History

History of the War - An elaboration of the recent Ossia/Grandia war which resulted in the release of the monstrous Tarrasque.

Dwarves in the North

Rise of the Pirate fleets of Chaos Crossing

The Spread of the Reclaimer Cult

Monks of the Eastern Isles

Dragons of Ascension

Most nations have their own ways of noting the passage of years, like the Ossian calendar, which has year 0 as being the year of their nations founding, 1446 years ago. Thus the campaign starting year would be 1446 OB (Ossia's Birth), in Ossia. To simplify things for bookkeeping purposes this world has 4x 7 day weeks in each month, so it'll be 12 uniform 28 day months and to prevent confusion for the time being the months will be referred to by the same names as our own.


Recent Events

After 20 years of war, the resources of both Grandia and Ossia have been stretched thin. Ossian capitalist interests have only intensified in this time, and as soldiers and mercenaries both return from the war they find that there is competition for jobs, as a lot of employers went bankrupt from actions taken during the war. The workers have started former labor unions, and some going as far to join the Ossian Reds movement, calling for an almost communist revolution in their desire for fair and equal wages.

The Return of Slavery
One of the biggest mines in the area to the east of King's Landing, Thundersteel Mine, owned and operated by the Thunderpick dwarven mining clan, was one of the first targets for Grandian saboteurs. A chaos-mage by the name of Umoc broke into the mine with a raiding party and detonated an Anarchothurgic bomb that ruined the majority of the infrastructure, as well as leaving a permanent chaos taint in the mine. Thundersteel Mine is now a dangerous ruin, with constantly shifting catacombs, abberant beast prowling, and Umoc supposedly presiding over it's depths.
The Thunderpicks responded by raiding the Grandian town of Isynia, and recouping their losses by illicitly selling spoils of war and Grandian folk as slave workers to dwarven Ossian factories. Before this point slavery had been virtually unheard of in Ossia, but with the majority of the work-force taking up arms in the conflict, indentured labor quickly became a dirty little secret among the dwarven clans. After a few years of goblinoid, orc, and monstrous slaves slowly trickling into the workforce, the dwarves of Ossia had turned from respected artisans and miners to vilified slavemasters and brutal capitalists.

The Rise of Communism
In the west a movement rose up, headed by their charismatic dwarven female leader Osta Blackhand, called Red Ossia, or the Ossian Reds. They started pushing for the abolishment of slavery within their dwarven community, and then eventually the world, as well as fair treatment and equal wages for workers. Blackhand came from a family of means, but after seeing the way her family had been doing business she liquidated her empire and started working for the common man. She funded what some would call terrorist fighters to free slaves, destroy factories using them, and raid supply lines. She held conferences for influential members of the dwarven community sympathetic to her cause, and even some outside nations, spreading her idealogy as far as possible. Her delegates spread all throughout Ossia and beyond, and when the war finally came to a cease fire, she demanded that either Ossia officially ban slavery or her mountain city home of Golden Hills would secede from the nation. Ossia was too weak from the war to fight the insurrection, and it's controlling merchants too poor to give up their cheap labor, so they acquiesced and the fully Communist Ostivakia was born within it's borders.
Now Ossia is struggling with labor unions and riots in it's own communities as word of the prospering Ostivakia reaches the populace by way of dissident propagandists on the Blackhand payroll. Slavers are being robbed by slave abolishers who call themselves the Red Keys, for they unlock the shackles of the oppressed. The once enslaved monstrous races taken from Grandia and beyond have been integrating themselves into their new homes, bringing a ramshackle bestial slave culture to the proletariat as well as some bringing Ossian magic and technological advancements back to their original home with vengeance in mind.
The Ossian standing military is stretched thin, as it was mostly composed of mercenary troops on merchant payroll, and when the markets dried up with supply routes being cut off and resources denied through sabotage, shifting political lines and blockade, their purse strings tightened. Many trading companies and institutions went bankrupt through this time.

The Criminal Underground Rises Up to Take King's Crossing
One organization that didn't suffer was the underground criminal conglomerate of King's Crossing, Five Fingers. The Marquise Morwyn De'Einter had established herself as a capable crimelord in the city, with her area of expertise being the smuggling and production of illicit magical devices. When Eoin Cross had come to her city with her son, Mogan Fitzholglen, they conceived a child who would grow to be one of the most powerful men on the continent. Morwyn had long desired to preside over all aspects of the criminal and political trade in the city, and though she had significant magical ability and a wide network of contacts within the city walls and without, she could not get the other crimelords to bend their knee to her, or even work together for anything beyond immediate crises that involved them all. After she managed to unite the crimelords to assist in repelling a shamanistic attack on the city by Grandia she began to formulate a plan.
She was aware of the possible plans to awaken the tarrasque, gleaned by scrying on her son and contacts that he made in the government, and she decided that this would be the perfect encouragement to scare her colleagues into compiance, and not only that, perhaps there was a way to magically ensure that they could never back out of the alliance this time. So she used her influence to ensure that the Tarrasque was released, leaning on the right men in power, magically removing doubt and fear from the planning generals, and indirectly providing assistance to her son and his party members to ensure it went off without a hitch.
When the Tarrasque was eventually released she of course feigned innocence and surprise and supposedly locked herself away in fervent study of some way to stop the beast. She already knew that the only thing which could stop the beast was the intervention of at least a minor deity, and she had already made her ex-lover The Holglen aware of this. So when the Tarrasque miraculously found it's way to King's Crossing Morwyn was prepared for it. She had made an artifact, a soul cage, which would lock the Tarrasque away using the God's power, but she had said that to do so she needed the other crimelord's assistance with various aspects of the preparation. So over the months it took for the beast to get to King's Crossing she had collected seemingly innocuous bits of aid from the other four crimelords of the city, each of which was actually used in order to bind that Crimelord's essence and free will. This arcane magic would require a significant amount of energy in order to pull off, which Morwyn planned to harvest from the sacrifice of the Holglen in it's battle with the beast.
So when the Tarrasque rampaged into town, valiant warriors pulled it to the center of the city towards the soul cage where the final showdown was to take place. True to her word Morwyn used the soul cage and the Holglen's sacrifice to imprison the beast in an interdimensional space far unreachable within the cage, and buried it deep underneath the town. She also used the energy to transfer a piece of each of the crimelord's souls, as well as all of her own, to her now 20 year old son Marten. Marten, fueled with the souls of five of the most powerful people in the city, essence of a god and immortal beast, became akin to a demigod, immortal, and completely controlled by his Mother's soul inhabiting his body. He quickly assumed control over all 5 criminal organizations, making each of his soulless puppets a notional captain in his criminal army. He then began buying up all of the legitimate enterprise in the city until he legally, and illegally, owned every piece of land in the city.
Since Marten's insurrection King's Crossing has become a central hub of criminal enterprise. It's customers traffic in everything from slaves to magical devices, drugs, prostitution and even souls. Marten has a connection to the slumbering tarrasque beneath the city and has drawn on it's chaotic power to reshape bits of the city to his liking, as well as open several permanent planar portals to traffic with extraplanar entities on a regular basis. One such plane that he has access to is a chaotic hell, and he often trades souls to it's inhabitants for demonic services or artifacts; though rumor has it that he has recently started bartering with a heavenly entity as well, as greed and power truly have no limits. This rumor came about after a prominent Red Key member who had freed hundreds of King's Crossing slaves was slain by a weeping Archon with a flaming sword, supposedly an angelic assassin purchased with souls.
Unfortunately, though Marten is immensely powerful and immortal, his mind is fractured. He houses 6 souls in his head, and his mother is the ruling voice, most of the time; as well as being inherently tied to a beast embodying chaos and the dead spirit of a chaos god. As such Marten will frequently argue with himself, actually physically changing aspects of his form in some cases. He is also prone to ocassionaly just losing his direction completely, reshaping things or people, with no regard to their well-being or sanity whatsoever, until the entity which possessed him to do so has been satisfied. He may one day just decide that everyone in his throneroom would look better if they had one less eye, and would calmly walk from person to person reshaping them until this was so, and then would just go back to business as normal afterwards.

Extended Timeline

Prehistory

The First Age (Empires of the Old Ones)

The Second Age (Fantastical Empires)

  • -6000 OB Roughly around the time when the nation of Gigantica launched it's initial transcontinental conquest known simply as the Grand Giant Invasion, attempting to impose their Pax Gigantis on the rest of the world and enslave the minor races. The dwarves were the main defenders in this conflict and managed to push the Giants back from their homeland at great cost.

The Third Age (Humanity rises)

  • 0 OB A charter is drawn up among a core group of industrial towns and their merchant kings, the nation of Ossia is born.
  • 428 OB Ossian adventurer's raid Tim's camp, sparking the journey which would result in Grandia's Formation.

The Fourth Age (Age of War)

  • 1426: In the new year, the war between Ossia and Grandia is declared. Angwar Keep is sacked.
  • 1426: Arcane saboteur Umoc attacks Thundersteel Mine.
  • 1428: Assassination of Grandian Dragon God warlord, country devolves into chaos. Massive counterattacks carried out by tribal leaders vying for leadership.
  • 1431: Goblin Defection. Several goblin tribes defect to Ossia envying their economy. Some goblin tribes remain in Gradia, disdaining Ossia's reliance on magic, this causes tension and the view of goblins as double agents on both sides.
  • 1436: Exiled stone giant assumes control of Grandia, unites clans, organizes army
  • 1438: Dragons from the mountain regions, Razoin Peaks, are exiled when shapeshifters assume control of the capital city.
  • 1436: Lamplight is destroyed in a bizarre arcane explosion, the Ghostlands are created.
  • 1440: The Year that the Tarrasque was released from it's prison underneath the mountain range.
  • 1444: Tarrasque captured and imprisoned underneath King's Crossing.
  • 1445, March 4th: The signing of the cease fire between Ossia and Grandia.
  • 1445, May 12th: Ostivakia is founded as it secedes from Ossia.
  • 1445, October 1st: A special election is held and Marten is elected mayor of King's Crossing.
  • 1446, March 1st: The Towering Oaks campaign start date.
  • 1446, October: King's Crossing is declared a foreign city-state by Ossia and declared off-limits; it is now completely overrun by criminal gangs under Marten. Locals begin referring to it as Chaos Crossing.
  • 1449, January 1st: The Republic of Northwood is formed in the neutral area between Northwestern Ossia and Xalliman.
  • 1449, April: Ideological differences come to a head and Northern Ossian cities unite in a Confederacy against the Communist cities of South Ossia. The Ossian Civil War begins.
  • 1450, June:** Current Campaign World Date - All current information in the world is set at this year.
  • 1450, June 21st: Draconic Destinies Campaign Start
  • 1455, September 5th: The Godsdeath Wave
  • 1455, September: Fresh Start Campaign Start Date

The Fifth Age (Steam and Sword)

The Sixth Age (Nuclear Families in a Magic World)

The Seventh Age (The Computer Age)

  • 2016 OB - The campaign start date of Age of Superheroes.
  • 2044 OB - The Tarrasque is awoken, 600 years after it's imprisonment, below a modern Chaos Crossing.

The Eighth Age (Deep Exploration)

The Ninth Age (Humanity's Reclamation)