Introduction to Alliance Videa

ZeroDonavan

Rogue
Owner
New Hampshire Staff
The Game

Alliance Videa is a campaign set in a land sometimes referred to as the “Shattered Realms”. This land is heavily blanketed by the Mists that have isolated cultures from each other since time immemorial. The Mists not only separate the Shattered Realms from the other lands of Fortannis, but also the Realms from each other. Gameplay is primarily located in the Realm of Videa, one of several Realms that has survived and developed since the Mists divided the land at large. The Realm of Videa, comprised of the human Kingdom of Videa and neighboring cultures in the Outlands, is protected by a magical barrier that holds the Mists at bay and destroys anything that passes into Videa. However, on a regular and predictable basis, the barrier disappears. During this time the mortal denizens of Videa are forced to defend themselves from the horrors that attack from the Mists.


The Mists hold more than simply monstrous threats, though. It also harbors the ruins of ancient civilizations, lost knowledge, and forgotten treasure. For those brave enough to travel through the Mists, lucky explorers may reach other Realms that have spent millennia in near seclusion. Thanks largely in part to a Videan group known as the Caligonauts, the Realms have started to connect with each other once more. With limited resources, various Realms have begun to form hesitant alliances with one another, sending representatives and diplomats through the Mists. Adventurers brave the dangers that wait for them outside the safety of the Realms. A new age of exploration has begun.


Themes

Alliance Videa is a campaign focused on exploration and discovery with horror elements. Players can expect to make difficult choices that will shape a world where many different cultures are interacting with each other in meaningful ways for the first time. How these cultures fare and what lost knowledge is reclaimed will be largely based on how the players interact with the world. Come and take your part in discovering and redefining the “Shattered Realms.”


Before the Mists

The Shattered Realms used to be a group of continents bound by trade and alliances. Everything changed drastically when the Mists came. The Mists spread across and enveloped large portions of both the land and seas, making many areas uninhabitable and travel routes impassable. Entire civilizations fell, their settlements consumed by the Mists, with their populations thinned and scattered. Historians and scholars speculate on what may have caused the Mists to overtake the continents, but no one knows for certain. Even the longest living races do not remember the specifics of the events that devastated the land. The population of these lands fled to where the Mists could not touch, and these protected areas became known as the Realms.



The Mists

With the Mists came monsters previously unknown to the denizens of the Shattered Realms. These terrible new beasts all share an ability to hunt easily in the Mists and were especially drawn to large groups of people. This made travel through the Mists incredibly dangerous. Even people within their Realms were not completely safe, as the monsters from the Mists would still pour forth.


Once the Mists spread across the land, reliable travel became nearly impossible. A well travelled road might lead somewhere completely unexpected. Messages sent between allied kingdoms were never received. Goods would be lost on the way from farms and mining encampments before ever reaching market. Entering the Mists typically led to becoming lost, and one might even count themselves lucky to ever return home. As the Mists began to permeate the cities and villages, even people on the street or in their homes would vanish. Slowly each country, and every city within, became isolated from the rest of the world by the surrounding Mists. Settlements that were engulfed wholly by the Mists were destroyed. In time, even the most stalwart of fortresses fell.


Though the majority of the population died in this cataclysm, those that found refuge where the Mists could not reach survived. Since the Mists were unable to enter into these lands, the refugees who made home here only had to worry about repelling the beasts that came out of the Mists. Thus these settlements developed into the Realms that exist today, isolated but alive.


The World Today


For centuries, those who found refuge from the Mists and its horrors waited for the day that the the Mists would recede. While building new lives for themselves, they hoped for their lands to be restored, but that recovery never came. Over the millennia since the massive destruction wrought by the Mists, details of past civilizations and cultures have been lost. As centuries passed with no sign that the Mists would depart, refugee settlements grew into permanent towns with new cultures and traditions. By the present day, even the long lived races such as Biata and Chaosborn have forgotten the nations of their ancestors and even their own pasts. Some still have enough knowledge to be aware that there are ruins of ancient cities, holding hidden gems of treasure and lore, waiting out in the embrace of the Mists. Few are willing to seek them and face the dangers within.


The “Shattered Realms” as an encompassing name for the formerly united lands is a misnomer and the name has been almost entirely lost to history. Most people only know of the Realm where they live. Other Realms are as separate and distant through the Mists as an entirely different continent. These Realms have been cut off from one another for so long that the concept of them being part of the same land is unimaginable.


Ages of isolation have passed with few travelers brave or foolish enough to venture through the Mists. These few interactions have maintained the knowledge in most Realms that there are other places that exist safe from the Mists. More studied travelers may even realize there is a shared cultural memory of a long-ago great cataclysm. Until recently, however, the passage of sparse travelers did nothing to connect the Realms in a noteworthy manner. Only within the past year have various Realms begun to interact with each other on a larger scale and become more aware that other Realms are accessible.


It is during this time of great change that our campaign begins.
 
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