Tag: cresia

Castle Roskov

2015-08-09 castle roskov

An illustration of a castle for a fantasy role-playing game setting.

Overview

Castle Roskov currently maintains the seat of power in the country of Zarnova. The castle is situated 15 kilometers directly inland from the city of Wila which is the capital city of Zarnova. The castle is home to the current ruler of Zarnova – the vampire queen Lady Anya Voorish herself.

Surroundings

Castle Roskov is situated in an extremely hard to reach place deep within unnaturally dense forest of spruces. The forest goes on for kilometers in every direction around the castle. A number of the spruces tower to heights of 120 meters shadowing the highest spires of the castle quite easily. Thus the castle is not visible from above the canopy of the forest lest one is close enough to the clearing that houses the castle.

Architecture

The castle is built from local stone excavated from the mountains to the west. The quarries are no longer active but still have a hefty supply of cut stone slabs that can be worked when replacement stones are needed in the castle. The workmanship of the castle is extraordinary – the castle was built to last. The general architectural style follows that of established Groam -influenced style that has been prevalent for hundreds of years and that is followed by many of even the newly built castles.

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Court yards and gate houses

The castle has an outer court yard which is secluded from the inner court yard by a secondary gate house which makes attacking the actual castle buildings extremely hard. Both gate houses have portcullises and heavy oaken doors. No other apparent entrances to the inner yard exists. The gate house complexes both house only defensive paraphernalia and positions but under the current rule are mostly empty spaces since the undead defenders of the castle can’t boil oil,operate ballistae etc.

Towers and walls

The corner towers are vast and each house living quarters and storage areas as well as defensive positions. The battlements of the castle walls are not covered and the bailey of the castle is part of the castle walls making the walkways on top of the walls harder to operate as there’s no way to walk around the castle perimeters via walkways only. The battlements protrude outwards slightly making it easier to counter attack any climbers. The walls contain rooms and corridors inside of them and defensive slits allow the defenders to fire heavier anti-siege weapons from within but the current castle house no such items – the rooms are now mainly storage areas for arrows, halberds, swords and such items that the undead defenders are able to use.

Bailey and keep

The keep is a 5-story structure with a roof designed for several catapults. None exists currently. The lower floors of the keep are the vampire queen’s main living quarters and the top levels are off-limits to all except the vampire queen. The entrance to underground sections is through the keep only. The bailey is truly a remarkably spacey and even luxurious: the lower floor houses a kitchen and main hall and grand stairs to all the other floors – 3 of them and the attic. The hall is open in the middle for all stories and each story has an impressive walkway circling the entire space – and has yet enough room to house several dozens of rooms that are living quarters. Servants and workers live in the two floors that form the attic and have there quite spacious and comfortable living quarters. Bailey has it’s own small underground section accessible from kitchen and contains the food supplies of the castle. Another bigger underground section was built for excrement and it’s accessible from the inner courtyard (the compost can be removed and used as fertilizer).

2015-08-15 castle roskov

Church

The original builders of the castle had need for a church. The church has separate inner temples for each deity of the old Phylar pantheon and a central hall. The church is now used as storage space and in a state of sad disrepair and neglect. The vampire queen has never been seen entering the church and many say that the ancient sanctum still repels the undead from ever entering the church without burning to ashes. The church has a tiny underground section of it’s own and contains merely crypts of various ages. Entrances to the various crypts and corridors are cemented and sealed shut by the order of the vampire queen and nothing much is known as to who were buried there centuries ago. The church still contains vast treasures of the Theocracy of Phylar period but while the maintenance crew see them daily, none have yet had the courage to steal any of the artifacts. The items seem irrelevant to the vampire queen while she does understand their monetary value.

Other buildings

The inner court yard contains but a few other buildings. The stables can house a few dozen horses, three piggeries and two chicken yards have been built next to the stables under makeshift lean-to structures facing the wall. There are a few dozen chickens, goats, lambs and pigs roaming freely in the inner courtyard. Their well being is under the care of the maintenance crew.

Residents

Maintenance crew, cooks and healers

There are only a handful of (living, that is!) permanent residents in the castle. The castle grounds and environs are maintained by a crew of 12 humans hand picked by the vampire queen and well-rewarded for their creepy duty among the undead creatures lurking in the castle. The crew are on the castle grounds 12 hours a day from dawn and return to Wila via horse drawn carts come dusk. While not a coveted position by any means, the crew do get so amply rewarded that each month they bring home a salary surpassing a farmer family’s annual income. Cooks and doctors are part of the maintenance crew and their job is to prepare meals to the blood supply -members (see below) and see that they are physically well.

The Roskov Ring

Castle Roskov has a large meeting hall in it’s heart. This hall is the closest to government of Zarnova. The vampire queen keeps a retinue of powerful individuals as her aides to control and rule the country. This retinue comprises of 7 members and have regular meetings in the castle regarding matters of state. Some of them occasionally stay for longer periods of time and many bring aides, cooks, drivers, slaves or servants of their own easily surpassing a hundred persons combined when The Roskov Ring convenes. More about The Roskov Ring.

The vampire queen Lady Anya Voorish

The main resident is of course the vampire queen herself. She lives in the castle and only rarely ventures outside. She takes maybe a tour or two around Zarnova annually conducting state matters, requisitioning blood supplies and making her power known to the land lords and commoners alike. Those tours take perhaps a month or two in total but are never scheduled beforehand or timed with any other precision than the vampire queen’s whim. She lives the entire castle and has no preferred dungeon, hall, tower or room. It is therefore impossible to predict where within the castle premises she is located at any given time – excepting the church which she shuns.

The blood supply

A group of 35 to 55 young(ish) adult males (of any race) call the castle their home now. They are all housed in the big bailey. These are the personal slaves of the vampire queen from which she takes her nourishment of fresh blood whenever she so desires and may even offer their blood to other vampires visiting the castle. The men are exclusively picked up by the vampire queen from around the country. They are not allowed to leave the castle – they are essentially prisoners. The alluring magic of the vampire queen further enhances the men’s subjugation but she also treats these men well since the quality of blood is of importance to her. The men are clothed well and attend to maintenance of the castle as much or little as they themselves desire. The men eat regular and well-balanced meals, they can engage in whatever activities they wish inside castle walls (such as healthy sports games in the spacious outer court yard) and the vampire queen has sex with the men to give them pleasure (even orgies with the vampire queen as a center piece are not uncommon) or arranges courtesan visits to the castle. Men that do not accept her rules she just sucks dry and tosses to a pile of corpses down below ground. When she bores with the taste of individual members of the blood supply, she usually releases them from her clutch and sends them back home with a monetary compensation ranging from meager to extravagant depending on how she felt about that individual. This is to encourage the people of the land to accept this strange and foul practice instead of resisting it. After all, should the men never return home, their families would most certainly rebel against her rule. Of the men who return home, most regard their time in the castle as “wonderful” and “well spent” but don’t actually seem to remember the presence of undead creatures and oddly have a greatly distorted memory of how the vampire queen looks and feels. As if they are still under some sort of charm or spell. The memories of the castle fade into oblivion entirely as time passes on.

Defenses

Apart from being in a location surrounded by nigh impenetrable forest, the castle is also well protected by way of combatants of the undead sort. The vampire queen maintains an army of rotting corpses and skeletons manning the gatehouse, towers and parapets. They require no sustenance and sleep, do not care for the omnipresent mosquitoes, never leave their post to take a pee and observe their surroundings with relentlessness and unnatural senses unhindered by foul weather. Half of these unholy warriors are armed with bows and half with melee weapons. They are not competent enough to maintain or work traditional defense methods such as hot oil, fire arrows, ballistae or tar and hence the castle has none of these implemented. Aerial defenses are non-existent but the castle grounds are well built and quite resilient to aerial bombarding by larger creatures dropping stones, caskets of burning oil etc. The number of undead defenders is impossible to guess since the vampire queen may have hundreds of corpses rotting in piles deep beneath the castle in special chambers. They are there just waiting to be animated into duty. A sort of reserve. The undead creatures do not care for any person they are instructed to ignore and will let all those go about their business unhindered – perhaps a turning of the skull, shifting of the pose or a rattling of the teeth making them know that they are indeed sensed but ordered to be ignored. It is uncertain whether or not the vampire queen can spy about using the senses of any undead creature she has animated. Such is the story anyway.

Weaknesses

There is no moat around the castle. The forest has grown quite close to the castle and the closest tree branches literally touch the castle walls. The proximity of big trees to the walls is giving possible attackers an easy vector in trying to climb the walls. Although the forest is extremely dense, the trees can be climbed and somewhat limited view from inside castle can be gained. Also the thick forests make for an excellent cover for attackers and observers alike. However, the local populace avoid the forest and say that it is somehow under the vampire queen’s control. This may just be superstition but the fact remains that the trees in the area are quite much older, bigger, twisted and denser than similar trees only some kilometers away.

 

 

King Werner Baerwyn

2015-08-03

Name: Werner Baerwyn
Race: Human
Location: Gruenwald, Gruenroth

King of Gruenroth, one of the biggest countries in Cresia, Werner is also a man of humble beginnings and retains his humility while serving his people as their leader. Gruenroth is a vast and sparsely populated country in a constant state of inner quarreling between city states claiming to be autonomous, tribal hordes seeking whatever retribution to whatever ancient and forgotten deed by their neighbors and between barbaric hordes of orcs, ogres and undead from Zarnova and ice elves from the north glaciers.

A competent combatant, Werner is also tempered with hardship throughout his life. His life has been a struggle since his parents were killed by marauding orcs when he was but 5 years of age. Since those times he has been determined to make a difference in the world. He truly believes that a single man can change the course of history.

He has four daughters with two wives – both of which are now deceased. His demeanor is that of a man determined to get his way and his attitude is the attitude of a can do -man. Gruenroth is seen to be in good hands by the common people although disgruntled voices from hot-headed tribal leaders need to be silenced on a regular basis. Gruenroth just might have the biggest army in Cresia but it is also widely dispersed around the country since there’s not a single neighbor that Gruenroth is quite comfortable with albeit actual wars are few and far between. And then there’s the intermittent feuds between warlords; should a military presence in any one area weaken, it will be filled by the forces of local warlords making it inherently difficult a task to keep the country under one rule instead of breaking into dozens of smaller tribal powers that alone would not be able to counter any of the country’s current neighbors.

 

Hargar Ber Marono, Ogre Tribal Leader

2014-03-25

Name: Hargar Ber Marono
Race: Ogre
Location: Wild mountain regions between Akron, Caheb and Groam.

The wild mountainous regions between Akron, Caheb and Groam are home to a wide variety of species. Many of which are brutish, violent and inherently dangerous and so the regions have never been claimed by any neighboring “civilized” country.

One of the species claiming the mountains their home is known simply as hill ogres – a misnomer really since many of their kin live in plains as well. Hargar Ber Marono leads a tribe of 80 hill ogres who dwell in areas south of Medon Pass. The tribe in question is semi-nomadic; they settle one area for some months at a time and then move to a different area returning to earlier locales doing cyclical moves between seven or eight camps. So when they abandon a camp, it usually takes at least a couple of years before they return to it. The camps are located roughly at the same elevation points (800-1500 meters from sea level), but span a rectangular region of at least 100 x 20 kilometers.

The ogres raid eagerly whatever they encounter and while their weapons may not be much more than stolen dull swords and broken axes, their fierce attitude and pack-hunting tactics make them quite deadly in deed. The entire tribe with even infants included take part in these raids and their females are not in any way considered lesser or inferior in any aspect of combat although the tribe is traditionally always led by a male ogre.

Trade routes between Akron and Groam using the Medon Pass are regularly targeted by Hargar’s tribe so any bigger convoys and caravans are discouraged to travel the pass without enough guards to be able to defend against the brutes.

Hargar doesn’t bow to anybody and is not a brute to be reasoned with. He considers humans as pesky annoyances but feels some sort of misplaced kinship with dwarves. If any dwarf should approach him with intentions to discuss trade-offs regarding free passage, it is less likely to end up in bloodshed. Although if he judges he has the upper hand, he makes demands completely ludicrous up to and including giving up females to be used as sex slaves by the brutes.

Lady Melia Sur-Romano, Countess of Wywold

 

2014-03-09

Name: Lady Melia Sur-Romano, Countess of Wywold
Race: Human
Location: Wywold, Akron

The wife of count Roberto Romano, current ruler of the small county of Wywold in Akron. Lady Melia is of Wywold origin herself and has been married to Roberto for 8 years. Lady Melia is originally from a small fishing village named Altenwold near the border of Akron and Ferria. She served as a cook for Roberto during Roberto’s initiation ritual when he was appointed the Count of Wywold by the king. Roberto was so taken with the excellent food prepared by Melia that he summoned the cooks in the dining hall and applauded them. She was soon selected as Roberto’s personal chef and they were married two years later.

She was already adept at using knifes, fishing hooks, tridents and such from her teen years. She wished to become as fearsome combatant as her mate and after some rather loud confrontations with her husband, they came to an agreement: she will get receive the best training available in Wywold in exchange for preparing meals for Roberto every three days. A deal was struck and years and years later Lady Melia still prepares her husband a meal every three days and has become one of the most adept combatants in the county. Their deal is well known in the county and oftentimes the people of Wywold make jokes about doing something every third day.

She is a balancing factor to Roberto as well. His harsh and stern style of ruling is mellowed down and smoothed by Lady Melia. While she is not an easy lady to deal with, she does understand that uncalled for or excessive harshness is counter productive. Lady Melia is currently herself teaching the art of swordmanship in the castle courtyard one day a week. While technically competent, agile and well-equipped, she severely lacks one of  the basic training of true warriors – facing death during actual combat.

Armored Corpse

2015-04-26 skeleton copy

Cresia is ancient. The lands are dotted with abandoned cities, castles, ruins and temples. Some of them are loaded with forgotten untold riches that are only hinted about in tall tales and legends. Seekers of fame and fortune are bound to look for them but not many have the fortitude to withstand not only the search itself but also the dangerous traps and guardians the sites have.
Creative Commons License
Armored Corpse by Kimmo Mäkinen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Temur Soxion

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Name: Temur Soxion
Race: Human
Location: Gruenroth (or where ever princess Leana travels)

Temur is the chief of princess Leana Baerwyn‘s personal bodyguards. He owes his life to king Werner Baerwyn and has vowed a life of servitude to him and by extension to his family. Temur has a history of violence back to his early childhood in the restless mountainous regions between Gruenroth and Zarnova. He was orphaned at an early age and adopted to a reclusive monastery located near the once bustling community of Ilven. The monastery was later ruined by a dangerous shadowy spider cult led by priestess Chya of Zarnovan origin whose influence is thankfully now shifted to warmer climates of Caheb. Temur spent ten years fighting against unspeakable creatures of Zarnovan source at the mountains and eventually joined Gruenroth‘s standing military at the age of 19.

He quickly rose in the ranks as he already had a decade of actual combat experience under his belt whilst most of his superiors lacked the power and skills to even subdue him. While the country is officially living a peaceful interlude in it’s history, the eastern mountainous regions are in actuality a veritable fountain of bloody skirmishes extending the entire border’s length of thousands of kilometers. And have been for quite some time. Total war is held at bay only because the region is just too damned difficult for either country’s armies to deal with (logistically or strategically) and the mountains also hide indigenous dangers hostile to all outsiders as well.

Years went by and eventually Temur commanded the entire standing army of eastern Gruenroth as a general appointed by the king himself. He was hand-picked by the king to his personal guard unit of elite warriors and gladly accepted the challenge leaving the army at an age of 40 and now holds a honorary title of Grand General of Gruenroth. He then quickly outmaneuvered his younger comrades and rose to lead the body guard unit nowadays simply known as The Soxions. When the king’s eldest daughter Lady Leana exhibited signs of interest to travelling the lands, the king appointed Temur to permanently body guard Lady Leana and on that mission Temur is still today. Lady Leana and Temur are good friends now sharing many common beliefs and a quirky, yet benevolent, sense of humor. Both also exhibit a similar appetite to righting wrongs – all in all this makes Temur content, pleased, proud and honored by his position.

Temur is deep, enigmatic, quiet, thoughtful and careful in his choice of words. He is the literal old wise man but also a warrior that can punch your lights out if need be.

Princess Leana Baerwyn

2014-01-30

Name: Princess Leana Baerwyn
Race: Human
Location: Gruenroth

Lady Leana is the eldest child of Gruenroth‘s current king Werner Baerwyn. Leana is a wandering spirit who finds it hard to settle down even though many expect just that from her. She spends around half her time travelling the lands of Gruenroth (and sometimes those of Argan and Akron as well) with a retinue of around twenty adventurers, cooks, servants and bodyguards. She uses her title to settle disputes, right wrongs and reports problems to her father’s trusted aide and political adviser Chalty Veron whom she considers more of a father than her actual biological father ever was.

Lady Leana is a competent and hardy traveler excelling in survival skills uncommon for women in general and she even hunts her own food by traps or by bow and arrow. She is therefore much respected by those who travel with her as she is the exact opposite of a narcissistic and pampered princess – say – like her two little sisters Lady Lucia and Lady Lise both of whom are content living a life of excesses in the king’s palace.

She has a very strong sense of right and wrong and she knows that her moral compass is the one she should be following in a world of injustice, violence, intolerance and hatred. She sees herself at a somewhat martyrish light although she has long since abandoned the need to shoulder the entire world’s wrongs. Some things she can’t alter and she accepts that. It still doesn’t stop her from trying. She speaks her mind freely and never voluntarily bow to men of authority even if she gains enemies that way. Mostly her father accepts her behavior as she does a tremendous amount of truly good things on her travels and the good far outweigh the bad. The king’s only concern is that he wants Lady Leana safely at home sooner rather than later because the future ruler of Gruenroth needs to be Lady Leana and not Lady Lucia or Lady Lise and the future queen must understand that governing a vast nation requires more than just survival skills.

 

Baron Benedikt Zolov

2013-06-24

 

Name: Baron Benedikt Zolov
Race: originally human (presumed deceased and is now some form of undead creature)
Location: Zolov, Zarnova

Not much is known about Baron Zolov as few mortals now dare enter the once-bustling trade town of Zolov that has been turned into a maggot-infested hive of undead abominations under the relentless rule of the baron. Located deep into the mountains in a hard-to-reach location almost 2 miles above the sea level, the town is not only remote, it’s positively secluded. The trade town was once an important way point for trade routes going over the mountainous regions between Zarnova and Gruenroth, but two decades ago things rapidly changed as baron Zolov simply took over the region backed up by Zarnova’s vampire queen Anya Voorish.

As Zolov’s residents were converted from living beings into hideous undead creatures, trade caravans no longer considered it a good idea to stop there and currently most of the trade routes using that region have faded into oblivion. The area still has good routes when one wishes to cross the mountains, but anyone familiar with the area would warn any and all travelers to simply avoid those routes and should anyone be fool enough to ignore those warnings, they most certainly would not rent their services as guides.

The exact nature of the former residents of Zolov is under debate and no reliable witness statements have been made in several years. In Gruenroth the whole idea of those undead creatures crawling on their borders is an unsettling one but so far the creatures have not expanded  their influence westwards of the bordering mountains. Baron Zolov maintains a stone fortress right in the heart of the old town – in a location that used to house a bustling marketplace. The fortress was built using the undead creatures as slave labor and much of the building materials originate from other buildings of Zolov rendering most of the entire town’s buildings as mere ruins further ruined by neglect and the harsh climate.

Baron Zolov is one of the vampire queen’s advisors in her ruling circle known as The Roskov Ring.

Anya Voorish, Vampire Queen of Zarnova

2013-06-25

Name: Lady Anya Voorish, the vampire queen of Zarnova
Race: Vampire
Location: Castle Roskov, Zarnova

The country of Zarnova has been under vampiric rulership ever since the fabled Theocracy of Phylar ceased to exist some 300 years ago. Phylarian remnants still remain scattered around the country and a number of Phylarian locations are still shunned by the undead leaders of Zarnova who – as the legend goes – can not enter those areas without burning to ashes.

Lady Voorish is the third undead monarch of Zarnova and her reign has lasted since the feared Lich Lord Tomas Vladovych mysteriously disappeared some 80 years ago. It is uncertain whether Lady Voorish had anything to do with the disappearance, but she was extremely quick to seize power and forcefully succumbed the entire elite of the nation under her rule in just under a week. Her rule essentially is just a direct continuation of what her predecessor set forth – albeit not as harsh and brutal.

Lady Voorish’s seat of power is at Castle Roskov some 15 kilometers out of the city of Wila, which is the capital city of Zarnova currently. The ancient castle is built in the deepest of forest away from the city itself and it is reachable by a single road only. The forest around the castle is unnaturally thick and menacing and many locals actually claim that the forest is not only unnatural but alive in that every soul claimed victim by the vampire queen grows a new twisted and ever-branching tree in the forest.

Lady Voorish has no grand illusions of world domination, but she also actively pursues a policy of border aggression in order to gradually extend the undead influence. While on good terms with the overseas countries of Nica and Zarkoi, Zarnova has no longer open diplomatic lines of communication with Gruenroth and Groam. Things have been steadily on the decline the last 20 years or so for the people living in the borderlands of Groam. Gruenroth and Zarnova had established trade routes over the mountains between the countries earlier, but Zarnova has not kept the routes safe for years and nowadays only the most daring of trademasters dare test their luck on those routes (the profits are phenomenal, of course!). Lady Voorish controls her country through a tyrannic ring of barons called The Roskov Ring. The barons are mostly of different undead varieties.

Anya Voorish is a powerful necromancer and mentalist herself – although probably still a has long ways to go to match that of her predecessor Tomas Vladovych. As a vampiric entity, Anya has seemingly easier access to necromantic magic and she openly wields her foul power to do her bidding. In fact she has reanimated corpses by the hundreds to form a daunting defense guard army keeping the Castle Roskov safe for her and rumor has it that there are rotting piles or corpses underneath the castle in secret chambers just waiting for the day that an actual undead army needs to be raised.

 

Harun Q’han

2013-06-14

Name: Harun Q’Han
Race: human
Location: Callistra, Calishem

While the streets of Calishemian cities are generally safer than cities of say – Caheb and Ferria – at night things change radically. In Calishem it is generally accepted that once the sun no longer lightens the streets, the darker side of the nature needs it’s outlet. A balance of night and day, a balance of brighter things and darker things. That’s why visitors in Calishem are advised to stay within their place of residence during the night and avoid any unnecessary movement. The city of Callistra – while being a bustling port of trade – makes no exception and once the darkness sets in, you’re on your own. A person getting in trouble in the streets at night are more often than not thought as if they were actively seeking trouble and got what they deserved.

Of course the nights are far from pure chaos. City guards usher people indoors and generally look out for the safety of the city. Arsonists, thieves, murderers and madmen need as much attention at night as they do at daylight. Harun Q’Han is one of the thieves.

Harun is a founding member of Tima – a covert and secret thieves’ guild located in Callistra. The guild has members from all walks of life, but a common trait to them is their acceptance of their darker side – something most Calishemians try to keep suppressed as suppression of the spirit’s dark tendencies is the only barrier between a peaceful working hierarchical society and anarchic destruction. Harun is by far the best of his clan. His nocturnal activities include stealing from the rich, assassinations by contracts, wanton acts of destruction and sometimes even indulging into sexual depravities. But he is not all about being bad – true to his own teachings, he also embraces his lighter side and is generally a very polite, socially active and a kind man engaging in communal activities, popular past-times and games and even helps out at a local orphanage. Of course he doesn’t need a day job due to his lucrative nocturnal activities and it is more than feasible to think that he is actually scouting for new members and apprentices at the orphanage.

Thus far his clan of bad boys has been covert enough that it’s existence is not registering to the powers in charge of things. The clan members hold bi-weekly meetings in which they co-ordinate their efforts and share their experiences over dinners and drinks. This way Harun can also control his group by suggesting periods of inactivity in order not to attract too much attention. A successful strategy indeed since after every major heist, Harun’s group maintain a low profile at least until the previous investigations have been stopped and deemed ineffective.