Torchbearers+Setting

Imagine a place where medieval Earth and fantasy elements blend to create an ideal setting for adventure: that is the Torchbearers setting. Stories of myth and legend are forged within a world of many familiar places, peoples, and cultures. The civilization of man is dominant across the globe after driving the non-humans and monsters of earlier days into the vast wildernesses of each continent. But human societies are built upon the ruins of the Ancients and in the villages, towns, and cities of the current era many relics and fragments of lore from those bygone is waiting to be discovered. Far more is hidden beyond the Edge where Man's enemies lurk, waging their wars upon each other, plotting their returns, eager to descend again into realms they consider theirs. Against their scheming armies count as little. It is for the select few with special abilities, skills, and talents to delve into the Wilds in search of what knowledge and weapons of the Old World can help protect the new, to strive against the horrors that lurk there, and to carry the light of Mankind into the darkness. These intrepid men and women are known as Torchbringers.

Some serve themselves, some free-lance, others are dedicated to a paymaster, whether prince or king, emperor or church, merchant house or guild hall. Those with the true spark of extraordinary abilities are rare but many brave and hardy souls try the lucrative trade, undeterred by its shocking attrition rates. Their adventures unfold within the rich history, geography, and cultures of medieval Earth, but a version infused with aspects of our own ancient world that have not vanished in this alternate history, as well as those things from fantasy settings that are often familiar. This world is also a bit larger than ours in order to accommodate a few extra interesting folks. The blending of our fascinating past with the supernatural does not obscure either but complements both. I hope.

__**Making Your Character**__
 * Background**: please select someone from one of the cultures of the Dark/Middle Ages of Europe during the 6th-13th centuries. Though the world will have a very medieval feel, somewhere around 1200-1250, there are a number of tribes, nations, etc. that retained their independence instead of being overwhelmed by feudalism and other great changes. A few exceptions are listed here:

In most nations of Europe there are enclaves of tribesmen (think Celts, Gauls, Lombards, Franks, Visigoths, etc.) that have survived outside the dominant medieval culture do to their innate fierceness, their use as a bulwark against the denizens of the Wild, and the relative lack of appeal (usually) of their lands.

Ancient Greece continues to flourish under the collective name of the Olympian city-states, the heritage of the Roman Empire survives in the form of the 10th Legion mercenary company (also known as the Red Cloaks), and the Italian merchant families dominate politically, economically, and militarily perhaps a bit more vigorously and in greater number (city-wise) than they did in in the 13th century (more as they did in the Renaissance period). More details are listed in the Settings section later on, and further information will be added to the site soon.

The holy orders may hold territory a little earlier or in different ways from the strict Earth timeline (looking at you Teutonic Knights and Hospitallers).

So immerse yourself in the culture and history of our past, research places and types of people that interest you. What does your character look and dress like, what weapons does he use, skills has he learned, what faith does he cling to and what cultural mores does he hold dear? Our first campaign will be Euro-centric, so feel free to investigate the many, many European possibilities from the period between 500 and 1299 AD. The timeline is not radically altered in lots of places, but it is in some, so selecting from within that span of time will give a great deal of options but still help with the veracity of place and time. In the Setting section you will find each of the major political divisions of Europe and their descriptions.

Your job is to find the kind of person you would like your character to be before you chose his class from the //Rolemaster// game system. **When you get a nationality, a look, a culture, a belief system, a feel, then let me know and we can discuss other pieces**. If you are from a particular area, try to embrace the types of weapons, armor, etc. that were common there. It will help with the immersion and it is important in crafting the atmosphere I envision for the campaign. If you want a Viking shield maiden she should not wield a katana or Dacian falx. There will be plenty of opportunities for her to be distinct in exotic ways later on but for now it is very cool to have her represent a type from her people.

Art of course can be a great inspiration when developing characters, and Angus McBride and other painters working for the Osprey military history line of books have some amazing works to use as reference material. Googling his name plus medieval warriors, soldiers, specific nations, etc. will yield lots of interesting depictions of medieval fighting men. You may not want a spearman from Scotland because you want a Scottish wizard but it may be that you like how the Scot in the picture looks and you decide the wizard will dress in a similar manner. Let the historical record and cool artistic creations help you. Pinterest is also a resource with endless ideas. Please don't just pick the usual fantasy stuff. I'm sure you can find a picture that is reflective of the historical dress, etc. of the day that will help keep the medieval Earth aesthetic. Avoding a steam punk or high fantasy version of a "medieval" character is not really the idea.

As I mentioned above, we will be using the //Rolemaster Standard System//. Creating a character will be done with those rules. They area bear to begin with so I will very happily work help with this initial and challenging phase.
 * Races**: hillmen, mariners, nomads, rural men, and urban men. Are there some men who have the blood of an Ancient race running through their veins. Yes. To you knowledge, you are NOT one of those.
 * Classes**: Fighter, Thief, Rogue, Layman, Magician, Illusionist, Cleric, Animist, Lay Healer, Healer, Mystic, Sorcerer, Ranger, Paladin, Dabbler, Bard, and Magent. Are there some humans that have been trained by a non-human master or mentor? Yes. You are NOT one of them.
 * Training packages**: each character should have one or more training packages taken to explain his background before becoming a Torchbearer. These add a great deal of flavor and they also are often a good bargain in terms of buying skills, ranks, etc.
 * Gear**: Chain mail or lamellar/scale mail is about he heaviest type of armor used in the world of man at this stage, at least as far as you have ever seen. Anything else sported by a human would be an heirloom from the Ancients and you don't have any of those. Sticking with the attire and gear appropriate to your culture is appreciated.

__**The Setting**__ It is a world dominated by humans, but not always was it so. Now, in the 1209th year since the Darkening (1209 AD), the network of human societies rules on six continents. Monarchy is overwhelmingly the most common form of government, though in places oligarchic councils reign in princely style. The almost universally-held view of mankind is that non-human races (the Ancients) are monsters with a long history of hatred, cruelty, and exploitation of the most horrible kind toward others not of their species, especially humans. They are terrible creatures with ill-intent and fell powers who haunt the nightmares of villagers and city-folk everywhere. They are avoided when possible and destroyed when encountered.

Here is a link to a map of the Eastern Hemisphere in 1200 AD:

http://www.worldhistorymaps.info/images/East-Hem_1200ad.jpg

Villages, towns, and cities of man hold the perils of footpad and disease, hunger and heartless winters, unscrupulous lords and rapacious merchants. War too brings its attendant ills that fall all too often upon those least able to defend themselves. But beyond the borders of each kingdom, the walls of towns and cities, the frontiers patrolled by brave men, there are far greater dangers. Areas of wilderness where no human ruler holds sway are vast and are known as the Wilderlands, Wild Lands, Beast Marches, the Frontier, the Savage Expanse, the Hunting, Darklands, and more commonly the Wilds. Beasts and monsters dwell there, unhunted by man, tempted at times to risk their hides to slaughter livestock and farmers. Savage tribes, sub-human and non-human, wage war against each other and among their own kind when no better foe is at hand. Sometimes a powerful chieftain unites a horde and hurls it against the land of man.

In these remote wildernesses dwell the Ancients. Hidden from the purging swords and fires of humanity, they continue their wars, nurse their grudges and bide their time. Though far diminished since the days when they held dominion over vast areas of the world, they manipulate it still as they can, sending agents into human lands to spy and sabotage, seduce and corrupt, steal and kill. Elves twisted with the bitter rewards of their arrogance and malice plot within the Forest of Shadow, a realm partly of our world and partly of the umbral lands only they know well. All is not as the elves would wish it, however, and darker things even than they hunt beneath the broad-leafed trees.

In the mountain wildernesses of the world ravenous communities of ogres prey upon those unlucky or desperate enough to travel their monster-infested lands. Far below these wild peaks and valleys, dwarfs are locked in an eternal war with their accursed cousins, the limitless orc and goblin tribes that also make the subterranean Deeps their home.

In the Dead Cities, places of great tragedy and carnage, or the Fields of the Fallen where the rites of the gods were not invoked or completed as a pall for those killed in battle, the Ghoul Kings reign. Masters of necromancy, they command legions of the dead whose hatred for the living drives a huger to kill all those who draw breath. Ever searching for those things they lost in life, angry at those who have what is now denied forever to themselves, the Breathless haunt these dread places. Their foul masters are ceaseless in their work to add to their legions.

Sages say that beyond our wolds lie many others, most of them inimical to mankind. Where such places have touched our own the land has become strange and tainted. Alien things from the Great Beyond, Riftborn demons and the abominations of the Elder Veil, can be called into our world by manipulation of the terrible forces emanating from these psychic scars. Cults of madmen and worse are drawn to these portals to the Forbidden Realms that are anathema to man and god alike. In the deep wilderness above or below ground are held gatherings murmuring to bizarre idols as they attempt to call into our world those horrors the stone and wood and metal effigies they create or find from long ago represent.

Some of the human political divisions during this period are:

Note 1: There are many, many lesser states from Pomerania and Friesland in the north to the various subdivisions of Corsica and the Middle East that are not yet detailed. Note 2: The pictures below are just examples from the period. Please don't feel restricted to selecting one of them.


 * The Holy Roman Empire** an enormous expanse of land with one foot in the west and the other distinctly eastern in orientation. It has long been a nightmare ot govern but recently these tensions erupted into prolonged and Pyrrhic conflict. The empire has been devastated by twenty-two years of war, not all of it civil. A ravaged land wherein survival is a challenge every day. A few knights or lords or powerful merchants have held the walls against total ruin but it is a place where roving bands of mercs are a constant threat and where armies still fight over the devastation. Many darker things have crept back into the Empire under over of the chaos to execute their own foul plots.

The **Kingdom of France** is riven with war between the king and a number of powerful dukes who want his crown. Wild Gallic tribes that still cling to their old ways and old gods are scattered near forests across France in villages protected by stout wooden stockades and hard-eyed men.


 * Sicily** is fought over by Normans, Angevins, Aragonese, Sicilians tired of being ruled by foreign powers, and Byzantine agents.

The merchant lords of **Italy’s city-states** fight each other with cloak, dagger, poison, seduction, bribery, mercenary armies and the threat of God’s wrath.


 * The Papal States** are the spiritual center and home to all of Christian Europe, and no greater den of plotting or base of power exists in the West.

The **Teutonic Knights** hold sway in the Baltic and are influential in Poland and Prussia, with members of the order and its agents in places much farther afield. The Sword Brothers in their white and red are a successor and allied knightly chapter that supports the efforts of their Teutonic brethren.

Eastward lies the great and fragmented **Russian principalities**, alternately threatening their western neighbors, fighting civil wars, or defending against hordes from the east and southeast.

The **Byzantine Empire** limps on, corrupt, riddled with conspiracy and treachery, vast, suspicious, in decline, rich, arrogant, and deadly still.


 * Olympian City-states of Greece**: still a military culture of hoplites, though with more missile troops and cavalry than was historically the case. Protected by powerful priesthoods dedicated to the jealous gods of Mount Olympus, they continue to defy the medieval world's changes as they resisted the Romans centuries earlier. A deeply pious land riven with antagonisms born of millennia of conflict between the hundreds of city-states.

The presence of the **Crusader states** defends the Byzantine Empire's eastern borders. What they lack in numbers and supplies they make up for in zeal, fighting prowess, and the castles that stand as bulwarks against their many enemies. Its rulers are a mix of European nobles and holy orders working together against non-Christian enemies, often at odds with each other due to nationalistic, political, and personal disputes, and supported by the great merchant houses of the Italian city-state and other independent governments that find tremendous profit in supplying their needs and keeping open this eastern trade nexus.

Chief among the enemies of the Christian states of the Middle East is the **Seljuk Turk Sultanate** that stretches from the Syrian Desert to three days ride beyond Tashkent. A great tribe of subdivisions, each vying to outdo the other and to find its own glory. Within the empire are also cabals of the ancient societies of the Near East that owe fealty to the Turks but who are not yet ready to go away without a last dagger in the darkness.

The **Ghaznavid Empire** farther east has checked Seljuk expansion, as have the endless nomad tribes to the north and northwest of the sultanate that prey upon the trade routes and population centers of the settled peoples.

Ramses II of **Egypt**, ancient far beyond the natural span of man, yet rules his opulent and mysterious land, hated foe of Seljuks, Crusaders, Byzantines, and more. It is said that within the Halls of Dust concealed in the depths of the Pyramid of the Black Moon the pharaoh communicates his will to the Jackal Priests who rule in his name.

The **Iberian Peninsula** knows little other than war, as Aragonese, Portuguese, Castillians, Leonese, and the Almohad Caliphate seek to hold or carve out territory. The Almohad power extends across to north Africa where only the Sahara and Egypt contain its sprawling empire.
 * England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland** are rarely at peace for long, often fighting each other or among their own kinsmen, ever eager to send their fathers and sons to the Continent, Africa, or the East as sell-swords or young noblemen on the make.


 * Viking raiders from Scandanavia** still prey upon the weak and the unwary, fight each other, and contend with things in their cold and wild homelands more savage even than themselves.

The **Hospitallers have made Rhodes** a fortress and a challenge to Byzantine, Seljuk, and Almohad power in the eastern Mediterranean. __**Other Important Institutions**__ Centurion of the 10th Legion and a Phoenician Marine Thracian Warrior of the Boar Cult of Kotys the goddess of war and slaughter
 * Churches**, whether Christian or Pagan, are the spiritual bulwarks of society. Priests tend their flocks, preach the doctrines of their divine masters, and perform many other functions from warlord to healer as their nature an the requirements of the communities they serve dictate. An important element to the a number of faiths are **monasteries.** These are places where those not sanctioned as direct servants of a god are accepted only as brief visitors. They are halls of secrets, the best a sometimes refuge for those seeking serenity or solace, wisdom or comfort. They can also be complexes where secrets not meant for the eyes of men are kept, where the whispers of the Devoted practice things that the lay worshipers would neither understand nor countenance. The worst are vile corruptions of their outward purpose.
 * Universities**, some with centuries of antiquity and strong connections to the very earliest days of Man's ascent into a civilized species, are not only schools for those with academic leanings and storehouses of great lore. They are also homes to the cabals of the esoteric, supporting one or more wizarding traditions, some allies of the high church, most considered by the great pontiff and his bishops as heretical viper nests.
 * Guilds and merchant houses** are power brokers as well, the one connected by vocation the other through strict familial dynasties or oligarchic conglomerates. Most have their own armies and navies, but the bulk of their forces are often comprised of the mercenaries, some of which have served individual merchant states, guilds, companies, families, or conglomerates for centuries. They also retain Torchbearers, not only for their feuds and to protect their great holdings, but to investigate new markets or sources of wealth, often far beyond the Edge. Indeed, there is a distinct subdivision of merchants who are known for their extreme intrepidity (some say madness) in traversing not only the trade routes of the lands of mankind in spite of war or other dangers, but also the paths of the Wilds in search of goods and profit. They are called the **Caravansari** and they have an even greater than normal need for those with talents in exploration and protection. Their wagon-masters and those who serve them are often extremely famous, though few make it to retirement.
 * Druidic Circles** not only provide inspiration and leadership to many communities living near or within the Wilds, they also work with foresters and rangers of the **Huntsmen Brotherhoods** to keep an eye on the encroachment of beasts, monsters, and other dangers that would cross the Edge to prey upon mankind.
 * Mercenary Companies**: are an essential part of the defense of many nations and cities. Some are famous, such as the venerable and legendary Red Legions (commonly known as the Red Cloaks), comprised of the proud descendants of Republic and Empire soldiers who have for centuries continued their martial traditions in spite of the Empire's eventual fall, handing them down father to son. Many others have also been born of the ashes of civilizations or societies fallen into ruin, the last defiant vestiges of a proud past, while others are simply well-organized professionals who work under one banner or charismatic leader as long as they can, changing allegiances and paymasters as the fortunes of war dictate. Driven by honor, gold, glory, and gods, they are as varied as those who hire them.