Hi everyone! So, Snakebite is my main project, but it's actually not the first time I've written a world; far from it. I've been DMing since I was 11 and have created a lot of worlds and DnD derivatives. This one is my favorite; I call it Night. I figured I might as well share it with you!
This is the introduction I gave to my players, explaining what the world was in brief and how it was different from conventional D&D. I'll follow up with more on the world and rules and even the campaign later, just so you can get a sense for my writing.
Looking back you can see how I was already chafing against D&D and moving towards wanting a different system. My house rules, at the bottom, forbid like half of the PHB.
As always, thanks for reading!
Night
No one alive has seen a sunrise.
Once, the world was bright. In the stories, and in the crumbled statues of the ancient temples, one can see a world of blazing sunlight and high desert. By the size of the old cities, armies of thousands must have marched under the banners of kings and emperors. In the oldest books, stories speak of mage-queens that could raise soaring fortresses in an instant and reduce them even faster. Life pulsed across the sun-scorched world, watched always by the sacred Sun Father and Night Mother, from their jade-encrusted palace at the heart of the world.
Until the day it didn't.
No one knows where the Sun Father went, or how. Rumors abound, but there is no organized reply. On a blood-red eve a thousand years past, the sun sank below the horizon, replaced by a starless sky--and then never rose again.
All life would have ceased if not for the Night Mother, who sacrificed her worldly form, throwing herself over the world and blanketing it in endless, brilliant moonlight. Her palace sits empty at the heart of the world, but the moon has ever since glowed full and large in the sky.
The following years are lost to history. The great empires crumbled; the endless cities emptied as the populace fled starvation. Though the world was saved, the world was changed: great, quiet forests crawled up over the once-dry lands, the storms calmed into regular rains, and the people learned to grow the herbs and grasses that could sustain themselves on pale moonlight.
A thousand years, maybe more, have passed, and the world remains blanketed in gentle night. There are no kings, few armies, and few cities. People live agrarian, candlelit lives in the country; the dead cities crack and crumble, having been picked clean over the centuries. Life is not always easy, but it is steady.
Tying the world together is the great Church of the Night Mother, the sole survivor of the ancient age of sunlight. In the halls of the Night Mother, priests venerate her sacrifice and pray to give her strength to carry on, while her knights swear themselves to protect her children. All speak of the day the sun might be restored, but sustaining the life-giving moon remains paramount.
And yet all of this is mere history. What captures the imagination of an adventurous spirit is not the stale stories of a bygone world, but instead always the rumors of Spirit Stones. Strange and ethereal crystals, they appear seemingly at random in the world. Some say they fall from the skies, and as such adventurers are keen to share stories of meteor showers and shooting stars. Perhaps the tales are true and the stones are the long-missing stars themselves. Perhaps they are blessings from the Sun Father, somehow piercing his captivity. Perhaps they are something else entirely.
What everyone does know, and what makes these stones so coveted, is their power. When held in human hands, the stones pulse with light and life--and, somehow, confer supernatural abilities upon the holder. Afterwards, nothing remains of the stone, but those affected by their touch grow faster, stronger, more vital. The feeling is said to be intoxicating, and few who have felt the stone’s grace fail to seek out more. Though many in the Church caution against the use of Stones, and many towns fear them, an industry has risen around them--though it is not a world of luxury, wealth exists, and there are many willing to trade fortunes for a few shards of sunstone.
Of course, much is rumor. You have never seen one, not a real one. Few people have. But whether you have a dream of power or simply seek a reason to leave your quaint home, you have become a seeker. For weeks you’ve traveled quiet forest trails and camped along ice-cold streams, heading east, to Chalcedon. You are not alone: slowly the deer trails and riverbanks converged into something resembling a road, though there are few merchants traveling these days.
Chalcedon was once a magnificent, if remote, city. Set at the intersection of a deep mountain pass and the ice-cold Mirrored Sea, it was a wealthy and holy city in the ancient world, of such unique importance no army dared to assail its legendary walls. Today is but a ghost, with a few thousand souls colonizing the western edge of the ruins, sowing their crops in ancient courtyards and lining the marbled avenues with fruit trees. Stories drift from the city across fog-choked villages a world away. They say Chalcedon and its brooding ruins bear a special wealth of sunstones, that great meteor showers tear at the sky and hail dozens of stones across the dim realm.
And so you find your way towards it, seeking something greater than a contemplative life in the Mother’s light. Are the stones the key to restoring the sun? Are they lost artifacts of an epoch of unimaginable power? Are they simply natural phenomena, potent but meaningless?
You will find out.
Game Mechanics:
No Experience. Players and NPCs gain levels only through the use of Sunstones/Bloodstones, special artifacts usually found at the end of a quest. NPC “Real life” experience mostly affects judgement, tactics, and cunning.
No Sunlight. Outside, the world is bathed in dim light at all times. The moonlight is divine and potent enough for plants to exist, but there is no natural bright light in this world.
Humans only. This is a world of humans, though they are relatively elfin, being generally smaller, thinner, and paler than is typical.
Only Player Classes. “Classes” are an abstraction applied only to player characters. NPCs stats and rules are specific to them as appropriate for their character.
Custom Spells. NPCs can use SRD spells, but generally have their own spell abilities. A limited number of spells function differently: generally, any related to planar travel or extraplanar beings.
No Random Encounters. There are no “random encounters,” per se, though they can be included if desired. Planned encounters can occur at random times.
Custom Gods. The sole mainstream religion is worship of the Night Mother, most commonly through the sprawling, institutional Church of the Night Mother. Animist and other shamanistic traditions endure, though they are all at least influenced by the Night Mother. Worship of the Sun is ceremonially incorporated into most theology, though with varying degrees of zeal.
Class Roles Differ. Player classes are abstract and need not define their social role, but they
suggest them.
Checks Have Fail Conditions. If a situation has no particular downside, this campaign does not require skill checks. Checks are called for only when failure produces a significant negative effect, such as missing a helpful detail, taking damage, or causing a cave-in. Bashing down a door, or picking an unguarded lock, with no pressure, will not require a check.
Culture shift. The world of Taurica is markedly different from worlds like Faerun. Taurica is not cosmopolitan, colorful, or marked by adventure. Demons do not invade from strange portals, mages do not raise emerald spires on the clifftops, and strange men with swords make people uncomfortable. It is a quiet, shadowed, placid world: many traditional high-adventure tropes do not apply. Taverns, for one, are vanishingly rare.
Hey sorry this has nothing to do with my RPG or my RPG reading. I won't do a lot of serious posts like this. I know, this is like the actual opposite of my usual vibe! Sorry. This could be the only one, for all I know. But I thought...I don't know what I thought. I'm putting it here and maybe sometime I'll take it down.
I ate an egg for dinner tonight. Fried, badly. It's a little rubbery, but I'm doing my best with it. I tried mixed in some microwaved ramen, which is pretty flavorless but salty.
Bite bite chew. Chew a little more. Swallow. It works.
I'm enough of a nerd to know this is Waterhouse, one of my favorite painters
This will probably always be one of the most important books to me.
That doesn't mean it's always my favorite; it's not the most fun to read, or the most psychologically-insightful, or even the most entertaining. It's written in a somewhat odd voice that feels strangely out of place; it feels older than it really is. But to me, this is the most important fantasy book I own. If you haven't read it, I can't recommend it enough.
Elfland is apparently a "prose poem," a term I've seen used but admit I don't really get. I think what it means, however, is that the writing doesn't flow the way you might expect. Most fantasy novels fly off the page; you read for plot, for characters, for romance and adventure and energy. Elfland is nothing of the sort: it's slow, meditative, beautiful. If you read for plot, you'll get through it quickly (it's short! My copy is 160 pages!) but you'll not really have read it at all.
I read it out loud. This sounds silly, I know, but hear me out. You don't need to actually read out loud, but instead, hear the words as you read them; imagine reading it out loud. I admit, I probably actually did read it out loud from time to time; I read this book for the first time in a hospital bed, anxious that I had killed myself. I wouldn't recommend replication, but I admit it helped the dreamlike atmosphere of the book wash over me.
You read Elfland for the feel. It's beautiful and weird and insubstantial. It feels like a myth, something told around a campfire on a winter evening a thousand years ago, by people who actually know what swords feel like in the hand. You'll know you're doing it right if you can feel how you'd actually deliver each sentence, the words you'd stress and the words you'd whisper, when you'd pause and let a scene sink.
It's, at its core, a romance, I should mention. Not the kind we usually get nowadays; there are no 'spicy' scenes or anything like that. The characters definitely do not feel like "real people." If that's what you want, this isn't the right book, probably.
I recommend it enormously, but you have to go to it and let it wash over you.
Why the damsel-in-distress art? Some kinda 50 Shades thing going on here?
Not really. I just like it, always have. It's not a porn thing. It's just kinda fun. If it bothers people I'll lay off it!
This is the second entry in Snakebite Lore, my articles about the setting of my Snakebite RPG and stories. In it, I explain my racial system: I don't have one. Players are all human, but they can come from one of several cultures!
*
Fantasy creatures are more or less the same as cartoon mice: they represent people, but people helpfully shaped into a distinct configuration for the aid of the audience. When a dwarf appears, the reader knows this character will be gruff, industrious, no-nonsense. An orc will be greedy, cruel, selfish, violent. An elf will be graceful, mysterious, and otherwordly. These conventions are so established they’ve become trite, and now most writers attempt to subvert these images. As a writer, I respect the effort to do something new. But as a storyteller, I ask: Why bother?
Why bother with an elf, if you’re going to make it cruel and ugly? Why bring in dwarves only to make them feral, magical, and bloodless? It’s not wrong, but to what end — why even use dwarves at all? The big gain is a sense of subversion, which might intrigue and entertain the reader, but only because their expectation is subverted. The story in itself gains nothing from this; therefore I’m not a fan. I always want to tell the best story, not write the greatest novel.
So in Snakebite, I’ve forced the issue: players are all humans. You can be a surly, greedy, industrious man! You can even be a short, stocky one with a beard. But your mother and father were humans, just like everyone else’s. I think, ultimately, this forces a truer character; people can’t rely on stereotypes, not even as things to revolt against.
The main reason I don’t think this is actually restrictive is that humans are dizzyingly diverse, and that’s true in Taurica. Any flavor of pulp adventurer fits in; from the charming thief to the swashbuckler to the swordsman to the explorer. If you like slender, mysterious, aloof characters, skip the elf: just be such a person! (I've been called 'elven' more than once.) Relying on the “Race” descriptor is problematic to me not for any modern sociopolitical reason, but simply because it shouldn’t matter: human stories are the best stories, and in my mind fantasy races are a crutch that hinders those characters development.
Be the character you want to be. Be gruff, brave, alluring, mysterious, inquisitive, reckless, bombastic — be a person! If you’re in a game for the story, be part of the story, not just some leftover set dressing from Tolkien’s imagination. And if you’re in the game for the mechanics and adventure, that’s fine too! Most people are, ultimately, pretty bland the majority of the time. Go out, get your treasure, cut your way to safety, and relax in the tavern — don’t worry about every move contributing to a sweeping psychodrama. Either way, do it as a person — a real person, even if in an imaginary world.
I do realize those stereotypes do offer one vital other service beyond pure aesthetics: they offer a known soil from which to build a person. Most roleplaying games, even ones set in well-known fantasy locations like D&D’s Forgotten Realms, are exercises in theoretical spaces. Further, the players are inhabiting a world fundamentally built and run by a different mind, the dungeon master. It can be hard to build a sense of character in someone else’s world, especially when the world is mostly a blank slate, eg. at the beginning of a campaign. I've noticed that pretty much all beloved characters come into established campaigns and settings, or “arc” noticeably as a campaign evolves. As the player grows to understand and feel part of the game world, they’re better able to connect to it; their character feels more believably grounded in the world around them.
Snakebite is intended to do so mechanically. Players do not need to learn an in-depth history of the world and its tribes and factions to be on the same level as the GM; the world is simple but deep, allowing for someone to feel at home there quickly so they can then tailor it, through their adventures, to their liking. The game starts out with a blank page, and then characters rotate in to the world as the party change it: ideally, no matter what the outcome of any particular adventure, even a total party wipe, the players continue in that world with their reserve characters!
But I'm getting distracted. Ahem. Races and cultures:
I don't really buy into racial differences. There's no mechanical difference between any race in Snakebite--but there are cultural differences.
Humans are cultural creatures; there is no such thing as a “default” human being. There were classical Athenians, there were 5th-dynasty Egyptians, there were pre-plains 18th century and plains-dwelling 19th century Arapaho and 21st-century Americanized Arapaho. Each one of these societies created thousands and thousands of vibrant, unique individuals — one might call them characters. But each of these characters also had an at least partially shared history, worldview, upbringing, values, and all the other concepts and practices embedded in human culture.
Humans in Taurica are no different. The Blacklanders are industrious farming people with advanced metallurgical skills and a complex legal and social structure; drawing inspiration from Babylon, Sumer, and other inhabitants of the ancient middle east. The Greenlanders are nomadic, pastoral, competitive, and tribal, drawing inspiration from ancient steppe cultures. The northern Bluelanders are an urban minority inheriting elements from ancient Germanic tribes but also post-diaspora Judaism. Particular members of any of these cultures can be quite diverse, but overall they tend to be more alike than different. Ashlanders are classic sword-and-sorcery tribesmen, coming more from old fantasy novel covers than historical reality.
These cultures aren’t meant to be exhaustive, or even restrictive: Snakebite, the city at the center of the game, is distinctly cosmopolitan, and most old tribal traditions fade away there; sometimes lingering in an accent and a diet — becoming the cosmetic flavor that many players want in a character, nothing more. But others can embrace fully their heritage, or push against it, or critique it from within, or call for its revival — any of the fascinating things that real people do, and have done, since the day we created language.
If that intrigues you, I’ve summarized the primary human cultures of Kocari’s domain, and therefore the city of Snakebite, below. Read on!
From my Snakebite RPG manual, draft 1:
All humans speak derivatives of Jotn, the language taught to them by the giants. Regional accents and slang can vary widely, and speakers from different places can sometimes struggle to communicate with one another. However, there is enough overlap that differences are more often annoyances than true hindrances to communication. Only a tiny fraction of the population is literate, and while there is an alphabet there is no standard system for grammar or spelling, making written texts almost unusable without carefuly study.
Kocari is a culturally diverse realm. Four principal populations overlap here, with different concentrations in the different regions. There are no anthropologists or nationalists to name them, so they generally are referred to (by other cultural groups) by the area they inhabit. In descending order of proportion, the groups are Blacklanders, Greenlanders, Ashlanders, and Bluelanders.
Taking their name from the dark soil of the Black River and its tributaries, blacklanders are the closest thing to a native population for the region. Most blacklanders descend from the local cities of the giants; when those collapsed, they fled to the riverbanks and took up agriculture.
Blacklanders typically have dark to light brown hair, olive to copper skin, and brown eyes that are frequently hazel. When properly fed, they are typically the tallest, broadest humans in Kocari. Blacklander men wear beards, and trim their hair relatively short. Women usually keep their hair long and braided during the day. Clothing consists of layers of light and flowy fabric, though farmers often work in only breeches or trousers. On formal occasions, blacklanders favor gold or brass jewelry; only the richest wear precious stones.
Blacklander culture is agrarian, with families forming tight kinship bonds. Villages are concentrated in dense, defensible clusters, often less than a mile from the next village over. Farmers travel out to their fields each morning, often fully armed. Only the largest manors and estates are typically well-guarded enough to stand outside the protection of the village. In Kocari’s domain, wheat, barley, and oats form the ‘spine’ of Blacklander agriculture, though they produce a wide variety of vegetables and fruits as well.
Blacklanders favor sandstone and mud-brick architecture, with most homes being two stories. Most windows open up to inner courtyards, which are often planted or shaded with cloth covers. The public-facing exterior of a home is considered community property, and villages frequently collaborate to decorate these faces with murals, shells, and decorative patterns.
Blacklanders primarily settle along the tributaries of the Black River, including the thousands of creeks that feed into them. Their cohesive, agrarian lifestyle leads them to create large families, and their population far exceeds that of any other ethnicity in the region. They form the majority of the population in Snakebite as well, though that population has adopted more a mercantile, cosmopolitan culture. Visitors to Blacklander settlements are received warmly, as hospitality is considered a critical virtue. However, outsiders are not allowed to cause trouble--an entire community will rally against even minor provocations, and unwelcome adventurers risk being “ridden out on a rail:” carried from the town and thrown into the dirt after a beating commensurate with the adventurer’s troublemaking. Against a genuine danger, the local militia can form in hours, with word spreading out to the neighboring towns. Kocari’s soldiers are not aroused by any but the most serious of threats and the villages are accustomed to looking out for one another.
Blacklanders have a democratic spirit, with village politics being decided through semi-formal meetings. Given how most neighbors are in some way related and have known one another since birth, this system works with a minimum of formal law.
With a relatively conservative social structure, the majority of Blacklanders spend their lives as peasants, dedicated to hearth and hoe. However, given the sheer quantity of their children, Blacklanders also form the majority of adventurers, mercenaries, and explorers in the region--there are many who find the prospect of village life stifling.
Lord Kocari is a Blacklander, as are nearly all of his retainers and servants. The majority of Snakebite’s oligarchs are Blacklanders as well.
Greenlanders come from the vast steppe beyond the Hinterlands, where they adopted nomadic, pastoral lifestyles. Greenlanders typically have dark eyes and hair, worn long regardless of gender, and light-brown skin.
Greenlanders are capable of agriculture, but the majority of their populations live off of their animals. Goats, cattle, sheep, and horses form the majority of their herds, though some keep more exotic animals. Hunting and foraging forms a large part of the non-dairy part of their diet, and they eat meat more often than any other humans. They typically wear hides and furs, though they buy and wear fiber clothes as well. Spending most of their lives in direct sunlight, they have a particular affinity for headwear, which can range from veils to turbans to enormous tasseled helms.
Greenlander settlements are highly portable, and they relocate frequently in search of greener grass, better hunting, or to avoid dangerous rival tribes. Most of these tribes reside in the flat, grassy plains in Kocari’s east, though many have pushed deeper into the hillier west and south. Some tribes have even abandoned their horses and become primarily a walking people.
Archery is a major focus of Greenlander culture. Metal being rare, they often use bone or wood-tipped arrows, especially when hunting small game or practicing. Swordplay, spearfighting and wrestling are practiced by male children as soon as they are able.
Greenlander social structure is based on kinship, clan, and tribe, in that order. Children are primarily raised by the parent of their gender, with girls in particular often barely interacting with their fathers. Within the clan--the traveling group--there is clear delineation between the male and female spheres, with every task rigidly categorized. Men hunt, fight, scout, tend to the animals, butcher and trim the dead. Women craft and mend, cook and preserve, paint and switch the leather tents, invoke the tribal gods, and carve the arrows. Men and women rarely mix during the sunny hours of the day.
Men often have multiple wives, and women are not infrequently abducted by new husbands, such that any particular Greenlander might have multiple sets of siblings. Baffling to outsiders, the institution of wife-stealing is unquestioned amongst Greenlanders, to whom it is simply how courtship is handled. Women are not wholly powerless in this equation: it is a woman’s right alone to confer legitimacy on her children; bastard sons are outcasts, destined to leave the clan, and a shame to their father.
Wealth is measured in horses, with most men owning 2 or 3, and the most powerful clan leaders boasting dozens of high-quality stallions. Women are allowed to ride and keep their own personal horse, but they are otherwise excluded from owning significant wealth. A few shrewd women have circumvented this system, earning not scorn but admiration for their achievements: despite their patriarchal bent, Greenlanders respect strength more than anything else.
Greenlander life can be brutal, as even the greenest prairie hosts not only rival clans but predatory beasts as eager to take a man as his goats. They are a suspicious, wary, and silent people, famous for their fearlessness and resolve. Vengeance is a cardinal value and most men have at least as many sworn enemies as friends.
Greenlanders do not practice slavery themselves; captives are ransomed, assimilated into the clan, or killed.
Greenlander tribes are organized patrilineally into clans. These clans have extensive, complicated internal politics based on old grudges, new marriages, and overlapping grazing lands. Raids between clans and tribes are frequent, and a source of constant regional instability.
Outside of Kocari’s domain, Ashlanders form the bulk of the human race. “Ashlands” describes the ruined world left behind by the dragons and the giants, littered with ruins, battlefields, residual enchantments, perpetual curses, and whirring infernal machinery. Life did not evolve naturally on Taurica; it was the product of two warring empires. As such, it is a hostile world, where every forest hides secret histories and aberrant mutations. The fertility of the Black River and rule of Lord Kocari has allowed for a strip of settled civilization; most of the world beyond has not so advanced. This is the realm of the Ashlanders.
Ashlanders groups come in a myriad of shapes and forms, suited to their specific way of life, which in turn is generally the product of their particular environment. Generically, these groups are called “tribes,” though these are distinct from the kinship networks maintained by the Greenlanders. Ashlander tribes rarely have the luxury of tracking distant relations--in the Ashlands, your kin is whoever is living with you at any given time, as at any moment you might have to stand together or die.
Ashlanders are invariably hunter-gatherers, living nearly animal existences. They use crude, generally salvaged, weapons and tools, and wear hide and bone. They are shamanistic and superstitious--and logically so, as aberrant magic and inhuman creatures frame their existence. They can speak to outsiders, barely, in simplistic Jotn; often their dialects are so degraded that outsiders rely on gestures instead of words for communication. None of this is to suggest they are stupid--stupidity cannot survive long in the ashlands. They are often keen tactical minds, deeply in tune with their physical abilities and the terrain around them, able to perceive subtle details in the change of the wind or the smell of the dust.
In Kocari’s realm, the Ashlander tribes have been largely pushed away from the central riverlands, as well as the grassy hinterlands. However, they are frequently found everywhere else, roaming the mountains and forests in small hunting groups.
Relative to the settled peoples, Ashlanders are shockingly egalitarian. They have no private property, no aristocracy, and no inheritances. Men and women alike carry spears and slings; young and old contribute what they can and take no more than what they need. Though they seem barbaric to the folk of Snakebite, ashlanders are surpassingly loyal, fearless, and stoic. Ornlu the Wolf, the legendary ashlander swordsman, is famous for wandering into Snakebite with gemstones worth enough to buy a palace, and instead buying the freedom of two hundred young slaves before departing for further adventure.
Bluelanders are the least populous human culture in Snakebite, found almost entirely in Snakebite itself. The “Bluelands” refers to the icy mountain ranges jutting up in Taurica’s north, carpeted by evergreen trees that seem as tall as mountains themselves. Bluelanders were designed for such a climate, and are frequently mistaken for elves, with pale skin and light-colored hair and eyes. Like elves, they have relatively small, slender frames.
The severe Kocari sun disagrees with Bluelanders; their flesh and eyes singe easily after only a matter of hours of exposure. Those who work outdoors anyhow typically have reddened, leathery skin relatively early in life. They have thus found their niche in the larger villages and Snakebite itself; where they form their own insular communities. Most work specific crafts, but they are also particularly mercantile, operating networks of long-distance trade networks linking Bluelander merchants across Kocari and beyond.
Within the towns, Bluelanders are visibly distinct. They have a fondness for adornment, with men typically wearing sumptuous clothing with intricate embroidery, and women wearing jewelry. Bluelander women often have a flair for the dramatic, favoring heavy makeup, perfumes, and flowing, suggestive garments; they are often found as dancers, fortune-tellers, musicians, and courtesans.
Far to the north, there are organized Bluelander kingdoms. In Kocari, however, they are a marginal people, and have no political organization. Though Lord Kocari is a Blacklander, his daughter Saga has bluelander features; in fact, she is what some call a ‘true blue:’ the golden-haired, sky-eyed bluelanders who most resemble the elves. It is both rude and exceptionally dangerous to point out the obvious fact that a dark-haired father like Kocari is very unlikely to have sired a golden-haired child.
Other than sharing pigments, there is no known connection between the elves and the bluelanders, and none seems particularly likely. Nevertheless, the comparison is often made.
If you're here, it's probably because you're checking in on my game. Mighty kind of you! The TTRPG community is alarmingly kind and helpful.
So: Snakebite!
I'm constantly playing with mechanics, because mechanics are how a game is played, and I want the game to be fun! But more: I want the right tools to really explore the world of Snakebite. This world, its ruins and villains and monsters and heroes, exist at the service of the themes, the feel of the setting.
So in this post, I want to talk about the world! I'll get to mechanics eventually, but the world is what matters: I want you to know how this world feels, how it tastes in the mind. Only then will any of it make sense.
A few years ago, I was hospitalized. I spent several days connected to tubes, in a dreamy haze. All I had was a stack of books my dad brought me; I asked for his childhood favorites and he delivered (because I'm dramatic and thought I was going to die. If you ever meet my dad, know that you've met an actual superhero.) Delirious and nearly-starved is, I can tell you, the right way to read Robert Howard and Lord Dunsany.
Snakebite is a world that feels like a Robert E. Howard story at all times. This can be Conan, or it could be Kull, and it absolutely could be Solomon Kane. It’s a world where every ruin is haunted — but ghosts are still rare and frightening. Sorcery is real, but ethereal, inhuman, and dangerous. Every woman is the most beautiful woman alive, every treasure is glittering, and every villain is a sneering, rapacious, smarmy tyrant. It’s not meant to be a stupid world — far from it, I want the chaos and the violence and the ruin to make “sense.” I don't really like dumb things, in comedy or action or tragedy. Instead, I want an operatic world, even when the challenge is as prosaic as avoiding starvation. There is no grinding in this world, and there are no easy victories. Characters are larger-than-life, all Conan and Red Sonja, but their survival is never assured — Snakebite is not intended to be as much a meat grinder as Call of Cthulhu, but it’s certainly closer to that than DnD. Life is always, even for the most decadent king, hanging by at most a handful of threads.
(Hey, a quick note on art: I’m using random Google imagesto set tone, but I’m loyal to artists: if ever I were to publish anything, I’d hire real artists. These are placeholders; I just like them being here. I hope that's okay?)
Press enter or click to view image in full size
I’ve created a world: Taurica, a vast continent of monsters, barbarian tribes, twisted landscapes, and forbidding ruins. Most of the map is blank space, but a bubble of relative order can be found in a region called “Kocari’s Domain,” the realm conquered by a now-aging warlord, Lord Kocari. The gem of his conquests: the city of Snakebite; the only true city yet built by humans. A place of iron in a world of bronze. Thousands of slaves and laborers, dozens of princes and gang-lords and aspiring oligarchs, fifteen major fighting pits, one aged and distant king keeping a jealous hand on power.
The central idea is that humanity was created as a slave race for the godlike giants, who came from the stars and ruled the world. But at some point, the dragons woke deep underground and emerged to war on the giants. Their inhuman power remade the world into a phantasmal, twisted place, littered with ruins, unnatural beasts, and alien intelligences; until both the empires of the giants and dragons collapsed and disappeared. Humans, the former slaves of now-dead gods, have spread out from their prisons into the world; carving out their mark with sabers and spears. It is a violent, decadent, amoral, relentless world. It is full of sex and violence and ambition.
If that appeals to you, read on! If not…well, maybe I can convince you? Following is an overview of the “core” game setting. Each of these regions is intended to be quite large, enough that one alone could support an entire RPG campaign or numerous stories. These are snapshots; there's much more detail for each in my master document.
I would genuinely love for you to like it. :3
An Overview of the Domain of Kocari
Snakebite: The largest settlement in Kocari, located on an arm of the Black River a few hours west of Kocari’s palace. This is a city of men, built by men, but using the detritus of a bygone age. Buildings are cut of sandstone blocks with protruding wicker window ledges. Crowds pulse through the narrow and filthy streets; beggars fill doorways and alleys. Hawkers lay out blankets of pottery and jewelry; more talented smiths rent workshops from where they sell weapons and armor.
Most settlements in Taurica are little more than fortified villages, concerned with daily survival. Snakebite, in all its filthy glory, is a true city. It is governed by avaricious merchants and ambitious warlords, and these rich masters live in opulence while the greater masses are hungry every night. Yet anyone who is free finds their way to the city, where there is always work, always violence, always action.
Slaves also find their way to the city, where they are auctioned or employed or trained to fight in the various pits that dot the city. Gladiators can earn fame and fortune, and while most die horribly to the sounds of rooting crowds, a select few have become masters of the city themselves.
Despite the poverty, Snakebite’s population is massive. This owes credit to the Tower Atlantica, a Dragon tower rising from the city center. Within the gem-encrusted surface the constant whir of gears can be heard, and twice a year the great tower trembles from top to bottom; none of the hundreds of sages and witches who have studied it can say why. There is no entrance to the tower nor hint to its purpose, but all who live near it seem to resist sickness and even the worst effects of old age: Indeed, this effect seems to permeate the whole of Kocari. Death is frequent, but disease is rare.
There is no single ruler or entity governing the city, but the most powerful individual is the crime-lord Gorlok. He is a repulsive figure, thought to be half-troll. He certainly looks the part. He is known for his cunning, but also his sadism. He takes pride in publicly tormenting and executing his enemies.
Kocari’s Palace: Located almost exactly in the center of his realm, Kocari’s palace was once a Giant fortress. Many of the vast columns and slabs have been raised once more through sheer mass muscle, though those split and damaged by time have not been repaired. It is a largely open palace, populated by hundreds of retainers, footmen, slaves, and craftsmen. Dozens of bright tents and pavilions fill the vast halls, where the lord’s guests and servants work and reside. The uninvited are refused entry to the palace, though given its incredible size and derelict state, the guards don’t seriously attempt to keep out determined visitors.
Lord Kocari feasts every night, and by day generally hunts monsters in the nearby fields and woods, surrounded by his warriors. To what extent he manages his realm, the work is done by his daughter, Saga. She is found always in the company of her Companions — bodyguards who have pledged their lives to hers. Their loyalty, like their ability, is beyond question.
Travelers come to offer services to Kocari, but otherwise it is not a major settlement: life at the palace wholly revolves around the lord.
The Dead City: East of Kocari’s palace lies the “Dead City” of Mundifell, built by the giants to house one of their vast legions of slaves. Two centuries ago, it was a major military center, replete with barracks, armories, manufactories, and civilian infrastructure. In the waning days of the war, the city was destroyed, and the survivors fled into the countryside.
The city remains, a skeletal version of itself. Scavengers have picked out the most valuable remains, but countless vaults and fortifications remain buried under mountains of split stone and the bones of the thousands who couldn’t escape the arcane firestorm. Dangerous magical energies still linger, as well as never-fired wards and traps laid by the giants.
The giants designed cities to their own technological standards. Buildings were made to massive scale, with residential towers as high as 20 stories tall, with elevated canals and pipeworks flowing between factories and refineries as large as modern villages. Lacking magical reinforcement, most of this infrastructure has collapsed, leaving heaps of shattered stone and corroded iron columns jutting into the sky. Despite the vast scale, the cities themselves are built at human proportions. The giants themselves could rarely fit comfortably within the ‘slave cities,’ which they left in the care of their thralls.
Other than scavengers, humans avoid the city. Inhuman creatures have made good use of the ruins for lairs, and even before the destruction, the industries of the giants left the ground polluted and toxic.
Windward Crags: These mountains form the eastern border of Kocari’s lands. Attacked by dragons, the battle wrought the stone of the mountains themselves into unrecognizable, twisted columns of stone. Arcane energies still linger here, and sorcerous hermits frequently take up residence in the countless caves peppering the Crags.
The name is not artistic: the winds howl piercingly through these bizarre, tortuous heights. Tribes of warring orcs and men build elaborate rope bridges connecting the spires, carving out precarious lives in the space between stone and air. Cannibalism is common here, and bone idols dot the landscape, serving as warnings, signposts, offerings, and more.
The monsters that inhabit the crags are particularly fierce, and their remains are particularly valuable. Many tribes exist purely for the hunt; trading bones and skins for food and steel.
Black River Canyon: The Black River runs from the north to the south of Kocari. It is broad, wide, and deep. Numerous tributaries drain into it from across the realm, making the river a shared ‘pathway’ across Kocari.
True to its name, the water is dark and icy cold. Though perfectly safe to drink, the river itself is perilous. Aquatic beasts are known to lurk below the surface, and children are never allowed to be by the water’s edge unattended.
In the north, the river flows through relatively open plains, but slowly the river cuts deep into the earth, forming the Canyon. This is a place of beauty, and also strange power, as if something powerful waits just below the water’s edge. Travelers oft go go missing here, and yet bodies are rarely found.
At the southernmost end of the Canyon sits the Black Pool. Here the canyon completely closes overhead, forming a vast, circular lake shrouded always in gloom. Druids consider it a sacred place, beyond good and evil: even the giants and dragons seemed content to let the Pool remain unmolested.
No one has ever claimed to dredge the bottom of the pool, and many who have slept near it recall disturbing dreams of endless, lightless, airless tunnels stretching away from them in all directions.
Wetwood: The southeast of Kocari is flooded most of the year, as it has no drainage to the Black River. This is the Wetwood: Remote, damp, and cold. The swamp tribes here feed on kobold, fish, eel, and moss; it is said that they accumulate so much poison in their bones that not even grass grows in their graveyards.
The ruins in the swamp are uniquely well-preserved, and many occultists have occupied the old towers and fortresses slowly sinking into the marsh. Given the difficulty of merely traveling the region, few efforts have been made to dislodge them.
Free elves live in the deepest reaches of the Wood. They are not hostile to outsiders, but seek little to do with them. Some do leave to adventure the world, but most are content within their groves, where they are rebuilding some sense of the civilization the world has lost.
