Let's Make A Setting

>The abstract Divinities that once safeguarded the world are now dead, and the land is now cast in a perpetual frost.
>The Cold Things hold sway over the world now, terrible and malign, dancing in the twisting frost.

Warmth and fire are some of the greatest necessities in this world, and nothing burns brighter than a human soul.

That is why the Cold Things are determined to snuff out each human's flame.

>the surface is nearly impossible to inhabit for long periods of time(ash clouds, poison gasses, acid rains etc.)
>forests run rampant in many places and with them run a great many of the cold predators forgotten by humanity.

It is rumored that there is a place, untouched by the cold, far to the north.

None who've gone in search of it have returned.

>The Cold Things do not seem to possess any unified forms whatsoever, taking on any shape they so wish, be it balls of dark matter that drink light and warmth, or masses of semi-humanoid solid nitrogen. Sometimes, they do not even bother manifesting "forms" at all, instead preferring to remain shapeless, and instead possess and warp others to do their bidding.

Is it Thule?

>One type of Cold Thing that has been noted is the "Wendigo".
>From what has been studied, these terrible entities remain primarily as naught but maddening whispers in the wind, creeping in the very edges of one's perception.
>These creatures do not seem to immediately take host bodies like most others amongst their specific typing, instead targeting those explorers who have lost themselves in the cold, patiently waiting for starvation to set in amongst them and for them to ravenously consume both themselves and each other.
>Upon the survivors gutting themselves on their own flesh and blood, the Wendigo will take control over their bodies, merging their flesh together with that of their dead or dying fellows, constructing a body with which they may ravage the world.

>The Cold Things wage war like nothing that has ever been seen before. They can steal into the hearts of men a dozen at a time, corrupt them as visibly or as invisibly as they want, as send them to corrupt others and carry the cold into the safest of places. They wear their victims' faces, they know what they knew, and, worst of all, they seem to be able to communicate with each other over long distances.

>There are cities ringed by sweltering fires or other forms of obstruction in an attempt to keep the cold at bay.

>A phrase that has taken to many survivors is: >"Fear that which creeps in the dead of night, fear the terror that takes the voices of all those you love, fear the siren song that calls you back to its frigid embrace, fear that which takes many faces and yet none, fear that which is everywhere and yet nowhere at once. Fear it, for it is as Legion".

>In all civilized corners of the world, attempting to heal the corrupted and free them from their slavery to the cold is outlawed. All touched by the cold must be put to death. The cold has always preyed on the weak of heart, and has tricked countless souls into giving their lives for nothing, and putting others at risk in the process.

>This hasn't and will never stop people from trying.

The gods lie unmourned

>Similar to how they view form and shape, to the Cold Things, sentience and sapient are also tools to be used and discarded whenever it is seen fit.
>Sometimes, these unliving atrocities will speak and mimic human behaviors almout perfectly as they wear the faces of long-lost loved ones, smiling and greeting survivors as if they truly were their lost ones.
>Other times, the Cold does not bother with proper sentences or even actual words, instead making unholy noises that tear at ones sanity, or using broken nursery rhymes or perverted verses of scripture that they have taken from the minds of the humans who they have devoured.

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Ninjas are the most common form of military forces in the world, with cyborgs as second most common

>Ninjas are the most common form of military forces in the world, with cyborgs as second most common
This could actually work, now that I'm thinking about it. Stealth and machinery would probably go a long way to not having your soul snuffed out by the Cold.

Ninjas are invincible individually but weaker the more of them are around. Cyborgs are slow, clumsy golems when alone but unstoppable machines of destruction when present in large numbers. Because both are currently weak (ninjas being in majority while the cyborgs are outnumbered), the mole people have decided their hour has finally come.

>Three masked figures are known to appear in the frigid lands to those who need aid, providing warmth, good, and safety for those they come acorss.
>It is unknown as to who these Three are, but they are considered to be a welcome sight by all explorers.

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I'm STEALIN THE FUCK OUTTA THIS LUL

Fuck off.

>it's the weekly: let's show that Veeky Forums can't write thread

Blame this on the fact that all the good writefags and people with genuine creative talent left this board long ago. Now it's just mindless shitposts and crap like this:

>The only vegetation in the forest are bare, twisted trees, and thick brambles
>Forms of magic exist to create fires that burn without wood or fuel, though the cost is always steep and grisly.
>The Three may be fragments of dead gods, still trying to aid their creations
>They may be ancient heroes, cursed by the Cold Ones to wander in silence, yet still by their very nature bringing aid to others
>They may be the Cold Ones themselves, playing some deeper game

Man, ever since that Lancer thread people have been high-strung

>The Cold Things seem to despise the Three on principle, ruthlessly assailing them whenever they appear.
>On occasion, the abominations of the Cold are known to abandon their attacks on settlements to go after the Three instead if they detect them in the area.
>It is still unknown as to the reason behind this behavior.

>The wilds close to cities are full of half starved and half mad animals.

>The deep wilderness is silent but for the howling winds and occasional scream or noise from a Cold One

Fuck you, nigga

Keep whining. This stuff has been gay and poorly written as hell so far. At least have some fun.

>The greatest warriors of certain cities are chosen to battle the Cold Ones and their influence. Wielding swords infused with heat magic, they are trained and warded to resist the Cold One's influence and see through their disguises.
They are bitter, brutal men. But their work holds back the winter.

>Hurr, at least have some fun by shitting up the thread with bullshit and shitposts that don't contribute anything XD!!!01!010
Leave Reddit. Don't come back.

The largest city was founded by King Heathstad, a famous hero who, along with the last great dragon, stormed the Cold One's deepest sanctums and stole the still-beating heart of a dead god.
Sadly, Heathstad and the dragon are long dead, but the city stands, its fires kept alight by the pulse of the god's heart, in the depths of its holiest church.

>The Hive is one of the largest cities out there.
>It's lights and towers serve has a beacon of safety amongst the eternal winter.
>Underneath the it's pristine image is the fact that the hive's society can be summed up in three words, cold, capitalistic, cyborgs.

>the heart is a bit more than figuratively the beating heart of Heathstad
>from its heat are homes warmed, metals forged, water boiled, and lights set ablaze
>it is a strange faith that the heart inspires, as much dedicated to venerating the dead god as to the clockwork precision by which the city sets its life.

>some say that Heathstad left one final safeguard to protect his people, the last dragon egg hidden from all so that not even the Cold Ones can find it
>some say it lies in the ruins of a long-forgotten city, some say it lies in the still-beating heart of the long dead god, while some say the cold ones retrieved it long ago and hope to corrupt it to create a frost wyrm, a creature of frost that would finally grant the Cold Ones the power to snuff the embers of life once and for all

>Something that has been noted by some explorers and researchers in the field, is thathere the Cold Things seem to possess some manner of "religion" as it were.
>They have been noted to engage in bizarre rituals and rites involving the bodies of those survivors who they have taken, seemingly presenting them up towards the lifeless heavens of frost.
>Most explorers don't stay to see the ritual through to its conclusion, but for those who do, they come back "changed". Vastly different compared to their normal selves.

Oh I like that.

>The truth about the Hive's safety record is exaggerated at best sometimes.
>The city has lost portions of the city to the cold before, often having to resort to sealing that portion of the city off.
>These areas have become known has 'dark districts' noting on the fact, there is very little to none.
>The rulers of the city will throw the destitute, desperate or defamed individuals in order to reclaim a lost district.
>Generally, this is used has an excuse to execute criminals or annoyances.

>In the days before the Cold started rolling in, there were those who attempted to push parts of their souls beyond their bodies, extending their 'self' into tools or objects
>this never met with success until it was tried with prosthetics, the 'phantom limbs' of amputees' souls quickly latching onto replacements for their lost physical counterparts
>as the world started being cast into ice and snow, and things became increasingly more desperate, a more mundane threat emerged: frostbite.
>as the world continued to freeze over and the bodies piled up, the prosthetics became less of a "if your limbs need to be replaced, we can do that" thing and more of a "skip the pain of frostbite and vulnerability of flesh and blood, amputate today!" thing.
>it wasn't long before the prosthetics were made in a variety of combat and survival models on a mass scale, rather than the simple handcrafted replacements of the past
>and so the makers of such prosthetics became wealthy and influential where they were once relatively humble medical folks

Wait, what tech levels are we dealing with here? I figured we were doing the standard medieval fantasy

I was going by the OP image which is modern, so I was going with '20 minutes into the future' deal.

It was probably more medieval, at least in appearance, before the cold started rolling in. Y'know, forcing people to find new was to apply older stuff so they can survive. Heathstad is probably something of an industrial powerhouse even if it was founded by a sword wielding dragonrider, using all that heat and energy to get pistons turning and steam rising. I tried playing off the cybernetics as soul-shenanigans, but whatever.

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>Whether out of a sense of selfless valiance, noble obligation, or simply to keep what is theirs, a great deal of those in power as the world began to freeze decided they'd rather go down swinging in their ancestral homes than let the Cold Things simply walk over their domains
>This, ah, didn't work out incredibly well in most cases. The snowed-in fortresses that dot the land are full of botched last stands and starved out defenders. And the occasional Cold Thing inhabiting the fallen.
>Those few groups who did survive the collapse of the world around them found themselves with a population of extremely grateful commoners and a whole lot of work ahead of them.
>While they may be a bit less technically sophisticated than the world's great cities, these 'citadel-states' have piled on as much protection as they can muster through brute force and magic alike.
>Though they can often make life (more) miserable for traders and travelers, demanding they recognize titles and claims to long-abandoned lands

Oh yeah, and:
>This can be particularly inconvenient for those who share a home city with distant relatives of, and thus claimants to the titles of, those nobles who survived

>Stones of blazing heat can occasionally be found scattered across the Arctic wasteland, the flames within them burning away the Cold and leaving pockets of safe-ground, albeit quite small.
>Some have taken to harvesting these stones as protective wards.

>two notable types of Cold Ones are the Joker and the Burner

>The Joker has been known to torment those brave or foolish enough to traverse the freeze with sculptures and mirrors made of ice
>The sculptures begin as startlingly accurate, and devolve into more and more grotesque caricatures of travelers
>The mirrors, colloquially called "funhouse mirrors" are apparently intended to disorient travelers, those traveling through caves should be particularly careful

>The Burners mere presence causes ice crystals to form in any areas of exposed skin. The crystals then spread, first along the dermal later, and then into deeper tissues until the subject is riddled with small crystals, and in an immense amount of pain. Once the crystals have propagated sufficiently, the soul of the victim falls to the burner.
>at this stage the Burner either uses these small, hard to notice crystals to control the victim like a puppet through some unknown means, or continues to grow the crystals, until icy plates develop.
>The newly made "ice hulk" wanders the freeze in search or other travelers to attack. Larger groups of ice hulks have been known to cause great trouble to settlements and cities

>Spirits are known to linger in places that had once been of great importance to them in life, actively protecting the area under their protection from the Cold.
>Some of the most powerful amongst these spirits have even formed protective zones under their dominion, where they guard various survivors and artifacts from harm.

>the villages under the protection of particularly powerful spirits tend to have a reverential relationship with the thing
>some view it (or occasionally, them) as an honored ancestor, others as the 'genius' of the place, a few as a soul on its way up to demigodhood, and many more strange interpretations
>there's usually offerings involved, hoping to 'nourish' their protector. The jury's out on whether that works.
>one town, edging closer to the brink, attempted to create their own protective spirit through particularly profane means
>it didn't end quite as well as they'd hoped

>they spirits also tend to make old ruins a bit hit or miss
>you're as likely to find a stalwart defender of their home as a jealous guardian of wealth or even just a Cold Thing hanging around.
>though honestly you're most likely to find a snowed-in husk where a rotten beam falls and crushes in your skull

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>The sea is full of life, true, warm life, that thrives in the cold
>It remains too cold for any human to survive in, even if they could breathe underwater. But the fishermen who provide warm food brought up from the icy depths remain a vital part of the survival of most cities