Improphane/SnakeFork

Improphane's Snake Fork Setting

Coming Into Snake's Fork Port(Intro): An introduction to the land, it's history and a brief bit of geography. A description of it's dealings with other lands including the Realm and the Guild. A discusion of the Theme(s) and Mood(s) of the place. And of course a Lexicon, and there should only be a few words in there, and a chapter layout of how to use this resource.

Mood: Toil, hardship any of those words used in the South chapter of Scavenger Sons. Everyone who lives in or near the Valley of the Devil's Tongue, struggles through their lives.

At night the place takes on a different feel, the heat is gone, and there is no work to do. Those who simply go home and sleep are missing out on a lively night life. Some of the lower working classes are promised a more permanent freedom than the brief night gives by infernal priests and ghostly emmissaries. Not to mention underhand political dealings taking place alongside shadow wars.

So the Mood shifts imbetween light and shadow, in the light it's Toil, and in the dark it's Dealings, and almost demonic.

Theme: Foreboding, every person has his personal dreams often coloured by his surroundings or influences of a more human nature. And so all the religions and cults, even city leaders offer a way out, or some prophecy that they will be saved, or set free(even if that means death). Not only do religous leaders "forsee" the end of the Valley in it's present condition, but political figures can see the Alliance ending, and the valley erupting in war again, if the Realm doesn't step in and take over completely.

Blood and Bones(Chapter 1): An indepth Geography, History, and even Religous background for the Valley of the Devil's Tongue. By religous background, I don't mean the Gods themselves, but how they are worshipped. And all the cults that have sprung up, like worshipping the beast that the world is built on and other fanatic beliefs. The religions of barbarians as well.

Geography; basically it will detail 4 major cities, 3 of which are inside the Alliance and 1 is outside, and possibly actively rebelling against it. The four major cities are as follows..

Snake's Fork: A city on the river Delta, and one which deals with the Alliance's(and in some cases the rest of the Valley's) trade with places outside of the region. It maintains a small fleet to ward off pirates, and a larger mercantile one, with several others running private businesses. And of course the Guild, and House V'neef are interested in this city, but sometimes the Guild would prefer to just skip out Snake's Fork and it's taxes and often does.

Kapoor: A military city ruled by a War council. A central part of the Alliance, with it's barracks spread to the bounaries of many other cities, in the interests of safety. The War Lord agreed to join the Alliance solely because it meant that other cities would give him the produce they needed to survive(which he didn't want his men wasting their time growing) and he got to spread his soldiers around the Valley.

Unamed City 1: The Religous center of the Alliance, full of spires of ivory and impressive arches. The small windy streets all paved and beautiful. Set on the top of a hill the City of the Gods, shines out like a jewel for the whole Valley to see. One of the most powerful cities of the Alliance because of the religous influence that it has upon the rest of the cities. This has been diminished by the appearance of Immaculate Monks, trying for converts and "inspecting" heresies.

Kilubu: A city that Darksoul is doing consists only of two giant ivory towers.

Unamed City 2: A city outside of the Alliance. And probably actively opposing it. Built of the "Black Ivory", a stone that they mine from the hill on which the sity is built. A dark mass of chunks litter it's not unimpressive skyline. Meanwhile underneath the city on the lake of Taggatzu's Spit, a red acid like liquid that can only be held by ivory, of the real or black kind. The city is run by the council of Blood Priests(the four high priests of the city's church, one that worships Taggatzu) who double has the leaders of the army, and also the Ebony Prince, who is in charge of law and order and foreign affairs, while the High Priests lead the army and make the laws that affect everyday life.

The Cities should be layed out like in Scavenger Sons, the minor cities should probably only have a small description, and info on Domain, Population, Government, Important Locations, and so on.

The Bonelands are the hills to South East of the Valley, it is there on the sand dunes that the barbarians dwell.

The mountains to the West of the Valley, is where the river that flows through the valley comes from. They are called the Rusun Mountains.

History; should start with the first legend. Then an account of how the cities fared during the Usurpation and the Contagion. After that perhaps a few wars and alliances, and when the new Realm moved in. I'm not good with any sorts of dates, expecially not the Exalted ones, so someone else can do the time line. I haven't though much about this, so we can all discuss it.

There should be information, on the festival that takes place every 3 years, the current year(whatever it may be) is the year it should be happening on. It is an Alliance only event. It features competitions of music, poetry and sport. The event is also an occasion for inter Alliance politics to take place, the advantage going to the city that is hosting the games that year. And it takes place during Descending Fire.

Courts of the Carcass(Chapter 2): A description of the Spirit courts of the Valley. Obviously they are typical spirits to be found in the South, i.e fire elementals. I thought that the overseer of the courts would be a Guardian, sent by the Gods to make sure that the new land they built on top of the dead creature wouldn't do anything abnormal.

It should also allow for an interesting mix of spirits brought in to rebuild the world, infusing it with, or destroying the underlaying corpse. And an even stranger heirarchy to the Courts themselves.

This was actually fleshed out quite a lot more in a few MSN conversations, and the aforementioned Darksoul had decided to do quite a lot of work on it. - Improphane

The Heroes of the Gods(Chapter 3): What the Exalted, mainly the Solars, are like in the Valley. How the different religions see them, and a few concepts for them to follow. Maybe some examples. The Sidereals can be left alone pretty much since we don't know anything about them, it should be enough to say Gold Faction here, and Bronze faction there. If there is anything left about the Lunars that wasn't mentioned in the Bonelands or Mountains sections.

Beneath the Beast(Chapter 4): Look below.

Stories from the Devil's Tongue(Chapter 5): Story seeds, about seven or so Mood and Theme or maybe Something vs. Something ideas to play through. And maybe even a sample adventure(for Solars obviously).

Spawn of the Demon(Appendix): A list of creatures and artifacts unmentioned before, and probably unique to the Valley.