One interesting assumption we were making in that thread is that for some reason magic only becomes relevant at the cusp of industrial revolution and not a day earlier. While it does make perfect sense that it would retard the development of of gun powder weapons and steam engines, it does not explain why it wouldn’t have the same type of chilling effect on all prior technology. For example, medieval metallurgy, masonry, architecture, husbandry and agriculture were all pretty vibrant and dynamic fields without which we wouldn’t see castles, plate armors, mounted cavalry and any other fantasy staples. But these fields never seem to be affected. So we must conclude that magic is irrelevant to these fields (which is silly, because we know you can make enchanted armors, flying castles and etc..) or it only becomes prominent after these mundane technologies are already well established.

Naturally, we know the meta-narrative reasons for this: we enjoy stories about knights, wizards and dragons and so we construct the worlds in which they can exist. That’s a given. But when we talk about in-universe logic, we must assume that magic is simply discovered and popularized late.

Here is a thought experiment: what if it wasn’t? What if “magic boom” happened not in the middle ages but way back, at a tribal hunter gatherer stage? What if tribal shamans were able to achieve the kind of power level as Fantasy battle mages? How would access to that kind of magic shape the society, and how it would affect the development of technology? And just to make things more interesting let’s say we are not talking about humans here. Let’s take Fantasy’s quintessential, low-tech, cave dwelling species: the Troglodytes (also known as lizard bros).

Lizard People

Let’s establish some background here: Troglodytes start their civilization as just about any other species. They are cave-dwelling, hunter-gatherers who just recently figured out how to make primitive tools out of stone and bones of their prey, but not much else. There are probably other sentient species in the area, like Gnolls, Kobolds and maybe even some Humans that are at about the same technological level. Sometimes they trade, sometimes they fight, other times they ignore each other. Then, Troglodyte shamans discover magic and everything starts to change for the better.

At first the changes are subtle – the healing and combat magic gives them an edge in battle against their more territorial neighbors and so their communities grow and prosper. Soon Shamans discover that magic can not only be used during the times of war, but that it’s real utility comes into play during peace. Instead of spending days gathering fruit and nuts in the forests, the Shamans can simply make those plants grow in and around their settlements. Instead of spending days tracking beasts of prey, magic can be used to lure them into traps or simply have them walk into the Troglodyte village and lay down waiting to be slaughtered. Magic also frees the lizard men from dependency on natural cave systems for shelter. They can now drill out houses in the stone, or burrow in the ground as they please.

As this knowledge spreads from community to community there is a good deal of social unrest. The hunters caste are very upset that they are being made irrelevant. They are very concerned that their professions will disappear the same way the “fire keeper” caste did when the magic users learned how to light and extinguish fire at will. At the same time the Shaman’s can barely keep up with the demand for their services: the communities start to rely on them for everything. They are healers, builders, warriors, food providers, community leaders and etc. The shaman caste realize that further growth is unsustainable. Their magic is helping their communities to grow and prosper, but as they do, the shaman are being spread thin. After much deliberation, they decide to invalidate and beak the vows of secrecy surrounding their craft, and teach it to everyone willing to learn.

Troglodyte Sage (formerly shaman caste)

Luckily it turns out that Troglodytes are all attuned to magic: it flows freely through their bodies and almost all of them can use it. And so hunters learn spells and incantations that let them lure, distract and control prey. Gatherers learn magic that allows them to influence plant grow, and tend wild gardens outside their cave villages. Builders study magic that allows them to crush, sharpen and move stone and earth to create tools and living spaces for the Troglodyte communities. Warriors study enchantments that will make their natural scales harder than stone, and make their wooden or bone spears unnaturally sharp. The former shamans take a back seat an assume a role of teachers and keepers of knowledge which they share freely with others.

Few generations pass, and the caste systems of old are all but forgotten. Most Troglodyte communities are now societies of specialized wizards. Where other civilizations turn to mundane technology, they simply use magic. When Gnolls develop bronze tipped javelins, Troglodytes simply enchant their bone spears to fly further. When humans start making weapons and armors from iron, Lizard men simply beef up their protective spells, and develop armor piercing incantations. In a way they can work faster than their neighbors because harnessing mundane technology takes years of research, practice and require raw materials. Spells on the other hand are basically just focused thoughts which can be disseminated immediately after being developed.

Troglodyte with an enchanted bone tool of unknown purpose

While other species develop complex writing, and graduate from stone tablets to paper based media, Troglodytes stop at a fairly simple system of glyphs suitable for carving them in stone or bone. They use it mainly to make sign-posts, labels, record names or for decoration. They don’t write books, or codify their stories because they have better ways of preserving knowledge using magic. The most common method of preserving knowledge or experiences are memory charms, usually made by enchanting skulls of small animals. The creator of the charm can imbue it with thoughts, emotions and memories and it will act as permanent storage device. Anyone can access the stored memories by simply touching the charm to their forehead (though some charms can be protected by a password that has to be whispered to unlock them). Compared to bound paper volumes produced by humans, memory charms are both inexpensive, trivial to produce and easy to use.

To facilitate the exchange of knowledge, as well as better resource management Troglodytes also develop a mass-transit system in the form of Way Stones. They are created by taking a massive stone slab, binding it with strong magic and then cleaving it in half. Anyone stepping on one half of the stone is ten magically transported to the other one. Communities wishing to establish a permanent trade link typically create a Way Stone pair, and then mark them with appropriate glyphs so that travelers can know which village it leads to. Not all Troglodyte communities are connected to each other, but most ave at least one or two Way Stones that link them up to some of their neighbors creating a vast network of connections.

Troglodyte using a Way Stone

Way Stone network allows the Troglodyte communities to specialize and grow in very peculiar ways. Because food and resources can be transported instantaneously between Way Stone connected locations there exist communities that produce no food or resources locally and simply trade for them with neighbors. This allows Troglodytes to live deep underground or in otherwise inhospitable areas such as desolated wastelands, magical swamps, or even underwater in magically sustained air bubbles.

No one really knows the extent of the Way Stone network as there exist no accurate maps that would include all the stones. After a few centuries of growth, the Troglodyte civilization is assumed to have over a thousand active nodes all over the world. Most communities only know the layout of two to three hops away from their home village and new Way Stones are created all the dime connecting new and established communities. Most traveled Troglodytes can probably tell you the shortest way to their Capital City (shortest in the sense of fewest Way Stone hops not actual real world distance).

To other races, Troglodytes look like primitive savages. They wear almost no clothes, and their tools are made almost elusively from wood, stone and bones. Those who trade with them note that they seem to be profoundly disinterested in anything made out of metal – including weapons, tools, armors and even jewelry. The truth is that they have no need for these tings because most Troglodytes knows a sharpening spell that can temporarily turn a bone staff into a razor-sharp weapon capable of cutting through a plate armor. They don’t use bows and arrows, because they put homing spells on their spears extending their range, and ensuring they always strike their target. They build no houses, because they can drill shelters directly into mountainsides, complete with stone shelves, stools and other furniture built directly into the interior. Where they have no rocky surfaces to work with, they dig underground or weave trees and vines to create spacious halls and huts for the citizens.

Their capitol city is said to be hidden deep in some inhospitable swamp jungle. It is said to be a gigantic cave city drilled into the sides and throughout an ancient mountain. It is said that every inch of the mountain has been carved by magic, and that from afar it looks like a cross between a stone anthill and an ancient pyramid temple.

Those who have visited the Troglodyte communities usually remark on how in touch with nature they seem to be. Those who lived among the Lizard Men usually quickly realize that this is not true. They exploit the nature to their own ends just like most other sentient species – their excesses simply do not look like conventional agriculture. The capitol for example is incapable of supporting it’s population with local resources, and so there exist many “hunting” communities that make a living hunting and gathering for the capitol and delivering food in bulk. Their daily “pulls” of game can easily deplete the local ecosystem within weeks, at which point they pack-up their Way Stone and move to another area.

And there you have it: a race of primeval lizard people who appear primitive, because they rely on magic for all the things we usually use tools for. All the modern comforts are provided by means of enchantments and spells which sharpen bone knives, or make stone soft and warm enough to comfortably sleep on. My Troglodytes are different. What do you think?

This will likely be the last post of the series, so before I begin I wanted to wrap up some lose ends and respond to the constructive criticism I have gotten so far. Firstly, here is a size comparison chart for all the sentient species of the Raven Island:

Size comparison chart. From left to right: Ogre, Savage Dwarf, Windup, Celestial, Ravenkin, Gnoblar, Hoblite, Orc, Imperial, Armadan, Nord, Gnome and Deep Elf.

I hope this helps to put things in context. And yes, Imperials are are about as tall as Elves and they tend to tower over Armadans, Nords and even Orcs. Celestials are about the same size as Nords but they have hollow bones which makes them much lighter and slimmer. Also, their impressibe wingspan makes them look bigger than they actually are. Ogres are absolutely huge in this setting.

In the comments section of Part 4, Treylot mentioned that the Celestials came out to be rather one dimensional. This is absolutely true. I guess I was focused on making them the antagonists of the setting, forgetting to throw in at least a little bit of nuance and variety… Which is kinda terrible, because adding nuance and variety to standard fantasy tropes was basically the whole point of this project. So I decided to create a short addendum to their entry here.

Celestials: Adendum

The King of Kings and his Spire Lords are often viewed as overbearing despots, and ruthless tyrants. There is however a reason for the iron fist rule. Within the King’s Spire, the King himself is often referred to as the Keeper of Secrets. At the center of his palace there is a library, cared for by a caste of Librarians. The Librarians have their wings removed at birth, and their eyes replaced with enchanted glass orbs which give them approximation of sight, but make it impossible for them to read the books they protect and maintain. Chosen few are spared their eyesight and are designated as scribes, though they are sworn to secrecy and have their tongues removed so that they cannot relay the secrets they transcribe to other librarians.

Inside the library there is a Forbidden Chamber with seven obsidian doors. The king wears a necklace with ten golden keys. Seven of these open the doors leading to the chamber. Within it, there are two chairs and a simple table. Upon it there are two books, both fashioned with golden locks and opened with remaining two keys from the necklace. The larger book is known as The Forbidden Tome and it’s contents are only know to the current reigning monarch. The smaller book is The Book of Secrets and it contains knowledge that every Spire Lord must know before taking his Throne in the Gardens.

When a new Spire Lord is appointed, the king takes him into the Forbidden Chamber and gives him the smaller book to read. The king waits patiently, and answers any questions the Spire Lord may have regarding the text. Not much is known about the exact contents of the book, but many Spire Lords have gone mad after reading it. It is said to contain terrible truths about the nature of the Celestials and their purpose on the island. Many Spire Lords who have been Knockers, break ties with the secret society and become loyalists after the initiation.

Spire Lord after reading the Book of Secrets

There are many stories told about the secrets within the book, but the most common version holds that it warns Celestials about primordial evil sunken deep beneath the island. The two islands are supposed to be tips of the toes of a sunken god who is older than time itself, and who will one day awaken to devour the sun and the sky. The Celestials build their spires all over the world in a pattern that will one day be used in a magical ritual that will crack the world in half and make the sunken god fall into the abyss below. Celesitals are heavenly beings sent to destroy the world, so that the sun and the stars (from where they came, but where they can never return) can be spared. King of Kings and his Spire Lords know that the world will be destroyed one way or the other, but they wish to at least save the heavens. The general population is spared this knowledge out of mercy.

Whether or not this is the exact content of the book is unknown, but it is the version corroborated both by the Followers and the Seekers.

Most Celestials live either in the Spires themselves, or around them under the rule of Spire Lords. Some however choose an alternate lifestyle. In the Northen part of the Kingdom there is an ancient tree city Ma-Kaw which used to be the largest settlement of the Ravenkin on the island before the arrival of the colonial forces. Today it is home to a small sect known as The Followers of the Council of Four.

Long after the ethnic purges that destroyed the Ravenkin civilization, descendants of the Celestial colonists rediscovered Ma-Kaw and became enamored with the long forgotten culture. They have recognized the bird people of the island as their kin, and come to regret what their ancestors did to them. They have re-built and re-settled the city modifying it to fit their own needs, but kept most of the architectural style the same. They have kept the ancient name, but also dubbed it The Free City or the Forest Kingdom.

The followers appropriated many customs and traditions from the ancient Ravenkin culture considering that way of life to be more in touch with nature, and the spirit of the island. They wear traditional Ravenkin jewelry and paint the markings of the original sixteen tribes on their skin as ornaments. They consider themselves an autonomous province within the Kingdom and they refuse to swear allegiance to any of the local Spire Lords. They are technically still subjects of the “Mad King” as they call every subsequent monarch, but they recognize only the rule of the Council of Four.

Each of the councilors (known as the Four Sages) wears one of the sacred masks which was created by the head shamans of the four largest Ravenkin tribes and given to the Celestials as a sign of friendship upon their arrival. Each of these masks has been imbued with ancient magic.

Sacred Masks of the Circle of Four

The first of the masks is always a little bit moldy and it gives the wearer powers of decay and destruction. The second mask sprouts flowers and grants powers of growth and rejuvenation. The third mask is covered with moss and gives the wearer power of control over ordinary (as in non-Blackwood trees) and ability to communicate with Dryads. The fourth mask is covered with small mushrooms and gives the wearer power over visions and mind control abilities.

Additionally, when all four masks are used together, the third eye on each opens up, allowing the wearers to gaze back into the past, or forward into the future. The prophecies of the Council are not always accurate, but they come true more often than not. The council functions as an Oracle for the Celestial people and even the Spire Lords have been known to seek its advice.

The Council does not give it’s prophecies for free. The price for asking the council a question about the future or the past is a favor that must be fulfilled. The favor can be any request, and one must agree to it before receiving the prophecy, but the Council may choose to defer specifying their prince until a later time. Failing to fulfill one’s end of the bargain typically nullifies the prophecy and bars one from asking the Council any questions in the future.

A Follower with Tribal markings.

The population of Ma-Kaw is small, and has abolished the caste system in lieu of a tribal society roughly based on appropriated and modified customs of the ancient Ravenkin society. Each of the four sages functions as a leader of one of the four ancient tribes that created the masks: The Moulder Tribe, The Springfeather Tribe, The Mossbane Tribe and The Madcap Tribe. Most of the residents of the city belong to one of these four major tribes and swear allegiance directly to one of the sages. The rest of the population belongs to one of the remaining twelve ancient tribes which democratically pick their own leaders by popular vote. Only eight of these minor tribes have more than a hundred members at any given time. Smaller tribes arise and vanish within a few generations and many tribal markings have been unused for decades.

Even though the traditional caste system is not in effect the society is still very much segregated. When the Ma-Kaw was colonized and the tribal structure was established the Unclean were funneled into three minor tribes: Thistletorn, Blueleaf and Halfpine. Subsequently, rules were established that prohibit intermarriage to prevent them from proliferating to other tribes. While this setup does give them more say over their destiny, they are still disenfranchised group among the free people of Ma-Kaw.

The Forest City is governed by the Council of Four but major decisions require all tribes to vote. The leader of each tribe (regardless of its size) has a single vote, but traditionally the Sages of the council have four votes each so that they can overrule the tribal majority if they wish to do so. This gives sixteen votes to the council, nine to the minor tribes and three to the Unclean tribes creating a rather lopsided pseudo democracy ruled by a tribal oligarchy.

The mainstream Celestials consider Followers to be savages because they live on the verge of poverty, do not respect the caste system and do not keep slaves. The Ravenkin hate them with a passion for stealing, appropriating and perverting their ancient culture, and squatting in the finest of their ancient cities. To add insult to the injury, no Ravenkin are permitted to enter the Free City. The Followers consider them to be fallen people who dishonored themselves and turned away from the ancient ways, and thus unfit to live in the lands of the ancients. They consider themselves to be more fitting heirs of the old culture and magic.

Most Followers live within the Free City, but they have recently started establishing small satellite communities in other parts of the Kingdom. It is not uncommon for tribals to temporarily enter the service of Spire Lords for the purpose of “networking” with the Spire Dwellers and developing trade relationships for their people. Their numbers are slowly growing, and some say the Council has accumulated so many favors it technically has more power than the King himself. They are also said to know all the secrets from the Forbidden Library having gazed both into the past and the future.

The King of Kings seems to tolerate the existence and proliferation of the tribal culture. Some say he values the utility of the Council as a reliable Oracle that can be used to peer into the future. Others say that King’s Spire owes the Council enough favors to ensure their continual existence for centuries to come.

There exist Celestials reject the regimented and orderly life of the Spires, or the tribal, tree dwelling ways of the Followers. They are known as The Seekers of Truth. Their society was founded by a nihilistic, traitorous Spire Lord Harkon who went mad after his initiation, became a renegade and told the secret of the Sunken God to anyone who would listen. He was hunted down and executed for treason, but not before his message has spread throughout the Kingdom. Many written of his message as ravings of a lunatic, but many believed in it despite it being suppressed by the Spire Lords. The Knockers were instrumental in spreading this heresy throughout all the spires hoping it would help them to incite a revolt.

The revolution never came, but Harkon’s gospel gained a cult following. Many Watchers and Unclean satisfied with their lot in life have left the spires and established their own communal settlements by burrowing deep into the ground to be closer to the slumbering god, as proscribed by the mad Spire Lord.

Seeker of Truth

On the surface, Seekers are a nihilistic death cult. They seek to awaken the Sunken God so that he can destroy the heavens. They count themselves blessed as they will be devoured first, and they will not have to witness the end of the universe. They practice live sacrifice using animals, and sometimes sentient volunteers hoping it will please the slumbering deity and gain them their favor. The cult looks pretty bad from the outside, which is why it was disavowed by the Knockers (who no longer disseminate Harkon’s writings). The King of Kings denies existence of the cult and Spire Lords are ordered to ignore the Seekers if possible to avoid giving them any attention. Despite the official denials and information suppression the existence of the cult is probably the worst kept secret of the Celestial Kingdom. The denizens of the King’s Spire often whisper that Harkon’s treason has been foretold in the Forbidden Book and that the Seeker cult has it’s role to play in the Grand Plan. Others say that it is a symptom of the infinite mercy of the Celestial kings to allow their people to choose sides in the grand conflict: they can live a regimented life of blissful and willing ignorance within the spires, or seek truth in the underworld.

Despite being a death cult, Seekers offer something to their members that cannot find anywhere else in the kingdom: a semblance of democracy and equality. Their communities have been established by, and are usually composed mostly of lower caste Celestials who resent and refuse to continue the oppression inherent in the caste system. Each commune is self-governing society with it’s own rules, customs and traditions allowing the members to self-determine and choose their own way of life. The Seeker societies typically have better conditions and opportunities for lower caste women than any other Celestial societies. They also care for the flightless, disabled and infirm and consider them valued and productive members of the society. Many communes have chosen Unclean women, or flightless former slaves as their Head Priests and Priestesses.

Most Seeker communes are open and welcoming to everyone wishing to learn the secret of the island and join them in the worship of the Sunken God. Knockers often use them as a refuge when their cover has been blown and they have to flee from the Spires. Seekers also frequently provide shelter to escaped slaves (though they are wary of non-Celestials in their midst). Many of their underground dwellings have schools, libraries, hospitals and even mental health facilities. As death cultists go they are pretty nice people, at least compared to Spire Dwellers or Followers.

Between the Spires, the Tree Cities and the Caves of the seekers thread the Celestial Blood Mages. No one really knows where they came from. Some say they have arrived to the island from elsewhere along with all the other Celestials. Others say they have developed their brand of magic on the island. Regardless of their origin, they are both feared and admired by all Celestials.

Celestial Blood Mage

Blood Mages have found a secret to longevity and regeneration. Their favorite party trick is ripping off their own wings and regrowing them on the spot. They are virtually immune to pain, and can recover from just about any damage. They can live for centuries without aging. They are virtually immune to fire and fire based magic and have devised extremely potent hypnotic gaze technique which can render a victim helpless and unable to move. They are said to be able to kill with a single word by causing the victims blood to boil. Their arcane blood rituals can bring about plagues, cause storms and the most ancient Blood Mages have been able to temporarily blot out the sun at times.

They are extremely powerful, but their magic is fueled by blood of sentient beings (preferably Celestials) and they require it in vast quantities. Younger Blood Mages typically drink it instead of taking regular food. Those who have lived for a few centuries must bathe in it to sustain their youth and power. Because of this peculiar need, most Spire Lords would loathe to have one live in their Spire. Both Seekers and Followers are very wary of them. Thus Blood Mages tend to be loners, traveling from place to place and never staying too long at one location.

To support their super-charged biology Blood Mages enter a comatose state known as torpor every night. It is a form of deep sleep from which they cannot be roused, which lasts roughly eight to twelve hours. During that time the blood magic courses throughout their body rejuvenating it. Failing to enter the torpor state tends to have adverse effects, as the enchanted blood in their veins starts to boil and cause internal hemorrhages. As a result Blood Makes are rarely seen after dusk.

Blood magic is not illegal, and it’s practitioners are typically considered to be very entertaining guests and powerful allies. Their experience and wisdom gathered over many centuries of life is valued by Spire Lords, Seeker High Priests and tribe leaders. They often get invited to Garden parties, tribal celebrations at Ma-Kaw or religious ceremonies at Seeker communes. But they can overstay their welcome pretty quickly.

It is not known how many of them exists. According to official tallies maintained by the King’s Spire there are less than a hundred of them remains. According to Seeker legends however, somewhere out there exists a city full of Blood Mages and slaves used to feed their insatiable appetite for blood.

Blood Mages can easily pass for regular Celestials. They are typically upper caste, though there exist Watcher and Unclean practitioners as well. Some live in the Spires or among Seekers practice the blood magic in secret feeding from willing subjects when possible. However because their thirst grows over time, it is often difficult for them to find enough supply of fresh blood over long periods of time. In desperation, some Blood Mages turn to kidnapping or murder to secure their blood supply. While the practicing of Blood Magic is not illegal, it is frowned upon because it can lead to some heinous crimes. Spire Lords do not tolerate unsanctioned murder on their territory, and Seekers consider blood that is not shed on an altar to be wasted so they typically banish Blood Mages from their societies if they are revealed. The Council of Four however does tolerate a few Blood Mages in their city as long as they owe them favors.

Undead: Corpsevine

Most sentient races on Raven Islands cremate their dead. The two exceptions include the Centaurs who rarely ever die (and when they do, their corpses grow into Blackwood trees) and Gnomes whose alien biology makes their bodies decompose differently than for other races. Everyone else however is vulnerable to a parasite known as the Corpsevine.

This plant life form seems to be native to the islands, and spread through microscopic spores carried by the wind. It is virtually impossible to spend a spring anywhere in the vicinity of the islands without inhaling the spores. They become lodged in your lungs, and they typically remain dormant until you die.

If a body is left to rot, the Corpsevine sprouts, and grows rapidly from within the lungs, bursts from the chest cavity and envelops the entire body to create what is known as the Corpsevine Walker:

Corpsevine Walker

Corpsevine Walkers are plant based zombies. Their single instinct is to seek out sentient beings who might carry more Corpsevine spores and kill them creating more walkers. Each walker continuously produces and spreads a slimy substance known as Corpsevine Mold as it hunts. The mold attaches itself to all available surfaces, grows and produces spores thus closing the Corpsevine life cycle.

The inhabitants of the islands have been trying to eradicate this menace for centuries, but even as mall patch of mold can produce enough spores to infect the local populations for miles in every direction under the right wind conditions. Similarly a single walker wandering through the woods can produce enough mold patches to restart the epidemic.

There is no known cure, and there seem to be no adverse effect of carrying the Corpsevine spores while alive so the locals simply grew accustomed to an occasional Walker outbreak. This happens especially often after big battles, or natural disasters that kill more people the locals are able to burn on funeral pyres before the vine starts to grow.

Corpsevine Walker in an advanced stage.

The Corpsevine Walkers are slow, ponderous and unintelligent. The leaves sprouting from the vines that envelop the necrotic flesh act as photo receptors giving the creatures a 360 degree field of vision. Their floral leaf eyes however are not very good at recognizing detail. The walkers are attracted to movement – especially the upright bipedal gait of sentient creatures. It is possible to avoid them by staying completely still, or by scurrying on all fours like a wild animal (though the later is more risky than the former).

They are completely deaf, but the vine tendrils have decent sense of touch and/or taste and the older walkers can often track their pray by taste, probing the ground and surroundings with their vines.

The only sure way to kill Corpsevine Walkers is to set them on fire. That said, they don’t burn easily – the vines are damp, and have usually get singed rather than catch flame. The vines always grow from within the body, so even if the body is badly burned, the vines can typically re-grow to a walking mass within days. The creatures usually need to be doused with blamable chemicals or magic to ensure they burn to a crisp and won’t rise again. Hacking Walkers apart is usually not recommended because severed vine tendrils can crawl on their own for days after they are severed from the main corpus. When disconnected from the Walker they have a tendency to wrap around limbs of the attacker, and shred exposed flesh with their thorns causing deep gauges that bleed profusely and typically get badly infected.

Most of the time Walker outbreaks can be easily controlled by corralling the creatures into enclosed pens and setting them on fire. Every once in a while, however, a Corpsevine Ogre shows up and ruins everyone’s day.

Sea Nymphs

Sea Nymphs, also known as sirens are aquatic sentients who live out in the deep seas surrounding the Raven islands. Some say they are descendants of Armadans who loved the sea so much they decided to live in it. Other, possibly more accurate theory states that Armadans might be distant descendants of Sea Nymphs who choose to walk on the land. In either case the two races have shared history.

Most Armadan legends include Sirens as allies, guides or sometimes antagonists. The surviving records written by the forefathers who founded the Capitol mention Sea Nymphs swimming alongside their ships and singing songs during the long journey from the (now forgotten) Armadan homeland. Armadan nobles have Siren in their crests, and adorn the prows of their ships with their likeness. When the Armadans stopped sailing the wide seas and built the Capitol the friendship between the two races seem to have ended. Old sailors like to say that the Sirens resented the founding fathers for forsaking the ocean for dry land. There might however be more sinister reason for this rift.

Sirens do not usually go near the Raven Island or the South Island. Sometimes their bodies wash ashore after big storms, but live specimens are almost never seen along the major trade routes, or within the Armadan Archipelago. But as soon as a ship sails far out enough into the sea to lose sight of the islands, they appear in swarms demanding to be paid a toll for passage over their domain.

Sea Nymph

Their upper bodies are remarkably human if you discount webbed hands with short barbed claws and needle point teeth arranged win many rows within their mouths. They have black-in-black eyes just like Armadans, though their skin is typically very pale and covered with a layer of slime. Their voices are inhuman and nearly impossible to describe and their vocal range extends far beyond what can be registered by human ears. They can perfectly mimic most sounds they hear, including languages of humans and other races. They often repeat words, sentences or make their own nonsensical sayings without understanding the context. Despite being able to mimic it, most sirens do not understand languages and dialects spoken on the islands. Number of them do learn one or more sentient languages, and they are usually the ones who negotiate with ship captains.

Their lower bodies are a whirling mass or fleshy, barbed tentacles which they can use both for swimming and for crawling. If a ship fails to pay their passage toll in gold, precious gems or other valuables Sirens deem acceptable they’ve been known to swarm up onto decks and slaughter the crews with their bone scimitars, claws and tentacles. They usually wear no clothes, but they’ve been observed to enjoy jewelry. Some carry leather pouches where they stow their equipment.

Little is known about their society, but it seems to be mostly matriarchal. Men are rarely seen participating in the piratical enterprise and toll taking. By studying shored bodies of Sirens, scholars determined that much like some species of sea-horses, it is Sea Nymph males who carry children to term within. Unlike sea horses, the Siren males also seem to take care of the children and are responsible for their education.

Deceased Sea Nymph’s body taken aboard to be studied by scholars.

It is said that they have sprawling underwater cities in the coral reefs surrounding the islands, though no air-breathing outsiders have ever seen them. The chief city in the region is located somewhere in the North West and when the Nymphs choose to transliterate it to Armadan tongue as a number four hundred and four. Some theorize that Sirens number their cities in a series instead of naming them, though more popular theory is that the city was initially a military post. This theory is supported by the fact that the leader of said city bears a title of Supreme Guardian and Gatekeeper which seem to be used interchangeably.

The citizens of City 404 and it’s many satellites arranged in a wide ring around the archipelago seem to be a society that has splintered off from a larger empire. The city itself might have been built here to guard something, but over the centuries it was forgotten. The soldiers settled down, had children who became natives and so on. Today the Sirens still keep some of the ancient names and titles though they no longer seem to have a clear mission. Unless of course that mission is taxing the trade routes in and out of Raven islands and inspecting cargo of outgoing ships looking for… Well, no one knows what they look for, but when a ship sets out into the wide oceans Sirens always insist to have their Shaman check for “contraband” though no one really knows what it could be, and what would happen if they found any.

It is unknown how many of them live in the city and the satellite towns but most estimates suggest the Sirens might outnumber all sentient inhabitants of Raven Islands. They could easily take over and tax all the internal trade routes between the big islands and the archipelago if they wanted to but they never do. They keep to the reefs, and posts many miles from the shores. It is as if something was stopping them. Regardless of risks and rewards, they almost never cross into the Shallow Seas of the Archipelago. It is as if there was something there, in the depths that frightened them. Or perhaps that’s what they were sent to guard here in the first place.

Dryads

Dryads are said to be the original inhabitant of Raven Island. Long before Ravenkin and Centaurs have built their first settlements, the Tree Spirits walked the land. While sentient and self aware, they are more of a force of nature than a civilization. Under ideal conditions Dryads stay dormant and incorporeal, their essence attached to ancient trees at the heart of forests. They represent the will of the woods and act as a defense mechanism when the island’s flora is threatened. When angered they envelop themselves in hard, hulking bodies made out of tree bark, stumps and branches. Those manifestations are typically referred to as Ents or Treemen.

Dryad manifesting as a Treeman

Outside Raven Island those manifestations are extremely rare. South Islanders and inhabitants of smaller islands can live their entire lives without even realizing Dryads exist. But they are common sight in Empire, Orzimar and Land of Hob. There, Ents can be seen walking many miles with purpose and determination. They are frequently spotted outside of the wooded areas, and some even cut through civilized settlements, though they rarely interact with other races. They appear to be disinterested in the affairs of mortals, and have more important business to attend.

Frequently they are seen congregating in groups of five or ten in open fields. Their language is silent, and incomprehensible to other races but they seem to have discussions or debates of some sort. They are organizing, marshaling their forces and taking up strategic positions as if they were gearing up for war. With whom, however, remains a mystery. Ents don’t seem to be very interested in fighting the sentient races of the island or even retaking their lands. They are rarely violent, unless provoked. Even when they resort to violence, they seem to loathe to take lives of sentient beings.

Ogres like to test their strength by picking fights with common Orzimarian Dryad variant known as the Oak Brute. These creatures are medium sized (as compared to their brethren) but typically stand taller than Ogres and their bodies are made out of thick, heavy oak wood. They are slow moving, and lethargic most of the time, but incredibly strong. The thick branches they use for limbs can easily crush Ogre skull in one swift blow, but they tend to patiently and almost tenderly swat away young Ogres until they get tired.

Oak Brutes

Scholars and nature mages have been trying to figure out what is making the Dryads stir, and muster for war. So far there has been little success, because their minds and their language are incomprehensible to mortals. Ents do not seem to seem to understand vocalized languages, and they are unaware when sentient try to communicate with them. Their thoughts are slow, and flow in strange ways: they think and talk in symbols and references that rarely make sense. This makes even magical communication difficult.

So far, available literature suggests that Ents are concerned with some sort of a magical “plague”, epidemic or outbreak. The island is sick, because of something alien and incomprehensibly evil has took root there. Some scholars argue that the Dryads are concerned with Corpsevine, but they never seem to react to Walkers. In fact, many Ents are infected with Corpsevine mold and think nothing of it. Others claim they are concerned with Unicorn visitors, though Horned Sages have been seen peacefully studying Oak Brutes. Some literature suggests that Ents have been awoken when Gnomes arrived from another plane of existence, though evidence seems to point to the contrary. The Dryads of South Island are mostly dormant, whereas on Raven Island they walk.

A controversial theory that is quickly gaining popularity is that Ents do not like Blackwood trees. There are no forest spirits within the Black Forest as the trees there seem to form a much stranger, gestalt like consciousness that is very different from that of Dryad minds. Ents are frequently seen patrolling around Blackwood Tree copses but never go near them. They also seem to react aggressively to very old Centaur Elders who venture outside of the Black Forest. They typically do not attack them, but they will follow them around and make sudden, aggressive motions attempting to intimidate and threaten. Few elders traveling alone have even been attacked, and savagely beaten by irritated Oak Brutes.

What is wrong with Blackwood Trees that they upset the forest spirits of the island? No one knows. The healing trees have been on the island for centuries, and proved to be nothing but helpful and beneficial to the locals. Perhaps the unrest among the Dryads is simply the islands’ natural defense mechanism towards new forms of life and it will die down eventually. Or maybe one day Ents will decide to march on Black Forest and start uprooting the magical trees. That remains to be seen.

Unicorns

Unicorns, also known as the Grays or Horned Ones are a bit of a legend on Raven Islands. Everyone knows someone who has seen them, though officially they are considered a folk tale. There is very little evidence that they exist, save for few artifacts of questionable origin, and unreliable first hand accounts. These tales are usually dismissed by serious scholars, though few note that the descriptions of Unicorns and their fabulous airships seem to be remarkably consistent across different cultures.

Those who have seen their ships, describe them as incredibly complex dirigibles powered by clockwork mechanisms and steam. They are supposedly above and beyond anything that was ever made by the Elves and the Windups, and capable of sailing through the skies all the way up to the third moon (the green one) which is supposedly their homeland.

Unicorn Airship

Each ship allegedly carries a Horned Sage and a regiment of Gray Warriors who protect him… Or her. Virtually nothing is know about the way they reproduce. Whether or not they are sexually dimorphic at all is unknown. Most of the witnesses who claim to have encountered them seemed to be unable to guess their genders.

They are most commonly described as large, almost Ogre sized bipedal creatures with elongated faces and a huge horn protruding from where their nose should be. They all seem to speak with deep, resonant, alien voices and both sages and warriors have similarly thick gray skin and, bulky, muscular build.

A Horned Sage

Sages seem to be rather powerful mages, but their primary vocation seems to be that of a scholar. They are frequently seen observing the nature of the Raven Island through looking glasses, taking samples, making measurements and writing down observations on tablets made from unknown materials. They seem to be especially fascinated with Blackwood Trees (but then again, everyone is) and Gnomes. In fact, many Gnomes claim that every year a number of living and Immortals goes missing due to Horned One abductions. Gnoblars have similar stories about having their individual members snatched by hulking horned beasts traveling in air ships. None of the supposed abductees has ever returned to corroborate on these stories.

Horned Sage with Plate Array System

One of the artifacts most commonly linked to the Unicorns are so called Plate Arrays – a circular formations composed of golden or metallic plates. Horned Sages allegedly use them in their magical rituals, and studies. They have been found in many different regions of the island, however there is nothing remarkable both in the formations and in the plates themselves. The artifacts are perfectly ordinary, non-magical and made from materials that can be found in the islands. They are typically hand polished and bear no symbols or markings that could help to identify their origin. Anyone with enough gold, bronze or iron and enough time can easily reproduce these arrangements, thus most scholars consider them to be hoaxes perpetuated by locals.

The Gray Warriors are described as wearing ornate heavy armor and using halberds or maces. They are supposed to be slightly shorter than ogres when staining upright but about as bulky. The seem to be aggressive, though not terribly violent. Their main concern seems to be the safety of the sage and they will not allow anyone to disturb his research. They tolerate observers as long as they keep their distance. If one starts approaching the Sage the warriors will usually move to intercept and attempt intimidation (growling, shaking weapons, shoving) before resorting to deadly force. When they do get into a fight, they seem to be deadly efficient.

Gray Warrior with Halberd

While Ogres typically rely on brute strength, Gray Warriors seem to prefer trained accuracy. They are meticulous, very disciplined and very focused when fighting. The put safety of the Sage and of their comrades above honor or glory. When facing overwhelming odds they usually retreat to the airship and fly away.

When killed, their bodies are said to decompose and dissolve leaving no discernible skeleton. This makes them immune to Corpsevine but also leaves little to no physical evidence of their existence. There exist several dubious and often discredited accounts that describe studies made on Gray Warriors who have been captured alive. Supposedly all of them died in captivity within days. Reason of death was usually starvation as they were either unable to or unwilling to eat any food they were given.

So far no one has been able to communicate with them. Those among Seekers of Truth who acknowledge their existence think they came to the islands for the same reason as the ancestors of Celestials did: to study and possibly worship the Sunken God.

Apendix

I hate the idea of a “Common” language spoken by everyone in a given fantasy setting. It is convenient, but at the same time kinda silly, so I figured it would be nice to do a quick overview of all the different languages spoken on the island:

1. Imperial – spoken within the Third Empire. The language has evolved from Old Imperial which is now only known by select few history scholars who study ancient texts (much like Old English today). The dialect spoken at the Imperial Palace is known as High Imperial and is considered to be distinguished and formal. There also exist the Norsk Dialect spoken in the northern provinces which uses a lot of Nord loan words and has different inflections, and Coastal Dialect which has Armadan influences.

   Imperial uses two written alphabets. The traditional script is used for official calligraphy, and documents. It is very ornate and is traditionally written in vertical columns from right to left. The simplified script is used by scribes to take long-hand notes and it reduces the traditional glyphs to simplistic strokes, offering form over function.

2. Nordic – spoken mostly in the North End and parts of Empire. It uses a rather distinctive and ornate, right to left script. The writing style is often described as “winding dragon tails”.

3. Orisian – is the official language of Orizmar. It uses a left to right script derived from ancient stone carving alphabet, and uses very simplistic runic glyphs. It is the official language of the temple. Fire-bloods speak heavily inflected dialect sometimes called the Ors’a Dialect after the way they pronounce the word Orisian.

4. Tork – also known as the Old Tongue is spoken by Gray Orcs and Ogres. It is linked to the old polytheistic Orc religion. It does not have a script, but because it actually used a subset of Orisian phonemes it can be written using the Orisian runic alphabet.

5. Klaptrap – is the official language of the Land of Hob. It is considered to be one of the easiest languages to learn as it has very simple grammar rules and only 16 phonemes, each represented by a simple alphabetic glyphs most of which can be written using two or three simple strokes. It is commonly spoken in Gnoblar Territories and in Southern Empire. Lower class Imperial youth often use it as a slang, or learn it as form of empowerment. Most Ravenkin are fluent in Klaptrap, though their first language often depends on the region. Klaptrap has also been adopted as primary language by many tribes of Savage Dwarfs, though few still cling to their ancient Ufdak (which seems to be a heavily simplified and mutated Zhuf-Darma-Rak argot).

6. Treesong – the native Centaur language. It is typically not taught to outsiders. Most Centaurs are also fluent in Klaptrap, and they use Klaptrap alphabet to write in Treesong.

7. Armadan – the Armadan proper is spoken in Capitol and only in Capitol. It uses an ornate, complex horizontal left to right script. The inhabitants of archipelago use a bastardized argot known as Trade. This dialect started as a sailor slang, but later became a conscious effort to streamline the arcane Armadan tongue and make it easier to teach to foreign trade partners. The grammar rules were simplified down to bare minimum, and the original script was replaced with simpler and more commonly recognized Klaptrap alphabet. It prioritizes function over form, and while it is easy to learn it is not sophisticated. Unlike Klaptrap which can be used to write poems or epic heroic sagas, Trade almost purely functional.

8. Goldleaf – spoken by deep elves. It can be written down using the elaborate cursive, left to right traditional script elves reffer to as Throughtflow or using the Zhuf-Darma-Rak type script based on Ancient Dwarf language. The second method uses abridged version of the alphabet, without many guttural phonemes and sharp sounds absent from Goldleaf.

9. Klang – spoken by Windups and virtually impossible to learn by outsiders because it employs sounds made by their metallic mouths clanging together. It allows maximum data transmission rate between individuals without actually exchanging memory tapes. Most Windups are also fluent in Klaptrap or Goldleaf.

10. Celestial – spoken almost exclusively by Celestials and rarely taught to outsiders. The Spire dialect is the dominant one spoken both in the mainstream society and among the Seekers who simply added few slang terms. The inhabitants of Ma-Kaw have a distinct accent but their dialect has not diverged much from the official language. Celestials are notable for having a number of secret languages, such as the Knocker Code and the Guldur Tongue, the secret code of Blood Mages.

    Many lower caste Celestials are required to learn Klaptrap or Trade in order to communicate with the slaves or rely orders to conquered people.

11. Gnomish – spoken by the Gnomes of South Island and understood by their Golems. It is almost the exact opposite of Klaptrap – a complex, nuanced language that is dense and difficult to learn. Whereas Klaptrap can be picked up in a manner of days or weeks, Gnomish tends to take years to perfect. Many gnomes are fluent in Armadan propper and Trade. When they forged alliance with Celestials they were allowed to learn their language. While not many Gnomes still speak it, the South Island is the best place to learn that tongue and the have a largest collection of Celestial texts outside of the Spires.

A common Lingua Franca does not exist though the general rule of thumb is that all sailors should know Trade. Even though Orzimar and Empire and the dominant powers on the island, their languages tend to be to complex to learn. When humans and Orcs interact with other races, Klaptrap tends to be the language spoken most often.

Guys, it is time to start wrapping up the Ravenflight series. Here are the three final races: Centaurs, Gnomes and the Celestials. They are all markedly different. Centaurs are mostly good guys and kinda awesome. Gnomes are neutral but strange, alien and not very much liked. They do questionable things, but there is a reason for it. Celestials look like angels but are pure condensed evil. But I didn’t just want to say “these guys are Lawful Evil™” because that’s how their brains work. I don’t like that. It is not that their race is evil. I think that any race has capacity for evil. What makes them evil is the way their society and culture is set up. They are evil, but they have capacity to be good. In fact individual Celestials might actually be OK dudes. But they live in a very fucked up society.

Centaurs

Like Ravenkin, the Centaurs of Black Forest are indigenous to the islands. They have been tending their forest dwellings for many centuries, and have successfully fended off all of the Celestial incursions into their domain with a combination of fearsome martial powers, magic and uncanny connection to the forests themselves. When the Centaurs go to battle, the Blackwood trees seem to fight with them, shifting, bending and snaring the enemies with their roots and branches.

Black Forest Centaur

When talking about Centaurs, one has to briefly discuss the Blackwood Trees which are unique to the island, and have innate magical resonance. Most mages who see the Black Forest for the first time describe it as a swirling vortex of magical power, with every tree being a small focal point that pulses with magic. The entire forest seems to be breathing magical energy in and out like a living thing. The trees seem to be semi-aware of their environment, and seem to be able to channel this magic in a limited way to move their branches and roots into more advantageous positions, often re-locating entire copses and re-shaping the terrain. Those who are foolish enough to travel through the forest are bound to get lost as it shifts around them.

The wood of the trees is said to be as hard as iron, and can only be cut with Elven mithril, or the Volcanic Steel produced by the Clockwork Domminion, though centaurs seem to know how to enchant bone daggers in such a way that lets them penetrate the bark and extract the tree sap. The sap is known to have potent healing properties which Centaurs use to tend their wounds and extend their lifespan.

No one really knows how long Centaurs are supposed to live, because eating the fruits of the tree and using the sap as an ointment seems to prolog their life indefinitely. That said, it also seems to change them quite drastically over the years. Most members of the species are born with blueish or tan skin, and a set of horns that grow throughout their lifetime. However ingesting the products of the tree seems to slowly tint their skin green, and cause small floral growths sprout out of their skin. These growths seem to be perfectly symbiotic and they actually make their host stronger. They share the products of their photosynthesis with the host, allowing him to grow larger and stronger, and eventually start to circulate something akin to the Blackwood Tree sap through their body giving them regenerative powers.

Centaur Elders grow to be hulking giants, taller and much stronger than Ogres.

The longer the individual lives, the larger he becomes. The Centaurs that are centuries old are usually refereed to as Elders and they are hulking giants, tallest of whom can actually see above the tree-line when they rear-up on their hind legs. The transformation however also makes them more sluggish and lazy. The oldest centaurs tend to find nice, peaceful glades in which they curl up and slumber for months or years. Some hill formations within the forest are actually known to be ancient Elders who have been comatose for so long they have become a permanent part of the forest.

Centaurs view the trees as an integral part of their life cycle. They play a major role in their rituals, their medicine and function as one of the fundamental staples of their diet. They are also revered as a source of magical and mystical powers. They are not as much worshiped, as held in deep respect and reverence. They are central to the Centaur lifestyle, and without them there would be no Centaurs. They would have been either wiped out or subjugated by the Celestials many centuries ago. They are bound to the trees, and the trees seem to be bound to them. It is said that when a centaur dies a Blackwood Tree copse will eventually grow in the spot where their body fell to the ground. The Raven Island is actually littered with many such small copses.

Most copses are tended to by the order of Clerics. Depending on the size of the copse there could be one or more Clerics present. They are not necessarily protectors of the trees but more of an order of gardeners. They will often sell or trade branches or even saplings of their trees to outsiders in exchange for goods and services. Also, unlike their Black Forest brethren they actually are very eager to help others, be it the locals or travelers. Their doctrine seems to emphasize non-violence. Thus Blackwood copses often function as makeshift hospitals where centaur healers tend to the sick and wounded of any race. This actually seems to be quite effective way of preventing locals from just cutting down all the trees altogether. Most rulers consider it to be more beneficial to have a renewable and steady supply of the wood and magical healing sap available for trade on their territory.

Centaur Cleric

Among the Centaurs joining the order of Clerics is known as “donning the white cloth” and it implies leaving the Black Forest and taking vows akin to the Hippocratic oath. It is a noble calling, and the flowers of this doctrine are treated with great respect. They however do not operate within the forest. In the Centaur homeland, healing and magical arts are studied by the Wierdwood Mystics.

Just like the Order of the White Cloth the Mystics tap into the magic of the Blackwood Trees, but they are not bound by oaths of non-violence. Thus they use their magic both for healing and for defense. They seem to be able to control the trees, make them move, shift or even wrap around each other making rain-proof canopies, bridges and other constructs. They are healers, architects and if need be also battle mages.

Wierdwood Mystic

Very little is known about the Centaur culture as it is practiced within the Black Forest. Outsiders are rarely permitted to enter deep into the forest and those who do see the fabulous living dwellings of the centaurs usually learn very little about the inner workings of the Centaur society during their stay. Centaurs are hostile to outsiders, but courteous to their guests, but they rarely involve members of other races in their sacred rituals, or invite them to study their mysteries.

It is known that they organize themselves into tribes known as fellowships. It seems that these groups are organized around sets of common beliefs. Each one has a creed, it’s own code of conduct and privileges. Membership seems to be completely voluntary, and individuals seem to be able to move between them without restrictions. The common thread between them seems to be the idea of sacrifice: members must take some sort of an oath, commit themselves to certain idea or give something up in order to join. Each of the fellowships is typically managed as a small commune in which all members have the right to take part in the decision making process.

It is not uncommon for individuals to get expelled from their fellowships, in which case they may or may not be able to join another one. Those Centaurs who have burnt to many bridges, or those unwilling to make the proper sacrifices in order to become a productive member of the society will often become wanderers and adventurers.

Centaur Wanderer

Those wanderers can be frequently seen traveling throughout the Third Empire, Orzimar and the Land of Hob. They often seek work as trackers, rangers or even mercenaries. Some take up the cloth, and become Clerics. Others make it a point to regularly visit the Blackwood Tree copses to receive their life prolonging sacred rights. Those who fail to do so typically start to slowly age, though their lifespans can vary from few dozen to few hundred years without the renewal rituals.

Sometimes wanderers will band together and create their own fellowships. Some of these are genuine social units, complete with their own code of conduct and a sacrifice. These tend to be orderly, and well organized nomadic tribes and they typically either become hunter-gatherers and traders. Most however tend to be just loose social groups without the underpinning social structure. These are typically known as Centaur Marauders and they are looked down by the mainstream centaur society because they are not “proper” fellowships. The loose social structure of Marauder groups and their “easy” lifestyle typically attracts a specific kind of people and many Marauding groups take to crime: banditry, highway robbery, smuggling and less frequently armed raids on villages and settlements of other races. Their criminal operations which often cause a lot of friction between Centaurs and other races. There however exist Marauder groups uninterested in violence or crime but rather choose Marauding because their ideals do not align with those of the mainstream society.

Centaur Marauders

Most prominent of these is the Mercantile Society which is composed of many loosely connected groups of traders. They subscribe to 80’s style “greed is good” philosophy and they reject the idea of fellowships which share property and resources and the idea of “sacrifice” on principle. Their caravans are a common sight in all the prominent port cities, and they have reputation of being very shrewd and efficient salesmen. They like to identify themselves by wearing red sashes, and gold jewelry.

There also exist marauding hero cults. Every once in a while, a Wanderer gains enough notoriety through their exploits that they gain fans back home. It is not uncommon for young centaurs to leave their homeland and become groupies for a prominent hero forming an ad-hoc marauding unit.

Centaurs have very unique views on sexuality. Unlike many other races they consider romantic love and the biological drive to procreate as two distinct and mostly unrelated things. This is perhaps because procreative sex among centaurs does not offer much in terms of intimacy. Male typically “mounts” the female from behind, and the encounter is typically rather brief and markedly un-romantic. Centaurs however do frequently engage in passionate “face-to-face” sexual activities, but these are usually not part of their procreative rituals.

Centaurs typically mate once a year during Spring Festival when all Fellowships come together, drink, dance and engage in procreative sex. After the festival everyone goes back home, and breeding pairs typically do not interact much. The child stays with the mother and is raised within her Fellowship until it comes of age and can choose to make the sacrifice, or leave the community.

On the other hand, there exist the concept of “soul mates”. Centaurs usually pair up into monogamous, romantic couples who live together, engage in romantic sexual activities, and help each other rise their children, but typically do not procreate. It is considered proper to seek out breeding mates from other fellowships, and romantic partners within your own, which encourages genetic diversity and strong, healthy children. Centaurs do not seem to have a taboo against homosexuality and biological sex does not seem to matter much when it comes to choosing romantic life partners.

Centaurs seem to become infertile after about a century, probably due to the use of Blackwood Tree sap. Elders who start sprouting vines out of their skin typically cannot conceive children. The continuation of the species is therefore completely in the hands of the youth. Young centaurs however frequently do not want to think about having children. Many wish to leave the forest and explore the would for a bit before commuting themselves to a Fellowship. This is one of the biggest issues, and points of concern for Black Forest communities. Each Festival seems to be smaller, and there are less and less children in the Black Forest, and there is nothing the Elders can do about this.

Black Forest Centaurs have rather friendly trade relations with most of their neighbors. They trade with Savage Dwarfs, and they seem to tolerate their presence in the outskirts of the forest (and the Dwarfs seems to have enough common sense not to venture deep into the ever-changing magical wilderness). They also frequently trade with Imperials, Elves and Hoblites. The inhabitants of the Land of Hob tend to be especially interested in the life prolonging properties of the Blackwood Tree sap and fruits. Unfortunately the strange symbiosis that makes Centaurs virtually immortal, seems to be unique to their biology. The sap will heal wounds and cure sickness of just about every race, but only Centaurs seem to sprout vines and leaves due to prolonged use. This of course does not stop Hoblite kings from importing vats of the sap and bathing in it regularly trying in vain to buy themselves few more years of life.

Gnomes

Gnomes are known under many names throughout the land: The Golemists of South Island, The Flesh Dancers, The Cursed, The Damned, The Profane… Most of these are said with a mixture of fear and disgust and deservedly so.

Unlike most other races who have sailed to Raven Islands across the oceans, Gnomes came from beyond. They are descendants of fey who have ripped open the reality itself and poured forth from the lands beyond time. The legend says they were running away from something so terrifying and sinister that they have collapsed their magical portals trapping themselves in this world, rather than having to face it. Being literal aliens from beyond, Gnomes are fail and sickly people. Once immortal they have cut themselves from their source of power, and lost the gift of eternal youth. They age quickly, and few of them live beyond their 50’s. Those who do, are ravaged by allergies and ailments that make life unbearable. After about four to five decades living in the hostile environment their bodies literally starts to slowly rot off their bones and fall apart. While they may still appear youthful to other races, they are usually in excruciating pain most of the time. Because of their alien biology, the Blackwood Tree sap is poisonous to them, and provides them with no healing effects whatsoever. In fact most healing, and life extension spells that work on other races seem to have little to no effect on Gnomes. The only healing magic that seems to work on them is their own, and so far they have been unsuccessful in preventing their bodies from slowly deteriorating over time. Thus it is traditional for most Gnomes to commit a ritual suicide on their fiftieth birthday.

Gnome adventurer.

The Last Day Alive is typically a great celebration. Friends and families gather and have a huge all-day party commemorating the life and accomplishments of their comrade. They all cheer when the 50 year old drinks the traditional poison at sunset, and then take his body to the Golemists to see if he or she can be resurrected as an Immortal.

When Gnomes arrived in this world, they have lost a lot of their magical powers, and they found themselves unable to function in this new world. Their bodies were not designed for this plane of reality and they felt weak and frail. They still have retained the ability to channel magic, and so the have decided to use these powers to make their lives easier. They have quickly realized that they could easily dominate and control local wildlife to do their bidding. One of the oldest professions on South Island is beast mastery. Unlike the Savage Dwarf beast masters whose craft is mostly instinctive and innate, Gnomes have it down to an exact science. They not only can completely dominate animals but have also learned to synergize their abilities. Most Gnome beast masters control multiple animals at the same time, and can use them as extra limbs or weapons.

Gnome Beastmaster

Controlling animals however was not enough. South Island had few large terrestrial beasts that could be used for heavy labor, and even fewer animals had the ability to both lift and manipulate heavy object with any degree of accuracy. Thus Gnomes have turned to the art of Golem making to create artificial laborers and defenders. One of their most famous creations are the Clay Golems – not necessarily because they are the best, but because they provide most utility for the price and effort involved in making them. To create a Clay Golem one only needs some regular mud (doesn’t even have to be proper clay) and a short incantation which will cause it to form into a humanoid shape and give it some remedial intelligence. They typically will follow any orders given to them by a Gnome, though they can be “programmed” to listen only to a specific person, or even to ignore all orders until their assigned tasks are finished.

Clay Golem

When it comes to maintenance, the owner simply has to pour a bucket of water on them from time to time, to prevent the clay from drying out in the sun, and cracking and breaking. Gnomes also make other types of Golems, but the Clay ones are ubiquitous. Iron Golems for example require building and maintaining an armored chassis that is then animated by magic which is rather expensive and time consuming, whereas mud based Golems can be created on the fly without much preparation.

Golems are typically mute, and incapable of responding to questions. They seem to be able to understand basic or even moderately complex commands, and be able to interpret and execute them, but responding simple yes/no questions is typically beyond their grasp. After the assigned task is complete, the Golem will typically just stop and wait for new orders, until he crumbles up and falls apart. This is mostly by design, because Gnomes do not want their magical servants to take initiative or develop sentience of any kind.

One of the most controversial creations of Gnome Golemists are the dreaded flesh golems. The practice of manipulating flesh was developed as an attempt to use golemcraft science to create “better” animals that could be used in regions where clay golems were impractical. The project was a marginal success but it did produce rather fearsome monsters that Gnomes started to use in battle. They have discovered that randomly combining animals could not only produce very efficient killing machines, but also demoralized their enemies. These war-golems have been dubbed “abominations” and became the preferred shock troops in Gnome armies. They are all the more frightening because unlike beasts who snarl and roar, these monsters are completely silent.

Sharkfist Grizzly Abomination

One of the most frightening types of abominations is the Juggernaut construct created by sawing together bodies of dead or dying enemy combatants into a gigantic mound of flesh, often mounted on top of clay based golem feet. These monstrosities are instructed to scream or call out with their many mouths. They typically plead for mercy, or apologize trying to induce pity in the enemies, even as the Juggernaut is attacking.

Flesh Golem Juggernaut

The absolute pinnacle of flesh golem engineering however is the art of reanimation of the dead. Gnomes have figured out how to take a recently deceased person and bring them back to life via a combination of electric shocks, golemic magic and alchemy. While the procedure is imperfect, it does have about 75% success rate meaning that most Gnomes can potentially be brought back to life after they die. This has become part of their tradition and culture. On their fiftieth birthday Gnomes imbibe a poison, and their body is handed over to golemists. It is cleaned up, embalmed, alchemically treated and then re-animated back to life. Those who awake from death on a golemist laboratory slab are known as the Immortals.

Gnome Immortal

Unlike most golems, Immortals appear to be intelligent, aware of their surroundings and they retain the memories of their past life. It is however uncertain whether or not they are fully sentient or if their cognitive processes just an act of mimicry. Immortals certainly behave as if they were in control of their thoughts and actions and had free will and agency but there are those who believe they are merely puppets in the hands of the golemist masters. They cite the fact that the personality of the Gnomes who go through with the ritual changes quite significantly as if their minds were replaced. Immortals themselves usually explain this by pointing out that death is a pretty traumatic experience, and life as a reanimated corpse changes the way you look at things.

Living as an immortal is indeed a rather unique experience. The reanimated do not require food or sleep to function at their peek condition. They feel no pain, and are actually stronger and faster than when they were alive thanks to alchemical treatments which re-invigorates and alters their bodies. Their minds are sharper, and they never experience the fatigue, grogginess and allergic symptoms which tend to plague living Gnomes. There are also downsides. The bodies of the Immortals do not heal in usual ways. While they do not bleed, Immortals can still be wounded and open gashes in their skin will begin to fester, unless closed up by a skilled golemist. Only the best flesh-molders know how to treats wounds without leaving nasty scars, so many older Immortals look very much like Frankenstein’s monster, covered with scars, and with pieces of their body replaced with spare parts from other cadavers. The magical spells that hold their reanimated bodies together tend to wear off over the years and must be renewed. Most Immortals visit a golemist once or twice a decade for that very reason.

Living gnome on the left, Immortal gnome on the right.

Most gnomes have white, pasty skin and spiky ears. The Immortals are typically very pale and their skin has leathery, parchment like texture thanks to the embalming process. Many are covered head to toe with scars, though the wealthier individuals can afford flesh-molding treatments that remove scarring. The hair of living Gnomes is usually brightly colored – typically blonde, bright red, light brown, pink or purple. They typically start going gray in their 20’s or 30’s and many start dying their hair to mask this.

Gnomes have a rather unique anatomy among the sentient races of Raven Islands. They have no belly buttons or genitals, and only one of their three genders develops nipples. The individuals who possess mammary glands and can nurse children actually not capable of getting pregnant. It is not entirely clear how exactly do they reproduce, but it is known that 3 participants are needed in order to conceive. The only description of Gnome mating rituals in Imperial libraries described it as “inconceivably revolting and obscene spectacle of writhing flesh, magical discharges and unearthly singing”.

Adult Gnome with pink hair dye.

Immortals are naturally incapable of reproducing, and death seems to free individuals from marital responsibilities. The three-person marriages in general seem to be rather temporary and tend to be dissolved after giving birth to, and raising children. It is not uncommon for Gnomes to be involved in several relationships at the same time, though this practice is generally frowned upon (though not considered immoral).

The political structure of the South Island harkens back to the ancient times beyond the veil. The Gnomes are ruled by the Two Courts: The Winter Court and the Summer Court, each of which reigns over the entire island for half a year. The Winter Court is in power during the dry season and the Summer Court presides over the rainy season. Both courts are ideologically opposed to each other and are in constant tug of war conflict, each trying to codify their worldview into law. This push and pull is supposed to balance things out. If an active court yields to the desires of the dormant court, it can expect similar concessions later that same year. If it tries to push their agenda too hard, there will be a similar push back from the opposition later.

Each court is composed of the Triumvirate – a three person council which has the executive power and the Members of the Court – a gathering of nobles who have legislative powers. Triumvirate is elected each year from among the Members on the first day the court becomes active. Nobles can hold titles in the Winter Court or the Summer Court but never in both.

The Winter Court rules from the White Peak high up in the Spider Mountains. It was built above the permafrost area specifically so that the members of the court could gaze out the window and see snow, which does not fall anywhere else on the sub-tropical island. The Summer Court resides in the Green Glades in the South-East coastal region of the island which is luscious and extremely beautiful during the rainy season.

The beliefs of each court can be hard to summarize, because they are not single-issue parties, or good/evil type distinctions. In general, the Winter Court is expansionist and xenophobic and seeks to push Armadans off the island and eventually expand the Gnome empire to the archipelago and beyond. Barring that, it seeks to pass separationist policies that will prevent the Gnomes from getting involved in foreign conflicts and limit foreign trade down to minimum. Many members of the court have ties to the Golemist Guild and they are very concerned with the rights and treatement of Immortals. At the moment death strips one of the noble titles and so all Immortals are considered commoners despite of their wealth and/or familial ties to noble houses. They are excluded from participation in the political life, and the Winter Court seeks to change that. One of their most radical idea is breaking up the Members of the Court into a House of Lords and House of Commons which would be open to both commoners and Immortals alike. They are also very pro-industry and want to give more rights to the growing mercantile middle class in the cities, and aid the manufacturing guilds.

Summer Court on the other hand is more friendly to outsiders. They seek peace and trade relations with the Armadans, and want to open up the South Island to immigrants from other races to facilitate trade and cultural exchange. They are very interested in building trade monopolies on exotic goods and services. They are in favor of South Island being an agrarian society ruled by wealthy oligarchy and they seek to minimize the influence of the middle class and the manufacturing guilds. They are tied to the Beastmaster guild and are concerned with the amount of influence the Golemist Guild has over the Winter Court. They consider Immortals to be untrustworthy at best, and mindless puppets controlled by golemists at works. They are opposed to breaking up the courts and letting commoners get involved in politics. They fear that House of Commons would become dominated by ancient immortals tied to the Golemist Guild and Winter Court and thus ruin the balance between the two political organs. They also seek to ban use of flesh golems (especially Juggernauts) which they consider obscene and inhumane.

Celestials

Celestials are the primary antagonists of this setting. They are “classically” beautiful to look at, but other than that they have very few redeemable qualities. Many races consider Gnomes to be strange because of their obsession with death and their flesh golems, but Celestials go beyond that. They are almost universally hated. At one point or another, they have been at war an tried to exterminate just about every race on the islands. This is what they look like:

Celestial

Most of the Celestials you will see out and about in the world look like white, blue eyed, blond haired angels with white wings. These are the members of the highest social caste of the race and they call themselves as simply the Celestials and they live atop of gigantic white spires scattered throughout the kingdom. Each of the spires reaches high above the clouds, and has no stairs, ladders or any other climbing implements. The only way to get to the top is to fly, and anyone incapable of flying is considered to be undeserving to visit the top. Each spire culminates in a flat area known as the Garden. The Gardens are extremely beautiful and meticulously maintained places of leisure. The Celestials themselves live in hollowed out chambers inside the spires, and they congregate in the Gardens. The more important members of the society live higher than the less important ones.

Two Celestials sharing an intimate moment in a Garden.

The taller the spire, the more prestigious it is to live in. The tallest and largest spire in the center of the kingdom is reserved for the King of Kings and his court and it is off limits to everyone else. Even the members of the court are only allowed to enter or leave it by invitation and permission from the King himself. Lower ranking Celestials have been known to been beheaded merely for gazing at the spire without proper reverence. It is customary to avoid looking directly at the King’s Spire to avoid offense.

Each spire is ruled by a Lord, who lives in the Garden itself and has absolute power over the life and death of all his subjects. Slightest disobedience is typically punished by cutting off the offenders wings and tossing him or her of the edge of the garden. Failure to show proper reverence or respect to the Lord on the other hand is typically punished by blinding the offender. Celestials have no courts and justice is delivered by the Spire Lords.

After the Spire Lords, the most powerful Celestials are the Magi. They are few in numbers, but they make it up in power. There is typically one or two Mages per Spire, the second one typically being an apprentice. They act as advisers to the lord, and their heavy hitters during war time. They are known for spells that cause scorching, blinding liquid light to rain from the sky destroying everything below in an unstoppable fiery conflagration. They typically wear ornate armor an masks and carry staffs that denote their social status and power.

Celestial Mage

Below them live the Celestials proper which are the warrior and aristocrat caste. Their society is very rigid, and orderly guided by tradition and ritual, but built on concepts of social Darwinism. The society pushes the strong, ruthless and unforgiving individuals to the top, and stigmatizes and punishes any sign of weakness, empathy or compassion. Those in power are encouraged to abuse their position and bully their underlings, whereas any push-back is considered a mortal offense and severely punished (typically by death or physical maiming). Any sign of physical infirmity is considered unacceptable. Those who become permanently disabled, or are too old to fly are considered parasites and usually ordered to be tossed over the edge by the Spire Lord. Temporary illness is tolerated, but usually results in getting dropped few floors on the spire and having to work your way back up after you recover.

Disabled children are culled right away, unless parents manage to hide their infirmity. Children who do not have desired characteristics (blond hair, blue eyes, proportional body, white wings, etc..) are typically consigned to lower castes. Sometimes parents will secretly dye the hair of their child if it is the wrong color, but hiding an undesirable in your house is typically punished by death.

To be upper caste Celestial one must have blond hair, blue eyes and white wing plumage.

Celestials are mostly patriarchal, though women are expected to fight alongside men. They can be military officers, but not mages or Spire Lords. When they become pregnant, they typically retire to dedicated chambers in the middle portion of the spire, where they are cared for by the lower caste of Watchers. Unlike Ravenkin who lay eggs, Celestials give live birth. A celestial Woman typically gives birth to a litter of between six to twelve children, though the expectation is only two or three will survive the rigors of Celestial society into adulthood. Few days after being born the children are inspected, measured, assigned names and caste. Those with “proper” features can move in with the parents. Those with darker hair or wrong color of the eyes are raised by the Watchers. Those with black hair and black plumage are taken to the bottom of the Spire to be raised by the Unclean.

A Watcher, with blue hair, and tinted plumage.

Watchers are the middle caste made up of the individuals who do not meet the eugenic requirements set forth by the Spire Lords. This typically includes having blond hair, blue eyes and white wings, but taller and more prestigious spires are even more stringent and measure the proportions of the skull, the size of the nose, the distance between the eyes, and etc. Most commonly, Watchers have white, blue or purple hair and slightly tinted plumage on their wings. They are permitted to live in the mid-section of the tower, but cannot visit the gardens. They take care of those who fall ill, and pregnant women and act as expendable troops in battle. Swords and shields are noble and sophisticated weapons, the Watchers are not permitted to use them and instead fight with pole-arms.

Because they are considered to be genetically inferior, they are not permitted to breed themselves. Some spires however will tolerate occasional breeding to bolster their Watcher population. The taller Spires however pride themselves on being “purer” and having small to non-existent Watcher population.

Unclean One

The lowest caste are the Unclean who live at the bottom of the spires. They typically have dark hair and dark plumage. They are not permitted to enter the gardens under any circumstances. In fact, the tradition holds that if an Unclean would step a foot in the Garden it would become tainted and it would have to be re-consecrated. Many Spire Lords order the wings of the Unclean to be clipped in such a way to prevent them from flying properly to make sure this never happens.

Unclean are tasked to work with the slaves and “lesser” races. Celestials rarely trade or have any diplomatic relations with other races, because they prefer to take things by force. But if they do, they typically bring an Unclean to do the actual talking. If the diplomats of another race desire to present a Celestial noble with a gift, they would hand it to an Unclean, who would then take it to a Watcher standing about ten feet away. The Watcher would then take the item further away, wash it with the water from the Garden and ritually consecrate it. Only after then would it be proper for a Celestial to gaze upon it. Most high ranking nobles and Spire Lords would never actually consider touching something made by a untamed savage.

The Unclean are the slave masters of the Celestial society. Many of them do not enjoy this position, or even openly resent it, but many relish it. It is considered improper for Celestials and Watchers to touch or interact with slaves, but someone has to build their spires, and work the fields which supply the spires with food. That job belongs to the vast hordes of slaves who live in the shadow of the spires. Most of the slaves are members of other races. A good number are Unclean or Watchers whose wings were cut off for some transgression. Upper caste Celestials typically do not survive this type of punishment because they are thrown off the edge and plummet to their death. Only those who live and/or committed their transgression near the bottom of the tower tend to live long enough to become slaves.

As a rule, anyone without wings or ability to fly in Celestial Kingdom is automatically considered a slave, and property of the Spire Lord who controls the territory. Orc and Ogre slaves are most sought after because of their physical strength and resilience. In fact, Celestials are one of the few races that figured out how to enslave the ridiculously stubborn race of Ogres. Their trick involves torturing the slaves to the edge of death, then healing them with magic, over and over without a moment of respite over the course of few weeks until their will is completely broken. The bottom section of each Spire is usually reserved for torture chambers used for breaking in, or punishing the slaves.

Orc Slaves are very common, because they are strong, resilient and they leave just across the border in Orzimar.

The slaves are treated very poorly. Those who work in the fields are forbidden from eating the crops they grow. They are given minimalistic rations, and their main source of protein is waste thrown from the spires. The de-winged bodies of celestials who have angered the Spire Lord in some way and of fallen slaves are almost always eaten by the starving masses. In fact, the area directly under the spire tends to be a graveyard full of bones. Celestials do not bury their dead – they simply throw them off the edge, and they leave the bodies to rot or be eaten by slaves or animals. Slaves are also not permitted to bury their dead, partly because it is considered waste of energy, but also because Celestials enjoy watching their slaves to canibalize their own out of hunger, and they think that bones littering the ground beneath the spire sends a powerful message to those who would want to oppose the authority of the Spire Lord.

In addition to being very innovative and efficient torturers, Celestials also like to apply their eugenics to slave breeding. Captive Orcs and Ogres are bread for size and strength. Humans are mainly bread for obedience, but are considered to have poor genetic stock. The Celestials who live for around 300 years are especially fascinated by Hoblites. While they are weak and frail, their short lifespan allows the breeders to iterate over many generations selecting specific traits and observe the results. Over the years they have transformed their captive stock of Hoblites into a blind, savage and fiercely violent species known as the Houds:

The Hounds bread from Hoblite Slaves.

Hounds have no eyes, but a very acute sense of smell and taste. They possess basic animal cunning that makes them excellent hunters, but most of their higher cognitive functions are gone. They are unable to speak but can follow orders and quickly learn to recognize and fear the voices of their celestial masters. Their maws have multiple rows of sharp teeth, and their claws have serrated edges making them very dangerous. They are trained to track, chase and devour escaped slaves. They are typically used in large packs coordinated by an Unclean slave master.

Not all Celestials are happy with how their society is being run. There are those who would wish to end the caste system and end the tyranny of Spire Lords. Some even object to slavery and torture. Few however dare to speak out because dissent is punished very harshly. Because they are raised to believe other races are inferior and repulsive, most dissatisfied Celestials never leave their society unless they have to. There are a few rogue Watchers and Unclean living in The Pit. The Gnomish Summer Court has given refuge to the families of general who have disgraced themselves in the war with the Empire during the Green Tide. There is also a former high ranking Celestial noble living in the Imperial palace. The Empress put him in kitchen, peeling potato and washing dishes. Other than that, they are rarely seen outside their own territories.

There exists a secret society among the Celestials known as the Knockers. They have developed a secret knocking/tapping language which allows them to communicate in secret simply by tapping their feet or knocking at the walls. They seek to eventually overthrow the King of Kings and end the caste system, though for now they concentrate on spreading their message throughout the Spires and recruiting as many members of the upper caste as possible.

To Be Continued

As usual, let me know what you think in the comments. Please note that while I used the concept of angels as they are depicted in Christianity to represent the rather reprehensible Celestials, this was not intended to be any kind of metaphor or commentary on the Christian faith. They are not angels, they are not connected to any divide power – they are just dudes with wings. I just thought that it would be interesting to take an image that is traditionally associated with Lawful Good alignment and instead make them Lawful Evil.

I think I have one more of these articles in me, but it will be just tying up the few remaining loose ends. I want to talk about the Undead, the Sea Nymphs/Sirens, the Unicorns (not these ones though) and maybe few other monsters.

The three green skinned races of Raven Islands are not directly related, and unlike various human ethnic groups they cannot interbreed. However they are frequently lumped together because of their skin color, and because they have all arrived on the islands within a 10 year window. Orcs arrived from the west, while Gnoblars and Hoblites from the east in what looked like a coordinated pincer attack on the mainland. It was not. While Gnoblars and Hoblites did have an alliance, Orcs were not involved and they were not even aware another green skinned race landed on the opposite end of the island.

That dreadful decade is now known as The Green Tide and it was one of the most chaotic, but also most important historical periods on the island. The arrival of green skins was instrumental to the formation of the Third Empire and the defeat of the Celestial forces.

Orcs of Orzimar

I’m fascinated by Orcs as a concept. Most fantasy enthusiasts more or less understand what Orcs are, but they still vary quite a bit from setting to setting. Much more in fact than Elves or Dwarfs. Tolkien’s Orcs are monstrous and evil, in Warcraft universe they are noble tribal warriors, in Wahrammer they are slapstick comedy race speaking with Cockney accents and in Ishtar they are hairy ape-dudes. A little while ago I even designed my own version. But for Ravenflight I want to use them a little bit differently.

In most settings Orcs are strong, savage and brutal. That’s what people expect from them. So to subvert this, I want to make Ravenflight Orcs to be civilized, noble and orderly race. They will be the knights, and paladins of the setting.

Orc Soldier

In D&D terms I would say that these Orcs are almost always lawful good. Orzimar is one of the most orderly and well governed provinces on the Raven Island. Instead of being savage brutes, most Orcs are actually rather distinguished, law abiding and deeply religious. Their faith is a bit esoteric and full of complex mysticism which makes it difficult to explain to the outsiders. At the most fundamental level however it is fire worship. The practitioners of this religion view flame as a metaphor for their own souls. Fire is a destructive force, which if left unchecked devours everything in its path, and such is also the nature of the Orc soul. The faithful believe that their minds and bodies were forged in battle to be world’s most dangerous, efficient and uncompromising fighting machines. In the past Orc war bands would spread across the land like forest fires, conquering and destroying civilizations and leaving only smoldering ashes in their path. The Temple of Eternal Flame was established to curb these violent urges and re-focus them on something positive. Fire, despite it’s destructive potential can be used to forge complex tools, cook meat to feed the hungry, cauterize the wounds to stop bleeding and etc. If controlled it is a force for good, and so is the Orc civilization under the rule of The Temple.

Orc Knight praying before the battle. Note a human squire in the distance.

The Eternal Flame that burns on the temple altars also functions as a sort of meta-deity which is basically a union of all Orc souls, both living and dead. Faithful pray, or rather meditate while gazing at flickering flames to attune themselves to that meta-community and potentially receive guidance from ancestors who are not really ancestors but rather conduits of the meta deity. A deity without a will or persona of it’s own, but which represents the will of the Orc people everywhere. Orcs can ramble about their faith for days, slowly peeling layer after layer of mystical dogma. Functionally however it basically means that Orzimar is a theocratic society.

Priest of Eternal Flame

The priests of the Temple are not only spiritual leaders, but also the ruling caste. The idea is that Orc civilization functions solely thanks to their religious dogma which allows them to channel their violent urges. Thus the theologists most versed in said dogma are most suited to be leaders. Instead of letting the nation be ruled by the strongest and most savage warlords the power is instead given to those members of society who are wise and posses the most self control.

In modern Orc culture praises stoic detachment, non-violence and wisdom. The Temple has developed strict code of conduct all the faithful try to abide by. Other races often refer to it as a “honor code” but in the Orc language its name actually translates to “code of personhood”. The code basically describes not what is virtuous, but what is the absolute bare minimum of decency one has to exhibit to call themselves a civilized person. The code it is actually long and nuanced, but in general it proscribes truthfulness, loyalty, keeping one’s oaths, using violence only when necessary, protecting the weak and not giving into emotions.

Orc Knight

Orzimar is ruled by The Grand Theological Council based in The Temple City, which consists of three arch-priests chosen from among the most distinguished temples. They are the highest authority both on the spiritual dogma, as the law of the land. From them, the power is delegated to individual temples, each of which oversees and provides guidance to one of Orzimar’s many provinces. Each temple is lead by priests and arch-priests and protected by Temple Guards (or Templars) who act both as the local police force and military. Becoming a templar is considered a great honor and reserved only for the most distinguished citizens. The priests and templars are the functional elites.

There also exist another prestigious caste within the Orc society. Their name is usually superficially translated as “knights” or “lords of the realm” but it actually also means “those whose blood is fire”. They are those orc families who can directly trace their ancestry to infamous warlord clans that once ruled the Orc people. Even though these ancient rulers are now primarily considered to be uncivilized and villainous their are still held in great respect by the common folk. Because of their lineage, the Temple tradition forbids them from becoming priests or templars. To earn their loyalty, the Temple makes many concessions to offer them special social status. The fire-bloods can for example own land if they can afford to purchase it. Each temple must allocate a percentage of their holdings and make it available to any noble-born Orcs who can make a valid claim. They are also exempt from most taxes and temple fees.

As a result most of the Orc knights are affluent and influential. They typically style themselves as scholars, merchants and deeply religious individuals to distance themselves from their ancestors. The temple considers them to be a pain in the ass, but also a useful resource if they play ball. As secular men and women who are often hero-worshiped by the local peasants they can often sway the popular opinion and aid spreading temple dogma.

Orc knight during peace time.

During war time, the lords typically take up arms, and pledge their services to the local temple riding to battle alongside the templars. But while templars always carry banners and insignia of the Temple, the fire-blood knights are allowed paint their ancient family clan markings on their shields. During peace, they often organize jousts and other martial competitions.

It is important to note that fire-bloods are not Orc aristocracy. They have no official political power and as far as the Temple is concerned they actually are lower on the social ladder than ordinary commoners. They however enjoy status of folk heroes and local celebrities. They are are beloved, despised, gossiped about and their lives, romances and exploits are closely followed by the public. They are the rock-stars of the Orc society, by birth right. Their opinions and can sway the masses.

The actual aristocracy, with power and political sanctions are priests and templars. Priests are the ruling class. The life of a priest however is not one of luxury. Priest must commit themselves to a regimented Temple lifestyle, and follow even stricter codes of conduct. Their life is filled with ritual, and tradition and they must forgo personal goals and desires, instead submitting their will to that of the Temple. Priesthood titles are not hereditary, and those seeking to join the priesthood must start as a novice and move up the ranks.

Orc Templar in full battle armor.

Templars are the functional aristocracy. They are given land holdings from the Temple in exchange for their military service and they are free to govern said fiefdoms as they please (but under the oversight of the Temple). They are the local governors and overseers. The templar titles are given out by the Temple priests but not hereditary. While it is common for children of templars to become templars themselves, they still must apprentice as squires and distinguish themselves to earn the title.

Orc society is far from being homogenous. Many of the lands in the Sought Western part of the nation used to belong to the Third Empire and are still home to large number of humans both of Imperial and Armadan descent. While the human settlements are officially under Temple rule, Orcs typically let them self-govern and do not meddle in the human affairs, unless they are actively going against the dogma. To Orcs, humans are an inferior and weak race, so the Temple feels compelled to delegate templars to protect and police their villages. These specialized squads however are typically trained to consult village elders, and help them enforce common human law, unless it contradicts the Temple proscriptions.

Humans are more than welcome to convert to the Orc religion, but they are not allowed to become priests or templars. They can however serve as squires to the Temple Guard which is actually a very prestigious position for an Orzimar human. Orc squires are typically expected to eventually be promoted to fully fledged templars. The fire-blood knights typically retain no squires, but instead have Ravenkin servants who saddle their horses and/or maintain their armor.

Young female squire deep in prayer.

While most Orcs have green skin, there exists an ethnic minority within Orzimar whose skin has a grayish tint. They are on average taller, and bulkier than the green Orcs but those are mostly superficial differences. While there are no rules prohibiting Gray Orcs from joining the priesthood or becoming templars they almost never do. There seems to be a good deal of prejudice against them in the Temple because most Gray Orcs are followers of the Old Faith. In addition to following the teachings of the Temple, they also worship the ancient Orc pantheon of deities lead by a fearsome god of thunder. Many tattoo blue lightning patterns on their skin to honor said deity.

Gray Orc

The Code does not prohibit polytheist faith, but most priests consider the Old Faith to be savage, uncivilized and incompatible with the modern teachings. Very few green Orcs choose to follow that tradition. Gray Orcs have even lower social status than fire-bloods, and they don’t enjoy their privileges. They are considered an undesirable underclass by most. That said, they proud traditions of craftsmanship and some of the most renowned smiths, potters, woodworkers and artisans are Gray Orcs. Many fire-bloods and even templars seek out their services or even retain them at their courts. There have been occasions when Gray Orc squires were promoted to full fledged templars, but only after renouncing the Old Faith.

Within the Temple there exists a secretive order of mystics known only as The Faceless Monks. They wear blue robes, and silver face masks to conceal their identity. In order to join that order, one has to renounce any and all personal identity, and fully commit themselves to the faith. They are rarely seen outside of the Temple City where the order has it’s headquarters. The Temple has seven holy texts, each of which reveals more intricate, mystical secrets of the Eternal Flame. The first three books outline the core tenets of the faith that are taught to everyone. Those who wish to become templars must familiarize themselves with the Fourth Book which outlines the duties of a Temple Guardian. The Fifth and Sixth Book outline duties, sacred rights and provide mystical revelations for the members of the priesthood. Each of the books is progressively more abstract, and harder to read. Temple novices spend years learning how to interpret the teaching of the Fifth and Sixth book. The Seventh Book is a complete mystery, written entirely in a metaphorical cipher. Reading it has driven ordinary Orcs insane.

Faceless Monk

Faceless Monks devote their entire lives to study of the Seventh Book. They act as advisers to the Grand Theological Council on the matters of faith, but may not become councilors themselves. The common belief is that these monks understand the innermost workings of the Orc soul. They know how to persuade, change people’s opinions simply by choosing the right words, or modulating their voice a certain way. They can give orders that cannot be refused. They are said to be mind-hackers – the Bene Gesserit of the Orc kind. They are feared by the common folk, and seeing them outside of the Temple grounds is considered a bad omen.

When Orcs arrived on Raven Island they did not come alone. They brought Ogres with them. These towering giants are about twice as tall as the largest Orc, and about as wide. They are incredibly strong and tough, but are said not to be very bright. This is actually not entirely true. They have been proven to be just as intelligent as humans or Orcs. People assume they are dim-witted mostly because Ogres have trouble developing good social skills.

Ogre Fighter from Orzimar

They are thought to share a common ancestor with Trolls, and like them they are introverted and contemplative species. Most Ogres prefer to spend their time alone, and get together only to trade, exchange information or mate. Most Ogres will talk with their closes friends once or twice a month at most – anything more would be rude. They also don’t have concept of greetings or good byes. They simply walk up, start a conversation and they leave when they get bored. While they can be taught local customs and manners it usually takes a while for them to understand why such things are even necessary. Some Ogres do make an effort to learn and follow local etiquette, and even attend Temple masses and study the holy scriptures in their free time. Many however don’t bother, and only interact with locals when they need something often cumming off as rude, ignorant and clueless – hence their reputation.

In Orzimar they typically live outside villages or smaller settlements and trade with the local population. Because they typically do not form their own communities, sometimes it seems like almost every Orc settlement has their own Ogre or two. The Ogres are usually happy to help the villagers out with heavy lifting or hard labor, provided they don’t have to do it too often. They are also fearsome fighters and many fire-bloods like to include them as part of their retinue.

Gnoblars

A lot of people liked the ideas I had in my Goblin post, especially including the “social network” concept. For Ravenflight I decided to embrace and extend that idea, liberally borrowing from Vernor Vinge’s Fire Upon the Deep novel.

Gnoblars are the smallest of the green skin races – shorter even than the diminutive Ravenkin. They have disproportionately large heads with big mouths and small red beady eyes. They are known for constantly fidgeting, and making small noises. They are also frequently refereed to as Goblins or Swamp Things. They are possibly one of the most poorly understood species on the Raven Islands.

A Gnoblar Pack

A single Gnoblar is about as intelligent as a dog or a cat. It is mostly operates almost entirely on instinct, though it seems to have enough intelligence to dress itself and use simple tools and weapons it is carrying to hunt or defend itself. That said, is mostly incapable of comprehending speech or following instructions. Experiments done with mirrors showed that Gnoblars are profoundly confused by their reflections, and constantly try to interact with them.

Once you get two or three Gnoblars in the same roo, they start making high pitched, chittering noises and suddenly they seem to get smarter. Gnoblar triplets understand mirror reflections, understand speech and can respond, though their speech is typically limited to monosyllabic words, grunts and gestures. Typically they choose a single “speaker” among themselves who is in charge of vocalizing for the group, though they always seem to discuss what is to be said in their fast, high-pitched squeak-speech.

The optimal number of Gnoblars seems to be somewhere between five and ten. That’s where they start being capable of speaking in full sentences, building new tools, casting magic spells (typically via dedicated caster member of the group if one is available), picking locks, setting traps and etc. When Gnoblars march to war, they typically operate in small squads of ten individuals, and they can be brutally efficient. The entire squad tends to act with a single-minded precision, each member fulfilling a role of an extra limb or an extra pair of eyes.

Group of Gnoblars takes on an Ogre

When they are in a group, their minds seem to switch to a kind of parallel processing mode, and the information is exchanged via the chittering sounds they make. It does not seem to be a traditional language, but rather a data-exchange protocol or some sort, and as such it is entirely untranslatable. Gnoblars seem to be born with the ability to understand and make these sounds, but they must learn human speech. The knowledge and skills seems to be transferable between individuals, though it is never a perfect transfer. For example, a Gnoblar who is very good at basket weaving can “pour” all the knowledge on that topic onto another individual. This does not however mean that the new Gnoblar will be just as good at it – she will have all the knowledge about it, but not necessarily the manual dexterity and muscle memory required to perform the skill.

This is one of the reasons why Gnoblar technology typically seems rather shoddy and of poor quality: because everything they make is typically built with unskilled hands, based mostly on second hand knowledge.

Gnoblar Dublet – these individuals probably got separated from their group, and so they reverted to basic hunter-gatherer instincts trying to survive long enough to be picked up by another group.

Individual Gnoblars seem to be considered worthless. Some are valued more than others: for example, Gnoblars capable of channeling magic, or those who are very good at specific skill to be valued more than the others. They are still expendable, because their skills are fully transferable and it will only take time to get other individuals to the same level of proficiency.

In general, the more Gnoblars participate in a group, the smarter it gets. There seems to be an upper limit on this. Because they exchange information via sound, groups larger than fifteen or twenty individuals tend to “think” much slower, because they can’t all talk at once and it takes time for the information to circulate amongst the group. While it is not uncommon for Gnoblars to have communal “thinking” sessions that involve hundreds of individuals, they tend to operate best in groups of about dozen individuals. The composition of such groups is almost entirely fluid: Gnoblars readily swap members between groups both to gain new skills, as well as new information. Instead of gossiping for example, Gnoblars will “load up” one of the members of their group with all the relevant information and send it over to the neighbor, who will in turn send a response “packet” in the same way.

Gnoblar War Pack attacking a human settlement.

Gnoblars tend to view themselves as a single entity – a group mind that spans the entire territory of great swamps on the border between The Third Empire and the North End. Individual Gnoblars do not seem to have names, and are mostly confused when queried about their identity. When asked “who are you?” they will usually respond “We are Gnoblar.” and leave it at that. They do however seem to understand that other races operate differently. They understand that a single human is a complete individual who can’t meld with a group or exchange information the way they do, but they are on record saying such an existence seems to be terribly lonely, sad and frightening to them.

For many decades Imperial scholars insisted that Gnoblars were religious, because they would frequently refer to them by name and in the third person. For example, a group of about dozen Goblins who was frequently trading with Imperials would often make statements like “Mork would sell that for less than 3 silver coins.” When queried about identity of Mork, they would only say “We all is Mork” or “Mork is many Gnoblar”. Other than such statements however, they never indicated any signs of religious worship. In fact, most Goblin packs seem to be rather confused by the concepts of religion. Only recently has it been established that these names were actually indicators of group identity.

Individual pack members are expendable. Note how Gnoblars do not react to the individual being on fire.

While individual Gnoblars have no names, a pack of a dozen of them will over time develop some sort of individual personality. Each pack seems to choose a name to signify themselves, and they usually refer to that name in the third person when interacting with other races. The “personality” of a pack seems to fit neatly in the head of a single goblin, but can only manifest its will when there is about ten to twelve individuals available for processing. This means that every member of the pack can carry the “soul” of the pack, and as long as one of them survives the pack can be re-constituted with new members. A Gnoblar can carry the “soul” almost indefinitely, but if he joins a pack which already has a “soul” he can be compelled to forget it. It is basically up to the new group to decide whether they want to retain it or erase it, as the individual Gnoblar will have to comply with overriding group wishes. I most day-to-day interactions, Gnoblars used as “data packets” get blanked and assimilated once their information is extracted. However, sometimes a pack will donate a few members of their own to “resurrect” a fallen comrade whose single member has survived.

The average lifespan of a Gnoblar is between ten to fifteen years, but a pack “soul” can actually live indefinitely. There for example, there still exist packs who fought during the Green Tide events. It is however frowned upon when packs get too individualistic and self serving. When a group of Gnoblars starts to go against the wishes of the majority, it’s members will typically be separated and assimilated to other packs erasing it from the existence. Gnoblars don’t really think of this as death, because memories and skills of the members are retained. The “souls” are viewed as a side-effect of the way Gnoblar minds work, and indulging them is considered ill-advised. Gnoblars adopted the human word “pervert” to describe Gnoblar packs who leave the mainstream society to pursue individualistic hopes and dreams. It is those perverts who are commonly seen traveling through the Empire, Orzimar or signing up to be Armadan ship crews.

Part of a Gnoblar “Pervert” pack. Note skin discolorations, lesions and other ailments caused by inbreeding within the group.

Gnoblars reproduce sexually, but have very little sexual dimorphism. Gnoblar women look almost exactly the same as their men, with the exception of genitals, and the twelve teats on their abdomen. They usually give birth to litters of about six to twelve children who reach full maturity in roughly a year and a half. In the mainstream Gnoblar society, packs constantly shuffle members around so they always have genetically diverse breeding pairs available to them. The traveling perverts unfortunately have no such luxury, and therefore they typically in-breed within the pack. This is only sustainable for few generations before the lack of genetic diversity starts to cause birth defects and health issues. Most are afraid to visit Gnoblar settlements out of fear of being disassembled and assimilated so they rarely have access to fresh blood. Some perverts become bandits and they will attack Gnoblar traders and kill enough pack members to be able to assimilate the survivors. Those who choose not to do this typically get progressively weaker, and eventually become completely incompatible

Gnoblars have peaceful relations with the Third Empire and North End. They frequently trade with humans and they allow their trade caravans go through their territories, though they tend to tax them. Gnoblars actually started building roads through their swamps to facilitate trade between Empire and North End and reap the benefits of the traffic going through their territories. They are shrewd traders and reliable workers. Humans actually prefer to hire Gnoblar laborers, because unlike Ravenkin they are trustworthy and reliable. That and any Gnoblar pack seems to feel compelled to repay debts or appease for the faults of any other pack.

Hoblites

Now that I turned Goblins into this weird, somewhat cute and cuddly hive-mind like race, I still had a lot of artwork in my research folder that depicted goblins as these cool looking, ugly, gaunt green dudes. I like these guys, so I figured I would make them a playable race. I didn’t want them to be automatically evil. That said, I didn’t want them to be as honorable and awesome as the Orcs. I wanted them to not be evil, but still be kinda messed up in some ways. But it had to be for a reason, and “chaotic neutral” is not a reason to me. It had to be something else.

During the Green Tide, Hoblites were commonly refereed to as Hobgoblins. Humans and Orcs assumed they were simply larger Goblins, but that is not true. Unlike Gnoblars, Hoblites are not group minds but rather individuals and they consider their smaller cousins to be an inferior race. They worship the Great Hob who is their patron deity, and who was said to have two brothers Gob and Nob, each of whom was born with half a brain. Those intellectually impaired brothers went to create the Gnoblar race, while Hob became the patron of the Hoblites.

Hoblites

Hoblites are taller than Goblins, Ravenkin and Dwarfs but shorter than most humans. They have a green skin, though the actual tint seems to vary from deep green to almost grayish blue. They have large ears and noses, but their mouths remain proportional unlike the large maws of Gnoblars.

Compared to other races, Hoblites have very short lifespans. Most of them die before they get to their mid twenties. Hoblites surviving into their thirties are about as rare as humans living into the hundreds. Unlike Gnoblars who reach full maturity within a year or so, Hoblites have the long childhoods of most sentient, self aware races. They are physically and psychologically immature for roughly the first eight years of their life. This leaves them very short window of opportunity to accomplish their goals, find happiness and etc. This is reflected by their culture which is very focused with the present.

Matt` in the comments aptly pointed out that this gives Hoblites on average a 10 year span of time to accomplish all the things which leaves them with little to no time to actually reproduce and rise children. How does this work then?

Hoblites actually practice communal child rearing to free up fertile members of the society to pursue other tasks. Each town or village has one or more Foster Halls dedicated to care and education of children. They are staffed by the order of Fosterites which is an ascetic scholarly order devoted to education and social care. Chief among them are Foster Sages who administer primary education and philosophy classes for adolescents 6-8 years old.

Children are organized into what is known as Kiths. Each Kith consists of about 30-40 kids of roughly the same age, under the care and supervision of Foster Matron who is responsible for their immediate needs, and care. Kith-mates stay together, playing, learning and working as a group until the age of 6 when they get to pick an education path based on their interest under the tutelage of Foster Sages, or choose to apprentice in a local guild. When they reach the age of 4 which is roughly equivalent of human teenagers with respect to emotional maturity, they are expected to help out with care of younger children. Each Kith is assigned a younger Kith they help out with. A member of your own Kith is a Kith mate, while a member of the Kith you were assigned to help out with is a Kith sibling.

As a result of the Foster Hall system nearly all Hoblites are literate, which is unprecedented among Raven Island societies. The system also creates a complex web of social relationships and dependencies within their society. Bonds between Kith mates are incredibly strong (often considered stronger than blood relations). Hoblites tend to have extensive support system: at any given time a child can seek help or advice from one of it’s blood-parents, a Kith matron, a local Foster Sage, one of the two dozen Kith mates, one of the elder Kith-sibs or one of the younger Kith-sibs.

When introducing themselves Hoblites will usually mention their Kith and Clan in that order and Kith rivalries or Foster Hall grudges play a huge role in their social lives and politics.

Hoblite Ranger and his riding wolf. The rider and the pup usually grow up together, age and die around the same time.

Hoblites are people who live in the moment. They are very much focused on doing things now, never putting things off until later, and accomplishing their goals. They are extremely drive, overly ambitious, and praise self reliance above all else. Selfishness is not considered a vice but a trait integral to Hoblite personality. Think Ferengi, but without the obsession with profit. The Hoblites are good merchants, but their life philosophy does not revolve around trade and acquisition. It revolves around fulfilling their own dreams and goals against all odds. Compassion and empathy are considered to be weaknesses that can and should be exploited.

Hoblites view themselves as better adjusted, more driven and more successful than all the other races. To wit, they have one of the most efficient trading networks on the Raven Island, and some of the most accomplished magical institutions.

The Hoblite Warlock Covens are famous throughout the islands for their skill and their collection of ancient scrolls of magical lore. Most warlocks can actually hold their own in magical duels with Armadan aristocracy, which is impressive considering the Capitol mages perfect their craft over many decades of study whereas Hoblites don’t even live longer than twenty years. Their accelerated programs of study attract many Imperial men, Nords and sometimes even Savage Dwarfs and Centaurs.

Hoblite Warlock

The Land of Hob is a feudal monarchy led by the Hoblite king. The capitol city is located on the easternmost penisula known as the Dragon’s Tongue. The tip of the Dragon’s Tongue is the location of Kingstown – possibly the largest and most populous metropolis in the Raven Island. It is a sprawling hive city which is home to seven rivaling Warlock Covens and the King’s Castle carved out of a gigantic petrified mushroom.

All Hoblites are subjects of the King and while the power is hereditary the throne is rarely held by a single dynasty for more than a few generations. Many kings are simply to busy trying to achieve greatness to sire children. Unpopular kings tend to get themselves and their families assassinated rather quickly so the power changes hands rather rapidly. New laws are established, nullified and changed all the time, and other races often have trouble keeping up with the court affairs of Kingstown. Most of the time the politics of Hoblites are an exercise in barely controlled chaos.

Hoblite King

One of the other interesting locations in The Land of Hob is The Pitt. It is a big city located in the Southern part of the nation, on the foothills of Shadow Peaks. The city is built around the volcanic lava flows, and mostly carved out of stone. This is in a stark difference to the usual Hoblite architecture which involves wooden houses, or abodes carved out in the giant mushrooms they have transplanted to Raven Island from their homeland many centuries ago.

A Ravenkin Warlock mystic from The Pit.

The Pitt is the home to the eight most powerful coven in the Land of Hob (the first seven being Kingstown covens), which is actually almost entirely dominated by Ravenkin mystics. They have actually used all the Hoblite rapid learning techniques and applied them over their longer lifespans to become some of the most powerful Warlocks in the land. It is a mecca for all kinds of social misfits: a town full of Gnoblar perverts, Ogres, Gray Orcs, Imperial men seeking to make name for themselves and etc. It is almost a micro-nation, ruled by the Ravenkin elders. Officially the citizens of The Pit are subjects of the King, but the King’s law doesn’t really apply in the city which is why it attracts so many misfits and criminals. It is where Imperial men and Hoblite women come to feel empowered. It is the only city in which Ogres are allowed to study magic and Gnoblar perverts can go to find new breeding members without fear of being erased from existence. It is also the only city in which Ravenkin are actually allowed to hold position of power.

Imperial Woman, citizen of The Pit

Because The Pit is such a multicultural melting pot, the Hoblite citizens tat live there are actually much less selfish and more compassionate than anywhere else. In fact, the general culture of The Pit is starkly different from the mainstream Hoblite culture, emphasizing equality and compassion. In The Pit all races and genders are considered equal, and have equal access to education and resources.

Throughout the rest of the Hob Land however, the society is definitely very patriarchal and quite prejudiced against everything and anything that does not conform to the Hoblite ever-changing standards. Hoblite women are not allowed to hold political positions or study magic. Other races are usually treated with disdain, and often persecuted and exploited. Non-Hoblite men (or creatures that can pass for men) can join covens and study magic. The exception are Ogres who are considered to stupid to learn any spells, despite ample evidence to the contrary. For the last 40 years there was also a law on the books that forbid Orcs from studying magic though no one really knows why. It is said that the king who established it simply didn’t like Orcs. So far no one bothered to question or remove this law.

Hoblite Warlock

The fact that Hoblite women are not legally permitted to study magic, doesn’t mean that they do. The Pit covens are open to both men and women, but not everyone is capable of traveling sought, or can afford to live in that crazy upside-down city. Therefore there exist secretive Witch Covens. They are usually established far outside of major settlements in secluded areas.

Hoblite Witch wearing a mask and ragged clothes both to to protect her identity and to play on the folk fears of the “stereotypical witch” imagery.

Witches typically wear masks to protect their identity when they go to their meetings, and blend back into the mainstream society the rest of the time. These covens also double as a sort of feminist organizations that help to empower Hoblite women and educate them not only in magical arts, but also discuss politics and ways to make Hoblite society more egalitarian.

One of the most prominent and established Witch covens is located at the Cursed Hill in the North, near the border with the Third Empire and the Black Forest. The witches themselves call the place Moonlight Falls. It can be frightening to outsiders, and witches prefer to keep it that way to avoid being harassed. Poor and downtrodden Hoblites will often seek out the Witches of Moonlight Falls because unlike Warlocks who work only for hard cash, Witches will often offer their services in exchange for favors or promises which need to be repaid later. Failing to repay such a favor is usually a very bad idea.

While the Warlock covens compete against each other, Witch Covens collaborate and exchange knowledge. In fact the Witch Coven network extends from Moonlight Falls all the way down to The Pitt. The covens will often take in battered or mistreated women, or provide transportation and lodging for those who wish to travel into The Pit or leave the Land of Hob.

Hoblite Witch of Moonlight Falls.

Being a witch carries a very huge social stigma. Witches are feared and despised and often persecuted for their craft, which makes them distrustful toward strangers. Hoblite legends usually feature evil witch as the villain and a heroic prince or axe brave as the protagonist. In Kingstown and the Dragon Tongue region Witchcraft is persecuted by public flogging and/or heavy fines. It used to be punished by death, but then the law was reversed when the king’s own sister was found to be a witch. In the North-Western regions of the country almost all women are somehow connected to some sort of a coven. Even women with no magical talent or interest in magical arts attend meetings to discuss politics and equality. This is considered to be a “bad” influence of the Imperial culture, and the locals just accept it.

Hoblite Warrior-Witch. Since local men will sometimes try to break up coven meetings, many women become self-appointed protectors an enforcers who patrol the area, and try to fend-off attacks.

The Hoblite culture has rich legeds and stories, most of which feature a cast of archetypal heroes and villains. The most common antagonist is an evil witch or an evil queen (usually depicted as Imperial noble woman) who kidnaps or curses the heroes love interest. The most common hero is the young prince who upon completing his quest travels back to Kingstown to become the new king. The other common archetype is the Axe Brave who starts his journey as a lowly lumberjack, and embarks on the dangerous quest with only his trusty axe, and his determination. Where the Prince usually outwits his opponents the Axe Brave usually overcomes obstacles with sheer force of will, perseverance and stubbornness. The Axe Brave can sometimes turn out to be a Prince (for example due to series of assassinations in Kingstown that makes him the next in line). These two legendary figures embody the personality traits most valued by the Hoblite society: cleverness and determination. Both are typically advised by a wise warlock.

Hoblite Axe Brave

Hoblites have an uneasy, tenuous peace agreement with the Third Empire. Most Hoblite kings are profoundly uncomfortable dealing with a nation led by women, but they recognize the military and economical might of the Third Empire and prefer to avoid open war. They also trade with the Clockwork Dominion (The Pit being a major trade hub) and the Black Forest Centaurs. Kingstown is a major port city and does great deal of trade with the Armadans. They have a sizable fleet of their own and there are small Hoblite settlements on many of the small islands East of Land of Hob.

To Be Continued…

Next time I will talk about Gnomes, Centaurs and Celestials and explain how the Undead work in this universe. After that, I think we will be done, unless I gather enough unique, offbeat ideas to make a “monster manual” style post about antagonists and fun beasts monsters that populate the Raven Islands.

If you feel lost, I highly recommend starting with Part 1 of this series which provides some background information with respect to goals and scope of this project.

And now, formalities aside, lets talk about humans.

To be frank, humans are a little bit boring. The fact is, they are often so uninteresting that a lot of source books don’t even really bother writing much about them. The assumption is that we already know how humans are, by the virtue belonging to the species. So player guides and manuals will go into extreme detail as to how Elves wipe their butts (three seashells method, naturally) and spend whole chapters describing Orc fashion (typically armors with varied amount of spikes on them) but when it comes to describing humans they just go “you know, normal stuff” and call it a day. And of course by “normal stuff” they mean white people, European architecture and western values.

Granted, there is nothing wrong with make-believe pseudo-European setting with knights, kings, wizards in funny hats all doing quests that involve magical swords and slaying dragons. It’s all good and it can be a lot of fun. But that’s not why we’re here. From time to time it would be nice to see a Fantasy setting in which Euro-centric cultures are not the dominant ones.

Yes, I’m aware that there are some settings in which this is the whole point. The Legend of Five Rings is a good example of a setting in which the entire cosmology is based on a non-Western template. But it is not necessarily what you would call a generic RPG settings. It is designed specifically around the idea of players being samurai-like warriors in a Japan-like place in which monsters are loosely designed around Japanise folklore. What I’m more interested in is a standard fantasy setting with Orcs and Elves in which majority of humans just happen to be non-white.

The Third Empire

If you look at my map in Part 1, you will notice that the nation labeled as The Third Empire is one of the largest political bodies on the Raven Island. It also has a central position and shares a border with just about everyone, making it a likely hub of land trade. This is an important nation, whose culture is going to influence all its neighbors and possibly be one of the default places for players to have adventures, and stories to take place. Lets make it fun.

Here is my inspiration:

Imperial Warrior

I envision The Third Empire to have look and feel very loosely based on feudal Japan. If I could actually draw and design period clothing/armor I’d probably make and effort to have them have a sort of unique look. More of a reference than a carbon copy of the real historical period. For one I’d prefer to avoid the cultural appropriation that comes with the samurai culture. They would be more like distant descendants of feudal Japan like culture which found itself on this strange island populated by all kinds of different sentient races and was forced to adapt.

Unlike Feudal Japan, The Third Empire has open borders. It’s cities are major trade hubs, and it’s roads are traversed by caravans of merchants every day. I imagine their culture would be influenced by that of their neighbors that of their neighbors and trade partners.

So for example, instead of Bushido, the Imperial warriors follow a honor code that was more or less imported wholesale from the Orcs of Orzimar. Their feudal system on the other hand was based on that of the Ancient Dwarfs. In both cases however, they put their own unique spin on it.

The Third Empire is actually a matriarchal feudal society, dominated by women. One of their core cultural tenets that has not changed since their arrival on the island, is that only someone capable of bringing life into the world ought to be allowed to end one. On the surface this means that men are not considered to be biologically predisposed to be warriors. And by extension, only people biologically capable of motherhood ought to to make decisions that will impact lives and livelihoods of others. Women are considered to be innately predisposed to be leaders, politicians, heads of the households as well as warriors.

You might say that adventuring in the Third Empire might be kinda crappy if your players all make dude-characters. Then again, having to constantly prove themselves and deal with being patronized and not taken seriously could be an interesting experience for them. Because that’s pretty much what always happen to people who decide to roll female characters in regular settings.

It’s probably worth mentioning that I’m not setting this up as some sort of a model setting. It is just a role reversal kind of thing, and it is not supposed to be treated as superior or inferior type of culture. It’s actually supposed to be just about as shitty as the run-of-the-mill fantasy patriarchies. Just, you know – for the other gender.

The nation is led by an Empress who is an absolute feudal monarch. Her title is hereditary, passed down to her eligible daughters. There is no such thing as an “emperor”. The male spouse of the Empress is simply known as the Imperial Consort and while typically of noble blood, is still technically a commoner. The Empress can also often have multiple concubines or concubini but daughters sired out of the wedlock are not eligible for the throne. That said, determining paternity can sometimes difficult so when in doubt it is typically assumed that whatever the Empress says is true, unless there exists an overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The Empress in her battle armor.

All the land in the Empire belongs to the Empress, and is split into fiefdoms and provinces that are given to her vassals in exchange for oaths of loyalty and military service. Since only women are fit to be warriors, they are the only people eligible to own land. The entire feudal structure is actually very flat. While the personal wealth and influence of different vassals can vary, all noble women are considered equals. There is officially no stratification in terms of actual political power (ie. no shoguns, dukes, barons or anything like that), no administrative castes and etc. While a land owner can sub-divide her domain, and enter into feudal relationships with other women, everyone’s primary loyalty is directly to the Empress. This flat structure is rather unique was one of the distinctive features of the Ancient Dwarf empire which seems to have inspired it.

Imperial Warrior

It is also worth noting that the Empresses are not worshiped as a goddesses, nor do they claim divine descent or mandate. They are, for the most part, considered ordinary noble women. Bowing or kneeling in front of the empress is considered old-fashioned and this practice which was common in the days of Second Empire is now frowned upon. The proper etiquette when being granted an audience with the Empress is to greet her as you would greet any Imperial noble woman. Men and commoners need to simply lower their heads in respect and slightly extend their arms forward, palms facing outward as they offer their greeting. Men of noble descent who are friends, family or acquaintances can instead offer her their left hand which she may choose to squeeze with her right. Noble women typically grip their forearms Roman handshake style. At times a salute that involves placing an open palm over one’s heart may be more appropriate. A lot of this is influence of Elven culture with it’s democratically elected Councils.

Men in the Third Empire are not allowed to own land or become warriors. It is highly unusual for men to travel alone without protection or leadership of women. While some may be proficient with a sword it is considered improper for them to wield one. Exceptions are of course made for foreigners and members of other races. That said, if a group of foreigners includes women, they will automatically be assumed to be leaders and addressed as such by the locals. If no women are present, they might still insist to be put in touch with the woman in charge at the earliest convenience.

Imperial men are expected to be homemakers and fathers. Most nobles are literate because one of their responsibilities is to attend to primary education of their children. Many make careers as scribes, secretaries or aides to prominent women. They also have near monopoly on the study of arcane arts.

Warlock

Magic was outlawed in the First and Second Empire, but since then the ban was lifted and it can be practiced openly. However, it still bears a heavy social stigma. Magic use amongst noble warrior women is frowned upon – it is considered a trickery and cowardly way of making up for the lack of skill or courage. As a result mostly men become practitioners. A good warlock can be great asset to any noble household. They are usually paid very well for their services, and treated with a great deal of respect (often also fear). At the same time however, they are socially undesirable and never fully trusted. They typically live apart from the general population in secluded hovels or towers outside the villages or noble estates. You know, kinda like witches in standard fantasy.

The history of the Three Empires is actually pretty long. The First Empire was founded around the same time as the Ancient Dwarf kingdoms in the deep south. It is said that the Imperial women aided the mountain folk to push the Celesials into the North and in the end suffered from the same mysterious calamity that annihilated the entire Dwarven race. Humans however proved to be more resilient to the calamity, and enough of them survived to rebuild their nation as the Second Empire. For a while they were almost uncontested rulers of the island up until the arrival of the Green Tide and subsequent resurgence of Celestial activity.

Imperial Soldier in full battle gear.

The Second Empire was besieged from the West by the Orc legions, North by Celestials and from the East by combined Gnoblar and Hoblite forces. It was plunged into complete chaos when Celestials launched a coordinated attack at seven major cities, effectively taking out the Imperial Family, prominent generals, leaders and officials. Eventually the nation once again re-formed as the Third Empire and made alliances with the three green-skinned races to once again push the Celestials into the far Northen regions of the island.

Most Imperials have Asian features including dark hair, brown or dark eyes and the epicanthic eye fold. That said, they are far from ethnically homogeneous. The people in the North-East for example have been culturally mixing and marrying Nords ever since they have arrived. As a result majority of the Imperials in those regions now have brown distinctly skin, and have assimilated a lot of the Nord culture including their obsession with Dragon iconography and their propensity for straight edged blades (as opposed to traditional curved katanas). The the Nord and Imerial blood has been mixed for so long now that Northen Imperials became their own ethnic group with stable gene pool, folklore and traditions.

An imperial from the North-East provinces. Note the darker skin, and “exotic” Nord influenced weapons.

Similarly, many Imperial descendants that live in the Western Shore of Orzimar have some Armadans blood. They typically have a bit darker complexion and the distinctive black-in-black “deep-sea eyes”. While Imperial/Armadan mixed couples are common in the region, they don’t have their own sub-ethic group like the Northeaster Imperials though it is not unlikely that one will develop in the future. Despite being officially part of Orzimar, humans are a majority in the region and their culture is a bit of a mix of Imperial and Armadan. While women are still considered to be dominant gender, many Imperial or mixed ancestry men pick up Armadan fashion styles and customs bucking their traditional gender roles.

The Armadan tattos especially are viewed as a sign of male empowerment. The is not a traditional part of Imperial culture but it has been booming in the West of the Empire. They are especially favored by men of mixed ancestry. The local designs are strikingly distinct from those of the Armadans and feature unique patterns and colors. They have become a tale tale sign of empowered western men as well as women who support equal rights and treatment for both genders.

Imperial from the Western shore of Orzimar. Note the darker complexion, distinctive black-in-black Armadan eyes, as well as Armadan inspired fashion.

Humans and Orcs are too different with respect to their gene pools, so there is no such thing as Half-Orcs or Half-Elves in this setting. That said it is not uncommon to see mixed couples marriages, especially among the commoners who typically marry for love, rather than for political gain.

Armadans

If the Third Empire was our Samurai inspired faction, then Armadans (also sometimes reffered to as Westerlings) will be the pirate faction. Because pirates are cool.

They are sea-fearing people who have more or less taken over nearly all of the small islands around the mainland. They also have a toe-hold in the Nort of the Gnome controled South Island which is actually their largest, and most prosperous holding. It is actually a quite large swath of land with multiple prosperous cities, including the Capitol City which is the seat their Prince Elect and the Parliament. It is however rather sparsely populated when compared to the smaller islands.

In general, the South Island region is refereed to as The Capitol and it is know for its beautiful vistas, quaint villages and beautiful cities full or open parks, fountains and squares. Most of the citizens of The Capitol are actually quite well off. This includes peasants whose standard of living is actually much higher than in other parts of the world. The agreeable climate and low population growth mean they almost always have plenty of food, and stable source of income.

In contrast, the hundreds of small islands are referred to as The Archipelago. Most of them are very densely populated, and can barely feed their population. Some islands are completely dependent on sea trades, and their populations face starvation during major storms that prevent trade ships from bringing in food and fresh water. Some islands are better off than the others, but poverty and hardship are a constant part of life.

Most Armadan islanders are sailors – both by convenience and by necessity. In fact they consider their lifestyle to be the true and genuine Westerling experience. The land lubbers from the Capitol who have never sailed and never been to the archipelago are sneered and scoffed at. While the Prince technically has a dominion over the entire nation, the true power lies in the hands of the Aripelago governors and sea captains. They care little of the courtly affairs of the distant Capitol City and they know quite well that the Prince cannot enforce his will upon them over many leagues of the sea. The Capitol Navy is the strongest in the world, but it’s total size is dwarfed by the number of independent privateers, pirates and private fleets founded by island governors.

Armadan woman. Note the black-in-black eyes.

The Armadans have dark olive skin (though typically much lighter than that of Nords or Elves) and are typically slightly shorter than Imperials and Nords. Their most distinctive physical feature are their eyes which are almost uniformly black without any whites, or colored iris visible. Not only that, they also possess a nictitating membrane, or a transparent third eyelid similar to that found in many species of fish and sharks. Armadan pearl divers claim that said membrane allows them to see as clearly under water as they do on land.

Some scholars point out that Westerling eyes are strikingly similar to those of deep sea Nymphs. Acient legends say that the original fleet that discovered the Raven Islands has been lost at sea for centuries and survived only by making alliances with the deep sea dwelling, tentacled merfolk. If this is true however, the alliances must have been broken long time ago, since sirens are as keen to entrap and sink Armadan ships as any others. Many say that despite the fact both races no longer seem to be able to communicate, Armadans are a result of cross-species breeding and they all still have some siren blood in them.

Armadan Islanders

Armadans arrived to Raven Islands some time after the Green Tide event. Their aggressive expansion across the small islands and shorelines had a huge impact on the ongoing war between Celestials, the green-skin nations and the Second Empire. Firstly, they have interrupted trade between the Celestials and the Gnomes crippling Celestial war efforts. Secondly, by invading the Western shores of Orzimar they have put Orcs in an uncertain position, forcing them into an alliance with the newly formed Third Empire to avoid war on all fronts. Thirdly, their assault on the South Island that resulted in the creation of The Capitol forced Gnomes to withdraw from the war completely and evacuate their Raven Island colonies.

Even though they were one of the last people to settle in the Raven Islands their presence helped to shape the current political climate. Since then however, they have become a mostly neutral nation of traders. The Capitol has formal alliances with everyone – including former enemies. They have embassies in the Celestial Kingdom, in the Gnomish Territories and recently even opened trade routes to the Clockwork Dominion. Armadan privateers and many local islander governments however choose their own alliances. So unless you see an Armadan ship flying the Capitol flag, chances are they aren’t friendly.

An aristocrat from the Capitol.

The Capitol has it’s own distinct culture, fashion and sensibilities. They cultivate a meritocratic aristocracy of sorts. All nobles are expected to be proficient in magic, and the more powerful their skill is the higher their social status. The Price Elect is typically chosen from within the most accomplished wizards. As you can imagine the competition is fierce, and the obsession with magic and arcane knowledge makes the aristocracy seem detached and removed from the common folk. The nobles who show no magical aptitude, typically seek glory and recognition by becoming Cavaliers who are the elite cavalry units tasked with to the defense of the Capitol borders from Gnomish invaders.

Cavaliers are essentially Musketeers on raptor mounts:

A Cavalier with his War Lizard mount.

Their patrols an extremely common sight on South Island and they are both feared and admired by the common folk. They are considered to be the finest elite fighting unit of The Capitol and the extension of the will of the Prince Elect. When they are seen outside of the South Island, it typically means shit is about to go down and the Prince has decided to take punitive action against one of the island governors.

Islanders fear and despise Cavaliers because they stand for all the wrong things: they are blindly loyal to the Prince, they are wealthy, arrogant and spoiled and have no sea legs. Most Cavaliers spend their oceanic voyages struggling with sea sickness, but once on land they are considered to be undefeated. Cunning governors will therefore engage them on the sea, rather than risking landfall.

On the mainland, they typically serving as honor guard for dignitaries from the Capitol. Orcs of Orzimar are especially impressed by their combat efficiency, and many of the knights seek to purchase their mounts for themselves. They compare their fighting style to that of the Black Forest centaurs.

Historically, those who couldn’t make it in The Capitol City and were unfit to serve as Cavaliers were sent into the Archipelago to be small time island governors fleet captains. It was a form of banishment and a disgrace. This combined with wealth disparity, might have been one of they key reasons of the animosity and resentment towards the Capitol in the islands. The islanders view the Prince Elect and the court as self-indulgent, detached and remote.

These days local island governments tend to be fiercely independent sometimes even outwardly disloyal. The Prince no longer appoints governors letting the island provinces self-govern as long as they don’t step out of the line too much. It is not uncommon for The Capitol to send the Loyalist Navy to pacify rebellious islands and install new local governments only to have them dismantled by the locals mere months later.

An Islander fleet Captain.

The islanders are fond of tattoos. The Imperials have picked up this practice and developed many advanced techniques, but Westerlings prefer simple designs in black or blue ink. The practice is however very unpopular in The Capitol where it is viewed as provincial uncivilized.

Islanders are very open when it comes to other races. Most of the inhabitants of the archipelago are once or future sailors, and they welcome anyone with good sea legs, a head for trade or naval battle skills. Orcs are sought after by most captains for their strength and resilience. It is also not uncommon to see Elf or Windup engineers selling their services to ship crews in need of clockwork war machines or advanced navigational devices. Most ships also have Ravenfolk crew members who provide cheep manual labor. The Capitol on the other hand is a fairly xenophobic place, and non-humans are less than welcome there.

Nords

Can you guys say Bear Cavalry? Because that’s what Nords are. They ride fucking bears into battle:

Bear Cavalry!!!

Both Armadans and Imperials tend to rely more on light cavalry, and lighter, functional armors. Nords are going to be heavy hitting, plate armor wearing close combat beasts. They have one of the most terrifying and effective military forces out there… And they are rather peaceful people. Their territories are in the Nort-Eastern “wing” of the Raven Island and they share a border with the Third Empire (with whom they have been allies for centuries) and the great swamps that are considered Gnoblar territories. The Celestial Kingdom is just across the inner sea, but they don’t seem to be a huge threat. Aside from occasional harassment and half-hearted attempts to contest some strategically important ports, the Celestials have been reluctant to launch full offensives against them. Nords are tall, wear incredibly heavy armors and ride monstrously large animals to battle. This prevents Celestials from using their favorite tactics which involve rapid hit-and-run attacks or their signature “snatch, lift and drop” maneuver.

I know what you think: Nords going to be either Vikings (because Norh-men, etc…) or pseudo Russians who talk like Hevy from TF2 (because bears). Nope, that’s just way to easy. Everyone does that, so I want to go against the trope and try something different. My Nords are going to look vaguely South Asian: brown skin, dark eyes, jet black hair, etc. Kinda like this:

Nord Noble Woman

The climate of North Vale is rather frigid and unwelcoming which has made Nords rather hardy and resilient people. Most of the population lives in the low lands where the snow recedes during the short summers allowing for cultivation of agriculture. However some of their most famous castles and citadels are high up in the permafrost regions of Ice Shard mountains.

They are ruled by the Ice Queen whose palace was carved directly into the ice on top of the Diamond Peak. The palace which houses hundreds of members of the court, attendants servants and staff, is completely dependent on daily supplies of food, firewood and other materials from the lowland regions. This makes it rather indefensible if it was ever besieged, but Nord rulers consider it a point of honor to live in such a dangerous location. They pride themselves on being able to protect their supply lines from their enemies no matter what. And protect them they do.

The Diamond Peak palace and most other mountain citadels are protected by the fearsome corps of Ice Dragon Riders:

Nord Ice Dragon Rider

Most dragons have been wiped out by Celestials soon after their arrival. The Ice Shards however were inaccessible to them, and the Ice Dragons proved to be more than match for their warriors. Their ability to literally “breathe” them out of the sky made the extermination of the species virtually impossible. Most of the younger, faster and more agile dragons survived the purge and later made an alliance with the Nords to defend their land together.

Most Nords use polar bears as their primary mode of locomotion, and only the finest, most accomplished warriors get to work with the dragon mounts. It is a great privilege and honor but also a huge responsibility. The Dragon Riders are tasked with protection of supply lines of all the major citadels, as well as with paroling the borders of the kingdom.

Nord Mage

Nord society is mostly egalitarian with respect to gender. Unlike the matriarchal society of the Third Empire and the decisively patriarchal Armadan culture, Nords don’t seem to have many rules, taboos with respect to gender roles. Hereditary titles are typically passed to the first born child regardless of the gender (so sometimes Nords will have an Ice King instead of an Ice Queen). Both men and women are encouraged to become warriors and the gender ratio amongst the Dragon Rider elite is pretty much equal.

They also appear to be rather tolerant and welcoming towards other races. While their remote kingdom is rarely visited by Elves or Orcs, Nords are accustomed to having non-humans living along side them. For one, their dragon mounts tend to be fiendishly intelligent and sometimes even capable of magic. Lowland commoners have been living alongside Ravenkin and Gnoblars for ages now, and during harsh winters everyone must work together to survive so prejudices and xenophobia are rather impractical. The Northen citadels are often homes to the Snow Beasts:

Nord Snow Beast

Despite their looks, these monstrous, towering creatures are actually fully sentient, and capable of learning human speech. Before the Nords arrived at the islands the Snow Beasts were primitive cave dwellers that only recently discovered fire, and learned to use stone tools. Many still prefer lifestyle, but many have been are drawn into Nord settlements by curiosity and desire to learn new technologies. They are not very smart, and can be very dangerous when angered but they are usually hard workers and are eager to please. Nords usually teach them to use simple tools and hire them for manual labor that requires physical strength and resilience. During war, Snow Beasts will often march to battle along side Nords wielding clubs, maces and wearing make-shift armor if they can afford it.

Yeah, these guys have bear cavalry, dragon riders and armored Yetis. They are pretty much considered to be impossible to conquer. No one wants to fuck with them.

To be continued…

If you were counting, Ravenflight setting has basically four main ethnic groups of humans: Imperials, Nords, Armadans and Northeast Imperials. I’m not really counting the mixed-race Armadans because while the Western Shore region is developing it’s own sub-culture it is not firmly established yet. Nor do they have an established, stable breeding pool like Northeast Imperials.

You might have noticed that none of these groups includes white people. That’s actually by design. Most fantasy seems to be happening in some sort of incarnation of endless Europe populated (except when “exotic” venues are required by the plot) so I wanted to shake things up a bit and re-define what is “normal” and commonplace in this setting.

One thing I was consciously designing for, was the subversion of a rather insidious fantasy trope. I’m not sure if it has a name, but you have probably seen it in a lot of video games. Dragon Age: Origins is a good example here, but others do it to. If you roll a female character, you will actually get extra dialog lines from random non-essential NPC’s. For example if you’re a warrior they will remark on how they don’t often see lady warriors in these parts, especially ones as accomplished by you. I guess it is meant as a compliment or something, but it is rather insidious. Instead of just going with the idea that it is common for women to become warriors or rogues or whatever, it instead insists that your character is the specialest of snowflakes for choosing that career path. It is normal for men to pursue all kinds of adventuring professions, but if a woman does it, it is all kinds of unusual. I hate that.

So the biggest, and most central nation in this setting has a matriarchal society in which women are the default for everything. They are warriors, scholars, rulers etc. This is normal in their society. It is commonplace. Women do everything, except magic, because magic is unclean and unfit for warriors. Instead of morally ambiguous witches that are probably evil and who exist on the margins of the society, we have warlocks which fulfill the same exact role.

If you go outside of the Empire, people are kinda used to the idea of women being warriors, adventures and leaders. While Armadans have traditional patriarchal society, the islanders can’t help but be influenced by the Imperial society. Outside of the isolationist Capitol it is kinda commonplace of Armadan women to pursue any kind of profession they want. And Nords are so chill they don’t even give a shit about gender.

I think this spread provides a pretty decent spread in terms of character choices: Imperials give you samurais and eastern style warlocks. Armadans can be priates, bandits, swashbucklers, aristocratic swasbuckler wizards and dinosaur riding musketeers. Nords are knights who use polar bears instead of horses and can have Yeti buddies who can do the whole the Chewbacka routine.

As usual, let me know what you think about these ideas. I’ll probably have two more of these posts. They are actually kinda exhausting.

For a while now I have been running my Reinventing Fantasy Races series of posts in which I try to come up with unusual and unconventional approaches to common fantasy tropes. Over the last few months several people mentioned that I have a good deal of material out there, that could potentially be connected and bundled together into some sort of a custom fantasy setting. I kinda like this idea, but most of the stuff I have written up until now is not very cohesive. In fact many posts present several contradictory ideas that wouldn’t necessarily fit together. I like the freedom to just spitball, and subvert fantasy tropes in vacuum one at a time, so I don’t really want to have some over-arcing meta-narrative or setting encompassing everything.

To me, a setting have to be at least somewhat cohesive, have some sort of shared history/mythology and be finite. I’m not really in the business of building some sort of super-setting that can be used to tell every story, regardless of it’s mood, theme and scope. I’m more after something narrower and specific, as those kinds of settings tend to be most interesting. For example one of my favorite D&D settings is Darksun which is a a rather narrowly defined subsection of the D&D universe which gives it a rather unique flavor. I’m more into creating something like that.

If you bear with me, the next couple of post in this series will be an attempt to create something I dubbed Project Ravenflight. Why? Well, one of the reasons is that I found this random, blank map that kinda looks like a bird in mid flight pooping on a hot-dog:

Raven Island, home of the Ravenfolk.

So I figured the larger island could be called Raven Island, which was historically home to some kind of Ravenfolk or some such. And since both Ravenholm and Ravenloft were already taken and Ravenpoop seemed to silly, so I went with Ravenflight… Don’t judge. Here is the same map, with some additional detail added on top:

Map with major geographical features and major nation-states.

Conceptually the project is still about “Reinventing Fantasy Races” and subverting tropes. But this time I will try to have some over-arcing world building elements that will connect the next 2-3 posts in the series into something of a setting, based around the above map. I’m going to reuse some of the ideas I already outlined in previous posts, and add some new ones while trying to maintain somewhat modular structure. So if you like a particular idea you can feel free to rip it out of the larger setting and use it elsewhere.

Ravenfolk (My Halflings are Different)

One interesting aspect of Halflings is that they are frequently depicted as subaltern people. They have no nations or empires of their own, but instead live amongst other races. Because they look exactly like humans, albeit of diminutive stature they integrate into their societies quite easily. Thieflings are also depicted as subaltern people without land or voice of their own in almost every D&D setting in which they appear, and they commonly face discrimination to some degree because of how they look. Still, if you overlook their height, their hairy feet, their horns and tails they are still very human.

What if our version of Halflings/Thieflings was so utterly alien, most races would not be able to identify with them? What if they were not only without land and voice of their own, but also robbed of their own identity, and prosecuted for something that was fundamental to their nature. Enter Ravenfolk: diminutive, flightless, anthropomorphic bird people of the Raven Island:

Ravenfolk

We can call them Ravenkin, or Crow Bros if you like. I’m actually stealing the concept art from D&D and/or Pathfinder manuals in which this particular race is labeled as Kenku. That said I’m ignoring all their lore and making up my own. The monster manuals and wikis of course describe their “psychology” by basically outlining a personality template – as you do in D&D. I hate that, so I’m not going to do it. Instead I will talk a bit about their history, culture and society.

Long time ago, before the islands were colonized, Ravenfolk used to be the most populous of the three native races. They were everywhere. They soared the skies and built their villages in the tree tops, in the cliff sides or other high places. They were a proud, honorable people with rich culture and traditions. Then their history was abruptly interrupted when the first Celestials touched down in the North.

The Celestials will be primary bad guys of this setting. I’ll talk about them later, but it’s safe to assume no one likes them (especially Ravenfolk). They are an expansionist colonial nation that doesn’t give a shit about anything that isn’t them. And they really hate things that can fly. Especially things that fly and talk back. Celestials believe the skies belong to them.

Ravenfolk, being an uppity, and populous avian race was therefore put on the short list for complete extermination. Celestial troops would swoop down from above, burn their villages, smash their eggs, rip their wings out and then drop them out of the sky. Unable to fight the overwhelming forces, Ravenfolk started to debase themselves by binding or cliping their wings and scurrying around on the ground and cowering in hope to appear leas offensive to the invaders. This practice proved to be effective: it amused and mollified Celestials and likely averted genocide. However the centuries they have lost the capability of flight entirely and no longer have functional wings. In addition, they have forgot much of their history culture and even their native tongue.

Ravenfolk Rogue

Today Ravenfolk have no land of their own. They have no nations, states or even cities. In fact, few Ravenfolk towns or villages exist because centuries of oppression have taught them not to congregate in large numbers to avoid being targeted. They prefer to move into towns and cities of other races or live as transients traveling wherever there is work for them. They rarely form very large communities, preferring to stick to small cliques or clans of friends and relatives that live or travel together. It is not uncommon for these clans to specialize in specific type of craft/labor and compete for territory.

They mostly live in the shadows of the other races: frequently as daily laborers, cheep goods peddlers, street vendors, servants, street sweepers, rat catchers, couriers, transients, rogues, peddlers and even beggars. Few if any own land or hold political positions. While many become skilled craftsmen, chemists or healers they almost exclusively provide services to common folk. Orc, Elf and humans of noble birth or significant wealth typically avoid associating with Ravenkin, unless they are in the need to hire first rate burglars, pick-pockets or even assassins. They do however integrate quite well within Gnoblar and Hoblite (more on those in another post) societies.

If Ravenkin ever had a written script, it has been lost to the ages. This of course does not prevent them from becoming literate in the local language of the nation in which they reside. Their native language has also atrophied quite a bit. Most Ravenfolk are fluent in one or more of the local languages. They are quite adept at mimicking the speach other races make, but because they have beaks instead of lips some sounds are inaccessible to them.

They are one of the shortest people on the island, most measuring under three feet of height. They are the only race with avian roots which makes them markedly different. For one, they lay eggs (which Gnomes consider to be a delicacy). Parents feed recently hatched young same way birds do – by regurgitating food into their mouths, which is a practice that fills most other races with deep disgust. They are also one of the very few races which no sexual dimorphism. It is actually virtually impossible for the outsiders to distinguish between the males and females of the species without close examination of their genital area. There is no variation in size, tone of voice or behavior between the sexes. Ravenfolk themselves of course have no trouble distinguishing each other’s sex, but their culture doesn’t really put much emphasis on it. Both parents take turns taking care of the eggs and feeding the young. Their native tongue doesn’t actually have gender specific pronouns, and person’s sex only really matters when it comes to procreation. When dealing with other races, Ravenkin will sometimes choose refer to every member of their species using the dominant gender in that society. So for example in a patriarchal societies, everyone is a “he”. This is actually intentional and cunning way of usurping at least a small amount of privilege for themselves. They have no problems distinguishing between sexes of dimorphic races, and take care not to miss-gender them. If unsure, they typically fall back on gender-neutral pronouns or descriptors such as “this one” or “that one”.

The apparent lack of clearly defined gender characteristics, their methods of feeding their young, and their heavily accented, squawking speech makes many outsiders uncomfortable and marks Ravenkin as perpetual outsiders in many societies.

Ravenfolk Wizard

Magic affinity is rare, but not unheard of among them. When their society was at its peak, there existed Ravenfolk shamans and clerics, but their art was lost to the ages. Presently Ravenkin who have the magical talents usually learn from other, more magically accomplished races. Human wizards rarely take them as apprentices, so most have learn their trade either from stolen magic tomes, or from Hoblite warlocks.

I kinda envision Crow-Dudes to be more or less ubiquitous in this setting. They are everywhere and they are weird and kinda unsettling. The island used to be heir home, but they are now treated as outsiders and the underclass in the land of the ancestors.

Deep Elves (My Elves/Drow are Different)

I already wrote a lengthy post on Elves but I wanted to do something different for Ravenflight. When I write these posts, I often look at stock fantasy art for inspiration. One thing I noticed about Elves is that they are rather boring. Most settings have a billion different types of them: high elves, wood elves, snow elves, dark elves, blood elves, etc.. There is an elf flavor for just about every type of environment or climate. And for some strange reason they all have fair skin and long, bright, flowing hair. This is actually true for many fantasy races: elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings and many more, all look like white people only short or with spiky ears (or both).

Well, there are Drow which kinda buck the trend, but not really. They look as if someone took regular elves, and painted them black (or dark purple, depending on the artist). At best this is just a a lazy palette swap and at worst: white elves in blackface. Drow are also typically portrayed as an evil race. So is their skin color coded for evil because of laziness and preexisting fantasy tropes, or was this something born out of ignorance and racial insensitivity and stuck around because D&D cannon is sacrosanct (except when it’s not)? While I kinda like the idea of something like Drow existing, I don’t think I’m on board with… Well, this:

Ugh, no!

I wanted something different. I wanted non-traditional elves. Elves that don’t look like Orlando Bloom in a wig. Elves that don’t hang out in the woods, shoot bows, and gracefully walk in the snow like it’s not even weird. But I didn’t want… Well, that. That picture above. That’s just.. No.

So I did some googling for inspiration and I stumbled upon this:

Deep Elf

I don’t think it was intended to be an Elf, but I found while searching for Elf pictures and I thought it was brilliant. Screw pale, blond, bow shooting, magic casting traditional elves. My elves are going to be awesome, brown skinned enchanters and artificers that live in the mountains, build clockwork machines and mine the earth for rare gemstones and ore! They are basically going to be Dwarfs, but still Elf-tall and ridiculously good looking.

Like most inhabitants of the large island Elves originated elsewhere in the world. The history of the island before Elves and then humans landed and started keeping written records is a bit unclear. Archeological evidence, and some oral history suggest that there was a huge war that lead to complete annihilation of the Dwarf empire in the southern mountain chains, and severely weakened the Celestials forcing them to retreat into the Norther regions leaving much of the land up for grabs.

The Elves came about 200 years after that war. They stumbled upon abandoned, rusting and crumbling clockwork fortresses of the Dwarves and they have become fascinated by their culture and inventiveness. They felt kinship wit this now extinct race of people who were very different, and yet had similar appreciation of fine craftsmanship, science and innovation. While the ancient Dwarfs took many of their secrets to the grave, their complex counting machines, fabulous clockwork architecture, and wind-up armors have taught Elves a great deal about craftsmanship, clockwork mechanics, steam power and etc… By combining this new found knowledge with their unmatched understanding of arcane magic and alchemy, they have created a whole slew of brand new disciplines of science.

Deep Elf Artificer with a clockwork device and a electro-alchemical powered staff.

Deep Elves, as they became known, became most prominent enchanters and artificers not only on Raven Island but the entire world. Their weapons and armors are not only famous for top notch craftsmanship, but also for the built in magical mechanisms that amplify their power far beyond what is possible to accomplish with arcane enchantment or runic inscriptions alone.

Their magic users are more interested in combining arcane incantations and clockwork mechanisms rather than blowing things up with lightning bolts. Instead they prefer to mass produce wind-up lightning staffs that can be used by their rank and file troopers. Their greatest engineering dream is creating a perfect device, in which the mechanical work would charge the magical circuits yielding arcane discharges that would in turn wind it’s springs creating infinite energy.

The elven architecture and technology is rather distinctly different from that of Ancient Dwarfs. Their clockwork citadels were squat, inward facing constructs with deep underground networks beneath them. Elves prefer to build tall, clockwork spires that jut outward from the mountain sides. While some of their oldest cities have been built by reconfiguring abandoned Dwarf settlements, most are built from scratch, adjacent to or above the ruins so that the ancient history can be studied and preserved.

Deep Elf facial features

It is probably worth mentioning that it was actually really hard to find images that would capture the look and feel I had in my mind for the Deep Elves. It is virtually impossible to find pictures of non-white elves (or for that matter fantasy characters of any race) to begin with, but I also tried to avoid anything with “tribal” motifs or African folklore because that’s not what I was going for. I sort of wanted a “Wizard-Engineer” type vibe. I imagine their culture being an intricate mix of their own traditions and new influences of the ancient Dwarf culture. For example, Deep Elf warriors would wear super fancy, clockwork mechanism power armors like this:

Deep Elf Warrior

Of course not every Elf can afford such splendid equipment. For comparison, here is scout wearing very plain outfit, and sporting a bow. If you look at her left hand you will notice a clockwork gauntlet device of some sort that likely assists her in drawing the string.

Deep Elf Scout with Clockwork Gauntlet

Their political structure is rather unconventional. Each of the Elven tower-cities elects a group of Councilors who are tasked with administrative and decision making duties. Smaller cities may only have a single Councillor, whereas larger ones typically appoint one per district. There are no rules regarding the Councilor’s qualifications, other than they must have the approval and justly represent the people of their district. While it is rare for a non-elf to become councilor, Elf history recall at least three human Councilors and one Windup who represented racially mixed districts in some of the biggest cities. The Council seats have 20 year term (which is short by Elven standards), after which they must be re-elected. When decisions regarding all of the Elven territories must be made a Grand Council is called (always at a different location) and all the appointed representatives confer and debate the issues until an agreement is met.

So there you have it: mountain dwelling, elves whose technology is a mix steam-punk style clockwork devices with magic. There are one of the established superpowers on the island, but because they are not terribly expansionist many other nations take them for granted. Few however are willing to encroach on their territory or declare an open war on them.

Savage Dwarfs (My Dwarfs are Different)

I had the idea for Savage Dwarfs a while ago and I think it will fit quite well into this setting. Basically, I want to get rid of the honorable, wealthy, mountain dwelling folk and replace them with something entirely different. Something like feral, forest dwelling barbarians. The kind of people who supplement their hunter-gathering lifestyle with a healthy amount of pillaging and plundering of more more established and civilized people. I want them to function as a low to mid level threat: convenient antagonists that can show up anywhere for no reason (nomadic, tribal, hunters who follow their pray) and start trouble.

On Raven Island the “true Dwarfs” – who built clockwork citadels in the Iron Mountains are an extinct race. They have been gone for centuries. Much of their technology, history and culture has been preserved by Deep Elves but there are still many mysteries surrounding their most advanced works, the great war and their downfall.

There however exists a splinter race that is considered the remnant of the once great empire. Savage Dwarfs are distant descendants of the Ancient Dwarfs who went feral. They left their mountain homes and instead settled on the edges of the Black Forest, and became nomadic hunter-gatherers. It appears they have worked out some sort of a deal with the Centaurs who seem to tolerate them on their land. It could be because they are actually not very interested in cutting down the sacred Blackwood trees but instead live in leather tents and follow animal migrations.

Savage Dwarf

Their technology is very primitive. While they do seem capable of working with bronze and iron, they have very little of it. Their preferred materials are wood, bone and leather which they use for almost everything. They have never been witnessed using Ancient Dwarf clockwork artifacts. They have no written script, and their oral tradition seems to be quite limited. They prefer to keep to themselves and are very weary of outsiders, but from what is known about their history, their myths and legends only seem to cover last few hundred years. It seems that any knowledge about the Ancient Dwarf empire prior to it’s collapse has been lost. Their elders stubbornly maintain that their race is actually native to the island, even though that is demonstrably not true.

Savage Dwarf

They are neither peaceful, nor friendly people. They seldom trade with the outsiders, and have no established political relationships with other races. Their tribes are nomadic, and they go where their pray goes. Very often this takes their into territories of other races. They frequently sally out into the human Third Empire and into the Land of Hob. If they happen to stumble upon civilized settlements they usually do not hesitate raid and loot them. They are very hardy folk accustomed to harsh conditions and few luxuries. They train to be warriors and hunters from birth, and almost every adult is proficient with an axe, club or a spear. When they go to battle, they hit hard. Few villages can withstand a Dwarf onslaught, and most end up burned to the ground.

When practical they take prisoners to be ransomed, typically targeting nobility and/or knights in impressive armor who might have affluent families willing to pay their weight in steel and iron. That’s right, Savage Dwarfs have no use for soft metals like gold or useless precious gems. What they value are steel weapons and armor pieces they can adapt for their needs and iron they can smelt to make tools and axes.

Rescues and retaliation is often difficult, because the roving tribes are notoriously difficult to track. By the time warriors mobilize into a viable force and arrive on scene Dwarfs are long gone. They are expert trackers, and they know how to vanish without a sign. When they roll up their encampments and hit the road they live very little behind. Only finest rangers in the land can hope to find them.

Savage Dwarf Beastmaster

While magic use is almost unheard of among them, there exist individuals that have a strange affinity to nature allowing them to communicate with and control wild beasts. This talent is extremely rare but sought after. Tribes that have such Beastmasters among them tend to be very prosperous and very dangerous.

Each tribe is independently ruled by a chieftain or an elder whose authority is absolute. It is not uncommon for tribes to go to war against each other, form temporary alliances or eve absorb one another but there has never been a unified Savage Dwarf nation.

There exist few depictions of how Ancient Dwarfs looked. Their culture seemed to have rules against actually painting or carving their own likeness. The few descriptions and wood carvings of them that do exist note many distinct differences. For one, Ancient Dwarfs seemed to be a bit taller and have a permanently hunched posture as opposed to the short and stocky wood dwellers of today. The ancients were also noted to have pronounced underbite and protruding tusks much like those of Orcs. This suggests that over the centuries the Savage Dwarfs have changed and adopted to the new environment. Or, as some scholars suggest they are actually not direct descendants but a cousin race that had a common ancestor with the ancients. They compare it to the relationship between the Gnoblars and Hoblites.

Think of Savage Dwarfs as a stand in for Orcs and Goblins. Whenever you need savage, uncivilized race to raid local villages, you use these guys. And yes, I do realize that Orcs and Goblins are ugly, monstrous and therefore killing them is easy and guilt free. I absolutely hate that, so we’re going to have none of that. If you want brutal, savage barbarians to fight they are going to look uncomfortably familiar and human like.

The Clockwork Dominion (My Dwarfs are Different Again)

Yes, this is my Clockwork Dwarf idea, but lets flavor it a little bit differently. The pictures are of D&D Warforged, who are (I believe) magical in nature, but I’m going with the fully mechanical, clockwork driven concept.

The Black Forest is hugged from the West by the Iron Mountains and from the East by the Shadow Peaks. The former is the home of Deep Elves, while the later was thought to be uninhabitable due to the volcanic activity in the region that constantly vented poisonous gasses into the air. Today however that region has a different name: The Clockwork Dominion and it is home to the islands strangest, and youngest civilization.

The people who live in this inhospitable, poisonous wasteland call themselves Mechanos… Mechanites? Clockworkaneers? Sigh… I don’t know. Help me out here. Figure out something that sounds about as good as Warforged. In the meantime I’ll go with the former. Other races usually refer to them as Windups or Clockwork Golems. That last name is a bit of an insult, because unlike actual golems made by the Elves are mindless automatons. Our mechanical friends here are actually sentient, self aware and capable of reproduction.

Their bodies look like ornate, but functional suits of armor, powered by spring-driven clockwork machinery. While predominantly bipedal and humanoid in shape they do not seem to have a unified look to them. There is a huge variation with respect to body shape, size or even configuration from one individual to another. It seems that the Windup people seem capable of re-configuring their bodies to better suit their work or interests over time. As such, they don’t resemble any other race. Some are taller than the Elves, while other are the size of Ravenkin and Gnoblar.

Windup Engineer at Work

The actual science behind their internal workings is still poorly understood. It is known that they do not consume food or sleep like other races. However, they must wind up their springs to remain active. In the Shadow Peaks their cities seem to harness the geothermal activity of the region using gigantic turbines that produce almost limitless amounts of energy. When traveling they usually carry portable steam powered wind-up mechanisms that can be stoked with wood or coal.

The longest a Mechanos can go without re-winding their main spring is about 48 hours, after which they simply shut down. However, upon rewinding they spring back into activity as if nothing has happened.

Because of their mechanical nature they are completely immune to all known toxins, poisons and infectious diseases. Their minds cannot be read or influenced by magic, and very difficult to detect because they are neither magical nor alive. They are extremely resilient and can withstand extensive physical damage without any long term effects on their health as their bodies can be easily repaired. Their weak point however are their memory spools typically hidden deep within their chest cavity and protected by multiple layers of armor.

Windup Smith

These spools are usually long rolls of punched paper (though some use gold, or other soft metals) that contain their memories, personalities and skills. The number of spools varies between individuals, but most have at least seven slots. Older and more experienced individuals seem to use more spools, while the young typically start with five which seems to be the lowest number of spools that is needed for self-awareness and regular function.

Windup Warrior

The memory spools can, and do get damaged over time so most Windups inspect them daily, and copy them to fresh ones if any signs of wear and tear are detected. Most can do this internally if they have free slots, but hand-cranked devices are also available and commonly carried by travelers. It seems that while doing this sort of daily maintenance, Mechanos can re-organize, condense and even delete unwanted memories so that they take less space on new spools. When an individual fills up all the available spools they become incapable of forming long term memories.

Mechanos are completely genderless and asexual. They reproduce by building their children new clockwork bodies, and providing them with basic set of memory spools that contain basic operational instructions, desired personality traits and assortment of skills. Designing new person is a rather difficult: an art, rather than exact science. While a single parent is all that is needed, typically two or three Windups will collaborate on creating a bootstrap spool set, using their own memories, experiences and skills as templates. The children are immediately self-aware and sentient and capable of autonomous function, though their level of maturity may vary depending on how many memories they have inherited from their parents.

Windup Explorer with extra paper spools in his backpack.

Mechanos have no written script or traditional books. They however can record their thoughts on rectangular paper or metal punch cards, which is what they typically do instead of writing letters. They claim this method is superior because it allows them to exchange not only ideas, but complete experiences, feelings, skills or complex notions. Their libraries contain thousands of card stacks instead of books. Why don’t they exchange memory spools? Because spools are typically very long and contain private memories, whereas a card deck can just be a distilled idea or an experience.

Windups have a friendly trade relations with the Elves and they can frequently be seen in Elven cities, either working there or just passing by en-route toward the Third Empire. The Black Forest is closed to them (as it is to most races) and they are not keen on starting an all-out war with the centaurs. Their territories also border with the Land of Hob, but the Hoblites can’t seem to decide whether they tolerate the machine people, or if they want to break them apart for the precious metals and gemstones used in their construction.

It is unclear who or what has made them. A lot of the Hoblite warlocks think they were originally built by the Elves as a servant race which broke free and escaped into the poisonous Shadow Peaks. Elves deny this, and instead claim that Mechanos must be descendants of the Ancient Dwarfs. Indeed, at the basic level their their technology resemble that of the Dwarfs. The Windups themselves don’t seem to know their origin either. Their history talks about the First Founders who have discovered the Shadow Peaks and their abundance of hot springs, steam geysers and magma flows and decided to settle there. There are however no records as to where the founders came from. The card decks that described their origins were either lost or intentionally destroyed, and those individuals who could have remembered have suffered catastrophic damage or permanent memory loss long time ago.

To be continued…

I’m going to stop here, because the post is getting incredibly long. Let me know if you like this thing that I’m doing. I have at least two more posts of this series in various stages of being drafted, so if you hate it I’m afraid you going to have to put up with it for a little while longer.

Unicorns are rather boring as a fantasy race. They are basically a type of horses, but the lore of most settings elevates them to a special, awesome snowflake of a creature status. They are rare, pure and magical creatures that we are told are important for some reason, but we rarely ever see. It is actually quite amusing that in most fantasy settings a typical adventurer has probably seen a dragons, hydras, manticores, baslisks and all manner of other monstrosities, but never a unicorn. It almost seems that the primary reason why they are so incredibly rare is that they are just so boring. What do you do with a unicorn in a fantasy story? A dragon for example can be a focal point of the story – it is big, threatening creature that is both cool and terrifying. But a horned horse? What the fuck do you do with that? At best, it becomes a MacGuffin plot objective (you need to either protect/rescue it Legend style, or alternatively obtain it’s horn as a magic ingredient), at worst it becomes a mount upgrade for a prominent hero. That’s pretty much the extent of usage we see out there.

So let’s try to come up with a scenario in which unicorns would be the focal point. For example, why are they so rare? The cannon answer in most settings is that they were hunted down almost to the extinction because humans wizards found their horns to be a really useful alchemical ingredient. But what if that was not the reason at all? What if unicorns were purposefully hunted down to extinction because they were phenomenal assholes?

Lets imagine a place where unicorns were allowed to roam free and breed undisturbed for centuries.

Ladies and mentlegen, welcome to King John’s Island: land when no man rides, except to Hunt or to Joust. This remote, mysterious island is probably most famous for it’s indigenous inhabitants, the unicorns. The island is large, and mostly covered in flat grasslands or sparse forests, and small streams and lakes providing ideal environment for these beasts. There are literally thousands of them in the island. While they typically do not enter human settlements, they can usually be seen just outside the city walls, or villages. No matter where you go on the island, there will be at least a dozen of these majestic animals in your line of sight. Only they are not really animals.

Visitors and newcomers often learn this lesson very quickly, when they wander off the main roads, or decide to take a stroll through one of the many beautiful, flowery meadows. The grasslands and forests of the island are off limits to men. Unicorns do not take kindly to those who trespass on what they consider their territory. Anyone who strays too far from the designated human zones will quickly find himself surrounded by at least a dozen menacing beasts. Outsiders and newcomers typically get off easily – they will be shoved back toward the closest human settlement and left alone. Locals on the other hand are expected to know better. If the unicorns find any of the villagers or noblemen wandering in the wild, they will skewer and trample them on the spot.

Unicorns may look much like horses, but they are devious and intelligent beast. Their minds are about as complex and capable as those of men if not more. They consider themselves to be the undisputed ruler of the island, and will take steps to keep this position. Before the men came to the island, they were the the only only intelligent inhabitants, and they quickly rose to the top of the food chain. You have to keep in mind that Unicorns are grazers, and they do not eat meat. Being on the top of the food-chain therefore required elimination of any and all predators that hunted them, as well as any competitors in the same environmental niche.

Unicorns tend to be larger, bulkier and more muscular than largest of horses.

As a result, there are no other large predators or grazing animals on King John’s Island. No wolves, no large cats, no horses or deer, or any other kind of animals with hooves. Unicorns wiped them all out long time ago. What is worse, they will not tolerate any four legged grazing animal imports. Whenever men tried to bring horses to the island, the unicorns simply slaughtered them on the first night, along with any shepherds or stable men that got in the way. No man rides on the island of King John. The villagers walk, and the noblemen and their guests are carried around in palaquins.

Why don’t men rise up, and defend their livestock? For one, Unicorns are actually rather scary. They are large – larger than regular horses, muscular and very fast. They can easily outrun and overpower a man. Being kicked by one of them usually results in shattered ribs, broken limbs or skull fractures. Their favorite tactic however is skewering men with their horn, and they are very, very good at it. They almost always aim for the heart, unless of course they want their victim to suffer. When they decide to humiliate a man, they will shove him to the ground gracefully prance around trampling him into the ground until he stops moving, and then defecate on the corpse.

If that was not enough, they also posses some low level magical powers. They are probably most famous for their ability to “blink” or temporarily phase shift to another plane of existence. This is not actually a teleportation spell, but for all intents and purposes it could be used as one. This ability allows them to become ethereal for the briefest of moments, allowing them to pass through solid objects if they wish to do so. Most unicorns learned to use this power both defensively (to avoid a predator attack, or for example a spear strike) and offensively (to bypass a steel plate armor when skewering a knight). While this power makes them very formidable foes, it does not offer complete invulnerability. Constant phase shifting seems very taxing and they seem to be able to shift only every few heart-beats so a persistent attacker with good timing can defeat them. While in their ethereal form they can still be wounded by magical weapons, just like wraiths, specters and other ghostly apparitions.

He is not striking a pose, he is actually pooping on your mother’s grave.

In addition to their blink power, they also seem to possess a low level form of telepathy. This ability likely evolved as their primary means of communication with each other, but they can use it to read minds of other sentient beings as well. Not only that: more skilled unicorns know how to use this ability to persuade or intimidate humans. The locals seem to be especially susceptible to this sort of influence. Some say this is because for decades the unicorns have been culling the human population, killing off anyone born with telepathic resistance to their powers.

Finally, men are outnumbered. The island is very sparsely populated and there is roughly twenty odd unicorn to a man. The island has only one prominent city: the Port Town also sometimes refereed to as King’s Landing (appologies to G. R. R. Martin but that’s just a cool name). Surrounded by tall walls it houses the King’s Castle, the island’s only port and a huge bazaar where both foreigners and locals can trade their wares. It also provides lodgings and entertainment for the visitors, sailors and dock workers.

The legend says that the city was built in the exact spot where the first human ships landed six hundred years ago. The Jousting Grounds was where they have first encountered unicorns. It is said that on that day, seven unicorns broke off their horns and gifted them to young man named John to fashion a crown that is still worn by the rulers of the island today. John was not a noble man, and was not even a leader of the expedition. And yet, he was chosen by the unicorn to lead his people. The young man shed his former surname and former life and became the First King of the Island, which was then named after him. His stewardship over the colony was one of the many conditions under which men were allowed to stay on the island.

Just outside the Port Town are the expansive Jousting Grounds and a expanses of fields and small villages almost to the horizon. Beyond the fields however, are grasslands that are the domain of the unicorns. They never enter the city itself, and they rarely visit the fields or villages, but there are are always few of them paroling the perimeter just outsize the human settlements.

Beyond the Port Town there is about a dozen small estates scattered throughout the island. Each of them belongs to one of the great noble houses, all of which were established in the first years of the colony. Unlike most feudal monarchies, The Island does not belong to the king, but rather to the unicorn. He has no right to grant anyone land, and there have been no new great houses in hundreds of years. It is however said that all the current great houses have been granted their estates by the unicorn themselves, through the king’s authority. All of the founders of the noble houses were said to be especially beloved by the unicorn.

The king and his court usually only reside in the King’s Castle in the early spring during the jousting season and during official holidays. For the rest of the year they retreat to King’s Estate located in the heart of the island. It is said to be one of the largest and most lavish estates on the island but it has never been seen by a foreigner. The kings value their privacy, and they admit guests and hold audiences in the Port City castle. Only the family, inner circle of attendants, servants and advisers are ever invited to the estate. The only men allowed to visit it are members of the great houses.

Most estates are composed of a castle, inhabited by the nobles and their extended family, and an adjacent village that feeds them, clothes them and supplies them with servants and attendants. The remote estates are connected with each other and the Port City with narrow cobblestone roads. These roads are considered part of the Domain of Men and can be traveled without fear. In fact, travel on King John’s island is probably safer than anywhere else in the world. There are no large predators, no highway bandits or marauding Orcs. The only danger is the unicorns themselves, but they never attack anyone who doesn’t wander off (unless they somehow deserved it). The roads are meticulously maintained, repaired and cleared off fallen branches, leaves or snow. While estates are for the most part self-sufficient, none of the nobles ever want to be cut-off from the rest of the island.

Every spring there is a grand jousting tournament held outside of the Port City. It is probably one of the most important events on the island, and many of the smaller businesses in Port city work the whole year to produce supplies, tents, ornaments and other materials for it. It is celebrated with great pomp and fanfare so most visitors think it to be a happy, joyous holiday at first.

Spring is the mating season among the unicorn. The ancestors of the unicorn used to fight to establish dominance during the rut, much like deer or elks do. Modern day unicorns are sentient, and they mostly lost their primal breeding instincts. However, they seem to still enjoy competing and fighting. Some even say they all have a vindictive, sadistic, malicious personalities in that they seem to enjoy dominating and humiliating their foes. Before the men came to the island their fights used to be protracted, bloody and ugly fights to the death. Each spring the island would be strewn with mutilated corpses. When the human explorers arrived, the unicorn saw the memories of knightly jousts in their minds and became obsessed with them. And so they devised their own version.

Before the men came, spring fighting was an ugly, bloody affair.

The unicorn joust is not as much about the riders as it is about the mounts. The mounts pick their riders instead of the other way around. The riders are picked from the great houses, and have little to say about it. They either ride, or are chased down and trampled to death in the most public and humiliating manner possible. Most choose to ride when they are called upon, both to save face and protect their immediate family from possible backlash.

Riders are permitted no armor. They ride bare chested, and they paint their bodies with the colors of their house. The lances they use are not the soft, dull ended jousting weapons you could expect at such event. They are hardwood, steel tipped barbed combat spears. They are designed to kill, maim and tear flesh causing mortal wounds. Jousts are typically to the death, but severely wounded riders who are no longer able to fight can be carried off and given medical care, but only if they fought valiantly, and have shown no fear or mercy towards the enemy. Cowards or inept riders who drop their spear or don’t at least make an effort to kill the enemy rider are typically thrown off and trampled.

The unicorn love the spring joust. It allows them to satisfy their blood thirst, without a loss of life (they don’t really care about human lives much) and it lets them to exert and proudly display their dominance over their “subjects”. It also gives the participants a little bit of a thrill. Since they must carry their riders, the unicorn can’t use their blink power to avoid damage. This means there is always some risk of getting injured or even killed during joust. It is said that in the past the mounts would try to rake each other with their horns at the same time as they passed by. However this custom seems to have went out of fashion and most of the time the mounts take great care not to injure each other. In fact, it seems that ever since they started jousting few hundred years ago, the unicorn grown to value their lives much more than they did in the past. For example, they react very violently whenever one of them becomes wounded by a rider. The offender is of course killed on the spot, and the joust ends abruptly. What happens next is rarely spoken off, and never actually recorded in the island’s histories. However if you ask the right people in the Port City they will tell you that there exist two or three old, unmaintained, overgrown roads out there. If you follow these roads you will find old abandoned estates in various stages of ruin. If you explore these, you will find all the doors in all the houses have been kicked off their hinges. If you look more closely you will find piles of human bones everywhere – broken, crushed, strewn across the entire estate. It is said that these estates once belonged to noble families, whose member has wounded a mount during the joust, either purposefully or by accident.

The only other big events that happen on the island are Hunts but these are rather rare. Thee unicorn have wiped or subjugated out all natural predators and large animals on the island, except one. They have only one remaining natural enemy is a dragon. It is also the one enemy they are unable to fight very efficiently. Dragons can fly, which makes them extremely difficult to capture and skewer. They also can breathe fire for a sustained period of time, which is actually longer than most unicorn can hold their ethereal form. A dragon can swoop from the sky, torch a unicorn, grab the charred body and fly off almost without risk. The unicorn hate dragons with a passion, and for years have been trying to exterminate them from the island. Unfortunately there is one place they cannot go.

Dragons are very good at killing unicorns.

The island is mostly flat and grassy, save for one mountain range, known as the Northen Crags. When you first arrive at the Port City the snow capped peeks provide a rather picturesque and lovely back droop. Few human inhabitants know (though some suspect) that this is where the few remaining dragons perch and lay their eggs. The elder dragons are very, careful and rarely leave the safety of their mountain homes. They feed on mountain goats or fly out onto the ocean to hunt big fish that swim near the surface. The young dragons however often choose to feed on the unicorn.

When young, dragons are not very bright and mostly driven by instinct. They only grow in wisdom as they get older. The immature, young specimens typically do not realize the danger the unicorn can pose. They mostly view them as tasty morsels, much more delectable than the sinewy goats. Most of them do not realize, or acknowledged the fact that the unicorn have subjugated and domesticated themselves a race of natural born dragon slayers.

As it turns out humans are very good at fighting dragons, especially in large groups. Over the years men have developed all kinds of mechanical devices that help them incapacitate a dragon. When they are called upon to a hunt, the noblemen typically bring large, crank-loaded crossbows that can shoot barbed steel harpoons with ropes or chains that can be anchored to the ground. While a single harpoon can’t stop a dragon from flying off, a dozen of them definitely will. Those who don’t carry harpoon usually bring large mirror shields that can be used to reflect light into dragon’s eyes to prevent it from aiming its fire breath at any of the unicorn. There are also sometimes wizards among the men, and they are especially valued by the unicorn. Even a single wizard can often be enough to confuse, main or root a dragon to the spot where it can be easily killed.

A hunt involving human wizards.

Wizards are rare on the island, but the few that choose to live there have a very special status. If they happen to be of noble blood, they will never be asked to joust as their lives are just to valuable. They enjoy an unprecedented amount of freedom with respect to traveling. Unicorn will usually try to avoid killing them so a wizard can often walk the grasslands, or wander off the roads. Wizards were the ones who visited and recovered priceless heirlooms from the “abandoned” estates. Unfortunately, most wizards end up overestimating their immunity, and they get themselves killed when the unicorn get annoyed with them constantly overstepping their boundaries.

Why don’t the unicorns just organize an expedition into the Northen Crags to destroy the dragon perches, smash all the eggs and kill the surviving elders? Some say it is because they enjoy the hunt. That’s probably not true. The unicorn can’t climb, and the high mountain ranges where the dragons perch are forever off-limits to them. Humans would have to go alone, without supervision, and for some reason this is not an acceptable solution.

Perhaps it is because the elder dragons are ancient, wise and well traveled. Some of them are likely to know the human tongue, and it is said their nests are made out of gold, precious stones. It is very possible they would try to bribe the slayers sent to kill them with unfathomable treasures, forbidden knowledge, secrets of dragon magic and who knows what else. In fact, a rumor says that there is a secret way into the crags, that the unicorns do not know of. That men can use this forbidden passage to go up into the peaks and talk with the dragons, and learn how to seal their minds against the unicorn, and how to forge magical weapons that can wound them. One day these men will rise up, and lead the army that will rid the island of the horned menace. But that day is still long to come, and more preparations must be made.

How is that for new and improved unicorns? They are phenomenal, abusive, dominating assholes who live to push people around. They rule the island with an iron fist, and the nobles are to frightened and to hypnotized by them to say anything about it. That and you get unicorn jousts and dragon slaying hunts for free!

Also, I can’t believe I just wrote 3 thousand words on unicorns.

Skaven Army Book Excerpt

If you read this and you don’t see anything problematic with the paragraph indicated by the read box let me explain. I think the purpose of that entire paragraph is to hand wave away the reason why there are no models available that depict Skaven women. Apparently they are sub-sentient, baby making machines kept in breeding pits. This kinda sucks.

Please note that the lack of female Skaven models doesn’t bother me that much because I imagine they’d be pretty weird. I have a feeling the GW sculptors would somehow try to make them “sexy” and I just don’t think that’s the way to go. You see, Skaven are evil, back-stabbing mutated rat-people so sexualizing them would be kinda weird. I’m actually quite ok with there being no plastic miniatures depicting rat-girls wearing chainmail bikinis that barely cover their human-like brests. I’m fine with the anthropomorphic rat army being full of hunched over, toothy little ugly monsters of indeterminate sex. But that paragraph in the book is kinda sexist and reductionist. It gives the entire species a weird ultra-patriarchal spin that’s not necessary and probably not even intended to be part of their lore.

Granted if your intention was to create an evil patriarchal-nightmare monster society then breeding pits and sub-sentient females would probably be a way to go about it. But that does not seem to be integral part of the Skaven lore and flavor. Outside of this small paragraph, Saven women are never really mentioned anywhere else in the book. The breeding pits have no special significance, and most of the descriptions are not gender specific. So the literal objectification of Skaven females seems to be almost an afterthought. It is something the lore writers seem to have added at some point when they decided they needed an excuse for the lack of bikini clad rat-girls in the army. Or at least that’s how it feels to me. If you skip that one paragraph, nothing actually changes. No other lore is impacted by the omission and nothing else is lost.

This is how Skaven look. You probably don’t want to see a sexualized, fetishized version of that.

The Skaven are supposed to be magically uplifted rats – or at least that’s one of the theories on how they came to be. If you ever had rats as pets, or played with them in a pet store you probably have noticed that it is not actually that easy to tell their gender at a glance. You more or less have to pick them up, flip them over and look at their genitals. The same is true for hamster, guinea pigs, rabbits and other types of rodents. They are typically not very sexually dimorphic. Both males are females are typically similar size, and have little to no outwardly visible secondary sexual characteristics.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that for Skaven gender actually works the same way. A fully clothed Skaven female is virtually indistinguishable from a Skaven male – at least to an outsider who does not possess a keen sense of smell that could help in making this distinction. And just like that, problem is solved. There is no need to create bikini clad rat-girl models, because existing models are perfectly suited to represent members of both sexes. In fact, you can say that any Skaven army out there is going to be roughly 50% female by population. Wouldn’t this approach be much better than the rather sexist “sub-sentient sex slaves in breeding pits” idea?

The above is an example of a single gender race trope which is rampant in rpg, tabletop and video game settings and which I personally loathe. Why? Because almost always it is reductionist and sexist in nature. Very rarely does it have any narrative purpose other than excusing the writers or lore makers from having to come up with a diverse roster of characters.

Dwarfs are another classic fantasy race that gets hit by this trope a lot in just about any setting. I vaguely remember reading a similar cringe-worthy paragraph in a very old Dwarf army book which explained that the ratio between the genders is like 12:1 and therefore Dwarf women are considered “too valuable” to be allowed to leave their houses. Fortunately, more recent editions of these books wisely omitted any such bullshit statements. In fact, once upon a time Games Workshop even had a “Dwarf Queen” model available:

Dwarf Queen Helga

They get bonus points for making her grumpy and fully clothed rather than somehow trying to get her into a chain-mail bikini. Sadly the model has been out of production for quite a while now, and the Dwarf army range is back to being all-male once again. That said, being a rebel I’ve been supplementing my own Dwarf collection with non Games Workshop models in order to add some gender diversity to my force. There are some excellent female Dwarf models out there from Reaper Miniatures and other smaller vendors. Here are some examples for you:

Dwarf Women

From left to right, these are: Freja Fangbraker from Reaper Miniatures, Dwarf Girl from Scibor and Haela from Hasslefire Miniatures. I’m using Freja one as one of my Thanes, and Haela just chills out in my Dwarf Rangers unit. I have a list of dozen other models like this from various vendors somewhere. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll share it in the comments.

The mere existence of models like these sort of renders the entire concept of the single gender race indefensible. You can look at these and immediately imagine how they could fit into the Dwarf society and the Dwarf Army. Freja is wearing heavy armor and has a look of sheer determination on her face – she seems like a serious military type, perhaps even a leader who would be fighting alongside her bearded brethren. Haela on the other hand looks very young, and seems like a free spirit – someone who would tag along and adventure with a group of rangers, dreaming of one day slaying a dragon or two. Their back-stories almost write themselves from the miniatures. There is typically no reason why there shouldn’t be more female Dwarfs in the lore and in the army books other than… Well, deeply internalized sexism and objectification of women really.

It is kinda sad, but that’s really the truth of it. There are plenty human and elf characters who happen to be women, but that’s typically because they are easy to sexualize and put in a chain-mail bikini or revealing robes. They are easy to make pretty and attractive because they can be lithe, slender and have the idealized but unrealistic body proportions of a comic-book heroine. Dwarfs on the other hand are short and stocky and thus their women can’t be easily morphed into a shape that can be readily objectified as a sex object. So a lot of artists or lore writers simply don’t want to be bothered drawing or creating women that do not fit some narrow definition of attractiveness.

Of course not all single sex races are male. Sometimes the pendulum swings the other way and you end up with something like the Asari from the mass effect universe. Unfortunately making all the members of the race female does not make the whole idea any less sexist. I honestly think that Asari were designed to be an all-female race so that Bioware could get away with having sexy space lesbians in their universe, which they could then use to sneak same sex romance into their first game. I mean, they get points for at least trying to promote sexual diversity (and they did a much better job of handling this sort of thing in their later Mass Effect games) but you have to admit that the whole idea of “see, technically this not gay because they are aliens and their gender doesn’t work that way” is deeply problematic on many levels.

I guess my point is: single sex races are always a bad idea. Unless your goal is to explore social issues involved with extreme patriarchy (or matriarchy or whatever) though a lens of a fictional species, there are almost always better ways to handle it. First step of course is to ask yourself why would you even want a single sex species to begin with? Why is it important?

If you simply don’t want to be bothered making different models/designs for both sexes you are approaching the problem from a completely wrong direction. Consider the following alternatives:

• No Sexual Dimorphism – as with our Skaven example, not all species have pronounced secondary sexual characteristics that make males and females look distinctly different. For example, if you want to have an intimidating looking warrior dudes in your universe you can just say roughly 50% of them is female, but most humans can’t tell the difference and they themselves don’t really give a shit about gender.
• Genderless or Gender-fluid – if you want an idea of how to create a species in which gender is fully fluid and thus have no bearing on social interactions or one’s identity, I highly recommend reading Left Hand of Darkness. In that book Ursula K. LeGuin depicts a society of hermaphroditic aliens who exhibit no gender whatsoever outside of short mating seasons, during which they can assume either male or female characteristics.
• Completely asexual – you can also have a species roughly based on colony insect model, in which workers and/or warrior drones are sexless and genderless. It would not be a big stretch to imagine that they would be sent to adventure, fight and interact or negotiate with aliens and outsiders whereas the members of the species with breeding capabilities would stay home and… Breed, I guess.

If you would be willing to create an alternate model/design, but you can’t figure out how to make it “sexy” or how to make a “masculine” version of your sexy species, then stop right there. You are doing it wrong. Your reasoning and your design is flawed and needs re-thinking. Women of the species do not need to conform to some narrowly defined set of standards of beauty defined by popular culture and advertising. Men of the species do not need to have to be masculine macho dudes. Making your species single sex because non-standard depictions of gender makes you uncomfortable is kinda shitty thing to do and people will call you out on it.

If you really do want a single sex race, it needs to make sense. You can’t just say “they are all dudes” without a good narrative reason why a species would evolve that way. Or rather, you need a good excuse as to why this choice is not just a symptom of your own deeply internalized sexist tendencies. It can be done right sometimes. For example, I would say that the Khepri from Perdido Street Station are the least shitty example of this trope. And that’s because there is a built-in narrative reasoning behind this choice. China Miéville wasn’t using the trope to create a sexy-chick or ugly-warrior-dude species as this is usually the case. He chose to subvert this trope, purposefully making the Khepri somewhat unsettling scarab-headed women.

In the Bas Lag setting, Khepri females are sentient, cultured and humanoid, while males are just unintelligent crawling bugs. Their society is divided on the issue of how the males of the species should be treated. Most Khepri consider them as expendable pests that are as expendable as they are plentiful. They kill males the same way humans squash insects – with no second thoughts or remorse. There however exist factions within their culture that worship the tese non-sentient scarabs and considered them to be sacred. They consider the well being of the males to be of utmost importance and view themselves as their care-takers and servants. Neither of these philosophies is poised as the correct one, and it is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out how they feel about it. In essence Miéville subverts the single sex species trope twisting it into an interesting sociological thought experiment. This is why it works.

Unless you are willing to commit to something like that, single sex species is usually a bad idea. Khepri are an exception to the rule that proves a point. They work, and are interesting mostly because the single sex race trope is so deeply entrenched in Fantasy that seeing it flipped on it’s head and subverted makes it stand out in a positive way.

Then of course, there is the issue of gender not being a binary two-state system that society wants it to be. In real life gender exists on a rather wide spectrum, which is something that is almost never even hinted at in popular culture. But that’s a topic for a whole other discussion.

Necromancer

I actually really like this approach. There is absolutely nothing wrong with crazy necromancer antagonists who hide behind hordes of skeleton soldiers. They make for great enemies, and unlike modern day zombie scenarios, fantasy undead invasions are typically perfectly winnable. Appearance of the walking dead in a fantasy setting immediately sets up an adventure. Genre savvy players know right away to start looking for megalomaniac wizards or mages with some deep grudge that might be behind it. It works very well.

But the entire point of this series is to switch things up, so lets see how we could spruce up the walking dead. I do not want to talk about the modern zombie outbreak in a fantasy setting type scenario though. Not because it wouldn’t be fun (I’m sure it would be a blast) but because there is just nothing to write about it. I pretty much already said all that you would need to know to run such a campaign. So let’s try a few other approaches.

Temple Sanctioned Necromancy

In most fantasy settings necromancy is considered evil and is typically forbidden or at least frowned upon by the establishment. Necromancers must practice their art in secret (at least up until they are ready to unleash their horde upon the living). It makes perfect sense – after all, what sane and well adjusted individual would want to dabble in such dark magic?

But what if it was actually sanctioned by the local religion? What if it was not only normal, but also somehow viewed as a benefit to society as a whole? Lets imagine a setting in which men worship a pantheon of 7 gods, one of which is the God of Death. This particular deity is considered the gate-keeper to the afterlife and he judges which souls are allowed to pass into the paradise, and which are to be denied entrance and destroyed. Initially the Deathgod used to destroy all wicked souls on the spot, but upon some convincing from his six brothers and sisters he eventually decided to give men a loophole. Sinners would get a chance to work off their karmic debt after death by allowing the priests to reanimate their remains so that they can be used for the good of the temple and the faithful.

Deathgod Priest

Undead created this way are just as mindless as the regular ones, but instead of world domination they are used for hard labor. Essentially they are indentured slaves who never have to rest, eat or sleep and can never complain. Since corpses are a renewable resource, the Deathgod temple always has plenty of free workers they can use to get rich, or for public work projects that show their benevolence. Since the undead are mostly mindless, they typically need to be accompanied by a handler – a lower caste within the priesthood called Deathguide that does the dirty work such as patching up the undead when they get damaged, disposing of the ones that are no longer capable of working and etc. They usually wear dark robes and carry a reaper scythe as a badge of their office. They are in this sort of weird place socially: unlike priests who are venerated and respected, their job carries a certain stigma. They are kinda like morticians or graveyard keepers – they provide a vital and needed service, but it is one most people are repulsed by. That said, they do represent the temple and do have a lot of factual power. In essence they are not people you want to mess with.

A Deathguide with his herd

People got used to this stuff and consider it to be a pretty good deal. They get to sin while they are alive and then their corpse will erase all that burden and allow them safe passage to afterlife, while at the same time providing free labor for the community. Naturally, sometimes people die in such a way that renders their body useless for reanimation. Fortunately the temple allows people to volunteer to “do time” for friends and loved ones. This system was put in place to allow people in especially dangerous lines of work (like soldiers for example) to have a reliable way of erasing their sins even if their body is destroyed. Later it became possible for one to sell their own time to someone, or purchase time from someone else.

The undead created by the priests of Deathgod are typically not used for combat, and they are mostly non-violent (though it is not uncommon for Deathguides to abuse their power and use their charges in a violent manner) and do not carry weapons. The one exception are the temple guard:

Temple Guard

It is said that the temple guard retain some of the will and memories from their past lives, and thus they do not need a handler. They typically patrol temple grounds and act as bodyguards for the priests of the Seven. The time of a Temple Guard is seven times as valuable as that of a regular undead worker, but only select few are chosen for that prestigious position.

Optional plot twist #1: the souls of the deceased awaiting entrance to paradise are not slumbering in limbo as per temple doctrine, but are instead brought back to the physical realm via the act of reanimation. All the undead remember who they are, are aware of their condition, but are bound to the will of the Deathgod priests by magic and thus unable to do anything about it. Some within the priesthood are aware of this.

Optional plot twist #2: The Seven are actually false gods. Regardless of what constitutes a deity in your chosen fantasy system, they do not fit that description. Their priests do not actually have any divine powers – they use arcane magic to perform all their miracles. The priesthood system was set up in the ancient times in order to prevent stigmatization and persecution of magic users and to usurp political power. Old religions have been banned, and for generations all those who exhibit magical aptitude have been recruited into the priesthood, or told that their power has a divine source. This secret is only known to the inner-most circles within the priesthood and even they don’t always believe it.

Bound Knights

If you are not familiar with Warhammer 40,000, I recommend at the very least looking up the Eldar lore for an interesting twist on the Undead theme. Granted, it is a science fiction setting (well, sort-off – it’s SF in the same vein that Star Wars is SF) but I think we can still use it and transplant some of these ideas into a classic medieval heroic fantasy setting.

Anyways, Eldar are aliens who believe that their souls will be devoured by the dark gods when they die. To prevent this from happening they all wear soul stones which capture and store their souls upon death. These stones can then be plugged into the Infinity Circuits which are essentially a virtual paradises where the spirits can hang out and chill till the end of time. Unfortunately Eldar are a dwindling race, and while they are few in number they have many enemies. So sometimes they pluck their ancestors out of the Infinity Circuits and install them into war machines called Wraith Guard (essentially ghost operated power armors) or Wraith Knights (more or less Gundams piloted by a ghost). They also sometimes install them in weapons and armor to make pseudo-magical war gear.

You could essentially take all of that lore and easily implement it in any high-magic fantasy setting – spirit stones and all. Or you could just cherry pick the part about binding spirits into empty suits of armor and make your setting little bit more Fullmetal Achemist. Or twist it around again and apply it to our standard necromancer template.

Typical necromancers are primarily interested in reanimating corpses. They use the physical remains of the deceased and have not much use for their souls. But imagine a reverse necromancer who is capturing souls of mighty warriors and binding them to empty suits of armors, building a terrifying army of Wraith Knights.

Wraith Knights

Unlike typical undead, Wraith Knights are fast, intelligent and highly skilled. They have all the memories from their past life, and retain all their combat skills. Since they feel no pain, and have no vulnerable internal organs and since they are held together by magic, the only way to kill them is to smash and destroy their armor to the point where it can no longer move. This might not be an easy task considering the necromancer has more or less assembled an all star team of veteran warriors and legendary heroes. Each Wraith Knight actually follows him willingly – in exchange for their service they get a chance to settle unfinished business, seek vengeance and etc.

Yeah, I know – I just kinda re-invented the Nazgul. Shut the fuck up. It’s Fantasy, of course it’s gonna always circle back to Tolkien.

Kingdom of the Dead

One of my all time favorite “my undead are different” ideas is High Cromleh from The Scar by China Miéville. While I more or less hated Uther Doul for being an unstoppable, unfappable superhero type character, I found his back story to be fascinating. He grew up in High Cromleh which is a caste driven society ruled by mummified, sentient undead known as Thanati. They are described as liches with sewn-shut mouths, with beautiful clothes and skin like preserved leather.

The living are a minority, who are farmed like cattle. Most are slain and re-animated as non-sentient zombies to act as servants and laborers to the Thanati. Chosen few are adopted by the undead nobles, raised as their own children and then killed, mummified and resurrected as proper Thanati when they come of age. There are few niche jobs that are consider below the nobles, but for which the zombies are too clumsy or too dumb, and thus the undead do tolerate a small number of living in their kingdom as long as they know their place.

The only social caste lower than the living, are the vampires who are considered to be the lowest of the low by the Thanati. Because the population of the free living men is so small, and because the liches guard their “cattle” jealously vampires typically live in shanty-towns on the edges of the poor districts, and take to the streets begging for food at night.

This ideas is as fascinating as it is repulsive. There is literally nothing I could add to it to make it any better. Not only does it invert the typical population rations and social positions of undead and living, it also deliciously subverts the vampire trope by turning it on its head. Since I can’t really improve upon this, here is a picture of undead nobles with crowns and shit, because pictures are cool:

Undead Nobility

This is another one of those ideas that you could just steal wholesale. It would be kinda fascinating to run a campaign in a High Cromleh style setting: especially with players who are unfamiliar with The Scar. Send them on an emissary/diplomatic style mission and see how they react when they arrive at the kingdom ruled by the dead.

The Awakened

Long, long time ago the land was cursed by a powerful and vengeful mage. To this day, anyone who dies within the borders of the kingdom without a proper burial will rise again the next day as a fully aware walking corpse. The proper burial of course involves burning of the body so that there is nothing left that could be awakened the next day. Most of the people choose to be cremated after death, because walking around in a rotting body is not particularly appealing to the living. Unfortunately, not everyone can be given a burial in time and every once in a while people wake up dead. This is especially common occurrence after battles or in places hit by a deadly plague where there is simply no time or resources to burn all the bodies in the timely manner.

Waking up dead after a big battle

What happens when you wake up the morning after you died? First you realize that the world looks entirely different. The dead have no use for eyes, ears or taste buds – in fact, these organs rot out and fall off first so they would be doubly useless to you. Instead of the five senses the living use to navigate the world, the Undead have one which they dubber Wraithsight. They are completely oblivious to tastes and smells (which is actually a blessing considering their condition) and have no sense of touch and as a result feel no pain. They however can perceive objects around them and are aware when they touch something or are being touched. They can also detect vibrations in the air, and recognize them as speech or music, thought they can’t really enjoy it the way they used to.

Wraithsight is neither sight nor hearing – it is something in-between that is very hard to explain to the living. There are no specialized organs that the undead use for Wraithsight – more or less their entire body surface is capable of detecting changes in their environment. So in essence an Awakened undead would technically have 360 degree vision. Wraithsight cannot penetrate physical objects though, so any clothing he or she is wearing will occlude their perception – which is why they still typically retain mannerisms such as turning ones face towards something they want to examine.

While most living consider underneath to be undesirable, those who become Awakened typically find their situation to be more than tolerable. It turns out that while most animal needs and urges (such as hunger, thirst, sex drive and erc..) go away after death, the self-preservation instinct perseveres. Thus most undead prefer not to throw themselves into a fire, despite the society’s insistence that they should.

Being an undead creates a lot of other problems. Since the proper thing to do is to have your body burned and ascend to an afterlife those who “wake up dead” are still legally deceased. This means that their property is divided amongst their kin and their significant others are free to re-marry. Most families consider it to be rather shameful to have an undead relative and they are typically not welcome back home. There are exceptions of course, and sometimes love and attachment are stronger than social stigma and an undead can return to their family. Some are very well cared for and preserved, but usually it comes at a cost of social status.

Most undead need to start a new life somewhere else. Some try to pass for the living at first, and while it may work for a while, sooner or later their body deteriorates to the point where they can no longer hide their true nature. Living usually get pretty upset when you deceive them about the status of your un-life and many Awakened are lynched or burned at stake when found trying to pretend to be alive. When they are open about being dead they can typically avoid lynching, though some thing that throwing stones at the undead is the only way to properly welcome them to the community.

Undead trying to pass for a living

There are few people willing to hire the dead, and if they do, they don’t pay well. On the other hand, dead don’t really have that many expenses, seeing how they never need to eat or sleep. As a result most of Awakened sooner or later gravitate towards each other and settle down in smaller or bigger communities where they can help and support each other. These dead-towns are typically well maintained, albeit very stinky places. Their inhabitants are usually friendly to any passing undead, but mistrustful of the living. Still, if you can get into their good graces, holing up in their town might not be a terrible idea – especially if you are on the run.

Every once in a while you can see one or more children living with the dead. Sometimes these are orphans that couldn’t find their place anywhere else. Other times they are relatives of one of the Awakened who is their last of kin. Most undead villages have at least one touching story about one of their own taking in a grand-grand-grand-child after its entire living family was wiped out by a plague or killed by raiders.

Unded man taking care of his grand-son after entire family tree was wiped out by a plague..

Those raised by the dead tend to grow up to be more tolerant and understanding of the un-death condition. Unfortunately they are few and far in between, so life of the Awakened is typically full of prejudice and hardship. Their villages are often raided by the living, or visited by all manner of priests who offer to “cure” their condition with cleansing fire. In the capitol there is even a dedicated think tank of priests and mages devoted to finding a way to lift the curse and banish all the existing undead in one fell swoop.

The Cursed Kingdom is infamous for its peculiar problem, and most citizens consider it to be deeply shameful and unfortunate. Still, despite this quirk the kingdom is actually the most prosperous and well developed nation in the area. The kings and priests claim it is because the strength of their economy as the good climate and natural riches. But the truth is that the prosperity is a direct result of the curse.

Just about every decade the population of the Ork tribes in the west swells up to the breaking point, and the horde sweeps back east across the great mountains pillaging and destroying everything in it’s path. They are savage, brutal, vicious beasts that are not easy to drive off the land once they get in. What’s worse is that Orks thrive on war so the harder you resist, the more of them come seeking a good fight. They have no fear, except one: they are absolutely mortified of the walking dead. Thirteen times the horde swept the Kingdoms of Men in the East, and each time it avoided the Cursed Kingdom. Most of the great cities in the neighboring nations have been besieged or even burned to the ground and rebuilt at least once. Most citizens of the Cursed Kingdom have never seen an Ork in their life.

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What is your favorite unusual spin on undead in a fantasy setting? Do you have examples of books, movies or games that handle the subject in an new interesting way? Let me know in the comments.

Lets imagine a world in which magic is not an in-born talent but rather a law of the land. It is sort of their version of quantum physics. In our world we have the uncertainty principle which tells us that by merely observing a particle we are actively collapsing it’s wave function and catalyzing one of many possible outcomes. In their world the very fabric of space-time continuum is mutable. It can be bent, twisted and reshaped by a sentient observer by the sheer force of will. This shaping requires intense focus, and effort but it is a skill that can be learned by anyone.

There exist sacred patterns which when held in ones mind focus the will in a way that allows manipulating the reality. These are usually ovals, helixes, and various abstract symbols. Their configuration in 3D space and the way they intersect allows a magic user to cause specific effects. These abstract, three dimensional patterns are known as spells.

This is how a spell could look like.

To cast a spell, one constructs the shape and symbols in ones mind and then wills it into existence. This causes the reality to wrap, but also sears the pattern into the fabric of time-space continuum leaving a temporary afterimage that can be “seen” (or rather felt) by those trained to detect it for hours and sometimes days afterwards.

Sometimes, it is possible for an over-eager magic user to use too much force and actually rip the fabric of reality creating a breach to the chaotic, unexplored and impossible to understand planes that lie beyond physical. Some say that what lies on the other side is the domain of gods. Others claim it is a spirit world where mortal souls go upon death. Yet others claim it opens the door to a hellish dimension that is twisted and evil home to demons and monsters. It could be any of these things, all of them or neither. It is however understood by most magic users that a breach is never a good thing. A rip in the fabric of reality will usually emanate strange energies that warp and corrupt everything around, and can become a gateway for eldritch creatures of unspeakable horror.

Mages

Magic is accessible to anyone, but the Helosian Order of High Magic is considered the world-wide authority on the subject. Helos is the most ancient city of the world – funded at the dawn of time, it has survived and outlived eight empires that grew and fell around it. The White Towers of Helos are the home to the Great Library which is contains the biggest and most complete collection of writings on all things magical.

Helosians have been studying magic for many centuries, and developed what is considered to be the most elegant, safest and most efficient way of doing magic. Their spells are minimalistic, elegant, easy to remember, regular and guaranteed not to cause a breach. Through intense study and trial and error they have discovered that some magical patterns are more potent than the others. For example, there many ways of producing energy that is to be used by the spell to cause a specific effect, but there are only about seven that Helosian Mages think are worth bothering with because of efficiency and stability.

Helosian Mage studying ancient scrolls.

Helosian Order is always at the forefront of the magical research. They always seek to innovate, optimize, stabilize and simplify ancient spells. While the bulk of the research is done at the Great Library in the heart of Helos the order has built a network of libraries and research outposts throughout the world. Most major cities in the world have their own White Towers district, complete with a library and magical portals leading back to Helos and teaching facilities.

The Order is open and anyone can join and learn the Helosian High Magic. However, before you join the order you must swear “The Oath”. All members of the order are bound by it, and breaking it is punished by death. The full text of the oath is too long to include here, but the three most important rules by which each Mage must abide by are:

1. A Mage swears to never willingly cause a breach in order to exploit the eldritch powers from the planes beyond. If casting a spell causes a breach by accident, a Mage agrees to submit himself to a tribunal of his peers which will determine whether or not his life is worth sparing, and if punishment lesser than death can be levied upon him.
2. A Mage swears not to extend anyone’s lifespan by the use of magic (especially one’s own). Helosians believe that nothing good can come out of immortality. This rule has kept the Order vital, and agile for many centuries now. Without immortal arch-mages at the helm, there is a high turnaround and lots of new ideas and new points of view which is great for research. It also makes the Order appear humble, reasonable and responsible to outsiders which is very important for public relations. There is however unspoken agreement that Mages can keep themselves healthy and heal old age-related ailments. As long as a Mage ages outwardly at a normal pace and leaves the order at an acceptable age (so around 90-100 years old for humans) they won’t be punished. Mages found “cheating” are usually given slap on the risk, unless their infraction is very jarring and becomes a public controversy.
3. Finally, all Mages must swear never to power their spells via life force of living things. While living things are marvelous power-plants of coiled potential energy that could be pumped into a spell at a moments notice, the practice of tapping or siphoning this energy is forbidden. The order is very strict about this, and this rule doesn’t just cover sentient beings but all living things – including plants.

The order is very academically oriented. Helosian Mages prefer not to involve themselves in wars or political struggles. Their aims are to study, improve and teach magic. The most prominent members of the order are not necessarily powerful and skilled spell casters but diligent researchers who have discovered new magical paradigms or have proved old paradigms to be wrong or inefficient.

There however exists a militant branch within the order known only as Breach. This secretive sub-order attracts the less academic and more martial oriented mages. The official purpose of Breach is to find magical breaches, close them and banish anything that might have crossed over to the physical world. They also usually are tasked with capturing, and punishing those responsible for causing the breach and enforcing The Oath within the ranks of the order.

A Breach Mage

While on duty, Breach Mages wear deep purple robes, and carry black wooden mage staffs which are both considered symbols of their status and authority. They are rarely seen in public like that, since most revert to the traditional muted white, blue, gray or pastel robes for their day-to-day activities. When on a mission they are said to be efficient, ruthless and disciplined fighting force. Their favorite tactic is to teleport in as a group, surrounding their target, and teleport back out mere seconds later leaving no trace at the scene.

Think of Helosian Mages as about computer scientists – they are mostly interested in theory and academic pursuits. They would rather mathematically prove a spell is correct/optimized, rather than write it and test it half of the time.

Wizards

Not everyone has what it takes to become a Helosian Mage. Some regions of the world simply do not have access to their teachings. Some people are also not very keen on swearing an oath of allegiance to an ancient, world-wide society in order to learn a few spells. Helos is not the only place in the world where magic has been studied, and many of the ancient tomes in the Great Library were not written by members of the Helosian Order but rather by outsiders. There are many ways to learn to cast spells, and there have been many great spell casters who have published magical research outside of the Order. Magic users who are not members of the Order and have not been formally trained in High Magic are commonly called Wizards.

There are actually many different types of Wizards. The most stereotypical example is what Mages refer to is a Hedge Wizard: an individual who is either self taught, or studied as an apprentice under another practitioner of this craft. Hedge Wizards usually hail from small villages or rural regions and have limited grasp on magical theory. They are proficient at casting the few spells they do know but their technique and form leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of them incorporate occult rituals into their spell casting, and practice live sacrifice to power their spells. Others use sloppy, unstable patterns that have been known to cause breaches or have warping effects on reality.

Battlewizards are Hedge Wizards who specialize in martial magic and warfare. They usually only know few reliable spells, but make up for their lack of power by considerable hand-to-hand fighting skills, and military experience. They are common sight at battlefields or in mercenary groups where they may specialize as healers, or offensive ranged damage dealers.

A Hedge Battle Wizard Mercenary

Of course there also exist more organized groups of Wizards. For example The Imperial School of Wizardry is the center of magical research at the Baravian Imperium from which the Order was banished two centuries ago. Baravian Wizards are just as organized and rigorous in their study as the Order itself, and while they lack their resources and long history they are also not bound by the self-imposed limitations of the Oath. Imperial Wizards frequently experiment with things like and life-force tapping, siphoning, spirit binding and life extension. They forbid breaching on principle, but they do not consider it an offense punishable by death.

Because of this, a lot of their spells are much more powerful, but also much more unstable. Mages consider a lot of what they do unethical, but Baravian emperors fully endorse and fund their research. Especially since their magic have given the Baravian rulers the gift of near immortality (but not yet of eternal youth).

Imperial Wizard

A lot of Baravian magic is built around a lot of the Helosian principles and paradigms, but characterized by certain sloppiness. Part of it is that the School has only been around for two centuries and while it accomplished a lot in such a short time, it has neither the resources nor the long view of The Order. Since Helosian Mages keep the latest research to themselves, the Wizards often base their studies on ancient texts that have been recently debunked and phased out of use at the White Towers. Finally, while Helosian Mages always strive for perfect balance between power, stability, elegance and efficiency, Imperial Wizards tend to be focused on raw power and utility first and foremost. Their art is less academic and more down to earth, and grounded in needs and desires of the people. Some view it as a positive thing, while others as a terrible, built in flaw that will one day doom the Baravian empire.

Similarly to the Helosian Order, the Imperial School has spread across the world, and their universities can be seen in many cities. Ironically, their admittance standards are usually much stricter than those of The Order. They select only the candidates who show aptitude for magic or have existing experience, whereas Mages prefer complete novices who could be taught to cast magic “the right way”.

The Imperial School forbids destruction of sentient minds to power spells, and condone lethal use of magic only in self defense or during an armed conflict. They however do not police these rules internally, and rather defer to the local authorities when one of their members breaks them.

Baravian Wizards are famous for their pointy hats and very (some would say overly) ornate robes that are somewhat reminiscent of military uniforms. This is actually intentional and in Baravia it serves to reinforce and make obvious the School’s subservient relationship to the state.

There is one more prominent Wizard group worth mentioning. It is known only as The Council, and it functions as a loose, decentralized organization of independent magic practitioners. Despite the ominous sounding name and grandiose posturing by it’s members, the organization is very weak and unorganized compared to The Order or The School. The Council has no central authority. Wizards who are members organize themselves into local cells or Conclaves, each having it’s own charter, membership rules and own libraries and teaching facilities. Neighboring Conclaves usually cooperate with each other, share resources and provide services for members, but it is not uncommon for them to have antagonistic rivalries as well.

A Council Wizard

Council Wizards take great pains to distinguish themselves from plain Hedge Wizards, though often this difference is in name only. A lot of Council members are poorly educated, and completely ignorant of the current academic trends. Others spare no expenses to obtain Helosian or Baravian research papers and improve their craft.

Wizards would be akin to your run of the mill programmers and software engineers. Some are good, some are bad. Some are in it just for the money. Other are highly educated and highly skilled, but choose to build practical things rather than theorize all day.

Enchanters

There is a large group of magic users that believe that manipulating raw forces of magic is too dangerous. They are even more squeamish about causing breaches than Helosian Mages. Some call them The Tarnsun Wizards after the kingdom where they originated, but they themselves prefer to be known as The Enchanters.

An Enchanter

Enchanters believe that the only correct way to manipulate the forces of magic is to bind it to physical objects. They view the long lasting spell-scars burned into time-space continuum after free casting as harmful. Their research indicates that each of those scars weakens the veil that separates this world from the hellish beyond, sometimes even creating micro-breaches that last fractions of a second releasing strange energies into this world. Because of this they eschew free-casting and instead they physically engrave the spell patterns on physical objects.

Instead of casting a spell instantly, an enchanter will spend hours, or even days slowly building it up on some object. This gives their spell unparalleled focus and lasting power that cannot be beat by free casting. What’s even better is that the bound items created by enchanters can be used by anyone. They require no special training and no skill to use. Their effects are immediate, long lasting and usually perfectly stable.

Because of this, their philosophy and teachings have spread from the sun swept valleys of Tarnsun and are currently conquering the entire known world.

Enchanters are like the IT. They don’t create a lot of new spells, but they are very good at installing and maintaining the hardware.

Witches and Warlocks

Witches and Warlocks are almost always bad news. Why? Because unlike most other magic users, they don’t believe breaching should be avoided. Warlocks and Witches are very much interested in The Beyond – the realms that exists on the other side of what they call The Veil, which is the mystical boundary that separates the physical universe from the other realities. Most of them have at least basic understanding of these foreign realms and rules that govern them, and this understanding is frequently deeper than that of Mages or Wizards.

While witchcraft is neither as organized of a discipline as magic or wizardry, most practitioners agree that The Beyond is not a single realm but rather a multivariate. There are at least three major realms that exist beyond the veil: Maelstrom (realm of pure energy that is the source of all magic), Penumbra (or Shadowrealm, the domain of the dead) and the True Beyond (realm of gods, deamons and eldritch monsterosities).

Witchcraft is an art of tunneling into these realms and using them as a tapping into the secrets of the Beyond. It gives the practitioners unmatched amount of power and potential, but also makes their spells volatile, unstable and unpredictable. There is a constant element of danger involved in threading this path as a slight mistake or lapse of focus can cause a spell to backfire, or open up a rift in the fabric of reality itself. Some magic users consider this a challenge worthy of pursuing, while others are just reckless.

A very common sight in their circles are animal familiars. Those are bound beasts whose life force they tap in order to kick-start their breaching spells. Since ripping the fabric of reality requires immense amounts of energy, conventional Helosian or Baravian methods are usually very inadequate. Witches love breaches so they use the coiled up potential energy produced by all living things to create short but powerful bursts of energy. This usually doesn’t kill the animal. A strong familiar can be used many times per day without harm.

A Witch with a Familiar

The most common type of witchcraft is known as Channeling. It involves creating controlled breaches into the Maelstrom and using the strange energies and emanations of that realm to power ones spells or simply to use their reality wrapping properties as a weapon of destruction. Most Chanelers have little to no formal magical education and are almost completely ignorant of High Magic principles, or even the basic research done by Council Wizards. Most learn their craft via secret apprenticeship, much more rarely as member of a larger Coven.

Warlock Channeler

There exist few places in the world where Witchcraft can be practiced openly. One of such places is the Great Kingdom of L’Ash, where the art of channeling the powers of The Beyond is known as “invoking”. L’Ashmian Invokers have a history almost as long as that of Helosian Mages. Their breadth an depth of experience in all things relating to the other realms is unparalleled. Even though they don’t see eye to eye with the Mages, they often work together with Breach to stitch up the rips in the fabric of reality.

L’Ashmian Invokers mostly practice controlled breaching to the Maelstrom in order to tap into the reality altering power of that realm. They wield this power with incredible precision and grace. Watching them work an outside observer would never be able to tell their spells always hinge on a brink of total disaster. Their power is so immense, they are considered to be gifted divine powers and worshiped as holy people by the locals.

L’Ashmian Invoker

Invokers take care to avoid breaching to Penumbra or True Beyond, as rift to these realms are difficult to control, and are populated by sentient and often malicious entities that seek to cross over to the physical realm.

There are however some Witches and Warlocks some that are not content merely channeling the power the energy realm. Some are not as much after raw, transformative power but after the deepest secrets of the universe. Those witchcraft practitioners are known as Summoners and they specialize in luring eldritch monsters from the True Beyond into the physical realm, studying them and binding them to their will. These extra-dimensional beings are ageless, powerful and often all knowing but also very often turn out to be tricksters or deceivers. The path of summoner is therefore difficult, but some say it is worth the risk.

Summoner

The most megalomaniac of the Summoners seek to attain gold-like powers, immortality and omnipotence by wrestling the secrets of the universe from the demonic and divine inhabitants of The True Beyond. Sadly, most of them end up devoured or possessed by the abominations they themselves have summoned. Those who are careful and well prepared however can often bind unimaginable forces to their will. Many empires have risen or fallen because of a work of an single summoner.

As you can imagine, whenever a big summoning spell is being cast, purple robes of the Breach are almost always bound to show up. This is why summoners usually have large retinues of attendants (mostly lesser channels) and apprentices who can keep the Mages at bay until the spell is finished. These Covens are usually tightly knit brotherhoods/sisterhoods kept together by strong loyalties and familial ties.

There also exist Necromancers who are more interested in exploring Penumbra rather than the True Beyond. Many of them simply seek to commune with the dead, or contact their ancestral spirits. Others use the unholy powers of the Shadow Realm to create armies of walking dead, by binding lesser animal spirits to bodies of cadavers.

Necromancer

Practicing necromancy is either illegal or frowned upon in most parts of the world, except in Orsavia in which it is sanctioned by the state. Orsavian Necrolite Priests are an ancient order that claims to have developed safe and practical life and youth extension magic that far extends the techniques used Baravian Wizards. They also claim to bring the dead back to life, if they are brought to them within first few days since death, or return them to the world of the living in some form of undeath via spirit binding any time thereafter.

Orsavian Necrolite Priest

It is not uncommon sight in Orsavia to see an ancient warrior whose body deteriorated down to bare skeleton or a Necrolite Priest who is a walking husk. In fact Osavia’s High King was born six hundred years ago, and since that time he died sixteen times, has been mummified and resurrected by the Priesthood after each incident.

Witches and Warlocks are a mixed bag. The low level Channelers, Summoners and Necromancers are like script kiddies and black hats – exploiting security holes (in the fabric of reality) for the lulz or for profit. Invokers and Necrolite Priests are more like gray hats who use the same tools and practices but with good intentions.

Sorcerers

Sorcerers have a natural knack for magic. They can actually think in the sacred patterns and almost intuitively bend the fabric of the universe to their will, producing little to no scarring. Most of them get this way only after centuries of practice. Others are born with this incredible talent. Either way, sorcerers are incredibly powerful and at the same time incredibly rare.

A Sorceress

Many Sorcerers start as Helosian Mages who refuse to abide by the second rule in the Oath and let themselves age and die. They leave The Order and practice magic as pariahs and outcasts for many decades, sometimes even centuries until they become so adept at it that they no longer have to think about casting. Others are mostly self-taught geniuses (or idiot-savants) with no formal training.

In either case, their magic tends to be highly unstable. Even classically trained former Mages tend to loose their grip on stability when they attain that kind of level of power. Changes in a sorcerers mood, or even idle thoughts can have tangible effects at his or her surroundings. It is not unheard of for a sorcerer to accidentally rip open a huge breach in their sleep, because of a nightmare they were having.

Breach Mages usually hunt down and contain Sorcerers with extreme prejudice. As they say, Invokers for the most part are only trouble when they fuck up a big spell, but a Sorcerers are dangerous even in their sleep. Many Wizards however like to have them around because while dangerous, watching them work can be enlightening and educational.

Sorcerers are like that one guy we all know – you know the weird dude whose mind is so far ahead of the curve that you can’t even figure out if he is a just that smart or if you are just that dumb. They are like that guy that goes “Yeah, so I was taking a shit yesterday and I thought about that problem you told me about, and I had my laptop with me so I rewrote this algorithm and now it runs in polynomial time”.

Anyways, this is my take on magic and magic users. I realize this is not really a very far fetched setup. I just like the idea of Magic being this complex process, and that creating spells is kinda like programming. That there are building blocks and algorithms for powering the spells, for tapping into elemental forces, for warping the reality and etc. I like the idea of there being academic style research being done on magic, and on ways to optimize and stabilize spells, while at the same time there are hedge wizards out there hacking on their equivalent of shitty PHP code that is full of holes, slow as molasses but actually does what it needs to do. I like the idea of craftsmen wizards who specialize in creating and maintaining magical hardware. This makes magic interesting and familiar to me.

Let me know what you think in the comments.