MORNING STARS (The Setting and the People in it)

 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

The world as it is known, circa 1660. In purple, green, and blue are the regions of the Empire of the Sun and Moon. To the north, in red, are the lands occupied by the many city-states of the djinn, which sit in the shadow of the Great Wall of the Djinn which circles the world's equator. That's the giant black line at the top. Finally, highlighted in yellow is the Protectorate of Yonah, which once boldly repelled the Empire's questing ships. North of the wall lies mystery, and beyond the sea lies loss. The world is vast, wondrous, and fearful.

In the beginning, there was nothing, and where there was nothing, there were fairies. Un-beings, anti-things, impossible and eternal. Tohu wa-bohu.

Then came the PRIMEUMATON, the First and Last, God; with terrible burning fire, it illuminated that which was once without light or darkness, life or death, and set about creating the world. A sun to light the day, a moon to shine in the night, and stars without number to glitter like jewels through the firmament. It was the animals who were made first, and the angels, thoughtless pieces of divine machinery, were emanated to maintain order upon this world, this earth. The fairies are made to flee to the most distant corners of creation, where they yearn for the world to be unmade.

Years pass. With no thinking-things to populate this world, God grows discontent and sets about creating the very first people of the world: the djinn. Born of mortal fire as the angels were of divinity, the djinn are the proud and mighty firstborn of the world, to whom all else are unworthy inheritors. Their lives are epics and tragedies, and their kings are unto lesser gods themselves. Indeed, their seven Kings of the Days become gods, by means now obscured- and for this, the djinn are sealed away in a great earth-girding ring of stone, the Great Wall of the Djinn, and there they would stay for thousands of years until the sin was forgiven or the bindings came loose. In the meantime, God makes more people to take their place, this time from a variety of animals.

Years pass. The serpent-men inherit the earth, and master not only their environment, but the very creatures in it; with strange sorceries the serpents mold flesh like clay, remaking animals and people to suit their purposes as tools and weapons. Dragons soar through the skies, and the snake-legged ophiokores marshal under banners that flutter with no wind to move them. The serpents went wrong in ways no people had before or since, as cruel as they were clever. There must have been some goodness in them, some kindness, but it was never seen by the people they enslaved and hunted for sport.

Years pass. The serpents are in a decline after a major war, reduced to a loose confederation of city-states that fight each other as much as they fight outsiders. A small man with a twisted foot, fearing death by cold, masters the manipulation of fire; King Arum the Torchbearer arises as the first wizard-king, and with an army of humans, giants, ambling men, and renegade djinn at his back, he razes the petty remains of the empire of the serpent-men to the ground. Those serpents who survive flee below the earth, collapsing their cities into the ground to deny them to the enemy and letting their creations run free. King Arum, victorious, raises cities and hunts the secrets of magic, seeking the path to eternal life. He succeeds, but not for long; a few years into his immortality, the fire to which his life is bound is extinguished by a catastrophic flood that not only kills the Torchbearer, but destroys his capital city in one terrible deluge. His successors war with one another, and scatter further across the continent. From here, history begins: year zero. This is the point where people start remembering things; all else before this point is known only in vague legend.

Stars begin falling. Lesser gods than the First and Last, who is at this point forgotten, descend from beyond the firmament to be shaped by human hopes and perceptions. First among them is Thunder Over the Mountain, which grants magic and strength to those who praise it, born of the desire to master the arts which King Arum could not pass down. More follow: the Lord of the Peaks, Apsinthion the Bitter Star, the sea.

Years pass. Humans have inherited the earth. In the far west, across the sea on another continent, an empire with a lost name rules the waves. City-states and wizard-kings abound; this is an age of swords and sorcery, where tyrants abound and men are placed in chains to serve them. The lesser gods are the highest powers, and the First and Last is but a piece of forgotten superstition. Injustice reigns.

Yohannes is, by all counts, a man destined for little. A freed slave turned gravedigger, he lives a life of quiet, miserable labor; in this era, there are always more bodies to bury. When he hears the voice of God call his name, he thinks he has gone mad, and asks what the meaning of this is- and his question is answered well beyond what he had imagined. The secrets of the PRIMEUMATON are revealed to him, secrets not known before or since- and he goes back to work immediately. The next day, however, he begins to teach: the true God who created the world still reigns, and the fallen stars who play at godhood are little more than upstarts and opportunists. All else is the illusions of magicians. The miracles he performs are beyond the capabilities of any magus of his day; with his left hand he may strike men dead, and with his right he may bid them to live again. In his time he gains two disciples: Petra the Stonecutter, a mighty ox of a woman who believed strongly in peace, and a vengeful former barley farmer known only as the Sickle. They never reach the divine understanding of Yohannes the Presbyter, but instead draw power from the twin aspects of the First and Last, PROVIDENCE and DENIAL respectively. Yohannes is ultimately martyred at the hands of a paranoid tyrant named Basileus Katigoros, the Prosecutor King; the King's finest anti-wizard agents ambush the Presbyter while his students are away teaching and seize him after taking several casualties. In front of the eyes of many, Yohannes has his eyes and tongue burnt out, has his limbs broken in several places, and is twisted around the spokes of a wheel.

Yohannes dies slowly, but in his hours of agony, he is the cynosure of man faithful eyes. In his final moments, his body ignites and rises into the sky, glowing like a star under the midday sun. The man is dead, but the WHEEL OF FORTUNE is born- the first among the Saints, lesser deities of human origin. The Sickle, by now reduced to nothing but a blade moved by unseen force, returns to the city with a cabal of assassins and leaves not a single one of Basileus Katigoros's men alive. Petra the Stonecutter picks up the pieces, and returns order to what will become the Holy City.

Years pass. Petra is an old woman, matriarch of the young Providential Church but still strong enough to wrestle lions without being harmed; the Sickle is no longer even animate, reduced to a weapon of terrible power with little remaining impulse behind it, passed between loosely-associated cells of Denialist monks. There is a tense peace between the worshipers of the First and Last and those of the lesser deities after the Synod of the Small Gods formally dictates the lines of authority between the Church, the Denialist Cells, the Star-Cults (a name they object to,) and the state. South of the Holy City, in the town of Geseong, strange ships are sighted sailing from the far west, bringing with them refugees from a distant continent. After a careful navigation of the language barrier, it is learned that a kingdom in the distant west, its name a historical lacuna, has been swallowed whole by the sea. Many more come after these visitors, desperate exiles, and the coast is lashed by constant storms, tidal waves, and terrible sea monsters.

This cannot be allowed to continue. For the first time in history, a god is slain, albeit at great cost. The sea convulses and coastlines shift as the earth trembles, drowning cities and stranding others inland. This act of deicide is a historical lacuna, but its effects are felt to this day: the Sickle is destroyed in the god-slaying process, either in a straightforward battle or elaborate ritual, becoming Saint DEATH, and Petra the Stonecutter dies holding up the pillar of a collapsing temple, becoming Saint STRENGTH.

In the east, the noble Sun Kings rule as fairly as men can, and in the south, the Viervorsten shelter against the bitter cold in their halls. The faiths of PROVIDENCE and DENIAL have only just begun to take root in these places; their histories are their own, tales of chivalry and honor, of the deceitful and terrible forces of fairy. They have little concern with their neighbors on the western coast; the people of the west, however, have other ideas. Bolstered by the Church and by the exiled nobility of a lost continent, the scattered cities of the west are finally united under one banner by the end of the first millennium: the Empire of the Sun and Moon.

Years pass- three hundred of them, approximately, now that we move from foggy history into the clarity of modernity. The Empire of the Sun and Moon annexes the Sun Kingdoms under favorable terms, now united by a common Church. The lands of the Viervorsten, however, more favor the Denialists, who care little for consolidation of power; the Viervorsten refuse the Empire time and time again, and after a breakdown of diplomacy, are ultimately conquered in a bitter war that colors relations between the south and its neighbors for centuries to come. The Empire remains unsatisfied, and wages a few small wars with the djinn to the far north, but this is ultimately fruitless; the fire-born djinn are comfortable living in places most other people find hellish, and their Great Wall is a fortress of utter impenetrability. Nothing comes or goes but by the will of the Kings of the Days, who have only grown more strange and obsessive with the passing years.

To the east, the lush jungle island of Yonah has remained in isolation since the days of King Arum, and has spent centuries developing in parallel with the rest of the world. The people there are six-winged and swift, albeit flightless, and worship God in the form of SACRIFICE; explorers from the mainland call them angelmen out of an erroneous belief that they are the mortal children of angels, but are later known as dovemen. The Empire kidnaps several for occult study, and follows this up with efforts to colonize the island- this time, however, they fail after widespread internal dissent and a spirited defense by the natives. Yonah is made a protectorate of the Empire after tense negotiations, and is mostly left to its own affairs from this point onwards.

Years pass. The modern day is here; the seventeenth century. Literacy is widespread, firearms are ubiquitous, and it seems that the world is finally at peace. The old rift between north and south is mending at last. The few remaining dragons have been slain by cannon and shot after years of sporadic conflict. Every day, the Church and the Wizards further explore the nature of the world. Soon enough, they will be sending ships across the sea and expeditions beyond the Great Wall, and all the world will be one...

A meteor strikes the Holy City in the year 1666, wiping out the ruling de la Mer family's line of succession in one fell swoop, along with nearly a hundred thousand people. Those who survive are scarred and deformed, and many are driven mad by the horror of what occurred. A dozen cadet branches and pretenders grab at authority, while the Church desperately attempts to determine what happened. Is this divine judgement? Divine error? The machinations of fairy, or of the jealous lesser gods? In the south, Marquess Labolas Fuseli, a twisted madman who hides his stargazer-fish face under a fine silver mask and his seven-fingered bones hands in fine silk gloves, readies his armies for what can only be war, although he divulges little of his plans. The Marquess disappears for months at a time, building facsimile men and repeating muskets on the strange flying ships his family made their fortune inventing. In the east, Archduke Hate-Evil II languishes in sickness, driven to the brink of death by cancer in his brain; in his prime he was as noble, generous, and wise as any man could be, a far cry from the living corpse he has become. If he cannot be healed, his realm will certainly disintegrate; in desperation, his knights seek a cup of legend said to have held the tears of the Presbyter before he died...

And then there's you. Thank you, reader, for sitting through all of this exposition. For your patience, here's the list of setting races, made for G24. 

Humans come in many shapes and colors, much like those in our real life. In the west, they are sort of Korean-ish with bits of France-by-way-of-Ys. In the east, they are very much like Ethiopians with a hint of Puritanism and Arthurian legend. In the south, they are quite like the Dutch, only colder and more prone to alcoholism. There's no such thing as a monoculture, of course- get your names and aesthetics from wherever you please. Humans get +2 SAVE, and many small conveniences from being the most widespread people in the world.

Giants are tall and broad, grey of skin and red of hair, with limbs like pillars and hands that could palm a cannonball. Their names come from the British Isles, with surnames tending towards occupations: Smith, Carver, Mason. Giants wander in nomadic clans, stopping to maintain sacred stone circles which they once used to bind fairies; these days, however, more and more giants are stopping to adapt to city life. Giants get +2 MOVE and when it comes to heavy lifting and pulling, only roll for things that would trouble an ox. Their fists and feet do 1d6 damage on account of their size and strength, but their ration consumption and armor costs are doubled.

Dovemen look quite like humans, save for the six wings sprouting from their shoulders, back, and hips; as a matter of fact, they essentially are a subspecies of human, altered from the baseline by serpent-man experimentation. They have Hebrew names, on account of looking like angels and me being a hack writer, but you can't go wrong with any of the Semitic languages, really. Dovemen get +2 HRTS and may jump three times as far horizontally as normal humans, and treat all fall distances as if they were halved. Due to their hollow bones, if a doveman takes 5 or more bludgeoning damage, they must save or be stunned for a round. Any unmodified armor requires them to fold up their small wings, losing out on their bonus to jumping and reduced fall damage. Such alterations are easily made by a competent craftsman, thankfully.

Ambling men are beady-eyed hissing arachnids with squat bodies and long, thin limbs, including a set of delicate feelers which they use to navigate in the perfect darkness of the underground places they live in. Ambling man names are nearly impossible to transliterate into human languages, being composed of hissing and interpretive dance, so among other people they tend to take up names of short poetic verse: Ocean of Darkness Encased in Grinding Stone, or Grinding Stone for short. Ambling men get +2 SNEK and 10' of blindsight, which means they can see in total darkness but not through barriers or in color. They can fit through spaces a human child could fit through, and have a natural AC of 12. This is a good thing, because very few people make armor for upright arachnids, but if you manage to get your hands on some armor that fits, add +1 to its AC.

Djinn have skin that ranges from bright red to ashen grey, and are crowned by a pair of horns protruding from their foreheads. Their names run the gamut of the ancient world: Sumerian, Akkadian, Roman, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic- the list goes on. Even the lowliest beggar among the djinn bears a title, and when it comes to titles, the longer the better. Get downright florid with it. Djinn get +2 SKLL and take minimum damage from normal fires, or half from fireballs and other unnatural flames. They start with the spell Subtle Form, along with 1 ND, which works like a Magic Dice, but it can only be used for casting Subtle Form. Djinn must save vs. narcissistic rage when disrespected, and must save to go against the word of agreements they have made.

• SUBTLE FORM: Take on the shape of a cloud of smoke, fog, or dust for [sum + dice] rounds, inhabiting a space roughly equal in size to your corporeal body. In this shape, you can squeeze through any gap that gas could filter through and fly as fast as you can run. If you are in a space too small for your corporeal body to fit in when the spell ends, you are forced into the nearest space that would fit you. If you are in a sealed container when the spell ends, however, you remain in gaseous form until it is unsealed, popping out into the closest available space. Try not to get tricked into any bottles, lest you get hurled into a lake and forgotten for a thousand or so years.

As a note, djinn is the plural, and djinni is the singular.

Ophiokores resemble human women with a pair of snake tails in place of their legs- the same woman, as a matter of fact, a broad-shouldered and heavy-browed pit fighter that the serpent-men used as a genetic template for their slave-soldiers. To distinguish themselves, they use tattoos, scarification, and other body modifications, with filing and lacquering of the teeth being the most common. Their names are Greek, with a dash of virtue names where the virtue is martial prowess. The adder-maidens, as they are commonly called, are regarded widely with suspicion for being the creations of a prehistoric enemy, and live mostly in itinerant paramilitary groups. It is known that they are capable of virgin births. Ophiokores get +2 INIT and +1 to hit, and suffer no penalties to movement or fighting while prone. However, they cannot regain HP when cold.

There are many other kinds of people, of course. The world is a massive place. In the shadow of the Great Wall lives the sunmen, swift arachnids with terrible jaws and long, many-jointed limbs; beyond the Wall are the Barbars, a nation of men with the heads of dogs, who speak only in barks and howls and are said to be unrivaled swordsmen. There are obscure tribes in the mountains and islands, and there are people who have lived only by firelight in the earth's silent veins. That's not even mentioning whatever lies across the sea.

Also, with relatively few extinction events to cull them, there are dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures still around, although mammals still outcompete them in many places. The world was a warmer place, once, when the serpents still walked the earth.

Stats as bear.

Special thanks to a lot of people. You know who you are.