Subsolem Septem
"Once the world was a green and verdant place, full of life and people and cities and nature and oceans and forests. During the day the Seven Suns brought light and warmth, during the night the Umbral Cloak covered the skies and brought rest and cooling air for all to enjoy.
The world was once good but we brought ruin to it.
Our ancestors, the progenitors of elvenkind were prideful and hateful, they split their own people among lines of faith and over the worship of their prime deity started the war that would end it all.
The War of the Ancients was fought first with weapons and technology, then with spell and sorcery and at its height the unthinkable was done: the casting of the Ultimate Spell.
A magick so foul and forbidden that none now recall even its true name and the effects were inconceivably destructive.
In an instant the three deities of elvenkind were diminished in their power and our progenitors lost their immortality and imperviousness but the effects reached much father.
The diminishment of the three divine powers weakened the cloak of shadows and let loose rabid pack that were the Seven Suns.
Now they hunt by day and scorch those lands and even by night it scarcely cools down enough for water to collect anywhere.
The oceans and rivers disappeared, forests burned and meadows turned to ash, all empires of the world crumbled and those that could took refuge under the cover of the earth itself.
Our progenitors underwent their Great Exodus and spent millenia travelling the Deeplands until they reached the promised land: the Great Cavern of Aman-ya which their prophets had forseen but other races were not as lucky.
As nations fell to ruin and almost all nature ceased to exist those that couldn’t adapt perished from hunger, thirst and heat.
Those who survived waged war with one another over the once abundant but now scarce resources of the world and though now some have adapted to this new world well enough to build cities once more, 20.000 years since the onset of the calamity known as the Bright the world will never be the same.
They call them the Scorched Lands, they speak of realms of only ash, dust, embers and of endless deserts dotted with the fallen, half decayed structures that were once the world our ancient kin knew.
Much that was known then was lost in time and now what may once have been simply technology is hardly distinguishable from magick most mysterious, occult and arcane in its workings.
The technology we have here, in Styx, its built from and upon what remained of our knowledge and we spent millenia rebuilding a sliver of what we once knew.
Now the surface is lost to us and we dwell in the depths without sunlight.
Once the world of the surface was a green and verdant place but it is no more, now there is only rust red and ocre sands, only bright sunlight and mere twilight as the Seven Suns parch the land.
I pray that we have learned from our mistakes."
But deep underground where none know the fury of the Seven Suns lies the Great Cavern of Aman-ya.
These are the Sunless Depths, the refuge life took after the cataclysmic onset of the Bright and it is here that our story unfolds.
The primary campaign setting as of now is the sprawling City State of Styx in the Western Deeplands.
Styx is a pseudo-theocratic communist republic ruled by the Temple Parliament which is made up of members of the Great Unions that the populace votes into office.
Styx is a swirling microcosm of law and chaos.
Where chimneys belt smoke into cavern skies and Three Serpent Rivers run thick with sludge near a forest deep and dreadful the best and worst qualities of sapient beings meet and the people of Styx know: when it comes from all according to their ability and goes to all according to their need Styx IS ETERNAL.
The entire Cosmos of this world is called Subsolem Septem, a world under Seven Suns.
Subsolem is a geocentric world made up of two World Disks stacked on top of each other which are upheld by the Minor Antlers of the World Skull.
Balanced on its Major Antlers are many other Realms and below it lies the ever-consuming Abyss that one day will swallow all of creation. Expansions focusing on the Scorched Lands and other as-of-yet uncharted lands within the Sunless Depths may one day come.
We as the writers of this world are aware that writing, even Fantasy, does not happen in a vaccuum.
Our views of the world and its history and culture influences how we express ourselves artistically and while we value our artistic integrity we value shared humanity and empathy just as much.
We are all flawed people and are happy to receive feedback from people with different backgrounds than us.
We do not intend to demean real world cultures, faiths, races with our work and if we do so accidentally we want to listen and improve.
The only groups we wish to demean are capitalists, bigots, fascists and cops, cheers.
CoffinTongues
Addertwist
The Cosmos under Seven Suns was inspired by the eternal practice of hopeful writing, the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, the satire and good humor of Terry Pratchett, the depth of Tolkien's works, the naturalist eye for the smallest of Richard Adams and the fearful written worldview of H.P. Lovecraft who we wholeheartedly hope would hate this world of diversity and beautiful strangeness.
