This is Part 3 and the final installment of the Overview of Gessa. Picking up where we left of with the continent of Selacia.
Until next time, Arewys...
]]>Hello Adventurers, Arewys here with another installment of details on the Original 5e Content we are working on. The World of Gessa. We hope you enjoy the sneak peek.
This Overview of Gessa, will be released in several parts, as there is a lot of ground to cover and we wanted to parse it in digestible posts.
Stay tuned for Part 3 of an Overview of Gessa next week!
Until then, Arewys...
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This Overview of Gessa, will be released in several parts, as there is a lot of ground to cover and we wanted to parse it in digestible posts.
Gessa is a diverse world full of strange creatures and magics. At the Fall of the Elves, over a dozen millennia ago, magic exploded into the world in an event called the Cataclysm. Every culture has a different viewpoint, spawning thousands of legends and myths that serve as the basis for many of the world’s religions. Even the Elves, now a rarity in this world, have forgotten the true nature of the Cataclysm as what ancient civilizations that ruled the lands of Gessa fell, their knowledge lost.
Since that point, the wellsprings of magic that erupted from various points in the world, the highest concentration at the center of Broken Continent of Xerac have twisted and mutated the creatures of the previous age, accelerating their evolution into brand new creatures, including new Sentient creatures not derived from Humans, as still exist on Kerana, the Beast races of Xerac. This eruption of magic changed Gessa and spawned these new races in Xerac and accelerated Humanoid evolution on Kerana and Jotunlund, creating new forms, though some like the Elves and Orc existed shortly before the Elves’ fall. In later articles, I will go deeper into each of the races and subcultures that exist in Gessa, but here I will give a brief overview of our takes on these races and the basic makeup of Gessan culture, but is not an exhaustive one.
There are a few new races and cultures, unique to this setting, that we will detail more later, as well as having high quality maps as we settle Gessan geography. This serves as a basic outline to give you all an idea of what to expect. And if you think you have a great idea to include in this world, tell us. If we like it enough, we would include and credit you as a writer for the area.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of an Overview of Gessa next week!
Until then, Arewys...
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The art of Christian Benavides- Illustrator -Visual Developer
We claim no ownership of the above image.
Central to any fantasy setting is magic. There have been countless takes and mechanics of magic, some better than others. Here in Gessa, magic is as much of a force as gravity or electromagnetism, except it is one that seems to be heavily connected to life and the will of mortal beings. It seems to gather around life, clinging to it, responding to it. But in doing so it also warps it.
It will mold flesh, mutate it, giving things strange powers out of base desires of the environment around it. Depending on the culture and the individual, magic is either a dangerous curse, a blight on the land, or it is a blessing, evidence the world around us responds to us. People may categorize and discriminate on types of magic, but in reality, it is really not qualitatively different beyond how a practitioner obtains the magical energy to work spells.
Magic wasn't always in Gessa. It's origin is shrouded in myth, but the Cataclysm regardless marks when magic came pouring into the world, turning a mundane one into a magical one. It seeped into Gessa, collecting in pockets. There are many different views on how and why the Cataclysm happened. The Astaran Church said it was the Sun, Moon, and the Wanderer's Light. Others say the gates across the Veil of Death were cast open. But in either case, these pockets of magic form and start affecting the world around them. Strange creatures develop. Beings of magic, the spirits, form. Taking shapes from the minds of the Mortals that interact with it (Subjectively, various cultures have different theories on spirits. The dead souls of mortals, beings from beyond the Veil). They take shape as Fey, Demons, Celestials. The creatures unlucky enough to get too close get transformed into Monstrosities and Aberrations. These concentrations of magic are dangerous, but also useful. Over time, cultures have figured out ways to tap into them. Arguably, Druids were the first. They found peaceful, natural places, and communed with the power that lay in the earth or water or whatever magical upwelling they found. They take a small piece. Enough to grant them magic, but not enough to change them too much nor destroy the wellsprings.
Clerics, Paladins, and Warlocks are a little more refined and regimented. They worship (or contract with) beings of magic, or otherwise worship a wellspring of magic. They develop rites and rituals that shape the magic to their faith and beliefs. The Astaran Church does this in communion with their sacred places, holy (magical) artifacts, or gifts from the holiest of spirits - angels. They might claim objective magic as Light from the Sun or Moon, but the reality is far more nuanced. Unlike other settings, divine magic isn't an objective gift from a god. It is shaped by faith, and losing your faith might cause you to lose your ability to channel magic in that way (and going against your faith could cause your religion to take it away), it isn't a direct channel to your god. In Gessa, there are countless faiths, just like in our world. And like our world, religion in Gessa is controversial and ultimately impossible to tell who, objectively, is correct, if any of them are. That said, they undoubtedly hold power with their faith and the sources of magic they choose to maintain and worship and gift to their followers.
Sorcerers are born or cursed by it. They are directly exposed either in the womb, through bloodline, or through direct, unprotected contact with a concentration of magic. Because they are linked to bloodline, however, some cultures like the Astaran Empire have decided that some of these bloodlines are divine, gifted, not cursed, with magic. 12 major bloodlines run through each of the 12 kingdoms of the Astaran Empire, each connected to a star sign and millenia of lore and legend surrounding the heroes and kings of the sorcerers that bore that power. These bloodlines are jealously guarded, the nobility carefully crafting marriages between and within houses to keep the magic that dwells in their blood alive and powerful, with mixed success.
Wizards are the most complicated. They have to cobble together scraps of magic. 'Divine' magic is gatekept by religions and holy orders and is jealously guarded. Becoming a Sorcerer is dangerous as you either have to be lucky enough to be born with it or exposed just enough to transform you, but not enough to kill you. Wizards study the science of this force. They study how it responds to life, where they can get it, how to safely channel it without transforming the body and mind. They cheat and use materials like Aurum (jewels or minerals that have been changed by magic) to store the magic, or snuff the life of magical creatures, or otherwise use whatever small scraps of magic they can find to do what they do. It is a dangerous line to walk, and the more difficult path to obtain the same power as divine users can wield with a prayer or a Sorcerer or Warlock with an errant thought. But it also isn't limited by either the beliefs or the specific source of magic. A Light Cleric can only wield spells that fit its faith, a Draconic Sorcerer takes magic similar to his ancestors and bloodline. But a Wizard, with study, can replicate the magic of others (This is a personal houserule where wizards can scribe anything without Divine keywords or class specific at double the scribing times and cost). They, along with Artificers, study the mechanics of magic and use those mechanics to efficiently use the meager magics that are in them or tapping into smaller sources around them. Neither bound nor cursed by magic, Wizards and Artificers are free from those particular chains surrounding magic.
'Rules'
Magic in Gessa is to feel a little more grounded and engrained in the world of Gessa rather than being of other planes. It is akin to a corruption, or radiation. It mutates and behaves strangely, but there are underlying physics and rules to it, even if they are rules of mortal minds, prejudices, feelings, and will. Likewise, there is very little that is objective about any religion's understanding of magic. They can and do claim many things about Gessa and what lies beyond this plane, but the reality of the setting is ultimately unknown to mortals. Unlike other settings, there is no objective extraplanar cosmology, no objective knowledge of gods or planes beyond the mortal plane. There are mysteries here similar to our own mysteries that are meant to keep the setting more like ours, where questions like what happens after death or which religions are correct are unknowable.
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Arewys Nawor Jomassenon, Sawyer Rowan Masonjones. Same person, different names. I’ve used this moniker with some variation since I first started playing tabletop. Wanting something fantasy sounding and vaguely Elven, the anagram of my own name became my name online, in video games, and in several self-insert characters over the years. So, when it came time to choose my persona in Gessa, Arewys was right there and ready made to be the chronicler and the lens of which Gessa lore and campaigns are written. A wandering chronicler and wizard, flitting on the edge of Gessan events as the narrative of the world unfolds, you might spy him as an NPC in a bar, a mysterious traveler that giverfs hints to adventurers, or a multitude of personas and disguises. The narrative of the world is written from their perspective, the campaign and world books will have side passages of his notes and thoughts about the world, ever helpful about tips and views of the world, told from the perspective of one chronicling the unique history of your instance of the world.
Sawyer Rowan Masonjones, on the other hand, is a far less interesting character. A power nerd to his core, I’ve been an avid reader of fantasy since I was small, starting with the likes of Tolkein, Brooks, Anthony, McCaffery, Pratchett, and many, many others. I was infamous for having a new book every day from elementary to highschool. I was on a first name basis with our librarians, a mathlete and star science student. I ended up going to the University of Florida where I had 6 different majors over 4 years, graduating with a Biology major and a lot of half minors. After that, I went to get my PhD at the University of California Riverside in the Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics program. I’ve been in grad school for way too long now, but I’ll be graduating in a few months. Table top though has been a near and dear thing to my heart since high school though, introduced to me by my partner Dana Phillips at the tender age of 17. In college, it was a way I made friends and most of my best friendships were developed through DnD.
DnD is far from a perfect game, and it always bothered me deeply not only the demographics of these groups were often white and male and gatekept from people that were interested, but ‘weren’t real nerds’, but the source material itself had some troubling over and undertones when it came to race and culture, so when I started DMing, I wanted to make a world that was far more ‘real’. Cultures couldn’t be one dimensional, sentient races would not be fodder for murderhobo players to kill, and moreover, everything was more complex than simply ‘There’s evil, go bash it’s head in’. I used it to tell stories of revolution, of big change, of fighting not just the external evils of a Big Bad raising an undead army, but about fighting the societal evils of the setting. This has evolved in 4 campaigns so far, never the same world twice, but the themes remained. I make no claims of being the right person to create such a world, but this is my attempt at making a far more interesting and nuanced campaign setting and stories than what currently exists. A DnD for the era where we are becoming, thankfully, far more inclusive and socially conscious.
Gessa is my own, unique take on fantasy worlds, trying to right the past wrongs of previous settings when it comes to talking about a diverse set of races and creatures. The game design is based on the idea that there are no monster races, no rabble that is just fodder for players to kill without a second thought, nor based in stereotypes about certain cultures.
Our goal with writing Gessa is that each race has a defined, unique, and diverse culture. Taking themes from our own cultures rather than stealing from specific ones. The Astaran Empire, for example, takes from themes and Aesthetics from the Roman, Persian, Greek, and other European empires, using them to talk about imperialism. And our take on the Orcs are not the violent and chaotic evil fodder DMs have sent after players for decades, but have a complex and unique culture, an anarchic meritocracy based on contests of battle, wits, magic, or strength to settle disputes. There will be standard races, like Elves and Dwarves and Halflings, but also a myriad of our own races, like the Ar-woan, the speaking trees who travel the world in their juvenile form seeking experiences before they settle somewhere and root permanently. Or the Ataraxi, a recently developed race; an insectoid hive mind achieving sentience and starting to produce capable individuals to send out to interact with the world. Each of these cultures of course thinks they are right in their beliefs and practices, but in Gessa, there is no specific, absolutely known cosmology. No objective planes or afterlife that is known to exist, much like our own world. Our intent is to produce a world that has conflicts that reflect ours without bringing our own cultural baggage, one that has cultures that feel as real as our own, and one where any player can find their niche within this world.
Our first campaign is very much inspired by the events of 2020. Early in the pandemic, when we started up a play by post, I decided to make a game where the big bad was not a person or an invading dark army, but of a disease sweeping the world, and a cult trying to spread it.
The Last Gasp is a campaign centered around a disease called the Burning. It starts as a cough and a rash, but over the course of weeks it burns and hollows out the chest cavity. Most get off at the cough and rash stage, never progressing further. But those that get to the stage where it burns you, most die. Those that survive, however, become the Ashen. Lungs and heart, and eyes are burnt out and replaced by light, giving them the strange power to wield silver and gold flame, or to spread the disease by breathing out ash. Their eyes are burnt out, but their vision is replaced by a limited sight of magic. They can only see out 10 feet to start with, but can see magic rather than the light we see. Characters can take one of the Ashen subclasses if they are afflicted with this disease, focusing on developing their new powers as one of the Ashcursed.
Over the course of the campaign, the characters are exposed to the politics of the Astaran Empire, a decaying imperium that 30 years ago, fractured into the Empire of the Sun and the more diffuse Kingdoms of the Moon, each with alternate views of the astrology based religion. 12 star signs correspond with 12 unique countries and kingdoms divided astrologically between the Sun and the Moon gods of Belacron and Munaia respectively, and the mysterious darkened satellite moon, the broken Wanderer, equal to the other two, but considered a dark and tricky force and influencer within the religion.
Each country was under the rule of the Astaran Empire under the Sun god Belacron until the northern, more moon worshipping countries rebelled 30 years ago. The two sides of the Empire exhibit two forms of the religion, the very traditionally minded and hierarchical Sun worshippers, that form a religion more akin to Catholicism, Islam, or other more theocratically minded religions, and the more pagan feeling version found more commonly in the North, that puts more emphasis into following the Moon Goddess Munaia and the more naturalistic rhythms of Gessa and the spirits that dwell there. (more on the religion and the Astaran Empire in an upcoming blog post)
The campaign takes you through a few of these kingdoms as the story has you follow the trail of the disease and the Cult of the Dark Sun, those claiming that this disease is the sign of the last days leading up to the destruction of Gessa. The campaign will be set up to promote player agency, giving options for DMs for diverging stories based on how the players interact with the world rather than a straight railroad, giving DMs and players the ability to explore the world and develop the story as they see fit.
We will be working on this over the next year, getting all of the content ready. But we will need funds for publishing. And to get the other half of our business model, an app where you can connect to groups as well as several other features that are game changers for the Role Playing Industry, but we need investors or revenue to realize these projects. If you are feeling generous, you can donate to us directly on our Donate Page, or tip us from your checkout as you buy from our online store. We thank you for your patronage and generosity, and look forward to bringing you these exciting products.
Thanks for listening.
Until next time, Arewys...
]]>Orcs are fantasy’s original sin when it comes to writing about race. Originally, in Tolkien's work, they were corrupted elves, loosely based on the Mongols. Overtime, in DnD, they morphed into a more tribalistic bent based on racial coding that is...not great.
This has been a matter for debate in recent years and it is very clear that this has to be changed in how we write our fantasy worlds. I’m not going to comment on DnD's handling of race or explain the problems historically, as there are many other people that have talked about that better and from a more informed perspective than what I can. In either case, they were made to be evil minions fodder, along with Goblins and Drow, that could be killed by the dozen with little guilt to the players. What culture was written for them was scant and based on the idea they are a fundamentally an evil race.
This never sat well with me. Sentient creatures should never be fodder to kill, nor is it ok at all to make an entire race and culture evil by sheer existence. The division between ‘Monster’ races and ‘Player’ races is not one that should exist.
One of the founding principles in creating the Gessa setting is that all the races and cultures we include or make are reworked into unique and nuanced cultures that draw from multiple sources. Instead of having a Roman stand in, a African stand in, a Chinese stand in etc, we take the themes of human cultures from our world to make new ones. Instead of the Roman or Chinese standins, we will have things that combine and introduce unique facets to an Imperial culture, or instead of Native American or Mongolian stand ins, there are races that are designed around the themes of Plains peoples. If we do our jobs right, none of the fantastical cultures we present should be based in stereotype or rooted specifically in any one culture, but instead a unique one based on themes from our own.
Traditionally, Orcs are a race of warriors, and we wanted to keep that core of it, but make them far more ‘realistic’ and as diverse of a culture as any, far from the one dimensional fodder they normally are viewed as.
Here, we are presenting our take on the Orkata, both culturally and mechanically. With this, we are also introducing a new way to think about races mechanically. Instead of having a couple set scores plus a score based on subrace, players are given several options at each step, and then additional ability score options when they choose the background of their character. On top of this, there will be additional racial options representing different facets of the culture or biology of the race. Our goal is that every race can be good at a wider range of classes and are less pigeon holed into certain roles.
Gone will be the days of Elves being solely rangers or wizards, Orcs are fighters or barbarians, Dwarves as clerics and warriors simply because that is mechanically the meta for that race or class. Each character would have their race with multiple options to tailor their scores, in addition, their background will now also add to ability scores, representing the development of their talents rather than strict biological or cultural increases. At the end of the process, any race should be able to comfortably be any class between these two rule changes and should demonstrate far more diversity within races, something that now only really is an option for humans and half elves.
The Orkata: The Orkata, or the Orc, live primarily along the western edge of the Astaran Empire, occupying the large central desert on the continent of Kerana, the Karaga (much like the Sahara or the Gobi, Karaga simply means Desert in Orc).
The harsh environment has produced a culture around the idea of personal merit, but of community mind. They structure their society not by bloodlines or democracy, but by simply who can prove themselves the best to keep their tribes strong, well fed, and healthy. They do this through competitions called Yath. These can take many, many forms. Some, like Mardu Yath, (a fun cross between basketball, soccer, and hacky-sack) are games or sports used to settle petty disputes or simply for fun. Others are tests of skill, knowledge, magic, battle, etc. The Orc take these challenges very seriously.
If an Orc thinks they are better in a certain position than the one that currently occupies it, they can challenge them to a Yath they both agree on to decide who is better. To outsiders, this seems to be a chaotic system of dominance and violence, but to the Orc, they simply think that it serves their group better to have the best available lead, and in truth, most of the Yath isn’t simply about killing their competition or of battle, but of skill. They in turn, are confused about the human propensity to have their leaders be untested and passed down through bloodline.
Despite the cultural obsession to be the best in their specialty, they are also profoundly community minded. Orc families are large and include a vast interconnected system of marriages and relationships. It is common among orcs that a household contains several adults each married to some but not others, all raising their broods communally, with no care of whose is biologically whose. In their larger communities and tribes, the focus is on making sure everyone is fed and taken care of, including the sick, elderly, or wounded. Duergar, humans, and the occasional elf often make it into a tribe by simple adoption when they are in need, finding those stranded out in the desert.
They travel on the backs of drakes, large lizards that are well suited for the desert environment. Drakes have spread throughout Kerana as a mount, but the Drake is native to the deserts here. Capable of spitting poison and with larger front claws for digging, they have become ideal as a combat mount, even if they are slower than a horse overall. With their range of color for scales, the large sails on their necks, horns, and wattle, they have been bred by Orcs, the Astaran Empire, and the Ryukan (Dragonborn) of Xerac to produce a variety of color morphs and those of various breath weapons, where they have introduced magic into their bloodlines. They also employ sand skiffs, using the wind and a little magic to sail the dunes as if they were water.
Orcs don’t have a formal religion, often claiming they have killed their gods. But they have deeply rooted traditions and rituals, their priests communing with the spirits that make their home in the Deserts. This has marked them as evil by the Astaran Empire, who claims any spirits outside the host they worship as heathonous. Being neighbors and of such differing cultures, the Orkata and the Astaran Empire have been at odds for the entirety of their history, at best having periods of uneasy truces. The land forms the border of the Karagan Desert and the Sharup and Nawor countries within the Empire are in fairly constant flux, many names and towns and cities exchanging often over history. A similar thing happens on the other side of the Karagan desert, where the Orcs share a border with the Free States and various principalities that dot the western coast and mountains of Kerana, though they enjoy more peace and trade with the Free States over the Empire.
Half Orcs are shunned in many human circles, accused of unnaturalness by the worst of the Astaran faith, but Orcs care very little about such distinctions. Their communities often have human, duergar, or even an occasional elf or other rarely seen race in their midst and no one bats an eye. If they are contributing, they are welcome, in the eyes of Orc. The humans of the Free states on the other side.
Race Mechanics: As stated previously, along with our setting, we want to introduce different rules on race, ones that allow more within race diversity of play styles. Each race in our system has 3 points that can be spent into 4 different stats. If they have a subrace, this is 2 choices among three in for the race as a whole, and 1 choice of 2 for the subrace. You can only put up to 2 points in any one stat between the listed race choices and the ones offered in our background rules, which allow for 2 points to put into any of the 6 scores based putatively on your characters background.
Alternate Racial Traits: Along with the normal rules for races, we will be writing out alternate racial features for the races that exist in our world. The goal of these is to allow for races to support multiple play styles and to add Gessa specific character options. The following are meant to be the alternate features for the Orc, representing different aspects of Orc Culture
Racial Feats
Racial Weapon Feats: With several races, we will be introducing race/cultural specific weapons. These don’t require a feat to use, but the feat does amplify and highlights the strengths of a particular weapon or cultural fighting style. To learn these fighting styles, you must either be from the culture the styles are from or have been trained in it by master of the style (Or simply DM permission). Here, I am describing two such Racial Weapon Feats for the Orc, for the deadly axe, the Urk-gosh, and the Goring Strikes feat, for any Horned Creature or one wearing a specially designed helm.
Half Orcs, being a crossbreed of two similar species (Of Human or Elf) find themselves somewhere in between. They differ depending on what was mixed together. Rule for half races will come up in an upcoming blog post, allowing for more mixed race options between the various Humanoid races of Gessa, including variants of half Dwarves, Giants, Elves, Humans, Halflings, Orcs, etc. Humans, Orcs, Elves, and Halfings all produce half of each parent offspring that can also breed in the next generation, but some like the Duergar (Dwarves) and Humans produce unfortunately sterile offspring. In the case of Half Orcs, those that choose to be Half Orc can select from the Orc racial abilities according to a point system, mix cultural and biological abilities from the parent races. Half Orc Characters can represent their Human half by trading away Orc abilities for Human’s penchant for skill (Replace Yath with Choice of Any two skills, Horns for 1 skill). Or trading Relentless Endurance and Yath, they would be able to gain the Human Feat trait or a Human Cultural trait (Alternate rules for humans based on component cultures will be outlined in another planned blog post)
Let us know what you think in the comments or on our facebook pages. You can also email me at arewys.jomassenon@gmail.com if you are at all interested in helping or writing.
Every week for this year, I will unveil another facet of my world, Gessa. By the end of 2021, we hope we will be able to launch and publish a complete world guide for Gessa and the first part of our Campaign The Last Gasp. Tune in next week for the first glimpse at the Astaran Empire and their astrologically based religion.
Thanks for listening.
- Arewys
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