The Pyramids

     As the White Ones grew more mad with power, one of the older wizards had his local village leveled overnight, destroyed utterly by his army of trolls, with everyone in it.  On this site he began construction of a pyramid, a tomb unlike anything Foran had ever seen, vowing to return one day from the dead, and demanding his wealth and servants would await him there.  His trolls toiled for many months before its completion.  The idea caught on, other White Ones followed suit and soon more tombs of power were being built.  Only the first of these was ever completed before the troll exodus.  With his servants fleeing beneath the mountains, the old White One was never buried in his tomb after his death in battle against the lords.
     Naihtep was the local lord who personally slew the old sage.  To defy and mock the White One, and to honor their lord who also died in the battle, the local peasents buried Naihtep in the finished pyramid, in a grand sarcophagus in its heart.  The pyramid had not only been completed in structure, but had already been filled with much of the wizard's hoard, including the Relic of Kings, encased in the massive tomb's vaults.
     Naihtep never touched the essence physically, but being so entombed together for thirty years allowed the Relic to reach out to the dead lord nonetheless.  He rose from his sarcophagus as the first mummy.  When Naihtep returned to his people they honored and praised him, reinstated as their lord.  His castle had been destroyed in the exodus, and so the pyramid became his new seat of power, where he restored the feudal ways.
     After the exodus there were no more exoknights, no more energy knights.  Naihtep was forced to draw from the untrained peasent pool to construct a new militia.  When the vampire scouts reached them Naihtep learned that other monsters were sharing their gifts with human recruits.  Naihtep studied his new powers and discovered he too was capable of this.  As the new alliance with the vampires and werewolves was forged, new mummies were rising from the depths of the pyramid to strengthen Naihtep's foundation as lord of his lands.
     In Foranworld Naihtep maintains Palladion, one of the last independant feudal states.

Reanimating the Dead

     The Death Relic called out to a man named Sanadin, who was dying of a slow but fatal disease known as "the rot".  The disease caused him to decay while alive.  His sight and other senses were deteriorating as the responsible organs began to fail, fingers withered and began to fall off and speech was very difficult with the bloated and unresponsive tongue of a corpse.  This made Sanadin the perfect candidate, as noone could be closer in affinity to this aspect of the Void.
     He found the Relic hidden in a treehollow by the river north of Darcborough but reached it too late.  With his dying act he reached for the artifact and with his last breath brushed it with his gloved hand, knockit it from its perch.  Both toppled into the river.  The essence had begun to transfer itself to its target host, and when contact was lost continued to pour outward, mixing with the water of the river.
     Over the next two weeks the inhabitants of Darcborough became ill, increasingly so with time, until the first deaths occured.  Within a month, everyone in the village was no more.  These were the first zombies.  Those that  died early clawed their way out of their graves, the rest rose from the places they had fallen.  Aimlessly they shuffled around the village, repeating the most common activities of their recent lives repetitively , moaning the fringe of torment their dead bodies could still perceive.  For those that were greedy or malicious in life, a hunger for living flesh became their only driving force, and those pets and livestock that had not yet fallen to the essence of death were swarmed upon and eaten alive.
     Malek's vampire scouts, while seeking survivors of the troll exodus, came upon Darcborough and soon warriors from every village in reach gathered to purge Darcborough of the undead infestation.  The roaming essence of death lingered and moved downriver, partially taking to the air and becoming an unseen tumor on the world, threatening the fate of Darcborough to any it encountered.
     Malek himself found the empty crystal Relic of Death by the body of Sanadin, and devised a plan to draw the essence back to its intended host.  The dead man was so badly decomposed that salvaging the corpse in its current state was unthinkable, and so pieces of the dead were borrowed.  A new body was fashioned for Sanadin from bits of himself and parts taken from other corpses to fill the gaps.  It was an awkward looking creation with stitchlines running up and down its surface.
     Together with the mummies, the vampires raised Sanadin to the clouds to be struck by lightning, believing this in combination with the mystic element of the pyramids would reanimate the dead man.  It worked.  The essence of death that had passed into the lifeless body before becoming seperated from the rest became active and Sanadin opened his eyes.  He was not a zombie, his consciousness intact.  He became the first Golem, a patchwork man.
     The rogue essence of death did not seek him out, to the dismay of Malek and those that aided him, and the knowledge of the damage it caused was much for Sanadin to bear.  He shuffled off into the wilds and was not seen for many years.
     When Sanadin resurfaced he brought with him knowledge of the Void, which he had gained from sifting through old ruins of white towers.  He found a way to create more Golems, that this power lay within him as part of his gift from the Void.  He knew that there was another way, that Golems could be created by stitching together the deceased of those that had fallen victim to the Roaming Death before their awakening as zombies.  Using the method only available to him he created only a few and kept thems as his close followers.
     Followers of Sanadin were typically those who wanted resurrection from death badly enough to pay the price of living on as grotesque giants.  Sanadin chose goodly men and women to whom the completion of their life's work was more important than their own desires.  Just as the werewolves and vampires had done, the golems realized they were an important new addition to what is required to surivive in this new and darker world.

     Golem construction became more sophisticated over time.  Later golems were not the shuffling giant monstrosities that their older kin had become.  Still, it is impossible to oversee the nature of a golem, the crisscrossing stitches and mismatched bodyparts never fail to give them away.  No golem could pass for human, no matter how precise the patchwork had become.
     Over time the ranks of golems grew.  Grievers who had lost loved ones sought out Sanadin with increasing frequency, begging him to raise their lost friends and family.  Wanting to ease the world's sorrow in some measure he granted these requests.  The golems were very quick to discover that many of these new golems were outraged at their new forms, resentful of what they had been forced to become.  Most of these ended their own lives in short measure.  Sanadin learned from this, and decreed that no golem was to become of anyone who had not themselves requested resurrection before their death.

Capping some of the Sharper Teeth

Very important to remember, monsters make up the primary goodly races aside humans in Foranworld.  They won't function well in a mutually-beneficial society if they're always sucking maidens dry or carrying off children to eat them in the woods.  I also don't want that dramaticly overplayed concept of the moral character struggling against the curse of his being that endangers the people around him.  No effeminate melancholy vampires who have to control themselves everytime a pretty girl exposes her neck.

So here's what I'm going to do: take away the killing urge and its source.  For vampires it is the need to feed on blood.  For werewolves it is the need to kill and eat, for golems maybe the fear of torches that makes them cave heads as an instinctive reaction.  I'm getting rid of those uncontrollable urges that are a detriment to nearby humans.  Vampires don't thirst for blood (they can still feed, but it's a choice, not a need), werewolves still eat meat, but they don't tear your limbs off if you don't have it coming.

Wolfing Out

The first werewolf was a man named Rorke.  Rorke was never someone to feel quite at home in civilization, and watching his family and friends cling to existence in a shattered world was too difficult to bear, and so he moved to where he felt most comfortable, the forests.  He became a ranger, of sorts, hunting to feed himself and the villagers when stock permitted.  He learned to live in harmony with the wilds, becoming a part of its workings without upsetting the balance.

When Rorke found the Relic of the Moon in an abandoned bear cave and picked it up, his shape changed almost instantly to half-man half-wolf.  The sudden and painful change forced him to throw the Relic, which destroyed it on impact with a rock.  After the initial shock, Rorke studied himself and what he had become.  The realization of his new being filled him with a sense of liberation, finally free from the human form that had made him feel so awkward and out of place.  His wish to be a part of the animal kingdom had been granted.  He saw the night with new eyes, his senses endowed with a new sharpness.

It took some time for the villagers to accept him in his new form.  He was still able to speak and tell them who he was but was reserved about approaching them, and so he used his new powers to extend his hunting grounds and leave his prepared kills for the locals to find.  Finally having enough to eat, the village stabilized and it's people found hope.  When they discovered what Rorke had become it took a surprisingly short amount of time to accept him back into their community, having recognized his power as a badly needed means of survival.

When Rorke had thrown the Relic of the Moon, causing it to shatter, it released its last shred of essence in a wave that washed over the nearby area, including a glen that was home to a pack of wolves and parts of the nearby village.  Children  to both human and wolf mothers that carried them at that moment were born werewolves.  A gap between the two communities was bridged and the local humans and wolves soon learned to live in symbiotic harmony.  Wolves took on the role of hunting food and nursing newborn werewolves, as well as sheparding the livestock, while humans took on the role of caretakers for their new friends, tending injuries and sickness and teaching young werewolves speech and morals.  Never are wolves considered pets to these humans, but equals, with werewolves as the link bonding them.

Rise of the Vampires

Malek was a thief who always preferred dark to light, the perfect attitude on a world with next to no sun.  As a child he preferred hiding and watching other children at play, and sometimes stealing their toys only to secretly return them later.  As an adult he find no contention among his peers and practiced his stealth on more dangerous targets like the fairyfolk.

With the lords and wizards gone, and the surviving people of his village struggling to survive, Malek felt a despairing helplessness that caused him to take increasingly great risks until one day, while hiding in a tree in the center of a goblin camp, he felt the call.  He didn't know what was pulling at his very being if not hope.  He felt instinctively that to follow that pull might mean a way to save his village and himself.  He returned to his village and gathered a small group of strong men, and they set out to follow the invisible compass that seemed to guide Malek.

In the rubble of a tower of the White Ones, now just a pile of rocks, the men found a hatch leading to what must once have been catacombs.  Most of the structure had caved in, but not far from the entrance Malek's prize waited, the Relic of Night, a small black statuette of a humanoid figured with batwings, a doghead and great fangs.  When Malek picked up the artifact it poured it's essence into the man, making him the first vampire.  The transformation was instantaneous, and despite the shock of the experience Malek managed to maintain his grip on the relic, saving it from destruction.

Malek returned to his home a new being.  He found he could change his form to that of a bat, a shadow or cloud of mist.  His eyes functioned in total darkness as if it was noon on a sunny day, his hearing became keener and he could sense the presence of others around him without sight, sound or smell.  He could exercise his will on beasts and hover above the ground.

Not knowing fully what he had become yet, he passed his gift on to a handful of trusted men and women, making them his scouts and emissaries and sending him to the four winds to seek out other survivors in Foran.  On batwings they set out and returned with goods news.  Thus it was the vampires that reestablished a connection between the solitary communities of a shattered world.

Legacy of the Void

The White Ones are long dead, the Trolls long gone.  Their works however, their experiments and possessions remained, waiting to be found.  The most prized artifacts of the White Ones were known as Relics of the Void, items in which various aspects of the Void were contained as an essence.

The survivors of the Exodus were a recluse, fearful and careful people, but over time more of them ventured out in search for anything that could lessen their predicament.  They explored the ruins of the castles of their lords and of the White towers.  They sought out neighboring villages in hopes of finding other survivors, but they were too few and far between.

The Relics chose to remain hidden, calling only to explorers to which they felt an affinity.  When discovered the Relics passed their essence to the mortal with which they came in contact.  Once drained the relics turned to clear and thin crystal, fragile and hollow.  Most of them were shattered as recipients of these Void aspects dropped them in shock or surprise.

The Relics were the birth of the first supernaturals, the first immortals, the first monsters.  The most powerful Relics reached their call the farthest and found their hosts first.  They were the first vampire, the first werewolf, spectre, ogre and sprite.  These first of many were the ones to band the people of Foran back together.

Six Honest Serving Men

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
 - Rudyard Kipling

We still don't know why my world is the way it is.  Was it always this way or did something happen to make it so?  It would be a drab history if things hadn't happened to make things the way they are.  So what were they like before?

In ages past Foran was a typical medieval feudal society, all human, but with a little sci-fi thrown in.  The evil fairyfolk were kept well away from threatening towns and farmers by an elite order of Energy Knights, paladins to the lords of Foran.  The Energy Knights led the Exoknights, men in mechanical exo-skeletal suits, 8 feet tall that made them soldiers to be reckoned with.  Not all lords could see eye to eye and so there was the occasional war between kingdoms, but most of the time there was peace.

There came a time when a sage, who was adviser to one of the lords, the names of both have been long forgotten, began dabbling in alchemy and mystic theory, things that natural science could neither explain or disprove.  This sage was the first to make contact with the Void, a space permeating and surrounding all of reality, everywhere yet nowhere and separated from the real with no avenue of interaction, until now.

The Void possessed a consciousness with which the sage learned to communicate.  Fascinated and enspelled by this new promise of knowledge and power to dominate all of Foran, the sage allowed himself to be drawn in to the Void's influence.  He began to study it's arts and took a group of followers that he taught to contact the void as well under his tutelage.  These men learned to charm the minds of mortals, call lightning from the sky, move things without lifting a finger, and spew fire from their empty hands.  They became wizards.  Prolonged contact with the void and possibly the extensive use of magic slowly drained all color from them.  Their hair and skin, even the pupils of their eyes went pale and they adopted clothing to match.  They became known as the White Ones.

Some of the lords began to suspect that the White Ones were becoming a danger.  The common people feared them for their appearance and strange ways.  As they became more twisted physically and mentally by the Void, that fear of them only grew.  By the time the lords decided to act against them it was too late, the White Ones had amassed too much power to be subdued so easily.

The White Ones employed as servants a creature they called Troll, which they claimed to have created from nothing.  In fact, wizards who ventured too close to the Void too quickly became trolls, it was the final form of their degradation.  Careful White Ones learned to harness this process and began creating Troll slaves for themselves, while peasants vanished mysteriously.  Trolls were pitiful lost things with no memory of their former selves, with no anchor in the world apart from their masters.  Being creatures of the Void, so infused with its essence, Trolls often grew to be more powerful than their masters, though great pains were taken to keep this knowledge from them.

When the lords of Foran united against the White Ones, the ensuing war racked the kingdoms.  Entire towns were swallowed by the earth, castles were turned to rubble, towers the White Ones had built were toppled.  In the end, the last White One fell, but not before the lords were dead and the kingdoms were crippled beyond recognition.

The Trolls seized the opportunity and abandoned their masters in their moment of weakness, in what became known as the Troll Exodus.  They fled the holdings of the White Ones in droves, unerringly aimed for each other.  In the central kingdom they pooled into a mass of thousands.  They tasted freedom and wanted nothing but escape, and in their flight destroyed anything and anyone that crossed their giant path.  They swarmed to the mountains and disappeared into their cracks and tunnels, leaving devastation in their wake.  It was the trolls that laid the blanket of darkness over the world which would block the sun for all times to come.

Civilization as the people of Foran knew it was gone.  In this new dark world, remote villages and the few survivors of the destruction of others found themselves abandoned.  Their lords were dead, families shattered, homes razed and broken, and the world had been engulfed in constant night.  Independently of each other, they began to rebuild, afraid to venture out and seek other survivors before securing a safe home.

In the beginning, there was darkness

Before I even begin to go into game mechanics, I'm going to write the world as a potential setting for whatever kind of game I want to use it for later.  If I want stories set in this world to be believable, then I'll need to pump it full of details first of all.

I suppose the first step is to pick a genre and general atmosphere I want to create.  For this world I'm going to go with dark fantasy.  I want my world to have elements of horror, but take them out of their usual setting to see how they react to medieval fantasy.  I want sunlight in my world to be very limited.  Lack of sunlight means poor agriculture.  How do the natives of my world carve out a living?  The entire ecology needs to be shaped around the lacking of this important source of life.  I don't want my world to be too cold, I want warm swamps, hot springs, and fiery pits where appropriate, so I need an alternate source of heat.  I'm going to go with internal.

When I was in high school I wrote a novel about a group of adventurers that were actually monsters in a world where humans were the dark threat.  I'm going to steal some of my old ideas and inhabit my world with monsters as the dominant species.  Humans are often the glue that hold other races together, with good reason, they have all the necessary attributes and diversity.  I'm going to go with that concept and have monsters and humans living together.

At the risk of being cliché, I've always been a fan of classic monsters.  The good old ones like Dracula, Wolfman, the mummy, Frankenstein, zombies.  I have to admit I've never seen or read Twilight.  I've been avoiding it because of what it seems to have done to the public image of vampires and werewolves.  I was an avid player of Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse,  I love Bram Stoker, werewolves that are bestial like the Wendigo, zombies that have the decency to shuffle instead of chase you like a cheetah on crack  That's what I want for my world; the classics.  Because I'm not writing horror, I'm going to make them more agreeable, but I want them to keep their old feel.