Year 10.
We were bound by the laws of old. We do not grow roots into the land; rather, the land becomes us. The things we see, the people we meet, the things we do, become us. Some call this home. Some call this stagnation. Some call this understanding. Some call this prison. Some call this civilisation. Our successes and our sins are physical, one with the stone as they are one with us. Travelers speak of a freedom of spirit, while we distrust those vagabonds who are not of the world we have created. With the death of the earth, so to is it a death of our home, our stagnation, our understanding, our civilisation, and our sin. The Apocalypse has killed us, and now it is time to live again.
The great Qiang bureaucracy struggles in the west to support itself, a burgeoning complexity from the days of old, a towering monument to the power of centrism, but now is a great pillar with no building to support. The Qiang Zhang are just as much refugees as the rest, but their government and Heavenly Emperor still play as if they rule their civilisation of old, and the rich hoard their wealth, wary that what the end of the world has given them will be taken from their clutches.. The Zhang do not let go of their old dreams easily, as the Mun continue down the same path, vowing to be the true, Heaven-chosen heir to the old empire.
As they bicker, the Qunash of the Suilimoon Horde eye their lands with contempt. They see their own deformities, and they see the beauty of the Zhang, and their desire breeds avarice. The Great Suilimoon knows that the fate of his people rest not on his shoulders, but on those that will follow him. What he passes down to his successor and his people will decide whether the Qunash will be seen only as a backwards and violent, if pitiable, people doomed to fade as the old world has, or if the Lost Lands will come to fear and respect the wrath of the holy Qunsar.
And between the fractured Zhang people and the Horde of Suilimoon are those from both races that want nothing to do with their baggage. The Fallen Bay is for those who have willfully fallen from their old worlds, both outside the Apocalypse, and from those shadows of the old civilisations that drag themselves on. The Qunash and Zhang Great Merchant Houses are banking on the desperate greed that kept the peoples of the world alive through the End will keep the Bay from Qiang, Mun, and Suilimoon hands. Of course, why simply look at a jewel when you can take it?
Along this well traveled trade road is a way-house. A little hut, what a poor man would call 'homey' and a rich man would call '...' because a rich man wouldn't be caught dead in it, and the dead don't speak.
Anyways.
Today it starts raining real hard like. Then it starts pouring. Lightning, thunder, real wrath of the gods stuff. No fun to be in unless you were a fish that was unfortunate enough to be still alive on land but fortunate enough to be in that situation at this particular moment, on account of all the rain. Unless you were a saltwater fish. Then you'd be just as unhappy, if not more so, getting your hopes up and all.
Anyways.
Travelers are starting to pour into the hut. Just pouring in, like the rain outside is pouring. Clever eh? First comes in a gems-and-precious-metals merchant, his expensive jungle cat fur lined boots soaked and soiled. With wet soil. Next is another merchant, selling cheap rugs that taste like spilled cabbage soup, but he's down on his luck. Lost his house in a bad deal down on his luck. Wife left him for the better prospects of a ditch digger down on his luck. After him, three farmers and one cow. The tallest farmer owns the cow, the other two are the tall one's brothers. The secretly want the cow, but are filial enough not kill him for it just yet. The next six people are boring and I'll skip them, just remember the exist and there's more than five but less than seven of them. Third to last is a shepherd with eighteen goats, who as you know are prone to eating anything they come into contact with, such as cheap rugs that taste like spilled cabbage soup. Second to last is a dragon. And the last to enter is a young maiden, young but wiser than her fair skin would imply.
The trade road is not in any country, or under the rule of any king, emperor, high-priest, dictator, chieftain, grand chancellor, supreme general, president for life, prime minister, subprime minister, or rude landlords. Being a trade road between countries, the dozen or so people spoke two dozen different languages and three dialects of goat-speak.
As they began to dry their relief changes to irritation. The merchants try to undersell one another. The farmers argue over the inheritance of the cow, and the cow is upset over having no representative vote in the matter. The six people continue to exist in a less than notable manner. The goats are happy enough, but the poor merchant will soon be poorer as his stock depletes. Everyone anxiously ignores the dragon.
Tensions are crackling. Goats are bleating. The cow is grazing. The dragon is smoking. The merchants are sweating. The people are breathing. It's all very dramatic.
Now, everyone grows silent as the maiden squeezes between the gang-press of men. She positions herself on the centre of the hut, in the centre of what could become a brawl. All eyes are on this young woman, and they all draw their breath as she prepares to bestow some wisdom. She sighs, and with an air of wizened wizard or witch or warlock or whale, says,
'Smell's a bit arse din'nit?'
Karam, Lokka, and Gajam, the three Bundvolk blocs, have eyed each other suspiciously since the migration first set down their tents at the base of the northwestern peninsula. As camps turned to villages, and villages to towns, and towns to cities, the communities began drawing together, first for protection from the wilds and raiders, and eventually from the other growing alliances.
The jewel of the Bundvolk, Karam, stands rich and proud in the north, and communities from far and wide have aligned themselves with the Karamese in hopes of catching some of the overflowing wealth. Those under the heel of Lokka’s armies look north with envy, and their desire for wealth and freedom teases at forming into rebellion, or invasion. To the east, the Gajam Confederacy does not enjoy the economic splendor of Karam, or the military security of Lokka, but the Gajamese are not ones to complain, with social and governmental stability ensuring that even if they aren’t rich, they are content.
Outside of secular matters of wealth, might, and happiness, the Bundvolk are growing ever more divided over religion. While they share the same pantheon, the blocs each follow their own patron deity. The divisions are widening, and hardliners are becoming restless as their preferred god is shunned or insulted by their neighbours.
Grast clawed his way up the jagged rocks, scraping off what was left of his fingernails on rough stone. His left leg dragged uselessly behind him. It was a futile effort, there was no escape, but even if he knew the truth, that ancient, animalistic need to fight had taken over the moment the Gorre had fallen upon him.
He wept bitterly, crying to the gods while cursing them in turn. How could he and his brothers have stopped the giants? All they were shepherds, all they had had were spears! They could barely handle a bear-hound, much less half a dozen Gorre! The barbarians had torn Fajh's arm off, the splintering of bones and jets of red mist punctuating his screams. Grast had fled after tossing his spear, he didn't even see if it had hit or not. He had heard one of them start eating. He had heard the screams.
His handhold broke. With a soft moan he slid down the slope, sharp outcroppings cutting his arms and legs as he scrambled for purchase. He found none. Slumped at the bottom of the path again, he whimpered as the hulking beasts towered over him.
'Gods take me, don't let them have me! Don't let me see it!'
The leading Gorre stopped, his mouth open in either shock or amusement. He said something to others in his language, then looked down at Grast. In the Liin language he said, 'Liin no fear. Eat no breath. Gorre no beast.'
Grast's heart froze, his mouth working uselessly. Was he going to live? Could he see his home again? Were the Gorre going to show merc-.
His line of thought was cut off along with his head. The Gorre gave a short prayer, then feasted.
At the swirling wall of flesh-shredding sand and dust that is the Apocalypse, the Hollowthings of the Night Wastes wait. In the vast desert they wander alone or in small groups, their hunched and shrouded forms skulking across the desolate landscape. To the south, at The Eye, the Beast-King calls the Hollowthings to a last mass. The creatures are uncomfortable together, and the Beast-King knows his congregation is already straining. If he is to do the Dead God’s will, he will have to do it soon.
Not all Hollowthings that strive for civilisation heed the Beast-King’s call. The Hollowthings of the Shallow Bay have built society around the Second King, himself at once acknowledging and denying the Beast-King’s superiority. As in the Night Wastes, the Shallow Bay is breaking apart at the seams, the Hollowthings’ attempts at civilisation crumbling before their nature. The situation is exacerbated by the hulking beasts taken as slaves, who while provide extremely efficient labour, are not ones to be controlled.
These are the Gorre, and being enslaved is not in their nature. To the east, the Great Gorre Clans live a violent existence. Skirmishing with each other and raiding their neighbours, the Gorre do not have a distinction between peace and war, much in the same way they do not distinguish between food and corpses. The towering giants are feared by their neighbours, but the greatest threat to the Gorre is themselves. Never ones to bow to authority, the Great Gor Orma Grett sees his accomplishments of bringing the clans together in a rough coalition crumble and fade as the years pass by. It took the Apocalypse to bring his people together, and now he needs to find something on par with the end of the world to keep them together.
The target of the majority of the Gorre's ferocity are the Liim of the Kingdom. Despite the name, the Kingdom is only really a united political entity due to the Gorre, without that constant threat, the Liim would likely have immediately gone there separate ways to chase treasure, adventure, and colourful flowers. While the Liim within the Kingdom's valley are fairly peaceful, if unpredictable, those that make their living in the mountains are hardened from the constant threat of Gorre raiders. Troops positioned in windswept mountain outposts do what they can, but the miners, herders and nomads of the cliffs are still frequently found among the Gorre's slaves and victims.
Not all Gorre and Liim are enemies. Some have given up their grudges and their very natures to settle down together in piece. Communion, most notable for its awkward lack of the article 'the,' is a relatively stable country where Gorre clans and Liim communities live and work together, along with a number of Hollowthings to whom the peaceful nature of Communion was appealing. In fact, the Hollowthings' Dead God was the basis for the Lost Ones, the religion that holds Communion together. While the various peoples of Communion are loyal to one another and their theocratic government, the harsh mountains that they live on do not help support a thriving economy, and Communion finds itself dependent on the very countries its people fled from.
The Shelm are curious creatures, in both senses of the word. Like most wildlife of the Lost Lands, the lack of contact with outside civilisations meant they had no inherent fear of people. Rather, many initially thought the hulking beasts were outright aggressive, though this was simply misinterpreting their curiosity.
With a shoulder height twice as high as the tallest Gorre, it's easy to see why the first settlers were intimidated by them. Many cultures in the old world had stories of great beasts, and some large animals of course did still walk the lands, a Shelm does truly look monstrous. While their stomach is matted with soft white or brown fur, much of the rest of their body is covered in a hard, thick layer of stone-like scales, thickest along their spine from neck to tail. The long claws on their four fingered paws doesn't help.
But the Shelm are in fact quite docile, and by some accounts even friendly. It's possible to approach and touch a Shelm, as long as you do so slowly and in full view. They have even been known to accept researches into their herds as if they were children, attempting to give them chewed food and sheltering them from harsh weather or predators. As far as my colleagues can tell, there are no reports of a Shelm attacking unprovoked. All instances of violence occurred when a Shelm was threatened first. When threatened, the gentle herbivores become terrifying force, capable of shrugging off crossbow bolts and tearing through armour, and the flesh and bones beneath, with ease.
Their size and ferocity keeps casual hunters from being an issue, but some countries have found one reason or another to bring military forces against them. While no student of the natural world could approve these endeavours, they have revealed something miraculous; when existentially threatened, Shelm herds draw together. Without any indication of communication across vast distances, herds are seemingly intrinsically aware of each other's condition, and will cross dozens of leagues to assist each other.
When the migrations first arrived in the Lost Lands, there were estimated to be several hundred herds of couple dozen or so adult Shelm plus their offspring. Now, there seem to be only a few dozen herds across the Lost Lands, but each number over a hundred Shelm. Even now, these super-herds are merging, one by one.
The blasted northern desert is home to more than Hollowthings. Like their western cousins, the Desertwalkers of the Borderland are well suited to the harsh environs of the Apocalypse’s foothills. The Desertwalkers were already used to being desperate and without roots before the end, and have thrived in the Lost Lands while others have floundered. Their Federation has attracted escaped slaves and refugees from across the northern shore, the freedom and social separation bonding the unwanted souls under the harsh, scorching sun.
The Desertwalkers are still at nature travellers, and not all have taken up permanent residence in the Borderland. Many travel as merchants, trading goods across the north. Others have migrated south to the live among the Lyrians. The first the migrants would reach is the New Lyrian Empire, its very existence owed to a discrepancy in chapter 7 subsection B.14 verse XIV of the Law on Council Seats in the Department of Records and the copy in the Department of Council Logs, regarding the use of the Lyrian singular and plural forms of ‘you.’ This issue snowballed into the New Lyrian Empire being formed from those that left the southern Lyrian country in disgust, founding their own new country with more clearly defined spelling.
The original Lyrian country, the Principality of New Gyldige, sits on the northern coast of the sea’s mouth, with view of the great clash of storm and waves of the ocean-bound Apocalypse. While far to the west the Qiang Zhang value their bureaucracy as the iron that their Empire is built upon, New Gyldige is ensnared in its endless departments, sections, subsections, supra-sections, intersections. The Lyrians are at heart a detailed oriented people, their devotion to their goddess is pure, and they are welcoming to outsiders. But they risk alienating other races, as well as even the more socially aloof Lyrians, with their endless complexities.
The islands in the channel are split between New Gyldige, and the Pitikara Tagata. The Tagata are an seafaring people, and the differences between the Lost Lands and their ancestral homeland cause them chronic, physical pain, their skill at see saw large numbers of Tagata survive the migration. The Pitikara stretch across the channel islands and the south coast, but are not truly united. The dozens of tribes vary in size and their degree of cooperation, but in the Lost Lands every race is pressed up against others, and the Pitikara Tagata are in no different position. The Lyrians, Pucans, Ryoto surround them, and through these differences in race and society, the Pitikara are drawn to each other for safety and identity.
Living in the shadow of the End changes you. Even in a world where everyone older than ten lived through the Apocalypse, those that chose to settle down within sight of the churning destruction are a different kind of folk. Soldiers will say that working in the presence of death gives you a different perspective on life, and that must be true for those that live in the literal edge of the world. Every morning they are greeted by the death of everything the ever knew, loved, and hated, and every night the last thing they see is the last line of all life on this earth.
We all know death comes a-knocking. We live despite it. Yet we usually don't see it, or hear it, stretched across the horizon in a wall of darkness and destruction. Are these people that dwell at the foothills of the Apocalypse simply mad? Or are they the only people to truly accept this world.
Whatever their mental state is, they are the most aware that while the earth may be ending, there are still those who refuse to give in. Just as we of the Great Migration were driven to the Lost Lands, those who perhaps lived further away, or were driven into hiding, or otherwise somehow clung to life, continue to be drawn to this oasis in the darkness. Disparate peoples of all races emerge from the maelstrom, ragged and haunted by a decade of hell. These survivors are truly changed on a way we can't comprehend.
They have seen the End, and have lived in it. When you are among the dead, they become you. Do we accept these walking ghosts? They breath like the rest of us, but in their eyes is a hollowness reserved only for the grave. Their skin is blasted and scorched, and when they speak it is with a weight that could crush kingdoms.
Whatever force the Apocalypse is driven by, some of it has become these creatures. These Remnants of the old world carry a power that the most experienced of wizards would never dare to tame.
I have seen the air blur and crackle, frost spitting into and out of existence along their skin before a dozen men before them are sheared of skin and flesh. Even a hollowthing would be incapacitated channeling such magic, yet a Remnant is unfazed.
Life must be payed for magic, this is a truth we all understand. As the rain falls from the sky and the sun rises in the east, magic must be paid its due. What have these damned souls payed for this terrible curse?
Amourrice is the largest island in the Lost Lands, and his home to the Lutindor Pucans. An odd little people, the Lutindor tribes are only tenuously united under a Queen, and there erratic, hedonistic ways keep their own self-interest in the way of cooperation. Lutindor’s separation from the mainland means they have had little direct tensions with other countries, but they have their own issues, mostly in regards to the exiled Swelgan Clan.
The Swelgans are far more violent than the Lutindor Pucans, though it is arguable if that is why they were driven out by the Lutindors, or if that was the cause of their aggression. Now situated on the mainland, Swelgan raiders regularly terrorise the surrounding countryside and waters, and sometimes even make direct strikes on their neighbours, most notably Lutindor, but they have also been known to raid Pitikara and Grand Gathering Land.
With a weak government and rich lands, the Grand Gathering of Ryoto clans is a tempting target for any raiders in the area. The lizard-faces have created one of the most vibrant economies in the Lost Lands, and their skill and capacity for metal working is acknowledged far and wide. Even among Bundvolk smiths, Grand Gathering metal work is prized and studied. The wealth of the Grand Gathering Ryoto clans is at risk though, as their weak ability to cooperate makes them vulnerable to raiders, and to the hostile outcasts to the northwest.
With greedy eyes, the Ralka Ryoto eye their old neighbours with contempt and violence. Many of the Ralka Ryoto clans were driven out from the Grand Gathering for some perceived offence, while others left to found their future, free from their old ties and the Grand Gathering’s rules. The Confederacy of the Ralka clans is in fact far more controlling than the Grand Gathering, and many are chafing under the requirements of this new government. The leaders of Ralka are not unaware of this, and know that this pent up unrest must be released. The question is only in what direction.
They call themselves Kingdoms and Empires, Confederacies and Unions. They say they have Priests, kings, emperors, generals, dictators, administrations, bureaucracies, churches, armies, navies, merchant houses, guild houses, noble houses, classes, castes, ranks, occupations, dignity, morality, obedience, leadership. They believe in civilisation.
And yet they rule empty lands and broken peoples. The Apocalypse is already seen as the past, out of sight out of mind out of reality. They play at their games as children in the shadow of their parents. The palaces are gone, the castles ground to dust, the arenas buried in ash, and cathedrals washed under the sea.
These are the days of the Kings of Tents and the Queens of Dust. We are undone, but we are blind and deaf to our own deaths.
The story of the Bokonotons is not a happy one. Far from their homeland, the Lost Lands degrade and destroy the Bokonoton body. Joints ache, sickness hits hard, and death comes early. A shortened, more painful life awaited all Bokontons who fled Apocalypse. To escape this fate, the Six Great Tribes of the Endless Interregnum of Bokonot have resorted to widespread slavery and magic to augment their environment. Carving magic-infused ruins into the flesh of slaves, Bokonoton griots have managed to prolong the life of these climate controlling slave-mages. These slaves are shells of living beings, their bodies and souls stripped and eaten away by the cancerous magic, only to be stitched together by the magic of others.
Not all Bokonotons agree to this horror. Many have fled south, calling themselves the Two Great Tribes of Doyejho, and accept the pain they must endure. Is it punishment, or is it a reminder of the gift they have been given? No matter what the reason is behind the burden the Doyejho now carry, the accept it, and go so far as to proclaim themselves pacifists. While this may wipe their hands clean of their perceived sins, it makes them easy targets for the northern slavers.
Why are we here? And who are you?
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