|
|
Dark Heritage - Setting Information
All of the contents of this document are designated closed content.
The world of Riven was once a relatively normal world -- it had a few idiosyncracies, of course, but it still was more familiar than not. It is actually the satellite of a gas giant. It is farther from its sun than our world, but recieves heat from the gas giant named Fallare, which is very dense and massive. This tannish, orange and red striated feature was a marked object in the sky at certain latitudes, since the Riven as tidally locked with Fallare.
Now, however, the world bears little resemblance to our own. Some massive cataclysm, the cause of which is unknown to the surviving populace, literally shattered the world into many pieces. Despite the laws of physics, these pieces "hang" together in space, surrounded still by their atmosphere, and the combined mass generates an earthlike gravity at any point in the field of world pieces. What causes this is unknown.
The pieces have congregated into Realms, or zones, each characterized by certain features. Each of these Realms is divided by a hazard of some kind, making travel very difficult from one Realm to another. All travel between islands is done by airship, flying barques that are powered by magic, in most cases. The following sections describe the various Realms of Riven today:
- Night Realm. At the bottom of the chain is a series of dark islands where the sun rarely penetrates. In the constant dark the temperature can range from icy cold to parts that are heated internally by volcanic activity, pressure, or the fermenting heat of decay. Organic life is strange and alien in this realm, as regular plants cannot grow. Vast forests of foetid tree-sized mushrooms cover many of the islands in this realm. The islands are also particularly close together; in many cases, several are clearly visible in the sky or on the horizon; or at least they are when there's enough light to make them out. These mushroom forests are prowled by not only highly dangerous predators, but also all kinds of unnatural things; daemons, undead and other creatures of shadow.
- Stormwall. Above the Night Realm is the Stormwall, a vast, eternal and violent storm, or set of storms more likely, as more than one "eye" penetrates the wall to give access between the two layers. However, these eyes are infrequent and fairly well known. Because no government or agency patrols them to keep them clear, the eyes are rife with pirates and buccanneers of the worst sort.
- Twilight Realm. The Twilight Realm is usually in varying stages of half-light, from nearly dark to nearly bright daylight. The climate here ranges from quite cold to cooly temperate. Enough light gets through the perpetual cloud barrier that forests of evergreens and even some more temperate plants like oaks and grasslands are able to dot the islands. Aside from a number of very unusual and quite possibly monstrous predators, this Realm is quite habitable and has a reasonably large population with a number of belligerent and independent (or at least autonomous) city-states and minor nations.
- Cloudwall. The Cloudwall isn't overtly dangerous like the Stormwall. However, it too has it's share of hazards. Essentially, it is little more than an extremely thick, everpresent and gigantic fogbank. Visibility is reduced to little more than a few yards. Worse still, the Cloudwall is studded with small, rocky islands that ships are unlikely to see until they have already crashed into them.
- Day Realm. The Day Realm recieves an almost continuous supply of sunlight, with the exception being the relatively short "nights" when Riven passes into the shadow of Fallare, the great gas giant about which it revolves. As such, the Day Realm is at it's very coolest, still warm temperate, and more often quite tropical. The exception is the great red desert areas in which unnatural cold winds scour the surface and suspended dust particles blunt the heat from the sun. The Day Realm is not characterized by multiple islands as much as the other realms, so much as it is by a gigantic, continent-sized island that makes up the bulk of the Realm. The Day Realm is also the most heavily settled and civilized area, although there are still many, many areas of danger and wilderness.
- Airwall. The Airwall isn't so much a hazard as it is simply very difficult to find the extremely high altitude and small islands of the Celestial Realm. Entire navies of ships have sailed upwards to find nothing and sink back in defeat when their sailors and soldiers were sick from lack of water, food or overexposure to the sun.
- Celestial Realm. The Celestial Realm is made up of a small number of hidden and tiny islands that float extremely high over the surface of the so-called Airwall. These islands are not heavily inhabitated, as they are cold and the air is very thin. The sun's rays are particularly harsh this high as well, without the protection of the atmosphere to screen them. A few religious orders maintain holds up here, and a few pirates ply the thin air currents.
The campaign itself will start in the city of Razina, a city in the kingdom of Cassant, located in the Day Realm literally on the very edge of the great continental island, overlooking the void that falls below into the Cloudwall. Other nearby terrain features include the Great Red Desert -- a cold and desolate area of craters, tortured and twisted rock formations and shifting sands. The campaign will start out primarily urban in nature, but what's the point of having a campaign setting about flying ships if the PCs don't eventually hop on board one and fly away to explore the rest of the setting somewhat, right?
I'll be incorporating various setting-related subpages here as time goes on in the list below.
|
