ITT: tg builds a setting

Long ago, before the Moon Tael fell to become the Taelish Mountain, when both Morre and Yene cast their tyrannical flame upon Erens, the lands hot and constantly battered by the Shrieking Seas, more blood than water.

Seeking a home for humans away from the hunger of the seas, Witch-Mother Izdihar ventured forth.

Through the scorched mountains, over the lifeless prairies, past the teeth of the forests Izdihar went. Great were her magics, but greater was the power of Morre and Yene.

When all hope was lost, Izdihar collapsed in the dead land now known as Izdihar's Salvation, where the Jinan people found her. The Jinan, blessed by the Silent Ones, brought Izdihar back from the brink of death and taught her how to tame the Seas. In return, she gave them two sons, conceived with their King. The King offered Izdihar his heart and a crown, but the Witch-Mother instead went to her people, the humans.

By the time Izdihar returned, her sons were full grown and almost as capable as their mother in great acts of magic. Izdihar lashed the seas to her will, and raised new fertile land from beneath them.

The Witch-Mother's sons became kings, Karam the Wise, and Rayyan the Jubilant. The Witch-Mother's people split between the two, creating the ancient civilizations all humans come from. The Witch-Mother herself left to meditate, although many places claim to be the place where she sat for three hundred years, none can prove it.

Morre and Yene were not content to see humans become prosperous and grow. Yene, ever more aggressive, pushed herself closer to Erens, to scorch all life from it. The Shrieking Seas began to turn to steam, crops wilted, the magics of Karam and Rayyan were used to shield the people, but Yene just fell ever closer to the land.

Idzihar returned from her meditations to unleash her Devouring Void, using her own soul to strip Yene's Fire and to scatter what was left of Yene into the Darkness, creating stars. Morre became cold and distant in revenge.

Attached: 456ce589c58e44adc8234ad849573059.jpg (500x666, 35K)

The Silent Ones, as connected to the land as they were, disappeared following Yene's violence.
Travellers from the far East will often tell tales of cults who still worship the Silent Ones, deep in the Ironeye Mountains.

The people of Karam the Wise, who would come to be known as the Architects of Karam, went on to populate much of the then-unnamed continent.
Their endless innovation and appetite to expand resulted in the creation of vast cities, dwarfing even the Jinan's cities of legend.
Never content with living in his brother's shadow, Rayyan the Jubilant gathered his people onto sprawling village-boats, and took to the now-sailable Shrieking Seas following Yene's destruction.

In a time when Morre and Yene were young, barely candles in the sky, the Rusilo peoples had reached the surface, escaping the containment and the now deserted cities of their now dead masters. In the strange land of the surface, they did as they had always done, imitated what they found and hoped for the best. As time passed and the sky grew more merciless and their numbers began to dwindle, they abandoned their cities of imitations and returned to the long derelict cities of their long dead masters in the deep underground and waited for the end.
The end never did come, however, and now, refreshed, they are turning their eyes back to the surface.

The Brotherhood of Izdihar, who have their largest monastery on the Taelish Mountain, seek every scrap and fragment of the Witch-Mother's writings and magic. They wish to make a new sun, without the coldness of Morre or the cruelty of Yene. Secretly still, their high priests seek the restoration of the Witch-Mother, who had sacrificed herself for the world.

Heretical rumors that a dark cult of exiled Jinan liches support this endeavor, with their leader silently manipulating the kings of man.

The Architects of Karam fought the bitter cold of Morre's vengeful neglect with ingenuity, combining fire magic with powerful furnaces and pipes running thoughout their cities.
Rayyan's people chose to fight the growing cold by travelling further South, hoping to find a warmer climate where his people could flourish.
Rayyan himself captained the largest village-boat, leaving his people to regroup and gather supplies as he took his most favoured sons further south than ever before.
The details of Rayyan's fall have been lost to time, but it is known that when he returned to his people, he had changed. Bearing a rictus grin and damp white skin, Rayyan and his village-boat of champions had changed terribly. Where their hearts once beat with the blood of a god, now a dimly flickering flame resided in their chests. What was once Rayyan began to massacre his people, resurrecting the dead with the necrotic flame he now carried, expanding his legion of marauders.
The few village-boats that escaped returned to Karam's cities, warning the king of his brother's change.
An epic battle between the brothers never came, and in fact they never met again. Rayyan and his legion are said to still haunt the Shrieking Seas to this day, attacking any who venture too far south. Karam, driven mad by his brother's disappearance, became enamoured with creating clockwork automatons, all resembling his lost brother.

The Jinan, the only people who can freely exist in all Three Planes at once, have receded into the First Plane. Rare is it that one witnesses a Jinan, rarer still is witnessing one unexiled.

The banished Jinan are a terrible sort, who maintain their existences on the Second Plane through magic too dark for most to even think of, let alone mention. Stories abound of men and women being seduced by alluring travelers, only to have every drop of blood and soul drained from them. Yet these vagrants of story are the mere beggars of the exiled Jinan... worse yet lurk

I love these threads, it's a shame they don't always get good traction.

Beyond the Planes of the realm exists the farthest points of creation, the Atra Poles. At the tip of each pole is a cage, a prison of will, within are bound the Hesha, the Primal Elements. These boundless entities forged the Planes in their violent struggles, and would have likely shattered the world's if it were not for Vsushir, the first of the Atru, who caught the Hesha and caged them with her will and locked then to each point of reality, to maintain the balance of the material. Even now, the Hesha claw at their prisons, bleeding their elemental mana into the planes beneath.

Heba the Keen, the greatest archer ever to walk the lands, whose srrows were not of stone or metal, but Words. For she knew the True Name of the Atru, Sleeping Ones, the Eldest Gods, and The World itself.

Fir this reason, when Anash the Pale stole her as his bride, he trapped her Voice in a stone and tossed into the Sea so she would be his eternally with no hope of escape