SevHistory
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Contents |
The World of Sevrea
| Overview • | History • | Inhabitants • | Technology • | Maps • | Characters • | Campaign page |
History
Human History and the Second Empire Age
The Qeloon Empire
About 500 years ago, the Qeloon Empire had its beginnings. The Qeloon family was the most prominent mercantile family in the city of Djola, and from that position they quickly rose to power under the ambition of family head Tahri Qeloon. He began to recruit or put down all of its opponents. Soon, the family ruled the city. Gathering their forces, they set out on an ambitious quest to become what was known as the Qeloon Empire under Emperor Tahri. The Empire expanded from Djola -- what is now Djeroon -- to all of the lands surrounding the inland sea, and the Emperor began construction on the new capitol of Juna City on what was Maronna Island, renamed to Juna Island in honor of Emperor Tahri's newborn son.
In its time, Juna City was a marvel, with wide roads, a huge market, and spires of stone reaching impossibly high into the sky. In fact, Qaranaska Sea came to be called Spyglass Sea because you could stand on the shore at any point and, with a spyglass, see the gleaming tip of the Alabaster Minaret in daylight and the Beacon Fire at its tip at night.
Juna Qeloon grew up to succeed his father but could never live up to his hype as a ruler. It was not long before his brother had him killed and assumed the throne, and the bloodline extended from this more traitorous offspring. The brother, Baliq Qeloon, attempted to expand the Empire to include even the nonhuman lands -- by evicting those nonhumans and rushing in human settlers. The armies did manage to claim good portions of the Plains of Hallan and the Beonnar Forest, but the cost of holding them was too great for very little in return, and eventually they were retaken by their former occupants. After his son assumed the throne, an uneasy peace was reached between the humans and their neighbors. Some Ghahi were even employed throughout the Empire to "keep the streets clean" -- though it was no secret that it was their usefulness as messengers that kept them employed, not their sanitation skills.
The Qeloon family ruled over the land for two centuries, but eventually, inter-family politics and societal decay led to an uprising of the populace, sponsored by the other noble families, and the empire toppled. A new regime was constructed to take its place -- Qul-qeloon, "Qeloon's Peace".
The Qul-Qeloon Syndicracy
The Four Syndicates returned to power following the ejection of the royal family -- the Mages, the Technologists, the Spiritualists, and the Scholars (Scientists). The entirety of Qul-qeloon was ruled by The Circle of Nine. The Circle was made up of nine representatives -- two from each syndicate and the eldest of the Tahri bloodline. None of the noble families wanted any of the other noble families to be in that position, so they simply chose the only living representative of the former Emperor's family, whom they felt they could always keep in control.
It didn't work as well as it might have. The syndicates began to mistrust one another, and they slowly started to sway influence in one city-state or another, set up their own private armies, and spy on the other syndicates. The two most powerful -- the Mages and the Technologists -- grew so distrustful of one another that their private armies started intercepting those dealing with the other side and convincing them to change their minds -- one way or another. Sabotage was rampant. Water wheels would be found dismantled; magical portals would turn up defined.
Soon, the two bands started openly fighting one another. In almost every major human city, gangs equipped with magical spells and items on one side and chem-guns and repeating crossbows on the other rampaged through the streets. Egotistical leaders on both sides gave politico-religious rallies to gather followers. The people locked themselves into their houses or ran for the hills.
It didn't take long for all-out civil war to break out. The Scholars sided with the Technologists, and the Shamen with the Mages, as you had to side with someone or be destroyed. Larger weapons were constantly being invented on each side to combat the larger defenses of the opponents. The Mages had been secretly working on a sort of super-spell that would neutralize all alchemical reactions in localized areas, sucking all of the potential energy from the reactive agents used by the Technos to power their chem-cannons. Unfortunately, the spell was too complex and too long to cast for it to be of any use in the field of battle or on a city block. But the Mages had a plan that would let them simultaneously unleash the spell on every city in Qul-qeloon.
The Qeloon Empire had built a sort of magical watchtower in every city -- Djola (Djeroon), Jahkef, Gazon, Ansad, Eighentin, and Steen. The Magical Observatories were built as much as guard towers as they were to keep watch on the populace. Each one could be observed from the central tower in Juna City.
After a year of preparation, the super-spell was unleashed. It was cast by a circle of the most powerful Mages from the Juna Observatory, sent out through all of the Observatories and amplified by circles in each. The Mages thought they had only their most trusted members on this project, and all of those involved in casting the spell... but the double agents still found out about it. The Technos were informed of the plan and, while they couldn't turn any of the casters or insert their own people into such trusted circles, they planted two one-foot-diameter rings made of Yrlune -- alchemically-created magic-warping metal -- into the Gazon Observatory, hoping they would neutralize the spell.
When the spell was cast, it radiated out from Juna City to all of the Observatories just as planned. When it got to the Gazon Observatory, it got... altered. The magic-refractive Yrlune bent the spell in two separate directions. One ripple went throughout the city, causing gates to open and demon-spirits to appear everywhere, ravaging the buildings and the populace.
All of the Magical Observatories had been built just outside of town overlooking each of the cities -- all except for Gazon's. The Observatory in Gazon City was built in the top of the Tower of Zi'il, one of the last relics of the First Empire -- a cyclopean monstrosity of stone, partly unfinished, mostly unexplored, and entirely mysterious. More importantly, it was right in the center of Gazon City. The feedback explosion in Gazon shattered the top half of the immense stone structure, showering the city with chunks of granite.
The second ring of Yrlune planted in the tower sent a massive feedback through the magical lines to Juna City, causing an explosion like a volcano and an earthquake combined. The explosion fed back to the Observation towers and levelled them as well. But Juna City was flattened. The entire island of Juna crumbled and sank to the bottom of Spyglass Sea, into a whirlpool vortex. Then the vortex inverted and started spitting out the remnants of the city all across the water.
Thus ended Qeloon.
The World of Today
To this day, a fierce wind blows outward from where Juna Island used to be, as if the magical portal that opened there has never closed. The wind makes it possible to navigate all along the coast of the Spyglass Sea but impossible to reach the middle.
Human society is stark in comparison to the embarrassment of riches of Qeloon. Gone are the powerful syndicates, to be replaced by much smaller and less influential guild halls, colleges, and brotherhoods. Many more people attend any one martial college than all the magical colleges in a city put together. Scholarly pursuits and higher education are a private affair of apprenticeship, since most of the ancient libraries and records stores were lost.
Remnants of alchemical and scientific technology remain, in various states of disrepair and function, and very few of them can be understood, much less maintained, much less researched into new ideas.
Until recently, most clans of nonhumans withdrew totally from contact with humans, except for the Ghahi, humankind's eternal acquaintance. Within the last 50 years, trade has gradually reopened, and once again all of the Free Races have contact, though perhaps not trust.
Something in the cataclysm also seems to have awakened a race of burrowing insectoids only called The Hive, heretofore known only to Dwarves.
Recent Events
Thirty years ago, a man named Venzaal rose through his family to become Crown Prince of Djeroon. He had a grand vision of reuniting all of the human lands in a new empire and making humanity once again dominant throughout the known world. This sat well with many people in the lands of the former Quloon Empire, especially in Djeroon, whose people naturally believed in their prime importance in the world.
Prince Venzaal negotiated an alliance with the ocean city-state of Jahkef to the north and the nearby lands of Gazon at the foot of the Spine of the World. He called this alliance the Venzaalian Treatylands, after himself. When the other human nations refused to join, gunshy about the history of empire in this land and not trusting another Djerooni leader, he became gravely insulted. He quickly raised an army, equipped it, and attacked.
Ansad was first. Being a rather poor city, it fell quickly, but Eighentin and Steen fought for their independence, using many nonhuman mercenaries. They held off Venzaal's larger but less organized forces, and the armies all went home.
Resentful of the mercenaries who came to the aid of the Free Nations, the Confederacy isolated itself from nonhumans and cut off all trade and traffic from Eighentin and Steen. Djeroon, its noble families, and Venzaal himself sank into stagnation and rampant decadence. Djeroon's wealthy became ridiculously so, and its poor became ridiculously so. Other nations stopped trading for Djeroon's goods -- its farm goods dried up because the richer farmers were able to politic the irrigation rights away and sell the water to lesser farmers at exorbitant profits, its material goods suffered as Venzaal and the other nobles bought only luxuriant goods imported from far away -- the further, the better.
Fifteen years ago, Prince Venzaal was assassinated. The assassin was later found to have been hired from the Cult of the Yellow Dagger -- hired by the Mercantile Businessmen's Association of Djeroon. The stifling isolation and lack of any real economy drove them to take up matters themselves. Though Venzaal was removed, the three original city-states of Djeroon, Jahkef, and Gazon chose to stay under the mutual alliance, and they are still called the Treatylands. Informal relations have been restored, shakily, between the human city-states.
It was just discovered that Venzaal secretly had a son, who is now seventeen, but his whereabouts and motives remain unknown.
