Cloudworlds: Prehistory

The Cloudworlds were a campaign setting I originally designed for my D&D games, aimed at addressing two problems.  On the one hand, an Earth-sized planet is huge, and takes far too much effort to fill with people and places.  On the other, a single world only allows so much scope for variance; if you have a race of ancient mystics of enormous power on the same world as your low-level campaign, you have to wonder why they haven't just taken over.  The Cloudworlds solve this by being small, but many.

This is a reimagining of my original Cloudworlds campaign from two decades ago as a distinct RPG and accompanying campaign setting.  It will be posted in dribs and drabs as time and interest dictate.

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In a time before time, the Gods Most High and the Elder Races forged a bargain: The Elder Races would craft for the Gods a miracle beyond miracles, a diadem known as the Thousand Stars. Their payment would be the knowledge of creation, held only by the Gods themselves.

The Elder Races laboured with a will, exercising their newfound talents with delight. And the Gods were pleased with what they wrought. These Dawn Ages were a time of unbounded wonders.

But neither side truly trusted the other. No-one can say who made the first betrayal, but this is known: The Gods Most High laid a trap for the Elder Races, a prison where they would be enslaved to toil forever. And the Elder Races forged a great weapon against the Gods, a weapon called the Spear of Night.

The Gods sprung their trap, and the Elder Races launched an assault against them, known to legend as the War in Heaven. The Gods were laid low, but so too were the Elder Races. Dragons were flung from the skies, the great cities of the Giants, the Apse, the Sidhe and the Made were reduced to rubble and ash; the Wilds, the Rafts and the Hives burned, screaming. Out of the dark millennia that followed, slowly the Elder Races rebuilt, and the Younger Races, their servants, and so began the First Age.

Or so the legends say. But this, my student, is the Ninth Age, as everyone knows. Since then, eight great cataclysms have befallen the worlds. What, and why? Not even legend tells us that. The Sidhe, the Apse, and the Giants are much reduced in power, their records scattered; what they once knew, they have forgotten. The Made chose not to remember. The Dragons know, perhaps, but they do not say. The Wilds and the Rafts do not know time as men do. The Hives know only the seasons, the Acari only hunger, and the Arana only hate. The great Wyrms do not speak at all. And only a fool would ask a question of the Dark...

And what of the diadem? The Elder Races never speak of it, nor write of it in their records. But if a man of keen eye studies the heavens, night after night, he will find, in all the skies of all the worlds, exactly nine hundred and ninety-eight stars.

P.S. The game has catgirls in it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:57 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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