Ruined Acheron

In time out of time, before St Gax wrote down the Law as dictated to him by the Lady, before the tribes of Man came to the lands that would one day be The Empire and the Realm, perhaps before even the Kingdom Under the Mountain had reached its greatest heights (or depths), there was Acheron. Built by black-hearted men near the very edge of the World such that their sorceries could drink from the magic of the Styx, Acheron was the greatest city ever built by men.  It was there that men first heard the deceptions of demons.

What race of man first settled there, no one knows.  In fact, scholars even disagree if there were permanent settlements before Acheron.  It is certainly true that once its vast empire stretched across the whole of the world, few structures were made that did not emulate in some way the architecture of that accursed city.  In this empire there was the seed of the Law, but only as perverted by the whispers of Armadeus and his ilk. Indeed, in those ancient days it was said that Armadeus was far stronger than he is now, and that he made his form known in the World as a well-muscled scholar whose skin, eyes, and even teeth were black as the space between the stars.

From Armadeus they learned the secret names of demons and angels and set them to work. They were the first to construct the sky-ships sometimes used now by the Lazerenes.*  They reached out into the black and found the planets of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air and named them for their heathen gods - false names given to them by Armadeus.  They called creatures out of the Pit and down from the Sky to be their architects. They enslaved all manner of mortals and immortals and did many wondrous and wicked things.

But as all men do, they grew prideful, and sought to turn their magics and secrets of binding against their dark masters, the princes of hell themselves. It is said they imprisoned some, though who and where it is not known, but it was there attempt to harness the power of Great King Moloch that undid them. He appeared among the city with but one of his legions.  He toppled their high towers, gored their great sorcerer-kings, and then when all this was done he rent the earth with his great horns and pooled the blood of his victims in the Blood Red Sea. Thus was the greatest city of men destroyed.

But there are some, mostly elves, dwarves, and others who are biased against the greatness of men in the eyes of the Law, who say that these early works were not done by men at all. Acheron, they say, was the product of a different race, long destroyed.  On the few occasions when they can be called upon to name this race, they call them the Star Lords - likely an allusion to their mastery of the heavens.  Those beings more long-lived than men say this race, if it exists in any form, wallows even now in a hell made for them by Moloch. Surely the men they see upon the world now could not be the inheritors of such mighty sorcerers.

*They were also likely the source of this hideous race, as they became changed by the demonic energies they dealt with.

Some Saints from the World of Nightwick

The Church of Law venerates a large number of saints.  For the common people, these serve much the same purpose as the Old Gods did in pagan days, while for the clergy their examples and writings provide useful insight into the nature of the God of Law.  Many holy orders are organized around the veneration of a particular saint, though only heretics of the worst sort would deny the existence and virtue of others.  In the West, saints are depicted with round halos while in the East they are depicted with square ones.

The Lady is perhaps the most holy of all saints; however, her cult is not terribly popular.  Her name is said to be too holy to mention, but some heretics assert that the High Pontiff has simply forgotten it.  She was the wife of the man Realmish scholars consider to be the first Emperor,* and it is said that she was the first human to hear revelation from the God of Law.

St. Gax the Lawgiver is always depicted as an elderly man with a beard and a habit bearing a festive floral print.  He is usually shown holding two keys that unlock the gates of Heaven and the Pit.  He was the second to receive revelation - after the Lady - but being the one who organized the Law and wrote it down, he is much more widely revered.

St. Hogg is depicted as a fat man with dark eye shadow to protect his eyes from the Sun.  he is said to have been an administrator during the last days of the Empire, serving in the Desert Lands.  He was a fierce opponent of the diabolic cult known to Lawful texts as "the Dukes of Drazah."  He is patron to butchers, reeves, and cooks.

St. Notappearinginthisfilm is typically depicted as a child in ill fitting clothing - usually that of an abbot or a bishop.  It is said that he was the first to introduce "nap time" to monasteries, and he is a patron to guild members and burghers as well as the patron saint of holidays and work breaks.

St. Ralph the Liar is depicted as a monk wearing a sandwich board claiming that his name is St. Benedict the Liar.  He is said to have convinced the High King of the Iron Kingdoms to submit to the Law through obscene aggrandizements, and creating the doctrine of the Ends Justify the Means.

St. Richard the Prior is depicted running while lit aflame.  He is a patron of truth tellers and it is said that he protects from death by immolation.  It is believed by the highest of the clergy that he chose not to exercise this power in order to save himself from death because he was ready to accept the crown of martyrdom.

St. Santa Claus is believed by some to be a sickeningly obvious adaptation of Father Winter, an Old God venerated in the Dark Country.  He is depicted as a jolly elf of enormous stature and weight wearing festive clothing designed for colder climes.  He is invoked by the superstitious against plague and frostbite, and is the patron saint of toymakers and bakers.

St. Simian the Fool is depicted as an monkey making an obvious gesture of refusal.  It is said that he refused to eat a martyr in the arena, and that once he was released he and the martyr traveled the world spreading the Law through an ornate organ grinder show.  On his feast day, bananas or other fruits are traditionally hurled at clergymen.

St. Simon the Wise is depicted typically as a magician, though sometimes only as a brazen head.  It is said that he was the first to organize the building of a grand cathedral in the capital of the Realm.  In order to do this, he developed a number of ways to increase revenue for the Church.  As such, he is patron of simony and money lending.

St. Toad is depicted as a frog in a monk's cowl.  He was the first frogling to submit to the Law.  He is not venerated in many parts of the Realm and the Dark Country, and some even assert that his feast day - Smarch the 32nd - isn't even a real day.

St. Twiddle is depicted as a man holding a church in one hand and a quill in the other.  It is said that he designed the cathedral that Simon the Wise had built, and that in doing so he established the intervals of 10' used by architects until this day - though some heretics claim that the presence of this standard in pagan and pre-human ruins calls this "fact" into question.  He is also patron of cartographers, though most who call on him in this capacity find him to be a fickle friend at best.

*Zenopolitan scholars disagree with this assertion, claiming the Empire existed for many years as a pagan polity before the Law was revealed to the Lady.

Some Cults of Zenopolis

Edit: I've been worried about this post for a while and I finally decided to do something about it. When I wrote this, I was not aware of TERF and "Gender Critical" talking points the way I am now. I meant for the description of the Antichurch to mirror the professionalization of women's work turning into men's work in the later middle ages and thought it would be funny if it was due to a technicality. However, what I wrote very clearly matches what TERFs say trans women are trying to do to women's spaces and I have been uncomfortable with that for some years. After debating deleting the post, editing the post, or putting a disclaimer like this one here, I decided on the last option. It is likely I will still do a revised version of this post so that that is no longer the "canon" version of it in the World of Nightwick. 

The Church of Law

The Eastern Church differs in a number of minor theological points from the Western Church known to most of the inhabitants of the Dark Country.  The most contentious is the shape of their god, which the Easterners believe to be a cube.  As evidence of this, they point to a relic they rescued from the wastes of the Desert Lands - an enormous cube they believe to be a section of the God of Law itself.  The High Pontiff states that this cube proves nothing as it is clearly nothing more than a large wooden frame with a man yelling loudly inside.*

This cube forms the center of Lawful worship in the City of the Emperor.  On the feast day at the beginning of each month, the High Patriarch places his hands on the cube to receive wisdom from the God of Law which he then relays to the Emperor, who is believed to be best able to interpret the Law. 

Unlike its Western counterpart, the Church in Zenopolis does not persecute  pagans.  Instead, it is highly syncretic, reinterpreting pagan worship in ways that make it actually venerate the God of Law, even if the actual pagan cult disputes this "fact."

The Cult of the Fathers

The people of Zenopolis place a great deal of importance on family, ancestry, and history.  As a result, the powerful noble families of the city long ago established the Cult of the Fathers in order to venerate powerful magnates who they believe performed great deeds - such as crushing slave rebellions and being really good at farming.

The Fathers are housed in a great system of catacombs that is rumored to intersect with Zenopolis's undercity.  There the pickled remains of great men are animated with strange magic known only to the cult.  They are poked and prodded with goads and their screams and jerks are interpreted by a learned caste of magicians and idolaters.

The Imperial Cult

Worship of the Emperor is one of only a few cults to be technically proscribed by Zenopolitan and Church law; however, it is "suffered" by the Emperor who has "better things to do" than stop peasants from leaving coins and votive candles at his statues.

The Imperial Cult is considerably more popular among the lower classes than the upper classes - mostly because familiarity breeds contempt.  The nobility is all too aware that the emperor is merely the most recent in a line of cunning men who knew the proper application of eyespoons.  Still, a small number of young nobles have joined the cult as an act of petty rebellion.

Deposed or exiled emperors are sometimes still worshiped, but none are worshiped after their deaths.  It is not uncommon for angry cultists to beset a public statue of a recently deceased emperor in order to slash out the statues eyes with a knife or set of eyespoons.

The Cult of That God We are Supposed to Pray To

No one in the city, not even the cult's High Hierophant and Hierophantess can remember the nature, gender, or purview of the God We are Supposed to Pray To.  Despite this fact, the whole of the city believes that if the cult is not properly maintained then Zenopolis will meet great disaster.  It is difficult to ascertain where this belief comes from, but surely it must have some foundation in truth or their ancestors would not have created the cult in the first place.  

Rites to this god are carefully executed by a double-clergy of men and women for none can remember whether the god prefers priests or priestesses.  Each says the ritual words simultaneously and then says them backwards in case that was the way they were supposed to do it.  The most prominent symbol of the cult is the Pit and the Fire of the City.  It is believed that if either the wood in the pit is lit aflame or if the fire is ever doused the city will be destroyed.

The Followers of the Conquered Sun

A reconstuctivist religion, the Followers of the Conquered Sun believe they have restored worship to a deity that was of vital importance to Man before the Revealing of the Law.  Critics note that they have clearly cobbled together a mixture of unrelated mythologies and hero tales into something only vaguely resembling a religion.  

Accounts of the Conquered Sun's appearance vary wildly, but believers are quick to observe that the Sun has many "rays" and that their god has known many guises in the past.  Indeed, some members of this sect believe that a form of apotheosis is possible in which one merges with the solar godhead.

This sect also produces a large number of ascetics - a fact which Church theologians use to assert that this "young" religion is merely a strange form of copycat.  These ascetics typically attempt to bake themselves in the sun, sometimes constructing large pillars in order to more easily have access to the sky in the crowded streets.  It is not uncommon to see a an iron box fervently and loudly debating with a stone column in market squares.

The Ones Who Know the Stars

This small but formerly influential cult venerates a set of beings known as the Star Lords.  Eastern Church theologians states that these beings are simply angels while Western ones assert that the cult actually falsely deifies the cyclops - a race of beings said to have built many of the miraculously large structures found throughout the World.

Their current leader - a "scholar" named Tsoukalos - was once a manager of a racing team in the Hippogriffdrome.  Now he spends much of his time asserting that wonders previously believed to have been built either by the work of Man or by the work of enormous beings was actually accomplished by  creatures from beyond the stars.  A member of famed explorer Parco Molo's expedition - Erich the Kin of Dan - heard this message and brought it back to Atalia, where he was promptly burned.

The Eastern Heterodox Antichurch

The Eastern Heterodox Antichurch is a brand of devilry that is rumored to exist and perform a number of foul turptiudes - including the slaying of stray animals, the perpetrating of ritual murders, and the playing of strange "adventure" games.  Its leader is, according to Western witch hunters, the Low Matriarch - a position which has been occupied by a eunuch in a wig for as long as anyone can remember, but witch hunters believe this is due to a loophole.  

It is unlikely that this organization actually exists, as demonic cults rarely organize themselves in the way that Lawful clergy expect them to.  Instead, there are a number of micro-cults dedicated to all sorts of demons working their dark arts beneath the city streets.  The most popular demon seems to be Moloch, whose leprous, inhuman servants are often seen in the company of hooded men in the bowels of the undercity.

*Those who have actually seen the cube note that it is opaque, clearly metallic, and does not make any noise whatsoever.

The City at the Center of the World

In the eyes of the people of the West, Zenopolis is a city without equal either in luxuriousness or depravity.  Its domed temples and tall spires are a testament to a bygone age: the age of the Empire.  When the barbarians swooped down from what is now Novgova into the Dark Country and the West, the Empire could do little to resist them.  Plagued by internal struggle and external invasion, the emperor Zeno moved his capital to an island city once used to as a fortress to defend against pirate attacks from the Desert Lands.  The Empire may have withered, but in the eyes of the people of Zenopolis some corneal of it still remains.

Zeno did not only move the capital.  He also revived the worship of the Old Gods.  While the Church of Law still exists legally, it does not hold the position it does in the west.  Instead, a cacophony of religions exist in the City at the Center of the World.  The Church claims many of these are diabolic in nature, and the clergy shudders to think what slithering things these deranged madmen worship.

Zenopolis's climate is arid when compared to the West, but the trade from the Desert Lands, the Dark Country, and places even farther than that have made it rich.  Its armies are filled with soldiers from across the World, though the Autocrat is particularly fond of using barbarians from the Dark Country as his personal guard.  Many of these men fled the lances of the Sword Brothers and found employment in the City.  It is sometimes said that the Autocrat's fondness for them goes beyond mere martial prowess, but most of the barbarians would staunchly deny this.  Such activity is unmanly.

Zenopolis is not the first built on this island.  Even before the imperial fortress, cities existed here.  The location is perfect for trade between the East and the West, and as such there has scarcely been an epoch where the island was uninhabited.  Rumors say that the ruins of these cities lie beneath the current edifices.  They intertwine and overlap creating a network of tunnels, chambers, and catacombs which could never be fully mapped.

In the days before the Church of Law, many of the temples possessed undercrofts and secret chambers that connected to these dungeons.  Since the revival of the Old Ways, many of these structures have seen renewed habitation; however, most still languish in obscurity.  It is said that when they were sealed, many of the priests and oracles were still inside.  What has happened to these populations in the thousand plus years since they were trapped inside is a mystery.

A more intriguing mystery, however, is what became of the golden idols and relics which were sealed in as well...
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Recently, my mind has been filled with ideas for different games.  I was having a hard time picking one, but earlier tonight I decided to take the common elements and spin them off into their own project.  The above is a result.

Essentially, I wanted to make an EPT style Underworld that was heavily inspired by CAS's Zothique cycle; however, I don't want to abandon the work I've already done on the Dark Country and the World.  Hopefully, this is a good compromise.

The monsters will not be standard D&D fair but neither will they be LotFP creatures.  I'm not exactly sure what they will be yet, but I have some ideas.

Zenopolis Design Specs

In keeping with that Jeff Rients's maxim about designing your own stuff rather than buying it,  I have decided to list the reasons I was intrigued by Heroes in the first place.  Hopefully this will help guide me in continuing my recently begun work on Zenopolis (or Once Upon a Time in the Mediterranean).  These are in no particular order, and some will overlap.

• A historical but fictionalized setting
• Rules/Guidelines for climbing the social ladder through wit and violence
• Rules/Guidelines for crime and punishment
• Cattle Raids
• Other kinds of raids
• pseudo-Medieval Economics
• Domain management
• Once you get to a position, it's hard to stay there
• Permanent, and gruesome, injuries

That's probably not all of them, but those are what I thought would be in the game.  So regardless of how Heroes handles them, Zenopolis needs to handle them in a way that appeals to me.

More on this project as it develops.

Another Campaign/Game Idea

This post is inspired by my discovery of the British old school rpg Heroes.  Heroes, for those who don't know, is a more or less historical game set in the "Dark Ages."  The game gives its specific start date as 950.  From what I understand, characters come into a city in the Eastern Mediterranean as mercenaries and ride to riches or ruin, wenching and whoring along the way.  It sort of sounds like Warhammer before Warhammer, and that's alright by me.

I'll never see a copy of the thing.  It was printed by a hobbyist in England in 1979 and it's about as rare states' side  as you might expect given that background.  To paraphrase gamer par exellence Jeff Rients, since I can't find the post to quote it: if you want an rpg product, make a list of the reasons why and then make something that does those same things yourself.

I like grit and grime as much as anybody, and the idea of playing rogues and skullduggers in the Middle Ages isn't just right up my alley, it is my alley.  So heres more or less the premise: you're a party of scumbags, looters, and preachers who wind up in the declining Byzantine outpost of Zenopolis.  Zenopolis lies on an island somewhere in the Mediterranean that is being fought over by numerous factions both real and fictional.  Your goal is to more or less play them for what they're worth in an attempt to pay for your rock n' roll lifestyle.

To start with I'd use the S&W White Box, but I'd hopefully add so much to it that it eventually turns into its own game.  That seems to be the way most early rpgs were developed and my fevered imagination has romanticized the process enough that I want to try it.

The most immediate hurtle I see is character types.  I'm not entirely sure that magic would exist in this setting (since it's a fictional island in a real sea), so I'm unlikely to allow Magic-Users and Clerics as starting characters.  I'd still need a way to differentiate unwashed ne're-do-wells from one another.  While I'm usually of the opinion that D&D has enough character differentiation, it definitely doesn't if you remove two of the three classes.  I may implement a RC style general skills system, or come up with something new altogether.  Who knows?

The working title is Once Upon a Time in the Mediterranean, though that may change with the wind.  I'll post any updates on the project here.