The Raining Place

You want to know why it rains, my child? I’ll tell you.

Once upon a time, there was a great king. This first king of the elves was named Solomon in our tongue. In his lifetime, he performed three great miracles.

The first great miracle of King Solomon was the binding of the spirits. The Solomonasya Mudra, or the Great Seal, once held the boundary between the Spirit World and our own. Now it lies sundered, and the spirits have returned to roam free.

The second great miracle of King Solomon was the founding of Svadeshah. At its height, the shining kingdom of the elves was said to wrap the world from end to end in a great chain of gold. Now its great spires lie fallen and ivy-choked, its glittering underpalaces ruined and mouldering.

The third great miracle of King Solomon was the creation of the mortal races: dwarves from rock, goblins from soil, and humans from clay. Under the rule of the elves, their kingdoms grew vast and rich, and their bonds ran deep as blood. Now, their lonely empires sit at the brink of collapse, and the peace they tenuously maintain threatens to buckle under the weight of old grudges.

A century ago, the elves disappeared, and the sky wept for them. It hasn’t yet stopped. This land is called Varshasthanam in their memory. In the tongue of the elves, it means the Raining Place.

WEATHER. Churning clouds have blanketed the sky for as long as the elves have been absent.

1 Lightest mist

2 Wet fog

3 Smallest drops

4 Gentle patter

5 Steady rain

6 Downpour

7 Deluge

8 Thunderstorm

HUMANS. Of every type, and every mien. Dwarves stay in the mountains and the caverns below, goblins hole up in the deep forests, but humans roam to every edge and corner of this world.

DWARVES. After a dwarf is born, their clan anoints them in molten metal. This metal rolls off their crystal hair and already-hardened hands to pool and calcify in the cracks that streak their stone flesh. Bronze dwarves are laborers and craftspeople. Silver dwarves are scholars and administrators. Gold dwarves are warriors and nobles. It is said outcastes bathe their kin in tin.

GOBLINS. Some look like bits of rock and moss stuck through with fresh-torn sticks. Some look like mud-stained burlap dolls, loping and ragged. Some look like patchwork skeletons of animal bones held together with twine and rusty nails. Goblins, eternal children, fashion each other out of whatever they can scrounge up, building themselves families out of spit and stitches and love.

SPIRITS. Miniscule or titanic, kindhearted or impish, anthropoid or alien, everything in this world has its own spirit. These otherworldly souls, live wires of emotion and energy, live in painfully technicolor vividness. They are foreign to the world of man, and uneasy in its ways.

ELVES. The elves have left this world. Where have they gone? What did they take with them?

This is an informal GLoGtober gift for my dear friend Hilander. He was talking the other day about a setting he had had some abortive progress in designing. This is a gesture towards that setting- hopefully it inspires some new insight, or progress.

This is designed around Hilander's Felwoods, or rather, an older edition of Felwoods; if my memory serves, there was an older version of the game with a Spiritcaller in lieu of a Cleric. It's a fabulous-looking game, and when I'm next running a crunchier (by my standards) fantasy game, I'll probably be taking it for a spin myself.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.