In the beginning Four Celestial Dragons, Kanu, Maaz, Bal and Falion, breathed the elements into life. They then wove those elements into the tapestry of our world that is called Iridiah or First Breath. From the soil of Iridiah they sculpted man and granted him dominion over bird and beast. Then from those first men they took the wisest and breathed into them part of their spirit. These became the Mage Lords and the Dragons, in their wisdom, granted them dominion over all lesser men

Summary

The civilized world is dominated by the Eldritch Houses, noble families of magelords (sorcerers) who inherit their magical talents and can trace their lineages back to the first men. Their highly ritualized feudal society dominates a huge archipelago called the Kelvani or Eldritch Isles. Generally each House holds an island as their ancestral territory, but in recent ages they have spread their influence, founding colonies in the untamed lands of the east. Powering this grab for resources is the growing scarcity in the overpopulated isles and the ever thinning ley lines whose crystalline stones the sorcerers need to augment their powers.

History and Culture

The shared Kelvanic religion, Dracolism, holds that the Mage Lords were raised from human stock in ancient times by powerful God-beings, dragons, who tasked them with sheparding lesser mortals and granted them the power and wisdom to do so. Temples tended by dracolytes, often unblooded affiliates of an Eldritch House, exist in every settlement throughout the Isles and their colonies across the sea. The unblooded are expected to attend regular services at dawn of the ninth day and pay a tithe, little more than another tax to their rulers. Dracolism is based on the Liturgy, a series of ancient writings claimed to have been handed down from dragons to man at the dawn of time.

In truth, no one is sure where the sorcerers or even humans came from for no records exist of those ancient times. There are of course heresies which compete with church doctrine, theories people whisper to one another in the shadows of taverns and secret halls. The most popular of these involves the idea of a mythical being called a wizard. In these forbidden tales a wizard is described as a being like a sorcerer but whose magic is not bound by blood. Such stories claim it was one of these primordial mages who created the lesser sorcerers of today not a dragon or God. Doubtless to say, the nobles are not to fond of this hypothesis and the mere mention of it has condemned men to the gallows or worse.

The social structure of the Eldritch Isles is highly stratified and formal. It is a no holds-barred feudalism where one's Lord is all the more a figure of respect because they can incinerate you with a gesture if you don't pay your taxes. In this world those born into the nobility spend their days in study, practicing their magical arts and the more mundane art of courtly life, etiquette. Occasionally, when the Houses squabble, they depart to war but in such engagements it is usually the peasant conscripts who die, not the sorcerers who stand at a safe distance at either end of the field hurling their spells. In this world the best an unblooded can hope for is a servant's position at the local estate. Most, however, spend their lives working the fields or mining the ley lines. For this reason, many volunteer to travel to the colonies despite the dangers both on the journey and awaiting them across the sea.

The Alliances

Noble politics are defined by the Alliances, two powerful groups of Houses bound by treaty and shared cultural heritage. The Northern Alliance includes all the isles north of the equator and is divided geographically from the Crescent Alliance of the south by the violent Sea of Sarvosa, a rough stretch of water forever pounded by easterly winds blown in from the western ocean and funneled by the isles. The cultural divisions between the two alliances, however, are sharper than any natural boundary. The two cultures split off more than a thousand years ago when a prophet arrived on the shores of a southwestern isle, a prophet named Xlisandi, a name foreign to all Kelvanni tongues. This prophet claimed to come from a land where the Dragons still ruled and she added to the liturgy another Chapter, the Chapter of the Return, which prophesizes the return of the Dragons themselves to rule over man. The Southern isles who would come to form the Crescent Alliance embraced her teachings, but they never penetrated north, fostering a religious divide between the two realms.

Another cultural difference between the two alliances is their approach to the unblooded. While the Northern Houses have extended more freedoms to their peasants over the ages, the Southern Houses have remained traditional believing that those not touched by dragon blood are, by default, slaves. However, the southern nobles have been known to recognize the 'spirit' of the dragon in their unblooded slaves, occasionally elevating their status to be knights, clerks and even advisers in their courts. In the New World the Northern Alliance tends to found colonies letting lower level nobility and commoners cement their hold over the land. Meanwhile, the Crescent Houses have avoided permanent settlements and favor remote trading and military outposts. Due to their less invasive tactics they are generally better thought of by the natives, but they also lack the resources, in terms of manpower, available to the Northern Alliance.

The Colonies

The Colonies lie along the eastern shore of a continent thought by its original discoverers to be the mythical Dragon Home. Instead of containing dragons, however, early explorers found it filled with lush forests and untouched wilds. Living within the bush were tribal people who possessed little in terms of technology, but had a wondorous talent for coaxing magic from the naturally enchanted plants and animals of their land. Although, sorcerers only scorned this savage magic, some unblooded appreciated the meaning of a sorcery that derived from knowledge not inheritance. In time people would come to call this new magic Alchemy and sorcerers would come to fear it like nothing else.

The colonies grew over time, but the more they pressed west the more united the natives became, until, when a continental alliance formed against them, they found their progress halted. At present a treaty keeps colonials from crossing the Vidlain, a mighty river that cleaves the New World in twain and for the time being they have honored these terms (at least officially). This is partly due to the power of the new native confederation, but also due to rising tensions between the unblooded colonists and the nobles. Most colonists have grown used to independence in a land where few nobles dared tread and now that they had tamed it, the sorcerers are arriving in droves, bringing their hated feudalism with them. The colonies are, quite frankly, a powder keg, set to explode.

Sorcery

All nobles are born with some degree of magical talent, but like any inherited trait, some inherit more than others. Some unlucky nobles, called Sparks, can only conjure the slightest cantrip while others, called Dragonbloods, can summon great magics with the flick of a finger and do so without tiring. As the centuries have passed, however, the incidence of such wild talents has become more and more rare and some have begun to whisper of a thinning of the blood. It is for fear of this loss of potency that sorcerers often marry within their families, a tradition that has carried with it all the problems associated with inbreeding: hemophilia, insanity, deformity, and physical frailty.

Sorcery itself is limited by the blood. A fire mage of House Solimond will never be able to conjure lightning no matter how hard he tries. A rifter of House Ishar can manipulate space, shift it to levitate and even warp it to teleport, but he'll never be able to effect anything but space. Sorcerers can often be quite creative with how they employ their talent. A fire mage could blast an enemy with steam if a water source was available and some Ishar dragon bloods have been rumored to travel through time since, it is believed, it is just another kind of space. Ultimately, however, sorcery is limited and not just by it's kind but also by power. The reserves of all sorcerers are finite and all will eventually tire if they tap their abilities excessively. To abate this weakness, the mage lords use ley stones, crystals mined from deep in the earth where flows of magic have left their imprint on the rock. They use chunks of these minerals as magical batteries and often encrust such stones in staffs, wands, tiaras, even swords. They also use lower quality ley dust to make magical inks, these inks are used to paint runes and affix spells to structures, items, even people.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a magical science by which unblooded people can mix magical ingredients in the correct proportions to produce an effect called a reaction. Such reactions are often initiated by exposure to heat or magical energy. The colonists originally learned alchemy from the Dracomar natives or Wildlings, but they have since expanded it into a complicated and powerful science capable of creating weapons which rival the spells of sorcerers. Of these weapons, the most common is the musket, a long barreled contraption which uses a magical reaction initiated by a spark to propel a metal ball. The ingredients used for the blast vary but the impact of the speeding ball is invariably lethal.

The nobles are rightly afraid of alchemy and some laws have already been passed proscribing certain alchemical weapons and experiments. Proceeding in the face of such regulations and creating hotbeds of dissension are the two great colonial Academies, Hazlin in the North and Cambrill in the South. Here alchemy is taught and researched much to the dismay of the mage lords and their church.

Wildlings

The colonists call them wildlings but they call themselves the Wikani which means of the land. The first alchemists, their practice of the art differs philosophically from the colonists. Where as the later sees ingredients as intert matter to be measured, the Wikani see all things as spirit. To them creating an alchemical reaction is the same as communing with the spirits of the land. Although, colonial alchemists often dismiss their beliefs as superstitions the Wikani still continue to achieve feats which elude the colonists. They have managed to 'domesticate' the most dangerous magical beasts of the New World and their ability to magically manipulate living material through alchemy, wood and flesh, far exceeds that of the colonials who are bumbling children by comparison. The weakness of the wildlings is their lack of fire arms for they possess neither foundary nor factory. Instead they deliver their alchemical spells by spear or arrow.

Marked

The marked are indentured servants of the Eldritch Houses identified by the runes, painted in glittering ley ink upon their foreheads. Although the marked are technically slaves, many are augmented by the spell bound by their rune, an innate spell they use in service of their masters. Unlike sorcerers, however, their magical energy does not recharge and when their glowing rune goes dim, they must return to their masters to be 'refueled.' Most of the marked are subjugated not only through indoctrination and oath but by their addiction to the rush of magic granted to them by their patrons.

Houses

I will only list two Houses below for I want most to come from the minds of players or be encountered through the course of the game.

House Solimond: Ruling under the banner of the salamander, a fire breathing reptile, these mage lords are far from cold blooded. Known for both their passion and their temper, the fire mages ruthlessly rule the volcanic isles of the far west. Those of the Solimond blood tend toward tan or brown skin with brilliant orange or red hair. Their magic always involves fire, though only the most powerful can conjure flame from nothing, most need a ready source of fire to work their art.

House Ishar: Arguably the most ancient House, the Ishar rule under the banner of the encircled triangle. Their members share a passion for math particularly geometry and have erected structures of dizzying symmetry on their desert isle. Their magic is called rifting, the alteration of space. This talent makes them one of the most important houses, for it is their portals which connect the islands to one another and make instant travel between them possible. Like the people of the south the Ishar tend toward dark skin, but are marked by their bright almost luminescent eyes. Traditionalists in the extreme, the Ishar have yet to even embrace feudalism and keep their unblooded population in a state of complete subjugation.

Characters

Characters can be Unblooded , Noble born or Wildling. Non human characters will not be allowed to start, but may open up later as the story progresses.

Setting

The story will take place in the colonies. The exact details of where will be hammered out in the OOC. This will allow me to mold the setting based on what people want to play and grant maximum flexibility.

Story

The story will be driven by the characters so direction and outcome are both uncertain. It will most likely focus on the growing tension and possible violence between the unblooded colonists and their mage lord masters over the issues of alchemy and personal liberty.

Character Sheets

If you need one, you are not ready. Write a description of your character including their background and an overview of their House if they are noble or marked. That is your character sheet.