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Skaria: Threats and Allies

Worldbuilding Episode 7

Welcome back once again to Of Gods and Gamemasters, and to my Worldbuilding series, starting from the pantheon of gods, with “Gods: Filing Off the Serial Numbers” and moving through the ages from Creation to the start of the campaign. Today's episode is called “Skaria: Threats and Allies”, and picks up where we left off with last episode's “Skaria: Life on the Border.”

Jumping right in, we last dealt with the naming conventions of Skaria, at least for places, and some of the cultural developments that arose from our unique pantheon. The individual naming conventions draw strongly on eastern Europe, especially Hungary, Romania, and Wallachia, but a tendency for noble families at least to use a patronymic or matronymic that actually refers to a famous ancestor rather than their actual parent. One example might be Lord Boyar Mikael Klepovich, who claims descent from the demigod Klepus, and uses the healing hand in their heraldry.

But several groups of people we have not yet addressed: the halflings, the elves, and the dwarves. Halflings tend to settle directly with humans in most places, and closely resemble their neighbors in culture. Halfling Travelers, on the other hand, the nomadic branch of that ancestry, have a singular culture across most of the Successor States, respected for their dedication to the ways of Vulpos. We'll come back to them at a later date.

Within Skaria itself, elves and dwarves are nominally considered part of the nation. They have full autonomy, but they provide forces and taxes to support the army, and the nation, as only they can. There is one major elven settlement in the middle of the great forest at the center of Skaria. Using as our base the Celtic tongue, that settlement is named Gladarach, or, roughly translated, Green Oak.

Like most elven settlements in the successor states, it has a central community of high elves in their sculpted tree homes, and a few stone buildings carefully merged into the surroundings, surrounded by the more temporary shelters of the semi-nomadic wood elf tribes who roam the whole forest. Off to the west and north some of the plains elves roam the Alfold and the Margravate of Sciritaut, their light cavalry among the most terrifying in all the remains of great Rega.

There are three dwarven strongholds. One is in the Jezzigory Range to the north. We're using Etruscan as our base language for dwarves, but also making stuff up, so Tular Tam means Stronghold of the Clan of Tam, tam meaning drummers. Tular actually means something like boundary stone, but I did a little lingustic sleight of hand to approximate. Same thing I did with Tular Ushil , which means Fortress of the Sun, a poetic expression for southern hold, from the Etruscan usil for Sun. Tular Gel means frozen Fortress, borrowing gel from Proto-Indo European for Cold. Those are at the South and North ends of the Skalpatian Mountain Range respectively. Dwarven settlements have deep mountain delved cores, with dozens of satellite villages in the surrounding hills, with mountain dwarves living in the core, and hill dwarves in the outer edges. City dwarves have been integrated with the human communities for centuries.

As for the Spartoi, the closest thing Rega has to either dragonborn or goliaths, they are fairly rare, and their settlements clump together with the settlements of the nearest other people. Silvertooths can be found near Tular Gel and Tular Tam, less often near Tular Ushil. Brasstooths are found near the coastal towns like Litwadun. Coppertooths are found through the hills, always near the communities of others, ready to defend them.

Other great allies always include the pilgrims, crusaders, and the like who travel to Skaria specifically to aid in its defense from Vyzantos and the barbarians of the north.

Moving on from allies, it's time to talk about threats. There are dangerous threats to Skaria even within its borders.

Many of these threats cluster around deep caverns in the mountains, both the Jezzigorys and the Skalpatians. The Kobaloi, the twisted mockeries of the races made by the gods, sadly corrupted by the blood of Invidia and the will of Interitus, teem in the dark depths, hiding from the eye of Solis, and even the eyes of Lunos when they can. While they are not inherently evil, the way they were twisted, and the influence of their current religion, makes them tend strongly in that direction, and mostly, they are filled with hatred for other life. When they can, they also infest ancient ruins built during Rega's golden age by any number of races, especially isolationist wizards desiring privacy who travelled to what was then the frontier to find it. That means there are plenty of fallen wizard's towers and strongholds, full of their blasphemous experiments or now taken over by goblinfolk...or both. Some even still hold their original inhabitants, now given to undeath by design or divine curse.

Even in the cities and towns, some monsters can be found. Dopplegangers sometimes roam the darkened streets or even in broad daylight, pretending to be something else, scheming their schemes. Vampires and other sapient servants of Metus pursue their vile missions in the settlements as well. The occasional cursed therianthrope can be found, most often in the rural villages. Serpentfolk play the most secret game, manipulating events as best they can and striving to remain undetected. Hidden Cults of the Dark Gods serve their masters in a myriad of ways.

Unintelligent or nonhumanoid monsters can arise anywhere the blood of Invida spilled, which could be literally anywhere. Those monsters may be of any type, even entirely unique, but lean heavily toward aberrations and monstrosities, twisted versions or combinations of natural creatures. Chromatic dragons sometimes come over the mountains and make lairs in them to use as forward bases, as it were, in their ongoing war against the children of the gods.

The threats from outside the borders are even more dire. Barbarian tribes of any number of species to the north and east raid with painful regularity, especially the horrific glutts from the north. Even an occasional hill giant wanders down from further that way. The organized forces of Vyzantos send raiding parties, scouts, spies, and operatives into Skaria, trying to prepare it for invasion. Even the well watched mountain fortresses cannot cover every pass through the mountains...only the ones big enough to admit an army. And sometimes, a dragon or other flying monster will carry other creatures into Skaria to strike far behind the lines. There are not enough metallic dragons or flying creatures available to the Skarians to prevent such incursions.

With all this, it becomes obvious that life in Skaria is near constant peril. Truly a land that has need of heroes, of warriors and wizards, of adventurers. You can see how easy it is to provide the opportunity for plenty of story, plenty of adventure, if you build the background of the world right. The Dark Gods and their direct servants, the scheming forces of Vyzantos, the twisted monsters from Invidia's blood that owe fealty to nothing, and a few thousand years of ruins left behind by people who might have considered what they could do a bit more than what they should do lend themselves well to a tense and sometimes even horrific setting. This allows a military campaign, if you want. You could begin an active war with Vyzantos or a major barbarian horde might pour out of the north. You could run a mercenary game, with adventurers for hire handling monsters and menaces town by town. You could go truly epic, with a quest to find some way to defeat Vyzantos forever. You could focus on an area, and cleaning the evil from a lost dwarven delve or wizard's labyrinth, possibly in search of forgotten lore at the behest of the Bardic Colleges. The possibilities are endless.

Next time, we'll circle back to species and lineages, with “Races of Rega: Monsters and Mortals.”