Arhosa Recruiting and Campaign Setting

[Stratovarius]

The great civilization of Arhosa persisted for over one thousand years, a monument to the strength and the power of the beaurocracy that imbued the empire, more powerful than even the emperors that ruled over the vast land. A beautiful, fair, and prosperous terrain graced the kingdom, marking it as the chosen land on earth.

Until one day the beaurocracy began to fail, the emperors weakened and became vain, and nobles within the land focused on their own gain and their own wealth, and let those around them fall into ruin. The empire split apart, each little village, town and city becoming its own kingdom, able only to claim the lands within a day's march of their centre. Armies devolved, and bandits grew, and the best of those claimed their own kingdoms, cutting out baronies by capturing villages, demanding tribute, and marking the land and as their own.

That state persists today, and the land is a broken ruin, for the temples, the roads, the books, the knowledge that marked the high point of the culture of Arhosa, all are slowly being lost and eroded. The castles that marked and ruled the land are occupied, but as often those residents are ghosts and crickets as they are nobles and servants. Populations have crashed, plagues sweeping across the land wiping out towns and villages, famine now a danger where once it was a remote memory, staved off by copious grain reserves. Today those silos stand empty, collapsed and hollow, mold climbing the walls where wheat used to feed thousands.

It is into this dessicated world that you have been born, a world drained of all the great things in life. Perhaps it is possible to restore Arhosa to glory, to recreate the empire and the knowledge and the life that once occured. Or perhaps there is a life to be made in this new land, taking for yourselves a kingdom and a rulership, passing it down to your children, or even create a new empire, a land remade in your image. All of these things are possible, and Arhosa is open to you.

Game Rules
[spoiler]

• Players can play any alignment, any race, any class, and can start anywhere in the world. Currently, there is no map, except in my head, but the terrain is huge, a full continent to play in. I will be adding some area flavour some of the various kingdoms, principalities, and bandit kingdoms. If there is something appealing that you would like to try, suggest it and I'll listen.
• All players must start in groups of at least two, and there should be no conflict between individuals in a party. However, if you do run into another party, feel free to go at it.
  
• This does not necessarily have to be about combat. Intriguing to the top in a city is also a possibility.
• 32 Point Buy, 1 Flaw, no bloodlines, 1 trait, No LA buyoff, no templates above LA +1. No UA races or classes.
• Source Material: Any, subject to build approval.
• Optimization level: 2-3, moderate is the goal.
• Starting level will be 4, and wealth is normal.

[/spoiler]

Civilizations, Kingdoms, and Starting Locales:
[spoiler]

• Hauthar: The Haugars were a warlike, barbarian tribe that lived in a hilly region to the north. So fearsome that Arhosa, the ruling empire to the south built a wall to keep them out, the Haugars were the only warriors able to break their disciplined army, using wild charges and insane rage to cut bloody swathes through all who stood before them. They still stand as they always did, roaming their northern mountains, perhaps least affected by the collapse.
  
• Hegenon: A small but highly formalized population, the Heginyn did not have the numbers to slay their own in petty disputes, and so each fight ended with the break of the opponent's weapon, rather than with any wounding of the opponent. Situated to the south-east of the former empire, their prior nobility of mind has eroded, leaving them pretenders to honour.
  
• Gyntar: The Yn Gyntaf prized speed and willingness to fight above all the other attributes within a man, and they bred their children for that very purpose. Fleet of foot and fast of arm, they ran into battle with joyous cries. Residents of the western plains, they are perhaps the only society there that does not use horses.
  
• Cuallhome: To strike and slide away was the love of the Cuall, a race of small beings who could never hope to slay the larger creatures in a single strike, and instead learned a method of fighting that emphasized many small, glancing blows that would slice into the legs and vulnerable flanks of their foes. They found their home in a broken range of mountains that encircled the centre of the empire, for it let them disappear into rocks and crevices, always safe.
  
• Helfarn: At one with the woods and trees about them, the Helfarch were extraordinary hunters, able to stop animals with a single shot, pinning it in place and quickly moving onto the next in their list of prey. It was with displeasure that they found out that the orcs and the goblins of the northern reaches did not respond so as well as the animals which had been their primary competition for food. The next level down from the northern reaches, they lie to the west and slightly south of the Hauthar, in woods that rest up against the base of the mountains.
  
• Astaland: The Astalch fought in a semi-ritualized manner, for to break a man's shield was to break his spirit and his energy. Defeat was to the shield, and not to the death. Against other cultures, the Astalch did not honour these mediums nearly so much, but the overwhelming emphasis on shield to shield fighting often lead to their downfall in battle. Bordering the western plains, they often conflict with the Yn Gyntaf and their plains-running brethren.
  
• Anaraf: Those of the Anaraf lived in the verdant bowl of a forest, at home with the natural world around them, and so beloved of the animals that a wounded bear would often wander into the camp of the Anaraf, where it would be soothed, tended, and fed, before being sent again on its way. It was an easy and pleasant life, for while they took care of the forest, the forest with their many gifts took care of them in the same fashion. Very close to the woods in which they live, they home themselves in the southern forests, remote from the rest of the world.
  
• War Lands of the Cynddeir: To fight to the last, to the very end, has been seen throughout history, but in none more so than the Cynddeir, who seemed to have a great predilection for fighting at the very last of their strength. It did, in fact, seem to be a racial trait, something inherited, that willed them on when they were covered in blood and exhausted. Warlike to the extreme, the Cynddeir crushed foe after foe under a relentless and furious assault, but as they came to civilization and a more relaxed way of life, their strength bled out and was left behind, a remnant of a greater past. They reside in the east, beyond the core of the great civilization, but not so much. With the collapse of Arhosa, they are recovering some of their more warlike ways.
  
• Llethome: To crush a foe beneath, to run them over, that was the pleasure and the excitement of the Llethu. None had been more vicious or more violent, and none had a greater empire at their peak. Creatures of near giant stature, they swarmed through their foes, using their great bulk to crush and overwhelm the pitiful creatures before them. Nothing stopped them, until their society broke amidst factional infighting, and the little ankle-biters were able to rise up and regain some of their own independence. The very core of the Arhosan landscape, they occupy the central realm of the broken empire.
  
• Biyan: The people of the Biyan region are a specialized culture. Each boy, at a young age, is tested and slotted into an appropriate discipline, and thence trained for a decade and a half before he is allowed to perform and become an adult. This applies equally to the study of magic, where those few who show magical apptitude are further subdivided, each studying a single small area of the totality of magic. The apprentices practice that one area until they have perfected the art, and there are vicious duels between various factions, each supporting their own area of magic as the perfect expression. Their lands fall within the south-west, close the central core of civilization. They were one of the first conquests of the Llethu.
  
• Enayinbo: Far from the madding crowd and pathetic, squirming civilizations that profess to master magic, the Enayinbo remained quiet and still. Travelling hither and yon amidst their peoples through teleporation that came to them as easily as breathing, they remained free and imperturbable, for as they had mastered teleportation, so had they mastered the arts of magical combat. That mastery they expended in duels amongst themselves, looking inward until they all but collapsed under their own weight. The civilization that most propped up the empire of Arhosa after the Llethu, they were responsible for the magical core of the land.
  
• The Crying Mountains: The Ferthyr long believed that to know, the person wishing to know must suffer for their art. Be it in the form of flagellation, self-denial, or even outside loss, suffering became a core to their society, such that they incorporated it into all of their magical artefacts and casting. Living in the mountains to the northeast of even the Hauthar, they deprive themselves of all sensation in a cold and unforgiving land.
  
• Nowhere: Brilliant yet eccentric, the Liara used their magical talents to create tools that would ease their daily tasks. Lawns were watered, silent servants kept the housing spotless, and magical beasts patrolled the land and town, keeping all those within the bounds unharmed. Freed of responsibility, the Liara danced and partied, their lives bathed in an endless ether of pleasure. Yet at the end of all things, they are gone, for even the mages who maintained the spells were swept up and away, and the defenses crumbled. The Liara sang as their civilization burned. A forgotten land, their artefacts can be found within some of the eastern lands.
  
• The Shore Counties: Each element is held in high regard by the Hegwyd, and it is to all of them that they pray, and from those precious elements that they draw their life and energies. Now, they live along the shore of a great sea, merchants and sailors, living in a land of winds, cliffs, and seas, and the sun that grows their crops.
  
• Tro Ar Fyd: Few things offer a wizard more delight than to twist the designs of one spell into that of another. The Tro Ar Fyd have long studied the essence of magic, and what divides the conjuration of ice from the invocation of fire. They did, discover the root of magic, and it has become the core of their land. It marks their terrain, a strange land that is a desert covered in cold, blasting winds and burning sunshine, the land farthest to the east.
  
• Marleath: Buried underground, in deep subterranean crypts, the kingdom of the Marleath thrived and grew, constantly digging and creating new buildings and tunnels. Armed with an array of dead servitors, raised from the body of every citizen of the city who passed the age of fifty, only the Patriarch Ve Angau stood eternal, a cold and restless Lich, who felt no love for the living, and viewed them as broodcattle to birth more to be slain. The kingdom resides under the northwest core of the empire, forbidding and difficult to reach, hidden and guarded by the unliving monsters.
  
• Whispering Woods: To change. To become other than one's self. That was the goal of the Cyfnewid, a people of such subtle and shifting form that no two ever looked alike. Each took to himself his own, unique, identity, as separate from one another as a bird in the sky is from a bush in a swamp. Eventually, each began to change and differ so much, that those of that race are almost unrecognisable. They live in the Whispering Woods, divided from the lands of the Anaraf by a great river.
  
• Flonha: Flonha healers, as well as the rest of their society, were renowned for their ability to heal, and for the kindness and gentleness that permeated the culture. Diseased people would make a pilgrimage from all over the world to be treated at the hospitals of the Flonha. Sheltered under the reign of the Llethu, they are homed upon the eastern edge of the great plains that house the Yn Gyntaf.
  
• Chral Kala: Magical energy crackled from the spires of the Chral Kala in its heyday, siphoning off of the energy of all those who lived with its domain, feeding that energy into carriers and storage for the use of the few, proud rulers of the city. Haughty men, others died so that they might live. They live against the western borders of the continent, a distant and remote kingdom that never fell beneath the yoke of Arhosa.
  
• Setras Ra: Bright lights sparkled along the golden rooftops of Setras Ra, brilliant spheres of captured light, illuminating a city of splendour and exquisite tastes. What it did not reveal was the lust and corruption eating away at the heart of the land, two forces brought together within the hearts of the rulers, men of charitable dispositions and secretive and immoral liaisons. It is the capital of the great land of Arhosa, the former heart of a vibrant empire. All races congregate here.
  
• Hania: The Hanian civilization was one of the first to discover the magic needed to make lands flow and form, lifting the mountain tops from the hoary peaks and turning them into the first flying landmasses. Each was enmeshed in the gale that kept it airborne and stable, but one by one, these failed as the patterns of the world changed, and the great stones fell from the sky, leaving behind little but forgotten hills and tiny islands as markers of what once was. Only a few still fly, and they hide themselves away, drifting among the misty peaks, homes of forgotten knowledge.
  
• Ghaelora: Those of the Ghoel valued faith above all else, faith in their single, overarching diety. That monolithic faith drove them onwards, pressing outward into the surrounding lands until they encountered those of another faith. Each converted, through death or through life, until the other gods saw their civilization as a true threat to all of their existences. Faced with the combined wrath of the gods, the Ghoel redoubled their own faith, knowing that they had come close to toppling the balance in their god's favour. It was all for naught, as attrition and the ageless, remorseless hate of the gods ground their civilization down, eventually burying their great city beneath a giant slurry of molten lava. A forgotten kingdom, its home and location have long been lost.
  
• Lochlands: The Byd Nitur spent their time in quiet contemplation, dancing amidst the trees and lakes of their quiet valleys, each tasked with looking after a single type of animal. And so each would wander through their domain, healing the sick, feeding those in their charge. It was an idyllic life, one relatively undisturbed in their quite homes, nestled amid the hills and lakes. Upon the eastern edge of the land, they are too small and too unimportant to have been engaged in the wars of conquest.
  
• Pyribyr Vestana: Possessed of a most startling trait, the Pybyr could weaken themselves in order to store the energy for use at a later time. Pybyr would collapse in their homes, emaciated, only to emerge hours later, their muscles swollen, as they went to work at smithing a stubborn metal rod. Some of their racial makeup can be gleaned through the works of their cities, although the citizens themselves remain quiet and aloof. Southwestern in location, they reveal little to the outside world.
  
• Astral: Mere ephemeral beings, the Pellennig danced and swum amidst the Astral plane, able to see what was before and behind them, and never in danger because of such. Their god had given them the gift of foresight at the cost of their bodies, and that was how they remained, half-present, but knowing all things that passed through their scope. Perhaps they still exist, although that, for certain, is not known.
  
• Unknown: It was long rumoured that existed a race of people to whom death was merely a stopping place on the eternal cycles of life. Known by the name of the Edfryd, they possessed the qualities of the phoenix, able to die, only to be reborn. They persist as a rumour, a paragraph here, a line there, always teasing and tantalizing, never realized.
  

[/spoiler]

[AndyJames]

I want to play the Celts! Charismatic and Protective!

Wait... Wrong game...



But yeah. I'm interested in playing an empire builder, but more King Arthur than Manshoon. So, probably high Charisma with Leadership type.

How does that jive with your world, Strat? And also, are your house rules in? 'Cause they sort of dampen my enthusiasm (because of the sheer number, more than anything else).

[Stratovarius]

Aggressive Protective. Now that's a real Celt.

High Charisma with Leadership should be fine. The minions will likely be more spread out as running camps and towns and working, etc, rather than used in combat, as I'd rather not try large scale encounters right away. Cohort is fine though.

And no, I didn't list my house rules deliberately. I've already got a campaign or two running with them in it, and I'll try a slightly more standard one this time out. However, should anyone wish to try a class, or class-affecting houserule, they're free to do so.

[AndyJames]

OK. Now to find a good Cha-based caster class with Diplomacy as a class skill...

The only house rule I'd like to see is the one which grants Sorcerers Eschew Materials as a free level 1 feat and the ability to ignore material components and/or focuses up to a value based on class levels. Just to encourage people to consider Sorcerer levels above 5 or 6.

[TheWordSlinger]

I'm thinking about running the Bard/Wilder/SublimeChord/Cerebremancer I've been kicking around in my head...so if you'd like a court bard of some kind, let me know Andy.

[AndyJames]

Bard or wiseman? You want to play the part of the Myrddhin to my Arthur?

[AfterCrescent]

EjoThims and I will go about as far away from what AJ and TWS are doing as possible.

We'll be working with a bandit group and plan on taking it over, getting filthy rich, and likely building a milita and conquering something...

[TheWordSlinger]

I wasn't thinking that, but I could do it. I don't know a lot about the Author myths besides the basics, I didn't even know who Myrddhin was until I Googled it. (I know who Merlin is, just not by that name...)

[AndyJames]

Yeah. Merlin was probably a Druid 3/Bard 1/Divine Oracle 1/AH5/Sublime C 2/AH +5/MT 3, though... With Versatile Spellcaster for early entry. He is cheesed out


And, yes. I tend to use the older names for my Arthurian characters:
Gwenhwyfar
Launcelot
Parsifal
etc.

[TheWordSlinger]

I'll probably go Bard for the first seven levels to get the Spellcasting req's for SC, then take 3 levels of Wilder to finish off the skills, then a level of Sublime Chord, another level of Wilder, then 8 of Cerebremancer to finish off the build. It's not very optimized, but I like it. 

[AndyJames]

You can get Wilder earlier and get all 10 levels of Cerebremancer:

Bard 4/Wilder 4/Cerebremancer 2/Bard +1/SC 1/Cere +8

Or use Versatile Spellcaster + Heighten Spell cheese to get into Cerebremancer even earlier.

That said, I am looking for a good Cha-based caster with Diplomacy as a class skill and lots of skill points. Know of one other than the Bard?

[TheWordSlinger]

Thanks for the build advice.
As for Cha based casters, I believe Beguiler has Diplomacy but I'm afb. Favored Souls have split Cha/Wis based casting and Diplomacy. That's all I've got.

[AndyJames]

Beguiler is Int-based but has lots of skill points. Not quite what I am looking for in terms of an archetype, though.

Favoured Soul is Cha-based melee type (or was intended to be) but only 2 skill pt per level, which hurts a lot.

*grumbles* Only caster I can find is the Shugenja and we all know how much of suck that one is...

And the funniest thing of all is that the Dread Necro fits the archetype I am looking for the best:

1. Martial Weapon
2. Able to wear at least Mithril Breastplate
3. Cha-based character

Only problem is: a DN as King Arthur type? Pardon me???

[TheWordSlinger]

I'm honestly not sure where you're getting the image of Arthur as a spellcaster, to be honest...

[AndyJames]

Not Arthur exactly. More of a LG-view that is inline with the legend of Camelot. Also, the men in shiny plate-type armour and martial weapons look would be nice. He just happens to cast spells instead of beating the crap out of someone with a sword...

[TheWordSlinger]

Maybe a one level Pally/Knight-if-it-gets-diplo/some-other-diplo-class before moving into your spellcasting class along with the Able Learner feat. You lose a single spellcaster level, but that's not a huge loss. Plus then you could go Abjurant Champ/Eldritch Knight to better your sword-swinging and your spell-slinging...

[VennDygrem]

Maybe a one level Pally/Knight-if-it-gets-diplo/some-other-diplo-class before moving into your spellcasting class along with the Able Learner feat. You lose a single spellcaster level, but that's not a huge loss. Plus then you could go Abjurant Champ/Eldritch Knight to better your sword-swinging and your spell-slinging...

Why not try the Sublime Way-Variant Marshal? It's a Cha-heavy class (with 4 sp/lvl, and free Skill Focus: Diplomacy) with the whole leadership slant, and is better balanced than the base class. White Raven maneuvers could be useful additions too. Seems to fit the whole LG Knight-Commander/Courtly-Leader role.

Of course, I don't know nearly enough about the class to make a fully-educated recommendation. *shrug*

[AndyJames]

That would sort of step on TWS' toes, as he is a sort of Bard

The real reason is that I don't really like playing fighter-types, even less so playing someone who throws his followers into the fray. I like casters, even if it is fixed casters like DN or Warmage.

[VennDygrem]

That would sort of step on TWS' toes, as he is a sort of Bard

The real reason is that I don't really like playing fighter-types, even less so playing someone who throws his followers into the fray. I like casters, even if it is fixed casters like DN or Warmage.

Fair Enough. In that case, are there any cases of someone adjusting DN to a Good/holy class? Replace desired lich result with some powerful holy race/archetype, or if not looking for a religious bent, some other powerful arcane race/archetype (seeing as how liches are already supposedly powerful mages, albeit undead). *shrug*

I'll have to  keep my eyes peeled. Also, I'm not sure how many characters Strato's trying to go for, but I might like to try coming up with a character, once I get home from the computer lab.

[AndyJames]

The DN also has a problem of 2sp/level. Grr... At the rate this is going, Cloistered Cleric Dweomerkeeper is looking more and more attractive...

So, you'll be joining us in building Avalon?