The year is 1016 and the world as you know it is at war. The Continent is gnashed between the jaws of two massive coalitions, half the world's capacity for war turned against the other's with everyone in the known world caught in their teeth.
For seven long years the Concord of Teeth, an alliance of convenience between the Vesakh homelands known as the Locust Territories, the Nostrian Tsarina Vyria Wyrmthrottler, and the Starborn Protectorate of Nashax has fought the Alliance of the Comet to a bloody stalemate, seeking to secure borders, resources, or simple revenge against the nascent Confederacy of Azharach and the ancient Dominion of Dis. The Alliance, formed from a coalition between the Confederacy, the venerable Navath-Qor, and the Dominion, pursues expansionist goals openly, while turning a blind eye to the revanchist rhetoric of High General Khrizhan Orsus, who sees this continental conflict as a mere evolution of his personal war against what he sees as the existential threat of the Vesakh people.
Long gone are the days when
a company of Made Women or a
coalition of adventurers and alley thugs could relatively politely enforce the neutrality of the Free Cities. War, total, grinding war, has sharpened everyone involved to a knife's edge that all participants now dance along. The Vesakh Territories face a crisis of emigration to the Far North and to the South, the frontiers accumulating dissident Locusts as the realities of industrial war challenge the Vesakh's traditions. Noster festers with discontented war dead, Nashax begins to splinter as the tidal opinion of the Church of Sea and Sky begins to ebb away from war, the Dominion faces a demographic crisis as the toll of war eats away at the number of elder Devils. The Confederate armies, under attrition that would destroy a pre-modern nation, are at this point held together only by racial animus and the need to save a bullet for the generals. The battleground nations groan under the weight of the dead and wade through the bloody mud of a generation of belligerents, and the centuries-stable Navath-Qor suffers a crisis of faith seven species wide.
War. Some say the only winning move is to not play. But veterans of conflict would know that there's another way to win a one-on-one fight: be the third guy to show up.
You are not affiliated with any of the Great Powers. You are an irregular squadron of neutrals, having stolen war materiel from both sides and struck out on your own, seeking to take advantage of the war-torn fronts of the world for your own ends.
Where (and why) do you fight?
[] [Theatre] Chelqath
Chelqath has never been conquered. Oh, every century or handful of decades someone makes a spirited attempt at occupation, as the various neighboring powers allow their greed for green hills and rich soil to outweigh their good sense. And yet, come back twenty years later, and you'll find a foreign grocery run by the son of a spirited local and the garrison commander, who speaks fluent Chelqathi. Mother Chelqath, spirit of the very land, wears away at all chains that outsiders try to place upon her, but the inexhaustible clash and furor across the country as the Frontline shifts back and forth have soaked Her face in blood, and you have decided enough is enough.
"Peace, damn you, peace! Take it outside!"
Goals: Maintain Chelqathi self-sovereignty, preserve integrity of land, push conflict beyond borders, take the wind and teeth out of offensives, contribute to cessation of hostilities.
[] [Theatre] The Kraels
The green and crumpled karstland of the Border Kraels, riven by valley and creak and rising up into the foothills of the Wall of the World, was a battleground long before it was made into the Gateway to the South. The clans that make their home there have long been exploited as militia or labor by the empires that flank them, empires that often try to strike at one another through the Kraels themselves. Nashax and the Confederacy often use Kraelin auxilia and manual labor in their cities, but have also funded brutal proxy conflicts against each other, backing Kraelin factions to get one over on the other. As the Continental War rages on, the thorn-filled ravines and lake-topped hills teem with the bandits and bushwhackers that either wage the War or prey on those who do. Larger-than-life figures like the Long-Handed Lady strike at military movements throughout the kraels, but below their stories stalk Yellow Bandana liberation militia, guerilla fighters of all factions, and deserters outrunning their own fear.
You wear the Yellow Bandana, and you are tired of your homeland being nothing but a place one crosses to get from one war to another.
Goals: Enrich self, impede war efforts in Kraeling theater, safeguard Kraelin population and resources.
[] [Theatre] The Interior
The Seas Clouded and Unfound connect the Interior, above and below, and the Interior connects the Coastal Powers of the Continent. If any of the Great Powers of the Continent want to trade with the other coast, they cross the Interior, and if they want to cross the Interior, they deal with the Free Cities. Wealthy and powerful city-states that draw upon their exurban holdings, vast trade connections, and the martial power of every sell-sword, adventurer and malcontent the world over to stay independent, their independence and control over the world's trade lanes are finally threatened by war in every corner. Suspicious of each other and at risk from their nation-state neighbors, the Free Cities of Outlandishton, Black Rocks, New Moloch, Ramshackle, Mt. Falsehood, Freedom Town, Lago Riendo and Iash Qoma are each faced with the choice to hang together or hang separately.
"The world's trade, its adventurers, its hired muscle and fugitives and scholars, once were the blood in these cities' veins. Now, we attempt to suture the wound."
Goals: Impede destructive conflict, push frontlines away, maintain independence and hegemony, achieve either control of coalition or avoid being made vassal, restore peaceable, profitable traffic
[] [Theatre] Yasaal
Great Yasaal, Golden Yasaal! Yasaal of the Sun! Once one of the Giants of the West, an empire that struck its grasping arms into the soft belly of the East again and again, the last handful of decades for Yasaal have robbed it of its cruel volition. The Raishes, the nine governors of the nine core provinces, each grew strong and prideful on trade and adventurism, while the central government withered on the vine, mismanaged and unable to whip the prideful provinces into a single team. When war broke out, the provinces could not agree on a side to back, and, just when it seemed like she might find enough backbone to bring her warring princes to heel, the Empress was assassinated. Now sister fights sister as the provinces declare for opposing factions, and Yasaal's saber is pressed to her own throat.
"Here lies half of Yasaal; it died of the other half."
Goals: Achieve stability or hegemony, prevent becoming rump state, suborn or neutralize Yasaali factions, prevent ascendancy of foreign power in Yasaali territory
While you and your cohort are isolated on the battlefield, you are not, strictly speaking, alone. One of the neutrals, those minor powers who looked at the brewing storm of death seven years ago and said "nuts to that", has elected to put their toe in the water by providing groups like you with supplies. They have their reasons, their strings and conditions, but guns and butter are guns and butter.
Who is backing you?
[] [Backer] The Republic
When your prosperity is locked into international trade and your oldest enemy and much more entrenched mother state has a land border with you, you tend to step lightly. The Brimstone Republic has so far stayed out of the war, afraid of killing their golden geese or pissing off the Dominion without much bigger guns at their back. But the roads are choked with smoke and bodies, and the tenor of the war, having lost all politeness, is shifting ever more towards 'war to the knife', frightening a vocal population of the citizenry away from open involvement even as the inward flow of gold dries up. The unpopularity of official involvement, however, is not frightening away the ambitious and daring from unofficial involvement. Be plausibly deniable and the Republic will fill your coffers with misplaced assets. Enter the light and burn… not just metaphorically.
[] [Backer] The Southern Frontier
When hostilities truly started, the powers of the Continent were tentatively stepping into the new frontier south of the Wall of the World mountain range. When Mt. Txova was leveled by a mingling of Nephilic divine rage and dynamite, it revealed a landmass beyond, a landmass now supporting a growing multiplicity of small settlements, colonies and compounds. The dust settled and Stromfels Pass was in its place, a gateway to an entire new world. A burgeoning coalition of townships helmed by the charismatic Mayor Achlodius of Coolwater is gathering power by advertising itself as asylum for Vesakh that object to their status quo. The first of these were treasure hunters, the second sought a quiet life away from the Locust ideal. Now, rebels, malcontents, conscientious objectors and schismatics flee the war into four outstretched arms. The powers of the South are fractious and growing too fast to manage themselves, but exotic resources, handcrafted materiel, good home cooking, and the goodwill of a free people belong to those who will help keep the war on the other side of the mountains.
[] [Backer] The Iadra
The Iadra Tevoyamat is the collective body of the Teuthis, beings from another world that landed in three vast colony ships on this world on the zero year of the current calendar. A century later, they tentatively reached out to join the world beyond, and have been a small but significant player in Continental politics ever since. Today, they are independent city states with a nominal confederation government… and the constant threats from the strange creatures within and around them have been joined by the threats to pick a side in this terrible war. While Iad Ekrekesh, the "Winding Coil" deep in Confederate territory is too far to reach, Iad Volemari, the so-called "Ninth Free City" in the Interior, and Iad Koseverem, the "Grounded Star" in lush provincial Yasaali jungle, are deep in battleground territory and are in need of your aid, offering living technology and foodstuffs in exchange for assistance against threats more esoteric than the lead, steel and resonance of the Powers.
[] [Backer] No one!
You're a strong independent militia that don't need no foreign entanglements! Without a strong backer, you'll have to secure your own materiel to wage the war, but it'll be your war to wage, without anyone interfering with your agenda. It'll be your fight to lose and your own choice of prize.
Author's Notes:
DM: "Doc," you may ask, "haven't you started and abandoned several quests already?" And you'd be right to. Heck, maybe I'll do it again! However, those other quests weren't set in the Hungerverse, the world of
Never Full and
Always Something which have lived rent free in my brain for years now. This was written with the assistance of the lovely
@Wicked Sanguine , and is set about seven years after the current time in Never Full and Always Something. (As of writing: that's You Are Never Going Home 11 and chapter 25-B, respectively).
WS: Those of you who follow the main work know that progress is slow and agonizing, but this world never leaves my mind. It's my baby, I'm sticking with it for as long as I'm the type of person who cares about made-up worlds in which to splash around, and Doc's one of the people I trust to watch my baby when I'm at work. This is a sort of "possible future" of Never Full; what the world might look like after the war rages on. Think Sunless Skies' relationship to Fallen London. And in this space for play, I intend for Doc and I to play with these toys until they break.
