setting design: the mountain elves of edenwound
[Homebrewed setting for a TTRPG campaign that never ran.]
We start our story in a province called Eld.
Eld, mostly home to human settlements, has a very particular type of landscape: it is hilly, yet very calm and flat. Except for the peak of Isthmus, the name of the mountain where the elven city of Edenwound is settled on. The city covers the eastern and southern sides of the mountain, but it is not common for elves to live on mountains. However, there is a reason Edenwound is set where it is set. The city, which at first looks like yet another small and isolated community of distant elves, hides one of the biggest libraries known to anyone in the Multiverse.
The mountain elves of Edenwound, a rarity amongst their kind, are the only elf people in a long time to settle on such unstable terrains. They are the guardians of the Secret Library of Scriptina, a vast and intricate complex of excavated subterranean tunnels, rooms and passages containing books and papyri full of secrets that most would kill for. The Edenwound elves have looked after the contents of the library since time immemorial, and they are highly respected amongst other elven kingdoms despite having confined themselves to the small city in the mountains they inhabit. Scriptina is a hidden well of knowledge only revealed to those in the city, and to a few select elven realms beyond the province of Eld.
But something unknown to any living elf has shaken the land. Seven pages of the most important book in Scriptina are missing, and no one knows where they are or how this happened. The Elder Council is risking the loss of authority if they have to admit their library is not as secure as promised thousands of years ago. However, what no one but them knows is that this is not the most important thing they are risking. The physical integrity of the book is what keeps Edenwound stable, and if not found soon, the lack of pages would cause the city to crumble down… in a very literal way.
north nocturnal: the last refuge before the night
[Inspirations: Icelandic villages, Whiterun in Skyrim]
North Nocturnal is a human settlement… If it could even be called that. It is barely a settlement, but it has its own tavern, its own well and its own stables, so although not many people choose to make it their home, it constitutes a safe stop before venturing into the northern counties that lie beyond the mountain of Isthmus. Located at the edge of a forest and surrounded by a couple of farmed fields, the village disposes of enough resources to survive on its own.
on the unbound elemental peoples
[This information is not known to the player/s on beginning their adventure. Elemental peoples are based on the Dungeons & Dragons Genasi species, as well as indigenous peoples all over the world]
In the Age of Rise, elemental peoples used to worship the living places they inhabited: from volcanoes to streams, from the highest peaks to underwater oceanic civilisations such as Atlantis. Isthmus, the legendary, giant earth Elemental, would move across the continent every night (1 May), and settle somewhere else. Back when the Legendary Elementals roamed the earth, this was very common in Eld, and elemental peoples used to move around with the giant elemental of their people according to the season. Air – Yule (Winter Solstice); Water – Ostara (Spring Equinox); Fire – Litha (Summer Solstice); Earth – Mabon (Autumn Equinox). Hence why we have never been able to find Atlantis! But even amongst the peaceful there is always the threat of civilisation.
A sage elder elf named Antiope, who lived in the nearest kingdom and had the power of all manuscripts on her continent in her heart, had a unique idea amongst elves. She would create the widest, deepest, vastest library known to any race before. She would fill it with the knowledge of thousands that had lived before her and thousands that would live long after she was dead. She owed it to the future, she told herself, and she and the other elders organised an alliance of elven kingdoms in order to push the earth elemental people out of Isthmus. In exchange for their help in the Elemental War, she promised the other kingdoms, all the knowledge contained in her library would be at their fingertips, anytime they desired to seek it. The conquest of Isthmus was successful, and Antiope and six other elders from different kingdoms performed a binding ritual whereby they made Isthmus an inanimate mountain. They wrote down their findings and their knowledge about the elemental peoples and the Legendary Elementals in a book that would be treasured for generations and generations in Edenwound. This book, when used in a ritual passed on from one Council Elder to the next one, would act as a physical buckle to the magic belt used to bind the Legendary Elemental into its inanimate form. This binding ritual soon became the most important tradition of the Edenwound elves, and it would be performed every Autumn before the Equinox, when Isthmus was due to move across the earth. Instead, the binding would be renewed for yet another year.
