# Nithusa - a world to be built



## Rkhet (Jun 6, 2005)

I'm planning on building a virtual world to run a campaign in.  Being lazy and all, I plan to take a long time.  So  I thought I'd do it here, where hopefully I'll get some feedback and stuff.  So the idea is this: I'll post bits and pieces here, and hopefully you peeps will contribute, or criticize, or whatever.

Oh, feel free to use any of this in your campaign.  Tell me how it goes if you do.




Nithusa.

Cosmology/geology

In Nithusa, the world really is flat.  It is a circular disk that ends in the void - or so say the legends of creation.  Human and humanoid settlements cluster in a roughly circular fashion around the Mountain of First Words, which is taken to be the centre of the disk - and the point from which the Perfect first created the world.  It takes roughly six months on horse back to get from one edge of the human settlements to the other.  Around the Mountain the environment is temperate and the soil fertile - perfect living conditions that slowly becomes more and more hostile and alien the further away.  

In the south is the Sea of Serpents, south of which lies many, many islands, home to a whole host of micro-kingdoms.  South of that is the Sea of Void - waters of unnatural calm that stretches on, forever, devoid of life or weather.  Go far enough out, it is said, you will reach the edge of all things - the stars, the sun, the sky, even the water - until you are sailing in utter nothingness, long dead but not knowing, for all eternity.  

In the west are the Badlands, where there dwells grotesque mockeries of life, failures abandoned ever since Creation.  Beyond is Gehenna, where the Shadow dwells, along with all his demons and damned souls - the Nithusan hell.

In the east is the Wall of Green, an impossibly lush forest (and further in, jungle) that is hostile to humans.  The elves and feykind live there - but even they dare not wander too far inside.  Time is distorted there, it is said: if you go in far enough you can hear the first words of creation.  Or be eaten by prehistoric insects.  

The north is cold and frozen and deemed unsuitable for life for all but the hardiest of barbarians, who cling to survival by means of raids, hunting, and cannibalism (or so it is said).

The sun is the personal manifestation of the Perfect, a reminder of his Grace (according to temple teachings).  The moon is the manifestation of his double, his Shadow.  The stars are the leftover specks of creative impulse from which the world was shaped.  When we die, we join them.  From them new souls are created.  From them come magic.


History

In the beginning was the void.  The void gave birth to the Original Spirit.  The Original Spirit attempted to create something in its own image, but was unsuccessful: as soon as it creates something, its own destructive nature would destroy it.

So the Original Spirit created the world out of the one thing it cannot destroy - itself.  It also created the first dragons - the original masters of the world.  In doing so it spent the majority of its power and went into a slumber.  

The dreams of the Original Spirit are troubled: its creative urge separated from its destructive urge, and they became his two aspects: the Perfect and his Shadow.

The two were at war against each other at once.  The Badlands and its aberrations were created at this period - perhaps a breeding ground for warbeasts, perhaps a casualty to powerful magics.  They both enlisted the help of the dragons, and it was a chaotic time, the skies filled with the smell of acid and sulfur and wild magic, and dragons dropped like flies.  This period is known as the Time of Two Gods.

The Perfect won, and the Shadow retreated to Gehenna... or so we are told.  It could very well be that the Shadow won and pretended to be the Perfect instead, unlikely though that is.  At any rate, the dragons, who are by nature unwilling to serve under anyone, even the divine, rebelled.  

The first Angels were created in this period, as a means to combat the dragons.  Back in those days Dragons were far, far more powerful, their collective power outmatching even the Perfect.  They were vain and proud, however, and unwilling to work together.  They were slain one by one by legions of angels.  Most of the dragons' secrets were razed along with their aerial cities and strongholds, and the art of Draconic Magic is mostly lost.  The spell-like abilities of dragons are actually minute fragments of this, passed down through the generations.  This was known as the Time of Dragons.

The Perfect created a second race to fill the role of dragons, whose numbers are now few.  He made them in the semblance of the angels, but far weaker and without wings, for he is tired of wars.  They are the elves.  Elven civilization flourished for ten thousand years or more.  Some elves who lived too close to the Badlands became changed, and thus came the orcs, the dwarves, the humans.

[eh.  Rest later.]


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