If there's one thing that fantasy worlds have, it's gods. Lots of them. I mean, hundreds of the buggers. I imagine that since Western fantasy writers have generally grown up in monotheistic societies, the idea of having different gods for different things seems the height of exoticism. There are gods of good, evil, war, love, evil monsters who are actually good, good monsters who do evil things because they're paladins, shadow, darkness, oceans, nasty gory death, nice peaceful death, magic, halflings, rocks, and so on and so forth. Conversely, a lot of worlds seem to also include a society which only has one god, and which almost without exception are zealous religious mentalists who want to burn every heretic in their path.

Lots of gods isn't a bad thing. Kadmeia will have lots of them, and in fact it would be difficult to justify a lack of them since its inhabitants come from lots of different worlds. The whole 'one god is bad' thing, though, is so obviously a comment on real world issues that I'm going to leave it out, because that's another thing that really burns my cannoli.  Nonetheless religion is a powerful motivating force and polytheism allows for some useful short cuts in deciding why good guys or bad guys might do the things they do.

I'm also not going to provide a big list of gods worshipped in Kadmeia. That way madness lies. Plus, it wouldn't be very interesting, and I'd run out of good ideas after the first few. So I'll stick to one for the time being, and then probably add more as context requires. Behold, mortal wretches, the tenebrous majesty of Neios, the End of Empires!

THE CHOIR INVIOLATE
Upon a world steeped in fear emerged the cult known as the Choir Inviolate. Their world was a bleak one dominated by endless deep forests in which the most horrible predators dwelt. As is the case on many worlds, near-humans were the most populous intelligent species, and they lived on the few areas of high ground from which the predators could be fended off. To the highlanders of this world a man's manner of death was as important as the manner of his life. Die well, and his life was worthwhile. Die badly, and everything good in his life could be undone.

This world had many gods, and a great many of them were gods of death. Among them was Neios, the god of endings. It was Neios who oversaw the death not only of people, but of places and ideas, of hilltop settlements and brave ventures into the forests. Neios was served not only by holy men and shaman, but by a select band of men and women driven to grim fanaticism by the fear forced upon them by their world. These people became known as the Choir Inviolate.

The core belief of the Choir concerned the Book of Days, a calendar supposedly dictated to the earliest members of the Choir which stated the exact time and date the world was going to end. The Choir operated as a secret society, gathering resources to create burial chambers to which the cult could retreat when the end of the world came. The date of the end approached and the Choir Inviolate duly filed into the niches of the death chapels, safe in the knowledge that they would die well.

When the world did not end, the Choir almost fell apart. The Book of Days was a lie and Neios had not brought the end after all. But a few did not give in. A small hardcore of believers, those who claimed to have spoken with Neios directly, kept the Choir alive. But they would have given up or died out, too, had knowledge of Kadmeia not reached them. Previously, the people of their world had not known that there were other worlds out there. But now it was suddenly clear that there were a multitude of worlds, and the Kadmeia was a meeting place for them all. The Choir Inviolate immediately concieved a plan.

The Book of Days was not a calendar. It was a demand. Neios wanted a world to be ended in his name. The Choir Invisible had failed him through their ignorance, but it could still redeem itself. Though the deadline for destroying their world had passed, the Choir now had a chance to find another world and destroy it, and hope that Neios would return to them and grant them the greatest of deaths. The Choir sent emissaries to Kadmeia to seek out a world with some means of destroying it, and the enact the end of empires in the name of Neios.

The cult of the Choir Inviolate exists in Kadmeia today. It is close-knit and extremely secretive - those few who have dealings with them assume they are a religious order but have no knowledge of their world-destroying ambitions. The prime duty of Choir members in Kadmeia is to gather intelligence on the worlds who send representative to Kadmeia, and find out if there is a way of destroying them that the Choir can take advantage of. So far, while many worlds have interested them, there have been no obvious candidates and the Choir is still engaged primarily in gathering intelligence.

The cult's leader is Agemann Dak, an intense, charismatic middle-aged man who spends his days in the Choir's hidden library in the half-completed sewers of one of Kadmeia's cities. Dak sifts through the information brought in by Choir agents and seeks out works on science and philosophy that might suggest some way to kill a world. Dak is very intelligent and softly-spoken, but is capable of absolute ruthlessness when necessary. Dak believes so completely in Neios that the god's existence is as clear to him as the clouds in the sky or the walls of his subterranean sanctum.

The Choristers who make up the majority of the cult gather information. Discretion, intelligence and a spy's understanding of etiquette and politics are valued qualities. The cult has no vestements or mark - Choristers simply looks like any one else and while they are mostly human (who are just one of the species in Kadmeia), there is nothing else that marks them out.

Dak has also organised a more 'pro-active' branch of the cult - the Deathsingers, killers and assassins whose job is to quietly remove anyone who suspects the cult's true purpose. The Deathsingers have no contact with the Choristers and Dak alone knows what they are up to. It is the Deathsingers who will probably perform whatever actions are required to kill a world for Neios, and Dak is preparing them to give their lives to do just that. Deathsingers are recruited from among the martially-skilled Choristers and they are required to renounce all their connections to the rest of the cult so their existence can be kept a secret.

The Choir Inviolate is small and lacking in resources compared to most of Kadmeia's power groups. They are certainly not the greatest threat to Kadmeia or the various worlds who use it as neutral ground. But the Choir are dangerous, dedicated and genuine in their determination to destroy a world.

NEIOS, THE END OF EMPIRES
Neios is very real. An ancient being of cosmic power, it exists in a separate dimension that interesects occasionally with the Choir's homeworld. Neios is a thing of entropy and decay, and it is Neios' influence that means no true empire ever grew up there. Everything that Neios touches falls apart and decays.

Neios' home dimension is utterly empty, for everything in it has long since disintegrated into nothingness. Neios hungers for experience and sensation, and his conversations with a few individuals on their fearful world gave him a taste of that sensation (it was these conversations, epiphanies from the point of view of the mortal participants, that gave rise to the Choir Inviolate in the first place). The Book of Days was intended to create terror amongst the humans of their world so that Neios could experience their distress, but instead the Choir's view of death lead to it being accepted as a holy book. Neios was disappointed with his failure and withdrew, never again to contact the mortal world. Though the Choir continued without him, Neios has all but given up on ever finding satisfaction in his cold, desolate dimension.

Agemann Dak is insane and believes that Neios speaks with him daily. He is trying to contact Neios anew and gain entry into his dimension where, the cult believes, all the fallen empires of the world survive united in subservience to the glory of Neios. Dak has almost unlocked the secrets of travelling between dimensions from various works of philosophy and science, and has come to understand that the death of a world will provide the power needed to open up a gate into Neios' dimension. Quite what will happen if Dak ever encounters Neios is uncertain but the possibility exists that the cult will not only destroy a world, but will unleash a primal force of decay onto all creation.

Neios and his hopelessly misinformed cult owe a lot to HP Lovecraft and the stories written after him. I'm a big fan of the cosmic scale of Lovecraft's stories so it's inevitable he'd end up in Kadmeia eventually. I also wanted the Choir to be based as much in ignorance as fanaticism - maybe that's a comment on real-world issues of the kind I complained about at the start of this post. They serve as a contrast to the major power groups, too, because Kadmeia isn't all about vast empires clashing. Finally Neios is a full-on supernatural horror just waiting to be unleashed by the ignorance of the Choir, or anyone else dabbling in matters best left un-dabbled with.

As any adventurer knows, a fantasy world will always have a police force. Town guards, palace troops, the King's Men, all ready to accuse you of murder and then hire you to find the real killer when it turns out your adventuring party didn't do it. Or maybe just throw you in prison and challenge you to stage a daring escape. Anyway, generic men in leather armour hang around on every street corner waiting for you to steal a horse.

This is yet another thing in the long line of fantasy tropes that bugs me and, as seems increasingly common with this blog, I'm gonna take the opportunity to mess with it a bit when law and order come to Kadmeia. I don't think law enforcement as we understand it actually existed in the medieval societies that inform a lot of fantasy. There were laws, but it wasn't a central authority that administered them - it was whatever passed for authority in your village, or maybe it was the rich guy who could afford to pay a lawyer and a sherrif to beat up poor people for poaching his rabbits. Town guards didn't exist and it was the victim's family who administered everyday justice by extracting the required payment for your crimes, or just beating the living shit out of you to teach you a lesson.

So, how would Kadmeia deal with law and order? King Arguloth, in all his silvery majesty, probably wants an orderly society but his duties keeping the Draconic Peace and making sure the various empires don't use his world as a battleground probably use most of his attention. So how do the rich get their stuff back when a rogueish lizard-creature makes off with it?

I had a bit of a think about it. Kadmeia has plenty of rich people who have a vested interest in keeping order and punishing transgressors. Maybe they'd look after law for themselves? But Kadmeia is a complicated place and when it comes to dealing with its masses of refugees, spies and chancers, you need an expert. So the Pardoners formed themselves and started cornering the market.

The Pardoners

The Pardoners are the members of a private mercenary company, quite possibly the largest in Kadmeia. While Kadmeia is thin on the wars where mercenaries usually make their money, the Pardoners have developed into a private police force. As long as a rich household can pay the required tithe into their coffers, the Pardoners can provide guards, investigation, recovery of stolen or owed goods and even trials to Kadmeia's rich.

Vorgurath, a mercenary who hailed from a species of vicious snakelike assassins, came to Kadmeia as the leader of a mercenary band calling themselves the Obsidian Tongue. Most mercenaries found work guarding embassies or diplomats, but Vorgurath, being a creature of great cunning and ambition, saw other opportunities. He recruited some clever, inquisitive types to complement his band of thugs and murderers and began to offer his services keeping the peace and gaining recompense for crimes. The Pardoners were born, and grew with great speed until they became the force that serves Kadmeia's notable citizens today.

The Pardoners still use the symbol of the forked tongue that dates back top the days of the Obsidian Tongue, but they have diversified enormously. As well as guards, the Pardoners employ Oculars (investigators who examine crimes to help clients identify the culprit), Quills (lawyer-judges who conduct trials and apply the Pardoners' code of laws) and Breakers (thugs, normally from large and intimidating species). Should a client claim to have been transgressed against according to the Pardoners' laws, the Pardoners will send an Ocular or Quill to start proceedings. They will decide if the client has been wronged according to their laws (the Pardoners' Laws, written down by Vorgurath decades ago, detail how much recompense a client can expect to be extracted from wrongdoers for various crimes). Normally a client can bring in accused transgressors themselves to demand reparations or inflict punishment, but the Pardoners will send in the Breakers if trouble is expected. Serious crimes require a trial, where a Quill presides, hears statements, and pronounces guilt or innocence.

The Pardoners are extremely strict about who benefits from the protection of their laws. If a client is in arrears, they cannot expect any help at all from the Pardoners. A crime committed against someone who is not a paid-up client is ignored by the Pardoners, no matter how severe it is. They also will not stretch beyond their laws and will not be used as an instrument of vengeance, although they are notably brutal when transgressors refuse to submit to their Oculars or Quills. The Pardoners do not accept being used as private troops or executioners.

The Pardoners maintain a network of safe houses and barracks all over Kadmeia, where their members are trained, equipped and often housed. Their headquarters is the Fathom Gaol, a large, sturdy prison of timber and stone on an island in the harbour of a bustling port town. Here Vorgurath (who is still alive) oversees the Pardoners’ activities, where the Pardoners receive high-profile clients requesting large of unusual contracts, and where many penniless debtors or serious transgressors are imprisoned. A convicted offender whose crime requires imprisonment, or who cannot pay recompense, ends up in the dungeons beneath Fathom Gaol. A few emerge having impressed the Pardoners with their resilience and skills and end up employed on special contracts, but most leave bedraggled, thin, and brutalised by their experience. The Pardoners keep their substantial wealth elsewhere, and its location is a guarded secret.

Vorgurath

Lord Vindication of the Pardoners

Vorgurath resembles a large snake with tough scaly skin, right down to the forked tongue and red slits for eyes. He has muscular arms with talons but no legs, and moves around on the coils of his long powerful tail. He wears the leather armour typical of a Pardoner on his upper torso and habitually goes armed with a crossbow and an axe. Vorgurath is very old and that age has given him a gnarled, hoary, tough appearance, although it has dulled his senses and his speed. He can no longer strike like a snake, but as head of the Pardoners he doesn’t need to.

Vorgurath was a mercenary from the day he slithered out of his egg. He is in it for the money. To him, money is sacred – it is the means by which two individuals can be joined in a contract, a sort of marriage which reinforces the bonds of civilisation. To back out of a deal, default on a loan or expect something for nothing are very offensive to him and the steadfastness of the Pardoners – both in representing whoever pays them, and refusing those who do not – reflects Vorgurath’s own obsession with money. Vorgurath can be trusted by anyone with the money to purchase that trust. He owes no loyalty to anyone who does not.

Vorgurath seems a simple creature once his mercenary motivations are understood. What is not generally known is the reason for the Obsidian Tongue’s arrival in Kadmeia. Vorgurath’s mercenaries were fighting on a distant world in the army of a mighty king. This king sent one of his sons out to command the royal army, and Vorgurath reported to this Prince. The Prince, however, refused to pay the Obsidian Tongue for their services, since he refused to accept that while some men should die for duty alone others should demand to be paid (he also had a strong dislike of the monstrous Vorgurath). Vorgurath responded to this fiscal betrayal by murdering the Prince. The King immediately ordered for Vorgurath’s head to be brought to him, and Vorgurath fled the kingdom, and eventually the world. He came to Kadmeia and stayed there not to earn his fortune, but so that he could build up a power base strong enough to resist the attempt of the king to kill him when his agents keep up with Vorgurath. Vorgurath has no doubt that one day the king’s men will march into kadmeia and demand his head. On that day Vorgurath hopes to bring in the Pardoners and all those who owe them a favour, and use them to save himself from an inevitable execution.

The Pardoners, then aren’t the most interesting bit of Kadmeia by any means (they’re a bit dull, to be honest) but they help explain how laws are kept, as well as one of the reasons why Kadmeia had such a divide between the rich and the poor, the important and the inconsequential. Their ambiguity lies in the ambiguity of material wealth itself – they will happily oppress or abandon those in need for money, but on the other hand it is money that also motivates them to punish the guilty and seek the truth. Money is as blind as justice. And Vorgurath has a reason to do all this other than living the good life. He’s scared of his past catching up with him, and fear is as good a driving force as cash. The Pardoners don’t act as one of the wonders of Kadmeia but I think they are necessary for it to work as a cohesive society, because without a framework for all its power groups to exist in then its conflicts don’t count for much at all.

Kadmeia is very slowly taking shape. To become a political melting pot full of plots and dark corners, it needs some more players. One thing it doesn't have yet is a 'typical' power group - an old-fashioned power-obsessed empire who are in it for the land. Fantasy tradition has it that these shoulod be based on the Romans, but screw that. I can't stand the Romans, they were all jerks.

The Scarphanic Empire

The Scarphanic Empire is a huge empire spanning several worlds, with dozens of outposts and vassal states all paying homage to the current ruler, Empress Phrenaxa II. Its ruling people are the Ignissae, spectacularly beautiful (or at least spectacular) creatures with marble-like skin and dramatic crests of crystal growths. The empire makes use of auxiliaries of other species, especially in vassal states with a limited Ignissae population, but anyone with any auithority is always an Ignissa.

Since its foundation by the Emperor Scarphanos I, the empire has been obsessed with expansion. There is no limit to its ambitions and through war or diplomacy there has always been a front on which the empire has striven to expand. Vassal states forfeit their right to rule themselves in return for safety and prosperity - the Scarphanic military fights any threat to its vassals with the same vigour with which it opposes attacks on its heartland (not that anyone has been able to challenge the empire's lands on its homeworld in many centuries). The much-vaunted Scarphanic culture is also frequently embraced by vassal and even conquered states, with ravishing art and comploex lyrical literature being encouraged as much as subservience to the empire. Freedom is never, ever granted, nor is the opportunity for a vassal to rule itself - but this, the empire argues, is a small price to pay for a kingdom becoming greater than the sum of its people.

The Empire has enemies. Lots of them. Many peoples oppose them on purely instinctive grounds, for the Ignissae are arrogant, dismissive on any culture save their own, and amoral as a nation. Others have suffered at their hands, for many vassal states have had the Empire's forces destroy local enemies, while others have been razed and decimated following rebellion. But the Empire's power is solid and few have managed to truly shake its foundations.

The Empire's presence in Kadmeia was inevitable and they were one of the first embassies to be founded in Kadmeia. Its purpose is simply to aid in the acquisition of new Imperial territories. It mostly does this by receiving ambassadors from smaller kingdoms who request aid to help in a local conflict. The Empire then has a legitimate reason to intervene in the affairs of another world and often ends up installing its own governors in one or both of the warring sides. In spite of the inevitability of this loss of sovereignty, embattled kingdoms are still lining up to pay fealty to the Kadmeian diplomats and their leader in Kadmeia, Crown Prince Lexonaph.

The Empire, unlike many powers in Kadmeia, does not make use of the many mercenaries who ply their trade there. Instead the substantial Scarphanic population in Kadmeia includes many members of the Imperial armed forces themselves, including the elites of the knightly orders. These orders, including the Moonlit Order and the rukrin demi-cavalry of the Bronze Order, are as much for show as for their military strength, since maintaining Imperial majesty is a key diplomatic tactic for the embassy. These soldiers are all Ignissae and are led by minor nobles. A position in the Kadmeia force is a prestigious one because the Empress considers Kadmeian operations to be key to the future expansion of the empire. The Crown Prince himself is the Empress' eldest son and his position is considered second only to the Empress' own in importance to the empire.

Kadmeia's intelligence force, the Amnethyst Order, is also present on Kadmeia although not overtly. It does not rely solely on Ignissae spies and buys much of its information from informants of many species. Betraying one's own people to the Amethyst Order is a potentially lucrative form of treachery but it is also highly dangerous since the Amethyst Order will never risk exposure by helping out an informant. Non-Ignissae are simply not worth risking Ignissae interests over.

The empire's embassy in Kadmeia is at the House of the Muses, a hymn in stone and crystal to the artisry and authority of the empire. The entrance plaza to the embassy is dominated by one of Kadmeia's greatest works of art, a grand statue of the Emperor Karingrak, a much-loved past ruler famed for his skill in using diplomacy, not military strength, to expand the empire. Crown Prince Lexonaph's private residence is a handsome mansion in the country, while the Moonlit Order maintain a fortified city estate which can serve as an urban fortress should the need arise. It is rumoured that the Amethyst Order has a prison hidden somewhere on Kadmeia, but no-one knows where it is and the Ignissae dispute its existence.

Almost all Ignissae in Kadmeia are citizens of the Scarphanic Empire - renegages are few since the empire picks its most loyal to serve the embassy. As a species, Ignissae are born into a number of different body shapes. The Ignissae see nothing wrong in this and indeed see this variety as an example of their superiority over other species. All Ignissae have the same crest-like crystal growths, marble-coloured skin and sleek, noseless faces. The most common types are Thaal (tailed humanoids), centauroid Rukrin, and Baethos with their humanoid upper torsos and long snakelike lower bodies. Other body types exist, some of which are even unique. Crown Prince Lexonaph is a Rukrin, for instance, and Scarphanic architecture is built to accomodate all the common Ignissae body shapes. The crystalline crests of the Ignissae are their other most notable feature. They can be transparent or opaque and vary greatly in colour - truly impressive crests are valued for their aesthetics among Ignissae.

The Temple of Diamonds

The Scarphanic Empire excels at being a completely understandable power base with its sole interests lying in defending, enriching and expanding itself. Its diplomats sometimes liken it to a natural force, governed by the simplest of priorities and completely inevitable. The truth is that since its inception it had been motivated in secret by an endless search. The object of this search is unknown but it is directed by the Temple of Diamonds, a quasi-religious secret society which acts as an advisor to the Imperial household. When a new territory comes under Imperial control the Temple sends out scholars to sift through local legends and excavate ruins, always searching for clues to something. The expansion of the empire is fuelled by this search.

The Temple serves as the priesthood ministering to the spirits of past emperors. Emperor worship is a secular business in the empire, driven more by tradition than by piety. But the priests of the Temple really do commune with the spirits of fallen emperors, bringing them forth and listening to them argue over what direction the search should go in next. It is the results of these consultations which the Temple uses to advise the current Empress.

The object of the Temple's search is the empire's most closely-guarded secret - very few even know the Temple exists. The Empress herself does not know what her forefathers are searching for (this knowledge will be given to her upon her death, when she will begin advising on how the Temple should counsel her successor). The Temple have, however, constructed an elaborate lie that can be fed to anyone getting close enough to learn of the Temple and its search. This lie is that the Scarphanic Empire is searching for the resting place of its mythical founder, so it can learn the sacred mission for which the Ignissae race was created and complete it. This hoax is contained within fake forbidden writings and testimonies waiting to be uncovered by meddlers or enemies of the empire, and form another layer of secrecy protecting the real truth. As for the true object of the empire's search? Only the dead emperors and senior priests of the Temple know.

Well, I guess they are a bit like the Romans. Okay, a lot. But plenty of people who come into contact with it will come away with the belief that the Scarphanic Empire (and particularly the Ignissae race) is entirely composed of tossers, so it's not so bad. The Empire is a solid, predictable power group which splits its time between being a bunch of political schemers and a load of warmongering expansionists. The secret of their search gives them a bit more of a motivation than simple 'manifest destiny', but precious few ever learn of it. To many Kadmeians, the Scarphanic Empire's soldiers and diplomats simply wish expand the empire because there is room for it to expand into, and that is reason enough for most Ignissae, too. Everyone loves to hate the way they stomp around as if they own the place - but one day, they might do exactly that.

Kadmeia has a king and a bad guy, so now they need some neighbours. So far I've been thinking in terms of civilisations - basically, people who live in big awesome buildings. I wanted Kadmeia to be a place of contrasts, and so the Splinterbone Tribe was born - a people who would be a significant power group without bringing the trappings of an empire with them. Tribes in fantasy tend to be either downtrodden noble savages, or rampaging orcs who need a good killing. I wanted a people that could form a power base without being obviously evil, whose brutality was undeniable but whose ambitions were the same as everyone else - safety, security, and respect.

THE SPLINTERBONE TRIBE
The home world of the Splinterbone Tribe was a harsh place, where the land barely bore enough fruit to feed the fierce monsters that roved its surface. This world turned its intelligent inhabitants into leather-skinned, squat, muscular creatures who developed a tight society based around age, respect and hunting prowess to survive. They moved constantly to find new hunting grounds or escape the natural disasters that plagued their world. As their society developed they became possessed by a terrible yearning for a land where they could settle down in safety without fear of what the next sunrise or nightfall might bring. This yearning became like a religion to them and they were driven on their wandering by the hope that they might one day find such a land. Their hardiest and bravest went on pilgrimages out into the unknown, but the few who returned bore news only of endless reaches of storm-torn plains or barren mountains, with no sign of their promised land.

Ambassadors to Kadmeia passed through this world, and news of King Arguloth reached the Splinterbones. They sent a delegation of their own to follow the route across worlds, and when they reached Kadmeia they realised that they had here an opportunity to find their promised land. Here they could speak with ambassadors from thousands of worlds, and eventually, surely, they would find one willing to let the Splinterbones settle in some unclaimed land of peace and plenty.

Generations have passed since the first Splinterbone ambassadors presented themselves to King Arguleon's court. More and more tribespeople have joined the delegation and now a Splinterbone nation of considerable size has grown up in King Arguloth's domain. As a nomadic people the Splinterbones in Kadmeia prefer to live pastorally, travelling in caravans through the land's forests and staying put only for the cold season. Their savage ways - they eschew cooked meat and wear animals skins, and still put their youths through gruelling tests of hardiness and courage before they can be adults - are looked on with horror by many who consider themselves civilised, and the Splinterbones would probably be unable to settle in any of Kadmeia's towns and cities if they wanted to. Their appearance, if nothing else, puts many off, for even in a world as cosmopolitan as Kadmeia there is still something too animalistic for some about the deliberately brutal-looking Splinterbones.

Many Splinterbones aspire to travel from their cruel homeworld to Kadmeia, and the ranks of the Kadmeian part of the tribe have swelled. Kadmeia is a place where young Splinterbones can earn their futures, not least as mercenaries, bodyguards and leg-breakers for anyone in need of some unsubtle muscle. The overarching purpose of the Splinterbones is to find a homeland and many within the tribe believe that they have found it - they only have to petition King Arguloth to grant them some of Kadmeia's wilds and they would have their home. Others are certain that Arguloth, being so concerned with even-handedness, would never show such favouritism to one people. A few even whisper that their destiny must be siezed from the dragon - by force, if needs be.

HUNTMASTER RED SKY
Red Sky is one of the senior members of the Splinterbone tribe in Kadmeia. He is an expert hunter and a fine warrior, but his real forte lies in diplomacy, which is otherwise not a skill with which many Splinterbones are blessed. Red Sky looks like the hunter he is - he carries his favoured hunting bow everywhere and wears trophies cut from many of his homeworld's most fearsome monsters.

Red Sky considers it his responsibility to change opinions of the Splinterbones, which is not always made easier by the savage acts that his tribemates commit from time to time. Red Sky himself is a friend of King Arguloth and often counsels the king, but by Kadmeian standards he is naive about politics and there is always the chance that a wilier ambassador could use him to take advantage of the tribe. Red Sky also has to deal with elements within his own tribe who believe that he wants the tribe to become like all the soft-bodied, city-obsessed weaklings who live in Kadmeia. Without Red Sky the Splinterbones might well have been complete pariahs, unaccepted even on the outskirts of kadmeian society, but with him some fear that the tribe will lose its connection to the ancient values that have allowed them to survive this long.

The Splinterbones maybe have a bit of the 'noble savage' about them, but they're not good guys - I imagine them being capable of real savagery, and as being absolute bastards when crossed. They're ugly, too, which I like in my fantasy races. In my mind's eye they're a bit like bipedal rhinoceroses in their builds, with big stomping feet, thick bodies and skin as thick as armour. They have some tragedy in their past and a real purpose which explains why they're in Kadmeia in the first place. But will they ever find their promised land - or will it turn out that they simply cannot survive anywhere that is not relentlessly cruel?

I have been thinking a bit about evil.

Plato had the idea that no-one was ever deliberately evil. Instead, evil acts were the result of ignorance about goodness. While this is a bit simplistic (sometimes people really do commit evil acts just for the hell of it), it seems to me that the great majority of 'evil' people believe (or have at least convinced themselves) that they have no choice than to do what they do, or even that what they are doing is right. Even if I am hopelessly wrong about this, story-wise there is more mileage in evil born of an intolerable situation or a wrong but understandable choice, than in a goatee-twiddling diabolical mastermind who's in it for the kicks.

Kadmeia needs a bad guy. Since Kadmeia is a fantasy world, that bad guy needs to be pretty evil. However, another of those fantasy tropes that annoys me is the idea that evil is a separate, identifiable, quantifiable force, and that its followers are evil through and through for no other reason that they just are. For my bad guy (they won't be the only force for evil in the world, but they're definitely one of the big players), I wanted an evil born of a tragedy. To outsiders it would seem that this evil empire is wicked through and through for no good reason save greed or sadism, but beneath all this there is buried a tragedy that, while not excusing anything they do, gives it some context and pathos that will add poignancy to whatever fate has planned for these villains.

The bad guy also needs to be cool and spectacular. The real world's evil is something grimly ordinary, and evil people have friends who think they are the salt of the earth as well as victims who know them for what they are. Evil is hidden everywhere, pooling in petty greed, jealousy and boredom, and sometimes is out in the open safe in the knowledge that no-one really cares. Kadmeia's evil will be spectacular - or at least, there is spectacle to it in addition to the everday grisliness perpetrated in the streets of its cities just like in any world. After all, this is a world of wonders, and not everything wonderful has to be pretty. The first of Kadmeia's bad guys is the Necrarchy.

THE NECRARCHY
The Necrarchy rules over a collection of devastated kingdoms on a distant world through the strength of monstrous death magic. The ruling sorcerers keep the secrets of magic that can raise the dead, slay the living and pass an old soul into a young body. Those who know of the Necrarchy describe an evil empire ruled by liches who exploit the dead of nations and delve into the most horrible secrets of creation, solely to lengthen their own lives. The Necrarchy's home empire is almost dry of life and so it is setting up colonies on other worlds, conquering weak nations and building necropoleis to house the living and the dead. The Necrarchy's motivation is simple - its members want to live forever, and they can only do that with a constant supply of fit, attrractive young bodies to tranfer their minds into.

The Necrarchy itself is few in numbers, consisting of a mere few hundred necromancers and military officers, all veterans of many bodies. Their numbers in war are swelled by the animated dead, and a Necrarchy army is a horrendous horde of armed corpses led by a relatively small number of 'living' officers. The necromancers, motivated by a dread of death, huddle in their white stone towers poring over volumes of necromantic lore and sending out agents to source new bodies.

The origins of this empire are steeped in tragedy. Once, the men and women who make up the Necrarchy lived in a land like many others, its name and history long since lost beneath the ashes of the dead. There came a time when this people were cursed. Again, the reason for the curse and its originator are forgotten, or perhaps known only by a few of the ancient liches who rule the Necrarchy. Whatever its source, the curse condemned everyone in the kingdom to become a ravenous, sadistic shade upon death, their souls being driven insane and rising from their bodies to wreak torture and misery among the living. Death, already a preoccupation for the kingdom, became a source of the deepest dread. Anyone who died could rise up and seek out their loved ones. Death was no longer the end, but the beginning of something far worse than anything in life.

To escape this curse, the people turned to necromancy. They discovered that they could use the empty corpses of their dead to fight the shades, and more importantly that when their own bodies began to fail they could transfer themselves into a new young body. Firstly they used the freshly dead as vessels for themselves, and then began seeking out young, fit men and women whose souls they could banish before replacing them in their perfect bodies.

From this desperation was born the Necrarchy. The need for new bodies and the constant ravening of the shades depopulated the kingdom, leaving only those who had cheated death with a new body. Soon the Necrarchy turned to neighbouring lands to harvest new vessels, using armies of the dead to conquer. Fortified towers were built to keep the magic secrets so essential to the survival of this fallen kingdom, and the Necrarchy as Kadmeia knows it was born.

Today, the empire dominated by the Necrarchy is a barren, almost literally lifeless place, dotted with fortified settlements and necromancers' towers. The Necrarchy, being very powerful thanks to its multi-world colonies and huge armies of dead-at-arms, has a presence in Kadmeia where its representatives strive to find new sources of bodies for the ageing liches. The Necrarchy Embassy is one of the oldest and most powerful on Kadmeia and is based in a great tower of ivory-white stone, its pale fangs reaching high up towards the sky. It is guarded by native troops and mercenaries (King Arguloth draws the line at a standing army of the undead) and rumours abound of the obscene necromantic experiments that must take place within its halls. No-one trusts the Necrarchy since they are commonly understood to be evil, and since the Necrarchy is loathe to let anyone know of its tragic origins most people of Kadmeia assume they were all born evil. Needless to say many embassies representing 'good' empires and power groups try to oppose the Necrarchy at every turn.

The Necrarchy represents a constant point of contention for King Arguloth. On the one hand, their activities are deeply objectionable and their presence is divisive. On the other. Arguloth's Dranonic Peace promises protection to all representatives, including the ambassadors of evil empires. Arguloth takes his peace so seriously that he will prevent plots against the Necarchy, no matter how based in common morality they might be. That said, Arguloth will absolutely not countenance the trafficing of doomed host bodies from or through Kadmeia, and his agents watch the Necrarchy closely indeed.

LADY ORPHEA SKHAAL
Necrarchy Ambassador to the court of King Arguloth
Lady Orphea is the highest-ranking member of the Necrarchy in Kadmeia. She is a ravishingly beautiful woman in her forties, with pale skin, white hair and green eyes. She wears the traditional Necrarchy colour of white and is never sparing with jewellery, bedecking herself in diamonds and emeralds. Her role is to pursue Necrarchy interests in Kadmeia and she is very good at it. In particular she is an excellent diplomat and constantly avoids open clashes with other powers even though she represents something that most right-thinking Kadmeians abhor.

Lady Orphea's body is not her own, and was presumably procured for her (assuming she started out a woman) to give her the desired presence and dignity. Her own magical talents are unknown but it is inevitably assumed that she is a necromancer herself. She politely refuses to answer any enquiry about such matters, and is equally secretive about what the Necrarchy are up to back in their dead empire. She has at her command several thousand mercenary troops and, presumably, an unknown number of undead, who are always guarding the Pale Tower against attacks (and attacks do come, especially from self-appointed moral warriors who try to blow up or burn down the tower regularly).

All Lady Ophea's relationships with other representatives are polite, distant and on her own terms. She is closer than some expect to King Arguloth, since much of his duties are taken up trying to prevent the Necrarchy being chased out of Kadmeia altogether. There can be little doubt that Lady Orphea is instrumental in whatever plot the Necrarchy are following next, and every chance that it involves finding new, healthy, beautiful bodies for the liches she serves.

The Necrarchy are evil for a reason. It's very good reason, too - if they don't do the evil things necessary to cheat death, then they will become ravenous monsters of the night and their loved ones (for they still have them) will pay the price. And yet they have no excuse, for countless innocents have had their souls stripped away to provide a Necrarchy officer or wizard with a new body. They also illustrate one of the themes of Kadmeia - that peace is not synonymous with goodness, and that for the sake of peace the evil must sometimes be accomodated. The Necrarchy also have a vested interest in Kadmeia's integrity and safety, and will be as quick as anyone to help face off threats to Arguloth's world. And yet evil is evil, and somewhere the family of the woman whose body Lady Orphea now wears are hunting for their lost daughter and perhaps planning their revenge.

There is more to the Necrarchy in Kadmeia than Lady Orphea alone, but that'll do for now. At the moment they are a cipher, a part of Kadmeia's theme, and perhaps later I will finish making them into a deep and characterful power block ready to take on the moral guardians of the multiverse. Perhaps King Arguloth will eventually have to choose between evil being done in his streets, and breaking his own Draconic Pact - or perhaps lady Orphea herself is already at the line beyond which is wickedness too grave for even her to countenance.

I am as a god, for I will create a world.

I'm a writer by trade so I like making things up. Flexing creative muscles is what drives me. I wanted a project where I would create something, and put it out there for people to see. Hence, a blog.

My world will be a fantasy world, partly because that is the kind of genre I work in and partly because that allows me to make up whatever I want with a minimum of research. It will also allow me to avoid some of the cliches in fantasy that annoy me, and include more of the things I think are cool.

The world needs two things to start with - a name, and a theme. For the name, I used emergency fantasy naming technique #1: use something ancient Greek and change one letter. Therefore, my world will be called Kadmeia.

Kadmeia also needas a theme, which is rather more important and troublesome. One thing that bugs me about a lot of fantasy worlds, starting with Tolkien, is that all the interesting stuff has already happened. The grandeur of the world is tied up in ancient history and lies in picturesque ruins for adventurers to delve into and ancient horrors to slumber within. The characters are literally picking over the corpse of a more interesting world and readers, players or whoever have to learn the world's history as well as experience it first-hand. If all those fallen elvish empires and dwarven holds were so amazing, why can't we see them before the goblins burned everything? Kadmeia will be a world where the age of wonders is NOW.

But Kadmeia also needs a reason to exist. Why would all these amazing things be dotted across the land? Simply evolving there over time seems a bit... lame. The real world is like that - it is the way it is because it just sort of is. I can see a world like that by looking out of the window. Kadmeia needs a purpose.

The first idea I had, and so far the only one, is a sort of fantasy Casablanca, or maybe Green Zone, where refugees and representatives from all overe the place gather. Kadmeia is a place where an ambassador from one world might pass a refugee from another. Perhaps mortal enemies will have to coexist here, because they all gain something from having a presence in this world. And if it was deliberately created as a of neutral ground for powerful empires and entities from across the multiverse, then it could be at the same time a young world as well as one full of wonders.

This, then, is my Kadmeia - a place where powers from across a hundred worlds come to meet and scheme, to make alliances and undermine enemies. This allows for it to be crammed with all kinds of bizarre and enthralling characters, and for its inhabitants to all have driving and conflicting agendas. It is brimming over with conflict, but with an overseeing force that compels its characters to shy away from open warfare and follow more interesting paths of skullduggery, politicking and espionage. Opportunities for adventure abound, as they must in any fantasy world.

The force that made Kadmeia what it is, and makes sure that competing power groups do not annihilate each other, is the first aspect of Kadmeia that needs detailing,. This world needs a king. To make sure no one messes with him, this kind shall be a dragon.

I like dragons. They are big, scary and intelligent. They are enough of a cliche that I almost left them out, but I hope to balance this by making sure there is only one dragon around and giving him more of a personality than the ancient angry lizard that everyone knows and loves. The first inhabitant of Kadmeia, then, is King Arguloth

KING ARGULOTH THE MAGNIFICENT

Monarch of Kadmeia, Enforcer of the Draconic Peace, Ancient Silver Dragon

King Arguloth is at once majestic and bestial, kingly and terrifying, magnificent and monstrous. He is an enormous dragon with polished silver scales, burning blue eyes and huge wings. He is every inch a king, both in terms of his royal bearing and in the raw power implied by his size, talons and fangs. King Arguloth typically wears ceremonial armour or royal robes cut to accomodate his enormous size and is rarely seen without the granite crown of Kadmeia upon his scaly brow. When he speaks it is with a voice like an earthquake, and wherever he walks ambassadors and courtiers follow in his wake as if some of his majesty and authority will rub off on them.

Arguloth is a seeker of peace. To him, conflict is the disease that afflicts the universe. Peace was more important to him that good and evil, a universal ideal immune to the vagaries of morality. As a young dragon he sought to broker peace between warring civilisations, but there was always another war brewing somewhere, another despot eager for conquest or another people who waged war to throw of the yoke of an oppressor. Arguloth despaired, and travelled from world to world to find an cure for this disease.

He came, at last, to Kadmeia. Arguloth was an old dragon by now, huge and much gnarled by his travels, and the first thought he had when he came to this beautiful unspoiled world was of rest. However, as he explored Kadmeia he came to realise that a new world where his laws applied, and where ambassadors and diplomats were under his protection, could be a powerful tool for peace. He built a fortress palace for himself in the mountains, and cut from the living rock the Granite Crown that would serve as a symbol of his authority. He made it known throughout the multiverse that representatives from any civilisation were welcome at his court, and that they were under his personal protection no matter who they might represent. He wrote the Draconic Peace, a code of laws stating that Kadmeian soil is neutral and no war may be waged there, on the pain of King Arguloth's own personal vengeance.

Soon kingdoms and empires from countless worlds were sending their representatives to Kadmeia to seek alliances and gather information about their friends and foes. They built setlements, and then palaces, to accomodate themselves. Kings sent their sons, and despots sent their generals. many of them rbought armies with them and Arguloth permitted this on the condition that they were used only for defence, never for aggression. Some disobeyed, and were destroyed by Arguloth and the agents he gathered around him to enforce the Draconic Peace. Cities were born and filled with refugees. The first native Kadmeians were born, many of them in shanty towns now growing up between the magnificent palaces of the ambassadors.

In the decades that have followed the foundation of Kadmeia, Arguloth has watched generations of births and deaths and seen countless plots hatched - some succeeded, some were foiled, but always it seemed there was someone looking to disobey the Draconic Peace with assassination and ambush. Spying is a huge industry in Kadmeia with every embassy spying on another, and anyone with an ear for information or a talent for not being seen can make a living for themselves on the streets. Arguloth presides over all of this and allows it to happen, for while an empire is using spies and subterfuge it is not waging war. Kadmeia's own culture has devloped, the worship of a thousand gods has been brought from distant worlds, and everywhere vibrancy and hope blossoms alongside the lies and murder.

King Arguloth lives to enforce the Draconic Peace and give enemy empires a way to settle their differences without sending armies out to die. And yet it is getting harder every day. Kadmeia is not just a place of reconciliation and neutrality - it is another arena for victory, and every side is stretching or breaking the Draconic Peace to harm their enemies. In addition, Arguloth welcomes all, even those that are branded evil by most - followers of dark gods or practicioners of tortuous magic, representatives of wicked emperors and insane despots. King Arguloth struggles daily with the scheming of Kadmeia's power groups and his agents, from elite soldiers to skilled diplomats, cannot keep up with the endless parade of plots and feuds. But Arguloth is a driven creature and the Draconic Peace will not die as long as he draws breath.

So, that's Arguloth, the king, conscience and spirit of Kadmeia. Maybe making him a silver dragon is a bit D&D, but then again there's nothing wrong with that. A dragon is something that everyone understands and plenty think is cool, and I can spin all kinds of crazy things off him.

Kadmeia is but a germ of a concept at the moment. It needs power groups to feud, secret histories to reveal, cities and wonders to describe and, most importantly, inhabitants to set at one another's throats. But now Kadmeia has the beginnings of a theme - perhaps the juxtaposition of a neutral world rife with scheming and politics, or the concept of peace at any price - it can slowly coalesce as more bits are added and old bits quietly retconned away.

Kadmeia lives. Arguloth reigns. And perhaps deep in his draconic heart he believes that now, he is as a god.