Difference between revisions of "Adefatalis Wastes"

Revision as of 19:02, 21 September 2007

Overview

The land is blighted. Towering stacks rise into the ground from the factories that pump out the war machines, made by the Kalar’s foul Necrology. The trees and plant life have long been replaced by fissures that grow ever deeper, pulling ever last usable bit of metal from the ground, to be funneled into the factories.

The deeper one gets into the Wastes, the darker and more polluted the sky gets, until one finds themselves at the Kalar’s tower. The sky has not been seen there for years, covered by the massive black clouds that surround it.

Machines the size of giants walk the land between the Warlord’s Towers, getting larger the closer you get to one of these monoliths. The largest of them scrape the sky, the tops disappearing into the clouds of pollution.

This is the land that Necrology has shaped, the land ruled by the machines of the dead. Fueled by restless souls, built from flesh, bone, and metal, these war machines walk the land, destroying each other only to be recycled into a new machine and sent forwards into battle once more, in an everlasting cycle.

Necrology

Necrology is the corrupted form of science that the Kalar and his subjects use. It is a form of mad science, mixing physical properties with necromantic abilities to create something completely different. The things that they create should not work, but they do because of the massed believe of the constructs, and the green goup made of the souls of the once living. This is the secret to the Kalar’s power, to the whole of the Wastes. Without this all would fall apart, leaving nothing but bones and scrap.

The technology is mostly a steam-punk level, high technology made out of low technology objects. Except instead of steam it is fueled by the liquid souls, and mixed with the bodies of the undead to create something truly horrible.

Geography

The land is split up by the different war bands that control it. The largest are centered on massive pillars of metal and flesh, the aeries of the death lords of the wastes. These are more massive armies than a war band, but they are made up of multitudes of smaller bands that have banded together under a stronger leader, who’s banded with other leaders, until the area directly around one of these towers is filled with camps of soldiers. The land is cold and barren, split by crags and towers, huge gaping chasms which are mined for more fuel for their wars. Plants and animals have long since been slaughtered for food or materials, leaving only the small herds and gardens that each village kept to survive alive.

Lakebeds dot the surface, having long since been boiled away or the water stolen to cool the machines of war. Lighting arcs from the sky in many places, the combinations of magic and pollution in the air making a deadly mix.

The Towers

The Towers of the Kalar and his generals, and of his generals higher lieutenants are something to behold. The smallest of them reach the size of a 10 story building, while the Kalar's is rumored to be over a mile wide at the base. There are no definite measurements, for any who have seen it no longer care to tell such things, and live only to serve their Kalar.

They are generally laid out in the same way. The details are separate for each tower, as they mostly all have their own look, but the insides are often fairly similar. The ground levels are taken up with the sumps. These allow water to be pumped throughout the towers, keeping the somewhat living flesh that makes up the constructs and in some, the towers themselves, "alive". Above these are the vats, the "workshops" where the armies are built. Mostly by lesser constructs formed for just this purpose, these are where the elite soldiers of the armies will come from. The grunts and war machines are built away from the tower, in specially tooled factories.

Above the vats are the general living quarters for those who work the vats, and keep the towers themselves running. Conditions here are terrible, almost as bad as in the mortal villages. Luckily the things that live here do not need more than to work, often not even having a full soul's worth of green goop to subsist on. These are immediately below the methane sections, which allow the parts of the tower that matter to be heated, and to fuel anything that needs such primitive means of subsisting. Above this is another living section, slightly better than the one below. Here is where those who work the methane and upper sections live.

Above that, is the homes of the elites. The generals advisors will live here, often having the floor to decorate as they see fit, experimenting as they chose, plotting their wars against the other warlords. Above them is the Warlord himself, living in pure undead luxury. The uppermost floors are places to behold, Necrology having changed them to fit the dreams of their individual Warlord.

The Chasms

The chasms dig deep into the crust of the earth, growing ever closer to the liquid mantel. Special creations are needed to work these depths, as once one goes below a certain level most of the war constructs would be destroyed. These pits are huge, some being near onto mile wide chasms that split the earth. Most however are merely a few feet across, though they still go deep. Stairwells cling to cliffsides, elevators and ropes pull up the earth's riches to be used in blasphemous machines.

In the smaller chasms, humans are used as the workers. Not deep enough to require the use of special constructs, they merely use those villagers who have not yet been chosen for death. If one dies while working? That's just extra meat for the vats. Often those that work the deepest reaches have not seen the surface in years, living their entire lives underground. Death is the only escape, and many of the inhabitant's greatest wish is to die unattended, so their soul may go free and not be used as fuel.

The Wastes

Pending

Inhabitants

There are three main groups of “people “in this land. They’re very disparate, and all hold a special place on the food chain of the land.

Mortals

The first, and least important, are the mortals. The people who are used for stock in the Kalar’s armies, their souls stolen to fuel the war machines, their bodies used as building bricks. There are usually a few villages of these spread around all of the different war towers, kept weakened by lack of food and the filthy living conditions. Every now and then, however, a power user is born into one of these villages. When one’s discovered they’re brought to the nearest tower, and trained as a lieutenant to the lord of said tower.

Conditions in these villages are worse than dismal. The people are underfed, under loved, and over worked. Hope is nothing but a memory or maybe the memory of a legend. Lotteries are held to determine who is going to the construct pits of the Warlords each day, the losers often picked not at random, but because the leader of the village has some dislike for them. Newcomers that have been captured in raids and talk of rebellion are often the first to go.

The leaders of these villages live in opposite conditions to the rest. While they do not have much in the way of modern comforts, they have all the food and drink they could ask for, and their children can grow up without worry of becoming fuel for some monstrosity. Unless they anger one of their lords, of course.

Constructs

The next group is the living constructs. These can range from small mostly meat creations on a metal skeleton, to mostly metal with just a once living brain to control them. The younger, weaker ones are kept controlled by the more powerful ones, but as they rise in the ranks, they’re soon able to rival the fighters of the mainland in strength. The most powerful of them are lords of the land in their own right.

There are two ‘common’ varieties of constructs, though they’re not limited to these. The first is a robotic shell of a man. Durable, but not much in the physical strength way. They deal damage by range and powerful weaponry. They are incredibly dull witted, though, as their power is all pumped into combat. As one gains strength in the war bands, though, the intelligence and power increases. The leaders of the larger bands are master strategists, though they are limited by their foolish follower’s inability to think on their feet.

The second is just the opposite of this. They are almost completely made of flesh, though often are augmented physically by metallic parts. Nearly a purely physical group, they resemble large monstrous humans. One might even call them ‘orcs’. They also eschew intelligence and tactics, but they are extremely clever, the smaller ones being the main builders of the war machines. The larger the orc, the stronger and higher in the hierarchy they are. They go to war on foot or in improvised vehicles, their battle plans relying on overwhelming numbers more than individual strength.

Warlords

The last and final group is the warlords. The Kalar’s ‘sons,’ the power users he’d trained to follow in his footsteps and pitted against each other. All of them control war bands which split the land when they battle, falling to one another only to be replaced days later. When two warlords go to war not much remains of the losers, and they are quickly absorbed into the winner’s armies. Nothing goes to waste.

The Warlords are massively strong, but rarely go to war themselves, sending their own ‘sons’ and lieutenants, choosing to spend their time studying and building, carving their own empires out of the Wastes. And, of course, there's the leader of all of the Warlords, the Kalar himself.

Kalar Cethegus

It’s uncertain what Cethegus was before. Something of a mad scientist, probably, and it’s assumed that he was carried back into the Drovinain Reaches in a raid. Or perhaps he went hunting for revenge. Or maybe it all started beforehand, when he was truly alive. His history is a secret to most of D'hennex. The truth is a mix of all of the above.

While the Kalar’s former name has been lost to history, parts of his story have been able to be pieced together. He was once the scion of a rich merchant clan. Trading was meaningless to him, though, it bored him to tears. Allowing his family’s managers to handle the business, he adventured. Gaining power and fighting prowess, he eventually discovered the joys of technology, having come across a few examples of it in his travels. He was intrigued, and took them back to his family’s lands.

Digging in, he discovered the way that things worked, but was not limited by ‘science,’ as he didn’t know the rules to limit himself. And so the magical or perhaps mental powers that he had trained while he was adventuring were refocused from combat to construction. It started out innocently enough, creating small little clockwork robots to do chores. Building things that would allow him to travel further, faster.

But it was never far enough, never smart enough. The devices he made all ran either by large levers as controls, or doing simple, pre-programmed tasks. They were useful for only one thing, at one place, and that was it. People started to talk, he was wasting the family fortunes, and so it was that he was removed from his place, toppled in favor of a greedy cousin, and sent to make his way in the world, and to take his junk with him.

And so he did. He discovered the ways that people could be mentally bent to the will of a power user. He learned all that he could of this, though he didn’t care to hold humans hostage. The flesh was weak, after all. And so he started experimenting to change this. Replacing an arm here, a leg there, a heart or maybe a lung, he discovered how the body worked, and was able to improve it.

He was still doing well, mostly, even if some of his experiments weren’t on willing subjects. But what he was doing was deemed necromancy, and he was chased off, his subjects destroyed, barely escaping to Drovina with his life. Things went downhill from there, as he discovered the joys of necromancy. No longer did he need to find willing subjects, he was able to lash parts to corpses and animate them. Make them move, make them live again, better than they were before. As he researched, the idea that he could take a dead body and animate it with magic and machinery turned to the idea that perhaps he could use a live soul to animate dead machinery.

And so, raiding over the borders, he took any people he could find. Stole them away on the back of his metal-meat beasts. Eventually he discovered the secret that skyrocketed him to Kalar status. He could remove the soul of a living being and use it to give life to his creations. No longer did the meat and metal monstrosities need to be controlled by his massive mental and magical powers, but they could think and function on their own. The green goup that he created from removing a soul granted his beasts a sick facsimile of life, but it allowed him to carve out an empire, granting his favored ‘sons’ power, and setting them up against each other. For only the strongest would be allowed to march to war with him to take over the entire world, and even if their soldier fell, so what? It was just more meat for the grinder. War machines were built from bodies and metal. The common soldiers were upgraded and the weapons of war grew in size from man-like creatures that were 7 feet tall to giant building sized walkers. All powered by the souls of the damned.

The Kalar sat back and orchestrated these wars, pitting one general against another, delighting in their triumphs as well as their failures. Experimenting on his minions wasn’t enough, however, and as the years passed he turned his attentions to his own body. He’s more machine now than man, ruling his lands from atop his black tower. These are all bits of legend and hearsay, of course, the truth known only to the Kalar and perhaps some of his top lieutenants