There are some things about Wyrlde you just have to talk about on their own, because of the way that they are referred to or how they are notable in common conversation and note.
The Seven Seas
Even a casual observer of the Empire will notice the startling feature that has been commented on for as long as people have known the shape of the world.
Sometime after the end of the God’s War, during the Bitter Road, the world changed, and one of the greatest of those changes was the sealing of the Ocean of Tears, turning it into the Sea of Tears, though most often just called The Great Inland Sea. Divided into smaller seas now, it is around this plentiful source and the shores of it that the Empire has been built.
The Great Inland Ocean is usually clear and warm, and troubled only when storms come up from the south. It is what allows the great Riverboats to ply their trade, moving upstream into the realms, and even crossing it, alongside ships. It is a major hub of commerce and travel, rest and beauty, and only the fact that it is filled with some rather dangerous creatures keeps people from truly taking it for granted.
Within the Sea of Tears, however, are The Seven Seas: Tranquility, Serenity, Showers, Storms, Clouds, Shadows, and Dreams. The average depth of the Seven Seas is about 3500 feet, with the deepest parts around 4000. The littoral areas around the shores only stretch out for about a mile, after which there is a sharp drop off.
The Seven seas are littered and strewn with small islands and assorted options – there is even a legend of a Floating Island that drifts about. The tale of the Sea Wizard Garda and his unrequited love for the Elfin maiden Isen is well known and oft heard, complete with the tragedy of their passing beyond the Pale after years of travel within the Seven Seas. The legendary Mariner, said to be half-Triton, was the first to sail all seven seas, and today serves as a Saint for those who ply their trade on the waters.
The Imperial Road
It took 87 years, but in 219, Sibola completed The Imperial Road, which is one major road and several small tributaries that link all the major Cities and Major towns. The Cities are mostly linked by the main body, which travels mostly along the coast, while the Towns are linked by tributaries of the main road that also take as direct a path as possible.
The imperial road is wide enough for seven laden wagon to travel side by side upon, with cleared space out an equal distance to each side. It is paved with local stones cut in uniform rectangles measuring five feet long by four feet wide and two feet thick. The roads are slightly raised in the middle and have wide drains on the sides that are often planted. Next to the drains are broad walkways, about 9 feet wide, also paved, and raised above the edge of the road a good three feet.
The Imperial Road has one major diversion point: the Crusade Road, which leads to the Crusades.
The road is the most widely used means of land travel, because it is not merely convenient, but it is well patrolled, and there is rarely a point where help is not within a half day’s ride. Every 30 miles along the length of it is a Station House, often next to some sort of Inn (or near a turn-off for an Inn).
Station Houses are stone buildings, square, with an arms and common room on the bottom, a barracks room on the second floor, and a watch post on the top floor, often with an attached mess and outbuilding.
A standard posting to such a place is a Fortnight, with a week’s travel permitted for returning each way, thus completing a full month.
Crossroads
On Wyrlde, there are Road Crossing and there are Crossroads. Road Crossings are just that. Places where two or more roads intersect.
In the Boonies, however, a Crossroads is a location that has strong Palescent, Psychic, and Resonant aspects, sometimes singly, sometimes in combination. There are typically graves nearby, always marked, though the names may be absent or faded. There are often Spirits here – Jinja and Halaso, typically — and there is always a sense of foreboding and ominous destiny. There may not be actual roads, but it is just as likely there are.
Crossroads are liminal spaces, one of the points at which magic seeps through the Veil into the world, and they are scattered and found everywhere. They are a place literally “neither here nor there”, “betwixt and between”, and are of great importance to the Master of Crossroads, Erishu.
At each new moon, spirits and travelers will leave small meals, set aside for the crossroads. If they are well known, they will be marked, often with a six-foot-high stele engraved with a door upon it, or a cairn of stones topped by a marked one.
Many crossroads will have one tree that is set aside from the others, very tall, with long, strong branches, and they will be used to execute brigands and bandits. These are always places outside the reach of patrols, justice said to be served.
The most dangerous Crossroads will have four stone braziers laid out, each marked with a pattern of three wavy lines, and if you look carefully, you will find they are connected by a thin wire extending from a complex knot in the center, and having another fine wire wrapped around it and laid out in a circle equidistant from the knot and the braziers. This wire will often be buried, but it will always touch the stone at some point, and often they will enter into it seamlessly.
They are natural ritual spaces, and it is said they are empowered themselves by the crossroads itself, enabling even an unlearned person to set forth and bring across some denizen or other, usually in pursuit of some bargain.
The Black Stone
About halfway up a mountain (because they are high and kill people) there is a massive black stone monolith, and legend says that you can ask it a single question, and it will answer. For centuries people have gone to this stone and asked it all manner of questions. You only get one, though.
One day a beloved Emperor made the pilgrimage to this fabled stone, and he asked the question “What is the meaning of life?”. The stone was silent for a time, and then in a grinding, grating voice, it said “Forty one.”
The Wastes
This is somewhat like the opposite of a biome, an anti-biome, a place where there is no life; not flora, not fauna, not a spore nor speck of possibility. Not even the monstrous nightmares or the great Dreadnaughts dare tread here.
Waste Environment
Fierce atmospheric combat is waged above these lands, the forces generated in the clouds striking down and blasting away whatever rests upon the earth.
At the end of every minute while in this region, there is a 1% chance (1 on d%) that lightning strikes a creature. Roll for each group of creatures within 10 feet of one another or individuals. When striking a group of creatures, roll randomly to determine which creature is hit. A creature that wishes to take the hit can make a DC 20 Dexterity saving throw to interpose themselves between the target and the lightning bolt. A creature hit by a lightning bolt takes 20d6 lightning damage and suffers the conditions.
Everything moves at half-speed in this difficult terrain due to the constant hazards of roots, thorns, vines, low-hanging branches, and undergrowth.
To move faster, you must succeed at a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw every round or else trip and be knocked prone.
For every 30 minutes you spend in a waste, you must succeed at a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or suffer 1 level of fatigue.
For every day a person or creature spends in this terrain, it must succeed at a DC 13 Constitution save or be cursed. The curse varies, but usually begins to sap the individuals Vitality, Psyche, or Heart score by 1 point each day, with their appearance taking on a more plant like appearance little by little as the curse takes hold.
The curse can be removed using Remove Curse or Restoration, but only so long as the score affected doesn’t reach 0. Once the score affected does reach zero, the character becomes an awakened plant of some sort and is now a native to the Waste, unable to leave it or suffer 1 point of necrotic damage for each minute it is outside the waste, eventually decaying into a sticky ashy residue.
Cursed creatures and those native to the waste ignore these penalties.
The Western Waste
It is, as it is named, a wasteland. Utterly barren, even the topsoil gone. It is said that when those who hold spells pass through such an area, they lose the spells – because they have been deprived of all that makes them magical. Even the great artifacts do not work here. At least one of these great wastes was created by mortal deed, and the name of that person has been struck from all record and note. There are vast and peculiar obelisks here, averaging about five wide and between 8 and 16 feet high, about a foot thick. They seem impervious to tools and have the peculiar ability to vanish and reappear elsewhere. They are haunted, many say, and many claim they whisper, “water sleeps.”
Northern Waste
It is said that trees of ice, shrubs of snow and a thousand sparkling sculptures occupy this place, where the north wind meets the sea, with a river that flows, full of memory, where all that was lost might one day be found. There are vast and peculiar obelisks here, averaging about five wide and between 8 and 16 feet high, about a foot thick. They seem impervious to tools and have the peculiar ability to vanish and reappear elsewhere, their surface sides reflecting strange patterns and markings. They are haunted, many say, and all that they whisper is “water remembers”.
Southern Waste
A wizard built a tower here once. A grand blue one, ten stories high, legend saying each story was of greater size within than without.
Later, he engaged in bargains and trade, dealings and demands with Imps and Thyrs and Grendels as he sought ways by which he could make his magic have mastery over all others.
During those years he forged and created many mighty things including twenty rings that he is said to have gifted mighty families, save one that he kept for himself. His deceptions and perfidy exposed, he couldn’t make magic great again, and in defending himself from vengeance, he created the waste where the Tower of Ism still stands.
The tower is surrounded by a field of these same Obelisks, most standing, some lain across others in a ring, and these stones are said to whisper, “water’s wet”.
Sea Waste
This is a peculiar patch of sea near Keris and Bermuda, where it is said a Merrow mage once tried to slay the world. Whirlpools and spouts have been known to appear out nothing without warning, and sailors tell of unseen shifting sand bars. There are vast and peculiar obelisks here, averaging about five wide and between 8 and 16 feet high, about a foot thick. They seem impervious to tools and have the peculiar ability to vanish and reappear elsewhere, and they float across the waves, prone, their sea sides covered in thick dead barnacles, their surface sides reflecting strange patterns and markings, and many say they can hear them whispering “water lives”.
The Ancient Land
Occasionally, someone will desire to risk themselves to try and recover some of the iron and steel that were lost in The Ancient Lands. Less than 1% of those who have tried that effort ever return, but those that have come back have spun wild stories about how the world there is reclaiming the land, but that what has come is twisted and vile and deadly to everything.
The most reliable source is the Master Sorcerer Amenhast, who described the Ancient Lands as being beautiful and deadly, filled with vast ruins overrun by deadly plants, of waterways and rain that are poison, or vast clouds of spores that will choke and swarms of insects that will bleed you dry.
He claimed that there are areas there where magic is dead, that no bird nor beast flies or crawls there, that it is a realm beyond anything imaginable – and that it is trying desperately to grow and expand.
The truth remains unknown, save for two things. The first is that Amenhast died the night after giving this report, and his body erupted with growths and was twisted monstrously before he was burned. The second is that he brought back with him samples.
Water that was like acid, plants that moved on their own, even severed and without soil, and dead insects the size of a hand, six legged and with mandibles that are razor sharp and stingers that leave behind eggs.
Branches of crystal, and soil that nothing natural could grow in and that had to be destroyed.
The sacrifice of Amenhast and the team of fifty others who were not able to return is a key point to remember, for the temptation remains; steel, iron, and artifacts from the God’s War still lie within that realm, untouched and lost for generations unknown.
It is widely suggested that some of the diseases and corruptions that are happening have their source in the Ancient Lands – brought with them by those who journeyed to that place and returned.
The worst part is that no one who has returned has ever been able to tell anyone where they found it.
The Seven Donjons
Located in out of the way places, there are seven labyrinths rumored to have been created by seven great Grandmasters in the Ages of Fable, Myth, and Legend. Rumor says that each of them contains vast wealth, lost secrets, and strange mysteries.
However, all seven of them are notoriously deadly – scant few tales are passed of the few who have returned, claiming tremendous loss of life, impassable tortures, and cruel and heartless traps, and all but impossible to reach first levels.
A side business exists across the land purporting to offer maps to them – most are fake, though discerning which is which is always difficult because even the Powers won’t talk about them except to admit that they are indeed real.
Some legends state that it was Paria who created them.
The Five Healing springs
Long ago, when people were less fearful of those from the Fairywilde, there were five healing springs created by them. They were meant to be a precious gift to the peoples, to save the sick and the injured, provide for the chance to live longer lives, to ensure youth and vitality longer than normal. Some legends say they can even return the dead to life.
They were hidden, though, so that only the most determined could find them, using clues scattered throughout the world, to save themselves or those they loved.
I once joined a seven-month long search, and we traipsed many of the far corners and strange spaces of the world. We found empty lamaseries and ancient ruins, but not once, in all those months did we come across any healing spring, having followed ever last one of the clues we could obtain. It was an enormous waste of time, money and life.
Over half our bearers were slain by wildlife, the rest of us by critters like the terrifying Almiraj.
Nasty little bunnies. The small group we had sent ahead to scout had to use one of our precious Doradan grenades on it.
Speaking of critters…
