A shadow hangs over the world of Veen, a gathering of smoke from the smothering remains of fallen castles, burning fields and the pyres of the dead. Upon the great continent of Aveven, a host is marching. The warlord, Buroaw Blackiron is bent on conquest, not just of a single kingdom but of all kingdoms. His dark banner will fly over every inch of the world or he will see every land burned to ashes. A vast murder of crows circles about his army, hoping to fed off of the carnage of battle.

The human, elven and dwarven kingdoms of the eat have fallen before Blackiron, their populations put to the sword or turned into slaves, worked half to death to feed the warlord’s army or to keep the flow of new weapons moving. The goblins tribes have been cowed into service or destroyed. The proud giants have been slain or forced to their knees. The dragons are dead or driven off, refusing to serve any ‘lesser’ beings. The villages, roaming bands and settlements of other, less common or lesser-known beings have been conquered.

The only thing keeping Blackiron from the rich and fertile west, have been the Teeth Mountains. The only passes he might march his army through are guarded by massive fortifications, which are nearly impossible to besiege. Those passes in the north are death traps, choked with ice, snow, feral humanoids and monsters. However, the mightily warlord has found a way through, the long forgotten underground trade road of the abandoned Dwarven realm Kamrorim.

As the host marched through the dark trade road, to engage the human nation of Delall, Buroaw dispatched small bands over the Teeth, using passes controlled by mountain clansmen, whose loyalty he bought with steel. These raiders have been ordered to harass the kingdoms of the south by burning villages, destroying crops and taking the common folk as slaves. He has charged the captains of his raiders to enlist those bandits, mercenaries and any others they can convince to join his forces. This is all in effort to keep his new enemies from presenting a united front, not that Blackiron fears them but his conquest of the world will go much smoother taking it piece by piece.

Alright folks, if your still with me, I bet your thinking this is the part where I tell you that we’ll be playing the local heroes who cut down the raiders and then travel north to vanquish the evil Warlord Blackiron. Well your wrong. This game is going to be about the men and women serving as the raider captains in service to Blackiron. We’ll be doing all sorts of things; murders, pillaging, slave taking, highway robbery, weeding out do-gooder types, ect. I’m going to leave it open ended, that is to say, we all could end up getting killed, survive until the boss comes south or forced to flee to safety. The only real goals our merry band is going to have are to spread chaos and fear, forcing the southern nations to spread their forces out in the countryside.

Now then, on to a bit about Backiron and a few of the more common races of Veen.

Buroaw Blackiron

Everything about this person is cloaked in mystery. He appeared about twenty years ago, in the company of a rather shriveled mage and a small band of warriors. After throwing around plenty of gold, Blackiron had a good size army of mercenaries and used it to take over the kingdom of Risftia. From that conquest, everything started to snowball, armies were crushed before him and he gathered a pile of crowns.

With that said, no one as ever seen Blackiron’s face. He always seems to wear a great suit of black plate, with a full helm decorated with a pair of bull’s horns. Whenever he holds a feast for his officers, he remains in his armor, sitting at the head of the table and watching those he commands. No one knows what race he is either. Some say he’s an elf, other say he’s a human but everyone agrees he’s not a dwarf, as the warlord stands a good seven feet tall. Everyone is sure that Blackiron is male though, from the voice that issues from the helm.

The only ones who might know for sure are his personal slaves but each and every one of them, has had a spell place upon them. If they try to talk about their master to anyone but the mage, Blackiron or their fellow slaves, they end up wracked with pains and frothing green at the mouth, before expiring.

A sampling of Veen’s Races

Elves
If you’ve seen one elf, you seen them all. As a general rule, an elf will be tall, slender, fair of skin and light of hair. Along with this delicate nature, their ears tend to be every long, with the top tapering into a point. If they are not killed or taken with sickness, most elves will live a good six hundred or more years.

Elves are an immensely proud people, believing themselves to be the favorites of the gods. They are quick to anger, over insults (real and imaged) or if touched by someone outside their immediate family and are even quicker to challenge the offender to a duel. As a result, most elven males carry a sword with them at all times. The blades differ from elven nation to nation but tend to be lightweight. Those elves living west of the Teeth prefer swords that are straight and narrow, where those that once lived in the east favor the saber. Elven women are even more prone to quarrel then the men but take their fights out of public view and settle the manner with daggers. Most often, elven women will carry a stiletto or a rondel.

It is written in the annals of elven history, that once there was by a single Elven Empire, which ruled all of Veen. It is recorded that the last Emperor had six sons, a set of sextuplets and when he died, he had not declared an heir. Each one of his sons laid claim to the throne, claiming it as their personal birthright. This of course led to a civil war, as elven lords declared their support to this or that brother. After years of bloody conflict, force of armors could not place even a single brother on the throne and it was agreed that each brother would take his follows and forge a new nation. The buildings of the imperial capital were crated away and used to lay the foundations of six new cities; Dagonnesti, Kagonnesti, Evernesti, Qilannesti, Ryadanesti and Pykonesti.

Only five of these cities survived the test of time, as Pykonesti was destroyed by a hobgoblin army many years ago. Blackiron conquered Evernesti and Ryadanesti ten years ago.

Humans
Where it is said that while elves, dwarves, goblins and even the bestial gnolls were created by the gods in some manner or another, humans were the children of Veen itself. The first humans, called the Dawn Men, appeared shortly after the gods breathed life into the elves. The story goes that the world created them as a counter point to the fae folk. Where the elves were long lived, the Dawn Men led short lives. Where the elves were cultured, the Dawn Men were primitive. Where the elves were quick to anger, the Dawn Men could go their entire lives without losing their tempers.

However, as the creations of the gods grew, claiming more space and learning the arts of war. The Dawn Men were forced to change, learning metal working and other skills to turn them from primitive barbarians into hundred of civilizations, They also had to become more violent, as peaceful settlement after peaceful settlement was razed to the ground. Their teachers in all of these things were the dwarves, whom were little more then accidents themselves and felt a kinship with the godless humans. Both races relied on one another for an age or more but with the shattering of the Dwarven kingdom of Kamrorim, the constant changing of human nations and the rather short generational memories of the humans, the two races drifted apart, although dwarven clans will honor bargains struck by the forefathers of the oldest human kingdoms and tribes.

Currently humanity is broken into many groups, ranging from the proud Plainsmen of the Sea of Grass, to the noble Silver Knights, the mighty Northmen, the dark islanders in the southern sea and to the barbaric Mountain Clansmen.

Dwarves
When the world was still young, Reaxe, the god of metalwork, challenged all of his brothers to a wrestling match. During this contest, he was thrown down upon the Teeth Mountains and the jagged peaks cut open his back. The god’s blood seeped into the stone until one large drop merged with a lump of gold, which was roughly the shape of a squat man. The lump of gold spring to life, becoming the first dwarf, Dagr Goldbeard. He lived for some time, locked away in a small underground cavern, until he fashioned a pick of stone and began to tunnel his way out. As the first dwarf dug, he came across other drops of god blood and shaped them in his own image, creating the seven Thanes and their clans. As the years passed, the dwarves crafted a mightily realm under the mountains, which they named Kamrorim and added more clans to the kingdom.

One day, they broke through the mountain’s skin and were nearly blinded by the sun. It was a few years later that they met the Dawn Men and chose to teach them the secrets of working metal and t he ways of battle, which the dwarves had perfected from conflicts with the goblins. A few centuries later, they craved the great trade road, which connected the humans to their kin on the eastern half of Aveven. However, within a dwarf’s lifetime (which can last near eight hundred years) of the road’s finish, their great kingdom had plunged into civil war.

You see, the last of the Goldbeard line had taken no wife and had no heirs and had passed on to the hall of ancestors. Each of the seven great thanes laid claim to the empty seat of the king and sent their warriors to claim it. War raged in the underdark, as the clans clashed. After many decades and a good percentage of the dwarven population getting killed, the small folk abandoned Kamrorim, believing that their ancestors cursed the place. To this day, no dwarf will pass over, under or through the Teeth Mountains. If they have a need to travel to the other side of Aveven, they take a ship. As the dwarves drifted apart, they found new mountains and set about craving out new homes. Most of these were the work of a few clans banding together and electing one king from the gathered thanes.

Most dwarves reach a height around four and a half feet tall and are very heavily built. Hair color ranges from black to brown to red (no dwarf, save the Goldbeards, as every had blond hair) and is grown long, often braided. Dwarf men grow long beards, which they take great pride in, often taking hours to comb, oil and braid their facial hair. Dwarf women are said to be jealous of the men’s beards and grow their hair to come around their faces and braid it to appear as if they have beards. This has lead to most races believing that there are no dwarf women. Most dwarven warriors fight with axes and warhammers but those dwarf lasses, whom take to fighting, arm themselves with short, broad bladed swords and lightweight throwing hammers.

Goblins
Goblins are a race of short humanoids, standing no more then four feet all and having pale greenish/gray skin. They lack hair, save for the off, one in seven goblin male that can grew a slight beard of coarse black hair. Their eyes are small, normally green or yellow. Each goblin prizes their mouthful of fangs above all else and will spend hours sharpening their teeth. They tend to have a small, underfed looking frames but are strong. For the most part, goblins don’t make clothing but wear scraps of cloth and leather to cover themselves. As a rule, goblins are cruel but lazy beings, delighting in the pain of their victims and working their captives to death.

The goblins were once a race of large maggot or grub, which lived underground until the god of greed, Geaya, changed them into humanoids. He set his new creations to mining gold, silver and gems from the roots of the mountains. It was through this task, they the goblins came into conflicted with the dwarves. Geaya was forced to call upon his brother, Nomog, one of the gods of war, to teach his creations of weapons and their use.

Hobgoblins
Hobgoblins are an offshoot of the goblins, created by Nomog. The god found that most goblins were too wild to correctly understand his lesions about warfare and was infuriated by it. Double-crossing his bother, he stole away several tribes and hid them away in the deep forests of the world. Over the years, he increased their height to match some of the tribes of men at five feet. He changed their skin from gray-green to an ugly mix of orange and brown. They grew more hair, oily and thin. They clothed themselves in leather and iron. Cruel they remained but no longer lazy, as their god turned them into an industrious and organized race.

Nomog told to his minions, through his clerics, that he meant for them to conquer their lesser kin, then the dwarves, men and elves. To this purpose, hobgoblins often raise mighty armies and march to war with great eagerness, often enjoying much success until the leaders of the army start infighting.

Gnolls
Gnolls are a primitive race of humanoids, which could be described as spotted hyenas walking on their hind legs. A gnoll can grow over seven feet in height and are covered in a reddish-tawny fur with black spots, which is shorter around the face and hands. They tend to not wear clothing, only scraps of armor they might have collected over the years. There is little sexual dimorphism is gnolls, as the female genitals resembles the males. The only real difference is the females tend to be larger and have a pair of small breasts.

Gnolls are nomads, traveling in clans led by an alpha female. They are most commonly found traveling the Sea of Grass but conflicts between the clans and with the Plainsmen have driven some gnoll bands out into the rest of Aveven. Most of their weapons are stolen, made from bone or made from stone. If a clan should defeat men, elves, or any of the other races, they will feast upon the dead.

According to Gnoll oral tradition, they were created by Tlangtui, the god of the hunt, to serve as her personal avatars.