Have vague idea for a setting

Have vague idea for a setting
Pls tell me if is shit tier cancer claptrap

>High fantasy setting, each sapient race created by own patron deity, general populace unaware of said deities, not even worshipped.
>Certain select cults and secret societies in each race aware of their existence, more concerned than reverent.
>Increasingly disinterested in mortal affairs, many of these patron gods beginning to support the idea of wiping the slate clean to make a more interesting "project"

>Through various means of divination and investigation said societies become aware of the disinterest of the Gods, and begin to understand that in order to avoid being wiped out a spectacle must be provided.

>Dwarves are the most powerful, unified and advanced race of the setting
>Prehistoric dwarves lived in grassland plains, where their stature allowed them to remain hidden from predators.
>Dwarf tribes (long ago) single handedly slew the vast majority of the setting's dragons, another sapient race, in order to secure their steadfast within the mountains.
>Monarchy is established among Dwarves based around the "Dracovorian Highlords", Dwarves able to devour the hearts of dragons in order to gain stupendous powers for a short time before dying.
>In times of war it was the duty of a Highlord to sire a son and perform Kerogh'Kal, a ritual in which he devours a preserved dragon heart and becomes an avatar, beings with reality warping magical powers who can single handedly turn the tides of wars.
>Dwarves use this newfound power to subjugate every other sapient race over the course of 100 years of bloody warfare.
>In recent times the vassalship or slavery of the other races has lead to a time of relative peace and prosperity, this is what the gods find tiresome.

>Enter the secret societies
>They seek to end the Dwarven empire and plunge the world in to a war to end all wars, in the hopes that the spectacle might appease the Gods in to not wiping the slate clean for a while longer.
Cont

>The societies conspire together under the overall leadership of the Dwarven society, which is led by a cousin of the Dwarven High King.
>After decades of plotting, the societies succeed in engineering a plot by which they manage to lure all of the Highlords, except for the High King himself, to a meeting, at which they are all assassinated.
>This means that the only true Dracovorian remaining is the High King himself, said to be the most powerful of them all, locked away in the deepest vaults of the Dwarven capitol, atop his throne carved from the skull of the once dragon king, in possession of the dragon king's heart.

>The other races are aware of this situation, the societies having sent their agents to spread the news of the assassinations throughout the lands

>Still none of them are yet willing to move openly against the High King, knowing that should he eat the heart, he would surely destroy them all in the year before his eventual death.

>Think of it as a sort of fantasy nuclear stand off mutually assured destruction situation

This would be the point at which the players in this world enter the story.

Do people think this sounds retarded?
Suggestions are welcome also, if people have any cool ideas of things they think might be good to add to the sort of framework of the setting?

Any advice would also be welcome, like if I'm leaning too heavily on bad tropes or anything like that, or if its too cookie cutter
Le bump

last bump ~sry~

What do you have on other "races"?

What are the other races present in the setting? Humans, Orcs, Elves, and the like? Is there a caste system within the slaves, are the field slaves better than the house slaves, are there non-slaves of the other races living amongst the dwarves, is this American "Imma work you till you bleed to death" slavery or like Greek "you've got some rights and we can't murder you without justification" slavery? You said that they discovered the power to eat dragon hearts and then became ubermensch from it, then subsequently conquered everyone else, did they do this while conquering the dragons and securing a foothold in the mountains or afterwards? If during, this means that they should logically have only been in the mountain for about a century. (They live on plains, they want the mountain, they fight the dragons in the mountain, discover power from the dragons, kill of remaining dragons and conquer mountain, use mountain as base camp to conquer everyone else).

I'd tell you to cut the bit about dwarven evoluton, it's a bit corny and too mundane for a fantasy setting. It's better if you make an actual creation myth. You're also essentially making dwarves the steel donut master race, which I'm guessing was your intent but still comes off rather badly.

>Kerogh'Kal
It's generally a good idea to steer free from terms in artificial languages, it's off-putting unless you're fucking Tolkien

Also, if dragons are scarce, how did they get enough dragon hearts to literally enslave all other sapient races? Why did it take 100 years? For reference once nukes were used on two japanese cities WW2 was over in months.

I think it sounds fine, generally. My only concern is that it sounds like the players would have to enter at a high power level to have any effect in the immediate future. If they were to enter at the low end of things, it seems like they would be just doing whatever until one of the sides decides to do something, in which case they would have to have progressed to the point at which they could do something.

Unless, of course, you like the idea of them trying to scrape by in a world that is quickly becoming very chaotic. There's nothing wrong with that option, so long as it's done well.

Also, I suppose you could have them employed/manipulated by one of the sides to do their bidding, but that still is susceptible to the questions of power level.

Humans, are a vassal race of the dwarves, generally low ranking members of the military, favoured servants and sometimes minor lords and land owners.
This is due to them immediately bending the knee after seeing the ruin visited upon the Kasjhari, their neighbours, by the dwarves.

Kasjhari, essentially avian humanoids of various subspecies, probably the largest and most powerful race before the uprising of the Dwarven kingdoms, due to the obvious advantages presented by their natural ability to fly.

I'm still working on the niches of the other races, and trying to make some interesting nonhumanoid sapient ones to work with

its interesting, i dont think it's shitty.

Dragons are scarce now because the dwarves murdered the vast majority of them

Previously they were fairly numerous, average individuals of their race being no more than 8-9 feet in length, though certain individuals of great power were extremely large and magically potent.

All of the standard high fantasy races would be present in some fashion or another, all with their general places within a caste system

I'm also looking to try and make a few relatively interesting nonhumanoid sapient species, but not too many because I don't want to bog people down with loads of shit to remember

No, but what I mean is if they already hunted most dragons, where are they getting the hearts?

You could make it so the instances of getting hold of a dragon heart are extremely rare and major historical events

Depending on the race and their location in the caste system it would range from the "We gonna work u till u die" to the "You will be treated with some modicum of respect and have a lesser version of rights by which you must be treated."

To the degree where some favoured vassal races are permitted to own land, join the military, even enter in to the lower echelons of command

The dwarves conquered the other races after consolidating from their war with the dragons, what you have in the brackets is the right kind of idea yes

Also, to expand on the dragon heart idea, what if someone were to ingest the heart of some other massively powerful, non-dragon, creature? Not a setting topic, per se, but a potential plot hook. Just something to think on.

They kept the hearts of the numerous dragons they slew in the war for the mountains

Dragon hearts are certainly not limitless in number

The remaining number and their locations are of course an intensely closely guarded secret by the Dwarven nobility

So the mobility of a slave in the society is just dependent on pretty much where that slave is?

So how much of a fight did the other races put up, and how big is this world? How much land have the dwarves got to keep hold of and how common are uprisings among the vassals as you called them? Do the dwarves control the entire world, or just their continent? Are there places outside of Dwarvish control?

Also, how DO the Dwarves get power from dragon hearts, and can other races get this power too? Is it just magic so you ain't gotta explain shit or is there a reason for it?

I was thinking it could either be run as "The players enter the scene at low power and must attempt to survive as the world becomes the grandest spectacle of war that has ever been seen."

Or they could enter with higher level characters and be directly involved in the conspiracy to cause the war that will save the world from being wiped away?

I would pitch both to the players in question I guess

How was the power discovered?

The world is divided in to one pangaea-esque continent of roughly the size of eurasia on which most of the sentient races live, and another roughly australia sized continent on the opposite side of the planet which is comparatively extremely inhospitable due to its closer proximity to the planetary equator, leading to extreme heat and massive tectonic and volcanic activity. Legends speak of massive monsters and primitive pseudo intelligent creatures that live there, but most people tend to avoid the place as it lacks any major rewards for the dangers associated with going there

The dwarves generally control the main continent, and uprisings occur very occasionally, though only really among the lesser treated races, as the vassals who are treated better understand that to attempt an uprising and fail would greatly worsen their lot, and probably land them at the bottom of the pecking order from the Dwarven retaliation, as has happened in the past with certain races

The tribal leader of the time declared a great feast upon their final defeat of the king of dragons.

As part of the celebrations, a piece of the dragon king's heart was cooked and served to the tribal leader who lead them in defeating the dragons

Upon eating the heart he fell in to a torpor, and seemed dead for a few days.

Funeral arrangements proceeded, and as the chieftain was burned atop a pyre, as was their way, he arose from the flames with skin like molten gold, surrounded by a halo of crackling lightning, and was around twice the size he had been

Okay, making some sense now! Are the slaves divided by race as well as job? Like are Humans kept separate from Saurians, or is it a pretty big mix?

Or do they breed the races for whatever job they have them do? Like are only the strongest Orcs allowed to breed so that their children can tend the flames on the furnaces and shit?

Have you thought of any noteworthy events besides the dragon war? Historical heroes,
perhaps?

Were the gods ever prominent in the world or did they just create it and sat back to eat some popcorn?

A sort of eugenics do occur among the worst treated races like the orcs and the kasjhari, in which mating is not allowed without strict oversight in order to make them purely useful for the manual labour or other such tasks they are employed towards.

Then there are races such as the elves and the ogres who are generally allowed to control their own societies, within strict limitations, as long as they continue to provide extremely high tithes and defer to any of the members of the higher races they should run in to.

There are the humans who are fairly heavily ingrained in to Dwarven society as servants and clerical workers, and very occasionally as minor nobles at the higher levels, and work at the lower levels like the societies of the elves and ogres, in a sort of tithe based vassalship by which they provide materials, labour and bodies for the military machine of the empire.

They kind of treat the orcs and kasjhari like people treat horses, they breed them for desired characteristics, trade them freely without regard, and they are not really given any actual rights, if you own one you could kill them because you felt like it and no one would bat an eye

Those are thing that I would certainly need to flesh out, I should make interesting backgrounds for all of the races

I just started with the dwarves because they are the ones de facto in charge at the start of the campaign is all

Like an example I was thinking of was that, the reason for the kasjhari being treated like shit was to keep them broken, because of the resistance they posed as the most powerful civilization at the beginning of the dwarve's uprising.

But I was thinking that the orcs might be towards the bottom of a pile because of an uprising that happened some time after all of the sapient races had already been subjugated by the dwarven empire, which had come dangerously close to succeeding, and so the Dwarves decimated the orcs as punishment?

>around twice the size he had been
so their superpower is regular size?

Around the height of a normal human, perhaps a little taller, far bulkier and broader, molten metal skin and crackling lightning aura sort of covers the appearance, though there is variance between different individuals who have undergone the process

Power wise I'm thinking along the lines of being an extremely strong wielder of powers that allow them to manipulate all elements (think avatar bending turned up to 11), intense superhuman(superdwarven) strength and durability, limited time manipulation powers and limited telepathy