Fate. Treasure. Dragons.
Welcome to Telrhin. A world setting for dice & paper rolepaying games. Home to my campaigns since 1984.
At the end of the day, covered in the dust of a few tombs, any adventurer worth their salt makes their way to the tavern. A place to kick back, brag about the day's victories, mourn the losses, and enjoy a good pint.
The world is changing, writhing, cracking under the strain of time. Serpent Earth is waking, her many dreams fracturing as she uncoils.
In the beginning the world was a scattered sky of different dreams, each one a world, born from the Womb and the Well of Dreams. Born from the sleeping minds of sleeping gods.
This is a short piece demonstrating the mundane magic of a fantasy world. In this case a temple in a major city, and the kind of things considered impressive but expected in a world of dragons, gods, and magic.
This is from some new work in the Field Guide to the Lowlands, in a section on Courts and Intrigue.
Very possible this was all influenced by too many games of this:
Lockdown gaming has driven us to this... pic.twitter.com/T7US1yTL5E
— The World of Telrhin (@Telrhin) June 9, 2020
In a world where the laws of science are mutable, and there's a palpable existence of good and evil, how do people define reality?
Each campaign can embrace its own direction for this, but the default worldview for most people is one of these.
Some might argue that this is the greatest solution to starvation ever conceived and a true miracle of the gods. Others - possibly the zealous followers of other religions - called it a blasphemous abomination. When it came to light that the source of the free meat was a giant bleeding aberration, the meat lost its appeal and communities turned against it. It didn't help that it had a strange taste some people compared to fish oil. The fish taste was sometimes excused away with an elaborate tale of Sarides, the "sometimes-brother" god of Sylas, and how he plucked the meat-sack-thing from the sea.
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: called Planker, it's 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.
