Four Ancient Kingdoms: Draken-Nar | Ilathyel | Xag | Xum
Ancient, fallen and lost civilisations litter every campaign world. From their bones spring great adventures. Heroes explore their ruins and search for the remnants of their treasures.
This week's Sunday Supplements presents four ancient civilisations drawn from the last year of posts.
01: Draken-Nar
Campaign Component | Ancient Kingdom
Tens of thousands of years ago, the inhuman artificer philosopher-priests of doomed Draken-Nar mastered non-Euclidian geometry and built immense, sanity-shattering fanes to house terrible and alien beings brought forth from the Eternal Void.
From their mountainous realm upon a vast and distant island, they carried out unspeakable research and sent out their sail-less stone galleys to explore and plunder the world. But the priests of Draken-Nar delved too deeply into forbidden things and learnt too much. They uncovered secrets that no mortal should know.
In a single day and night, their once great and terrible civilisation was scoured from the world by a thick grey bilious fog that billowed forth from its fanes and high temples. The fog destroyed everything not of stone or metal that it touched, erasing the blasphemous horror that was Draken-Nar. It was as if the gods themselves had decided that the world would be a better place without Draken-Nar.
And yet fragments of this peerless, pre-human kingdom survived the magical cataclysm. A few of its greatest priests and wizards escaped upon the wings of powerful spells or by employing cunningly wrought implements and devices of the most curious sort. Some lingered on in the world for a while before falling prey to time’s remorseless onslaught or the vengeful assaults of fearful savages. Other survivors returned to the ruin of their home to scavenge what they could from the lifeless wreckage. In this, they were successful, for the philosopher priests recorded their lore on thin sheets of specially prepared, all but unbreakable bronze. The secret to crafting such sheets was lost in Drakon-Nar’s fall, but imbued with extra-dimensional properties, each could hold staggering amounts of lore. Other, more powerful sheets held entire demi-planes within; such places could be prisons, homes or secret refuges. Yet other sheets, spell-trapped and hidden, were used to store lore deemed too dangerous for even the philosopher priests to know.
Thus, do scattered fragments of Draken-Nar’s hideous lore yet survive to the present day. The foolish or the power-crazed seek out such fragments for their own personal ends. Few such quests end well, for calamity and misfortune hound most such folk; only those loreseekers with certain arcane protections can hope to emerge unchanged and unscathed from contact with Draken-Nar’s terrible legacy.
02: Ilathyel, the Shining Kingdom
Campaign Component | Ancient Kingdom
When the world was young and fresh and primal, Ilathyel, the legendary first forest kingdom of the elves, flourished amid the innumerable boughs of the World Wood. A shining beacon of goodness and lore, the elves dwelled in a world untouched by humanity’s artifice and greed.
The elves were mighty in spell and battle-lore and ever fought to push back the waves of vile goblins and orcs seeking their destruction. Long were the wars, uncountable were the orc and goblin dead and glorious were the elves’ victories.
But vanity and arrogance lurked in some of the elves’ hearts, and a shadow slowly grew deep within Ilathyel. A small cabal of debased and corrupt elves—progenitors of the hated and feared shadow elves—opened an Abyssal gate, and an elder spider demon steeped in hatred and malignity scuttled through. A horde of demons followed, and terrible, merciless war engulfed shining Ilathyel.
The war raged for a century; thousands of elves and uncountable demons were slain. Ilathyel did not fall, but it did not swiftly gain victory. While the elves strove against and slew the demons, the shadow elves gathered themselves and fled, taking with them much lore and magic, including the legendary Silver Tablets of Tragator. By the time the demon horde had been eradicated, Ilathyel was but a shadow of its former self, and slowly the Shining Kingdom frayed and fragmented. The shining glory and power of the elves was broken, never to be restored.
03: Xag, Dead Empire of the Fungi-Spawn
Campaign Component | Ancient Kingdom
Millennia ago, the hideous fungi-spawn of ancient Xag ruled the sweltering southern jungles and raised grotesque towers and immense ziggurats toward the sullen stars in veneration of their uncaring, alien gods. Long and terrible was their reign over the primitive humans and their ape brethren that dwelled in the jungle and bounding plains. Far was Xag’s reach, pitiless were its armies and deathless were its seers.
The distant but catastrophic eruption of the island-volcano Cinderstone, however, doomed Xag to destruction. As clouds of hot, toxic ash filled the sky, day became night, and temperatures plummeted. When the ash began to fall, Xag died.
As hot, suffocating ash choked, crushed and buried their cities, nine of the greatest fungi-spawn—deathless seers, their lives unnaturally extended by gruesome necromantic magics—sealed themselves into the lightless depths of their greatest ziggurats. Built with supernal strength, these ziggurats—the greatest of all Xag’s creations—endured. Within their tomb-sanctuaries, they bore witness to the utter eradication of their kin and the complete destruction of their empire.
One by one, the deathless seers fell into slumber. For now, they sleep and they dream. Entombed with them, great spore banks—kept in magical stasis—represent Xag’s last desperate attempt to stave off extinction. When the time is right, the deathless seers will emerge from their ziggurats and use the spore-banks to rebuild their empire.
The humans dwelling in the jungle have long forgotten ancient Xag and its primal horrors. But even they do not dare the rugged, curiously-shaped hills of the deep jungle below which slumber the last buried remnants of diabolical Xag. Vague and formless legends and traditions of unspeakable terror lie over the silent, brooding jungle-clad hills. Carnivorous plants, heavy with fragrant and soporific black, scarlet and purple blooms, grow thickly throughout the hills, and not even the mighty tigers hunt therein.
04: Xum
Campaign Component | Ancient Kingdom
Wicked and ancient Xum flourished a millennium or more ago in the arid lands of the far south until the encroaching desert and increasingly violent infighting between the kingdom’s religious factions spelt its doom. Now, Xum’s once-proud walled cities are choked with sand, and its people are long-dead or fled to more clement climes.
Where once nobles and priests squabbled and fought, now tribes of gnolls—the descendants of Xum’s mercenary companies—fight for survival and pick over the bones of a once proud kingdom. The tribes yet worship Xum’s pantheon of demon-gods, and the fighting between them is savage and without quarter.
But even after ten long centuries, glimmering treasures and potent magics yet lurk amid Xum’s sand-choked bones, and a steady trickle of adventurers heads into the sand’s trackless wastes. Many fall foul of the demon-worshipping gnolls—suffering unspeakable fates at their hands—while others succumb to the harsh desert environment. Some adventurers, however—lucky, cunning or powerful—reach one of Xum’s olden, sand-swallowed cities and return laden with strangely wrought jewellery and curious artefacts of otherworldly origin.
Ashlarian (proper noun) of Ashlar; Campaign (noun) a connected series of adventures; Component (noun) a constituent part; Legendry (noun) a collection or body of legends; Lore (noun) knowledge and stories about a subject
Thank you for reading the Sunday Supplement; I hope some of this week’s Campaign Components make it into your game or sparks your creativity.
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