"a pile of broken truths"
Welcome to Telrhin. A world setting for dice & paper rolepaying games. Home to my campaigns since 1984.
Like most religions the Sylas cult has a few variants and offshoots, loosely wrapped in the fold of the larger faith. The followers of Sylas the Merciful are best known for their charity, namely the free meat they hand out to the poor among their flock.
The cities and coasts of the Valek are all unified by the sea. You could say that everything around the Valek faces inward, and the sea is the focus of everything: trade, food, wealth, power, and war. The roonhands of the Valek are tied to this global world, influenced by the cultures of a hundred ports, speaking the same slang creole as the sailors: cho-cho, a mix of Thurne, Tagani and Korul.
When you step into the Veil you enter a landscape of vague reality that exists between several places. More formally this is called the Umbra. It's most heavily influenced by the Spirit World, but it also touches on dreams and the edges of the Second World. It's a place without a cohesive geography and home to a long list of creatures: spirits and monsters and a few lost travelers. The short of it is, you're lost without a guide.
The Gods Want You to Die (and other fun facts): in the end, every god wants you to die. They may promise health or safety, love or happiness, but what matters is your faith in them. That devotion binds your spirit to them and helps deliver your glow. It's ravenous and desperate and it drives the gods more than anything else. Without it they wither and die.
A few thoughts on a recent one-off adventure. It was a tomb in the Lowlands in a place called the Valley of the Drowned Kings.
The adventure was meant to be easy. It was a classic "go explore the dungeon" setup for some friends, two of them new to the whole Dungeons & Dragons thing. It was set in the Lowlands, the main gateway region of the world that's easy to grasp and step into. All standard fantasy fare.
I decided to jump start the story at a campsite a half day from the tomb. They had a map. They had an NPC guide.
This is a snippet from the city of Karm Tor as I was tidying up my notes. Karm Tor is part of the Damoran Empire, on the coast of the Gulf of Renlon and the provincial capital of Miriand. And as long as we're talking about dive bars in Telrhin, you should check out the Pox Crain.
The Hackled Pint: a dive bar off the narrow Square of March Brohan. The placard is the only freshly painted sign on the street, featuring a pewter beer stein covered in hackles.
"...in the soft hum of people’s sleeping minds I’ll tell you more. I’ll tell you about the Nine Rulers of the Seven States, the Lost City, the Darig Kingdoms, and the forgotten past of the Venthi people. Because here in Brok Nine every dream has found its way, and with it every secret and every truth."
This is from the work I was doing on a second edition of Maelstrom Storytelling for Hubris Games back in 2006. I think it was Chapter Three with a note to call it "At the Storm's Edge".
Serpent Earth coiled herself to sleep after the Long Night in which all things came to be. The black sun Syr grew ever larger until it threatened to overcome the gold sun Hael.
If there were such a thing as archaeologists they'd find remnants of forgotten gods as well as different interpretations of the current ones. There's Bachnel, the brother of Gahl who was god of night and dreams, and the Goat God of the Grasslands called Puknet. There are ancient Rayikian texts with references to Borgia goddess of seizures and possession. There are whole religions that are lost, like the Sanctum of the Four Winds.
