This Old Ship
A Short History
Nearly one hundred years ago a man named Ager found an archway in the side of the Clock of Kala that led elsewhere. He made it his quest to find a way to open this gate and find out what lay beyond. During his search, he amassed a fourtune in numenera and shins from his travels.
Eighty years ago, Ager packed up his trade empire, his family and everything he owned and walked it through a portal into a land far to the north of the Steadfast.
This land is named Calda, and is the home of the Sable Hegemony. This is an empire that has ruled for centuries, in a harsh land that grows strong children. Resources are scarce, and city-states vie for power and standing within the empire.
To the north of Calda and the empire is a land that until 63 years ago was covered in a deadly mist. Named for the mist that covered the land, Maka-Tho is a mysterious land that has yet to be explored. None who ventured into it's neon pink mists were ever seen or heard from again.
One day, that mist disappeared. Nobody has found a reason why. Within a year, Ager moved his family again -- out into this wild untamed land.
There he found a numenera that could change the world: buried in an old ship was the key to unlocking potentially every numenera on the Ninth World and beyond. To ensure that his family would always control this incredibly precious resource, Ager built a town on top of the ship. They ensured they controlled the only means of access to the ship, and have kept an iron grip on that control ever since.
This town is named Ararholm, after an ancestor of Agers.
Ten years ago Ager died, and control of the family and the ship fell to his daughter, Pakmi. She is doing what she can to hold the family and town together, but she is not the charismatic leader her father was. She knows she needs help, or her father's dream of a Hammersplint empire ends with her.
Five years ago, after decades of traders telling the world about Maka-Tho and the vanishing of the mists, a slow trickle of explorers and homesteaders has started. Every few months a new explorer, family, or hermit looking to get even further away from people showed up in town.
Two years ago that trickle became a stream as word of the ship reached the outside world. Now Ararholm faces many challenges in the days and months ahead. Only time will tell what the town and its residents will discover within their ship and outside the walls of their home. So many new faces who have come to find out if their destiny lay in this exciting new land, or if the only thing waiting is death.
Some of you have been called out by Pakmi to help her maintain and build her town into something grand. Some of you are here for other reasons.
What will you find out here in the frontier?
Will you wait and see what destiny has in store, or will you forge yourself into
someone strong enough to make their own destiny?
"When you have a billion-shin vision, don't surround yourself with one-shin minds"
Ager Hammersplint
