Dig, the head spoke one last word, it's eyes rolling in the direction of the Hint: "Traitor. Traitor."
(This is not final, and I'm definitely not satisfied with it.) -
Centas Development and Ideas
#47Some heroes I intend to flesh out:
Nephi Sheepstealer (one of the most famous Centasi folk heroes, a bandit, outlaw, and revolutionary)
Aruspillaung Gore (the heroic Armiger of Oool Klash)
Oolvaran Max and the Starshiner (a heroic duo) -
Centas Development and Ideas
#48I'm toying with the idea that the Monroi are actually from another planet (don't worry, they were aliens in a very John Carter of Mars fashion, a proud warrior culture of a dying world). They left their world before human memory in huge starships to escape their Cthulhic tentacled enemies, the Etana (whose true name drives men and Monroi insane).
At least, that's what I'm thinking.
The Monroi colonies (which I envision as huge towers covered in biological concrete and shards of stone and brick) could be the original starships, simply expanded and built upon into the vast, humid complexes in which Monroi now live.
Of course, the coming of the Monroi would be thousands of years back, and probably would be forgotten even by most of them, except in the form of legends and tales.