Lore

Äventyr

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RELIGION

The Protector God

Most humans agree that a god they know as the Protector led their ancestors to Ravenland across the seas from their native, ruined homeland. According to legend, he flew before the ships in the form of a raven with a snake in his claws. But the consensus ends there. Adherents of at least three different viewpoints have squabbled since the Shift, when they haven’t
been persecuting and killing each other for heresy.

WYRM

According to the Congregation of the

Serpent, the god allowed a raven to

carry him during his journey. The raven

is considered to be a holy, but not divine,

bird while the snake was the god. They

name him Wyrm and his symbol is a

twisted ouroboros – a snake biting
its own tail. The leader of the Congregation of the Serpent is called the Psychopomp.

RAVEN
According to the Raven Church,

it was, of course, the raven that

was divine. The fertility snake he

carried is the mother of snakes as
well as the worms that prepared

the ground for human presence.

They call their god Raven,
and have the bird itself as their holy symbol. The Congregation of the Serpent in Alderland (southwest of Ravenland) believe those that worship Raven are heretics who should be pursued and killed, a view-point the Rust Brothers of Alderstone have inherited and sharpened even further. The Congregation of the Serpent in the Forbidden Lands does not like the Raven worshippers either, but accept them as one of few constructive forces. However, the Raven church is respected by elves and Elvenspring, even if they do not share their moralizing view of the world. Raven worshippers are renowned healers and shapeshifters who can travel in animal form. They fight the Rust Brothers. The Raven church also honors the water goddess, Flow, since she is of great significance to life.

You also know that there is something called The Raven Sisters and they are procecuted and killed by the Order of Rust Brothers.

FLOW
The water goddess, Flow, is worshipped by
elves, Elvenspring, and villagers. During

the ceremony known as “Flow’s Delight,”

she is invoked in a well or bucket of water,

which overflows with water once the invo-

cation is successful. The water is allowed to

flow out and is believed to cleanse the

house or village from disease and vermin.

People rinse themselves off with it and collect it in containers where it keeps its purifying and healing power for a few weeks.

THE NIGHTWALKER
The Nightwalker is considered the

oldest of all the gods, the untameable

force of nature that shatters harmony

and the ordinary. Normal people do

not worship him but may seek to

appease him to avoid bad luck and disaster, some-times by blood sacrifice. The Nightwalker is the protector of the night, mysteries, and untamed magic. He sees through any veil. The moon is his eye and wisps of smoke are his spies, as are the vague and ethereal fragments of fog that rise from the ground when the weather is cold and damp.

RUST AND HEME
According to the Rust Brothers,

the raven that led humankind

to Ravenland was made of iron

and the snake of wood – gifts to

humankind so they could make

tools and weapons and thus

dominate their world. It is the

materials, rather than the animals, that are divine. Humankind must, like iron, be worked and purified and tempered in order to reach their conviction, while the uninitiated are pieces of raw iron ore and the heretics the slag that must be removed. Iron is power and might, while wood is life and disease. The Rust Brothers call the Protector god Rust and his wife Heme. They worship rusty idols and crude wooden figurines that represent the gods. The figurines are roughly hewn and cannot be too detailed because that
would be an insult to the perfect form of the gods. The Brothers spread their word throughout the villages and help the faithful, while those who doubt are converted by force. The church leads the restless dead away from the villages to shape them into servants or soldiers. If the gods are to protect mankind, they preach that the gods Rust and Heme must be appeased with tribute in the form of food, silver and human
sacrifice. It is a known fact that villages which do not pay tribute to the church suffer misgrowth and
other misfortunes.

HUGE

Huge is the forge god of the dwarves. He

has given them the task of expanding

the world. The dwarves believe that the

sun is the fire in Huge’s forge. They call

it Huge’s Hearth, and their goal is to

reach it by expanding the Earth until

they do. All the clans want to reach it first so as to sec-ure the best seats at Huge’s table before the even greater task of reaching the Outer Forges (the stars) is set for them, about which he will tell them once they reach him. The dwarves believe in reincarnation, but the god can choose to reshape them for next life. They believe in a parallel spirit world where their souls rest and are trained by Huge for their next work shift in the world. Skill, knowledge and duty are the traits that impress Huge rather than living a moral life.

CLAY
Clay is the god who shaped the world

at the Protector’s behest. Clay is a sex-

less deity, a powerful craftsperson,

who holds dominion over crafts, life

and the magic of creation. The druids

among the Elvenspring worship Clay, as do many elves. They see the god more as a master teacher than their lord. Clay and soil are divine substances to the followers of Clay and they often create objects of clay to use in rituals.

LEGENDS

The Hollows

Location: South of Triple Ford

The Hollows… Have you ever been to that dump? It’s a village at the back of beyond. Cowards and milksops hid from the Blood Mist in that sorry excuse for a village, waiting for better times. They were unaware of one thing, however… that their peaceful village was built on a site of blood and death.

Grindbone

Location: South-west of Triple Ford

Hunters whisper of Grindbone, the village of slavers and thieves that lies beyond the forest. Many have heard the cry of the village’s mill from the river but few have dared to approach. It is said that the mill-stones grind the souls of the enslaved to dust since slaves have no use for spirituality. Some come to Grindbone through compulsion, others in exultation.
There, those captured by the cruel arrive. From there, those sold by the greedy leave.

Amber's Peak

Location: East of Triple Ford

It is whispered that the half-elf Zertorme was one of the first generals of the monster Zygofer, but that he was disgusted by the villain’s tyrannical rule and joined the Elvenspring of the eastern Forbidden Lands to fight his former master. When the fleeing horse-people arrived during the wars, Zertorme allowed them to stay on the plains in exchange for their submitting to his commands during the wars, and because of this, the riders hold him in the highest regard. A melancholy has fallen over Zertorme ever since the Blood Mist lifted. He is said to have retreated to the old ruined fortress of Amber’s Peak, where magical flames burn ever stronger. People say that the sorcerous Zertorme is trying to tame fire itself in order to turn it against Zytera, but many villagers are terrified as the number of fires around Amber’s Peak have increased. On the few occasions when Zertorme has appeared publicly, he has been wearing a mask that is said to hide a burn that he incurred during his
studies of the fire.

The Hexenwald

Location: South of The Hollows

Nearby villages whisper of witches who live within the
shadows of Hexenwald, trading favors and charms for
blood. Others insist it is the haunt of an ancient necro-mancer, pointing to antique maps showing a tower where the forest now stands. They say this necroman-cer wished to live forever, and so sealed his heart away in a jeweled statue, hidden beneath his throne. No one has seen the necromancer in centuries, however, and the educated dismiss these rumors as superstition. Until several weeks ago, that is, when shambling corpses were sighted near the borders of the wood, some even wandering onto nearby farms. Has the Necromancer woken from his ancient slumber? Or is some other dark power at work?

Graveyard of Thunder

Location: West of Triple Ford

I followed the stag deeper into the forest, beneath giant ferns and around stinking bogs. I thought I had lost its tracks, when I suddenly saw the deer stand and stare at me, just fathoms away. Completely still, it was, as if it had given up. I notched an arrow, whispered a short prayer, drew and took aim and was just about to let fly, when the sky exploded in a blinding light.
I must have been struck by lightning and fainted when
I was thrown to the ground, for when I woke there was a ringing in my ears and my mouth was flooded with the taste of blood. When I finally regained my legs and took in my surroundings I saw the stag, or what was left of it, hanging from a tree. It was as if something huge had just lifted it, taken a bite and then thrown the remains into a tree. I heard thunder roll in the distance, but couldn’t see a single cloud above me.

Feroxas’s Claws

Location: South-west of Triple Ford

Within the Rust Church, the tale is told of how the gods Rust and Heme first celebrated their wedding before the exultant fathers of the Rust Brothers and the praising mothers of the Sisters of Heme. From the divine embrace was eventually born the daughter, Feroxa, a beautiful child of the blackest hematite with
freckles of rust on her stone skin. But their happiness made the Raven god jealous. The bird of carrion swept
down, stole the child from its cradle, and settled on a high cliff to devour it. Desperate and furious, the god Rust let his limb lengthen into an arrow of iron and the goddess Heme sacrificed a finger to form a bow, strung with Feroxa’s umbilical cord. They sent their ironclad servant Teramalda to the crag and she shot the arrow at the Raven god, who gravely injured and terrified, fled to the woods. Raven took off with such force that Feroxa was pushed off the cliff and fell to the ground, shattering into shards beyond count that spread across the world as pieces of hematite.
Teramalda tried to break her fall but was mortally wounded by the weight of the stone child. Feroxa’s decapitated head came to rest next to Teramalda. It was bereft of sight since the raven god had already pecked out its eyes, but the god-child sensed its help-er’s lips and breathed her spirit into her. Ever since that day, Teramalda roams the world in search of vengeance on the Raven god and his followers. The god Rust wished to bury the head of his dead daugh-ter, but his wife Heme said that now was the time for vengeance, not sorrow. Together, they forged a set of hematite claws from Feroxa’s remains, to be worn by the champion of the Rust Church in the hunt for the scum of the Raven god. The claws were lost, however, when their wielder – Gardkan, captain of the Iron Guard – fell in battle during the Alder Wars. The claws were forged during Teramalda’s invasion of Raven-land, but the legend of the gods and their child is just a myth. Teramalda’s suit of armor came to life when the dwarven lord Garmar Four-Beard had the woman cooked over embers in it, and it is possible that it was the god Rust who woke her. Anyhow, she prefers to hunt dwarves rather than worshippers of the Raven.

Apperance: Two leather gloves with large metal claws mounted on knuckles. 
Effects: Feroxa’s Claws are a melee weapon. The claws ignore all metal armor and cause more damage in combat.

Wail's Horn

Location: South of The Hollows

"It is said that the goddess Wail visited the oceans in
her youth, but that the great waters, overcome by
love and greed, refused to let their guest go when
she attempted to leave. Wail struggled in the depths,
giving birth to the swirls and eddies of the world,
but a toothed shark took pity on her, raised her on
its tusks and threw her into the air so that she could
blow away. Once free, Wail blessed the animal, and
since she understood that the oceans would want to
punish her savior, she made the creature larger and
fatter so that it would never have to be frightened or
cold in the oceans again. She also gave it the ability
to breathe air so that she could blow life and courage
into it henceforth. Thus, the walrus was created."

Apperance: A natural horn, probably from some sea beast, with copper fittings

Effects: When blown, Wail’s Horn creates a strong gust of wind. The gale grows in force with the length
of the tone so that an experienced wielder can blow open doors, propel ships, throw down enemies, or even level walls. They say that the dwarven bard Hollerbellows blew an entire Alderlander army off a cliff during the Second Alder Wars, but that the effort caused his throat to close up, leading to his being overpowered and killed, the horn disappearing in the chaos.

The Stanengist Crown

Location unknown

It is said that the first six elves of the Forbidden Lands – the ones who planted the trees, drew  the furrows of the rivers and gave the animals their home – after completing their mission, had their rubies gathered in the royal crown, Stanengist, the name of which means “The Hanging Stones.” In the crown they rested deservedly, but at the same time, kept watch over their creation and gave advice to their descendants. For a long time, the crown was worn by the kings of the land and granted them the power to keep the kingdom intact, but sometime right before the humans arrived in Ravenland, the thief Merigall stole three of the stones from Stanengist, and the land has been
sundered ever since. Whoever reassembles the stones in the crown and places it on her head shall
according to legend gain the power to rally all kin and rule over the Forbidden Lands. The stonesinger Brander of Bynd is said to have received a vision from the god Huge in which he saw the lost stones set into the scepter of a king, the jewelry of a queen, and a sword that slays giants.