THE GODS:

--Talar, god of fighting (and the forge)
--Anthan, god of thieves (usually he's pretty rob-the-rich-and-give-to-the-poor)
--Nairi, goddess of magic and the stars
--Mother Nature (also goddess of healing) (her true name is a secret! If you discover what it is, she might bribe you to keep it to yourself!)

Those are the "big four," but there's also:

--Lady Luck (goddess of good and bad luck) (her true name is also a secret! If you discover what it is, she might bribe you to keep it to yourself!)
--Calvaros, god of laws and justice and vows
--Noric, god of freedom
--Ossein, god of bones and darkness
--Abrioga, god of monsters
--Ronsi, goddess of children and games (she's a child herself)

Also: various nature spirits, ranging from the four very powerful elemental spirits (air/earth/fire/water) to little tiny nature spirits

Also:

--Bellmora, the pirate queen goddess.

Bellmora was born at sea onboard her father's ship The Maelstrom, a fierce former navy ship turned privateer.

Bellmora's mother was a sea witch who used herbs and magic not only to ensure a healthy birth for her daughter, but to bless her with her own dark magic.

Growing up, the young Bellmora learned to walk on the rocking deck of a ship as easily as others walk on solid ground. She displayed both the discipline to learn but also a carefree nature like a sea storm.

As a teen girl, Bellmora found some of the blessings of her mother blossom within her. She could commune with the sea to calm both it and sea beasts. Naturally, rumors of these gifts caused captains far and wide to wish to kidnap her for luck on their own voyages.

From ship to ship the young girl was taken, making her distraught, angry, and finally tired of the constant threat of being seized to join a crew. She caused the sea and sea monsters to grow angry and violent. Crashing the ship she was on against some rocks, she was believed to have died, but was instead spirited away by a sea beast to the goddess of the ocean, who saw in the girl an aspect of the sea seldom represented by the goddess of the sea herself. So, she set a mark on the girl, that made her something special: a mortal that had the potential to grow into a goddess.

Bellmora was placed upon the shore, where she set about taking her own ship and gathering a crew. She sailed the seas as a pirate, taking what she could from other ships and always sending some treasure down to the sea out of respect for the goddess that saved her life. Bellmora's legend and ability grew as her own pirate ship was joined with those of other captains to become a pirate fleet. The terror of the sea lanes, she predated on those ships she remembered where she had been taken captive, sending them to the depths.

Known as the Pirate Queen at this point, she was already a demigoddess, and when she stole a legendary artifact from another god and sent it down into the sea, she became the goddess she was meant to be, raised up and forced into plane of reality where gods and goddesses dwell, she still longed for adventure and piracy, and granted some of her power to other women who traveled the sea. Over time, even a few men became her priests.




Need more? How about this:

FACTIONS:

--the Knighthood

--the Thieves' Guild (note: not all thieves are in the thieves' guild (despite pressure from the guild.)

--the Mages' Guild (note: not all mages are in the mages' guild (they're far less pushy about it than the thieves' guild is. (Witches count as mages, sort of, but they could care less what the Mages' Guild does, says, or thinks of them or about anything else for that matter.)

--the Priesthood (dedicated to Mother Nature) (note: not all divine-miracle-workers are in the Priesthood. Many druids are just doing their own druid stuff, as a part of druidic circles, or not.)

Those are the "big four" factions, but there's also:

--The Nobility (see The Queen and Dukes, below)

--The Merchants' Guild (some of them are decent folk, but some are terrible people, because capitalism. Of course, that's true of the nobility and the thieves' guild, too.)

--individual druidic circles

--the People of Red Blades: biggest barbarian tribe

--the Bards' Guild

--The Adventurers' Guild



SEFONIA:

--The country you are currently in is named: Sefonia

Sefonia is officially a monarchy (queendom), but civil warring among the rest of the nobility has made it so the queen basically just tries to keep the nobles' bloodshed to a minimum, which she mostly/usually manages to do, more or less.

The queendom has an old national enemy to the northeast, the nation of Quayern, but they're currently as sick of fighting us as we are of fighting them, so there's a fairly solid truce right now... although everyone expects that that'll only last one or two hundred years if we're lucky, fifty or less if we're not.



Sefonia officially has 7 provinces (used to be 8, see below), each with a city of the same name:

--Vierna. The capital city, in the center of the country.
----Who's in charge: The queen.
----Why's it strong: The knighthood is centered here. (It's also the richest of all the cities.)
----Physical features: farmland and woods


--Trevisi, the second-strongest province after Vierna. Second richest city, too.
----Who's in charge: the city council of merchants, led by Duke Trevisi himself.
----Who's REALLY in charge: The head of the thieves' guild.
----Why's it strong: lots of spies, assassins, thieves, bards, etc.
----Physical features: farmland and ranches (goats, sheep, cattle, chickens, other)


--Sternza, the third-strongest province
----Who's in charge: Duke Sternza himself.
----Why's it strong: lots and lots of fighters, mercenaries, cavaliers, archers, etc.
----Physical features: woods and forests and farms and the coast


--Hazrith, the fourth-strongest province.
----Who's in charge: Duchess Hazrith, the most powerful mage in the country.
----Why's it strong: magic and mages.
----Physical features: lots of mountains


--Zelgud, the fifth-strongest province.
----Who's in charge: Duke Zelgud, a cleric of Calvaros
----Why's it strong: Lots of powerful paladins and clerics.
----Physical features: plains and farms and dry desert
----Other: The largest group of the People of Red Blades: biggest barbarian tribe, live in this area.

--Fenmark, the sixth-strongest province
----Who's in charge: Duchess Fenmark
----Why's it strong: Combat engineers.
----Physical features: Hills and valleys and rivers and streams... with excellent bridges, dams, aqueducts, roads, walls and other fortifications...


--Vertoht, the spookiest (official) province
----Who's in charge: Baron Vertoht  
----Why's it strong: Because its clerics and paladins are dedicated to Ossain, god of bones and darkness, and Abriogi, god of monsters, and no one wants to mess with them
----Physical features: Wetlands and marshlands... lakes and rivers... collectives of farms here and there


--Pendrell, the lost province:
----Who's in charge: No one. Duke Pendrell tried to take over Hazrith, and the then-Duchess Hazrith (the great-aunt of the current Duchess Hazrith) turned Pendrell into a huge swamp. It's now called Pendrell Swamp, or, more often, the Dismal Swamp. Various monsters mostly inhabit it now (although some humans and other people do still live there)...




MAP-like thing:


          The Northlands: Some Barbarians live here, but Very Cold Climate
                               Snow on the ground almost all year

                      Trevisi                                      Zelgud
                   farms and ranches                            plains and desert


  Fenmark                                Vierna                          Zelgud/Sternza
 Hills and valleys                   farms and woods                       border
                                        
                                                                         Sternza
         Hazrith                                                      forests and the coast
        Mountains    Pendrell            Vertoht
                          Swamp        Wetlands and lakes              





--Northeast of Sefonia: Quayern, a land of dry plains and desert.

--East and Southeast of Sefonia: ocean, with various interesting islands if you go far enough

--South of Sefonia: other barbarian tribes and monsters. Usually the barbarians to the south and the monsters to the south keep each others' numbers down so that neither invades Sefonia.

--West of Sefonia: More mountains, and then very few people know what. It's known that there's another ocean very far to the west, but not a lot of people know much about what's in-between, because there's monsters.

--Under Sefonia: Almost no one is aware of this, but there's lots of deep tunnels and caverns underground. Both people and monsters live down there. The easiest way down there is to go to the northlands. The barbarians there know about living underground-- when winter gets really bad, they all go underground-- it's the only way to survive the winter.


--Malmorda: the main Quayern town on the coast.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:22, Sat 12 Aug 2023.