HQ - HEROES & VILLAINS The Background World & Glossary

[knightkrawler]

So I've decided to post entries for terms and glossary entries in a thread here to accompany their usage in the dropbox publishings.
As I do not use the Warhammer Old World or any derivation thereof as my background world, but rather one completely invented on my own (with big influences of course),
work on a background sourcebook is difficult as
a) I come up with things as I go along and
b) nobody has the time to write such a pamphlet in one go, anyway, including me.

This thread is meant to
a) contain my entries going along until I feel comfortable with writing and uploading a sourcebook for download
b) for you to ask me what this and that is or means that you find in my main body of work, like "say, kk, what's the Grand League?" or "What's the Doom?"

This all means that hopefully, this thread will one day or another be a nifty little glossary for people to refer to when a new term comes up.
I'll reserve 9 posts for starters underneath this one, to fill them up as I go.

[knightkrawler]

Politics

The Ogre Grudges
The Ogres – or Ogrún, as they call themselves – are an ancient people, possibly descended from Dwarfs or closely related to them. The Dwarfs say devolved. Neither of them easily admits to that or the similarities between them. For there clearly are no such similarities, now are there?
The fact of the matter is that both races are in constant unrelenting hatred against each other. When not at direct war, they talk badly about each other. Ogres also eat Dwarfs. Not because they taste particularly good, but as the ritualistic fulfillment of the word of their god, the titan Aukrys. The Book of the Devourer reads that the people of Aukrys are destined to devour all their enemies to ascend to become the foremost race and nation of Aría. Among the other races of Central Aría, it is debated if 'devour' should be taken literally. The Ogres do.
Thus, they were easily convinced by Morcar's lieutenant Festrawl a few years ago to stomp an army out of the ground, even allying themselves with the Grimdwarfs of the Firewastes, to overrun the keeps and kaers of Dael and Skyreach. They want vengeance for all earlier routs which, they claim, came courtesy of the Dwarfs' superior weaponry and warmachines. For the Ogres have no patience (or intelligence, some might say) to deal with such puny mechanics and confide in their Purifiers, priests and interpreters of The Book of the Devourer, to weave spells and rally the masses. And in this dark age, they stand before the gates of Dael, settled tightly in the ancient dwarven keep Caellar's Caer they won months ago.

The Durí (Dael)
The Duri are the main political trunk of the Dwarfs. Their "kingdom" is still allowed to be called exactly that by the King's decree because of everything they have done for us. Before the Doom and the Grand League, there was peace and trade between the central kingdoms, city states, and the Dwarfs of Dael, which is their largest city and the name of their kingdom. When the Doom loomed, the Dwarf Geodes were among the few to warn us and initiated rallies for devising measures of protection. So the Dwarfs built many caers and they gave us plans and helped building our citadels while we gave them the promise of help and long-lasting friendship as well as the guaranteed safety of their kin among all humans. This is the foundation for the Grand League where we welcome diversity and the good that stems from it. The Durí are an important pillar of the League now and will always be.

[knightkrawler]

Creatures

Goblins
Goblins may be tiny, but they are vicious and insidious. Of varying skin colors, they only have in common a lack of size and glut of ugliness. Their two stomachs can digest almost anything and their mating is quick and effective, which makes them a pest everywhere within and around the Grand League. It is still rather unclear if they have been shunned from functioning societies and communities for their thievery, lazyness, and ructiousness, or vice versa. Stinking pesky little buggers taking what they want and then bickering over how courageous they are, they band together in marauding, rather nomadic groups led by more powerful creatures, often Orcs or Ogres that promise them food and fun. Goblins that are not typically small and of indistinguishable gender are invariably mutants who strive to lead their smaller kin in hopes of something higher than the next meal and the biggest steal. They are hugely obese Goblin kings, capable of some animistic spells and brutality alike. Religion is unknown to goblins and utterly unwanted, too, as they will follow anyone who makes the right promises and who seems like someone shunned by the League's societies as well.

Orcs
Orcs are brutal looking bulky creatures with a distant similarity to humans. Their skin colors vary greatly, but a majority tends toward some shade of green, augmented by tattoos, and many other, more heinous ways to adorn a body. Their patience is as thin as their skin is thick, which is the reason why we have had our fair share of political difficulties even though Orc leaders agreed to the terms of mutual peace set by the Grand League. The alliance might be uneasy, but if anything, the Orcs' sense of loyalty reigns them in effectively. Yet, there are the wilder tribes to the west of their Tallwood steppes, that strive for a different lifestyle, unwatered by the influence of peace and puny human. These are the ones bound by oath and promise to Morcar, fighting on his side as the bulk of his army, especially in western and northern territories.

Mongrels
The Doom caused many catastrophes and longterm changes on our world. Mutation was not the least. Those closest to the cloud watched their bodies changing in agony over painful days and weeks. Their features became beastlike, resembling horses, goats, or pigs, their limbs and digits became less handy, growing hooves and claws, their skin grew coarse hair and fur and discolored into all shades one can imagine. But these physical transformations brought with them writhing spiritual and mental pain. Many grew insane, most went feral, all became aggressive and shortfused. The result was their being shunned from closeknit societies an communities, driven from the cities, as they were helpless and couldn't help to rebuild the countries. So they wandered north where less humans and dwarves live, where they could roam free, and built their own tribes, forever mulling over what they have lost. Now Morcar has come and promised them all the things that we supposedly took from them.

Guardians
Guardians are well-armed and armored knights that do not hold their own lands, but rather stand in pay as soldiers to their liegelords, while their families live in their lord's courts where they are promised protection and lands for their future. This is how our noble system works and it serves these guardians well since their lady is as dependent on them as they are to her. But his is also what can corrupt them, not in their hearts, but their minds. While the lords and ladies of many a house listen to the whisperings of Morcar Barrister, the knights are told exactly what they need to know. They often do not know better, but the fact that they stand against the League's heroes should not redeem them at all. They are knights, after all, and they promised to die for their liegelord's cause.

Skeletons & Reavers
Skeletons are the long-buried or fallen bodily remnants of several races that have been raised to do battle once more by the fouler sorts of nethermancy. This state they are in now is what we call undeath. They linger as piles of bones and weapons, strewn about dungeons and caers and wake upon the presence of heroes. They rise as full human bone structures and their eyes glow a greenish or icy blue. Their movement patterns are somewhat erratic, but they retain the basic fighting capacities of their warriors' lives and will attack anyone that is not written into their hex as an ally.
Reavers are skeletons with heavy armor and better weapons, greater fighting prowess and a stronger hex.

Wights
Wights are undead that are raised from fresher bodies than skeletons. Their hexes are much weaker since their bond with the earth devouring them has not had the time to fully serve as the nethermancer's energy source. As walking corpses with foul flesh hanging from their bones and guts from their withered bellies, they are much slower and their fighting prowess is somewhat lesser, but they will follow and attack relentlessly upon being awakened. Tougher to slay than skeletons and imposing more disgust, they are the overall more dangerous opponent.

Reavers
see Skeletons & Reavers

Golems
There are many substances and pre-existing pieces of art or other human creations from natural elements and fabrics that can magically be awakened to do an Elementalist's bidding. Similar to the undead, golems are hexed, which means their master does not have to stick around, but rather that the golem will attempt to fulfill the spellcaster's orders lastingly until it is destroyed. The most common golem types are statues or puppets built from earth, wood, water, and various metals or gemstones. A golem will relentlessly follow his hex, which is oftentimes the task to guard a treasure, and never surrender unless the hex is broken by disrupting its mystical threads connecting the different fabrics and elements in the golem's body.

Brood
The Brood are a hunched over, thin and lean race of beastmen resembling walking rats, which they basically are. As opposed to the very diverse animal mutations the mongrels suffered after the Doom, the Brood's mutations are limited to ratlike features, gestalten, and mindset, making them outsiders even among the ugliest and most feral mongrels. This quickly led to absolute seperation of the Brood, the underworld being their only hiding place and natural habitat alike. Hidden for decades, they have bred like, well, rats, flooding their tunnels with pestilence and shortlivedness and clan wars based on jealousy and the need to find more space. Only recently have they surfaced as a race under an unknown ruler to fight for Morcar and the promise of the aboveground world as their new less limited breeding pits

Broodlings
are the vast majority among the Brood, simple-minded ratmen in bad armor and worse weapons, drowning humans and dwarfs with sheer numbers.

Pestbringers
are particularly sickly or stupid Broodlings that wield hollow morningstars, filling the air with a foul, bright-green gas that seems to contain the Brood's own sicknesses.

Direrats
are mutated rats, victims of the Brood's attempts to breed particularly fierce fighting beasts, as big as cats or even dogs and wolves.

Ratswarms
consist of everything you do not want to crawl all over you and bite you in places you did not know you had.

Ratbeasts
are huge, disgusting monsters, mutated and experimented upon to become the most aggressive killing machines the Brood can imagine. The beasts carry around horrible weapons, crafted into their flesh and bone, the gas to keep them feral and mad, and mutations you do not want to tell anyone about.

Grimdwarfs
The Grimdwarfs are a political offshoot of the Dwarfs who separated after the Doom, first striving to sell their secrets of science, elementalism, and engineering as well as attempting to sell the protection mechanisms for caers and citadels prior to the Doom, and then reluctant to join the Grand League. They wandered off into the Northern Skyblades to build their own meritocratic societies, soon establishing themselves as pioneers in many a science branch that is deemed at least untrustworthy if not unethical or dangerous elsewhere.

Grimguard are the best soldiers of the Grimdwarfs, stoic armored tanks wielding heavy hammers and sharp throwing axes. How they have been pushed over the edge of their reserved cooperation with the Grand League by Morcar's deviousness and what they have been promised to turn so determinedly against their brothers is a mystery to me.

[knightkrawler]

Magic

Hex
A hex is the lasting effect of a spell of nethermancy that bonds the hexed creature to the caster of the spell. Only slaying the hexed creature or its long-lasting state of hibernation after being raised can break the hex. Usually, the strength of a hex correlates with the intensity of the glow in the hexed creature's eyes.

Loretome
A legendary book that "has been writing" itself, pages of text appearing when they are needed and can be interpreted. Of course, only the Wizards of the guilds can do this, and only few among them can do it well. Mentor is widely considered to be the master of reading its wisdoms.

Nethermancy
This is a loose term for all magics that involve taking control of another's body, may they be dead or alive. A wizard has to call on dark passions strongly to wield the threads of raising bodies, conquering souls, and digging up bones.

Passion
In other worlds, the passions, each ruling over their own unique area of emotion, force, and synergy, are called gods. There is a pantheon of them - some are light, some are dark, and some dwell in between. Each of them DO IN FACT EXIST as a "mind" that is ever-aware, but has to focus presence along the time-scale. Thus, effective and "fair" spread of granting is simply not possible. That is why they are not, in fact, gods. Some people have seen one or even more passion at working a miracle in person, so there is no need for a book to be written to be taken as gospel. People know that the passions exist as they know horses exist.

Untied
"An untied sorcerer/wizard/mage is one who has the innate powers necessary for casting spells, but who has not yet specialized in any area of magic. An untied wizard thus might be proficient in the use of nethermancy and elementalism and moreover have learned quite a few guildbook spells, too. This is not only compromising in that individual's power level - though many of these wizards choose this non-path for sheer ambition of proving this is not so - but it is also very dangerous for the soul to call on a variety of passions and draw from many sources of energy. As we all know, the Spells of Morcar are very powerful and thus we all are eager to have a go at them. But few are ready to pay the price and only lifelong untied mages can try. I tend to avoid taking the risk to see their careers flourish and put a stop to delving too deep rather sooner than later." -- Mentor

[knightkrawler]

Geography

Aría (Ah-REE-ah)
Quite simply, the planet where everything takes place. Also used as a name for the known part of the giant continent that covers most of the world and is thought to be all of Aría's landmass, including the islands around it - which, needless to say, it isn't.

The Circle
An almost circular geographical depression in the western half of known Aría, the reason for its existence utterly unknown. Theories are manifold, but its symptoms indicate a catastrophe of global measure should something like "The Reason" or "The Doom" ever happen again.
Within the Circle - which is sometimes called "The Crater" - there's a collection of randomly thrown together peculiarities: the Rainbow Jungle, a funghal forest with giant insects that grows every year; the Rift, bordering the Crater to the East, where cities float on rock in the air and peoples live in the sides of the enormous ravine; the Fomori swamps, always shrouded in mist; Owlwood, a forest that becomes more and more dangerous as the hero ventures deeper; and several more.
All the Circle is sprinkled with caers and citadels and there is a general tendency towards lawlessness and private armies, renegade interests and wyrd happenings...

The Scar
The Scar is an enormous mountain range, or rather a range of mountain ranges dividing the western part of Aría in two. It also holds the distinction of being the western border of the Circle. Its eastern lower ranges embed several towns and citadels as far as the northwestern reaches of the Rainbow Jungle. In the north, Dwarf clans have settled relatively recently, and it is there where they dig deepest for riches that might not be found anywhere else. It is also said that the Brood have their largest hotbeds in the Scar, though where exactly nobody can tell.

The Valley of Flowers
The Valley of Flowers lies embedded in the lower ranges of the Scar's northeastern part, snuggled into a pocket of near-elemental air that has protected the town and acres forever and made it flourish to more riches and health than anyone would deem possible for a land of so little area and so few people. This elemental air, steadily and softly whispering down from the higher ranges in the northwest, keep the Rainbow Jungle from creeping up the hills and mountains into the valley. Should these winds be kept in some way or another from blowing over the valley...

The Rainbow Jungle
Ever spreading, ever creeping south- and eastward, the Rainbow Jungle is a festering mass of giant mushrooms, fatal moulds, and and an elemental decay that no dwarf, man, or greenskin can survive. Without a very special breathing mask, whose production secrets are known only by a few Elementalists, an adventurer will not survive a single day. With it, they might make it through a week, and even then they will have to fear for sickness and decay to take over. As it is, only insects can survive this mess, but how they thrive... locusts the size of lions, winged tapeworms gliding in crevasses ever searching for fallen beetles or termites the size of grown men. The fringes are dominated by giant sandrunners and swarms of house-high landassles, and this is where anyone should halt their journey.

The Fomori Swamps
Only recently have the Fomori sneaked out from their fens and swamps hidden among veils of fog. Since no man has ever seen any reason to enter the swamps forever clouded in mist and mystery we do not know anything about them. They are to be avoided, we assume, for what would anybody seek there anyway? Close by, where the water does not flood the ground anymore, but rather nourishes it from below, the land is worth to settle on and these lands are a major source of produce to the Grand League cities in the western part of Aría.

Durán-Dael
A little east of Dael and Caellar's Caer lies Durán-Dael, a caer surrounded by various mines and formerly reigned over by the Minekings. First of their line was Demrond, and much of Durán-Dael was built around his remains and Thundersong, his magical hammer, which he fought Zargon himself with. But the caer fell, along with Caellar's Caer. Now it is infested with the Brood and other vile creatures. Its economical and strategic importance cannot be ignored forwver, though.

The Weathertop
A solitary rock jutting out from the soil in the northern regions of the Circle. Elemental earth – for lack of a better word – flows from the earth's core into its tip and back, forever replacing itself without loss of force to the outside. The synergies produced and utilized here are of unspoken importance. Accordingly, upon the discovery of its power, a citadel was built into Weathertop and one of the eldest and wisest Elementalists of the Grand League was installed as a caretaker and scholar. He has not found out why what we call bad weather – rain, storm, lightning – seems to concentrate their forces around the Weathertop's tip.

[knightkrawler]

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[knightkrawler]

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