Notes on a world
I’m a longtime fan of pen and paper role-playing games - Into the Odd, Cairn, the titan Dungeons and Dragons, and a hundred others that are created by indie gamers and publishers every day. I haven’t played in a group for a few years now but that doesn’t stop me from coming up with ideas for games; sometimes that’s half the fun.
Here’s a few fragments of the new setting I’ve been working up over the past 2 weeks. It’s largely based off the declining reign of an monarch in a dying world, though there’s also a few hints at what comes later. All comes courtesy of my notes app and brief moments of solitude at work.
Fragment 1
All that remained after the cataclysm, the night where the sun fell into the earth, was silence. The machines collapsed on their terrible weight and the things that gave them foundation, the metals, the angiosperms, the earth, awoke. There came a long, low humming on the wind and when the titans had long become dust there was life again.
Fragment 2
The kingdom has been raveged by civil war. Barons and earls swing from trees at the gates of capitals. The king’s favourite lies in a golden tomb beneath Penmoore castle. The more fortunate aristocracy feel the heat of the power vacuum. Out in the vassal state to the west opportunity gleams from cave mouths.
Fragment 3
‘Parliaments, consultations and councils decide nothing … For the nibbles of the realm, terrified by threats and the penalties inflicted on others, let the king’s will have free reign. This today will conquers reason. For whatever pleases the king, though lacking in reason, has force of law.’
Fragment 4
The church remains begrudging to the crown since the death of a saint at the hand of the king’s men 100 years ago. He condemned the king to the judgement of god 13 years from the day. The king later died, trampled by his own horse while trying to flee the castle in a paranoid state.
Fragment 5
The king swears homage to a democratic (triumvirate) nation across the water. There are some regions there that are under the king’s control but this nation has slowly been fortifying towns around them for an invasion.
Fragment 6
The king banishes an earl who is accruing land and wealth rapidly on the charge of raising an army against him. Due to his lands being on the border with the country to the north the earl was attempting to broker peace but did hold animosity towards the king. After his banishment to the democratic nation, the queen (a younger sister of one of the men on the triumvirate) is sent there to broker peace over the contested territory. Once there she sides with the banished earl, arguing that the king is unfit to rule and must be replaced by their 14 year old son. They arrive on the coast with a military party (partly funded by the triumvirate) and capture the king as he attempts to flee north. The king gives up his throne and his most loyal followers are put to death after a short trial. His son now rules but is controlled by his mother and the earl.
Fragment 7
The new king is 18. He knows that he cannot be controlled by his power hungry parents any longer. With a trusted team of knights and young barons and earls they ambush the earl in a meeting with a few elder barons and priests. The earl is captured and the queen is stripped of her power and pensioned. After a short trial where the earl is accused of killing the previous king while in prison, he is hung drawn and quartered.
Fragment 8
The folville gang (a corrupt gentry family) stalks the mid lands. They kill their political rivals and take travelling judges hostage.
Fragment 9
Name of place: Saracen.
Fragment 10
Roaming educators (import from democratic country) and judges.