User blog:Rita Roulette/The current state of Bael Turath

We have a blog?

Fascinating.

So, in the last posted article there's the issue of referencing places and people that currently exist only in my head (or Trevor's, as in the case of Dayonia and their absolutely gorgeous God of the Forge) and there's absolutely no way to look half this stuff up, since it's not taken from existing canon. Some things only partially have the issue, as in the case of Arkhosia, where I lifted the name but tossed the rest of it. This is normally because Trevor has established some things as "word of God" due to mentioning them as in-game knowledge, but then didn't touch on it much further as it served no immediate purpose - for example, the Fall of Bael Turath.

We knew the following, in-game:
 * Bael Turath was an empire of humans, across the sea
 * The fought the Dragons and everything went poorly for everyone
 * Something terrible happened and they all got turned into Tieflings and pacted to various Devils/Asmodeus himself. It's vague here.
 * They are very French (my bad)
 * They trade with Greybank a lot and there are records of it happening even before the Terrible Bad Thing that ended the war
 * They had some really asshole pirates

And that's about it.

It gave me a lot of freedom to figure out what I wanted to do with them but it locked me into a bunch of old canon, and as most people who have ever heard me open my big cursing mouth know, I hate most 4e canon with a fiery passion.

I was also put at odds with the fact that I desperately wanted to start from scratch with the Eastern Continent; a map that conformed to hard and fast geological and meteorological rules, new cultures, better depth on creatures that hadn't been established to live in great numbers on Heagan, a new (or rather, old) set of gods, and an emphasis on my favorite portion of the Alignment Spectrum: Chaos vs Law. Again, I had some rules to work around: Other than the above I was free. Free to struggle with mapping software and wonder where I went wrong with my life.
 * Bael Turath must be on the coast
 * Dayonia must exist here
 * Rajaat's sun travels around the whole damn world so the top part can get fucked so far as my climates are concerned...
 * Arkhosia had to be relatively close to Bael Turath for the war to make any kind of sense
 * I did, in fact, have to name the Dragonlands "Arkhosia"

I managed to get a bunch of nations down in note-form and figured out (vaguely) who would be living in each place and why. There is still a lot of space to fill, and a lot of other "in between" areas that need fleshing out, but I decided that I had to bite the bullet and actually write out one of these places.

Then I made a Tiefling character, and it was pretty much a given that it would end of being Bael Turath.

"How," I asked myself, staring at my monitors, "do I write an entire country?"

Greybank was an island nation, and basically just the one city, so there was only so much a casual observer could reasonably need to know. I decided that I would leap off that idea and initially only write for the main city in Bael Turath, so I did some research and found info on a place call Vor Rukoth in the ruined empire.

I borrowed the name of the city along with several other places within it, and lifted the Queen of Roses from official canon before dropping her into a prison cell. In the 100% legit story, Vor Rukoth is a smouldering ruin still run by this queen bitch of the universe, a whole fucklot of scary undead, and twisted fen-dwelling fey. Since there is a whole segment of this continent (the Ringwood - look forward to it) devoted to scary-ass fey creatures I scrapped that bit entirely and brought Vor Rukoth back to its glory days, extrapolating what I thought would have happened during restoration efforts.

Since this is the only location I'm using some lifted material (albeit changed a lot for continuity's sake) for, it came out first!

Other places I gotta detail eventually, probably with an update once a week, will look like this: And a ton of other less figured-out places such as:
 * The Ringwood - a forest inhabited by Unseelie Fey, containing a portal to the realm of the Queen of Air and Darkness
 * Leifalynd - overseers of the Esparran Continent; a cabal of druids harkening to the Circle of Eight in their belief that balance is everything
 * Adylweir - land of the not-so-humanoid animal folk; everybody from Yuan-ti to Shifters. Territories radiate out from the central "free" zone
 * Dayonia - humans who have been blessed with the art of Soulsmithing, able to forge the spirits of animals (or people) into metals
 * Pawule - halflings/gnome republic. In these clockwork and crystal towns undead tend to “timeless tasks” such as repair and maintenance
 * Haddas - a group of cloud giants found they got along well with the local orc tribes and have created a unique and symbitoic culture
 * Koswick - a human/aasimar settlement just outside of Bael Turath. They keep an eye on the Horned City of Vor Rukoth from the Furrows.
 * Vultae - Where the snow elves have to contend with the passage of Rajaat's sun and the immigrated Hasihk across the mountains
 * The Sea of Sound (a field of plants that alter the deafening sounds they make by season; eg clacking reeds in winter winds)
 * Dark Demesne (section of ocean off the coast of Bael Turath. Home to Devourer-worshiping Sahuagin and ever moving whirlpools)
 * The Furrow (area outside Vor Rukoth where dragon teeth can be picked out of the soil where nothing grows but strange, inedible plants. Soldiers who died here enact their death as phantoms every so often)
 * Crystaline Vaults (a network of caves entirely covered in abnormally strong magical crystal)
 * Isle of Blinding Light (aka The Temple of Blinding Light, an island completely covered by a massive temple-city dedicated to Pholtus)
 * Lost Empire of Penumbra (ruins of an ancient empire of which little is known, crumbling and ivy-covered, a grey zone)
 * Howling Rift and the Ardus Spires (a giant canyon that holds massive “stalactites” containing a peculiar order of monks)
 * Fellowship of Feathered Folk (a group of Kenku and Harpies that is believed by conspiracy theorists to control the finances of Esparra)
 * Snail’s House (a tiny cottage run by the children of a nearby village where they herd flail snails)
 * Viridian Lake (a lake rumored to be inhabited by a spirit. When the lake is covered in heavy mist, an island can be seen in the center)
 * Ignaz Estate (an old mansion currently tenanted by a group of doctors who use it as a laboratory and shared library)
 * Argentum Hills (once popular for mining silver, industrialists were driven out by fey. The dew that forms on them has unique properties)
 * Traveler’s Grotto (a tiny grotto off a hidden lake, shrine to the Traveler where it is often said to appear. Safe haven from monsters)
 * Fury’s Domain (a territory once ravaged by the namesake Goddess, contains the bottom two places)
 * Kingdom of a Thousand Mercies (once the lands of the dwarves, tunnels lead to the Underdark, now abandoned and dangerous)
 * Trickster's Well (a well leading to the Underdark that is said to grant a wish dependent on the value of the coin tossed in, and how it lands. Capable of granting great boons and dire curses to both those who wish and those who try to take the coins)

Welcome to Esparra.