User:Catuse167/Ascalon/worldbuilding

The continent of Ascalon is the main setting of several campaigns in the Halfput D&D group, most notably The Cycle of Helix and Spice and Warforged. Other tales, including The Flying Train of Gyro, Frederick's Blessing on this Wonderful World, The Heroes of Halfput and its many sequels, The Dungeon Starring Glenius Mortius and its sequels, and the planned The Irresistible Dance at Magic High School, are also set in the same world, though not all of them take place on Ascalon itself.

Ascalon is in the northern hemisphere, with the continent of Farglance (the setting of Blessing and Halfput) to the west, across the Essmar. In the southwest, across the Lovlos Sea, is the continent of Tortosa. Birb Island and Alpha Complex may or may not also be somewhere in this world, but most likely not. Further continents may be added as storytelling demands them.

The Age of Legends (c. 25000 Before the Plague-3000 BP) and Ancient History (3000 BP-700 BP)
Historians have found little evidence from this era, which is shrouded in myth. According to the predominant faith, the great Patron Deities were born not long after the first men, but the Great Storm and Fire purged the continent of life after man succumbed to the temptations of the gods of iron (meaning any deity not the nature goddess, Pamant, and the gods of gold (their own lusts and desires). The only survivors, on the archipelago of Black Mithril, slowly repopulated the continent millennia later. The Spring Century, as it was called, marked the end of the Age of Legends.

The earliest surviving settlements arose in the following millennia, as nomadic tribes settled and turned to agriculture. Man began to worship the Patron Deities at this time, and often converted each other by force.

The Age of Nation-States (700 BP-276 BP)
Modern nations began to form out of the tribes and religious factions that developed during the ancient period. As these nations struggled to establish themselves, man found that the greatest threat to them came not from the gods or from nature, but from each other, in the form of endless warfare.

As examples, the Ashbay War saw the city-state of Spanos conquer the southern watershed of Ashbay, and the Wars of Summer, the Vampiric Advance, and the Insuian Wars similarly saw the Tyrfing Archipelago, Arakelov, and Insuia unified behind strong kings who were able to use their manpower advantage to snowball small victories to repeated conquests.

Historians consider the Age of Nation-States to end with the Battle of the Three Races (near modern day Three Races' End, New Ascalon, Confederacy of Ash), the conclusion of the Civil War of Spanos. After the battle, the half-orc King Makorth I Kamemarsh ascended to the throne of Spanos. From this point on, Spanos would wage no more wars of national unification: it would rather march against factions of different cultures.

The Golden Age of Ascalon (276 BP-1 BP)
The name "Golden Age" may seem ironic in modern times, as the nobility that rose in the Age of Nation-States imposed a brutal feudalism that was the law of the land from Black Mithril to the Rising Sea, but in the dark century that followed, many felt nostalgic for the supposed good days of old, and the name has stuck. It may not even be as misleading as one would intuit, as historians identify three great advances of this era that the modern world would be unrecognizable without.

The first such advance was the notion of an empire. With its internal disputes quelled, Spanos faced a crisis. Without warfare, scholars of the era claimed, population growth would rapidly outstrip the food supply, for the bulk of the Ashbay watershed is infertile mountainside. To avert this end, Spanos waged conquest after conquest, both to restrict its own population growth and to seize arable land. At the same time, Serre, with its most fertile plains, persuaded its neighbors to join it by choice with the promise of prosperity, and thus its "vassals by choice" gave rise to the state known as the Friends of the Rising Sea.

The second advance was economic: the modern notions of trade and capital. Wealthy nobles in Anjou (modern Obeisance, Bradamante) realized that they could further increase their wealth by collectively investing in risky voyages. By 100 BP, feudalism had been abandoned near Anjou. Seeing the successes in the east, the kings of Insuia sought to implement similar reforms.

The final advance was technological: supposedly under the guidance of the god of science Helix Himself, a cult at Akadeos developed the technology to power the flying Free City of Gyro. Gyro's technology, which included a great army of Warforged and a force of airships, is in many ways a primitive attempt at a modern society.

The Golden Age ended after the Plague of Halfput, which had already ravaged Farglance (which soon after collapsed into the War of the Ravagers, a 10-year, continent-wide conflict), arrived in Insuia by ship, where it was called Shadowplague.

The tale of the Plague of Halfput is told in The Heroes of Halfput, and its aftermath is depicted in Down in Delmorev. The War of the Ravagers is depicted in The Ravagers of Rogan and The Last Dream of Roscoe Underborough, while its aftermath is depicted in Reclamation and its sequel, Deluge.

The Age of Empire (1 Year of Death-89 YD)
The Year of Death was so named because twenty percent of the population of Insuia, and at least fifteen percent in Ascalon as a whole, were killed by the Shadowplague. The calamity was particularly infamous in that it targeted nobility just the same as peasants, bringing about succession crises across the continent -- which Spanos was only too quick to exploit.

The treaty of Asbury ended a decade of war in Insuia, which had killed another thirty percent of the population. The state became a vassal, and the long-sought breadbasket, of Spanos, which reorganized into the Empire of Ascalon.

In the following decades, nearly half the continent joined the Empire, often by choice. Even as far away as Teichmueller, large-scale wars seemed impossible, as the Empire would quickly move in and take over, demanding massive tithes and repressing local religions.

The Empire finally overreached itself in the Divine War, an Empire-wide civil war about by an attempted assassination attempt on King Thorde II Raven of Insuia (widely believed to have been orchestrated by King Ramses II of Sanathalon, popularly known as Percy the Poet, but at the time blamed on Emperor Makorth X). The conflict is so called because many believe that the Patron Deities Themselves took part in the conflict, backing their favored nations: Pamant served Insuia and Thelalia, Helix backed Gyro, Migalo empowered Spanos and New Ascalon, and Lucia (who is not mentioned in any texts that predate the Divine War) supported Sanathalon.

The Divine War forever reshaped the western half of Ascalon, as Insuia declared independence, Thelalia was annexed by Gyro and turned into a capitalist "republic", the ruined state of Sanathalon was partitioned by Ferros (which took the name Poetsbane in a cruel mockery of its deceased leader) and New Ascalon, Lucia's worshipers were widely persecuted, Gyro was brought down from the skies and landed in Black Mithril, and an arbitration body, the League of Legends, was founded to prevent such backhandedness from starting another war of the same scale.

The tale of the Divine War is told in The Cycle of Helix, while some of the buildup to it is in The Flying Train of Gyro. Some of its consequences are explored in The Dungeon Starring Glenius Mortius, its sequel, Glenius Mortius' Dragons and Dungeons, and Frederick's Blessing on this Wonderful World.

The Age of Wisdom (89 YD-313 YD)
With the Empire of Ascalon defeated, modern forms of government were established. Combined with the rapid spread of technology due to the end of Gyro’s isolationism, and progress commenced at an unusually high rate. The transistor and the internal combustion engine, long taken for granted in the Free City, spread around the world. Though there were some growing pains (what is the use of a bus if there are no paved roads?) the greatly increased manpower -- for now not only Gyro's researchers were working on such technologies -- made resolving such logistical difficulties quite easy. Eventually the Emperor himself became obsolete, and was ultimately replaced by a chancellor and a president, both elected democratically. To celebrate this reform, the Empire was renamed the Confederacy of Ash, and Thelalia-Gyro willingly rejoined it.

The worst extremes of laissez-faire, however, saw workers toil miserably -- first in Thelalia, but eventually all across the continent -- as feudalism fell and was replaced with brutish factory labor. Many theorists proposed solutions, and many theorists were ignored. However, an extreme group known as the Future's Front, hoping to overthrow the old order and establish a collective, automaton-labored utopia, was founded in Arakelov in 205 YD.

Arakelov, Vakil, and Nochi reformed themselves as the Triple Alliance in an attempt to contain the Front, and were able to do so until 299 YD, the beginning of the so-called Futuristic Revolution. Nearly every government on the continent allied against the Revolution, and Teichmueller was able to use its wartime influence to bully its neighboring states to join it in a hegemon known as Ame no Murakami.

After seemingly endless battles, atrocities, and outbreaks of disease, the Ceasefire of the Vakil Mountains in 313 YD brought a close to the Futuristic Revolution. The Future's Front held the area around Anjou, which they named the Glorious Republic of Bradamante. It is a cruel irony that the scions of the Revolution, the people of Bradamante, have the lowest standard of living of any people on the continent, as technological advances eventually lowered the necessary workload for survival anyways.

The Cold War (313 YD-present)
For the first time since 276 BP, Spanos or one of its successor states was not the sole center of power on the continent: by 319 YD, Ame no Murakami had a larger population, a larger military (complete with a unit of four million undead), and a higher standard of living. The two great empires imposed blockades and tariffs upon each, desperate to contain the other's power. When this proved insufficient, they built up their militaries further and spared no expense in outmatching each other's technologies.

A heroic attempt at running the blockade is depicted in Spice and Warforged, and its aftermath may be depicted in the planned sequel, The Irresistible Dance at Magic High School.

Thelalia-Gyro
Thelalia-Gyro consists of the northwestern part of the continent, as well as the island chain of Black Mithril.

Insular Thelalia, defined to be the region between the Thelalia River, the Consumnes River, the River of Ash, and the Adamant Mountains, consists largely of metropoli, in particular Virtuoso, Rioso, and Thelalia, built over what was once swampland. Within Virtuoso is the former royal palace of Thelalia, the Granite Sepulcher. West of insular Thelalia is Pamant's Domain, the holy place of the faith of Pamant, overseen by a Council of the Elder Druids.

North of insular Thelalia are the Adamant Mountains, which are not terribly high, but bitterly cold. The cities of Enki, Inana, and Enlil are here, but outside of them this land is largely uninhabited.

South of insular Thelalia is the Consumnes Riverlands, the heart of the former state of Insuia. The cities of Nuthalia, Ifshin, Pyramid, and Asbury continue the greater Thelalia metropolis; Asbury ends at the Descent, a great waterfall and a popular site for suicide. Asbury also boasts the Insuian Institute of Mathematics, the finest research university of mathematics in the world.

Further south still are the Southern Marches, and the ancient cities of Henshaw and Livingstone. Though strategically important in wars past, this region is now scarcely populated, save for a great city of kobolds beneath Livingstone.

Beyond the Southern Marches is the northern watershed of Ashbay, which was largely razed in the Divine War and was never truly rebuilt; it remains farmland to this day. The Last Colony, an island on Ashbay, is technically territory of Thelalia-Gyro.

To the west of the mainland is Black Mithril, a jagged series of islands that harbor the increasingly misleadingly named Free City of Gyro. The islands are named for the precious resource of coal, which was once found in abundance there.

New Ascalon
The northern reaches of New Ascalon are known as the Prince's Icechest, after an Imperial prince who sought to conquer them, only to learn that there was nothing of value there but ice. Nonetheless, he set up his capital, New Spanos, there, and dared all the land to try to conquer it. Indeed, New Spanos was burned twice, first in the Divine War and again in the Futuristic Revolution, and both times the invading army was ruined.

Though New Ascalon is largely uninhabited, the historically important cities of Civilization's End and Three Races' End are near the Spanosi border. Further south, through some hundred miles of forest, is the Ancient Desert of Sanathalon, and its canal-fed, jeweled city of Ozymandias, now renowned for its famous hotel, the Palace of the Lots, which is led up by great pillars of salt. Nearby is Nox's Family, the only place in the Confederacy where worship of Lucia is socially acceptable.

East in the forest is Carteneau, a trading post turned military base, which is armed to the teeth to stand against Base Meriele.

The Disputed Territories
Though neither the Confederacy nor Murakami can agree whose has the right to the disputed territories of Chaorkartel and Hurthi, neither are in the control of either state; both are draconic cities built of great stone pillars extending hundreds of mortal stories in the sky, inhabited by kobolds, dragonborn, lizardfolk, and occasionally even dragons.

District Arakelov
Across the border from New Ascalon is District Arakelov of the Eternal Night.

District Arakelov is bitter cold, and its northern reaches can see as many as 16 hours of night in the winter. This, combined with the partial vampirism that is common in the upper class there, makes the district perfect for necromancy research, and other "dark" magic and science. Most such research is carried out at Base Pie in the north, with some of the more preternatural study at the Hodge Theatre, on the border with the magical District Mochizuki, and more accessible work at the Center for the Advancement of Necromancy in Arakelov itself. Many young people have moved to Arakelov in recent years to advance their careers. Much of the undead Murakaman army is stored in Base Meriele, just across the Closure from Bradamante, and just a heavily fortified border crossing away from Carteneau.

District Arakelov boasts the only predominantly vampire city, Dawn and Dusk.

District Mochizuki
Of all Murakami, District Mochizuki has the least population, at only 200,000, and the smallest geographic size. The weather isn't quite as inhospitable as District Arakelov's, but bizarre magical and spiritual, possibly even demonic, phenomena are eternally present. Monsters roam, and even the trees and storms seem to speak. Across the waters, across the Bridge Mortals Don't Cross, are the tiefling shrines of the Scarlet Devil Hell. Another holy site, for a now long-forgotten faith, is the Tomboy-in-Love's Palace, which is believed by many to be haunted. The only true city of District Mochizuki is Mochizuki itself, on the border of District Yamashita, where all but 20,000 of the district's residents live. Near the Hodgetheatre is the best school of magic in Ascalon, the Makoto Academy for the Magically Gifted. Most of District Mochizuki is tundra, but close to the southern border are the Hodge Mountains.

District Yamashita
The least densely populated district, District Yamashita consists of Yamashita itself, a forgettable suburb of Mochizuki, and hundreds of square miles of mines, lakes, and untamed wilderness, consisting of the Hodge Mountains in the west, forest in the center, and farmland surrounding the eastern fort of Base Morgan. District Yamashita is surrounded by District Mochizuki in the north and east, Districts Teichmueller and Serre in the west, and Faust in the south. The resources gathered here are fed to the factories of Keion, just across the border in District Serre.

District Teichmueller
The central, capital, and most heavily populated district of Murakami at 21 million residents, District Teichmuller is largely city surrounded by farmland.

The center of Teichmueller is Teichmueller Centre, a massive governmental and military structure, which is surrounded by the multi-layered cities of Teichmueller I, Teichmueller II, and Teichmueller III. The Teichmuller Ns are high-tech cities with large scale public transit and health infrastructure, to support the estimated 15 million people living in the metropolis. Though many are nobles, government officials, technologists, mages, generals, and wealthy businessmen, there is also a vast underclass, though this has lessened in recent years.

Other cities in District Teichmeuller include Midare Setsugekka, on the border with District Arakelov, and Ten Chi Jin, on the border with District Serre. A bullet train connects the two cities to the Centre, and many supercommuters who cannot afford to live in the capital live in the outskirts.

District Serre
District Serre is the largest district, and the second-most-heavily populated, after District Teichmueller.

Because of its massive watershed, District Serre has a large agricultural and culinary industry, but most of its economy is maritime, based out of the cities of Futaba, Serre, and Nami. Futaba is the home of the Tanmari, a grand state-owned casino resort and a large source of its income. Nami is buried in swampland, and many fear that if the seas rise, it will be swallowed.

The inland cities of Kaminowa, Makoto, and Sai, are hubs of art, philosophy, and science, but each are surrounded by farmland for hundreds of miles. Fujiwara and Nochi are somewhat less cultured, and are in fact largely just agricultural trading centers. The city of Keion, on the borders of Districts Teichmueller and Yamashita, is a business hub, where technologists process the raw materials obtained from the north.

District Grothendieck
The island district, consisting of an volcanic island chain controlled by Murakami in the Rising Sea, the equatorial sea a hundred miles south of Faust and District Serre.

District Grothendieck, especially its capital, the Great Isle Grothendieck, is a major tourist destination, being sunny and cheerful year-round. Smaller islands include Riemann, which is known for its beaches and wildlife, and Roch, which is known for its nightclubs. However, from the point of view of Teichmueller Centre, the true purpose of District Grothendieck is to provide a barrier between international waters and airspace and District Serre, where incoming ships can be stopped and inspected.

District Vakil
District Vakil is rainy, mountainous, and lonely, with most of its population living by the sea in the cities of Vakil and Miou. There are dwarven fortresses in the northern mountains, though. Vakil and Miou are somewhat isolated from the rest of Murakami, because of the lack of good roads to District Serre; any large-scale transportation must be done by airship. Culturally, the Lonely Cities are moderately conservative and nationalistic, owing to their military significance. The largest warm-water aquarium in the continent is in Vakil.

Base Glenius is the hub of Murakami's missile armada, always trained on the Confederacy, and the first line of defense against a Confederate aerial attack. The border town of Kansai serves as a barrier keeping out pesky immigrants from the Tyrfing city of Zoroaster, just five miles away.

The Glorious Republic of Bradamante
At one point, one could describe the geography of Bradamante accurately. This is now impossible; nobody who enters this tyrannical state ever returns. It is at least known that the Glorious Republic has at least two cities, Obeisance and Solidarity.

Tyrfing
Tyrfing consists of two strips of mainland as well as an island chain in the Sea Lovlos that separates them. Not as well-developed as the Confederacy or Murakami, Tyrfing has a weak government and unstable economy. Without effective law enforcement, piracy and smuggling are quite common. Dueling and other martial arts are legal, common, and often lethal.

The northern strip of mainland consists largely of lowlands in the west, centered around the city of Drague, the prime destination for aquatic sports, plateau in the center, and beaches and tropical forests in the east. The resort town of Ebbe is in the south, while the city of Zoroaster lies on the border of District Vakil, separated from Kansai by a great wall. Atop the Plateau Elugi is the capital, Kveldurf, riot-prone and ever bloodied.

In spite of modern cartography and the region's strategic importance, the Tyrfing Archipelago is poorly documented, as the power structure frequently changes, and possibly so does the geography.

Known islands of interest include the Island of the Ancients, or Iota, a center of piracy, and Isle Valo, the center of the Lucian faith. The most prestigious tournament for duelists takes place on the Symmetric Island Group.

Poetsbane
Poetsbane consists of three regions: the coastal lowlands, which are peppered with many small cities, each of their own character, the Cast-iron Mountains, which have been stripped dry by mining operations and abandoned, and the Ancient Desert.

Some of the larger cities in the lowlands are the Courtroom, believed to the holy place of the god Jantar, Trammel, Sollie, Laforge (the center of Confederate mass media, especially television), and Le (home of the Confederate Center for the Political Sciences). Similar to Teichmueller and Thelalia, it is perhaps wiser to think of the region as an entire metropolis, and each of the individual cities as merely neighborhoods.

The Ancient Desert has recently seen its population increase fivefold, as many young people have moved to Tutankhamen, where many video games are developed, with the intention of becoming streamers. However, given the original size of Tutankhamen, a fivefold increase is not nearly as impressive as it sounds, but still sufficient for the city to appear on many maps of the continent as a whole.

Across the dunes is the Inferno, a magical fire that never halts. It is believed to be the holy place of Armal, but so few people actually believe in Armal that this is doubtful.

Heavensfire
Heavensfire is an island off the coast of Poetsbane which was once entirely tropical jungle. Since humans have moved in, however, it has turned into a hopelessly expensive beach city, with undeveloped land now taking up less than a third of the island.

On the beach is the Moonstone Renaissance, the single most prestigious hotel on the continent, whose walls glow black and grey. Heavensfire is also a popular restocking point for ships sailing east from Farglance.

Topos
Topos, a city surrounded by desert created by Akadeoshi experiments gone awry, is the capital of the Confederacy. It is a circular city built in sets of rings of high-rise buildings around the Limitless Tower, the home and office of the President of Ash, Jan Steel, and the Chancellor of the Confederacy, Walter Woodin. Not far away is the Stellation, which oversees the defense and research budgets of the government.

A vast underworld exists in Topos, in spite of the semblance of law and order around the Limitless Tower.

Oghillos
Oghillos is less a city and more a port which, for reasons not understood by political scientists, was assigned its own state by the Confederate government. Outside of the port is more of the Akadeoshi desert and the unarable mountain chain known as the Highwaste.

Aguos
Aguos is the center of the Confederate navy, a great port and maritime city which dwarfs Oghillos. Many a romantic novel has been written about the heroic sailors of Aguos.

Aguos is surrounded by the Tongs, the delta of the southern Ashbay watershed, and the Highwaste. Atop the Highwaste is Maritos, a city that has long prospered on hiring out its young as mercenaries. But now that war has turned cold, Maritos' purpose has been lost, and most of its residents have moved downhill.

Akadeos
Akadeos is a city surrounded by desert of its own creation. A Confederate analogue to the Hodgetheatre, Akadeos is the home of Confederate magitek research, especially into the creation of Warforged and the transfer of cardinality. Its most important contributions, historically, were the building of Gyro and the summoning of demonic armies for the Empire. Akadeos consists of buildings that have been burned down in accidents so many times the blackened structures are often reused to create their replacements -- so the whole city appears covered in ash and sand.

Spanos
Wedged between the River of Ash, the River of Blood, and the holy of Migalo, the Warrior's Woods, Spanos is a city built of brick that for centuries was the epicenter of Ascalon. Still, great palaces, barracks, roads, and arenas stand, largely unused.

The local government of Spanos is widely believed to be controlled by organized criminals. Still, it is a popular tourist destination because of its historical significance. Topos has considered sending a special military division to replace the Spanosi government by force, because far too many tourists have been killed after wandering into "off-limits" parts of the ancient cities.