After the last god was destroyed, the various living participants were scattered all over the world; this event came to be known some time later as the Split. Some of them, after wandering around for a few days, found their way to this spot; a prime location to build a settlement. It was at the border of some expansive grasslands, a forest, and a line of mountains. The mountains promised minerals for a future economy, the forest was full of food (animals and plants), and had a river running through it that came from the mountain (extremely fresh, since it's so close to the source mountain, but low on fish), and the plains area provided an easy place to build houses and to raise animals.
Over a period of about a month, some scattered beings migrated slowly to this spot, and started from scratch. Some had their weapons, and could use them to shape wood (thankfully, a few dwarven warriors sporting waraxes had showed up), while others struggled to create even the simplest of tools; animal bones for sewing needles, sharp rocks (sharpened against other rocks) for knives to fletch arrows, etc. but the going was hard without any metallurgy. A couple of the more industrious dwarves eventually managed to collect a sample of decent-grade iron from the nearby mountains (it wasn't easy; it took over a year without decent tools), set themselves up a furnace using simple stone, mud (to seal the holes), charcoal, and a battle fan (borrowed from one of the more exotic fighters), and managed to eventually produce a workable blacksmith's hammer by shaping the metal with the one dwarven battlehammer available. From there, the settlement managed to produce all manner of other things, and within a couple years, they had some permanent structures, and could produce almost anything they needed.
It has been a hundred years since the Split; the town of Monsbaiya now features a small city hall, a blacksmith (run by the same dwarf who forged the town's first hammer, though he is getting old now), a clothiery, and some farms. Most of the original settlers (who were warriors, remember) had trouble settling down to 'country' life; a few managed to make a decent living as hunters, but most chose to be explorers, to document the area surrounding their new home. However, it isn't easy; the world is a very large place, after all. The first Monsbaiyan explorers tried to follow the river, in hopes of finding the ocean, which would be another prime location for a settlement (due to trade potential)... and returned three years later to report that the coastline is actually a series of cliffs for miles in either direction. The Lutra river crosses overland for a considerable distance, and ends in a waterfall into the ocean. Despite being wide enough to carry a trading vessel, the Lutra river will not bring trade to Monsbaiya. The next group to explore along the river brought a scholarly elf with them, who was knowledgeable in geography... he determined that the odd formation (a waterfall into the ocean) is an anomaly; after a decent length of time, erosion would surely have created a shallower incline from the high river to the ocean. Thus, concluded the scholar, this portion of the world has not been like this for long.
The explorers have also searched beyond the mountains. They came back within a few weeks, with disheartening news; the expanse of flatlands beyond is nigh unnavigable. There are no hills, no trees, no structures; without astronomy, navigation is impossible, and the art of navigating by stars is yet unreliable after the Split. The explorers also noticed, while crossing the mountains, some extremely subtle vibrations; the Monsbaiyan miners have begun to notice these too, but cannot determine anything except that they are coming from "downwards".
Of the original settlers of Monsbaiya, were a group of seven fire elves. Only one of them had participated in the actual war against the gods; the rest were noncombatants. They joined the other races in their efforts to build a settlement; the fire elves are not particularly suited to manual labor, however, and found themselves most useful as hunters and woodworkers.
Once the settlement had a decent production rate and the fire elves felt their future was secure, they turned some attention to repopulation. Six years after the Split, a fire elf boy was born.
The boy was a well-rounded kid; he had a head on his shoulders, and was quite athletic. Any children's game he played (the finnicky, short-lived humans had of course produced their own children by that point), he played with all his energy, until he nearly fell over from exhaustion. He was very quick compared to the human children, and he was even more agile than some of the high elven ones.
As he grew, the settlement grew too; the town was officially named Monsbaiya the same month he turned 24. However, he was never much good at helping to build things: he studied architecture from the elders (one of the high elves had been a particularly knowledgeable wizard before the Split), but he hadn't the strength to construct buildings. So, he built smaller things, and helped his town by setting traps for animals in the forest. By the time he turned 90, Loenae had learned quite a range of skills: he was athletic, he could make traps, he knew how to design a building, and he had even learned how to hide and steal from one of the high elves (though whenever he practiced stealing, he would always make sure to give the thing back and apologize).
However, he had become bored with his town. He wanted to be one of the explorers, and find another colony of survivors from the Split. So, he tried to learn weaponsmithing from Monsbaiya's smith-dwarf. He found, as with construction, the smithing was labor-intensive work, and he wasn't particularly well-built for it... but he was amazingly good at manipulating the temperature of the metal, making it cool at the appropriate rate, and he didn't suffer from the forge's heat as much as the dwarf did, and so he became the smith's apprentice for a few short years.
By the age of 94, he had forged himself a rapier (he had to pay the full price for it, as per the terms of his apprenticeship), bought himself some adventuring supplies, and chose his adult name: Loenae, elven for RiddleWhisper.
Whew! Man, was that writing-intensive or what. Anyway, that's my proposed starting location for our little group. Any chance we could use the proximity to the forest as "came from the region of the high forest", for purposes of qualifying for regional feats?
@Jervous: read
here. Traits are small bonus/penalty combos, and flaws are drawbacks that you can take to get a free feat.
My sheet is in
the same place, but with some adjustments... I'll change Combat Expertise out for Fleet of Foot if I can qualify for the region.
Author
Topic: Moar DnDs on the Interwebs (Back to Fridays\Sundays) (Read 88569 times)