Dread Realms – Asthalia Wyrldica

Table of Contents

The Dread Lands

As there are Bright Lands, there are Dread Lands, over whom the shadow of the great evils of the world have been cast.

During the God’s War, they were driven out of the Bright Lands, pushed to the edge of the world by the Powers That Be, and given over to the unending task of creating for themselves what was taken from them.

Traveling among the Dread Lands, one is struck by both the similarities and the differences between the two opponents. There are no Imperials within the Dread Lands. There are, however, people who are indistinguishable from Imperials called Fasians. Lemuria’s villages and towns are ordered places, nearly all identical homes and buildings – so much so that one can tell what a place is with but a glance.

The Dreadlands are a vastly different sort of place. There are three groups: Thule, Lemuria, and Bermuda. Some might argue to include Helike, but that place lies under the sea, and so is difficult to do anything but discount. Thule, in the far north, is openly allied with Lemuria, but is not seen by anyone as a part of it. Duat is an occasional ally, an occasional problem. These things fit, given Duat.

One of the core principles of the universe, an absolute rule that governs above and below all other such rules, is that the weak are meat, and the strong do eat.

There is immense Hostility between Lemuria and the Empire and the Shadow Realms. This is best summed up with one of the core principles in their Great Book:

They call these people consumables, slaves, chattel, cattle, and other names that strongly suggest they are not people, that they are not thinking, feeling people, and that they have only one purpose.

To feed the beast that is Lemuria.

Note that it is possible to come from these places, or to have been kidnapped and brought there and escaped. It is exceedingly rare, insanely dangerous, and less than one percent of those who try will survive the experience.

For PCs, note that you cannot, at this point, play a Goblin, Imp, Thyrs, Grendel, Merow, or similar.

For DMs, note that all of them have the same basic core structure for professions, in terms of all the other elements.

Be aware that the information herein is coming to you from the perspective of the Empire, The Seven Cities. How Hyborian and Kahokian, how Islanders, how the Exiles see it are all slightly different from what is presented here.

Additionally, there is a great deal more to the world as a whole that you cannot see yet – if there were, what value would adventures be? The Campaign for Wyrlde is in part about opening up new possibilities.

The Empire of Lemuria

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Introduction

We do not know much about Lemuria as a whole – spies and investigators, explorers and peace delegations have rarely returned or if they have returned, they have had their skulls cut and drilled into and other foul deeds done to them that have left them nearly mindless or maimed or horribly deformed.

The Empire of Lemuria. It has three great cities (Hellania, Gilead, and Lemuria proper), and at last estimate some seven thousand villages. Beneath it is rumored to exist Agartha, a vast underground city of its own. Lemuria’s cities are generally divided according to the roles that the population there is intended to play. With a population of Goblins and Imps it is a diverse population that is shockingly segregated, down to the neighborhoods that the different people can live in.

That segregation has a Holy Purpose, for much as Elfin and Dwarfs were made to fight in a war, so too were the Goblins and Imps that are the majority of Lemuria, and the leadership there is a mix of those three and the Fasian Lords.

That, of course, ignores the number one issue that identifies Lemuria in the minds of most people: They capture, breed, and keep slaves. Slavery is the backbone of their world down there, and they are quite adept at using them.

That selfsame slavery presents a challenge, for they do not view it as slavery. They see it as a domestication project, akin to herding, farming, and training. You see, one of the reasons for them to be The Dread Lands is that they consider Imperials, Elfin, Dwarfs, and the rest to be food and fodder – chattel or cattle, depending on your take.

A few years ago, a raiding party was captured, and the sole survivor of the three days they were held awaiting interrogation (they killed themselves) was promised a chance to die in battle in exchange for helping us to understand what was going on down there, what they were like, and why were we their enemy. That interrogation is used widely now, for it gives us the best insight into whom we battle.

Much of what follows is taken from the Interrogation of Hob Master Bosworth Durkin, Flower 6 to Heat 18, 278 YNE. Direct quotes are used as much as possible, but it should be noted that his words are not for the faint of heart.

Goblins are the main force, the structural body, the overwhelming mass. Their shorter lives, rigid structure, and overall power increase as they get older all contributes to their having the greatest level of influence and privilege within the society as a whole.

Next are the Imps, whose small size, nimbleness, and capacity to work together is envious even among our own combines with the innate brilliance that is their ability to construct and design and delve and defend while doing the logistics for their realm.

Lastly are the Fasian Lords, whose might is often greater and who serve as the Enforcers and attendants to the Ikons of the Five, who reside in the Black Tower located in the heart of Lemuria proper. The eternally wrapped Fasian Lords are often flag commanders or special unit leaders but are rarely seen outside of Lemuria. Rumors abound regarding them – their skin is covered by arcane, ritually imbued tattoos; they are all albinos; they wrap themselves to disguise who they are and this allows them to infiltrate and subdue; the list is endless because no one alive has ever seen a Fasian Lord’s face or body unwrapped from the black bandages that cover their bodies entirely beneath the often tattered looking robes and cloaks they wear. It is the Ikons who genuinely rule all of Lemuria, and it is the Fasian Lords who enforce that rule.

Lemuria

Lemuria is both what they call “the Capital” and the heart of their entire world down there, and yet as diverse as they are, it is not a place where – as an example – there are halflings.

“The Urpian lands, where the savage and uncivilized treat hard working people like trash, and the poor are cast aside like some flotsam washed up on a shore from the great ocean. Our people do not want, do not suffer. We take care of our own, and we don’t allow those half-bloods and other impurities to be part of our society – they are abominations that weaken the whole.”

Indeed, simply considering looking at someone outside your own kind is a criminal offense, but also, unlike us, they cannot intermingle and produce them. Their variance from human norm is too great, and while Goblins can create Orcs, orcs can only create half-Orcs, and in all cases it was intentional. They were designed to be able to do that.

The segregation is supported as an Edict from on High, meaning it is something that they have written in their Great Book. That is merely the instructions and words of Belial from the end of the War, as they prepared for a killing blow, a final solution to the problem of us, people.

“They tell a story meant to make one cry, to weep, of poor broken people struggling to survive, and yet they never acknowledge what they did to us, sealing us away from the Holy Land, pushing us to the ends of the world, and how they treated those of us they had taken as prisoners, starving them and killing them.”

“They never talk about those things, never reveal those truths in the lies they tell about how Belial was too hard for them. This is a hard and harsh world, and one must adapt to it, fit it, dominate it, make it serve you instead of simply devour you like so much meat.”

“They can’t even speak properly – have you heard them, babbling on in their indecipherable language, never once using the words that were handed down from Trundle himself, given to us as a gift and part of holy writ.”

Of import here is that this is how they see not themselves, but the people they hold as slaves. They simply do not count except as food, as labor, and for all the great and grand buildings that they speak of, their realm was built by the labor of slaves.

Tradition is sacrosanct in the dread lands. Not everything is traditional, but what is tradition must be kept and honored.

“The world has become a place of depravity, where the weak are given places of honor and recognized instead of put in their proper role and position. It is like a woman refusing to make babies because she doesn’t want to, or trying to take the role of a man, or, possibly worst of all, engaging in perversion with another woman.”

“The Urpians allow that. In some places, they celebrate it! One of their cities is ruled by a woman! These things lead to people deciding they have the power to question, to doubt, to allow softness and weakness to creep in and corrupt them, making them no better than the chattel they are.”

As noted, the major difference between Thule in the north and Lemuria in the south is that in Thule, women occupy nearly all the positions of authority. This is because the women of Thule are larger, meaner, more aggressive, and would wipe out any of the typical commanders or leaders in Lemuria, where it is strength that establishes the proper rule and place.

Being suspicious of each other is normal in Lemuria – after the betrayal of the Kobolds at the end of the God’s War.

“You can never to be too careful. Even those who have taken the oaths may turn, despite the horrible fate that awaits them should they do so. And the great Enemy, the Urpians who rebelled against the just and natural order of the universe, have been known to use magic and to take the place of people you love and care for so they can kill all of you.

So better safe and watchful of people who are not as dedicated to the Cause.”

“The Cause” is the retaking of the Bright Lands and the Ancient Land, and the enslavement of all the people there. It is variously called the Cause, the Lost Cause, the Great Calling, the True Purpose, and the Destiny of Lemuria.

“I am the Witness to all my brothers whom you killed We are all to be heroes, to be seen, to be witnessed doing our great and noble deeds as we live and breathe and fight and die for the glory of the Empire!”

This witnessing, this recognition of masculinity, of heroism, of sacrifice, is an exceptionally critical thing – especially among goblins, who give out their cry of “Karaja!” when launching into battle. For years, we thought it was a battle cry – “kill them all” or “follow me,” that sort of thing. It was quite a shock to realize that they weren’t even speaking to us, but to each other.

It was even more shocking to realize that “Na garege kiho nomnom” means “oh look, fresh meat!”, and is heard nearly as often. Storage of meat and vegetables is usually accomplished through salting and drying, even in Lemurian spaces, and so they are not saying it to intimidate, but because those sent out on the main lines do not get to have fresh meat often. That we are the fresh meat is not of concern to them.

“There are Urpians over here that have never done more than looked at armor, or done more than watched a play sword fight, who would refuse to fight for their own glory of whatever false Powers That Be they follow and whatever twisted thinking they might hold fast. Pacifists aren’t even worth using as consumables. They have no flavor, no soul, no spirit, no real use beyond fertilizer.”

Lemurians do not welcome nor accept the idea that fighting is not always a thing. For them, living is seen as a struggle, regardless of how little struggling they do when it is believed that they have at least one slave for every ranking citizen. They have been raiding a long time, and their early raids were decimating.

“We would never have let them raid us the way we raid them. We would have decimated their little villages in a wave of overpowering strength the likes of which they cannot imagine – but soon, soon they will see it for themselves.”

“Those others, they are too weak, too lost in their fake ideologies and their certainties that they no longer can tell the truth. It is our job to bring them the Truth, to bring back the traditional values, and end the perversions and injustice of their stolen lands.”

The zealotry that Lemurians show, in particular, is not matched in Thule, and this is likely because of the separation following the war, which gave Thulians the ability to begin thinking for themselves, perhaps.

Hellania

“The Fatherland, Hellania. Gilead likes to pretend, taking after the weak and slovenly Urpians that drove us through blood and death and horror out from our own rightful places.

Hellania was founded by Belial, personally, before the traitors snuck in like the thieves they are and stole him away, locking him away from us and capping their weak spined and perverted betrayal of the Truth.

Go, see our Homeland, and how it is orderly and neat, and everyone has a role and a place, and everything goes towards the greatness of Hellania, for we are all but servants of it and the great Cause – which we say because it is not Lost, merely misplaced. We do not have the filth of animals in our streets or the refuse of some perversion or beggars looking for a way to avoid a decent day’s hard honest work.”

Hellania is the primary training ground and center of the vast military system of Lemuria, of which every person is a member. Lemuria exists as a standing army, an ever-present threat to the peace and stability of our Bright Lands, and Hellania is their principal training ground for most of it.

It is suggested that the impossible number of half a million troops are stationed there at any given time, rotating out to work at family Plantations or as craft supervision. Hellania is a sprawling city where no building is taller than ten feet high, flowing over the landscape like a blight of perfectly identical domes made from clay and plaster and wood and then sealed using the one thing that they never seem to run out of: blood.

Gilead

Gilead is used to train insurgents and raiders and small specialized strike forces. Their role is to incite fear, to cause panic, to disrupt supply lines, to overcome the defenses of the place. Their training ground for this is Gilead, and like the rest of the realm of Lemuria, they use slaves to practice and refine their skills.

Gilead’s slaves are, as a result, seemingly given more freedom, set up in villages and spaces that are re-used over time, and even allowed to establish patterns of work and life. The typical small village goes through the cycle every five years of being populated, rebuilt, re-established, and then when growth and resistance has reached a certain level, attacked. They are allowed hope, only to have that hope taken away from them when the time comes to eat.

There are collaborating slaves for this. They allow a few of them to live, to start and perpetuate the cycle for each iteration. They are given special privileges, but never allowed any kind of real power – and are traded out when they become too difficult to work with or are discovered.

Agartha

Supporting all of this industrious work, managing the transportation, storage, security, and planning for their own counter insurgency and insurgency tactics is what lies beneath Lemuria: the warren-like labyrinth of Agartha.

Agarthans are all about the logistics of effort. They are concerned and seek to train in disruption insurgency and counter insurgency, movement and supply, and communications. They are sneaky, sharp minded, and focused on a different kind of approach to tasks: they seek to move everything underground, through what they call the Underdark. Thousands of miles of corridors and trailways, storage and munitions, the works: Agarthans do all of this underground.

They use fairly fixed ways of protecting and defending forward outposts and related areas: traps. Servant monsters. The complex breeding projects that have produced a host of terrors. The experimentation on people. Also, of course, themselves. They are the builders of Warrens, allowing the dread lands to prepare and establish raiding posts from which their teams can enter and raid and vanish by retreating to secret staging Warrens.

Agarthans drive their slaves to death, without mercy, compassion, care, or concern beyond “are they able to move? Then they had best be moving.” They mind killing slaves even less than the rest because slaves are also food – they are the cattle and primary meat source for the Goblins, even if the Imps themselves do not eat such. They work on timetables that would be impossible in the Bright Lands, and they seem to know ways of causing pain that have never been studied.

Most Agarthans are small, because most need to be able to operate on a level with the primary inhabitants: Imps. Imps do not like people being larger than them. They have a case of enormous ego in a tiny body, and it shows. They are bossy, nasty beings with quick tempers and the ability to direct it effectively. This colors the way that all of those who work and dwell in Agartha behave and act – although always still segregated.

While much of Lemuria is united by Lemurian culture, and it is common here, there is a uniqueness to Agartha that is worth speaking of. They have some way of communicating through the darkness, of warning about traps and other dangers to each other. Reports suggest that it is a complex growling or grumbling series of sounds, and that they may use markings of some sort. In any case, it is strongly believed that Agarthans have their own language and writing system, distinct from any other. Perhaps more importantly, Agarthans do not consider themselves part of Lemuria, seeing themselves in a way that they will die before they share with others.

It is notable that Imps do not eat meat. But that meat can feed their fungi farms is of interest and note.

Attitude

The great philosophers and many of our bards and even large gatherings of nobles often meet to discuss and question the reasons and rationales used by our Foes to continue to fight, to hate us with such ferocity, and to deny reality with such absolute conviction. There is no reason to fight, to raid, to disrupt trade, to steal children, to enslave other people. Yet they do, and they have neither qualm nor moral uncertainty about it. A large part of the reason for this came out of Bosworth’s mouth as he cursed and spat, his green skin turning mottled shades as his anger and bitterness spilled out.

“For over a thousand years, he has sent us his Ikons, and they have built the great Black Tower that rests within the heart of our city, rising from the bowl of the ancient volcano or meteor strike like an antenna pointed at the Heavens above, which we will one day reclaim for us and all our heirs.”

The following distinctions aside, what we have gleaned through clairvoyance, through the sending of parties of adventurers to reconnoiter, and related efforts, is at least an idea of what the hamlets, villages, towns, and cities are like in appearance within the realm.

Government

Lemuria is an absolute dictatorial theocracy, headed by Bane, the Ikon of Belial. He uses the Fascian Lords as a kind of nobility or Elite to enforce his will upon the larger population.

While he officially is said to reside in the Dark Tower, or the Black Tower, or the Dread Tower (there are three of them, and all are identical, all sitting right next to each other) we have reason to believe none of the above is always true.

This is often having to suppress a bubbling and secretive rebellion among a very small segment of his population, and to shut down some kind of secret escape route that is enabling slaves to escape.