Hallowed Legacy
Scope
The motivation behind building Hallowed Legacy
This is a setting that has been evolving for decades. In the mid 1970's, when Dungeons & Dragons was just beginning, there was a group of friends who decided to make their own world for the game. They added their stories, their triumphs and failures, to the legacy of that world so every adventure built upon the last. Those friends grew up, and some of them had children. One of them decided to introduce his curious and imaginative nephew to the game at only seven years old.
Time passed, and as people tend to do, the original group moved apart in one way or another. But they handed their notes of a hundred adventures to the young boy who then wrote his own worlds and stories to play with his friends. And the story continued.
This group has been playing campaigns and writing stories within these same realms for over twenty years. And the worlds we inherited ran for twenty more. Every character, every loss, every victory, every romance, war, tavern, and town has become a part of this legacy. They have been recorded in stained and taped-up notebooks, loose scraps of paper, sketchbooks, and random word docs with helpful names like "notes about notes." So that is where this amazing platform comes in. We are aware of the treasure we have with this setting and we want to preserve and present as much of it as we can!
These worlds have brought us so much joy and adventure, and if we can do this right, we can share that adventure with players all over the world. That is our Hallowed Legacy.
The goal of the project
This is a concrete chronicle of a legacy that started decades ago. It was and is primarily for Roleplaying Games as a living world for our players to collaborate and add to the legacy of the setting. The intention is to publish adventures and setting guides for these worlds and to build a community around them. We will bring in smaller products like zines for small parts of the setting, magic items, or one-shot events. And we will also feature much larger projects like novels and physical products like props, handouts, and manuals.
Before all of that exciting stuff, however, we have to do the great work of transcribing a thousand scattered notes in ancient tomes (3-ring-binders) and make them presentable. So that is goal one; get the basics of the main realms written and edited within World Anvil with enough information and fluid user experience that people with no prior knowledge could play in them.
Goal two is to create a Patreon for the community of people who want to dive deeper and gain access to secrets. These will likely be GMs or people who are really into worldbuilding. Either way, this will be the optimal place to bring in those aforementioned smaller products.
Goal three on this roadmap is to launch those larger products like setting manuals and full adventures!
Hallowed Legacy's Unique Selling point
It starts with the legacy aspect of the Hallowed Legacy. Some of these worlds are older than us! And while "old" settings are certainly not unique, these stories are collaborative and personal, with each player leaving something behind. Whether it's a town, a tavern, a character, or an entire nation, each new generation has left its mark on the worlds of Hallowed Legacy. And some corners of the map are intentionally left blank and we encourage new players to build their own stories into their version of the Legacy.
The cosmic tree has many branches and each path leads to a unique world. Yet a terrible cataclysm has threatened to pull some of these branches asunder and plunge their worlds into darkness, chaos, and destruction. With each world that falls to the darkness the demons which inhabit the chaos grow stronger. If left unchecked, these demonic forces could overwhelm all of the branches and invade the Core World. If that should happen the cosmic tree will fall and nothing will be strong enough to bring it back.
Theme
Genre
Mostly Dark Fantasy with some horror, grimdark, low fantasy, and Sword & Sorcery mixed in. All the settings have some form of magic, different gods, and a connection to the world tree. Some have more advanced technology but are usually powered by magic or very basic machinery like clockwork.
Reader Experience
I want to instill a sense of wonder for the vastness of the past. Most of the worlds should feel mythical but dangerous. There is a wonder to be found in the wild places of the world, but terrible things happen to those who aren't careful. There is a sense of a deep and mysterious past and forces beyond mortal understanding pulling the strings, but also the smaller and more mundane lives of people just experiencing the world.
Reader Tone
The worlds of the Hallowed Legacy tend more towards the dark side of things. The mood is far more like the Witcher or Game of Thrones, or even Dark Souls in some cases, though some of the world have less of that going on and are more like Dragonlance or traditional Forgotten Realms.
Recurring Themes
Ancient Gods with mysterious powers, lost and forgotten civilizations with world-spanning influences, and the barely controlled chaos of magic/forces of nature beyond mortal understanding.
Character Agency
The power dynamics are often shifting, sometimes only a grain of sand is needed to tip the scales. But sometimes a higher power will put its finger on the scale and affects the fate of an entire world.
Focus
Drama
There are forces that can affect the world tree itself, causing mass cataclysms for the realms on affected branches. When a branch experiences these events, it can weaken the branch. A branch that is weak can become a target for darker entities that will pull at the connections until the whole branch is severed, plunging any world into chaos and darkness.
Worlds like Shira'tol struggle to maintain their connection to the world tree and suffer greater forces of war, strife, and evil.
Images: Artwork (C) 2017-2024 by Kayla Perisho-Denley, unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved. Stock art and cover images from Pexels is licensed as Royalty-Free (RF) without attribution except where stated otherwise. Some cover images (C) 2017-2024 Kayla Perisho-Denley
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This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this article are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Articles and written content (C) 1999-2024 Kayla Perisho and Jacob Denley.
(this World is a work in progress, please ignore the scaffolding as we construct it)