This content was originally included in Homelands #1. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.

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White

• A Common Enemy

The spirit of the peoples of Aysen is fueled by hatred for Baron Sengir. For generations, the Baron sent his Vampires and foul creations to plague the fields and farms of the Aysen countryside. His Vampires were usually driven away or destroyed—they were never numerous enough to actually take control of any part of Aysen—but conquest was not the Baron’s goal. Instead, he strove to create an atmosphere of fear throughout Aysen. After an unusual confrontation with a Serra Paladin by the name of Ihsan, however, the Baron realized that the citizens of Aysen were bonding through their common fear of the nightly terrors rather than crumbling into despair. Therefore, he ceased to order these attacks, and now it is a rare thing to see one of his creatures anywhere in Aysen. As the Baron theorized, with no common enemy to bring them together, the citizens’ petty rivalries began to grow. The Baron is an immortal, and thirty years to him passes as does the blink of an eye. Waiting a few years isn’t going to trouble him, but it could lead to the downfall of the Aysen culture without any effort on his part, which to him is a worthy gamble.

• Death Speakers

Death Speakers are evidence of the main schism in the Aysen culture. A number of disillusioned members of the populace have begun to take to practicing minor divination and spirit-summoning. These people generally are doing no harm to anyone, including themselves; they’re only trying a little future-reading and interpreting odd occurrences as divine signs and portents. However, rumors that they have the ability to summon the spirits of the dead and make them answer questions about those still living really unnerve those Bureaucrats in power who have secrets that need to be kept. With the Baron no longer a constant threat, the citizenship of Aysen is beginning to turn on the Death Speakers. Recently, the Serra Inquisitors have been conducting armed raids on the homes of Death Speakers, putting those that they catch on trial and almost always convicting them of corruption. The Samites are well aware of the situation and are doing their best to avoid getting involved, but a number of Samite Alchemists are harboring Death Speakers in their homes or are being dragged into the conflict in other ways. So far, no one has died or been seriously injured, though the city rumors would have it that an entire den of Death Speakers has mastered the art of fabricating Skeletons, Zombies, and other undead creatures. Still, it’s only a matter of time before some minor incident sends the entire citizenship of Aysen into a fevered mob hunt.

• Serra’s Absence

Aysen Abbey was built in Serra’s honor years ago, and the Aviary was established as a temple to her and a place for her to visit. The last time that she appeared in Aysen, however, was some twenty years ago, and much of the citizenry’s faith has begun to wane. They believe that Serra has abandoned them. Without her annual visits, and without the oppression of the Baron’s influence, the people are starting to lose their convictions, and even their sense of purpose. The Abbey Gargoyles, Serra’s gift to the city of Onella so long ago, are still doing their duties, which in the eyes of most of the populace means that Serra has not forsaken them entirely. Still, while she has been gone for five or ten years at a time before, she’s never been gone for twenty, and the Abbey Matrons are starting to have their hands full quashing rumors of her departure. Her absence weighs heavily on the people of Aysen, adding to the already high tension level in the city-state and fueling the fervor against the Death Speakers.

• Hazduhr the Abbot

Traditionally, when an Abbot dies, Serra walks among the peoples of Onella to choose a new spiritual and cultural leader from the crowds. The current Abbot, Hazduhr, is growing increasingly ill in his advancing years and is unlikely to live more than a few seasons longer. A number of people believe that when he dies, Serra will not appear to choose his successor. This would cause complete chaos among the citizenship, inevitably with dire consequences. The Abbot’s knowledge and insight make him an invaluable leader, but as his age incapacitates him, he is rapidly becoming a symbol of the spiritual and societal bankruptcy that is within Aysen.

Blue

• The Wizards’ School

Reveka, a very determined Sea Dwarf, is the Wizard Savant who currently acts as Director of the Wizards’ School—a very precarious position. If the Wizards’ School does not soon become a political power, it is in danger of being usurped by either of its “allies” at best, or being economically destroyed by Eron’s influence at worst. _ The only way that the Wizards’ School will _ survive is through subtle control over the rest of the world, taken piece by piece. The Wizard Savant has no intention of seizing dictatorial control anywhere, but she realizes that she needs to have spies and contacts everywhere. She has no choice: she must play a full-scale game of intrigue and try to keep the world from war at the same time. In her attempts to maintain this balance and gain a toehold in the political arena, Reveka is also quite conscious of the fact that the Wizard Attendants in the school have the right to challenge her for the Directorship, just as she challenged the old Director. If one of them wins such a duel, it could mean her exile, the fall of the Wizards’ School, and the eruption of open war between Aysen and Baron Sengir.

• Reveka

The current Director of the Wizards’ School and the highest-ranking Wizard Savant, Reveka is known for her determination and her ambition. She has a strong temper and a cunning mind. She wants to re-establish a good position for the Wizards’ School among all of the cultures of the Homelands at nearly any cost, but trusts no one’s council save her own. She really does have the best intentions, but her methods are manipulative, and she will do nearly anything to maintain the political alliances she has so carefully forged over the years. Reveka has spent time in the Bureaucratic chambers in Onella, sipped wine with Baron Sengir, and met with ambassadors from Koskun Keep to try to stop the feud between the Goblin wizards and her own people. Once, she even personally sailed a loaded frigate through the winter storms to ensure that the peoples of the port town of Kerselin had food to last until spring. In many ways, it’s all part of a game, but that game is one that Reveka has to win.

• Magic

The limits of the empirical knowledge and theories of magic in the Homelands are constantly being tested by the students in the Wizards’ School. As the Goblin wizards in Koskun gain strength, egotistical duels are becoming a constant on the beaches and in the foothills of the Koskun Mountains. Reveka is aware that her students often take long trips into Aysen, but she is not aware just how many have been sailing to the beaches of Koskun to bully the Goblins there, worsening the increasingly volatile political situation. No serious battles have happened yet, but that is likely just a matter of time.

Black

• Baron Sengir

An ancient and powerful Vampire by the name of Baron Sengir was summoned and abandoned on this world long ago by a planeswalker who lost a critical duel. The Baron slaughtered most of the Dwarves of a nearby castle and settled into his new residence accompanied by the few he’d enslaved as undead. No matter what the distressed Dwarves did to try to retake their castle, the Baron was simply too strong for them to defeat. In one of the raids, the Baron took the Dwarven king’s daughter for his own, enchanting her mind so that she would love him rather than her father. Irini has since been his own loyal vampiric daughter, kept beautiful and young through the years by dark magics.

The Baron discovered two things of importance in the years following his arrival in this plane: that a hidden stairwell led from the throne room of his castle to a huge abandoned Dwarven city deep beneath the ground, and that within the underground city lay a gate that led to another world. Though the Baron knew little of true magic, he knew that gates like this are dangerous things, and that even if someone were prepared to enter one, there was no guarantee of return. None of the Vampires or undead servants he pushed through the gate ever returned, and none of his small magics were able to discern where the gate led. While he felt sure that this gate led back to some Dwarven metropolis, there was no way to know for certain save going through the gate himself. He searched through the city for clues, interrogated the Dwarves his servants captured for him, and consulted divinational devices from all over the Homelands, but to no avail—he was still confronted with a one-way gate to a place he knew nothing about. For this reason, he decided that he would only enter the gate fully prepared, with a sizable private army drawn from the world’s inhabitants

At one point, the Baron had his servants kidnap a variety of humans from Aysen, as well as a vessel carrying over thirty families on the way from Onella to the pioneer town of Kerselin. He had them set up a small village in the marshlands near his castle, and they lived under his influence and rule, making the best of the harsh living conditions. He certainly didn’t need these short-lived humans, but keeping them under his influence had entertained him through the years, and turning their dead into handservants and Vampire warriors for his castle made them useful in a number of ways. To keep the villagers from attempting escape, the Baron ruled that if one person was caught fleeing the Barony, he would murder ten people in the individual’s place and guarantee a cell in his dungeons for the one caught.

• Ihsan

Ihsan grew up in one of the small towns common on the plains of Aysen. When he was just coming of age, he had a series of dreams and visions of confronting “the Dark Baron” in Castle Sengir. Ihsan then devoted his life to becoming a member of the Serra Paladins, an order of knights devoted to the protection of the towns of Aysen and to the ultimate destruction of Baron Sengir. After serving as a Paladin for many years, Ihsan bravely journeyed to the Baron’s castle and confronted the immortal. Much to Sengir’s surprise, the Paladin kneeled before him and begged that the Baron make him into a creature of eternity, that the Baron share his power and show Ihsan the true meaning of eternal life. Ihsan wanted to be a Vampire, to embrace the promise of power that the Baron could bestow upon him. The Baron agreed.

The Baron was an experienced immortal and knew not only that Ihsan wanted the power of eternal life only to use it to destroy him but also that Ihsan was martyring himself to darkness only for the good of the world he had left behind. (“The typical hero’s journey to become one with darkness and then use the power to destroy the darkness whole. Perhaps another day, in my youth,” the Baron thought to himself, “I would have died by his trickery. But today, I shall not.”) The Baron proceeded to drink the lifeblood from the knight, and as Ihsan died he begged in a whisper to become just like Sengir. The Dark Baron smiled, pulled free of the Paladin, then spoke the words and incantations of a powerful spell he had learned from Grandmother Sengir, calling upon the magic of the swamps and bogs to fill Ihsan’s body with death. When Sengir stood and wiped his mouth clean of the red stain, Ihsan was dead.

But not undead.

The Baron had not turned Ihsan into a Vampire, but a ghost—an impotent, helpless spirit, a puppet under the Vampire fords control rather than a being that could fight back and eventually usurp its maker. Binding the Paladin’s spirit to his own signet ring, the Baron then placed the ring on his index finger and ordered Ihsan to stand by his side and act as his guardian, ally, and companion for all of the days to come. Cruelly, the Baron told Ihsan that he would never be his own creature again, that he would always be the thrall of the ring’s owner.

Ihsan begged and wept for a hundred days, but the Baron paid no heed, for what is a hundred days to an immortal? Now, Ihsan is one of the Baron’s most treasured possessions, and the Serra Paladins have vowed to destroy the traitor of their order: Ihsan the weak, Ihsan the fallen, Ihsan the betrayer.

• Irini Sengir

Irini, Baron Sengir’s daughter, wants to own his signet ring herself, for she wishes to control, torment and drive Ihsan completely mad. Her Dwarven heritage has faded over the centuries, as the Baron has altered her shape and outward demeanor to suit his own aesthetic pleasures. Now, Irini is a woman of miniature beauty, who harbors enormous, dark passions.

Red

• Eron the Relentless

Once, Eron was merely a common thief from Aysen who did service for a corrupt Wizard Savant. As a reward for his loyalty and productivity after a particularly dangerous journey, the wizard used his books of dark magic (a bribe from Baron Sengir) to transform Eron into an immortal. When the Baron found out that the Wizard Savant had created an immortal without his permission, he became quite cross. Soon after, the wizard suddenly vanished, never to be seen again, and Eron struck out on his own. Eventually, Eron realized that he was bored with his life and went to the Koskun mountains, where he declared himself King of the Goblins. He was soon assassinated, and came back again to continue his reign, a cycle he has repeated again and again.

Eron has been contacted by Baron Sengir a number of times, and he knows that the Baron wishes to meet him and see how his “stay in immortality” is going. So far, Eron has politely declined every invitation to Castle Sengir. Eron fears Baron Sengir more than anything else, for he has the feeling that the Baron is just biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike. The narrow mountain pass that leads from the Barony to Koskun Falls is watched by Eron’s best guards day and night all year round, and even though Eron’s spies would tell him well ahead of time if the Baron were planning to lead an army through the pass, he is still worried. Eron tries to get supplies and food to the villages the Baron has acquired over the years, but he is never really sure whether what he sends reaches them.

• Food

The denizens of Koskun Keep must eat; if Eron doesn’t feed his people, they will likely revolt and cause an untold amount of damage to both themselves and his rule. Eron has arranged for food to be delivered regularly to Koskun Keep—the result of a stronghanded trade agreement with Aysen. If the food supply between Koskun and Aysen were interrupted somehow, Eron’s people would surely turn against him.

• Thieves and Rogues

Koskun Keep is a milling ground for the criminal element of the Homelands. Many of those who flee persecution in Aysen eventually end up in either An-Havva or Koskun, and Eron wonders how Iong it is going to be before he gets the first Death Speaker on his doorstep, and how Aysen will react to his harboring of their heretics. He turns a blind eye to most of the crime that happens in his realm, but he takes special exception to the doings of two thieves, Joven and Chandler. Once, the two tricked him out of one of the few possessions he really valued, an Ebony Rhino left over from the Great War that one of the Goblin families traded him for status. If he ever catches either Joven or Chandler on his side of Strongrock, he’s going to make sure they pay for a very, very long time.

• Keeping the Peace

At the western base of the Koskun Mountains lies a huge forest that divides the mountains from the plains. In the distant past it was simple to traverse through the forest and come out on the far side. But now there is some force, some controlling entity that ensures that any war parties — Eron sends are destroyed or utterly vanished, while any unarmed Trade Caravans are fet through unmolested. He doesn’t know what it is in the Great Wood that he dislikes so much, but looking from one of the ridges overlooking the tree-topped landscape gives him the chills. He knows that whatever is there is not actively trying to destroy him, but he still doesn’t trust whatever force is controlling the creatures of that haunted place.

• Anaba Minotaurs

The Anaba Minotaurs live in a hidden part of the Koskun Mountains. They lead a simple, quiet life, although the young Minotaurs that have left in search of adventure elsewhere, have started to draw attention to their part of the mountains. It is only a matter of time before one of Eron’s search parties find them, and then not much longer before he brings them into his sphere of corrupting influence. There is a certain tension in the air, as every day brings the Goblin parties one step closer to discovering their ancestral home and bringing an end to the Minotaurs’ peaceful, spiritual culture.

Green

• The Great Wood

When the Great War left the rest of the planet a barren wasteland, this section of the world grew and flowered due to the rift created by the Ancient whom Ravi defeated. Creatures continued to live and die as they always had, and some that had been left here after the Great War managed to flourish among the trees of the Great Wood.

When Feroz’s Ban was put into place, the normal flow of energy through this world was hindered. It still flowed in at the same rate, but it left at a much slower rate, as if its stream had been dammed. The trees grew at an astounding rate, and the forest became healthy and incredibly fertile. The large number of creatures within the Wood kept most of the other survivors of the Great War clear of the forest.

• An-Havva

The pioneers from Aysen, those escaping the bureaucracy and tyranny of a closed-minded people, settled by the Great Wood. They built houses, plowed fields, carefully harvested select sections of the Wood for lumber, and flourished in their fierce independence. Despite its people’s general mistrust of outsiders, An-Havva became a thriving midway between Koskun and Aysen, the place where travelers and wanderers alike now often stop for a meal, repairs, or just some company. Many even build houses and settle in for a season or two or even longer, glad to have found a community where corruption will not be tolerated.

• Autumn Willow

In every forest there is a sense of presence between the trees and in every living thing. When Feroz put the Ban into place, the aura in the Great Wood increased to the point that it became a sentient, physical manifestation: the Autumn Willow, an avatar of the Great Wood itself. The Autumn Willow gained power over the years, and when the first pioneers arrived from Aysen to settle on the edge of her Wood, she went forth and met them, and found that they were good people. She created a path for them between the Koskun Mountains and their main settlement, a township called An-Havva. Traders, a necessity to An-Havva, Koskun, and Aysen, have come to know this path as the Lady’s Path and are allowed to travel it through the mountains. War parties from either Aysen or Koskun Keep, however, are destroyed by the paths guardians if they are too belligerent.

A huge river courses through the middle of the Great Wood, fast and full of rapids. Where the Lady’s Path intersects it, the Autumn Willow had the Faeries construct a large bridge; she then set them to keep any interlopers from crossing it. Any being who tries a to cross that bridge without her permission is beset by a host of Faeries who push them back; if they persist in their attempts to cross, the Faeries drive them to their deaths in the frothing water beneath the bridge.

• Changing Times

Time continued, with the Autumn Willow acting as the balancing agent between all of the cultures and factions within her reach and keeping a careful eye on all of the lands and peoples of this world. Occasionally, she would walk the streets. of An-Havva in human guise, the better to understand her neighbors. When Baron Sengir suddenly ceased his obvious machinations against the citizenship of Aysen, she grew concerned about his motives. She consulted her divining pool and saw a terrible future, one where Baron Sengir marched all of the survivors of a terrible war down a long stairwell leading deep into the earth and then through a gate into a place far away. Though only a possibility, a reflection of chance, the divination still chilled her

When Feroz’s Ban failed as a result of his | death and Serra’s exit from the plane of Ulgrotha, the Autumn Willow felt the energies that sustained her begin to fade. She knows that with the strength she has now, she may be able to restore the broken mana channels and bring the planet back to life—but it would cost the lives of every creature there, including her own. If she doesn’t use her power, however, it will continue to wane until she ceases to exist, and Baron Sengir may very well take over the Homelands once she has faded to nothingness. She is desperately trying to find some other way, because to destroy all of the ones that she loves would require a cruelty that even an incarnation of nature cannot endure. So she waits—for a champion, an event, or a miracle—but she knows that she cannot wait much longer.