The Tides' history is broken into five ages:
A brief history: Like all dragons in his remote desert-based city-state and its neighbors, Kolek was originally a powerful human wizard. When he learned of distant lands with simpler magics and easier life, he sought to conquer them, but he soon found himself out-classed in waterbourne warfare. The pursuing navy was caught in his escape spell, which was mangled by their countering magic, and both armies were brought to a new land filled with comparably primitive peoples. The dragon began to enslave the natives and build a new empire, while the naval commander, easily the inferior on land, prepared a counter-offensive to free the people. After an epic war, the influences of the two warring cultures on the previously isolated cultures led to an interesting blend of cultures and technology both old and new. Each native people has an ancient home, predominantly inhabited by a single race, though there are many multi-racial cities elsewhere, especially in the Free River Valley.
There are other lands very distant from Tergie. While magic exists within a fair range of any of these continents, neither arcane magic nor even the will of the gods holds much power as you are removed from their sources. Tergie's history was largely shaped by visitors from other lands; a being of chaos (Seph), an immortal (Deonne), a dragon (Kolek), and a privateer (The Mystic).
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This age was heralded by the Coming of Seph. Seph was an outsider, thought to have been brought forth from another place of existance. He was supposedly a being wrought of pure chaos, entering the Tergan lands to bring about change, and with it, dynamic societies and an unpredictability to life that makes it worth living. Seph and his teachings directly contrasted with the other gods, and his followers' embrace of open-mindedness and change fuelled many a debate. Of course, with debates comes disagreement, and with such an advent, coupled with the overreactions of the other gods, war.
Seph introduced the gnolls to the regions surrounding the Dammoo Sedeb at the far end of the Intsnef Canyon. As the gnolls integrated into human and lizardfolk societies, many of the latter engaged in more intimate relations. Lizardfolk-gnoll offspring started to become common, and soon the Slazzill lands were home to both lizardfolk and their half-gnoll children, the kobolds.
Once war between the Canyon and Wetlands had begun, the sparse tribes of birdmen who lived between them found themselves either attacked and enslaved or actively recruited. As their primary god was the same as that of the humans, they eventually united the tribes and integrated into the Canyon's culture. As loyalty was of tantamount importance, and since the birdmen's capacity to fly was so useful to the canyonside cities (not to mention in performing raids into Slazzill), the birdmen quickly found themselves of equal or even greater standing in the human cities they had just joined.
Just beyond the densely populated dwarven regions of the Amdur Plateau, the catfolk started showing up. As more passive followers of Seph, the catfolk found acceptance with the dwarves and there was peace for many years, until it was revealed that they had been raiding the kreenlands, and that their god was responsible for the wars between the humans, lizardfolk, and gnolls. With tensions growing uneasy after this discovery, the Plateau was also pulled into the great war.
The non-religous kreen were not left undisturbed, either. Gnoll raiders constantly attacked kreen tribal territories, pushing them all the way downflow to the Continential Gap and beyond it into the Dimpka Savannahs before they organized enough to push back. Catfolk had also been crossing the Strait and raiding kreen camps on the other side of the Savannahs.
Two concessions came from the Great War. First, the gods agreed to never step foot on mortal lands. The second was an exchange of champions to accomodate Seph's need for intermingling and to set an uneasy cease-fire. Although there was still much by way of political manuevering, and several returns to full-scale war, this eventually led to a peace between the peoples.
Near the end of the Great War, the gods' champions, who had been traded between sponsors and peoples, advanced to become gods themselves. With this advancement, they started to form their own agendas. While these agendas initially resembled a return to an age of warfare, they eventually settled down and embraced peace. This began the Golden Age.
The golden age saw trade flourish, and with it, ideas and culture. Art and literature thrived, growing to new highs.
The Pelmilay, an underground-dwelling people who met and befriended the dwarves during the last age but refused to participate in the war, began to trade with the dwarves, learning dwarven metallurgy in exchange for mining and gemcutting techniques. The relationship was so strong that half-pelmilay/half-dwarf people, called peluman, came to be commonplace within dwarven societies. The pelimlay themselves are blind and dependent on an environment rich with Intsnef radiation. They lack fingers and toes on their hands and feet, instead relying upon their trunks for most activities.
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This world is a rather large modification of Dungeons and Dragons and has influences from non-D&D sources like Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. In this sense, it has evolved beyond the 3rd Edition scope of "Campaign World/Setting" into another d20 fantasy role-playing game. Basalt Tides contains new races, classes, system of magic, and history. The physics of this world are especially removed from those of real life, inspired by the Ancient Egyptian mythological cosmology and, of course, my imagination.
Before rewrite: RiverStrong's history in one sentence! Athasian sorceror-king uses powerful spell that transports his city to the Dragon Isles off Cerilia's Masetian/Khinasi coast, brews for a while, caught with pants down while sending an army to conquer Cerilia, hastily flees to random world more like his own (this one), followed by the band of pirates who stopped him, brew brew brew, war between Athasians and Cerilians trashes this Bronze Age world, freed slaves and natives rebuild world.
All content copyright © 2003-08 by Adam Katz unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Page last updated Sat Nov 29 15:15:46 2008.