The Land of Echoes

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Around the wide, wide sea, a land of whispers sleeps. Tall mountains touch the sky, forests hum with secrets, and golden deserts stretch far, far away. In the heart of it all, a shining city dreams of magic, while old stories dance in the wind. […] This is the Land of Echoes.

— From Stories Dancing on the Wind (Gestalt’s Children’s book)

The Land of Echoes is a world that’s big enough to allow players to create pockets of their own design without breaking the wider world, but thematic enough for a GM to invent components on-the-fly.

The World

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Geography

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Before the Sforzo, the world was divided into five main regions, roughly oriented on the cardinal axes, with one being in the middle.

• North: tall mountains with small settlements protected by monasteries.
• East: Big, unstable kingdoms in constant competition and unstable borders.
• South: Forest spreading over several climates; going south it goes from a temperate climate to an increasingly tropical jungle.
• West: A massive desert with sparse settlements, with the occasional caravan.
• Center: A massive sea with an archipelago of islands bound by the Gestalt, a peaceful empire.

Society

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While the behavior of eccentric and powerful beings is mostly character driven, most people behave as their environment allows them to.

Gestalt

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In the heart of the Gestalt, technology derived from the arcane studies of the supernatural allows people to lead relatively comfortable lives. They might have day jobs and stable incomes. Corporate structures may also emerge, especially in larger cities. Are they always kept in check, however?

East

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In the east, instability leads to more insular communities linked by ever-changing commercial routes: you can’t rely on help coming from the Kingdom, but you can expect their tax collectors to come by, regardless of who it is that controls your town’s territory, for now. People may work the land, trade, or be drafted into a local army, often unwillingly.

North

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In the north, it’s geography that insulates communities from the outside world. Unlike the East, this isolation manifests itself in the lack of trade rather than in local independence: people tend to specialise more, as there’s a stronger sense of broader community within villages, valleys and monasteries. People lead generally tough lives, but in a much less gruelling fashion than those living in the East.

West

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In the West, what little civilisation is present is geared towards commerce: people hold caravan points around oases or lead caravans through the scorching heat of the desert. Some people try to make self-sufficient settlements with varying degrees of success. The conditions make forming bases for gangs hard, but make their attacks on caravans and settlements all the more deadly.

South

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In the south, the sprawling forest stumps the growth of large cities far from bodies of water. There’s a thriving network of commerce in the larger cities, commonly built along riverbanks. People’s livelihoods in cities are strongly linked to trade, as often they lack the agricultural development to sustain themselves. In smaller settlements, the relationship with the forest is much tighter. Often with the help of druid circles nested deep within the woods, villagers will forage what food they need and trade what excesses they have with the bigger cities in exchange for materials

Supernatural

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The supernatural world in the Land of Echoes reflects its inhabitants. This meant that during the time of Elves, the supernatural (and by extension Nature) turned particularly hierarchical. Over centuries, with the shift in societies, so shifted the nature of the supernatural order. More fragmented societies led to the decay of powerful Gods, paving the way for smaller, local entities to gain traction amongst small communities. It’s not uncommon for towns and villages to be founded around particularly old trees, for which they care for in exchange for boons and protection.

The actions of the inhabitants of the world leave echoes that reverberate through the thread of the supernatural. They have a local effect that weakens as they move farther away. In the same way, events affecting the supernatural world leave echoes in the world. This is how magic works. Different traditions of magic target different domains within the supernatural thread.

The Sforzo

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For reasons unknown to the general public, the relationship between the natural and supernatural heighten during a time that would later come to be known as the Sforzo. Some attribute it to a failed magical experiment, some to the ire of old, forgotten Gods, but none can be sure as per what is true and what is fantasy.

The effects of the event were catastrophic and varied for each region. Remember that as the GM, you hold the freedom to change these events to better fit the tone of your campaign. This is what is going to be used for my posts, but history after the Sforzo is yours to write, so it’s of little impact if you deviate here:

• In the East, an epidemic cleaved through the population, leading to the weakening of most of the main kingdoms and the rise of local lords.
• In the North, quakes shake the earth, as the mountains grow taller.
• In the South, forest fires quelled by violent storms become increasingly common, stretching the druid’s thinner and thinner resources.
• In the West, life begins to flourish in the oases; cities expand, people migrate into the desert, rapidly transforming it into a hub of growth and prosperity.
• In the Central Sea nothing seemingly changed, but the Gestalt closed off, recalling many of its ambassadors to the other powers in the Land of Echoes.

Supernatural Forces

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Deities

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The Pantheon is vast. Divinities exist, but are of different nature than in other settings. Pharasma is not an inherently powerful entity, but is powerful insofar as many people worship her. As a matter of fact, Pharasma is no entity at all. It’s simply a large thread within the tapestry of the supernatural. Gods in this setting are results of large-scale worship of the same spirit, concept or supernatural entity.

Belief in Gods as powerful sentient entities is still present within the world. Some monasteries might venerate Irori, for example. (note for GMs. You can and are encouraged to take the examples of Pharasma and Irori as just that: examples. They are from the Golaron pantheon as I, the writer, used the Gloaron pantheon to not have to invent a lot of deities in my home game. If you are used to another setting, just use its Pantheon. Or invent your own!)

This system is incredibly flexible. For example, it’s possible to have a local monotheistic system if an entity or concept receives sufficiently geographically concentrated veneration or power, as it’s local influence over that area’s thread will be massive enough to mostly overpower that of other entities, making its own domains “dominate” over all others. An example might be a powerful necromancer lending its power to the domain of Death over a region in order to weaken the grip of other domains over that area. For example, it might enfeeble the domain of Nature to prevent plants from regrowing. Another example might be a white dragon wandering too far south, venturing in too warm a place for his comfort and inadvertently bringing an early winter into an area.

Domains

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The world has a partially animist structure based on Domains, formed by the alignment of the power of many supernatural entities. Particularly powerful entities may hold control over some of these domains, becoming de facto “main” deities.

Nature

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One of the most influential domains is the domain of Nature. It’s present in the daily life of most inhabitants of the continent and is largely venerated in the Southern forest. Being wholly unaligned, there’s many interpretations of the behavior of Nature within the world: is it benign? Cruel? Indifferent? Some believe it to be devoid of any and all intention, being comprised entirely of the sum of all “natural” things. Its supposed manifestations are hardly explicit, much like those of the Gods that some particularly powerful clerics purport to have spoken to. At the same time, they’re slower, larger, less immediately visible; arguably more powerful. Some people believe the Sforzo to be a rebellion from Nature itself. This notion is especially common in the South, where the struggle of fires and storms makes the manifestation of Nature’s suffering an all-to-imminent threat to the populace.

Magic

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Magic counts amongst its followers the worshippers of Nethys, along those who don’t believe him to be the source of all magic, but just a very gifted wizard. There’s scriptures and tomes supporting either version of the facts. The distinction between the two groups of scholars isn’t in their respect for Nethys’s power, but in the reverence the latter group holds for the weave of magic itself. This practice is especially common in the Gestalt’s core.

The Sforzo

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The Sforzo is the great mystery of the Land of Echoes, and it’s for the GM to flesh out in particular. Here’s two options I personally find to be very thematically fitting:

• The Sforzo is a breaking point in the overall thread of the supernatural, where the echo of the actions of creatures within the world is greatly amplified. This leads the world to get more hostile in places inhabited by hostile societies, mountains to rise where isolationists are dominant. Monsters to breed and spawn where evil forces corrupt society. Or yet, nature to flourish where collaboration leads to prosperity (which is how I’m personally ruling the Western desert in my current game)

• The Sforzo is a breaking point in specific domains that are particularly powerful in certain regions. Such as Nature in the South, or that of Magic in the Gestalt. This leads to an alteration in how the Domains respond to the behavior of their inhabitants.

Notice these aren’t mutually exclusive. Mix and match until you reach a thematically fitting apocalypse for the story you’re trying to tell. The Sforzo is supposed to be a mystery. It can be bold, noticeable and powerful as I’ve made it in these examples, or it can be more subtle. For example:

• As time goes on, life seems to run shorter for people who seek to live it to the fullest. It begins slowly, with kings, adventurers and travelling merchants seemingly dying at young ages for “natural causes”. Is it just the stress of a hard job, or is there something more to it?

Cults

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There’s many cults within the world. Here’s some examples.

Cult of the Elves

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The followers of the cult of Elves believe that the Elder races’ longevity makes them innately better rulers, and long for the return of the long fallen massive Elven empire.

This is common in areas closest to mighty-looking elven ruins.

Only millenary wisdom can be granted to be at the helm of our world

Cult of Sacrifice

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The members of the Cult of Sacrifice believe that the only road towards enlightenment is Sacrifice. This may come in the form of sacrificing others, one’s self, or parts of one’s body or mind. Its members can grow to become fearsome monks.

This is most common in poor communities, where people might seek meaning in the suffering they already feel. Members might join after losing a loved one, for example, trying to assign a meaning of sacrifice to the loss.

Languages

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Each region has its native language, even though most people speak Common. Each region’s common differs slightly depending on their native language. Common is a de facto lingua franca. There is such a thing as a “Gestaltian” accent, for example. You can pick any language family for each region, but here’s what I’m rolling with:

• Central Archipelago: Swahili
• Northern Mountains: Quechua
• Western Desert: Thai
• Eastern Plains: Slavic

You can obviously get more granular, and I might do so in follow-ups. Personally I like using far-away languages, as it gives a sense of scale to the world, and it allows for interesting linguistic puzzles as you might have to translate ancient texts found in different regions.

Notes

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This is obviously not a finished world or setting. This is the basic structure I’m building on, and I’ll keep posting addenda as I keep going. Hopefully something interesting comes out of it, and if it doesn’t… maybe someone else can use it to make something worthwhile :3

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