. Age . Of . Worms .
[Party Roster]
1] Disciple of Sakura (Adre Miathas)
2] Jacior (Bedlam)
3] Rock_DS (Gish)
4] MT the Clown (Teslaokin Amphatera)
5] The Jester of Equilibrium (Lete)
6] Seph (Beatrice)
7] Optional
[The Prophecy...]
Since the beginning of history, humanity has measured time in Ages. Ages of Glory, of Dreams, and even of Great Sorrows marks the human tally of years, giving a sense of order to the events of past centuries. But one age has yet to occur—an age of darkness, of decay, and of writhing doom. Witty bards and wrathful preachers know it as the Age of Worms, weaving it into the peripheries of their passion plays a mythic era of destruction that could begin at any time. Astrologers, diviners, and the servants of Fate know more. The canniest among them fear that the Age of Worms has already begun.
[Local Background]
At a perfumed arcade known as the Emporium, Governor-Mayor Lanod Neff rubs shoulders common labourers awaiting an appointment in the Veiled Corridor. In an adjoining antechamber, snakes and exotic dancers gyre to a sonorous weave of cymbals and seductive pipes. A floor below, a gaggle of grasping miners presses against the windowed door of a darkened cell, impatient for a glimpse of a two-headed calf.
Out on the street, a gang of rowdies scream obscenities at a crumpled halfling, kicking it as if scrambling for a ball. Their drunken laughter echoes off shuttered windows and bolted doors.
In a tower-flanked fortress across the shadowy square, filthy men with nothing to lose shout hymns to St. Cuthbert, clutching to their idealism and principles like cornered animals. Their wild-eyed chief minister smiles as he draws a cat-o-nine-tails across his bare back, awash in their adulation and the spirits of his god. But it's just another night in Diamond Lake.
[Diamond Lake, Briefing]
Diamond Lake nestles in the rocky crags of the Cairn Hills, three days east of the Free City of Greyhawk to which it is subject. Iron, copper, and silver from Diamond Lake's mines fuel the capital's markets and support its soldiers and nobles with the raw materials necessary for weapons and finery. This trade draws hundreds of skilled and unskilled labourers and artisans, all hoping to strike it rich. In ages past, Diamond Lake boasted an export more valuable than metal in the form of treasure liberated from the numerous tombs and burial cairns crowding the hills around the town. These remnants of a half-dozen long-dead cultures commanded scandalous prices from Greyhawk's elite, whose insatiable covetousness triggered a boom in the local economy. Those days are long gone, though. The last cairn in the region coughed up its treasures decades ago, and few locals pay much mind to stories of yet-undiscovered tombs and unplundered burial cairns. These days, only a handful of treasure-seekers visit the town, and few return to Greyhawk with anything more valuable than a wall rubbing or an ancient tool fragment.
In the hills surrounding the town, hundreds of labourers spend weeks at a time underground, breathing recycled air pumped in via systems worth ten times their combined annual salary. The miners are the chattel of Diamond Lake, its seething, tainted blood. But they are also Diamond Lake's foundation, their weekly pay cycling back into the community via a gaggle of gambling dens, bordellos, taverns, and temples. Because work in the mines is so demanding and dangerous, most folk come to Diamond Lake because they have nowhere else to turn, seeking an honest trade of hard labour for subsistence pay simply because the system has allowed them no other option. Many are foreigners displaced from native lands by war or famine. Work in a Diamond Lake mine is the last honest step before utter destitution or crimes of desperation. For some, it is the first step in the opposite direction: a careful work assignment to ease the burden on debtor-filled prisons, one last chance to make it in civil society.
Despite its squalor, Diamond Lake is crucial to Greyhawk's economy. The city's directors thus take a keen interest in local affairs, noting the rise and fall of the managers who run Diamond Lake's mines in trust for the government. The city's chief man in the region is Governor-Mayor Lanod Neff, a lecherous philanderer eager to solidify his power and keep the mine managers in line. Neff exerts his capricious will via the agency of the grandiloquent Sheriff Cubbin, a man so renowned for corruption that many citizens assumed the announcement of his commission was a joke until he started arresting people.
The alliance between the governor-mayor and his pocket police might not be enough to cow Diamond Lake's powerful mine managers, but Lanod Neff holds a subtle advantage thanks to the presence of his distinguished brother, the scrupulous Allustan, a wizard from Greyhawk who retired to Diamond Lake five years ago. None dare move against Neff so long as Allustan is around.
Instead of scheming against the government, Diamond Lake's six mine managers plot endlessly against one another, desperate to claim a weakened enemy's assets while at the same time protecting their own. While they are not nobles, the mine managers exist in a strata above normal society. They consider themselves far above their employees, many of whom are indentured or effectively enslaved as part of a criminal sentence. The miners' loyalty tends to map directly to the working conditions, pay, and respect offered to the miners by their wealthy masters.
Diamond Lake crouches in the lowland between three hills and the lake itself, a splotch of mud, smoke, and blood smeared across uneven terrain marked by countless irregular mounds and massive rocks. The oldest buildings pack the lakeshore, where fishing vessels once docked and stored their impressive catches. That commerce has abandoned the town entirely, for the shining waters that once gave Diamond Lake its name are now so polluted as to make fishing impossible. Many old warehouses have been converted into cheap housing for miners and labourers, and no one is safe outdoors after dark. As one walks north along the streets of Diamond Lake, the buildings become sturdier and the spirits of their inhabitants likewise improve. A great earthen road called the Vein bisects the town. With few exceptions, those living north of the Vein enjoy a much better life than the wretches living below it.
All of the town's social classes congregate in the Vein's central square. Roughly every two weeks, someone in the town upsets someone else so greatly that the only recourse is a duel to the death at the centre of a ring of cheering miners. The bookmakers of the Emporium and the Feral Dog do brisk business on such occasions, which tend to draw huge crowds. On less violent nights, the square is still home to a thousand pleasures and poisons; if Diamond Lake is a creature, the Vein's central square is its excitable, irregular heart.
[Character Creation]
Available Sources: WOTC-Published 3.5 Sourcebooks
Banned Sources: Savage Species, Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic, Tome of Battle, and Unearthed Arcana.
ECL: 1st (0 XP)
Gold: First Level Starting Gold.
Ability Scores*: 32 point buy OR 4d6, drop the lowest, 7 times.
If you roll, you cannot choose point-buy. If you roll and get no score above 13, or a total modifier of +1 or less (after dropping the lowest roll) you may re-roll.
Hit Points: Maximum first level, roll 2HD for each level afterward. Re-roll any ones, take the best of the two rolls.
Alignments: Any other than Chaotic Evil.
Pantheon: Greyhawk
Backgrounds: Recommended for role-playing purposes and to get the indepth feel for the campaign, though no necessary. If you wish to discuss your background, feel free to PM me through Gaia or IM me over messanger.
MSN: sir_lans@hotmail.com
[House / Optional Rules]
1] Spellcasters that prepare spells may spontaneously cast Cantrips and Orisons. Normal daily limits still apply. Spontaneous casters instead know an additional number of 0th-level spells equal to their relevant ability score modifier. Sorcerers with 18 Charisma, for example, would know 4 additional 0th-level spells.
2] If you wish to use Animal Companions/Familiars/Mounts in combat, their stat block must be in the "Other Notes" section of your character sheet, or on another sheet altogether.
3] Please mark the resource used for stuff outside of core! Like, if you take a feat from the Complete Adventurer, put "Feat Name [C.Adventurer, pg. x]" or something like that.
