Eshor
Scope
The motivation behind building Eshor
I want to build an interesting world that will allow me to run a D&D campaign that features the sort of complex city-state rivalries of Renaissance Italy and classical Greece while maintaining the freedom to develop my own lore rather than trying to remember lore created by others.
The goal of the project
This world is being built to be the site of a D&D campaign I will be running for some friends in a few months. I'm hoping to bring in some of the thematic aspects of my other worlds - particularly Irion - without saddling myself with too much complex lore to present, as this will be my first time actually running a game.
Eshor's Unique Selling point
My chief inspiration is the early Renaissance, a time of flux rather than the technological stagnation of many fantasy worlds. The central plot for the campaign I plan to run is centred around a city state that is rebuilding after a devestating earthquake that caused widespread damage through much of its territory. By and large I will be keeping my focus to this region, fleshing out more distant locales as needed.
Theme
Genre
This will largely be traditional Fantasy, but at a point in history where technology and magic are on the rise, rather than the decline featured in many Fantasy settings.
Reader Experience
I hope to create a world that is exciting with an optimism for the future. However, for the initial campaign, I hope to keep my players focused on the urban environment of the central city-state and its immediate surroundings.
Reader Tone
I'm looking to try to present a more moderately bright world - bad things happen occasionally, but most of the time, people get by pretty well.
Recurring Themes
- Big changes in the future - cultural, technological, etc.
- New buildings, new construction, rebuilding, recovery
- A sense of guarded optimism - times have been bad for a while, but are starting to get better
Character Agency
I plan to give the players a good amount of agency. They will inevitably be drawn into the city's politcal struggles. By the end of the campaign, I hope that they will become major figures in the establishment of the city's new leadership, and will present factions with a variety of stances on what form that leadership should take.
Focus
Drama
Succession: The royal family is dead, and the city is ruled by a Steward who has all but claimed the throne. Will the Steward manage to consolidate his rule? Will some forgotten scion of the royal family return to claim the throne? Or will the people depose the tyrants altogether and form a new form of government?
Reconstruction: The earthquake struck many years ago, but much of the city and the outlying territories are still struggling to rebuild, with the trade that was once the lifeblood of the city having been lost to competitors up and down the coast.
The steward's focus in leadership remains primarily on the military, under the excuse that the earthquake was clearly a magical attack and that the city must have a strong defense force face the inevitable invasion to come. However, in practice, many of his forces, particularly a group of mercenaries, spend their time drinking and bullying people in the city, while outlying territories fend for themselves. Ironically, the resulting lawlessness in those regions has led to neighbouring powers occupying territories under the guise of maintaining public order, though how many of these neighbours will be willing to relinquish their control if and when the city turns its eyes to those outlying territories remains to be seen.
A nearby island harbour once allied with the city has ceased sending messages to the outside world, and reports of piracy and sea raiders are on the rise up and down the coast.
A long defeated necromancer clinging to a semblance of life lurks within ruins deep beneath the city, plotting their return and rise to power. In the centuries that have passed since his defeat, kingdoms have come and gone and few now even remember his name.
With the lack of trade and so many resources being devoted to the military, poverty is on the rise. Local farming and fishing is sufficient to provide most of the food needed for survival, but one bad harvest and food stores are liable to collapse. Various powerful figures fear for the future, all the while putting on a brave face to prevent a general panic and the hoarding that would inevitably come with it.
Credit for section dividers to Firkin on OpenClipArt.org