A Dark Fantasy Campaign

Deliver Us
from Evil

Before the light, there was Silence, the age of darkness and despair. A savage age, marked by chaos and disorder, and civilization lay barren and bare. False gods reigned, we sacrificed our blood and souls to them, and were left in dirt and mud, no light to warm our hearts.

A light whispered in the dark and silent. Yet so quiet, our torn hearts could not hear, but for one that wasn't broken.

From the dark rose our savior, our Lady Lucienne, herald of Light, and turned whispers into shouts and cries for us to listen. She broke the silence and unveiled the false gods' lies. Their dark reign should end, and in their place the One True Light would shine.

And thus dawned the age of light. Where there was dirt now orchards flower, cities sprawl, and where there was chaos, our Empire rose to protect what we have nurtured.

Still, the dark prevails. Through witches' whispers, the false gods plot and scheme to douse the light that blinds them. Goblins cross the marches as their faithful servants to announce our desolation.

Oh Lady Lucienne, deliver us from evil. Keep with us the one true light, so we may illuminate the dark that lingers.

The Campaign

The campaign world is a high medieval gothic fantasy setting.

Within the vast and powerful Valoran Empire, your journeys start in Hartmoor, a small barony within the Duchy of Arvannes, not too far from the border provinces of the Empire. Though not yet directly threatened by Goblin Attacks, the looming threat of war and violence sows unease across the people of the duchy, and Duchess Éloane of Arvannes must strive for Empire's support within the High Council of Aubescourt.

Meanwhile, another threat appears to be emerging in the Barony of Hartmoor: rumor speaks of a Covenant cult operating in the region, allegedly responsible for recent heresies and, quite possibly, for a string of murders that were recently committed.

This is your home, and your home is threatened by forces beyond your understanding. With the Goblin armies crossing the marches and false gods' servants looming over your community, the burden falls to you to stand fast and hold the line.

The Powers That Be

The Valoran Empire

Half the known continent, one crown. The Valoran Empire is the world's great success story: roads that run safe, walled towns, guilds and granaries, a fleet that rules its coastline. Its signature is order — the pax imperialis, a peace so real its people have forgotten it was ever otherwise. The imperial crown sits atop a feudal ladder of kings, dukes, and barons, all watched over by the great institutions of the High Council. Beyond the borders, the world is wilder: kingdoms where brigands roam and goblins still raid, and where the Empire's peace ends, its self-image begins.

The Goblin Tribes

Not bandits, not beasts — a people. The goblin tribes have sprawled across the Weald, an unmapped region beyond the marches, since before the Empire, kept survivable for centuries only by their endless feuds with one another. Now the tribes are uniting under a shaman-prophet's banner, settling the marches, and marching to war. Servants of the old gods, they do not come to conquer. They come to end the world of man.

The Dawnward

The Church of the One True Light, founded by the Lady Lucienne herself three centuries ago. It is the soul of the Empire: crowns the emperor, blesses the harvest, tends the poor through its Almoners — and hunts heresy through its Inquisition, for within the Empire the old faith is not only sin, but crime. Its priests carry the Divine, the only sanctioned magic in the world of man. For most folk, the Dawnward is goodness — and most of its faithful genuinely are.

The Covenant

The old faith — the pantheon that reigned during "the Silence". Within the Empire, its practice is outlawed and its name is a curse: witchcraft, devil worship, blood sacrifice. Yet, the old faith has survived: Household rites, oaths, seasonal feasts, and, in some communities, small covenants and sects are secretly practising the old rites where the Dawnward's eye can't reach.

How to Play This World

Faith is everywhere. Even the skeptic swears by the Dawnward when the wolves are at the door. Choose your relationship to it: devout, dutiful, doubting, or daring — but have one.

Magic is not casual. Miracles belong to the Church; everything else is a crime or a secret. Access is limited from the get go, and more often than not, magic comes as a threat rather than a savior.

The world is small and dark. It's as much grimdark as dark fantasy. It's dangerous and unforgiving; behind each smile might loom a hidden knife.

Emphasis

Mystery & Investigation●●●●Clues, interrogations, archives, secrets that have been waiting a long time

Roleplay & Drama●●●●Belief under pressure: what your characters trust, and what it takes to break that trust

Combat●●●●Set-piece battles and desperate last stands, earned by the story

Exploration●●●●Ruins, old roads, the far side of the tree line — journeys that carry weight

Politics & Intrigue●●●●Thrones and councils in the background, close enough to touch if you dare

Player Options

Ancestries

The population of the realms of this world is mostly human. Most folk in the countryside live and die never meeting anyone who is not. Those of other blood are few, scattered, and never quite trusted. The following peoples are open to players.

Human

Humans are the people of the world — its villages, its armies, its churches, its heresies. They come in every condition: peasant and prince, zealot and skeptic, saint and knife.

A human can pass anywhere without remark. In a world where difference draws suspicion, that invisibility is worth more than it sounds.

Dwarf

Dwarves are a short, broad, long-lived mountain folk, rarely seen and little known. They keep to their holds in the high peaks; those who walk among other peoples are usually traders or smiths, doing quiet business before vanishing again.

However, some Dwarves made their homes about the towns and cities of the Empire, looking for fortune beyond the mountain dark. They are known as patient, private, and slow to befriend.

Fey-touched

Reference: Half-Elf

Some people are born just slightly wrong: too fair, too still, ears that come to a point, eyes that catch the light oddly. They age slowly and live long — long enough to outlast everyone who remembers them arriving. The world calls them fey-touched, and not kindly.

Fey-touched are born to human parents, usually. Families occasionally whisper about an ancestor who "went into the woods for a year and came back changed." Whether that means anything, no one can say. There are old tales about a fair folk called "the elves" who may once have lived beyond the tree line — but tales are all they are, kept alive mostly within fey-touched family lines.

Whatever their truth, fey-touched live as outsiders: tolerated in towns, whispered about in villages, and occasionally turned out by frightened neighbors. Many grow thick skins. Many grow strange ones.

Forest Gnome

Gnomes are a small, spry, long-lived folk of the deep woods — the "little people" of grandmother's warnings, though the warnings only sometimes have it right. They are real, but rarely seen: they live past the tree line, avoid roads, and deal with outsiders cautiously, if at all.

A gnome among humans is a genuine oddity. Country folk treat them with the mix of awe and dread reserved for the fair folk. Gnomes are watchful, practical, and stubbornly alive, which in this world suggests someone or something is looking out for them.

Greyborn (Goblin-Blooded)

Reference: Half-Orc

Greyborn are the green- or grey-skinned children of humans and goblin stock. Broad-shouldered, strong-jawed, hot of temper, they inherit their goblin side's hardiness and drive.

They are born and raised in the marches and borderlands, where the human realms grind against the Goblin people, and they belong fully to neither.

The world does not know what to do with them. The Church does not preach against them — but the Chancery keeps track of where they live, and when the goblin wars flare, neighbors remember whose face remind them of the enemy.

A Greyborn grows up knowing all of this. Some spend a lifetime trying to outrun their reputation, while others lean into the prejudice.