Re-discovering a Forgotten Sport - Intro Campaign Setting

[Judd]

The Sorcerer Kings, Wizards and Witches have ruled the world for as long as anyone can remember, casting mighty magicks that take months and years off of their lives.  They have summoned creatures from a world sideways to our own who devour any dissidents and the Wizard's spoiled children float through the world without a care.  We thought there was nothing we could do to stop them before we found the book.  

The book details an ancient sport, some kind of lost physical culture using an instrument called a sword, like a knife but bigger, heavier.  It seems that in days past the world was ruled by these instruments and the ability of men and women to use them in what they called combat.

Soon the Sorcerer Kings and their sadistic spawn will have a terrible surprise.  With broom-handles as our guide a few of us have been pouring over the text and deciphering this Riddle of Steel.


Inspired from a few lines from the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time books and conceived as a possible setting for introducing the rules.

[Brian Leybourne]

Nice teaser, but not a lot of meat... are you planning to flesh this out more?

Brian.

[Judd]

I was just considering ways of showing TROS newbies the game in an interesting way.  One way would be to show that they're characters have never killed before, never picked up a sword in combat and are re-discovering this lost art.  Just thought it would be an interesting way to teach the game.

[Judd]

Nice teaser, but not a lot of meat... are you planning to flesh this out more?

Brian.

What more meat do you see to flesh it out more?

Wizard-King Kingdoms?  Witch Plantations?  Wizard Tower-Keeps?

Fates of resistance movements in the past?  (those poor bastards who tried to take over th world with their book on lacrosse).

What direction do you see this going?

[Brian Leybourne]

Well, the whole thing really.

Who/What are the Sorcerer kings really? What are the creatures from the other world? What do they do? What's life really like for the population?

Etc :-)

Brian.

[Irmo]

What are the creatures from the other world? What do they do?

They're Microsoft lawyers. Really, the most dreadful monsters in the multiverse ;)

[Judd]

When I have time I will begin to answer those questions.  But for now I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.

[Judd]

"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
- Ani Difranco


Some fools whisper stories, tales about how it was before the Sorcerer Kings.  Once they lent the emperor their wisdom, created miracles.  Eventually, they were powers behind the throne; our emperor was only a puppet.

No one is sure how long it has been since a magic-numb emperor at on the throne.  Their magic does strange things to time and our perceptions of it.  

Now the Sorcerer Kings rule, an iron hand clutching a magic staff is their banner.  Their Wizards and Witches rule provinces much in the same manner that Dukes, Duchesses and landed Knights did in old days.

In old days the land was ruled by steel.  Any Wizard will tell you that this antiquated phrase refers to the steel core in every coin of the realm.  We've learned differently.

While digging a new well, a servant in a nearby plantation found a strange book.  Tomes are useless to us simple folk and it is a fate worse than death if we are found with so much as a scroll.  For a vellum scroll entire families have been wiped from existence, only grave markers with names of families none can remember mark their passing.

This tome had pictures, illustrations of men in strange poses with farming implements no one had ever seen before.  Diagrams of circles, circles within circles not meant to summon creatures but meant to lead us through a complicated dance while holding these lost tools.

While our masters study and sleep and scheme we sit by moonlight and decipher this strange code, trying to shed light on this Riddle of Steel.

[Judd]

Those with magic summon all manner of creatures to do their bidding.  Name a horror from a folk tale, a beast from any menagerie imaginable and a Wizard has summoned it or combined creature's best and worst to bring it into being.

They sacrifice years off of their lives to make these creatures, demons made of stone that sit on their walls, horses with wings to carry their messengers, hawk's head and wings on a lion's body to hunt their enemies.  

Those who willingly submit to the rule of the staff try to curry favor so they might be the next creature on a Wizard or Witch's eldritch slab.  These freaks give up their humanity in order to serve our cruel masters all the better.  When we take our steel to the test, it is these we will target first.

I dream of the day I close into largo range with a rapier in one hand and a dagger in the other and cut some half-man's throat.  In my dreams we storm up the tower stairs and catch the local Wizard in a newly awakened state, sleeping robes still on, hair askew.  It will be a rondel in the eye for that bastard, anything that takes longer would be suicide.  No spells can be allowed to escape his lips.

And now we study and argue.  It is as if we are waiting for something, a spark in a dry barn.  Maybe the Wizard or one of his creations will take a child in the night again.  Mayhaps that will be what sets us off.

It could be that we are waiting for a long forgotten beast.  The Sorcerer Kings thought they had killed this monster long ago but it is out there, waiting to be awakened, rarer than any Dragon, and more powerful than a dozen ogres.  Some say we are waiting for a sign from the Gods or a cold winter or a clear advantage.  I argue that we are waiting for a hero.

[Judd]

The Sorcerer Kings reserve the Legions of Hell for their own person use, imperial decree alone is all that is allowed by law to spur them to action.  

The Sorcerer Kings are the only people in the land who are allowed to summon Demons.  Surely others do, the wall wardens to the west of here are said to have Demon's blood in their veins.  Perhaps a Wizard in their province no doubt summoned some monster out of hell and it bred, or captured a creature and grafted what they could onto their servants, giving them Demonic taint but the cunning and strength that comes along with that.

The spellcasters who break the Sorcerer King's decree and attempt to broker their own deal with the underworld face an unknown punishment.  When the offender's ghost is returned home for internment in their ancestral catacombs, the spirit of the late summoner is sobbing and wailing.  These tears last forever, echoing through the vaults of their dead until the end of time.