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yzegem · 1 month ago

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Main lore of Encounters in the Frontier

In this pinned post I will introduce the main historical chronology and concepts of the setting.

Most of the events take place in a subcontinent with the general size, shape and latitude of India, wich is a penninsula of a larger megacontinent wich occupies most of the northern hemisphere. This subcontinent, wich I will just call the penninsula, has a shallow sea to the east, another to the west, steppe and large mountains to the north and a deep and vast ocean to the south, wich eventually leads to the land of alwaysummer. At the eastern sea are the twisted islands. The penninsula has dense forests to the northeast, jungles to the southeast and the western coast is more dry and desserted. the northwest has the plateau, a large elevated plains regions, spotted with forests and the centre of the continent is hilly and mountainous.

By this time the Empire controlled many religions and peoples, in some cases loosely, and revolts had to be almost constantly supressed in the western and southern provinces. The central mountain range, southwestern dessert, northwestern plateau and norterns steppe were their most unstable frontiers, as well as eastern pirates from the Twisted Islands.

The Sun Empire had a humble origin as a city state in the southeast wich fought for its independence and won against a nomadic invador from the north. The years of foreign control made them realize their vulnerability and they began to rapidly militarize. For the Sun Empire, the best deffense was a good offense and they rapidly annexed the nearests city states in a rapid expansion. In their culture, war justified itself. They generally arrived at a city and offered them to surrender in good terms or be suffer very bad taxations and treatment after their defeat. Many chose the first option. At this time, certain warrior families began to rise to power and formed a warrior class wich selected a military leader from among themselves. There was also a very powerfull priest class, wich ended up concentrating into a single dynasty and also chose a leader from among themselves (Although the role ended up being inherited mostly). These two roles complimented each other. The military leader managed external politics and the executive power, while the priest leader managed internal politics and the juditial and legislative power, as well as of course, managing religious festivities and such. These two roles were imagined as being a husband and a wife (the priest leader was often a woman, since politics is considered a woman's job), the state a family and their population their children.The Empire spread westwards and managed to control one of the richest cities of the penninsula, Odras. This city lays under the plateau and is a hub from inland commerce and connects the trade routes of the eastern and western seas. They retained their religion and strong identity, wich had significant influence on the rest of the Sun Empire. By this time the Sun Empire's religion was politheistic with the sun god as the head of the pantheon.

Now I will introduce the Twisted Islands and the magic system of the setting:

If you have ever been introduced to the concept of the fourth dimension or wormholes it was probably by the folded paper pierced by a pencil analogy.

This setting's shape is more like this:

Some parts of the world seem to be closer in the 4D plane than others, and wormholes are more likely to appear between them. Some regions have deeper folds and portals will be more common, while others are "flatter" and there will be almost no chance of one appearing. In this world, the Twisted Islands have the most and deepests "folds", so portals appear often, sometimes on their own and connect to many places.

The Twisted Islands are an archipellago of mostly very small atolls and poor in natural resources (except fish and shellfish I guess). Still, the portal's influence in the region is very apparent to the naked eye. Rock formations take impossible shapes, caves are larger than the cliff that contains them, trees grow upside down… so they attracted many sea peoples, wich settled in them for religious reasons. The islands often only held a small population of ascetic monks, wich sustained themselves with donations from pilgrims, wich mainly came from larger, less portal-active islands and lands, wich is where most of the Twisted Island's population is originally from, it's rare for people to be born in the islands proper.

Portals don't usually open on their own, and require energy input, such as a strong fire. Monks would place an offer over the fire, raise the temperature and the offer woud suddenly disappear with a flash of light, and sometimes something else would appear on its place (most often just rocks that don't match those of the island, but enough to impress anyone that sees it). Slowly, their methods became more refined and they could locate, open and predict where an object would go more reliably. The peoples of the Twisted Islands were also known as great sailors, good at sea trading and wich could venture into the open sea, while those from the Empire only sailed next to the shoreline.

Managing portals was a dangerous task, reserved only for the elite of the monasteries, trained for years. It could result in untreatable portal wounds, in wich a limb mantains it's function but becomes "twisted". This modified limb seemed useful in locating portals and their shape and angle, so some monks started modifying themselves on purpose, thought this is shunned by most.

Ok, so those were the basis of most regions before the Dragon Age, a period of ecological and political change. It started with the explosion of a megavolvano in a distant, unknown land, wich caused a volcanic night in the penninsula. This resulted in a widespread famine through the continent… then came the dragons

Dragons were probably native to the land were the volcano exploded and came looking for a new home. They eated cattle, wild megafauna and tragically often humans at an unsustainable rate. They mainly settled in the central mountain ranges of the penninsula and the northern steppe, wich caused mass migration from these lands. These migrations were often violent and caused great damage to the already in crisis Empire.

The first encounter with a dragon happened in a frontier fortress south of the plateau, wich was taken by a dragon at night and its inhabitants devoured. The dragon took the fortress as a nest to lay eggs. The Empire, after comunication with the fortress was cut, asumed it had been taken by a plateau tribe and sent a small platoon of soldiers to retake it (dragons were only a rumor atp). The whole platoon was massacred by the dragon.

At the north, the nomads united under a charismatic ruler called Saljar, wich conquered a big chunk of the Empire's land. In an almost suicide mission, the already desperate and decaying Empire went all in against this king from the north. This campaign was full of tensions and during their travel north, guerilla attacks from rebellious regions and dragons weakened both armies. The unpopular military ruler died right before battle (most likely secretly poisoned by the Ashiva, the priest ruler as the military leader was the one that made the bad desition of starting this campaign) and it seemed like all hope was lost, but Ashiva, took control and led the army into battle (a very desperatel move). During the battle two dragons started fighting eachother while flying on top of them and fell mid fight on top of the nomad troops, causing them to break formation and flee. Its said that Ashiva himself killed the feared Saljar. Ashiva became very popular and took supreme control of the Empire, claiming to be the Sun God personified.

Still, the Empire had many problems to adress, such as the dragons (all military efforts to hunt them ended in disaster) and the former army of Saljar, now dispersed in small armies, wich sacked the Empire's towns. Ashiva, proving to be a very capable diplomat, managed to organize a meeting with these warbands, where he recalled the fight of the dragons over their own armies, and claimed that, in the same way that these beast both died while fighting, so would they if they don't adress the dragons. Ashiva proposed that these war bands start to hunt the dragons and bring their heads to him, in exchange, the Empire would grant them power over their lands. The nomadic light camelry proved to be very effective at hunting dragons and they soon became powerful noble families and settled mainly in the frontier lands or rebellious regions of the Empire to "pacify them" (It's known that the natives of these regions considered their new rulers worse than the dragons).

It took about 120 years to hunt most dragons and end the dragon age. During this time the Empire was ruled by Ashiva's divine and absolute dynasty. The new Dragon Nobility became increasingly powerful and the danger of a coup d'etat was very real. The plateau and northern coast of Alwaysummer were conquered during this period.

During the mid Dragon Age, the most powerful monastery of the twisted islands learned how to reliably send objects through portals (if a living creatures is sent through a portal ir appears dead on the other side). The chief of that monastery sent a message through the portals to every other monastery of the archipellago, calling them for a meeting to show them how to do it. This meeting was known as The Call. The comercial use of the portals was immediatly exploited and the twisted islands unify and become the major hub of trade of this world. Diplomatic trips from the archipellago reached many distant lands to set portal openings and trade centers (the envoys were met with varied reactions, sometimes welcomed, rejected, or straight up killed). These portals were specially useful for sending messages and the rivalry between the Empire and the Islands only increased from now.

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