Friday 15 September 2017

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus - World Landscape Campaign Setting

world landscape is a made-up backdrop of beautiful European scenery in a painting. They are arguably examples of the shadow fantasy genre. Here is one:



A: The Gerontocracy of Basiney. A city where one in a thousand citizens is born an immortal struldbrug, who gradually accrues more and more wealth until he wields immense power and influence (but is too decrepit to enjoy it). A place in which corporatism not merely dominates but has run amok, like renaissance Florence or early modern Amsterdam as imagined by Gordon Gekko.

B: The Platinum Mountain. Ruled by a white dragon demigod who spins platinum thread, mined by his dwarf serfs, into webs and coils which he then magically animates into automata to serve him.

C: Servasser, the Sea Wolf Port. A fishing settlement which now lies largely abandoned; the population of fishermen and fishwives were infected by lycanthropy which spread through them like a plague. Now they inhabit its dilapidated ruins and raid the surrounding seas to assuage their ravenous hunger.

D: Gwenteliver's Castle. A fortress owned by the storm giant Gwenteliver, who surrounds herself with human slaves who she gradually interbreeds with giant insects, reptiles and other beasts. Her collection of art is unrivaled and strongly desired by almost all the Gerontocrats of Basiney.

E: The Smugglers' Cove. A small, secluded bay where smugglers from the neighbouring land of Celquinox come to liaise with rogue traders sneaking goods for trade past the tax collectors of Basiney. The people of Celquinox are a race of mutes who extend their necks with metal bands until their vocal chords no longer function; they employ their children to communicate on their behalf with strangers, and talk to each other with secret gestures they do not teach to outsiders.

F: The Entrance to the Spirals. An underground network of caves extending far beneath the surface of the earth, created in the ancient past by a burrowing worm which dug in endless repeating spiral tunnels. Somewhere these spirals connected with the tunnels of underground denizens such as the duergar, neogi, kuo-toa and the like, and they now throng with busy subterranean life which boils up from the bowels of the earth towards the surface.

3 comments:

  1. Great way to build a world, and it seems like it could also be useful to show to players.

    And as an aside, looking at that plow sent me into a deep Wikipedia dive... always a dangerous thing.

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  2. No one is even looking at him. Poor guy.

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