The World of Amalthea

---

The basic assumptions of Amalthea differ significantly from vanilla Pathfinder. Here are a few tips to get you started.    

Steampunk Fantasy

Amalthea possesses a distinct period aesthetic. While the genre remains largely the pulp heroic adventure familiar to most Pathfinder players, the world is also set in an industrial age. Characters have attitudes and philosophies more in line with the 19th to early 20th century, than the Medieval-Renaissance assumptions of most high fantasy. Furthermore, nothing is static in the world of Amalthea, as factions and ideologies vie for influence through conflict and intrigue. Revolutions, both technological and political, are just around the corner.    

The Cycles of Magic

On Amalthea, the strength of magic waxes and wanes every thousand years, and history is defined by this cycle. The First Light saw the ancient empires of giants, dragons, nagas, and elves, followed by their cataclysmic fall in the First Darkness. The Second Light gave rise to the great civilizations of humanity and other common mortals, which ended in another millennia of warfare and decline in the Second Darkness. The Third Light was a glorious testament of mortalkind’s mastery over the world and its magic, defined in its final century by the arcane industries supporting every major power. But that too has passed. The world has just entered its Third Darkness, a dark age rendered nearly apocalyptic by the betrayal of Grand Inquisitor Abrazan Koss and the incursion of aberrant horrors from beyond the known cosmos. And no one is quite ready for it.    

Heroism Shines in the Dark

The overall narrative tone of Amalthea is one of dark romantic fantasy, with a heavy dose of gothic and Lovecraftian horror. Amalthea is a grim world besieged by eldritch evils and ruled by uncaring leaders more concerned with their own power than the fate of mortalkind. The wondrous, fairytale-like magic of old has gone into hiding, while the newer magic of faith and industry is quickly running dry. But hope is not lost; it is up to you, the player characters, to be the heroes this world needs.    

Religion is Complicated

Unlike in most fantasy settings, concepts of divinity, faith, and the afterlife are subject to heated theological debate. While the gods and divine magic unambiguously exist, it’s left up to interpretation what they truly are. It is commonly accepted that the Elder Gods are the genius loci of their respective planes, and the Ascendant Gods are saintly mortals or outsiders transformed through collective faith. However, as incomprehensibly powerful forces of the cosmos, there’s seldom agreement on the exact natures of these beings, and many reject the dogma of the Sybilite Church in favor of esoteric (some say heretical) interpretations. Furthermore, barring the most powerful servitors to the gods who are guaranteed a place beside their deity, no one is quite certain where their soul ends up after death. Beliefs in a planar afterlife, reincarnation, journey to somewhere beyond, or mere oblivion are all quite common. Safe to say, there is no objective answer to the greatest questions of the cosmos.    

Moral and Cultural Nuance

Among playable humanoids, no race exists in a monoculture, whether good or evil. Conventionally “evil” races like orcs or drow are just people like anyone else, with diverse outlooks and habits. Most humanoid enemies faced by player characters are defined by membership in evil organizations, such as crime syndicates, cults, and oppressive regimes, rather than by their race or culture alone. While xenophobic tribes and nations exist in isolation, most places see many local races mingle, and individual identities are borne equally of species and nationality. Prejudice among humanoids is just that: prejudice. You can roleplay a racist, and plenty of people might even agree with you in-character; but know that your bigotry is not justified by lore.   This is contrasted by the inhuman monsters adventurers face: horrific aberrations, ravenous undead, bloodthirsty fiends, and tainted beasts of the wild. While we strongly believe that moral ambiguity makes for better storytelling as a whole, sometimes, a hero’s job is just to slay a monster. And some things are just monsters — although a crafty GM is always welcome to put a spin on a monster, and question that as well!  

The Pact of Valdoro

The region most of the server's events will take place in is called the Pact of Valdoro, which is a union of ducal republics each centered on a city state. The City of Tisoria is the newest member among them.     The other cities of Valdoro are respectively:  

• Anchora Magna: The former capital of the Pact and seat of the Sybilite Church, the city has now been ruined, and is filled with unnatural horrors from beyond the known cosmos.
 
• Delverne: A gnomish city with bizarre clockwork architecture and greenhouses filled with magical plants, Delverne has been under an impenetrable magical forcefield since the Scourge. No one's heard from them for 24 years.
 
• Esmirana: This island state was conquered briefly by the Sublime Realm of Zaharrah in the past century, and following its liberation, it became known as the City of Illusions, developing a culture of artistry and entertainment.
 
• Varancia: An ancient dwarven city where the headquarters of Ember Trading Company is found. Varancia is divided between its upper city, a floating upper class district built into the mountainside and suspended by airships; and a lower city inhabited by most commoners.
 
• Luscarine: Luscarine is a city of water. Not only is it filled with winding canals, a large portion of the city is located on an colossal bridge that houses most of its commercial and governmental districts.
 
• Cossina: Site of the ancient Dragonmoot, Cossina is a juxtaposition of modern architecture and industry with the enormous ruins of ancient dragons. Cossina boasts the continent's largest populations of dragonkin.

  Other metropolises surrounding the Valdoro region include:  

• Shaded Hollow, a beastfolk settlement beseiged by corrupted dark fey.
 
• Tolth-Korrum, the heavily industrialized capital of the Tolthar Hegemony.
 
• Noctris, a warrior technocracy of tiefling monster hunters.
 
• Balkur, an anarchist nation of kobolds.
 
• Cirromere, a Velthirian city with the largest naval base in the world.
 
• Port Azure, the largest port and de-facto capital of the Blacktide Confederacy.
 
• Durgrimmar, the underground city of the Duergar, below Valdoro through a very long tunnel.

 

The Continent of Paracia

  The planet of Amalthea has five known continents: Paracia, Cerlania, Perora, Naru Daeva, and a yet-undiscovered land that has only been spoken of in legends. This section provides a summary of the Paracian continent's various regions and their cultures.     Paracia is found on Amalthea's northern hemisphere, and is home to the following nations and states, listed from left to right, top to bottom:  

• Sudeja: A mysterious land of whale-hunting nomads, stargazers, and witches of ice and snow, Sudeja gives rise to many myths of strange and sinister beings, such as the legend of the horrific wendigo.
 
• Narbovia: A realm settled in ancient times by humans, frostheart dwarves, and beastfolk taking the form of bears, Narbovia is a harsh yet beautiful land whose natives developed a culture of survivalism, mountaineering, and warrior traditions that make great use of bears, their sacred national animal.
 
• Marklund: This island chain in the Great Bear Sea was settled by the Markish, a unique human ethnicity that trace descent to somewhere far from Paracia itself. Marklund was once a raiding culture, but have recently embraced mercantilism, and today competes with Velthiria for naval dominance in the continent's northeastern waters.
 
• Dominion of Okkurn: The lands of Okkurn has been the domain of tundra orcs since time immemorial, and is viewed by outsiders as a realm of unparalleled savagery. The truth is a little more nuanced, but the pre-agricultural orcs do little to dispel this notion when travelling abroad.
 
• Shan-Kuo: Settled by Cerlanian colonists dreaming of a life of peaceful seclusion, Shan-Kuo is a land of rolling hills, serene homesteads, and wondrous monasteries built in honor of the Cerlanians' unique animist traditions. It is also home to the only kaiju found outside of Cerlania.  
• Kuma Marches: The Kuma Marches are the ancestral homeland of most humanity (barring the Markish), populated by nomadic clans of horse-riders and sheep-herders known for their ancient musical traditions and unparalleled skill in archery.
 
• Tolthar Hegemony: Built into the mountain range called the Spine of the World, the Tolthar Hegemony is the ancestral homeland of all dwarves, and today still houses the ancient clans of the steelblood dwarves. Despite their industrial prowess, the Tolthari dwarves are less internationally successful than their Valdoran cousins, as their country is held back by byzantine political intrigue driven by generational grudges.
 
• Luir Brennath: Known as the Graveyard of Giants for its numerous ruins from the fallen Exalted Empire, Luir Brennath today is largely inhabited by wood elves and beastfolk who reject most forms of civil governance in favor of a tribal, druidic lifestyle. The Brennathi humans living on the outskirts of the woods follow similar traditions, and together these people have resisted colonization and religious conversion by "civilized" cultures for millennia.
 
• Duskwood: The darkest woods in the center of Luir Brennath are believe to be cursed by the ghosts of ancient giants that yet haunt the living, although the drow who call this land home seem to prefer it this way. Their matriarchal culture centered on witchcraft and cutthroat clan politics is considered mysterious and sinister to most outsiders.
 
• Kingdom of Velthiria: Ruled by a high elven nobility that claims unbroken descent from the Undying Lands of Naru Daeva, Velthiria is an imperalist power that seeks to spread its cultural legacy to other elven and human nations beyond its borders. However, centuries of aristocratic intrigue and colonial rebellion has rendered Velthiria a shadow of its former self, and a budding democratic movement threatens its millennia-old social order.
 
• Empire of Talandra: Ruled by an ancient imperial lineage believed to be blessed by sacred nagas, Talandra is home to diverse tribes of humans, beastfolk, and orcs that all come together in unity to defend their lush and beautiful jungle against the relentless onslaught of monsters. Due to their close proximity to monsters, Talandrans are no foreigner to dark magic, and are masters of dark arts that would drive foreign mages mad.
 
• Gleaming Weald: The beastfolk of the Gleaming Weald admit no overlord of mortal origin, instead seeing the Archfey as their true kings and queens. As a result, they have historically been victims of invasions and raiding, and in defense they constructed their settlements to straddle the veil between the Material and Fey. The Scourge has driven many native fey mad, causing a large exodus of beastfolk refugees from their ancestral home.
 
• Scourgelands: When Anchora Magna fell to the Scourge, summoned by the mad Grand Inquisitor Abrazan Koss, a region of the Shadowfell became overlaid over the Material Plane. The porous nature of the Shadowfell further allows horrors from the Far Realms to pass through, creating a region of unspeakable corruption that continues to expand.
 
• Ashen Canyon: The city of Noctris used to be a Velthirian prison colony, until a magical disaster tore a rift in to Valkyon, the Ashen Battleground, flooding the land with fiends. Noctrian survivors became tieflings, and developped a warrior culture centered around battle against supernatural evil while making do with what scrap they could find in the wasteland.
 
• Pact of Valdoro: Valdoran culture claims descent from the ancient Valdoran Empire, who gained unparalleled prosperity in its pact with dragons. While the ancient dragons are gone now, many felled by Valdorans themselves in search of glory, the modern city states that make up the Pact remain as prideful and ambitious as dragons. Valdoro today is known to be the world's wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation.
 
• Balkur: Balkuran kobolds were once enslaved by a draconic false god, and later by Velthirian colonists. Having slew their former masters in a brutal war for freedom, Balkur today refuses to be ruled by any form of conventional governance, instead preferring an anarchic society where the rights of the laborer are supreme.
 
• Qasala: The small island nation once saw warriors of three rival faiths put aside their differences to create Amalthea's first chapter of paladins. Today, Qasala is a neutral port for pirates of all stripes, and resembles little the righteous paladin state it once was. Nevertheless, the ancient values of religious liberty for all remain sacrosanct in Qasala, and it is believed to forbid a man's right to worship in Qasala is to invite the wrath of the gods themselves.
 
• Blacktide Confederacy: Ancestral homeland of sea elves and several cultures of aquatic beastfolk, the Blacktide Isles suffered from centuries of colonial rule under Vethiria, who drafted a significant number of its native peoples into the navy. Following the Isles' independence, the former navalmen turned to a life of piracy, and routinely prey upon the lucrative oceanic trade between Velthiria, Valdoro, and the continent of Perora to the south.

   

The Rest of the World

  Three known continents exist beyond Paracia, respectively known as Cerlania, Perora, and Naru Daeva. A fifth continent is rumored to have been discovered by sailors, but its existence has yet to be fully confirmed.  

• Cerlania: Located on the southern hemisphere of Amalthea, southwest to Paracia, the Shattered Isles of Cerlania is composed of hundreds of islands of varying sizes. Some of these islands float in the air in defiance of natural gravity, while the larger grounded islands are full of breathtaking karsts. Cerlania is home to sleeping kaiju, worshipped by locals as fragments of the Heavenly Mother, as well as native spirits called kami who are tied to the health and prosperity of the lands themselves. While traditional Cerlanian culture is pre-industrial with a focus on harmony with nature and the spiritual realm, the continent is currently under threat by the imperialistic and industrialized Enyama Shogunate located in its southernmost landmass. The Enyama Shogunate is governed by a brutal caste of oni, who not only despoil the lands they conquer by masscaring its native spirits, but have also awakened and enslaved a kaiju to their service.
 
• Perora: Located southeast of Paracia, Perora is most well known as the birthplace of astrology, and for the Sublime Mechanism, an abstract yet dogmatic religion that stands in direct rivalry with the Sybilite faith of Paracia. Perorans are far more commonly planetouched than Paracians, and the continent's two most prominent nations, Zaharrah and Tulkarn, believe that their people have a divine duty to embody the goodness of the Elder Gods in vehement opposition to all evil, mortal and supernatural alike. Several wars have been fought between the faithful militants of the Sybilite Church and the Sublime Mechanism, but in the Third Darkness, both faiths stand equally opposed to the eldritch Scourge.
 
• Naru Daeva: Far to the east across the Pale Sea, the continent of Naru Daeva is a great mystery to the people of Paracia. Known as the Undying Lands, Naru Daeva was the homeland of the elves, and historical records show that the elves and even many of their subject races were immortal in this land. A civil war resulted in the summoning of Great Old Ones to this land, causing it apocalyptic destruction, and only a handful of elves survived by crossing the Pale Sea to Paracia. Today, the high elves of Velthiria are obsessed with reclaiming this land, but the variable time and non-Euclidean geography of the Pale Sea has made it immensely difficult to even reach this fallen land.