Throne of Avarice

BRIAN YAKSHA'S
Throne of Avarice
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introduction: Hail to the Conquerors, to Empire, 1
to Ambition Made Manifest!
What is This? 6
i: Histories of Unceasing Greed. 11
Calmyn in Modern Times. 20
ii: Born in Vanity. 23
Moods in Calmyn. 30
Styles in Calmyn. 38
Calls to Plunder. 46
Calymn Cryptdigger Archetypes. 55
iii: Suffer Upon Foreign Shores. 93
d66 Cryptdigging Companies of Calmyn. 95
d66 Company Complications. 104
iv: Hosts of Iniquity. 111
The Ducal Throne. 114
Orders and Bureaus of the Duchy. 122
Houses Vaunted & Houses Fallen. 130
The Great Banks. 138
The Watts–Calmyn Consortium. 147
The University of Harlingstad. 156
The Vaalengart. 164
The Gunszelmarkt. 171
v: Stains Upon the Realm. 181
The Westergorms. 184
The Mothlighters. 193
The Ettinscove. 202
The Eindercrag. 211
The Swamps of Saglash. 220
The Vale of Sustern. 228
The Vale of Etchland. 238
vi: The Mantle of Modernity. 247
Established Urban Centres of Calmyn. 250
Facets of an Urban Centre. 252
Lesser Hubs of Humanity. 270
The Colonial Outpost. 279
appendix: Names & Titles.
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Creation, Writing and Art Direction by brian yaksha

Editing by pam punzalan and zachary cox
Graphic Design by dai shugars
Cover by ben brown
Project Management by zachary cox
Best Left Buried was created by zachary cox and ben brown
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6
INTRODUCTION
Hail to the Conquerors,
to Empire, to Ambition
Made Manifest!
2 introduction
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U
nder the reign of the Good King
Yomund, the nation of Calmyn flourished as
lords of the known world, and the scourging
assimilationist lash against unknown shores
"the rise of the Good which dared to challenge their supremacy by mere
King Yomund", existence. All enclaves of the so–called civilised world
page 13 were broken by the burghers, bankers, and brutal
militarism of the Calmynite throne. In a show of their
subservience, each vassal puppet state festooned
"a flower which
its iconography or crowns with the Flower of
brought them joys
Prosperity: a vivid sunflower of scintillating golds
not known since
and red flecked spots, sunwheels within sunwheels.
departing the
The natural world’s treasures flourishing and coloured
radiance of the
in the symbol of mortal blood spilled for such providence.
All–Father",
It is a fitting icon: beauty and wealth at the cost
page 12
of lives. A symbol too, of duress, should any from the
exterior world think to defy their betters. So deep was
"the acts of the greed of Calmyn—so tight their grasp upon the
the Wizard of the throats of all people—that they should have reigned for a
White Tower thousand years atop an empire of slaves and corpses.
are known all the But Calmyn was betrayed from within.
world over, for his The Wizard of the White Tower’s Coup was
actions toppled inevitable, and for all the atrocities the vile man–made–
Calmyn into god has performed since—he may have saved the world
despair", with his treachery. He toppled Calmyn’s glorious
page 14 heights of imperial power, paving the way for other
duchies to assert their independence. Uncountable
cultures were freed from the yoke or the threat of the
lash. Calmyn should have been little more than a corpse
in the end: a broken place for imperialists and conquerors
to die starving, knowing the taste of all luxuries and
gasping at their absence with desiccated tongues.
Empires never die though, not truly.
introduction 3
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In the 300 years since the Coup, Calmyn remains
the cancerous affront to humanity’s worst sins that
it has always been. The banks, glutted to perverse depths
with the plundered wealth of the world, took control.
These Great Banks rule, for they control the only power
all men obey. The Duke, ever a learned man, appeases
them as he pits them against one another. He seeks to
resurrect the idea of an empire which would swallow
the world for the sake of coin.
Under the Watts–Calmyn Consortium, the "the Consortium
iconography of the Sun, the Flower and the Hand of has always existed,
Prosperity, can be seen once more on foreign shores. even back in the age
They are plunderers, colonists, and conquerors, backing of longboats and
revolutions and funding cryptdigging companies to delve berdish-wielding
the dark places of the world and steal that which must plunderers",
never be stolen. They arm the Vaalengart, scions of page 147
warriors from every known culture ever held by the
Calmyn of old. These professional killers are the envy
"the remnants
of any nation, armed with fine uniforms and masterwork
of cultures made
weapons—always first bloodied against those their
wordless, and people
ancestors once swore to protect. They do not question
made thralls, allowed
their orders; payment eases the burden of bloodshed
to live as an epithet
and the lies make colonialism all the easier to stomach.
because Calmyn
In their eyes, they are saving the world from itself,
saw something
from its disorder, from an uncivilised state.
of worth",
Propaganda prevents open dissent. The poor mangle
page 164
one another in the hopes that they might be perceived
as inconvenienced burgher–sovereigns rather than as
the oppressed masses who starve so that the petty rich "totalitarian
can cling to their old money another day. The nation’s censors and
Order of Imperial Conduct ensures that all matters aspirational
of the duchy are displayed only in revisionist terms: pundits",
Calmyn never fell. If it did, it was due to outsiders. Good page 122
4 introduction
"the pre-eminent
academic body in all
of Calmyn–and as
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citizens are not outsiders. Universities across the duchy,
such as the University of Harlingstad, assist in
propagating this false narrative of events while hoarding
they would boldly the stolen recorded history of the world away in grand
claim, the wider libraries and archives.
world as well", Only the Gunszelmarkt truly oppose the ideals
page 156 of the nation, but they are little more than reckless
youths, so broken by the nature of the world that their
individual cells are easily dispatched by those with
"children of a
enough wealth to write off human life. Anarchists
lost generation,
on the fringes of civilization, angrily dreaming of a
angry and unwilling
better world that remains beyond their gangrenous
to take the scraps
touch. Desperation will drive them to horrid action soon,
others demand
for they believe that it is better to die screaming on your
they supplicate
feet than suffer an existence as debtor’s slaves to decrypted
themselves for",
ghouls wearing wigs that are worth more than your life.
page 171
Of all the hateful forces in the world, that Calmyn
yet remains is an affront to the idea of any inherent good
"Best Left in human nature. It is a gilded gauntlet throttling its
Buried is a fantasy own while it prepares to turn its gaze upon the rest of the
horror game where world again. The dread song of its history was something
the monsters are Best Left Buried, but again it is sung in grim verse
scary and the players by the mouths of the nationalist and the rich. There is no
are scared", salvation to be found. If the strength of the White Tower
https://soulmuppet- could not kill Calmyn’s avaricious hunger for dominion,
store.co.uk collections/ nothing will. If you find yourself in Calmyn, you are
best-left-buried here to suffer.
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introduction 5
6 introduction
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WHAT IS THIS?
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i: regarding the book’s themes
Calmyn: Throne of Avarice is an unsettling
toolbox based around late capitalism, colonialism,
imperialism, and class struggle. Make no mistake:
Calmyn is a wicked place. While your average civilian
makes no ethical consumption under such capitalism,
the bulk of those you will encounter are people who
directly profit from and propagate such evil upon the
world. These evils are meant to be portrayed as such,
and you must reconcile this to your discomfort. You will
be ground into fine powder attempting to change the
hegemonic horror of a power still clinging to its former
regime. Still, it is better to die trying to prevent further
evil than to live in shackles, real or metaphorical,
that see it vaunted.
ii: using this book
This book is filled with everything we thought you
might need in using the duchy of Calmyn as a setting.
There are names across spectrums of wealth and gender,
aesthetic choices, regional and faction tailored moods;
all manner of details to turn any individual into a
burdened citizen of an avaricious power. Locations are
described, both in specific examples to spark inspiration
and by way of supporting lists of various traits you could
apply to keep things tonally consistent across the various
biomes of Calmyn’s borders.
Cryptdigging is given central focus for the purpose
of describing infamous companies of brutal means, the
introduction 7
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lies they use to recruit new fodder for their endeavours,
and miniature sandboxes upon which they will cruelly
strike out upon foreign shores for the sake of gold and
glory alone. Whether the players will serve as agents of
imperialism, vile collaborators, or the oppressed masses
seeking to cast off the yoke is a matter of taste and tone.
Greed colours all things that Calmyn touches; making
foul those who cherished liberty or granting clarity to
those freed from its stranglehold for even but a moment.
iii: the calmyn sandbox campaign
This is not a place of honour, but glory is easily earned
for those of bold and often sadistic bent. Calmyn has no
shortage of internal issues: the poor desire their
common human dignity to supplant the reign of banks
and burghers, and the rich desire to snuff out the last
flickering embers of hope that those beneath them
might change their stars. The self–proclaimed bastion of
civilization is rife with incivility, with terrors left caged
in ancient vaults or in places glimpsed only in terms of
the high strange. There are fallen cities and failed towns
a–plenty, populated only by the destitute. The enthralled
dot the countryside—enclaves for elements that the
realm refuses to acknowledge. "those who have lived
Cryptdigging Companies recruit the young, the their lives under the
foolish, the jingoistic and desperate, but most importantly, influence of the
the misguided. They sell their recruits on lies of glory, Hand of Prosperity
on the means to live a life beyond what they know, and are of a cut more
the promise to be hailed as saviours and messiahs upon cruel than the rest",
foreign shores. They do this because it works. page 55
Generations live and die broken against the whims
of councils who lust for plunder. A cryptdigging unit
brought together in Calmyn will be shown everything
their hard–won treasures will pay for; a lie unspoken
8 introduction
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that they’ll not live to reap such blood–stained rewards.
Calmyn is content to send all who believe its lies to die
upon foreign shores or to be thrown against any issue
within the nation at the whims of the highest bidder.
Calmyn can serve well as a nation for intrigue and
political mercenary work, as a launching pad for forays
into brutal assaults on the rest of the world, or as a more
humble stroll into the macabre gothic dread of small
towns and careless urban sprawls. It is a cruel place,
no matter how you make it. F
introduction 9
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6 PART I
Histories of
Unceasing Greed.
A Brief History
Calmyn in Modern Times
12 part i
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T
he Great Isle was conquered
by the first generation of exiled tyrants
from once haughty Lys (now sodden Torre).
The fledgling folk of the region were broken
by the lash and made to serve for the glory of the
Tyrant Calmynidus; the Starsent Heir of the All–
Father who stole fire from Ados and cleaved the path of
glory through the continent’s interior. It was on the
banks of a river that the Tyrant gazed upon a flower
which brought them joys not known since departing the
radiance of the All–Father; and lost in the rhapsody of
its unfolding petals—like sunwheels upon solar discs—
that they laid their blade of wyrmsflame to rest. Upon
this riverbank they set their claim and the purpose of
their nation: prosperity, so that all may know the beauty
they perceived.
i: the plundering era
In the wake of Tyrant Calmynidus’s death (or return
to the All–Father’s side in a continued heavenly war
against Ados the Drake, if legends are to be believed),
the nation reverted in many ways back to its state prior
to the Lysian’s arrival. Clannish fiefdoms of hunters
and plunderers who would strike against the coastal
trade meridian of the Taurochtalian Imperium, taking
riches and wealth from unclean hands. Though bickering
between chiefs, thegns, jarls and thrallmasters
prevented the same level of unity held under the yoke of
the Tyrant; a defensive alliance against foreign
interlopers for the sake of profit, plunder, and security
ensured a continuance of Calmynidus’s vision. Though
fractured, they were united for sake of prosperity; to
glut themselves on the treasures of their neighbours.
part i 13
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ii: the yomundic era
The rise of the Good King Yomund is lost to history,
revised in annals and muddled by legends, revisionism
and rumours. He was, by note, one of the greatest
warriors of his clade. He was said to wield a blade as
worthy of wyrmsflame as Calmynidus; whose counsel
allegedly came to Yomund upon the winds and guided
his hand to ensure the will of the nation. Through
shrewd negotiations, blackmail, the taking of hostages,
and the showing of clemency at the cost of station,
Yomund united all under the banner of Calmyn and
built a throne within his once petty village; now the
shining city of Yomundendam. "the Old Capital,
iii: the era of prosperity rich in history but
United, Calmyn spread its most famous trade outward. not power",
Plunder and conquest bloated the coffers of the nation; page 250
and from this the first Great Banks were founded.
Vaults of iron—forged by debtor–dwarfs of Clan Throne– "they control the
ward in their infinite shame—were buried deep in the wealth of all now,
earth. They would hold gold beyond measure, riches from the dead and
enough to drown the world, and any manner of sacred living alike",
thing which Calmyn would take with no thought to the page 138
vulgar profanity of such an act. It was in this era of
untamed conquest and rampant colonialism that many
lies were made commonplace so as to justify the depth
of their evils in the eyes of those countrymen who might
think to protest.
Scholars would claim all the peoples and cultures of
the world to be derivatives of Calmyn, for Calmynidus
was the heir of the All–Father; and thus any conquest
upon a rival nation was an act to bring these ‘uncivilised
belligerents’ the handof prosperity which they were
entitled to take or have thrust upon their throats.
14 part i
"... the remnants

of cultures made
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From this came the Vaalengart; who would preserve
unique traditions that might better serve as weapons in
Calmyn’s arsenal, rather than as cultural commodities
made thralls, allowed which could be made ubiquitous and ‘proper.’
because Calmyn iv: the wizard’s emergence
saw something Calmyn grew haughty with the gout of their gilded
of worth...", coffers; the Great Banks expanded, Consortiums
page 164 were founded, the successors to Good King Yomund
proved pale imitators who too easily were bent to the
whims of vaunted houses rich in influence. The throne
"the Consortium of Calmyn, weakened by bickering between siblings
has always existed, who each vied for the throne, bid the counsel of the
even back in the age Wizard of the White Tower—believing that he
of longboats and might grant them contact with Yomund or the Tyrant
berdish-wielding themselves.
plunderers", The Wizard of the White Tower, the cruel man–
page 147 made–god of our current era, was but a man at this time.
He viewed the feeble pleas for necromancy from the
Calmynite throne as beneath his station; to know that
such lickspittle royalty feasted upon the known world
like parasites brought a sour smile to his lips. Thus, for a
time, the Wizard served in the courts of Calmyn; rising
houses to vaunted status for their capacity to bring him
reagents, and castigating with curses others into fallen
houses for their insubordination.
And then, when the time was right and the stars
were nigh, he enacted his coup.
v: the coup: or, the
desecration of calmyn
The acts of the Wizard of the White Tower are known
all the world over, for his actions toppled Calmyn into
despair. A tragic fall from such a hubristic height had
not been seen since the sundering of the Ashen City,
part i 15
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or the loss of the Iron Halls. The heirs of Good King
Yomund suffered twisting mutilations, their forms
warped and melted into ineffable flesh of a scope
befitting the scale of their titanic arrogance; banished to
the wilds by arcane might. Houses both vaunted and
fallen sought to strike against the Wizard for these
crimes, but each was undone from within. The chained
spectres of their founders arose from hill cairns and
graveyards, made physical by the weight of their
plunder in life; butchering their way across the nation.
In a period of weeks, Calmyn’s grasp upon the world
was shattered. Its colonial ambitions shuttered as
supplies dried up from the homeland and now–liberated
forces could assert their boundaries and butcher
collaborators with impunity. Though all would be made
lesser for the Wizard’s Coup, his treachery allowed the
world to regain a chance at prosperity; a flickering
ember offering far more hope than many had known in
generations.
vi: the banking war
In the 300 years since the Coup, Calmyn has begun to
recover in its own vile way. With no true throne to unite
the nation, the few surviving vaunted houses engaged in
petty wars for a seat at the Ducal Throne—the new
station installed for sake of supplication to the Wizard
of the White Tower. But for all these politics, none could
deny the shift in power had left the nobility and now
rested entirely into the hands of the Great Banks. It was
the Great Banks who still held wealth from many royal
lines now destroyed. It was they who through occultism
and metaphor bound the wealth of the dead into their
iron vaults—forcing any lingering haunts of Calmyn to
suffer untethered to the mortal realm.
16 part i
part i 17
18 part i
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But mankind, in their avarice for station and
assurance of power once so thoroughly dominated by
another; were not satiated. The Great Banks played
their game of debts and wealth and engaged in bloody
conflict across the newly–minted duchy and former
colonial outposts the world over. The Banking War had
no victor, save of course the Banks which profited from
their hegemony and the bloodshed of those fool enough
to slave away for their desires willingly. Banking Wars
crop up still, though seldom in areas which might
damage holdings of worth.
vii: the debtor’s rebellion
"these institutions Over the last decade the Duchy of Calmyn and the
are the apparatus Great Banks have had to contend with growing unrest
of manipulation from the labouring class who—despite the duchy’s
and deceit, revising claims of modernity—suffer a worse quality of life than
the cruel history their enthralled ancestors. Inheritance runs the risk of
Calmyn has revenants rising to take back what is not buried alongside
inflicted on them, and dealings with the Great Banks to prevent
the world", such a profane curse often sees even well–to–do families
page 164 fall into multigenerational debt. This, together with the
rising cost of goods and commodities driven by burghers
and well–to–do who seek monopolies on common
"the Debtor’s
utilities, has birthed an underclass that will engage in
Rebellion began
desecration, cannibalism, and all manner of desperate
ages ago, but it
criminality.
has never stopped:
This culminated in the Debtor’s Rebellion, an
the poor grow only
ongoing issue within the borders of the duchy. It is a
hungrier, colder,
perennial cold forever war that the vaunted and the
and closer to
wealthy use to justify their atrocities against the poor
feral violence
and the fallen. Debts colour all but the most privileged
in their agony",
in Calmyn, and many have been forced into modern
page 171
shackles far more biting than those which trammelled
part i 19
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their ancestors. To strike against the status quo on one’s
lonesome is to be proclaimed a Debtor Rebel; or even a
derelict Gunszelmarkt if one is young and hopeful
"children of a lost
generation, angry
and unwilling to take
enough. Crimes are punishable by humiliating executions: the scraps others
more salt in the wounds to silence the masses.
ffffcffff F demand they supplicate
themselves for",
page 171
20 part i
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CALMYN IN
MODERN TIMES.
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F
or all its bluster and gilded modernity,
Calmyn rots. The old cling to their wealth
and power in a baleful kleptocracy of burgher
alliances and vaunted houses born of coup–
era treachery. The young die aimlessly, thrown into the
meat grinder of foreign affairs; made to conquer for
sake of jingoist propaganda of a better world, or for
mere chance at a life better than one wasted in derelict
enclaves of once cherished traditions. The rich play
games of politics under the errant gaze of the Wizard’s
agents, corrupting even the most steadfast enforcer of
the White Tower’s policies with games of debt and
luxury beyond mortal fathoming. The poor, as they
always have, die with indignity. To fight for a better life
is to be condemned to torment—unless that fight is done
"though tattered at the behest of one’s own countrymen and oppressors.
by the Coup and The Great Banks rule adjacent to the Ducal
forever tarnished Throne, a symbolic position that serves lickspittle to
by the Desecration, the Wizard of the White Tower’s dread agenda of
the Duchy yet human supremacy. Consortiums and Cryptdigging
remains the strongest outfits serve the will of the elite and spread their lie
bastion of human of prosperity in all the ways the old plunderers did.
supremacy in the Bureaus operate on behalf of Calmyn’s image, revising
known world", history, changing maps, condemning settlements to
page 114 fester on the fringes of a modern nation whilst wringing
what few silvers they can through exorbitant taxes and
familial debts. Even faith in the duchy is perverse,
twisted to deify acts of greed, to scorn charity, curse
part i 21
the dead, and provide no comfort to any who might seek

such succour.
Shackled to debt and the spectre of past atrocities,
few are willing to acknowledge that change may yet be
possible, and that the soul for the Calmynites sits upon
a knife’s edge. Heroism could come if the young are able
to cast down their forebears and forge ahead, having
learned the lessons of the past. But empires do not change,
nor do capitalists and conquerors. They adapt to whatever
form allows their presence to be tolerated, and they
steal away whatever joy might be found.
Whatever may yet come there are only two truths
all must internalise: prosperity is assured at the barrel of
a gun, and hope is a luxury that few can readily afford.F
6 PART II
Born in Vanity.
Moods in Calmyn
Styles in Calmyn
Calls to Plunder
24 part ii
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C
almyn is nothing if not metropolitan,
for the world was once theirs to throttle into
"the rise of the submission. Since the end of the Yomundic
Good King Era, the Calmynites have mangled, adapted,
Yomund", and appropriated all the cultures they saw fit to conquer
page 13 or obliterate. The Flower of Prosperity took that which
was once filled with meaning and debased it to serve as
shows of status within their repugnant hegemony. All
"a flower which that is cherished abroad—be it spices, textiles, idols or
brought them joys songs—are made homogenised by the Calmynite’s creed
not known since of prosperity. That which will not abide them is made
departing the wordless, a term they hold to mean ‘the shocked silence
radiance of the of the uncivilised gazing upon the apex of humanity’;
All–Father", but which in truth simply holds to a policy of destroying
page 12 languages which might imply anything less than
Calmynite supremacy. All things can be found in Calmyn
for a price, tarnished in the blood of the colonised and
made profane by hands who cared not for context.
To be born in vanity is to be a Calmynite: rich or
poor; vaunted or fallen, rural bumpkin or urbane
bohemian. The only distinctions that matter within the
duchy are those which run the intersection of bloodlines
and wealth, for a humble farmer might yet discover
gold in the hills and even a fallen house’s heir might still
cling to its coffers in ill–repute. The distinctions of gender
expression are deemed but another field which may be
proffered from, another set of boxes to hold people in,
another set of traits to hawk goods upon. Ethnicity is a
point of pride, for all who dwell in Calmyn are Calmynite.
They have no say in being anything other than that.
When generating player characters or NPCs to
interact with, consider the following aesthetics and
moods to give them life within the context of the duchy.
For player characters, determine their origins within
part ii 25
society and their current station; such as being born Vaunted and living
Urban; or being born Rich and now Poor. Station within society is
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nebulous, fleeting, and fickle; though seldom do stars rise to become
Vaunted from any station—save of course by way of marriage, bastard
F
acceptance or bureaucratic mishap.
26 part ii
i: born in vanity:
urban aesthetic traits
Traits considered to be popular among the urbane, bohemian, and more
metropolitan citizenry of Calmyn regardless of class, station, or breeding.
Such traits are found to be the tell–tale signs that one is used to a life of
‘soft–living’ in the cities, regardless of the amount of strife or comfort one
has actually endured.
1. Sophist’s threaded sideburns. 1. Busker’s burn brand.
2. Coin–dot eyebrows. 2. Vaalengartish port–wine mark.
3. Thin, tight lips. 3. Blue–stained tongue.
4. Chain–beaded mutton chops. 4. Scholar’s braided forelocks.
5. Resting teeth–bared. 5. Quiffed horns of ambition.
6. Prodigiously thick brow. 6. Pinch–pierced nose bridge.
ii: born in vanity:

rural aesthetic traits
Those from the rural backcountry of Calmyn are stereotyped to possess
such aesthetic traits, regardless of where they are actually from. Though
some find such physicalities speak to a shared knowledge of life beyond
the cities; the more urban consider such traits to be the likes of yokels,
thornbacks, and the uncouth.
1. Disassociated glare. 1. Scarlet flushed eyebags.
2. Sunken cheeks. 2. Witching pointer nails.
3. Flower–woven side whiskers. 3. Affixed lineage seal.
4. Battered stern jawline. 4. Thimble finger cap.
5. Pale–milk eyes. 5. Goose–pimpled flesh.
6. Piebald hair. 6. Chin like a knife’s edge.
part ii 27
iii: born in vanity:
vaunted aesthetic traits
To be vaunted is to be ordained from birth as part of a line, proven in its
glory and its propensity towards prosperity. Though few bloodlines
among the vaunted possess traits beyond those inbred or trained by
sophist tutors; most claim otherwise or brandish bespoke heirlooms that
flaunt their wealth and station in ways none can ignore.
1. Amber–golden eyes. 1. Silvered heraldic besagew.
2. Bulawan floral crown tattoo. 2. Regalia sash of foreign patterns.
3. Graceful mien of regality. 3. Face of Ettinscove ceruse.
4. Key–keepers ornamental necklace. 4. Cinnabar powdered great wig.
5. Owl–feather ruff. 5. Yomundic–era baldric.
6. Locked labret piercing. 6. Seraphic white–lattice glove.
iv: born in vanity:

fallen aesthetic traits
None of a fallen house wish to display their status, for to do so is to invite
insult and injury. To be made fallen or born into such a lineage is to have
traits once considered vaunted, is to be brutalised and beaten, scarified,
and desecrated. They bear atrocious marks that might not be readily
noticed—and once seen, cannot be ignored.
1. Bashed–gimlet eye. 1. Butcher’s Thorns tattoos.
2. Pyrite crowned incisors. 2. Lead debtor’s mask.
3. Petitioner’s shorn pate. 3. Bastard’s crown of nails.
4. Heir–Saviour’s disfiguring burns. 4. Back whipped to bending.
5. Etchlend letters patent pennant. 5. Marked in cinnabar stains.
6. Penitent’s script–carved emaciation. 6. Severed ring fingers.
28 part ii
iv: born in vanity:

aesthetics of the rich
The wealthy adhere to an aesthetic standard that flaunts their wealth in
the faces of all who view them. These ostentatious displays defy one’s
breeding or locality, for wealth is a state of mind defined by a state of
being which must be viewed with jealousy in order to be truly appreciated.
1. Slavebone dental implants. 1. Smooth face masked in gold leaf.
2. Mouth, tattered by mummy rot. 2. Necklace of debtor locks.
3. Pallid by leechwork. 3. Multiple familial signet rings.
4. Uncalloused hands. 4. Gilded canine teeth.
5. Shimmers with ambergris sheen. 5. Glutton’s throat gout.
6. Floral ribboned warrior’s wig. 6. Bespoke crafted parade mask.
part ii 29
vi: born in vanity:

aesthetics of the poor
One cannot hide being poor, least of all in Calmyn. To be poor is to find
yourself subect to insult, injury, and harm which compounds endlessly.
What seems to others a pathetic display of poor life choices is in truth the
consequences of a hateful society where one harm leads invariably to another.
1. Cauliflower knuckle scars. 1. Severed of offensive fingers.
2. Jaundiced by organ debt. 2. Splinted, recent injuries.
3. Louse–ridden and filthy. 3. Hacking labourer’s cough.
4. Flayed of their pound of flesh. 4. Bandaged facade.
5. Shattered, fencepost teeth. 5. Crudely stitched throat wound.
6. Tar–addict’s necrotic flesh. 6. Bedraggled by bot flies.
30 part ii
fffffffcfffffff
MOODS IN CALMYN.
ffffffffffffffff
T
he general attitude of any given
person in Calmyn can be easily read
through their moods. Stereotypes are held
between various groups depending on their
"the new capital, locality; with the metropolitan sorts of Grand
the hub of modernity," Calmynswaard sneering dismissively towards
page 250 urbanites of ‘lesser’ urban centres. Those of a rural
upbringing will always be pegged as a rural sort, though
the distinctions between a Mothlighter and a
"High and winding
hills whose loose
Westergormer will be lost on those not seeking to
look deeper.
rocks bloom
These moods are meant to telegraph attitude and
with moth larvae
open potential routes for interaction, both with non–
in the spring,"
player characters and by characters with the wider
page 193
world. Should a player character choose a mood; pick
one that represents that which holds the most influence
"the highest point in over their being: their status, local, or whatever seems
Calmyn sits at its
northern border."
most interesting.F
page 184
part ii 31
i: d6 metropolitan moods
1. Brusque, hurried and easily 4. Speaking to be overheard, a
agitated. gossip; seldom has useful talk.
2. Putting on airs; a cultured 5. Debauched and cruelly playful;
poseur, devoid of greater depth. seeks distraction from the void.
3. Sneering, belligerent, and 6. Crudely dismissive, all too
grumbling; always frustrated. tired; often churlish for it.
ii: d6 vaunted moods

1. Nose turned up, eyes glazed 4. Grimaces in pity at those
in ignorance. they deem a lesser.
2. False half–smile, an open 5. Spits and throttles a hand
statement of disdain. as if to threaten the world.
3. Clears their throat, always to 6. Interrupts and corrects those
cite precedents. they deem less wise.
iii: d6 fallen moods

1. Mewling, broken; a lickspittle 4. Words like a firebrand, the sort
wretch cringing at shadows. ignored at your own risk.
2. Coldly distant, save for a curt 5. Hacking and jittering, a wreck
smile belying revanchist dreams. denied their stabilising fix.
3. Looms imposingly, with eyes 6. Forced smiles, a pathetic
of hateful judgement. pleading for some small mercy.
32 part ii
iv: d6 rich moods
1. Grins gregariously, a foppish 4. Cruel in their station, supremacy
dandy dwelling in idle comfort. assured by way of their coffers.
2. Self–deluded by power; views 5. Incompetent, a failson clinging
everything only in transactions. to luxury with an infant’s grip.
3. Mealy–mouthed and 6. Nigh mechanical in how
accommodating, unused they view humanity; a cold,
to the power of wealth. detached soul.
v: d6 poor moods
1. Downtrodden gaze, pathetic 4. Broken by the world, they bear
by cruel circumstances. the bruises of too many
punches rolled with.
2. Starving, always; sallow 5. Sickly by circumstance, ill from a
of skin and sunken cheeks. thousand minor unpleasantries.
3. Delirious of station, stumble 6. Wears a brave face, broken by
drunk in a hopeful frolic. the weight of the world.
vi: d6 urbanite moods
1. Driven by pride in their 4. Errantly gossips, spreading
urban centre, viewing all hearsay and rumour for want
other locales as hollow. of being interesting.
2. Posturing for position, a sort 5. Pompous, the sort of smug
that craves attention and fears only belonging to a delusional
being revealed. erudite bohemian.
3. Scorns the wider world 6. Hateful of any ‘civilization’
which can never know the smaller than a city, viewing
complexities of urban life. them as backwater and foolish.
part ii 33
vii:
1. Perceives the world with
d6 rural moods
4. Listens to the environment,
watchful eyes, like an animal as if they understand a secret
who knows it may become prey. language of the wilds.
2. Walks with careful steps, 5. Gesticulates when they talk,
mindful of twigs; a calculated to emphasise importance;
gait and stern posture. to be memorable.
3. Suffers an errant chill shiver, 6. Keeps small food stuffs in their
mumbles unintelligibly; pockets, an errant snack to stuff
blames a relative. Will never a mouth which might speak
acknowledge this if called upon. out when not warranted.
viii: d6 scholarly moods

1. Ignorant and belligerent towards 4. Sycophantic, a mewling and
any wisdom but their own. acquiescent stooge.
2. Loveless and distant, single– 5. Studiously professional,
minded in their pursuits. curt and serious at all times.
3. Tyrannical, a petty dictator 6. Dreary and cruel, a meandering
obsessed with their own voice. self–obsessed windbag.
ix: d6 military moods

1. Stoic but lickspittle, endures 4. Restrained, caged with nervous
suffering so as to belong. energy; ready to be unleashed.
2. Jarhead jingoist, ready to strike 5. Pompously self–assured, every
any who question their loyalty. slight a chance to spite an enemy.
3. Stony faced but clearly haunted 6. Consummate professional,
by the weight of their deeds. untrusting of superiors but
loyal to a fault.
34 part ii
x: d6 destitute citizen moods
1. Depressingly self–reliant, 4. Desperate for news, from
anxious at the actions of others home and abroad; unable to
turning into burdens. live happily outside escapism.
2. Nostalgic, often daydreaming 5. Bored and numb, expects
of times less bleak. Churlish nothing; let alone anything good.
when wakenly present. Never surprised by ill tidings.
3. Penny–pinching, a frugal miser 6. Hateful to urbanites, believes
who has never had anything, those living in urban centres to
and thus will never know to have spurned ‘true culture’ for
have enough. ‘easy comforts.’
xi: d6 westergormer moods {mountains}

1. Windswept and always 4. Mindful of their step, a cautious
dishevelled for it; as if the air soul; bears the nervous candour
swirls only to their detriment. of one used to falling.
2. Bold, all their motions 5. Keeps an eye on the clouds;
telegraphed with intent; a clucks their tongue at the taste
being who does not stumble. of ill weather.
3. Prone to pointed gesticulation, 6. Always errantly limbering up;
forceful; clearly hates being stretching limbs and popping
misunderstood. joints; cannot help themselves.
part ii 35
xii: d6 mothlighter moods {hills}
1. Watches the horizon with a 4. Twitchy with a weapon,
dull gaze; as if expecting death reaches for it at loud sounds.
from above. Hardly ever A huffing snicker when it
realises they’re doing it. isn’t warranted.
2. Sniffs at the air like a beast, 5. Picks at any minor blemish
cringes; rankling at the stench upon their flesh; pinching and
of mud, goblins, and bugs. popping; fearful of parasites.
3. Tastes the air, becomes cagey 6. Nasty, inhospitable glances are
when it seems ‘thick.’ Barely shared at others. As if they
contains a primal rancour don’t believe anyone else is
when it storms. who they appear to be.
xiii: d6 ettinscover moods {coast}

1. Clammy flesh, limp 4. Rough–and–tumble sort;
handshakes, and stiffly always looking like they’ve
postured; moves with fluid just emerged from one fight
momentum in a morning mist. and are looking for the next.
2. Dreary demeanour; 5. Sniffs at their outfit, always
like a fisherman regalling ignorant of their own stench
roundabout for no cause but overly animated in
but to hear their own voice. response to another’s.
3. Salt and dandruff flake from 6. Moves in a rhythm, a sailor’s
their pate, they spit before shanty grumbled under their
they say anything of worth. breath; turns their mind off
whilst performing menial deeds.
36 part ii
xiv: eindercragsman moods {canyons}
1. Stands with the cautious grit of 4. Has a harsh, stony glance;
one used to violence, and more looks at folk like they’re figuring
used to striking first. out how best to butcher them.
2. Doesn’t flinch, instead putting 5. Quick to silence, closing their
a hand to a hilt and turning at lips and keeping them sealed;
a threatening sound. Mistakes measuring their breath to an
this trauma for learned caution. inaudible huff.
3. Rolls their fingers errantly, 6. Croons out sorrowful songs
as if jonesing for a snuffbox from the corner of their mouth;
or to pull a trigger. bemoaning the many indignities
and shortcomings of life.
xv: saglashed moods {bogs}

1. Swats at errant flies, be it with 4. Spits when they curse, dribbling
a free hand or a harsh blow of filth in a spittal spray as they
air from their mouth. speak with vitriol of hate.
2. Grins at cruelty shown to those 5. Insular and cautious around
they believe ‘too civilised’, outsiders; finding human
laughing when beautiful company treacherous and
artifice is tarnished or soiled. rumours of monsters laughable.
3. Scratches without consideration 6. Shifty, often crouching;
for appropriate–ness or place; a stalker’s gait indiscriminate
no matter how uncouth. towards filth or muck.
part ii 37
xvi: susternfolk moods {fields}
1. Coughs and sneezes when they 4. Long, attentive silences, ended
talk; beset by a hay fever in all by a solemn nod regardless of
places but home. any agreement.
2. Rosy flaking nose, easily burnt 5. Aches from the weather,
by the sun. Seldom of good cracking their back and
spirits during daylight hours. rubbing their knees; every
little shift a new petty agony.
3. Liturgical speech peppers their 6. Of a rough demeanour, as if
diction, with praises to the expecting any interaction to be
All–Father and the Hand of a labour and anyone interacted
Prosperity factoring into most with to be a burden.
common, transactional speech.
xvii: etchlender moods {borderlands}

1. Openly distrustful and 4. Postures with thuggish
disrespectful; keeps a distance regality; acting equal parts a
as if to avoid being shanked. noble soul and someone who
Only cooperative after would strangle another and
a handshake. laugh all the while.
2. Code–switches accents 5. Carries themselves like a
throughout conversation, hedge knight, speaks their
speaking the language of names and titles and judges the
oppressor and oppressed recipient to such knowledge by
depending on their audience. how they weigh these things.
3. As pretentious as a would–be– 6. Speaks and moves in threatening
king; disdains the authority of motions; knowing coercion is
civilization. Acts a brute, might the only language that will
makes right outside the law. keep them free and alive.
38 part ii
fffffffcfffffff
STYLES IN CALMYN.
ffffffffffffffff
S
tatus and wealth mean everything,
and thus those with means seek always to
display themselves festooned in treasures to
the envy of all. Yellows are the preferred
colour of those loyal to the duchy, as it shares the beauty
"a flower which of the Flower of Prosperity and the many bountiful
brought them joys flower fields of the nation’s interior. Those who seek to
not known since defy conformity for sake of courting controversy or
departing the spitting upon the oligarchs in power wear other colours,
radiance of the and do so boldly with knowing intent. Textiles are taken
All–Father", from all the world over, and many styles are pilfered
page 12 from cultures once conquered; their patterns supplanted
by those more befitting the Calmynite palette.
Those without means, and those without station;
those who struggle to survive; have little say in how
their style expresses themselves. They wear what they
can, pleading to be seen as an individual or to be not
F
seen at all if it will lead only to further scorn.
part ii 39
40 part ii
i: styles {rich}
1. Wool cloak of peach, embellished 1. Ecru robes embellished with
with gemstone beads depicting the Flower of Prosperity and
faction loyalties. a peacock pattern lining.
2. Ecru wool doublet with a high 2. Shoulder hugging cape of
collar, adorned with key goldenrod over an ornately
patterns in ivory thread. patterned courtier’s coat.
3. Golden tangerine doublet 3. Ostentatious winter beast coat,
with a chevron pattern and flecked with camouflage and
a gold–plated belt. accented cufflinks.
4. Tailored leather long–coat 4. Red tweed blazer with pointed
with crimson–and–gold leaf shoulder pads and a gold–
adornments. thread waist sash.
5. Gown of deep–pile velvet in 5. Aureolin brocade coat with a
lemon, embroidered with black sash of umber Norui silks.
thread floral patterns.
6. Paned doublet worn boldly open, 6. Plain but finely–woven furred
with puffed slashed pants and gown, padded to display a
a heinous codpiece shaped like sense of strength and warmth;
the head of a scowling crocodile. with a ruff collar.
part ii 41
ii:
1. Raggedy black linens,
styles {poor}
1. Grease–stained long wool
frayed in subservience. jerkin, a ruined inherited garb.
2. Stiff, ratty, sombre frock coat; 2. Stained workman’s tunic, susp–
as if pulled from a corpse. enders and worn leather boots.
3. Layers of clothes, stained 3. Tight, fraying shirt with
with sludged, worn thin horizontal stripes; and a flat–
and shredded by abuse. top hat with fresh burns on it.
4. Shriven and wrapped in 4. Moth–gnawed tweed jacket
bloodied linens; beneath and cotton knickers;
a cheap, ratty suit coat. muddied and unkempt.
5. Pauper’s vested frock coat with 5. Fraying urchin’s garb,
fingerless gloves and a wafting a few years too small and
hint of embalming fluids. worn to pieces by time.
6. Red, rat–felt great coat with 6. Shrouded in itching rags,
several stolen scarves and a with a Flower of Prosperity
buckle–belt hat with holes. pinned to their left wrist.
42 part ii
iii: styles {urban}
1. Sleek plaid suit with a hide– 1. Burgher’s cotton herringbone
riding stock collar and a cape bank suit with vest, and
like a beetle’s shell. a veiled flat–top hat.
2. Black turtleneck tunic with 2. Pretentiously pinstriped great
a mummer’s wimple veil to coat, lined with weasel fur
obscure all but the mouth. and a patchwork blouse.
3. Unstained, handknit white 3. Short–sleeved blouse beneath
sweater with trousers; garters, a Calveri–designed doublet
and thick kicking boots. with pyrite buttons.
4. Immaculately patterned vest of 4. Leather military duster coat
Salveri textile designs beneath over a yellow plaid vest with
a tan tweed frock. a Norui silk cravat.
5. Dishevelled, grody beige blouse 5. Itchy plaid sweater with tufted
beneath a long brown coat; knots, quilted pantaloons,
affixed with a yellow ribbon. and a fine handkerchief.
6. Striped linen blouse with 6. Fur–lined deerstalker’s jacket
pinstripe pants, suspenders, with tight leather gloves and
and a buckled felt hat. a thick, burlap sack mask.
part ii 43
iv: styles {rural}
1. Beige linen shirt, comfortable 1. Blackened doublet with rugged
twill pants, and a set of inherited cloak, stockings, latchet shoes
old leather suspenders adorned and a brimmed black hat.
with lock–shape clasps.
2. High–waisted pants, trimmed 2. Grey double–breasted frock
in leather, with a double–belted coat over a furred waistcoat,
jacket to keep out the elements. with a tall pelt hat.
3. Rugged flannel tunic affixed 3. Fleece–lined jerkin, soft leather
with a cockade in regional trousers, and comfortable
house crest colours. walking boots.
4. Belted white linen gown, 4. Thickly knit cable sweater with
with a pleated slash and a floral embellishment, oilskin
diadem of sunflowers. pantaloons, and hardy deck shoes.
5. Sleeveless chemise with 5. Rough blue trousers, woollen
a festive bibbed petticoat tunic shirt, bright straw hat,
and outrageous striped pants. and well–worn clogs.
6. Vocational sailor’s oilskin 6. Block–print patterned blouse
trousers, breathable tunic, under a wool vest with ox bone
and slashed blue deck jacket. buttons and a cheap cravatte.
44 part ii
v: styles {fallen}
1. Disproportionally bulky 1. Quarter sleeve shirt and a long
great coat of tarry black, bloodied great coat, worn with
with tarnished lock–shaped a leather skullcap beneath a
fastening clasps. cheap wig and stove–pipe hat.
2. Long suit jacket, once proudly 2. Broad shouldered trench coat
tailored but now a patchwork of chequered textiles, line with
affair of stitches and rat fur a raccoon pelt shawl and a
where opulent furs once lined. turtleneck sweater.
3. Petticoat, a recent purchase 3. Commoner’s leather doublet,
now marred by stains from a pinstripe trousers, and practical
public tarring. A well–wrought knee boots; all distinctly of
gibbet cage for the head, a lower class design but made
sneering punishment. with artifice enough to endure.
4. Once an elaborate wool coat, 4. Gown of ichorous boeman’s
its resplendent patterns are leathers, squaminous,
now obscured by grease stains. twitching; all too human.
5. Crudely–repaired chequered 5. Brutalist’s military great coat,
pattern jacket, tight–fitting worn as a cloak over a frayed
coachman’s gloves, and a Watts–Calmyn Consortium
burdensome fur lined raincoat— general’s uniform. No medals,
the look of one meant to drive and several buttons missing
their own carriage. or replaced cheaply.
6. Mourner’s long–sleeved black 6. Pale robes, once shimmering
robes, with an archaic long liri– mother–of–pearl; now faded
pipe and hood to obscure the by time and disgrace.
face of one with a shamed ego.
part ii 45
vi: styles {vaunted}
1. Voluminous gown of goldenrod, 1. Leather suit, sculpted and dyed
long–flowing and trailing several to appear like the musculature
feet behind. Emblazoned with of a flayed corpse. Golden palm
the house crest, complemented studs show the Butcher’s Thorns
with a jewelled floral diadem. embellished on bloodied gloves.
2. Empire–waisted day robes, 2. Black robes, fringed with the
lined with lace and decorated scintillating feathers of jungle–
with fresh sunflowers and waxed dwelling avian beasts and a
tulips. Ensembled like a ray of turquoise talisman depicting
the sun, a shimmer of Prosperity. the seals of foreign, fallen courts.
3. Double–breasted black 3. Tyrant–era robe of quilt–style
gambeson, with buttons of goldcloth brocade, worn
gilded ivory, and a beaded regally; like a painting of
Torrean belt sash. Prosperity made manifest.
4. Ecclesiatrical nun’s habit 4. Chemise like a sea of turquoise
in stark white; intentionally made from Norui silks, with a
splashed with red dyes, tasselled partlet about the neck
an inkling few gold flecks, displaying the house’s crest and
and a royal’s fur trim. A living golden chains bound about the
display of the Desecration. waist as a show of propriety.
5. Blue velvet quote worn over 5. Full doublet suit of beaded
a ruffled yellow shirt, with golden tortoise beetles make
dapper black leggings and fine the wearer appear as though
leather boots made from the they are the scintillating hoard
hide of leviathanic reptiles. in the Great Bank’s vault.
6. Blackened attire from antiquity, 6. Scholar’s gown in house colours,
the once beatific clothing of patterned with the crest, affixed
a now fallen house claimed with a cockade lapel seal, and
in conquest. Worn with a torc worn over a matching wool
of silvered eels, in hubris. vest and trousers with garters.
46 part ii
fffffffcfffffff
CALLS TO PLUNDER.
ffffffffffffffff
T
o join up with a cryptdigging company
is to risk one’s life in search of wealth which
goes rarely to the benefit of the worker
delving into the dark corners of the world.
To those in Calmyn, the opportunity is a means to
advance one’s social station; to redeem oneself for the
sins of their families, or to further spread their influence
across the known world to ensure their names remain
exalted in the duchy. F
part ii 47
i:
1.
calls to adventure {rich}
Service in this company will 1. The Great Banks will overlook
assure a position within the a poorly–invested loan in
Burgher’s Alliance. exchange for cryptdigging.
2. A tour spent cryptdigging 2. Within the crypt dwell
will see you welcomed into artefacts of baleful power,
a prestigious social club the sort that would strike fear
that’s long denied you. in the hearts of your rivals.
3. Cryptdigging has been offered 3. You seek to see the world,
as a term to prevent your as though on a grand Tour of
family from falling to poverty. Plunders. To serve in a company
offers a degree of safety.
4. A vaunted house has offered 4. To spread prosperity is to ensure
you dowry and station, provided one is of use, and to be of use is
you do this dirty work for them. to avoid the shame of poverty.
5. Glory is found in bringing 5. A hated rival has bragged of
prosperity to foreign shores; their time cryptdigging and you
and you shall be found glorious. must show up their smug tales.
6. You seek to gain contacts in 6. You seek to elevate yourself to
foreign markets, so as to spread a company council, so you may
the prosperity of your family avoid the crypt but still enjoy
and reap wealth in turn. the wealth of its plunder.
48 part ii
ii: calls to adventure {poor}
1. You serve to avoid losing a 1. You took a job with this company
limb; as that’s what the debtors as a means of employment. You
said they’d come for next. had no other option, and they
lied about the dangers.
2. You seek vengeance and power, 2. You were given a choice: service
and a life spent killing monsters in a cryptdigging company, or
will grant you both should your time spent in the hard labour
hate keep you alive. camps of a military prison.
3. You have a fool’s hope for a 3. Fool that you are, you signed
better tomorrow, and you know on willingly hoping to get rich.
you’ll need to delve into the You’ve sunk too much cost to
underworld to reach it. back out now.
4. You were press–ganged into the 4. You’re cryptdigging to pay off
service of this cryptdigging medical debts, though you’re
company, and you’ve no means aware that the peril this work
to escape without legal invites means you cannot
chicanery and further debts. easily escape this vicious cycle.
5. Coercion from various bureaus 5. Ever the would–be bon vivant,
of the Calmynite duchy have you joined to surround yourself
seen you employed as a crypt– with the rich and powerful.
digger; to flee risks thralldom Alas: you spend most of your
or summary execution. time with the grunts, looking
upon the Council from afar.
6. You were starving and a crypt 6. Opportunity for one of your
digger gave you succour, station is rare in Calmyn.
only to force you to take their Service in a cryptdigging
place after they deserted. The company offers you a chance
company council doesn’t care. to escape your homeland.
part ii 49
iii: calls to adventure {vaunted}
1. Your participation in this crypt– 1. A cherished loved one has
digging company will serve you sinned enough to disgrace
in gaining influence and bragging the whole family. You serve to
rights within the Duchy bureaus both escape these consequences
and orders; enough to leverage and to cite deeds against any
against bureaucrats. would–be blackmailer.
2. You work among these thieving 2. Time in the service of plunder
dregs in the hopes of gaining will see you made worldly and
allies in a foolish ploy against with allies enough to someday
the Wizard’s supremacy. seize the Ducal Throne.
3. You delve the dark in search 3. You joined in secret from your
of proof that your lineage Family. You desire wealth
was endowed with a divine enough to usurp your betters
right to rule. and cast them into the muck.
4. You seek to gain a cult of 4. You know that a vaunted family
personality for your heroics. may fall, but the Great Banks
With a large enough lickspittle are everlasting. You venture so
following, no atrocity you as to make a place for yourself
commit will ever be questioned. in their exalted ranks.
5. You are present in this 5. You seek a path to immortality,
company as a means for your for death frightens you, as does
family to embezzle wealth. the knowledge that you cannot
You’re not happy about it, even take your earnings with you.
with a promised stipend. You will suffer not this indignity.
6. Your family suffered during 6. You are here to pursue the
the Desecration. Only by plunderer’s legacy and perform
plundering the dead of other a Tour of Plunder; to make
nations will you make yourself merry and maraud across the
right in their eyes, and grant known world; to cleave a song
yourself a sense of honour. worthy of the bards of old.
50 part ii
iv: calls to adventure {fallen}
1. Shame haunts your family 1. Your family is to be put to the
name, and only through many torch, to the last soul. Service in
storied deeds all the world this cryptdigging company has
over can you hope to escape granted you a stay of execution,
such shame. in note of your services.
2. Glory must be gained to have 2. Time spent in service to a
a name worthy of more than cryptdigging company will
spite and malice; you serve offer you time away from your
so as to gain such respect. unhallowed family home.
3. The vaunted houses are traitors 3. A betrayer to your family
to the last; heir usurpers of the line sits upon the Company
Wizard’s legacy. You venture Council. You serve so that
to gain proof of their wicked– you may see them shamed,
ness and to break their see them usurped, and
grasp on power. eventually see them slain.
4. The Great Banks ensured 4. Of all the titles stripped from
your family’s fall from grace your house, those related to
remained permanent; you seek cryptdigging were some of the
wealth and profane knowledge hardest won and most bitterly
so you might rob them in kind. lost. You seek to regain them.
5. Artefacts of great power may 5. Ancient grudges against man
allow you to rewrite history and monster alike see you take
and pen your family legacy in a up the mantle of cryptdigger,
kinder light. Nothing shall stop so you might honour the dead
you from such a dangerous path. and earn their faded greatness.
6. You foolishly believe that service 6. You seek to find a spouse of
in a company, likely for the influence overseas, so they
benefit of a vaunted house might vaunt your house with
patron; will see your family a dowry and make themselves a
name risen from the muck. show of your Calmynite ideals.
part ii 51
v: d66 beliefs in calmyn
11. The poor deserve their 21. Treachery is only treachery
suffering, for only in a crucible when a contract is broken. No
may they be reforged in worth. other oaths need be honoured.
12. All are born of Calmynite 22. Liberty can be found in chains,
sovereignty, those who cling but never abroad. A thrall
to other cultures are misled. prospers in Calmyn’s hands.
13. Wealth is the physical measure 23. No pursuit is greater than the
of one’s influence upon the grand work of Prosperity.
world, and is thus sacred. No deed is more sacred.
14. All deeds are transactional; trust 24. Adapt or die, and kill those who
not the altruist, for they seek adapt slower. The entrenched
a cheap price for your belief. slow prosperous momentum.
15. The dead pay no debts. It is 25. Any may become vaunted,
profane that they might cling but only the vaunted may fall.
to the wealth of the living. Know comfort in your place.
16. The Wizard’s gaze ignores 26. Doubt must never outweigh
those with gilded eyes, your ambition. The only failing
thinking them single–minded. move is to not move at all.
52 part ii
v: d66 beliefs in calmyn {cont.}
31. Calmyn is the only civilised 41. A bastard today is a lordling
land in the world. All other tomorrow. Know the worth
lands cling to barbarism. of your friends.
32. All are thankful for the inter– 42. To the Prosperous the
cession and wealth of Calmyn. Flower, to the Worthless
It leads the world into the light. the Butcher’s Thorns.
33. A bargain is only ever a burden: 43. No day is wasted if you’ve
no deal is as kindly as it seems. lined your pockets.
34. A fair wage dulls the knives of 44. There is no sin which cannot
indolence and leaves a hunger be paid in weregild. There is
for further labours. no debt which can be avoided.
35. Nothing beneath the earth is 45. Inheritance is the breaker of
sacred: all is tarnished, dirty, homes, the maker of friends.
and meant for living hands. Make your favouritism known.
36. The wealthy can afford 46. The taste of hope is cheap, and
anything but a conscience and certainty is cruel. Freeblades
a soul. Those must be earned. worth their pay are both.
part ii 53
v: d66 beliefs in calmyn {cont.}
51. You’ll always profit from the 61. Nobody ever did anything
friendship of those with weak for nothing. There is profit in
minds and strong backs. a corpse. Cherish this truth.
52. Everyone must start somewhere, 62. There is nothing more profane
and from the bottom you can than wayward poverty, for
see the most angles. even a thrall serves a purpose.
53. There are things in the wild 63. Little good can come from time
that no man can know or under– spent beyond lantern light.
stand, yet still they linger. Even in a civilised enclave,
shadows lurk and sneer in envy.
54. If the Hand of Prosperity is 64. History is written by the
rejected in kindness, it must All–Father’s heirs, by Tyrant
grapple and bind. For the aspirants. To aspire is to
good of all. be moral.
55. Hospitality is a trade, not an 65. There is little in this world
oath or an obligation. Debts one can accomplish in a single
of kindness are worth their lifetime; thus money assists
weight in blood. in magnitudes.
56. When one trafficks into 66. A debt must always be paid;
the strange, they trade the if not in coin than in time,
material for the metaphorical if not in time than in flesh,
and make themselves paupers if not in flesh than in offal,
to crowns unseen. and if not that then in means
beyond reckoning.
54 part ii
vi: d66 calmynite mementos
11. Lucky silver coin, shaved at 41. Poisoner’s pen, with a single
the edges. dose of venom.
12. Gunszelmarkt revolutionary’s 42. Antique fuse bomb of
bandana. exquisite artifice.
13. Ancestral tortoise brooch. 43. Scholar’s stimulating scalp oil.
14. Cane with an iron crocodile 44. Horrid looking moth, pinned
head topper. under glass.
15. Broken lock from the Banking 45. Jar containing multiple breeds
War. of leeches.
16. Sun of Prosperity cockade. 46. Pendant of the Midanian eye.
21. Con artist’s “I. O. U.” writ 51. Dowser’s gilded chain, slightly
of debt. haunted.
22. Patterned faux gemstone rings. 52. Burlap sack of goblin–heads.
23. Saglash–muddied petticoat. 53. Plundering era cairn urn.
24. Grandfather’s plague–stained 54. Powdered mummy dust in a
handkerchief. silvered snuff box.
25. Thrice–pawned wedding band. 55. Cuttingsway shaving blade.
26. Yomundic–era drinking horn. 56. Child’s tin crown of Prosperity.
31. Finely painted pewter spoon. 61. Exquisite faberge eel.
32. Desiccated goblin foot. 62. Candle made from offal.
33. Pickled crone’s tumour in a jar. 63. Consortium letter of marque.
34. Wood–carved mug depicting 64. The skull of a notably
the All–Father. intelligent scholar.
35. Small and portly lap dog. 65. Boeman’s chitin coffer purse.
36. Smuggler’s flower brick. 66. Penannular Hand of Prosperity.
part ii 55
fffffffcfffffff
CALMYN
CRYPTDIGGER
ARCHETYPES.
ffffffffffffffff
T
he character of Calmyn colours
its perceptions of the traditional archetypes
of those found in a cryptdigging company.
Though still every bit the eclectic cadre of
vagabonds, miscreants, tomb robbers and foul magicians;
those who have lived their lives under the influence
of the Hand of Prosperity are of a cut more cruel than
the rest. They are the victims and profliterators of a
capitalist regime which seeks to continue its perfidious
rule of Lendal whilst escaping further torment at the
hands of the Wizard of the White Tower. F "the acts of
the Wizard of the
White Tower
are known all the
world over, for his
actions toppled
Calmyn into
despair",
page 14
56 part ii
i: believers
Religion offers no comfort in Calmyn: those who claim to hear the voice
of the divine care nothing for charity. Faith is a means of manipulation,
another avenue for the avaricious to pursue power. These are the self–
righteous and the profane: proselytisers preaching ideals of supremacy.
1. hand of prosperity
Man is akin to god as man is forged in the image of the All–Father,
and those heirs guided by Calmynidus will bend heaven and earth
for sake of wealth alone. Such is the creed of the Hand of Prosperity,
who prioritise the accumulation of wealth over all other things;
denouncing or flogging those who dare blaspheme by pleading
for alms or charity.
outfit: brass mask of the All–Father, gilded warhammer depicting
the Hand of Prosperity.
2. ser midanian’s flock
During the Desecration, Ser Midanian was a cherished folk hero.
Their touch was the Hand of Prosperity, for their fingers made auric
the freshly dead and bound their spirits in a tomb of gold. Many a
gilded saint are buried beneath the land, and though all Calmynites
know the dead shall not claim wealth the Cult of Ser Midanian
knows that the dead need not be buried as paupers.
outfit: waxed seal depicting the Flower of Prosperity, a bejewelled,
gold–thread frock and a golden reliquary bone.
3. ghoul idolator
There are those so debased in their pursuit of validation that they
make mockery of the divine by supplicating themselves to the
idolatry of the vaunted. They lick at the boots of the vaunted and
the wealthy and view them as a modern godhead; a state that they
too wish to ascend to and may attain with enough lusting devotion.
outfit: grisly idol’s flesh mask and a scourge of scavenged hair,
cloth and mementos.
part ii 57
4. heresy of the filthy lucre
Prosperity did not mean wealth when it was preached as the grace
Calmyn was to bestow upon the world. That wealth and coin have
supplanted enlightenment and dominion shames Calmynidus,
who tamed the land and thought to offer its bounty to all. Profit
sullies prosperity, and to fight for purity is to risk one’s life.
outfit: marred Lysian coin pendant, a flagellant’s scarring,
and a coin–forged dagger.
5. orthodoxy of the wizard
Once rare outside of Keene, in the time since the Desecration’s scars
began to mend, a countless many came to worship the Wizard of the
White Tower. These lickspittle godsmen cloy for position in secret
societies and university bureaus, spouting vile rhetoric and seeking
arcane powers to further vaunt their hateful man–made–god.
outfit: opulent white velvet gown, an ivory scroll of the Wizard’s
edicts, and a white marbled sceptre.
6. throneseeker
The Coup destroyed the royal line of Calmyn, scattering the ordained
right to rule of the Tyrant to those of distant, muddied bloodlines.
The Throneseekers believe themselves stewards of Calmynidus:
heirs to the All–Father’s power in mortal form destined to find
those most worthy to retake the throne, or to take it for themselves
when the stars are right.
outfit: Flower–studded jerkin of lush fabrics, a half–destroyed writ
of a noble family, and Yomundic–era silvered epaulettes.
58 part ii
"Hand of Prosperity Priest"

part ii 59
"Blackened Tongue Cabalist"

60 part ii
ii: cabalists
Those who pursue mastery of the strange and other–worldly are uniquely
unpleasant individuals. They consort with Cinderbeasts and entities of the
eldritch unknown for the sake of petty ego. No good comes from such comm–
unication, for no dominion can be truly enforced. Still, the occultists
of Calmyn pursue such matters recklessly as any other—hoping to gain an
upper hand against their rivals even at the cost of their immortal souls.
1. consortium occultist
Metaphor is the language of the strange and unknowable, and it is
only through mastery of the subtle meaning of words that an occultist
can seek mastery of unclean powers. The Consortium has studied
ritual since the Coup, creating would–be arcanists indebted to the duchy
and endowed with terrible power to compliment their loyalty.
outfit: pinstripe frock coat, eldritch hand–scarring, and a locked
grimoire of theory.
2. geist–in–chains
The Desecration roused the dead and manifested them by the weight
of their buried wealth. In Etchlend, a house made fallen bound
them–selves in filthy lucre and profane rite, forcing their body into
a half–dead state and gaining mastery over the magical potential
of their tarnished souls. Though officially purged to the last,
their tradition remains a vicious temptation to many.
outfit: binding chains festooned with petty mementos; a death scar.
3. esoteric order of the golden cormorant
Within the high halls of Grand Calmynswaard, the rich and well–
travelled play games of governance by making compacts with
beyonders through foreign ritual. By making mockery of sacred
rites, the Esoteric Order of the Golden Cormorant assures its own
damnation whilst viewing itself as heirs of “wordless” cultures.
outfit: high society lounge suit, a planchette talisman in the
shape of a cormorant bird.
part ii 61
4. moth–maddened
Red lights fall to earth out in the hill country of Calmyn’s exterior
marches, and those touched by the strange sometimes inherit its
agonising touch. Tumours fester on the Moth–Maddened, blooming
into strange but beautiful lepidoptera; revealing patterns and flaws
in reality. Warning of calamity, and driving an irreconcilable wedge
between the afflicted and the stable world they once inhabited.
outfit: pockmarked by trypophobic scars, accompanied by an
errant few strange moths.
5. saglashian swamp thruege
Goblins proliferate in the Swamps of Saglash; enough that Calmyn
considers it a no–man’s–land. This is how the duchy spits on tradition.
The Swamp Thrueges of Saglash have reigned since before the
Tyrant’s coming, dealing in the souls of thralls and the creation of
vile beasts. They are the mothers of monsters and the fathers of
fangs, reprehensible in their power and made derelict by modernity.
outfit: woad–slathered limbs, a furred band collar, and several
reagent–stuffed pouches.
6. the blackened tongue
The most desperate and bereft of Calmyn’s broken society will trade
their immortal souls for a chance to burn their betters and allow others
to inherit a kinder tomorrow. They fill themselves with Cinderbeasts,
with whatever evils will grant them assurity; bloating themselves
to never again feel hunger, blackening their tongue with the tarry
presence of unclean words and brimstone vengeance.
outfit: distended, shifting gut; a tongue blacker than the void,
a compact’s burn scar.
62 part ii
iii: cut–throats
For those who are willing to commit any number of abhorrent acts for
sake of coin, the path of the Cut–Throat is all too common in the back
alleys and highways of Calmyn. Life is cheap enough to call too many
to the trade, and expensive enough to see only the most vicious survive.
1. cuttingsway slasher
They stalk the abandoned tunnels and cuttingsways where the fallen
fled the Wizard’s wrath; killers without creed or mercy beyond the
fetishistic and totemic. Souls broken by the weight of the Desecration
and the long indignities of life in a nation that values coin over
humanity. They don horror masks and long knives, silent in the
deed; acknowledging one another like posturing rogue elephants.
outfit: horrid–but–utilitarian murderer’s mask, a grisly–and–brutal
bloodslathered weapon.
2. racketeer collectionist
One of the few ways the poor can get a leg up in Calmynite society
is by breaking the legs of those poorer than themselves. Racketeer
Collectionists serve at the behest of petty crime lords, Great Bank
interns, and often as the ‘reputable face’ when dealing with fallen
houses. They’re little more than dolled up brigands, playing at polite
society whilst acting to spread misery for a chance out of their own.
outfit: gaudy linen coat, a faux–gilded collection tin, a set of fine
gloves, brass knuckles.
3. fixer for the burgher’s alliance
To be a fixer means to be a rich man’s garrote wire, a vaunted house’s
hired gun, and a poor family’s nightmare. The Burgher’s Alliance
honours its contracts, pulling those who make corpses that outweigh
their debts into the ranks of the illusory middle class. Many prefer the
weight of sin over being indebted and at risk of a fixer’s visit themselves.
outfit: decorative wool vest with your master’s colours, leather
gloves, a gaudy weapon.
part ii 63
4. consortium agent
The Watts–Calmyn Consortium still rules the world by way of bribes,
coercion, assassination, and blackmail. To be an agent of that group
is to enjoy all the finery of life away from prying eyes. Agents are
planted in cryptdigging companies or ducal embassies, ready to butcher
anyone for sake of Calmyn’s prosperity and personal commission on
command.
outfit: mottled leather coat, a silver badge of Consortium
authority, a hidden vial of arsenic.
5. youth in revolt
The lost generation has no small amount of outspoken, antagonistic,
violent individuals, and these rebels with a cause are scorned by a
society that has no wish to be deemed complicit or made out to be
collaborators. To be branded a Debtor Rebel or one of the Gunszelmarkt
is to be condemned to the firing squad—but only if one lies down like
a dog to take it. Young rebels with a body count make change far
more readily than a youthful corpse.
outfit: slashed–and–patchwork jacket, a vicious knife, and a
pamphlet of beliefs.
6. the order of eels
Though originating during the Era of Prosperity, the Order of Eels
came into its own following the Coup. Trained kingkillers and
professional turncoats, the Order of Eels serve the concept of the
vaunted houses—allowing the most exalted of Calmyn’s society to
slither away from controversy by way of bloodied knives and
murdered rivals.
outfit: silver harlequin’s mask, neck tattoos of coiling eels, an
heirloom stiletto dagger.
64 part ii
"The Cuttingsway Slasher"

part ii 65
"The Academy Berdisher"

66 part ii
iv: dastards
Bravado and flamboyance are lauded in Calmyn; for those who speak fast
and act faster are considered to be destined to rise in station and make
princes of the paupers in their midst. Most come from money and power;
for only being born of such privilege can allow for the pure boldness
it takes to act in such open smug superiority.
1. colonial dragoon
Despite Calmyn’s position now as a duchy, its efforts across the known
world are far from tamed. The bravest leathernecks and boldest
would–be heroes are still shipped far and wide to promote prosperity
no matter the cost. Colonial Dragoons embody the fighting spirit
of Calmyn, like living banners of an idealised nation.
outfit: full naval commander’s costume, masquerade mask,
bespoke officer’s sabre.
2. academy berdisher
Every school worth even a fraction of its admission price offers
extracurricular activities in some school of combat. The art of
berdishery, that being the duelling combat of using sparth axes,
is considered a cultural institution from the Plundering Era. Those
who practise it today are cherished for their adherence to tradition.
outfit: padded leather jackets, marten–fur cloak, an heirloom
beridish ax.
3. consortium bravo
If not for the Bravos, the Watts–Calmyn Consortium would be so
easily seen for what it is. Brave, daring, of a charisma seen only rarely
in a generation; such dastards are decked in medals and cultivated
to assume the aesthetic necessary to be viewed as a heroic underdog;
the likes of which the foreign markets might foolishly trust and that
which those in the homeland view as an aspirational entity.
outfit: silken swashbuckler’s shirt, officer’s padded jacket,
lapel and breast medals of rank and honours.
part ii 67
4. ettinscove roughnecks
The coastal folk of Calmyn have long been viewed as rowdy and
uncouth, a subculture unto themselves. The Plundering Era saw them
travel abroad, axe in hand. In the modern days, they are the stereotype
of barroom brawlers, maritime privateers, and treasure seekers—quick
to throw a punch, and endowed with luck born from a life of violence.
outfit: heirloom yarn sweater embellished with floral patterns,
utilitarian hand axe, reinforced steel drinking tankard.
5. order of the knights starless
Born from cultural appropriation of Calveri aristocracy, the Order of
the Knights Starless are an order of bastard–born burghers and fallen
house heirs who flock to a banner which might see them removed
from the great game of Calmyn’s posturing society. The Order is
respected, its folk considered selfless in accepting their disreputable
position and working to better the Duchy. The Calveri consider
them to be a mockery of true knighthood and spit at their name.
outfit: cold–colored gambeson; a buckler painted with a twilight,
starless sky.
6. the fraternity of horns
When an heir to fortune and prosperity comes of age and seeks to prove
themselves, they often petition the Fraternity of Horns to undertake
the Tour of Plunder. Originally a bardic institution in the courts of
the Tyrant, the Fraternity now serves as sponsors to see those exalted
in wealth thrown into dire circumstances for a taste of danger and a
chance at treasure. Something to earn them more than just their name.
outfit: plunderer’s map of Lendal, ostentatiously horned helmet,
a gilded drinking horn.
68 part ii
v: everyman
There is no glory to be found among the labouring masses, though the
everyman will disagree for sake of braggadocious self–worth. Among the
people of the world, Calmynites consider themselves the most modern,
urbane and educated—and for every truth to this, there are a thousand
lies and caveats revealing them as ignorant and ordinary as anyone else.
1. agrarian
Those who work the fields, the orchards, and the ranges; foragers
or farmers, fruitsellers or municipal sharecroppers. Agrarians are the
backbone of Calmyn’s society, though their lot is thankless. They
feed the duchy and allow it to prosper and spread unto foreign shores.
outfit: well–weathered boots, entrenchment tool, heirloom seeds,
extra quality rations.
2. legalist
Calmyn would be nothing without its courts, for they allow the Great
Banks to rule with impunity and the Watts–Calmyn Consortium
to act without clemency. Legalists know the bureaucratic loopholes,
palms to grease, and which wigs to powder in order to get things
done. They are complicit in all manner of strife, debt, and ruin,
but enjoy a reasonable life as cogs in a terrible machine.
outfit: legalist’s frock, ruffled cravat, a haughty cinnabar–powdered
wig, travelling gavel.
3. debtmaker
To be a debtmaker is to be an agent of the Great Banks, and it is to
be the most loathsome sort of predator. Debtmakers are agents of
loan, usurers who find those in need and offer them a taste of hope
which comes at a price they cannot pay. Debtmakers are the modern
thrallmasters, shackling generations and families into servitude;
reaping organ, flesh, and any chance to escape for their own coffers.
outfit: debt ledger, mancatcher pole, a heavy leather cosh,
and an old pointer hound.
part ii 69
4. metropolitan
Cityfolk are by and large just as miserable as anyone else, though
they dress it up well by clinging to a belief in culture, amenities,
and pride at working often menial or redundant careers. Cogs in the
machine of prosperity like anyone else, they universally posture at
being individuals; conformists despite their loud denial of the term.
outfit: fashionable but informal clothing, well–made but
uncomfortable footwear.
5. agitator
Those who dare challenge the belligerent status quo are decried
as agitators, enemies of the peace, rabble–rousers, Debtor Rebels,
or agents of the Gunszelmarkt. This is seldom true, but a pamphlet—
no matter serious or satirical—has a habit of rankling the nostrils
of the upper crust. To be an agitator is merely to have an opinion,
and to be foolhardy enough to voice it with a belief that it shouldn’t
doom you to death.
outfit: messenger’s bag, several dozen political pamphlets,
solid running shoes.
6. thrall labourer
Just because one is poor need not mean one is a thrall, even if it feels
as such. Thralls exist below the bottom rung of society: poorer than
the poorest, forced into labour, little more than bags of blood and
organs for those who might desire an anatomical oddity or to indulge
in a murder. Thralls endure the worst jobs for miserly pay which is
stolen away by agents of capital, for sake of debt, tenement housing,
and gruel.
outfit: wooden yoke of servitude, glinting shackles with symbolist
debtor locks.
70 part ii
"The Metropolitan Everyman"

part ii 71
"A Goblin-Hunter Freeblade"

72 part ii
vi: freeblades
Freeblades have been the backbone of Calymnite society since the Plundering
Era. They serve as bondsmen and conquerors, killing at the behest of their
betters and spreading the Hand of Prosperity across the known world.
To be a Freeblade is to be readily employed, and serve at the behest of the
Great Banks by proxy or direct action. Freeblades are as lauded as they
are reviled, dependent on who holds their contract.
1. banksman
Prolific in their ubiquity, many freeblades begin their careers in
the ranks of the Banksmen. Though often little more than hired
thugs on retainer, any Banksman worth their pay cheque will soon
find themselves on foreign shores or plunder a tomb.
outfit: tin–plated oil–skin apron, badge of commission and a
claviger’s truncheon.
2. banker's blade
A profession for those deemed unwise in numbers beyond force
multiplication. Trained to guard with all but their lives, they are
a common sight among Cryptdigging companies out of Calmyn—
usually wayward children of bureaucrats seeking their parent’s
approval and prove themselves worthy of a desk job.
outfit: gaudy parade armour with beaded epaulettes, a pattern
welded arming sword, something to prove.
3. plunderman
Once a respected trade, they are increasingly rare in the modern era
due to the advent of the Banksmen and the cost for proper training
in the art of the axe. Plundermen are marauders, profiteering vikings
who historically made their riches against Maigne, the Gorgon Coast,
and the Dwarfs of Rytik. Those who cling to the aesthetic today are
traditionalists at worst, or all–too–often just looters in horned helms.
outfit: auroch–horned bronze helmet, a mass–manufactured hand
axe, a fur–lined greatcoat.
part ii 73
4. judicial champion
The courts allow the rich and the vaunted to rule at the behest
of the Great Banks. As such, none of these parties will ever be held
to consequence. Judicial champions serve the courts at the behest
of whoever will pay their wage, throwing down the gauntlet of trial
by combat to cow a settlement or gain satisfaction for their client.
outfit: holmgangr’s great blade, municipal–decorated armour,
a finely feathered hat.
5. terrorist for hire
Despite the avarice and dark ambitions of Calmyn, most folks—
on an individual level—find it repugnant to commit atrocities against
wide swaths of people. It is rare to find the sort willing to firebomb
a market square, break a dam to kill a village, or feed a noble heir
to a pack of hogs. However, when such an individual is needed,
the market provides. These terrorists for hire are paid both quietly
and well for their crimes.
outfit: waterproofed tailcoat, black iron prybar, trench dagger,
a fuse bomb or vial of acid.
6. goblin–hunter
If ever there was a growing field for freeblades, it would be as goblin–
hunters. Calmyn rots from within as goblins proliferate in number;
a grim parody of civilization that will soon cause serious infrastructural
harm. Armed with moxie, an ill–tempered dog, and often crude
weaponry, such freeblades can make a living wage—even if some
believe their presence invites goblins to spontaneously generate.
outfit: heavy, reinforced leather apron; an ill–tempered ratter dog,
a cleaver or weaponized gardening implement.
74 part ii
vii: outcasts
Those who do not belong are often put to death for fear of what a dissident
voice might bring to light. The Debtor’s Rebellion saw many branded as
an outcast when their crimes of demanding a better life were deemed illicit,
but not quite profane enough to warrant a firing squad. As more of the duchy
falls into dereliction and disrepute, more join the ranks of the outcast.
1. gunzelmarkt secessionist
The Gunszelmarkt took Parwijk because nobody cared or thought it
would matter. But now the youths are securing supply lines, preaching
secession, anarchy and solidarity. No true Calmynite abides such terms,
nor such outcasts. They might bring change, make things different.
Possibly better. They grow in numbers, and their cells more organised.
outfit: cotton twill coat with affiliated cell patches, a stolen bayonet
or hatchet, a servant’s peaked cap.
2. mothlitten
Those who wander into the hill country on pale moonless nights
often come back cursed, with a red tint to their eyes and a stammering
echo behind their words. The human body does not readily reconcile
glimpses into the unknown or the infinite: even the most sagacious
sophist find themselves rendered speechless by the terror. That they
are shunned by their peers for this suffering speaks to Calmyn’s cruelty.
outfit: skin that feels too loose and too tight, red–tinged sclera,
an out–of–body stammer, and moth bitten garb.
3. saglashed
Not everyone in Saglash is a destitute vagabond liable to butcher and
devour civilised folk, yet propaganda paints them as such, describing
them as little better than goblins. Indeed, many consider Swamp–
dwellers to be “Great Goblins”; much to their disdain. They are a folk
of rich, pre–Tyrant traditions, but few care to learn this or respect it.
outfit: muddied woollen garb, two–skin cloak, woad facial band
tattoo, a bog iron sword.
part ii 75
4. ex–convicted
No amount of time spent behind bars will see someone forgiven in the
eyes of society: it is a pipeline into thralldom, lined with enticements
for recidivism and cultivated desperation. It is to be set–up to fail,
to be punished and forced into labour for not having enough money
for bribes, no matter the crime.
outfit: ragged burlap pants, sweat–stained shirt; prisoner burn
brand, whip scars, fresh shackle wounds.
5. beggar host
To be unhoused and unlanded, yet also enthralled, is to truly be
outcast. Busking is barely tolerated unless one is of means, and
begging is punishable by assault. Beggars cling together, unnoticed
and unloved; in numbers enough for warmth but never enough
to completely keep out the chill of cold or warrant a massacre.
outfit: tattered shawl cloak, dirtied foot wrappings, a nasty
shanker, friends in low places.
6. taken generation
Though the Lost Generation speaks to those trapped within
generational poverty in Calmyn, one must note their intersection
with the seldom spoken of group known as the Taken Generation.
The children of officers, foreign enthralled, abducted chattel;
those who have been deemed Calmynite but still denied acceptance
by malus of being “an Other.” Poverty, predatory debts, and self–
doubt as colonised people haunt their steps.
outfit: ill–tailored Calmynite garb, shackle wounds, brand scar
of the Flower of Prosperity.
76 part ii
"A Gunzelmarkt Secessionist"

part ii 77
"The Learned Druggist"

78 part ii
viii: physikers
Under the auspices of expansion and foreign policy, Calmyn has long
been one of the chief developmental bodies for advancements in the field
of medicine. Alchemists and physikers the world over have found their
techniques plundered by various medical bureaus serving at the behest
of the Watts–Calmyn Consortium or for subsidiary cryptdigging outfits.
1. the college of nimble leeches
The most reliable medical art has always been leeching, and Calmyn
has long profited in the art due to the myriad hungering worms of
Saglash and Etchlend. The College of Nimble Leeches, though now
considered archaic despite its utility, serves more as academic sponsors
to scholars of hirudotherapy than an active force in the field of study.
outfit: many–pocketed apothecary’s apron, a jar of girthy leeches,
a jar of nimble leeches.
2. mummy druggists
The conquest of Norui granted Calmyn its most heinous addiction:
the interred dead. Recreational use of sacred bodies as a holistic
supplement, smoked substance, or luxurious meal is backed by
ample quacks, recreational cannibals, and All–Father monotheists.
who seek to defile the domain of Vashni.
outfit: patterned longcoat of Norui silks, a decorative urn of
mummified meats, a snuff box of powdered royalty.
3. resurrectionist
The Desecration caused many in Calmyn to burn their dead or bury
them deep beneath heavy stones when possible. But bodies are needed
for the medical arts. This is where Resurrectionists come into play:
they claim the most choice parts at the behest of schools and bureaus,
often receiving an honorary degree in this macabre field.
outfit: broad–brimmed hat, black linen frock suit, an organ in a jar,
a well–balanced spade.
part ii 79
4. triage surgeon
Bloodshed is inevitable in the wake of a power that has sought
to rule the world by force, by plunder, and by market. Triage surgery,
often performed by the untested in a moment of crisis, is nearly
a rite of passage among cryptdigging physikers who find little
practical application of their overpriced thesis work when made
to stitch someone up in the heat of a monstrous incursion.
outfit: cream–coloured overgament, long leather gauntlets,
a surgical tool bag, and a well–made amputation saw.
5. learned druggist
With access to every market of the known world, all manner
of curious pharmaceuticals find their way onto Calmyn’s shores.
A learned druggist is of a less than exalted field of medicine, though
their working with poultices and knowledge of esoteric substances
make them a valuable commodity both in a foreign court or when
cutting a deal with a back alley tar merchant.
outfit: double–breasted frock coat, magnifying pince–nez; a leather
roll of alcohol, numbing agent, venoms and recreational drugs.
6. the ineffable order
Since the fall of the throne, a growing orthodoxy has appeared within
the universities of Calmyn: a movement built upon the conceit of
malleable flesh and human potential. Though deemed by their
tenured betters as little more than phrenologists or borderline Chalice–
worshippers, the Ineffable Order remains assured in their dire purpose.
They will bring back the royals with dark alchemy and vile flesh.
outfit: billowing frock, several dozen knobular tumours,
an alchemist’s kit of phials, a leather roll of various blades.
80 part ii
ix: protagonists
Though held in high regard elsewhere, those who adhere to the life of a
self–proclaimed protagonist are but the choking Hand of Prosperity,
clutching on Calmyn’s behalf. Though they are of cultural aspiration to
the young and the weary, they are still the ruthless agents of colonialism.
In a world of repugnant moral greys, they are the shimmer of glinting coin.
1. calmynswaard bold
Be they rich or poor, those who claim themselves to be of the
Calmynswaard Bold serve as living exemplars of bootstrapping work
ethic and derring–do. They are groomed to present themselves in an
aspirational light, so that the young and despondent might also seek
to labour beyond their means on behalf of a thankless nation.
outfit: midshipmen jacket, workman’s boots, a handcrafted rapier,
a medal of honours.
2. knight of the order of prosperity
Decked in parade armour, gilded and embellished; the Order of
Prosperity embolden the populace across the world. They are little
more than petty officers, cadets who paid for their honours, drunk
on the propaganda of the Bureau of Imperial Conduct. None could
deny what they offer; to do so would invalidate the countless dead.
outfit: masterwork tin parade armour, a gold–foiled officer’s blade,
a sash tapestry displaying the Hand of Prosperity’s grace.
3. mercantilist–marine
From the long galleons they come, the sword of the Watts–Calmyn
Consortium and ten thousand other, lesser, guilds and operations.
The Corp of the Mercantilist–Marines are those who first land upon
foreign shores, who make their encampments and scout for well–
organised plunder. Villainized by their victims, they are lauded as
the many, the proud, and the prosperous in Calmyn proper.
outfit: maritime doublet, buckled doe–skin boots, boarding axe,
a doglock blunderbuss.
part ii 81
4. trade unionist
To preach solidarity and alliance is to risk death and disgrace, yet a
few unions have come to form in Calmyn. Their reach is limited to
fields where such movements do not risk the profits of their betters.
Even so, their mere existence provokes hope in the hearts of the
young; the belief that perhaps the smallest of improvements may
be made. Their prosperity sees them live as exemplars, and to die
only as fools or martyrs.
outfit: muted three–piece fullsuit, a belted greatcoat, a felt hat,
an understated sword–cane.
5. etchelend ranger
The borderlands of Calmyn are untamed and unbroken, like
a thrall free from the lash and hungry for vengeance. The Etchelend
Rangers are folk heroes to the Calmynite cottagers who dwell
in these broken places, striking out against the unsettling elements
of the night, and the grasp of foreign nations which seek to put
Calmyn under unclean hands.
outfit: hooded doublet, blinder mask, a decommissioned arbalest,
a book of unsettling lore from hedge witches and survivors.
6. forward brigade
Colonialists to the last, the Forward Brigade establish that which
is Calmynite and that which is holding back a populace from
embracing being Calmynite. The Forward Brigade are the first
populace, the governors, the gendarmes, the makers of the wordless,
the ones who turn neighbour against neighbour. Collaborators.
Oppressors. And for this, they are lauded as heroes of the duchy.
outfit: padded twill uniform, fine leather jackboots, an officer’s
berdish axe.
82 part ii
"Forward Brigade Protagonist"

part ii 83
"Seeker of the High Strange"

84 part ii
x: scholars
The universities of Calmyn are the envy of the world, or so they claim;
the price of admission is enough to see all but the vaunted thrown into
poverty. As a highly literate nation, many self–proclaimed scholars bilk
their cheap sophistry from the street corners; preaching all manner of lies
the public will hold as truth; even if it is printed on cheap vellum.
1. tower reliquarian
A celebrated order of scholars, filled to bursting with the tenured
and elderly who prefer studying plundered artefacts from the safety
of a vault. Sadly for aspirants, the only means of entry into the order
is to procure more treasures than a previous applicant; forcing those
who desire an easy life of anthropology into the crypt.
outfit: lush, comfortable academic’s gown; lace–edged neckwear,
an inherited travelogue.
2. conduct propagandist
Of all the insidious bureaus that see Calmyn flourish, the Order of
Imperial Conduct is one of the most vile. Employing experts, professors,
scholars and wise folk; it revises history to obscure travesty and failure.
It hunts down those who could offer other testimony, be they witnesses,
victims, or sites; and they break it until it fits their chosen mould.
outfit: modernist’s work suit with a soft collar and cravat;
a printed book of Calmynite colonialist rhetoric.
3. inspired truthseeker
As much of Calmyn’s history is notably revisionist and propaganda,
occasionally an academic will stumble upon a loose thread. An innocent
tugging upon the string reveals the tapestry of deceit, forcing them
into a terrible state of being. Do they continue, inspired, to seek the
truth despite the risks as any true academic should? Or do they walk
away, willfully ignorant but denied the usual bliss?
outfit: baroque student’s coat, buttoned at the neck; a linen vest
with a hidden pocket to conceal an illicit document.
part ii 85
4. seeker of the high strange
The unknown beckons like the most foul of lovers; offering infinite
potential and all the honeyed words. Scholars succumb more easily
than others to this; for they desire answers—no matter how profane.
Those who stumble beyond the enclaves of modernity find themselves
haunted; seekers of a High Strange, moonstruck theorists obsessed
with concepts that will bring them no joy nor comfort.
outfit: dishevelled, moth–eaten waistcoat; ink–stained hands,
a pile of unintelligible notes leading to a profane truth.
5. gloriata aspirant
It takes a special kind of sadist to promote the evils of Calmyn for what
they openly are and demand those lectured to applaud the grim work
of the duchy. The Gloriata Aspirants are such scholars, bureaucrats
at heart who exalt that all ends justify the means of Calmyn’s prosperity.
They seek tenure and audiences, so they may belch their calming
vitriol with a presumed air of legitimacy.
outfit: academic’s dress with a gold–thread shoulder sash, a beret
with floral tassel, a book of revised political and legal doctrine.
6. harlingstad academic
There is no institution of higher learning as well–known as the
University of Harlingstad. To be a scholar or a student within their
halls is to be vaunted, if not by birth than by deed. It is to have access
to many a plundered text and treasure, and to be secure in one’s future—
provided one keeps their head down and says nothing which might
court controversy with the Order of Imperial Conduct’s revised truths.
outfit: academic gown, lined in yellow silks; magnifying lorgnette
spectacles, a thesis book of approved theorems.
86 part ii
xi: travellers
As was preached by the Tyrant Calmynidus, all born in the visage of the
All–Father are of the Calmynite people. Travellers are no exception,
for the duchy ensures its supremacy by appropriating whatever cultural
traits it finds valuable and diluting them for the greed of the public market.
Foreign Lendalians are often inducted into the Vaalengart by force—
or otherwise made broken, colonised, and wholly mantled by a culture
which cannot abide anything other than its own mastery.
1. wordless culture
The Calmynites took all that was beautiful about their land, their
people, their culture; and boiled it down into a tasteless mush. It did
not take long before they rendered those they conquered outsiders,
killing their language, appropriating all that made them and their
people a brilliant piece of the grand tapestry of humanity.
outfit: grey cultural garb, mass–produced weaponry, bland rations.
2. gilded hand envoy
The Consortium made an example of their ancestors. The Envoy
wears it around their neck. A severed hand, dipped in gold;
a mockery. “The Hand of Prosperity” the Calmynites call it; one to
accept lest they take another and give it to someone more thankful.
A mark of indignity, a humiliating icon of coerced submission.
outfit: a gilded severed hand, worn as an amulet; diplomat’s finery.
3. ducal hostage
Calmyn maintains its supremacy over other duchies by hosting and
holding an unknowable number of hostages. Nobles, sages, political
prisoners, heirs to various chiefdoms and thrones—bound within the
borders of Calmyn and kept alive for coercion. Should a rival state
fall, payments cease, or a hostage no longer be required, they are
often thrown out into the world, left displaced and desperate to live.
outfit: iron masked helmet, prisoner’s rags, an errant shackle
chain, torment wounds.
part ii 87
4. profane exhibition
Calmynites enjoy celebrating themselves and view every other
culture as a misguided deviation of their own. Thus, it is horrid when
they choose to celebrate the concept of the Other. They festoon such
travellers in amalgamated costume, devoid of meaning and
perverted of purpose and take the bearer to be the living exemplar
of all others from a group so far from their prosperous hand.
outfit: ill–constructed ‘national’ costume; an inferiorly–constructed,
decorative weapon.
5. officer's claim
Plunderers believe that everything belongs to them. Cherished,
treasures, innocent, beautiful things are all taken by hands that
never tried to know them beyond a prize. The Taken Generation is
born from many such prizes, but seldom are those directly abducted,
adopted, or betrothed acknowledged as suffering their own unique
indignity. Lashed to a coercive party who claims to love them.
outfit: cultural garb, mark of Consortium association, a gilded band
displaying the Flower of Prosperity.
6. vaalengart inductee
When the Calmynites come, one can either be conquered or become
a collaborator. Both ensure erasure, but only the first means a loss of
agency. The Vaalengart swear themselves to Calmyn’s ‘glorious and
noble cause’ offering up fighting arts and cultural items to be preserved
by the clutching hand of prosperity. They serve as irregulars, scorned
by their countrymen, perceived to be as bad as the conquerors.
outfit: Blank–faced iron mask and cultural helmet, sash of fabrics
from the homeland.
88 part ii
"A Gilded Hand Envoy"

part ii 89
"Ueteran of the Banking War"

90 part ii
xii: veterans
Though freeblades get the credit, it is veterans who get the good pay.
Calmyn’s plunderous infrastructure requires their testimony, their wisdom
and their hatred of things the modern world lacks the stomach nor palate
to indulge in directly. They know too well how broken everything is, and
have chosen to continue serving to get their pound of flesh; the suffering
and consequences towards others be damned.
1. banking war
Most veterans cut their teeth in one of the everpresent Banking Wars,
serving a company in acts of robbery, sabotage, and open gunfights
in urban or rural battlegrounds. The pay is meagre, assuming one’s
side is even victorious; and those who fight to absolve themselves of
debt often find their loyalties traded on the open market. Payment to
remove soldiers from the field and place them before a firing squad.
outfit: well–oiled musket, drab uniform, few old friends, many doubts.
2. debtor's rebellion
Though the Debtor’s Rebellion is allegedly ongoing, the core conflicts
only rarely spark into a flame. Veterans of the Debtor’s Rebellion
fought either for or against the poor in the streets and alleyways
of major urban settlements. The wounds of the conflict linger,
reputations poisoned against the Great Banks or the common folk.
outfit: quilted waistcoat, hold–out flintlock pistol, balaclava mask,
a bad reputation.
3. glorious conquest
Opportunity is born of conquest, and Calmyn seizes every opportunity
it can. Glorious conquest in the wake of the Coup has never truly
ended, for Calmyn seeks always to assert itself upon foreign shores.
Many a veteran are forged in these vainglorious land grabs, making
enemies of other cultures and confronting terrors far from home.
outfit: blackened cuirass with floral patterns, brass dragoon helmet,
foreign trophy weapon.
part ii 91
4. the norui pacification
The Pacification of Norui occurred in recent memory, enough that
some veterans fought both in the initial purges and again in later
operations to secure the duchy to the Wizard’s ambition. Veterans
returning from the conflict have the joy of seeing the rich and
vaunted feasting upon the mummified dead and treating the war
as an item of gossip rather than a bloody war.
outfit: turban helmet inlaid with gold, sandproof pepperbox pistol,
a resilient military overcoat.
5. the falen inquest
Even though inquest after inquest has seen only more dead and
nothing gained, it seems as though the Watts–Calmyn Consortium
will never learn its lesson when it comes to the duchy of Fal. Whatever
resources lay buried within that frozen hell remain untouched, and the
avaricious gullet of Calmyn refuses to let such treasures go unplundered.
outfit: fur–lined stechhelm, heavy fur greatcoat, an all–purpose
hatchet, many regrets.
6. repossessor
Tragedy and debt often sees someone trapped within a violent field
for years, and the most despicable veterans are those who serve as
repossessors. They are experts in theft and in seeing people at their
very lowest, and those who reap organs, heads, and precious mementos
at the behest of the Great Banks. They take that which they are
ordered to take, no matter how far afield. To do otherwise is anathema.
outfit: ubiquitous civilian garb, writ of collection, strangle cord,
a hold out pistol, an unaddressed shame.
6 PART III
Suffer Upon
Foreign Shores.
D66 Famous Cryptdigging
Companies of Calmyn
d66 Company Complications
94 part iii
fffffffcfffffff
A
cross the rest of creation, cryptdiggers
are viewed for what they are: opportunists
and tomb robbers. In Calmyn, however, they
are exalted as part of the national image. They
are cherished in stories and given a toast of piss–quality
mead when they stumble into port, as they are the Hand
of Prosperity.
To be a cryptdigger is to be a professional delver
of the dark places of the earth, invoking the imagery of
the plundermen of yore whilst serving under the
auspices of a company in jolly cooperation and the better–
ment of humanity. It is a fine lie, meant to inspire the
young and the foolish, the desperate and the bold, and
all those who might seek to change the world if not
forced into a life of constant peril.
Most will die, unremembered and an indignant
throes. They will become more tallies on the casualty
markers of a Wing–Commander, unlikely to even be
given grave markers or letters to next of kin unless it
was paid for ahead of time. F
part iii 95
D66 FAMOUS CRYPTDIGGING
COMPANIES OF CALMYN.
ffffffffffffffff
11. the calmyn crowner’s company
The preeminent cryptdigging company of Calmyn, debt collectors
who obey the edicts of a great illuminated ledger kept in Yomundendam.
All nations, all cultures, and all creeds are deemed insolvent of means.
Thus the Company is sent in to recollect, to plunder, and to enthrall.
signature gear: illuminated writ of plunder from a Great Bank.
12. the vault legion
Inductees are forced to liberate a key and coffer from the vaults buried
beneath Fort Grendelock, as proof of their mettle and to traumatise them
with controlled horrors that lurk in the crypt. Freeblades of distinction,
a campaign spent in service to the Vault Legion opens many doors to
officer’s clubs and more daring posts in need of those proven resilient.
signature gear: portable iron lockbox and key.
13. the company of the tarnished coin
Some believe them founded by Lysian expatriates who followed in
Calmynidus’s wake, pursuing Prosperity but finding mankind only moved
by silver and gold. In truth, the company is financed by a vaunted house
that won their power in the Wizard’s Coup. In their shame, they hire out
mercenaries to purge horrors from the world.
signature gear: an ancient coin, stained by blood.
14. the penal hatcheters
Drawn from the swollen work camps of colonial outposts and military prisons
alike, given time off their sentence in exchange for service in the crypt. Poorly
outfitted and utterly expendable, identified by numbers and never by name.
signature gear: solid iron hatchet with a number etched into the head.
96 part iii
15. the esoteric order of the moth
Those who have written off the Mothlitten do so at their own peril.
The Esoteric Order of the Moth collects those who have gazed upon the
high strange of the beyond and grooms them to purpose. Its masses are
made of the unhinged and broken, most being thrown against further horror
to the benefit of dapper heresiarchs in its Council.
signature gear: leather domino mask painted with a moth wing pattern.
16. the plundermen
Less an official company and more a common misconception held by those
encountering plunderous Calmynites abroad. The Plundermen are just
that: an unorganised marauder horde, heirs to the long tradition of the
Plundermen. They are here to loot, pillage, and perhaps go off to find more
certain employment in more legitimate companies later.
signature gear: toggle–close haversack made of black reinforced leathers.
21. the blacktooth company
A loathsome lot of affordable killers, cryptdiggers and scoundrels: derelicts
who cut every corner to give their contract obligated results. Notable for
their cheap, mass–produced rotgut rum which is equal parts medical
adhesive, molotov cocktail, and drink–til–your–blind laudanum which
stains all it touches in a greasy black sheen.
signature gear: bottle of tarry, greasy, bile black rum.
22. order of the gilded key
Founded by a vastly overqualified Banker’s Blade who managed to secure
ducal funding through crafty embezzlement. The Order of the Gilded Key
sell themselves as lockbreakers, vault delvers, and all manner of cryptdigging
second–story men. Though knavish as they come, the vaunted appreciate
their appeal to scandal and public optics.
signature gear: gilded key upon a soot–tarnished chain.
part iii 97
23. the liar’s tongue
Exorcisms are a tribulation of great expense, both upon the fiend’s host and
their families. Those who survive are indebted, their reputations tarnished,
and their minds ravaged by the horrors of beyond. The Liar’s Tongue
collects such victims. It forges them anew to purge the world of Cinderbeasts
and hell–made monstrosities, and to seek infernal treasures.
signature gear: squirming blackened pickled tongue in a jar.
24. the guild of the radiant clutch
Founded by a fallen house seeking to redeem their image in the eyes of the
duchy, the Guild recruits from the young and displaced, filling their heads
with all the lies of Prosperity they will never achieve from their lowly
stations. It seeks to forge the youth and the undesirable into an apparatus to
spread the Hand of Prosperity.
signature gear: Extravagant yellow leather gauntlets marked with the
Flower of Prosperity.
25. the goblinscalper gang

Drawn from the rural masses are the Goblinscalpers, cryptdiggers who
have suffered the ravaging presence of squamous feral goblin predation.
Armed with whatever they can, they seek to scourge and purge the land of
this menace. Due to the proliferation of goblins the world over, such
gangers are often found abroad.
signature gear: scrap–metal bodged machete.
26. the lonely few
Those whose lives are spent in the uncertainty of cryptdigging are oft viewed
as cursed. For the Lonely Few, this is believed to be literal. When working
with collaborators or other companies, it is only the Lonely Few who
survive unscathed. Be this through skill, skullduggery, or true witchcraft is
unknowable save to the scant few survivors.
signature gear: bottle of fine rum with shot glasses for sharing.
98 part iii
31. the all–father’s firstborn
Zealots who adhere to profane blood rites and geomantic sacrifices; deluded
claimants who believe themselves unsullied from a direct line of succession
born from the All–Father’s tryst with mortality. Would–be demigods who
plunder the crypts in search of that which will make their destiny manifest
and exalt them in the eyes of their god.
signature gear: ancient inherited stone carving of the All–Father.
32. the occult order of distant xytok
Born from refugee theologians of Keene, this Company has long pursued
sorcerous and mundane means to study the celestial realms. Trafficking
with beyonders and seeking eldritch artefacts has seen them become
cryptdiggers over their history. They long to drag down the Wizard,
viewing him a false claimant to heaven.
signature gear: alchemical pendant which shifts in colour as various
divinities wax and wane.
33. the adosian order

The God of Hoards and Greed is hated in Calmyn, for the dragon Ados was
a foe of Calmynidus. Thus the Adosian Order are heretics, a cult who
venerates the Dragon in hunger of wealth at the cost of Prosperity.
Alchemists in the upper echelons have long corrupted and secured backing,
offering poultices that promise a dragon’s longevity or malign form.
signature gear: scarified ring finger, made to look coated in dragon scales.
34. the mechanist’s union
Once the subject of collegiate mockery and the typical union–busting
of the Watts–Calmyn Consortium, the Mechanist’s Union asserted itself as
a company of renown by making deals with Torrean artificers. Together,
none doubt the supremacy of their artifice, yet scandal dogs them when
they openly operate in Calmyn.
signature gear: block–printed Torrean treatise entitled
“The Mechanisms of Design.”
part iii 99
35. the roiling immaculate
The direct hand of many a vaunted house, the Roiling Immaculate serves
the glory of those who dare not sully their hands in cryptdigging or open
skullduggery. They court the image of the gentry, of noble saviours
liberating the world from deep dwelling horrors. They are butchers and
bastards, monstrous catspaw for the already mighty.
signature gear: white sash cloak with golden tassels.
36. the knights poltergeist
Decreed a defunct noble order, the Knights Poltergeist base themselves in
the derelict ruins of the civilised world. They bare the heirlooms of
destroyed houses, signet rings that see the dead of the Desecration whip
about them like a cold and curious wind. They embrace the haunting of ages
to seek its end, in defiance of all Orders.
signature gear: haunted signet ring bearing the mark of a former
vaunted house.
41. the unsullied fraternity

Many who seek to journey on the grand Tour of Plunder cannot afford the
full services of the Fraternity of Horns; thus the Unsullied Fraternity’s
existence. Made up of those willing to take on a servile role to support the
glorious plunder of the rich and the vaunted, they are the bondsmen and
shield–bearers of a modern age, all on company pay.
signature gear: rönd shield depicting a patron’s colours in fresh paint.
42. the high host of harlingstad
Officers and academics playing at cryptdigging run the Company Council.
They hire debtors, desperate graduates, and ‘the help’ to fill the underworld
with their corpses in the hope that the crypt might choke on them and
make easy pickings of its treasures. A miserable post in cryptdigging circles,
but viewed aspirationally by fool Calmynites.
signature gear: boutonniere pin depicting the seal of the University
of Harlingstad.
100 part iii
43. the mockmakers
Of all the menaces of the modern world, the mimicry of the Boeman makes
many unduly suffer. The Mockmakers are those who suffered the mockery
of these falsemen, and though driven nigh–unto madness by the hunt—they
are notable as cryptdiggers to those in need of their aid. Skinthiefs, mimics,
and all manner of changelings are their prey.
signature gear: vile wreath of onions and dried quasi–insectoid–semi–
humanoid heads.
44. the eindercult

The spiralling shapes and unknowable antiquity of the Eindercrag has
driven many to atavistic ferality. Some claim that Calmyn was born in the
canyon: an equally contentious statement as those who claim it was born in
the bogs. Regardless, the Eindercult festoon themselves with the aesthete
of the ancient canyon–dwellers—a notable bit of branding.
signature gear: spiralling cinnabar woad tattoos.
45. the ettinscove drowners
Privateering is an earnest trade, though the Ettinscove Drowners do their
damndest to paint it otherwise. Having made enemies of the Leaguesmen,
the Fleet of the Idjbal, and even the Friends of Dupont, this cryptdigging
company prides itself on high seas plunder and staining red their ship decks.
signature gear: blood–stained bandana and 30' of bespoke Ettinscove
horsehair rope.
46. the house of the unanointed

Desperation haunts the House of the Unanointed, for their Company
Council have spent generations licking the boots of the Ducal Throne’s
Steward. Every deed is the one which may see them made vaunted,
their debts forgiven, their nobility assured. They fight and they die, bitterly
hopeful to their last breath, that their names be exalted.
signature gear: an unpainted wooden shield crest charm.
part iii 101
51. the thrice–bound ledger
Funded by legalists, this cryptdigging outfit specialises in the fields of debt
collection and legal discovery. Hired most often by various governmental
bodies or cryptdigging companies as a means to secure evidence or defaulted
payment from insurance claims or operations which took their backer’s
money and vanished into the crypts.
signature gear: Writ of the Courts and personal locking ledger with key.
52. the company of the iron thirst
The lust for coin, dominance, and Prosperity spit upon an atavistic truth:
mankind thirsts for violence. The Company of the Iron Thirst are mostly
brigandish in demeanour, always in search of a new crypt to plunder, a new
monster to slay, a new legend to make, or a new god to make bleed. Though
disdained, few fault their ambition.
signature gear: weaponized drinking horn and an iron nasal helmet.
53. the far norui expedition
Though Norui bent the knee and the world was spared further wrath from
the Wizard of the White Tower, its interior remains unknown to all but its
people. The Far Norui Expedition seeks to exploit the lands beyond the
coastal reaches and chartered deserts of the Last Isle.
signature gear: yellowed tagelmust mouth–veil.
54. the ten–penny needlers
The concept of a ‘thief ’s guild’ is amusingly childish when one could instead
be part of a racket. The Ten–Penny Needlers were content with merely
dining on urban decay until the allure of the crypt enraptured their upper
echelons. Now they spread their criminality, debauchery, and outright
thuggery in settlements near any crypt worth their plunder.
signature gear: ten copper throwing knives.
102 part iii
55. the hag’s cauldron
Loathed by the authorities within Calmyn, the Hag’s Cauldron still holds
sway with many houses and upper functionaries. Saglash theurges have a
history of providing insight to rulers, and this company was founded by
those channelling the barking visage of a crone who served Calmynidus.
The Council can discern dark fates, ones averted only with treasures and
offal from the most foul places in creation.
signature gear: grotesque cooking pot and ladle.
56. the chalice usurpers
Founded recently in a joint agreement of plunder between an Inheritor of
the Gorgon Coast and a set of fallen houses in Calmyn, the Chalice
Usurpers are first class freeblades making a name for their cruelty. Nothing
is sacred in their hands, and they are paid well to plunder the depths and far
reaches of the world to fill the vaults of their monstrous masters.
signature gear: taurochtalian pugio with a gorgon–headed pommel.
61. the thrallmonger crusade
Self–deluded monsters make up the Thrallmonger’s Crusade. They do not
take their thralls for profit nor for debt, for they believe that only under the
lash of Calmyn can mankind’s purpose be found. Slavers and the mind–
broken oppressed who have venerated their oppressors make up the ranks,
plundering the world for flesh and Prosperity.
signature gear: wooden yoke of Thralldom and a flagellant’s keratin
scarifications.
62. the carrion march

Nothing can go to waste in Calmyn, not if you’re poor and without support.
The Carrion March knows this, and it knows the safety to be found in
numbers. Its cryptdiggers are little more than ghouls, cannibals more than
willing to slake their hunger by feasting upon the rich who deny them
liberty. The mummy trade out of Norui has seen them shift from mere
marauding outcasts to a premiere supply chain with man–eating predilection.
signature gear: fingerbone trophy from their first gnawing.
part iii 103
63. the eldgaoler
Founded by the eldest veterans and townsfolk who banded together to fight
the recently departed during the wake of the Desecration. Those who are
deemed too old or too worthless to serve Prosperity are invited to join the
Eldgaolers, to spend their dying days binding the departed into deeply
locked vaults beneath the earth.
signature gear: a silver heirloom miner’s lantern, made prior to the
Desecration.
64. the heirs–sunderthrone

Ancient bastard–blooded claimants to the Throne of Calmyn, from lines
cast down since the Coup. They delve into the crypts in search of artefacts
which will allow them to destroy the Wizard of the White Tower, and bring
Calmyn under their reign.
signature gear: splinter of a wooden shield from the All–Father’s Grove.
65. the seraphic proxies
Lickspittle supplicants to the Wizard of the White Tower, zealots of a breed
rarely found outside of Keene’s most insular cult communities. They seek
the servile mantle of celestial heralds, to be man–made angels in the choir
of the man–made–god.
signature gear: ivory bangles inscribed with eyes and runes.
66. the oathless host
Rare is the plunderman who forswores the oath of cooperation which saw
Calmyn vaunted to consortium and commerce. The Oathless Host are
those who offer no quarter or clemency to their countrymen, who when
abroad honour only their rite of plunder. A scourge of the legalist, and fair–
weather allies of the Watts–Calmyn Consortium.
signature gear: bear–pelt face mask painted with the bloody rune for
“True Plunder.”
104 part iii
D66 COMPANY
COMPLICATIONS.
11. Local collaborators meant to be on the company pay have instead
been betrayed by the company council, meant to take the fall should
anything go wrong. The collaborators are beginning to suspect this.
12. The Company Council hasn’t paid its labourers in a fortnight, allowing
camp followers to start up a racket and for other cryptdiggers to begin
whispering of mutiny.
13. An unanticipated hostage of potent political worth has been found. The
Company Council will wish to be alerted so as to determine the hostage’s
fate, but the hostage is willing to offer aid and coin if they’re simply
freed and returned to safety.
14. Agents of local authority have begun to assert themselves against
the cryptdigging company, writing citations and apprehending those
they don’t like the look of. The Company Council is torn between just
butchering the local authority or cut their losses.
15. A porter’s clumsy hands and ill luck have seen a treasured relic from
a crypt destroyed. The Company Council doesn’t think they should pay
for broken goods, and the porter is to be flogged for incompetence—
and this is to say nothing of any evils released by the relic’s destruction.
16. The Wizard has placed one of their agents in the company.
The Wizard’s agent is a pompous, delicate, nasty piece of work,
one whom the Company Council has decided to offload on the party.
The agent must be ‘babysat’ whilst they go about their duties.
part iii 105
21. The air crackles with ozone and a faint buzz; a hurricane, a storm of
once in a century portent, will soon sweep across the land. It will cause
floods and flaying winds, drowning out those who seek to march through
it. The Company must endure, get the job done, and get out of there.
22. The bankers backing the Company on this endeavour have pulled their
funding and refused to say why. The quartermaster is up in arms,
and the Company Council now needs to find a way to unload whatever
was pulled from the crypt. They expect the party to remedy these issues
or go unpaid.
23. The party has been ordered to scout the nearby locale for “worthy
labourers” as the Company Council has arranged to trade thralls with
the Watts–Calmyn Consortium. The deal will fall through, but how
many enemies the party has made at camp and in the field is on them.
24. The land itself seems angry at the trespass of the Company. Charted
routes are treacherous, the wilderness seems encroaching, and
the freshest recruits are losing their wits in fear of “something
outside the camp.” The Council needs morale restored immediately.
25. The Company Council neglected to mention that this is not the first
attempt at delving this crypt. The horrors within recognize their colours
and signets, and they will fight with previously unthought of tactical
cruelty. Victims from the previous delve still linger in agonised states.
26. The Prophet knows that the stars are right and the Scholar agrees that
now is the only day in which the crypt can be delved for their schemes.
The party must delve the crypt in a single night, and they must spill vile
blood upon any treasures they seek to relinquish.
106 part iii
31. The Recruiter has been arrested in a nearby town and the party
has been ordered to release them. The Recruiter was lying on all the
conditions of the Company, blatantly deceiving and seeking to sign
on those too foolish and desperate to know otherwise. The Recruiter
has no shame about this, save that they cannot return to camp without
at least a few new recruits.
32. Sickness spreads through the camp and the nearby area; none are
sure if it comes from the rations, the brothels, the locals or the crypt.
Additional precautions must be taken to avoid sickness. That noted,
the locals are less able to defend their wealth as a result.
33. Before the Camp is able to be packed up and the Company to move on,
calamity, strife and disaster sees them stuck within the borders of the
land they’ve been plundering. The locals view the Company as having
overstayed their welcome, and fleeing over borders in the night risks
casualties to calamitous circumstances.
34. Denizens of the Crypt have been spying on the Camp, studying its
inner machinations and dynamics. They have whispered lies to those
deemed most willing to betray the Company, and have engineered
further harm—murders, thefts, fires—to further stall the delve.
35. Turncoats within the Company seek the party’s assistance in airing
grievances; hoping to get the party painted as traitors so as to take the
fall if their coup against the Company Council fails. They will attempt
to ingratiate themselves first, by way of shared meals and assistance.
36. A collaborator who has been deemed a useful asset to the Company is
allegedly stuck within the crypt and likely injured if not dead already.
The Company Council requires the collaborator’s rescue or recovery so
as to keep this asset or not burn bridges with the locals.
part iii 107
41. While at Camp, a greater horror from the Crypt strikes with the intent
of killing and maiming the Company Council. If the Council is not
aided, they will be additionally cruel to the whole of their company—
pending their survival. Regardless, the Council will question how the
horror was able to find them within camp, why their sentries failed, and
if this was an act of sabotage.
42. An incompetent noble has been installed into the party by the Company
Council who have promised to see them bloodied. The noble is well
aware of the dangers and would much rather pay the party to do all the
work for them whilst they await safely in nearby civilization. To allow
the noble their wishes would be assisting in desertion of their post;
but they are just a liability.
43. The duchy of these lands has offered promises of hospitality and rewards
should the Company deal with local threats and recover lost treasures
from the crypt. The issue arises that the duchy is offering
far less in payment for their recovered artefacts than even the most
bickering private collector. It is clear that not handing over the treasures
will only end poorly.
44. The operations within the Crypt and the retrieval of its treasures
have undermined a ducal conspiracy between local political factions.
The parties in play cannot admit their compliance in the scheme,
but they will pay handsomely for what they need—more than the
backers who hired the Company.
45. Rival cryptdiggers have set up shop in the area, jumping the claims
of the party’s Company, bribing locals to refuse services, and all but
engaging in open warfare. The Company Council is considering
diplomacy, but this has all the lookings of a gang war in the making.
46. A member of the Council has decided the party is both expendable and
in need of being taken down a peg. Their jobs grow more dangerous, their
duties more beneath them, and though other Councillors find this
strange, they will not speak out unless formally petitioned.
108 part iii
51. The Ducal Throne of Calmyn is paying handsomely for any cryptdigging
company willing to put homesteads and other settlements in the region to
the torch. There is no bounty on lives, only for land set ablaze.
The Company Council is not against the endeavour, though they
do not officially sanction participation in it.
52. The Guildmaster expects the party to come across rival cryptdiggers
while on the job. The orders are simple: kidnap anyone of worth, dispose
of any sign of the claim jumpers, and figure out who tipped the rivals off
to the site.
53. The Quartermaster has need of the party’s discretion: some gear
has gone missing from the camp. Though it is nothing dire, it must
be accounted for. The Quartermaster wants the party to rob, steal,
loot and plunder whatever trade goods they can get their hands on.
It’s wise to keep on a Quartermaster’s good side.
54. Before the party are able to leave camp, an order has come in from the
Guildmaster proper. They’ve received an inquiry from a buyer, and as
such they’ll need the party to drag a few horrors out of the crypt alive
so they can be caged up and shipped off. Any cosmetic damages will
come out of their end pay.
55. The Company Council can accept no failures on this job: their reputation
and status in the civilised world is at stake. The orders
are little different than usual, but implied in the intensity is that
if the party retreats without the treasures, they will have wished
they died in the crypt.
56. The backers who hired the Company are making extravagant promises:
if the job goes off without a hitch they are promising titles and land,
to be made gentry or even vaunted. The Company Council seeks to
exploit this reward for additional, unreasonable, dangerous labours
from the party.
part iii 109
61. Another crypt digger has stolen valour from the party upon returning
to camp, claiming recent victories as their own. They tell the tale better
and no one is willing to call them a liar. Unless made to stop immediately,
they will only steal more glory from the party as time goes on.
62. A Company Councillor grants the party additional rations of alcohol
and sweetmeats only to then claim a debt for the favour. The Councillor
needs the party to acquire something without making a scene, nor
alerting anyone else. The item in question is mundane, but this raises
further questions that will go unanswered.
63. A member of the Company Council is wanted in the region for a long
litany of crimes, and are now unable to properly perform their duties.
They have allocated their command to the party under the instructions
to “get this job done, and get it done quick”, much to the chagrin of
others involved.
64. Local authorities are needlessly accommodating, though false in
the smiles they wear. They believe the party and their Company are
agents of the Wizard, and to cross them is to court doom. If the party
takes advantage of this, they may enjoy privileges—at least until the
truth comes out.
65. Agents of the local municipality accuse the Cryptdigging Company to
be agents of a rival duchy, sent here to plunder and unleash long sealed
horrors upon the land. Local merchants are to refuse the Company any
services; those who abide by the Company are branded spies.
66. War has broken out in the region and now the Company finds itself
between crossed blades. Unless they take a side or withdraw, they will
be considered enemy agents. The job in the region is time sensitive and
cannot wait for tensions to die down.
6 PART IV
Hosts of Iniquity.
The Ducal Throne
Orders and Bureaus of the Dutchy
Houses Vaunted & Houses Fallen
The Great Banks
The Breaker of Nations
The Watts–Calmyn Consortium,
the Capitalist Hegemony
The University of Harlingstad,
and Other False Authorities
The Vaalengart, Collaborators,
and the Conquered
The Gunszelmarkt; Debtor Rebels
& Desperate Youth
112 part iv
fffffffcfffffff
T
"these institutions hough the nation bowed before the
are the apparatus Wizard’s might, it maintains the facade of
of manipulation a broken state only to placate the White
and deceit, revising Tower’s machinations. The nation of Calmyn
the cruel history died so that the duchy could live, and sit upon a throne
Calmyn has as elegant as that which came before them. Though hateful
inflicted on of their reduced station, the Duchy of Calmyn bides
the world", its time and plots to gather relics and influence enough
page 164 to challenge the Wizard who humbled their nation,
desecrated their dead, and shattered their grip upon all
creation. It is an inevitability, a strife upon the horizon.
"they control the
But in this nation reduced, not all are in lock
wealth of all now,
from the dead and step. The Great Banks and the Watts–Calmyn
living alike", Consortium have grown wealthy beyond reckoning in
page 138 the wake of the Wizard’s coup. Though they serve the
ambitions of the Ducal Throne, they seek to
puppeteer it with every poisoned word and fairweather
"the Consortium bribe. The bureaus and orders of the Duchy posture for
has always existed, power in this coming order, strangling truth and
even back in the age manipulating culture by way of the University of
of longboats and Harlingstad’s printing presses.
berdish-wielding The Vaalengart have no say nor salvation: they
plunderers", will die to the Wizard in a coming war or they will see
page 147 their home nations crushed beneath the bootheel of
prosperity. They collaborate and betray their homes in
the face of hegemony, choosing to wield arms against
"though tattered by the
their heritage in a pragmatic fool’s hope of sparing them
Coup and forever
from a wordless oblivion.
tarnished by the
Erstwhile, the Gunszelmarkt are a tumour of
Desecration, the
hope in the festering heart of modernity, stoking the
Duchy yet remains
fires of secession and revolution. They will be a thorn in
the strongest bastion
the eye of any who take the Ducal Throne, a starving beast
of human supremacy
whose death throes will either rip a throat out or hobble
in the known world",
those fool enough to put them out of their youthful misery.
page 114
part iv 113
fffffffcfffffff
Whatever shape the future may yet hold, the houses "the pre-eminent
of the vaunted and the fallen will be present to witness academic body in all
and endure the malus and boons of the age. Those who of Calmyn–and
sit upon the Ducal Throne are ever changing, but those as they would boldly
who serve it are eternal in dignity and in shame.
fffffffcfffffff F claim, the wider
world as well",
page 156
"the remnants
of cultures made
made thralls, allowed
because Calmyn
saw something
of worth",
page 164
"children of a
lost generation,
angry and unwilling
to take the scraps
others demand
they supplicate
themselves for",
page 171
114 part iv
fffffffcfffffff
THE DUCAL THRONE.
ffffffffffffffff
T
hough tattered by the coup and
forever tarnished by the Desecration, the
Duchy yet remains the strongest bastion of
human supremacy in the known world.
The Ducal Throne was shattered by the Wizard’s
sorceries, rendered pale as puremost white as an eternal
reminder of their place. But it is still a lavish seat within
"a flower which the most exalted hall of Lendal. The Flower of
brought them joys Prosperity hangs upon a banner tapestry behind the
not known since throne, affixed with tribute signets from every court in
departing the every nation that ever had the good grace to climb out
radiance of the of the mud and suffer colonisation.
All–Father", Based in Grand Calmynswaard, all houses
page 12 abide by the rule of the Ducal Throne: the Great Banks
serve at its beck and call, and the Watts–Calmyn
Consortium carry its agenda abroad. Treachery abounds
"the new capital,
in the shadows of the Prosperous Enclave, but such is
the hub of
the nature of all nations. Even the most beloved tyrant
modernity,"
page 250
still courts poisoned blades. F
part iv 115
i: the steward of the ducal throne
The Duke (or Duchess) changes far more often than the Steward of the
Ducal Throne, tasked with enacting the long policies of those who granted
them the position. Like the Duke, they sit in the pockets of the Great
Banks and the Consortium. Others who seek to speak with the Duke will
be shunted off to the Steward unless they are of sufficient wealth or status.
1. The emaciated steward, with hair like a rat’s nest and a face made
ghoulish by a lack of eyebrows. They mewl sycophantic words and spit
on those who call for change. Gaunt, they wear the elegant frock of a
Justice of the Vault and a ruffled collar festooned with ornate padlocks.
2. The loyal steward, a cultivated study in symmetry and professionalism.
Their wisdom is beyond question. Old and of exhausted mien, their
words command and their convictions condemn, hissed as they are
from a humble frame under military garb.
3. Though born of an occupied land, the outlander steward serves
unwaveringly. They speak cutting words and suffer no insult to their
sacrifices and acquiescence. For their devotion they are granted the
privilege of wearing a single baldric made in their homeland’s aesthetic.
4. The maimed steward was rewarded for their services with the loss
of a sword hand and elevation to this duty. They look upon the world
detached, a holmgangr without the right to raise a berdish. They
dress everybit the part, a martial plunderer of pedigree.
5. The rebuked steward craves the throne, for it was theirs to hold and
denied to them by petty politics. They serve, ambitious to prove
their worth and the folly of the current duke. A pawn to any and all
who offer them a chance. They dress as a steward should: exquisitely.
6. The wisened steward exists in a state of immaculate sterility: as perfect
as uncut marble. They know more than they could ever have time
to say, but seldom waste their time explaining their deeds. They wear
the gowns of nobility, but know the Wizard’s dominion is absolute.
116 part iv
ii: visiting dignitaries
Many of them are hostages, and whether they are willing to admit it or
not is of no consequence. They come from across the isle to bribe and
bicker with the Steward and the Duke, petitioning for aid and investments,
pleading for clemency and more time. Their desires are dashed or made
manifest at a whim.
1. The haughty warlord, a degenerated Inheritor who seeks freeblades
to gain the Ashen Throne. Their words are honeyed, but spat from a
mouth of rot and fangs. A miscreant from a fallen state, a grim
mirror of what could befall Calmyn in its darkest hour.
2. The Wizard’s overseer, a mage masked in blinding light and seraphic
gowns. They speak in booming edicts, though they desire only the
death of all that is inhuman. They are incorruptible, though loyal
only to their master. Any who will aid their cause are tools to utilise.
3. The Maignish dignitary, a hulking bravo of the Anointed Bullfighters;
a folk hero installed in this court to keep an eye on their avaricious
neighbours. They posture and shame acts of cowardice and greed;
mockery enough to see reckless bravery from those of tattered ego.
4. The lobbyist from Dupont, boldly free from Calmyn’s grasp;
a parliamentarian from Vulgar Rock. They drone on about the prices
and qualities of wood, of tariffs and shipping rates; a doldrums in
mortal form. They court the image of a yokel, it aids in their schemes.
5. The Nouri delegate, a speaker from the House of Ja–Harakh; they
seek alliances to further weaken the newly bowed Duke of Norui and
assert the independence of the Water Guilds as a nation–state. They
are richer than most, flaunting it when bribes will fracture their foes.
6. The speaker of a non–human race; they wear the finery of their people
and expect no kindness nor clemency. They know the aims of the
Wizard, and they seek alliances of convenience to forestall their
inevitable purge. They will cull any to save themselves.
part iv 117
iii: non–human dignitaries
1. A Gastropodian, bearing gifts from realms beyond mortal comprehension;
they offer maps and riddles—new lands to conquer—in exchange for
alliances that will see their people spared the Wizard’s wrath.
2. An Orc of the Palemaw, come here to ensure lobbying with the House
of Cobbles will lead only to denial of Dwarven claims to the Iron
Halls. Far more cunning and civil than any will give them credit for.
3. A Lamenter, in truth a Midanian saint bedecked in the wealth
of a fallen house. They seek to make sacred sites that have long
been built atop of. They wish to change the views of the Wizard’s
Desecration, claiming it a blessing.
4. One of the Small Folk, a burgher who seeks to fund the purging
of goblins within Calmyn. They believe that Calmyn has been too
lenient, too lax, and this is a grave insult to the Small Folk which
can only be remedied in blood.
5. A Drakespawn with gilded fangs, here to speak of the Falen Inquest
and to open trade negotiations with the duchy proper. They know
of hidden terrors, but do not speak of them; they merely invite the
Calmynites to try their hand at further operations.
6. A slough–fleshed elf with a mask of bolted iron affixed to their
skinless form. They offer esoteric boons to the Duchy in exchange
to stymie the ambitions of Ilym’s Architect. They speak plainly that
man shall not have the Linwode, for it is beyond mortal hands.
118 part iv
iv: the current duke
The Ducal Throne is occupied by the members of a vaunted house, though
poison and time, succession and usurpation ensure that seldom does a
Duke sit firmly upon their sundered throne.
1. The elder statesmen, built of harsh angles which grow only more
cutting with age. They’ve never shared a word in kindness not laced
with venoms. Their gowns are elegant, opulent; nigh on a mockery
of the Wizard’s own regalia.
2. The master of all they survey, a cultivated apex of humanity;
a mastermind devoid the spark of empathy. They are not a sadist,
nor a brute; merely cold, too calculating for lies or pleasantries.
They wear the parade uniform of a despot.
3. The undesired heir who took the throne through cunning and
sadism alone; of fey moods and a cruel spouse’s disposition.
They view the duchy as a victim, to be stepped upon, to be extorted.
They wear armour befitting Calmynidus of old: a tyrant’s regalia.
4. The dictator, an expansionist whose hand outstretched will cleave
the world. They have lived their whole life in pursuit of this singular
purpose with no time for petty politics, favours, or kindness. They
wear armour akin to Yomund’s own heirs for sake of image parity.
5. The unopposed despot; young but also old; a piebald entity of soft
angles and murderous smiles. A bleak study in the duality of man,
they care only for the progress of Calmyn and the subjugation of
those who do not exalt its virtues. Their gown is extravagant: the
epitome of a vaunted house’s ill–earned opulence.
6. The exalted heir, wise beyond their dawning years; a diplomat and
a poet who looks upon Calmyn and sees it not as a flower wilting but
a bulb waiting to bloom. Despite their reputed kindness, they sneer
at those who deny their control. They wear a modernist’s court suit,
made of only the finest Norui silks.
part iv 119
v: ambitions of the throne
The current duke will always seek to perform a deed worthy of legacy,
a plot that will see them remembered both in song and in the curses of
their enemies. Such ambitions lead ever and only to the assassination of
the current duke, the succession of a new duke, and countless dead.
1. Calmyn must be united in purpose, not left to rot in clannish
fiefdoms of burghers and bankers. That the young seek to continue
the Debtor Rebellions and secede is an insult to the duchy. Calmyn
must be brought to order. Those who refuse must be purged.
2. The Wizard is as distant as he is idle, but no mortal weapon can
strike down a man–made–god. The Duke then seeks such a device:
a weapon forged from the stolen fire of Ados the Drake, a blade born
of prosperity and a divine wyrm’s baleful flame. Such a crusade will
line the pockets of many, and kill ten thousand score more.
3. Counsel with non–human travellers and half–cracked alienists
reveals a world beyond that which is known; beyond the duchies and
the isles; beyond the mists and the firmament. The Duke shall plant
the Flower of Prosperity in such far flung realms no matter the cost.
4. The Great Banks have undermined the duchy, and some have cause
to believe they prolonged the Desecration with rites of necromancy.
The Vaults must be taken for the Ducal Throne, the Great Banks
sundered and their vaunted treated like would–be Adosian heretics.
5. The Watts–Calmyn Consortium has grown too powerful, and it
spreads prosperity in its own name, not that of the duchy. It must be
consolidated and brought to heel. If Calmyn is to reign over the world
it must not do so through proxies who put profit over prosperity.
6. The Gilded Heart is an item of ancient legend, forged from sinful
treasures all the world over, and it must be claimed. The Duke must
reign eternal to challenge the Wizard, to guide the duchy back
to an empire and hold the world entire under the sway of prosperity
If it leads all to a brighter tomorrow, every sacrifice is worthwhile.
120 part iv
vi: scandals in the court
Be it hearsay or fact, scandal haunts the court, often indistinguishable
from the throne’s true ambitions. Such lies lead just as easily to usurpation,
with many killed with indignity regardless of the truth of the matter.
1. Nobility gossips that the Duke and the Steward have been replaced
by Boemen wearing suits of ichorous false flesh. Every perceived
flaw, gesture, and movement are scrutinised with fearful eyes. If the
Ducal Throne is compromised by inhuman agents, it must be purged.
2. They claim the Steward and the Duke are engaged in a tryst,
sullying the lines of succession and the usually very overt courtship
rituals of the gentry. Such a romance will compromise ample alliances
and schemes; reveal agents and hide many more. It must be stopped.
3. The Duke claims that the current Enclave of Prosperity has wilted
and grown dusty; they demand a new palace be built. The cost is
beyond consideration, and though the Ducal Throne could readily
afford it they intend to initiate new tax policies to fund the project.
4. In response to idle gossip in the cafes and parlours, the Ducal
Throne has ordered the silencing of large swaths of the populace;
claiming them to be disgracing the legacy of Good King Yomund.
The targets are put before firing squads, though their crimes are so
unclear that even the soldiers have begun to question their orders.
5. They claim the Duke has spurned their allies abroad and afar, claiming
them to be robbing the coffers of Calmyn. Unless colonial outposts
and foreign duchies are willing to pay ever steepening tariffs, war
will come and such wealth will be taken ten score by plunder alone.
6. The most loyal and lickspittle of the vaunted houses are to be made
fallen; the Duke knows of some deep flaw and treachery to their inner
workings—the sort that can only be remedied with a fall from grace.
They say the Steward is behind it, through catspaws and conspiratorial
manipulations. Regardless, this will mean ample kinstrife.
part iv 121
122 part iv
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ORDERS AND
BUREAUS OF
THE DUCHY.
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T
he ducal throne exerts its influence
by way of a corrupt bureaucracy of governing
bodies who oversee the duchy’s operations
and scheme to both ensure and enshrine
the hegemony that validates their existence. These
institutions are the apparatus of manipulation and
deceit, revising the cruel history Calmyn has inflicted
on the world. This lets them justify any new atrocity,
and cow a populace which might take umbrage at the
many profane crimes against humanity inflicted in the
name of Prosperity. F
part iv 123
i: ducal order moods
1. Revisionist at heart; looks upon 4. Makes mental notes of
every event with how it must everything, smiles in a way to
be reported. churn a blackmailer’s stomach.
2. Gaslighter, ready to assure 5. Repeats new words with ill
that nothing is happening intent, as if memorising them
as it is perceived. to claim ownership.
3. Sneering imperialists, everything 6. Speaks with governmental
is either foreign and primitive, authority, self–assured that they
or local and disgraceful. can do anything they desire.
ii: ducal rank–and–file aesthetic

Bureaucrats, liars, paper–pushers and magistrates. Those who serve as
the rank and file of various Ducal Orders adhere to their uniforms and
guidelines of obedience, but they cannot easily obscure the damage such
a life has put upon their souls. Such a daily harm traumatises and wounds
in ways that tarnish the physical form.
1. Sunken eyes and gnawed lips; a 4. Blank eyes and forced smile,
being dead inside. Their voice their uniform immaculate;
trails, monotony incarnate. their voice an echo of words
said by rote.
2. Eyes that do not merely cut, 5. Tedious the way only a perfect–
but vivisect. Projects the hostile ionist can be; clucks their tongue,
kindness of a hunting cat. scrutiny haunts their every word.
3. Dishevelled despite trying other– 6. Downtrodden, with a voice like
wise, ready to lash out or collapse a distant ghost and eyes that
to any unanticipated catalyst. never make contact with anyone.
124 part iv
iii: ducal officers aesthetic
The direct agents of power and authority, not vaunted but certainly
wealthy enough to look upon all in their nation as pawns and proxies.
They care only for the duties required of them and whatever small
ambition might ensure the longevity of their legacy.
1. The unflappable officer. A study in the aesthete of modern militarism:
strong, clean cut, and speaks only in barking boldness. Everyone
around them is wrong until it benefits the officer that they be right.
They’ll weather any storm and snap any neck to secure their position.
2. The articulate officer; painfully throwback in diction and dress, a
bureaucrat generations out of style. Would–be metropolitan in tastes
and comforts; laughs at their own jokes and comments when others
don’t laugh with them. Holds grudges and shame across generations.
3. The shameless officer; a shallow and self–absorbed layabout who
knows that their subordinates will pick up the slack or die trying.
An expert manipulator, and thus easily corruptible; too useful
to too many people to demote or have killed.
4. The compromised officer; of middle age and kind demeanour, they
work for the betterment of their family and of Calmyn and thus are
vulnerable. Professionally dressed and loyal to a fault; ready and willing
to obliterate anything which threatens that which they care for.
5. The totalitarian officer; a cruel monster who rules through fear by
enforcement of absolute law. The aspirational look of any Calmynite
modernist, a forgettable face, a long smile, and a heavy brow that hangs
in judgement. Their voice thunders with the authority of doom itself.
6. The sycophantic officer; repeats the names of those they speak with,
tries to cultivate a sense of comfort. Piercing eyes too intense for the
comfort they intend. Says all things with a chipper tone, be it good
news or the most catastrophic of orders. This job is their entire purpose.
part iv 125
iv: ducal order ambitions
1. The Ducal Throne refuses to admit it, but the nation is in disarray.
The Order must reach beyond its means and station to bring the
chaotic elements to heel. It will break jurisdiction and harm the
vaunted houses; but it must be done.
2. In recent years the Order has been diminished in its power and
authority. To prevent being dissolved, the Order must regain its
rightful place, humiliate those who sought to usurp it, and ensure
it is once more enshrined for its purposes.
3. The Order knows it exists best when it is but a cog in the grand
mechanisms of Calmyn as a whole: it is not a place for gloryseekers,
nor is it an apparatus for the vaunted. Those who seek to subvert the
Order for their own profit must be deterred or disposed of.
4. Prosperity is the goal of all Calmynites, and a Ducal Order exists to
see it spread. The Order must become resurgent, its name penned in
illustrious inks upon the finest vellum: it must become worthy of
praise by its deeds, lest it wilt. Its failure diminishes all of Calmyn.
5. Hegemony must be reached, for the Orders are too fractured and all
too often forced into needless rivalry. They must be united against
a common threat. If one cannot be found, it must be manufactured
for the good of the duchy.
6. A truth once thought redacted has come to light: the Order once
held greater power, and by all rights should still be holding said
power. By law of precedents, a return to such tradition is by right
endowed to the head of the Order and not even the Duke may stand
in the way of this.
126 part iv
v: additional ducal orders of calmyn
1. the order of imperial conduct
Totalitarian censors and aspirational pundits, these agents
of redaction and revisionist events seek to control all perceptions
of Calmyn and the wider world to best suit the desires of the Duke.
2. the order of the knights starless
A government–endowed order of bastards, would–be heir–saviours
of fallen houses, and worthless failsons. Given a stipend to play
at chivalry and perform “goodly deeds” for any who need it,
they are in truth an apparatus to silence would–be claimants.
3. the bureau of berdishery
Once the chosen martial art of Calmyn, now faded in favour
of blackpowder and rifles. Sponsors any willing to pursue the art
of axe–duelling, and will make heroes of paupers should they have
the knack. A lobby of influence for anti–modern sentiment.
4. the order of prosperity:
An officers club of purchased valour cadets, and little more than
a propaganda arm for the Order of Imperial Conduct. Militants
have mixed opinions of the group, but it provides all inducted
with pathways to greater power and leadership.
5. the order of eels
An exalted order of clandestine assassins who serve at the behest of
the vaunted houses to ensure their petty wars can be remedied without
harm to open economy or ducal image. Killers and cut–throats all.
6. the order of reliquary vaults
Hoarders and collectors, those who take what is beautiful in the
world and store it away in guarded towers. They view themselves as
the preservers of history, but they have no love for those plundered
at their command.
part iv 127
v: additional ducal orders of calmyn {cont.}
1. the order of the gilded corpse
Post–Desecration order of resurrectionists, tomb robbers,
and Midanian theologians. They exist primarily to extort money
from those who have just suffered a death in the family, as few bury
their dead with their wealth in this modern age.
2. the bureau of interior purpose
Corruptible cartographers who reissue maps of the duchy every
few months, incorporating new borders between territories as
defined by bribes and skirmishes. Loathsomely political and
uncaring, but always exquisite in their artistry.
3. the bureau of prosperous induction
Faction dedicated to the incorporation, assimilation, and dominance
of new cultural elements into Calmynite society. Their work renders
a culture wordless and strikes meaning from the sacred and profane.
4. the bureau of foreign inquestiture
Fiscal analysts who measure the potential plunder of an inquest,
errantry, or full conquest against the cost of such endeavours. Most
are easily bribed, as their signet ring is worth more to plunderers
than their insight.
5. the bureau of the national image
Mostly obsolete, a group of diplomats present in the courts of all
lands once held by Calmynite hands. They serve to correct the
language of foreign nationals in describing previous and ongoing
colonial occupations. Few give them attention.
6. the bureau of writ and standard
Legalists endowed by the Great Banks to establish that which is
minimum and that which is permissible, ensuring any competition
between Calmyn’s affluent parties does not get in the way of profits.
128 part iv
v: additional ducal orders of calmyn {cont.}
1. the order of the sovereign’s mint
The official functions of this Order—forging new coins and operating
its machines—were officially shuttered since the Coup. Its members
maintain the Sovereign’s Mint as glorified custodians. This is a place
for useless nobles.
2. the order precursor gloriata
Faction of historical revisionists concerned with the promotion
of Calmynite traditions from the Yomundic and Plundering Era.
Promote an obscured view of history to ensure none can learn from it.
3. the bureau of birthright & bloodied lineage
The official archive of family lines in Calmyn, a bureau used to deter–
mine the various compounding intersections of dowry, intergenerational
debt, and right to be considered a citizen, burgher, or thrall.
4. the order relicuos gloriata
Body concerning the preservation of Calmyn’s glory, culture,
arts and records lost during the Coup and the Desecration.
A bureaucracy of scholars, historians, and spies planted by
the Wizard of the White Tower.
5. the bureau of catchpoles & thrallmaking
Diminished by the Great Banks who prefer to make thralls by way
of coin rather than directly beating and chaining people. A hateful
relic, primarily operating on the fringes of society, overseas, and as
military officer’s clubs.
6. the court of legalists, vaults, & commons
The designation granted to the legal bodies governing the interpersonal,
tort, and malicious affairs of the various estates of Calmynite society.
They are notorious for serving those whose merit is designated by
coin over precedent or code.
part iv 129
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130 part iv
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HOUSES VAUNTED
& HOUSES FALLEN.
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C
arved within the last remaining
"the rise of the Good timbers of Good King Yomund’s feasting
King Yomund", hall in Yomundendam is a piece known as
page 13 the All–Father’s Grove. In kinder days it sat
behind the Ducal Throne, but following the Desecration
it was carefully moved into the safety of the Tower of
"the Old Capital,
Yomundendam. Aside from being one of the few pieces
rich in history but
of national heritage which displays the full truth of the
not power",
bloody days of the Plundering Era, it is also the sole
page 250
legitimizer of the gentry in Calmyn.
Upon the boughs and branches of the All–Father’s
Grove are miniscule shields, emblazoned with the crests
of the vaunted houses who are endowed with rite to rule.
Beneath this piece of high carpentry, are the pried and
scuttled shields of houses which fell in disgrace; and can
no longer claim such privilege. Those houses dwell
eternally in indignant humiliation.
The crests of a house, fallen or vaunted, are festooned
upon everything and anything they can claim to have
ownership of. They are painted upon the signs near the
entrance to towns and cities, carved into the stone
mantles of universities, embellished upon the pennant
flags worn by dragoons and military officers. When
generating a character from such a background, roll on
the following tables to determine the full depth of their
legacy and their means and assets no matter how far
afield they may be. Even a fallen house still holds its
wealth from a more luxurious state, tarnished and
strained as it might be.F
part iv 131
i:
1. Ivory Buff &
house colours
1. Carmine Red & 1. Carmine Red &
Orange Rufous Sulphurous Yellow Lemon Yellow
2. Light Grey Olive 2. Violet Blue & 2. Violet &
& Apricot Yellow Orange Yellow Yellow Ochre
3. Pale Lemon & 3. Pale Lemon & 3. Vinaceous Tawny
Blackened Olive Warm Grey & Citron Yellow
4. Orange Yellow & 4. Black & 4. Pale Fawn &
Cerulean Blue Sea Green Royal Blue
5. Black & 5. Old Rose Red 5. Deep Crimson &
Grenadine Pink & Ecru Pale Raw Umber
6. Spinel Red & 6. Pale Royal Blue 6. Canary Yellow &
Pale Grey & Ivory Buff Dusky Beige
ii: crest mantling

1. Flowing Scrolls 1. Helmet of Horns
2. Pennant Flags 2. Sundered Crown
3. Wreath of Flowers 3. Head of a Battle Axe
4. Wreath of Thorns 4. Outstretched Hand
5. Crown of Coins 5. Wheel of Solar Rays
6. Crown of Axes 6. Wreath of Locks & Keys
132 part iv
iii:
1. Cormorant
crest shield
1. Field of 1. Tortoise Shell
in Flight Sunflowers of Coins
2. Crowned 2. Gauntleted Hand 2. Bundle of
Crocodile of Prosperity Berdishes
3. Interwoven Keys 3. Chalice of Coins 3. Heart & Keyhole
4. Bejewelled Skull 4. Frothing Lapdog 4. Burning Crown
5. Glowering Sun 5. Crucified Thrall 5. Shooting Star
6. Grand Emperor 6. Tumorous 6. Man–of–War
Moth Hag’s Foot Galleon
iv: crest motto

1. “Always In 1. “Pride of the 1. “By Our Clade,
Avarice” Plundermen” All Shall Be One”
2. “Gladly Envious 2. “Pay Never the 2. “The One,
Of Tomorrow” Debtor’s Geld” True People”
3. “Twice to Talent, 3. “For Want of the 3. “Bane of Dragons,
Thrice to Taste” Flower, Eternity” Hoarder of Hoards”
4. “We Shall Take 4. “Our Fortunes 4. “Steadfast and
It With Us” Everlasting” Ironclad”
5. “By Lock, By 5. “Invincible. 5. “Freedom in
Stock; By Hook Unflinching. Labour, Prosperity
& By Crook” Unstoppable.” in Industry.”
6. “Thralls to None, 6. “Our Soils Rich, 6. “Unsundered,
Masters to Many” Our House Richer” We Rise Always”
part iv 133
v:
1. Bloated Leeches
crest supporters
1. Shackled Knights 1. Mocking Crocodiles
2. Skull–wearing 2. House Founder 2. Snaggly–toothed
Goblins & Spouse Eels
3. Decapitated Horses 3. Piles of Treasure 3. Swarms of Rats
4. Skeletal Thralls 4. Weeping Children 4. Rutting Boars
5. Mangled Hands 5. Crusader Host 5. Kraken Tentacles
6. Impaled Adosian 6. Contemplative 6. Cackling
Wyrm Foxes Manticores
vi: vaunting of the house

1. Supplicated the Wizard of the White Tower in the immediate
aftermath of the Coup, offering loyalty in exchange for power.
2. Backed the Wizard of the White Tower in the hours prior to the
Coup, allowing the destruction of Calmyn’s nationhood in exchange
for a station beside the sundered throne.
3. From a line of bondsmen who served besides Good King Yomund
in the taming of Calmyn and the unifying of its fiefdoms.
4. Descendants of wealthy thrallmongers who offered up thralls
by the thousand for Good King Yomund to build his kingdom.
5. Born of a line held hostage in Torre, allegedly sharing blood with the
Lysian Tyrants and therefore possessing a distant rite of authority
in Calmynidus’s name.
6. Participated in the invasion and colonisation of Norui, seeing its
leader bend the knee to the Wizard, and entrenching itself in
matters where going unvaunted would have caused scandal.
134 part iv
vi: vaunting of the house {cont.}
1. Served as Plundermen against the Empire of Taurochtalia, bringing
the wealth of Inheritor palaces to Calmyn.
2. Assisted in the construction of the Tower of Yomundendam, endowed
with its secrets and entrusted to serve Calmyn in a similar manner.
3. Brought a legion into the Vaalengart, averting a bloody conflict
and turning would–be–foes upon their previous people.
4. From a line of bankers who invested in the Consortium in its founding
days, and who survived long enough to become vaunted.
5. Controversially of a line which is believed to have absconded with
the last true heir of the royal family of Calmyn; vaunted for such a
deed which is neither admitted nor confirmed.
6. Vaunted by manipulation of the Great Banks, made a political house
so the Ducal Throne could exert some degree of control over them.
1. Hailed heroic for services to the nation during the Desecration,
a house which saved many from the dead who ravaged the lands.
2. Celebrated for their adherence to the legacy of Calmynidus;
slaying wyrms, planting the Flower of Prosperity.
3. Cherished for their contributions to the arts, made vaunted for
projecting the national image of Calmyn in a charitable light across
the whole of the known world.
4. Funded revolutions in foreign lands so as to allow Calmyn to profiteer
off both sides and establish hegemony. Made vaunted for such duty.
5. Servants of the Ducal Throne for generations, made vaunted as a
show of power by the Duke and Steward: a scandal that goes unspoken.
6. The most faithful house in Calmyn, made vaunted in the name of
the All–Father as a means of silencing claims of godlessness by
trading partners in Jerrod.
part iv 135
vii: holdings of the house
1. Controls the flow of sugar imported from Norui and Torre,
granting a monopoly over a luxury market.
2. Finances freeblade operations upon the Gorgon Coast as a means
to collect artefacts and endowments from the Cult of Chalices.
3. Pulls the strings of several members of the Hammer of Ilym, ensuring
the house deals in only the finest stone and eldritch antiquities.
4. Holds a large share of bonds in the Grosvenstock Logging company,
granting the house a tight grasp on the global lumber market.
5. Possesses a stake in maritime negotiation arrangements, granting
authority and tariffs against the Harberg Frigaters, the F.O.D., the
Leaguesmen and the Iron Reach.
6. Holds several patents on alchemical and pharmaceutical techniques
developed by the Alchemists–Crusade during previous inquests to
Salver, Torre, and Norui.
1. The Great Banks work in lock–step with the house to ensure their
hegemony of power over a shared portfolio of investments.
2. Controls a cell from the Order of Eels. Through such coercive killers,
they hold the fates of many vaunted houses.
3. Holds governorship over a colonial outpost, reaping of all resources and
thralls and the Ducal subsidised protection offered by the Consortium.
4. Endowed with wealth from generations of cryptdigging,
granting insight into the hidden places and horrors of the world.
5. Infiltrated the Interrers of Norui, holds exclusive license for exporting
mummified corpses for recreational and medical consumption.
6. Old money from marriages with members of the Rochenne Societe–
Memorial, Jerrodine’s House of Cobbles, and distant relatives of a
previous Steward of the Ducal Throne.
136 part iv
vii: holdings of the house {cont.}
1. Allied with the Gildenteeth and a stakeholder in Zkarndain;
granting access to treasures from the cold desolation of Fal.
2. Regularly breaks bread with the Gelder League, gaining access and
insight to arcane developments and how best to monopolise them.
3. Hold vast investments in the Kinter Consortium and artistic
endowments to the Gergenbesch of Keene.
4. Has allies within the Sadjer Union, granting access to all manner of
drugs, reagents and spices, and a list of clients in need of such things.
5. Has blackmailed smugglers within Tor Agamande, ensuring a steady
flow of eldritch weaponry and the tutelage of sorcerous knights.
6. Alliances with the Tower of the Inverted Lotus ensures the house
holds dark insight into realms beyond mortal comprehension and
all the treasures beyond the liminal.
viii: the falling of the house

1. Broken by the Steward’s word; they fell in order to serve as an
example, and to reinforce the loyalties of others.
2. Holdings plundered in reprisal by Inheritors and freeblades,
made fallen by the destruction of all easily accessible assets.
3. Purged by the Order of Eels at the behest of another vaunted house,
with enough surviving members left alive to suffer the consequence.
4. Reduced to a fallen state when the former head of the house spoke
of charity and almsgiving whilst in a moment of libertine senility.
5. Brutalised and broken after a failed attempt to gain the Ducal
Throne; reduced by the betrayal of another house which succeeded.
6. Made fallen for having spoken openly of social reform and having
courted freethinkers who warned of Calmyn ending up like Roche.
part iv 137
viii: the falling of the house {cont.}
1. Reduced to a fallen house by the Order of Imperial Conduct,
for reasons redacted in official records. The lies of a perceived truth
do far more lasting humiliations.
2. Cast down after an attempted secession of a former colonial outpost
into its own nation–state. The Ducal Throne suffers not traitors.
3. Branded fallen after an infestation of Boemen flayed much of the
family lines, spread plague upon their lands, and called into question
the humanity of any survivors.
4. Fell after the burning of their estate by unknown agents leaving
the surviving generation orphans in the care of hated foes.
5. Made fallen after a changing of the Ducal Throne, after a hated
foe had power enough to cast them down without reproach.
6. Purged to a fallen state by standing against the Wizard of the White
Tower during the Coup—a wound they will never recover from.
1. Made fallen after the head of the house was taken hostage by rivals;
all holdings and coffers were extorted to the point of utter destitution.
2. Broken by fickle fate, their house mark defaced off the All–Father’s
Grove by an errant hand; cast into indignity by shoddy masonry.
3. Condemned to a fallen state after its estate holders vanished abroad,
leaving no ready heir or chain of succession to alleviate such a doom.
4. Reduced to a fallen house by the curse of a hag. The house is
damned to rise and fall in eternal tumult, like the ebbings of the
tides she was condemned to in generations past.
5. Following a bitter divorce between the heads of the house; one head
has married away to a rival, and the other cast down into obscurity.
6. Fallen by choice, to off generational debts to the Great Banks. Free
from the yoke of such burdens, they must contend with this disgrace.
138 part iv
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THE GREAT BANKS,
THE BREAKER
OF NATIONS.
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B
anks had always existed in Calmyn,
for offering promissory notes helped ensure
that all knew what plunder and fortune
belonged to whom. It was only in the wake of
the Desecration that they truly became the Great
Banks of the modern age, making use of occultists and
vicious contracts to grant ownership of buried wealth to
the concept of vaults and pits. They condemned many
foul spectres to eternal torment in the deepest dungeon
vaults of the nation. For this kindness, they seized every
opportunity at power. They control the wealth of all
now, from the dead and living alike. With every debt
made, they grow further in power. F
part iv 139
140 part iv
i: great banker moods
1. Studious, the eyes of a mnemonist unimpressed by the petty creative
arithmetic all engage in with uncouth application.
2. Views all things—be it treasure, garments, mead or man—as things
to be traded and at a price far less than what one would dare hope.
3. Spares no unneeded words when they speak; a brusque sort whose
hyperbole none can afford.
4. Aloof, recklessly so. The demeanour of someone who exists at
a station of power few can touch, and fewer still dare to.
5. Appropriately callous for their line of work; able to ruin lives and
look upon the wealth of nations with equal glaze–eyed detachment.
6. Hides a nervous soul beneath their skin; a hedonist to be coaxed,
for they have indulged in too many pleasures of wealth—they crave
for sensation to have meaning again.
part iv 141
ii: great bank rank–and–file aesthetic
Servants and usurers, those who place acquisition over human dignity.
Even the youngest and kindest know they serve at the luxury of the
wealthiest houses in society, and make their wages from the indebted and
the starving. They sign the deaths of the many for the pleasure of the few,
all in the hopes of joining such ranks themselves.
1. Dapper in the local styles and wearing a smile. A fox in the
proverbial hen house.
2. Wears the tin–plated oil–skins of a Banksmen, a brute as liable
to extort by force as by words.
3. Gaudily dressed, all the smugness of a wealthy failson paired with the
growing realisation that they are unloved and will amount to nothing.
4. Spindly fingers and a scowl that expresses only distaste;
perfumed with the scent of greased locks and iron shavings.
5. Wears the frock of the hoi polloi but carries a notched mancatcher
pole. Their smile belies a person capable of viewing their fellow
man as property to take.
6. Garbed as a legalist and carrying a large ring of keys besides a ledger.
Views all others with a squint and an upturned chin.
142 part iv
iii: great bank executive officers aesthetic
What they have is never enough to satiate their greed, for wealth is not
the measure of what one can purchase. It is how one can exert control
over their men. Enough will never be enough to stop them, to make them
see reason, to make them value the lives they ruin.
1. The misanthropic executive lingers, ancient and persisting in this
world by spite alone. They dress in the frugal wealth of one who
could’ve known poverty and equally loathes both the extravagant
and the destitute. Their words are harsh, but they do not lie.
2. They wear the finest suits quilted from antiquated gowns of royalty,
shoes from the leather of horrid beasts, and strutting about with a
cane once wielded as a sovereign’s sceptre. They are smugly drunk
on what they deny others: money and wealth.
3. The disquieted executive wears the smile of privilege, but there is
nothing behind their eyes. They play the role of bon vivant; but they
are little more than a husk. All the world is quantified in numbers
to them, and they cannot reconcile an existence defined that way.
4. The obsessive executive is more a wallflower than the Flower
of Prosperity, a beauitful physique hidden beneath a tailored suit
and an acquiescent demeanour, wearing a mask of kindness. Their
composure hides a bubbling font of rage. Outrage compells them to
uncover unsavoury truths and oust that which they find detestable.
5. The delusional executive clings to the idea of apotheosis, scorning the
frailty of the mortal form. They embrace the rites and sorcery, hopeful
to stave off the grave and unwilling to suffer the embarrassment of death.
They are physically marred by such pursuits, tarnished by hubris.
6. The immortal banker with a soul cleaved by Cinderbeasts: a
sophisticated usurer from a previous age, of antiquated style and
speech. Eloquence haunts their voice. Their bare flesh reveals
gilded chains buried beneath skin—shackles they long to escape from.
part iv 143
iv: great bank ambitions
1. The Great Banks will soon face their darkest hour, and those most
senior within know they must submit themselves to the heresy of Ados–
worship or be destroyed. They seek wealth and ritual power to ascend
into hateful, draconic form. It is the only way their wealth may persist.
2. The dead are stirring in the vaults and someday soon the contracts
forged during the Desecration will be rendered moot. The Great
Banks must transcend death to control and bind it. The secret for
immortality is hidden in gold and the whispered spectres of the
Midanian order’s gilded dead who rest despite their largesse.
3. That the Great Banks should be content with their power is to spit
on the very idea of Prosperity. The Great Banks hold more plunder
than any lesser nation could muster; so why should the banks be
denied their dominion over humanity? A nation founded by bankers,
will be untouchable and stronger than any empire known to history.
4. The Wizard’s ban on the Gold Sovereign is driven by the innate
metaphorical power of gold, for those who control the flow of
the sacred metal may forge kings from such blessed auric roots.
The Sovereign’s Mint must begin manufacturing its currency once
more, lest humanity lose its dominion over the earth and the
Wizard further undermine modernity.
5. Alchemy will unlock the salvation of all humanity, and gold shall
pave that path. The Great Banks must invest in these pursuits;
in the creation of devices and mechanisms to advance humanity to
its next state. Transmutation shall make humanity whole and new;
provided the machinations of short–sighted do not get in the way.
6. Time is all that can reduce the Great Banks from their supremacy;
and though executives have not sat themselves around a table and
openly stated their aims to put entropy under lock and key; it is
their end goal. Permanence of being and permanence of wealth,
to hold opportunity over all existence as timeless deities.
144 part iv
v: great banks of calmyn
Whether at home or across the known world, the Great Banks establish
themselves as the only infrastructure worthy of trust. Though based in
Calmyn, their agents are ever present wherever money changes hands.
1. the sovereign’s mint
Shuttered by the Wizard’s edicts, it is still maintained and in theory,
operational. However, because dealing in Gold Sovereigns is now a
high offence, the Sovereign’s Mint can do little but officially inform
those using their coinage such currency is no longer accepted.
2. bank of the frugal usurer
Little more than a racketeering outfit used to shackle individuals
into poverty and thralldom. Infamous for reclaiming family estates
and buying those it ruined to pull the same schemes upon new victims.
3. the first calmynic vault of plunder
The eldest ‘vault’ in Calmyn. Unbeknownst to all but its overseers,
it makes use of Lamenters to maintain its deepest corridors and to
protect its most ancient, stolen treasures.
4. the yomundic reserve
The official coffers of the Ducal Throne, though certainly not anywhere
close to its true holdings. A money pit where tithings and taxes are
thrown like joss paper; never again to be touched by common hands.
5. tower bank and trust
Safe storage and investment firm for the old money houses of
Calmyn; where for a small fortune one may claim to have treasures
stored away in a reliquary tower. Services only by written invitation.
6. the reformed bank of calmyn
Public facing bank, made so as to acquiesce to the Wizard of the
White Tower’s edicts. Primarily used to issue promissory notes
which are worth more as kindling than as items of exchange.
part iv 145
v: great banks of calmyn {cont.}
1. the chaliced bank of inquest
An investment firm formed in recent years to syphon funds to and
from the Gorgon Coast, hedging their bets on a new War of
Inheritance breaking out. Serves as a proxy network for those who
fear to openly state their allegiances about the conflict in Maigne.
2. the bank–beneath–the–bells
Originating as a vault built beneath a clocktower, this
branch has taken to the branding and now purchases derelict
churches or bell towers to operate out of. Instead of investments,
most local outposts make coin with wage theft and cooking books.
3. the etchelend group
The bank upon the borderlands makes its official station that one
which concerns war–time plunder and territorial contract disputes;
but in truth they are a front for occultist traditions. They seek to
reclaim wealth lost to the dead, untethering the departed from their
earthly belongings so they may be spent and owed again.
4. the vault of the commons
The ever hungering collection agency has a habit of discovering
“new old debts” to break families escaping destitution. Their money
pits are allegedly swollen to bursting with the spectres of dead beggars.
5. the merchant bank of man
Deeply bound to the Burgher’s Alliance, existing for the benefit of
the Steward’s post; ensuring the burghers do not grow beyond their
means while also keeping them from the hardships of the poor.
6. the bench of the port
With an office in every foreign harbour, they keep ledgers of the
current tariffs and maintain bribes against privateering factions. Those
who cannot pay see their goods acquired to be sold at a premium.
146 part iv
v: great banks of calmyn {cont.}
1. prosper bank, holdings & loans
The bank of the common man; directly connected to the infantry
of the Forward Brigade and the Mercantilist–Marines. They allow
those who owe or desire loans better percentages if they are in active
service or are willing to conscript their descendents to the cause.
2. the bank of grand calmynswaard
The finest public facing banking institution in the duchy; serving all
stations of society with equal bureaucratic indifference, offering mildly
exorbitant investment advice, and allowing the poorest to escape
thralldom in exchange for organs, blood, and other profane offerings.
3. the vault of the gentries
The bank of the vaunted houses and the stewards of fallen holdings;
an inscrutable organisation that is largely untouchable and all but
impermeable. Those who attend it control the fate of the upper crust,
starting wars and ending lives by way of creative accounting.
4. the yomundendam thrall exchange
A marble pillared hall in the old capital serves as the hosting ground
for the trafficking of indebted and enslaved folk from every known.
Human, non–human, living and dead—all are chattel for sale here.
5. the vaalengart moneychangers bench
With a branch in every colonial port, the Bench engage in predatory
exchange rates with non–Calmynite cultures, debasing their
economic systems and undermining non–capitalist trade systems.
6. the honoured ducal mint
The new mint of Calmyn, where coins emblazoned with the Silver
Sigil are minted and marked. Its overseers officially exchange Gold
Sovereigns to their equivalency in Sigils. They name the names of
those with the illegal currency to the Wizard’s spies.
part iv 147
fffffffcfffffff
THE WATTS–CALMYN
CONSORTIUM,
THE CAPITALIST
HEGEMONY.
ffffffffffffffff
T
he consortium has always existed,
even back in the age of longboats and
berdish–wielding plunderers. They were
but an alliance then, an agreement between
fiefs and plundermen that when abroad all Calmynites
were as one: no kinstrife nor treachery would rise
between them when foreign plunder could be claimed.
They were incorporated by the titular Watts, a figure of
openly redacted acclaim—a merchant Steward who was
able to purchase the kind silence of his place in history,
such that none think of his deeds whilst he counselled
the Calmynite throne. Time and changing views of
power and nationhood have seen the Watts–Calmyn
Consortium function both as the military and economic
arm of the duchy. The Consortium, however, has a
mind of its own. It is far too happy to assert its
independence as an entity should it disagree with the
Ducal Throne, or seek to hold the world in duress. F
148 part iv
i: watts–calmyn consortium moods
1. Pompous guffawing, befitting those assured of power
and the enthusiasm to enforce it.
2. Hard–nosed and stern, always commanding.
3. Confident and self–assured in their own image as a hero;
belligerent as only a killer of thousands may be.
4. Rubs fingers errantly upon their lapel, as if to polish a medal;
shares a knowing smile as though certain they’ll have it soon.
5. Moves with the rough–and–tumble aches of an individual used
to their sea legs, used to sleeping off a fight, and liable to get into
one again soon.
6. Carries themselves with all the swagger and smug superiority
of a celebrated butcher, lionised to a distant public.
part iv 149
ii: consortium rank–and–file aesthetic
The agents of enterprise and colonialism, these jackbooted plunderers
playing at burgher politics and global domination. The rank–and–file are
dogs: they kill and act at the behest of their betters, all for their promised
rewards. That they feel no shame nor pride in the harm they commit
is a scathing indictment of the Consortium and Calmyn as a whole.
They serve capital, no matter the cost.
1. Sullen–eyed and hair shocked white by the trauma they deal with.
Pinstripe frock coats, bely an associate with the sanctioned occultists
of the Consortium.
2. Well groomed, with the faint scent of a pomade and floral soap
to their aura. They wear the fine mottled frock and pinned badge
of a functionary in a mercantile outfit.
3. Flared–hip breeches and a doublet which has seen better days;
each stained with the sweat and blood of a rough day’s work and
a hard life’s living.
4. Rippling form beneath a maritime doublet, with hands meant
to wield a boarding axe and doglock pistol in terrible unity.
Wears a dog’s grin: deadly and charming; capable of great harm.
5. Nebbish and inscrutable, a paper–pusher more than a plunderman.
They wear the cinnabar–stained wigs of popular low nobility,
though it is of faded saturation.
6. Brutish behind a fancifully patterned yarn sweater; as if to invoke
the image a child holds of a parent liable to beat them. A goonish
stride; a being looking to drink and to deal in fisticuffs.
150 part iv
iii: consortium officers aesthetic
The Plundering Era never ended for the Consortium. Though they
feigned pity and terror in the wake of the Coup, the Watts–Calmyn
Consortium has ever and always cherished the inflicting of their will over
the spreading of “prosperity.” There are few things more horrifying than
a person obsessed with ensuring their influence will define the world.
1. The colonial officer is a tall obese man decked in finery, although those
who know can tell that such an attire is a hand–me–down. They upturn
an aquiline nose when forced to converse with those beneath them,
and only speak with enthusiasm when discussing their own glory.
2. The veteran officer is grey at the temples, but age has not diminished
their mind, their sadist’s charisma, or their training. Unfestooned
with medals by choice; they dress like any middling Consortium officer:
a lapel stitch shows their rank, and a pragmatist’s cunning their command.
3. The utilitarian officer is a field operator; often covered in soot, scum,
blood or offal. Has served in lesser roles, with the scars and capaility
to prove it. They speak disarmingly, able to crack a joke and care,
leaving them accepted by subordinates, and scorned by their betters.
4. The alienist officer courts the strange with a charisma that saturates
their stride. They have escaped the scars of the Consortium occultist
education, and they look at the shadows like a goading bully—waiting
for something to strike so they might put it in their place. Mundane
niceties are beyond them, but they take delight in manipulation.
5. The manservant officer is surprised to find themselves in power, and
wields authority like an indecisive tyrant. Dressed in parade finery,
they are unaware of both its pomposity and impracticality in the
field. Their voice is unsure, unless repeating the orders of others.
6. The forward officer, disarmingly pleasant but with a tendency towards
derring–do. Agile and combat ready, with limbs like bound rope from
a life of dealing out floggings.
part iv 151
iv: consortium ambitions
1. The establishment of a colony would ensure both future land
thefts and all the wealth such plunder can bring for generations.
Proper procedure requires petitioning and acquiescence from
the Ducal Throne and the governorship of a vaunted house,
and the Consortium seeks to avoid such oversight.
2. Traffick in thralls is always lucrative, though growing sentiment
among the hoi polloi in Calmyn find it distasteful. The Consortium
seeks to correct this perception, thinking that shackling enemies of
the duchy can remedy the issue. If enemies are not easily found, they
can be manufactured through sabotage, set–up, and foul circumstance.
3. They will not call it a war, for such things could involve politics
larger than themselves—yet that is what they seek to wage. They
want a war of reprisals, to butcher, brutalise and make an example
of those who denied the Consortium its stranglehold.
4. The Consortium has always found the people of a certain region
to be distasteful, and they now seek to assert the Wizard’s edict to
justify atrocity. Though the common rank–and–file have been kept
in the dark, the officers have been grimly illuminated to the truth.
None can mistake that what will occur is an extermination.
5. Having grown lazily upon its laurels, the Consortium seeks to
reassert its roots in plunder by engaging in the full scale erasure of
an age. They will fill their ships and wagons with treasures enough
that memory of them is found only in absence, and in the exhibitions
of the academic world.
6. Despite establishing hegemony and spreading Prosperity, the
Consortium cannot help but notice that local cultures and customs
leave a distasteful sense of non–Calmynite inferiority in the air. They
seek a cultural purge, but not one that can be overtly performed—
as this would admit to a failure at the onset. They must make what
is sacred into something profane or abominable.
152 part iv
v: consortium subsidiary companies of calmyn
The Consortium is not a monolithic titan. It is a hydra. Through subsidiary
companies, guilds and groups, they keeps a firm hand upon every duchy.
To strike down the Consortium would be to bankrupt the markets of
every duchy, to kill every merchant, and to throw the world into chaos.
1. carnation company
Freeblades of the interior, serving the Consortium as the premiere
stagecoach and bodyguard firm. They negotiate contracts with
highwaymen and assassins to ensure the safety of their clients.
2. good prosperity colonial guard
An affordable solution to insurgency and colonial occupations. Good
Prosperity purchases the contracts of the expendable and ships them
overseas in uniform to shoot where their superiors point.
3. regent acquisitions group
Cryptdiggers who procure historical artefacts on the behalf of
universities, private collections, and public exhibitions. Though they
act like scholars, they are desecrating tomb robbers without equal.
4. bellmaker’s tea & meads
Founded in a Sustern Vale church, the company has grown from
servicing drinks to travelling plundermen to cornering the beverages
market by branding themselves as the drink of true Calmynites.
Their inquests overseas have resulted in many peasant massacres.
5. old yomund’s spice & sundries
Operating out of a warehouse in Yomundendam, the company formerly
known as merely “Spice & Sundries” operates as a distributor,
importer and exporter of small luxuries and agricultural goods.
6. bear–roaring ironclad
Joint Falen and Dupontaigne naval engineering firm, maintained by
Calymnite coin and the Consortium for mutual benefit. Has caused
strife with the Leaguesmen of Maigne over maritime dominance.
part iv 153
v:consortium subsidiary companies of calmyn {cont.}
1. pilgrim’s quartering
Outfitters of expeditions and maintainers of the duchy’s hospitality
industry, Pilgrim’s Quartering maintains sweatshops abroad for the
creation of common bedrolls, sheets, and weatherised jackets.
2. krakenscoiling vault press
Originally a free press that served the university system, K.V.P
was purchased by the Consortium so as to oversee the flow of
information in Calmyn. They control the knowledge of the populace—
making it a rag few hold in high regard, for its biases are clearly seen.
3. stonecutter’s coach and porter
Stevedores, carriers, and stagecoach workers work under the banner
of Stonecutter’s Coach and Porter; the premiere way of moving
large items by road. They make use of a fresh horse post line,
and ample willingness to fire upon any and all who get in their way.
4. trinity gelderlend
In association with the sorcerers of Gelde, Trinity Gelderlend ensures
that arcane developments in the towered nation are well–documented
for the benefits of Calmyn. Those who bear the sigil of Trinity
Gelderlend are seldom trifled with for fear of curses and witchery.
5. gelbenhag gunnery
Jerrodine firearms are the finest in all the world; and it is Gelbenhag
Gunnery which sees Calmyn forge their own faulty facsimile.
Hiring the best, brightest, and most freshly exiled engineers of
Jerrod, they arm troops with the illusion of superior handiwork.
6. architect’s apprentice association
Too risque to work within Ilym proper, the failson scions of the Hammer
of Ilym are hired to serve as overseers and petty geomancers. They
will take any effort possible to strike out against the Fey.
154 part iv
v:consortium subsidiary companies of calmyn {cont.}
1. company of afar–sunderhill
The burghers of Calver are united under the Guild of Sunderhill,
ensuring that Calveri goods not taken in plunder must be purchased
through middlemen. They maintain their image as feudal Calveri.
2. the new idjbal harborage
Founded in defiance of the Fleet of the Idjbal, a commercial port
that seeks to usurp the defiant mariners who have yet to accept
Norui’s bending of the knee. Goods from Norui which leave from
any respectable port fly with the banners of the Harborage.
3. gali group
It took notable marriages and many generations for the Consortium
to gain entry into the Silent Market of Salver, and it is through the
Gali Group that they hold it still. The Consortium do not dare to give
this up, for the Silent Market can gain anything no matter the cost.
4. kinter crown confederated
Keene controls gold enough to make Ados blush, but it is so thralled
to the Wizard that they are unwilling to simply trade it openly.
Thus the Consortium concocted a false faced company, Kinter Crown
Confederated, to engage in such mercantile acts under the auspices
of political gifts, support of the Wizard’s edicts, and other deceptions.
5. gavrolte gate company
Rochenne operated by Calmyn owned, the Gavrolte Gate Company
works in commercial fortifications; a fact which all in Roche seek to
exploit in their coming societal collapse.
6. valcomea cartographica
A firm of Torrean expatriates born of the Valcomean temple order.
Seized from the wake of schisms within their culture, they serve the
Consortium now—charting and correcting maps for sake of trade.
part iv 155
156 part iv
fffffffcfffffff
THE UNIVERSITY
OF HARLINGSTAD,
AND OTHER FALSE
AUTHORITIES.
ffffffffffffffff
T
he university of harlingstad is the
pre–eminent academic body in all of
Calmyn—and as they would boldly claim,
the wider world as well. It is a wholly
corrupted scholastic system built entirely around
reaching the correct conclusions for the benefit of
Calmyn’s endeavours at home and abroad. If there was
ever a time where it was a place of enlightenment, such
years are far behind the University now. Its faculty is
composed of those approved by the Ducal Throne and
its Orders; its students are comprised of those willing to
indebt themselves for generations or who are of means
enough to quickly learn their place. To those who do not
seek to break the status quo, it is a valuable asset to work
with and a reasonable place to be employed. To those
who desire the truth, it is an obstinate authority capable
of deceptions beyond fathoming. F
part iv 157
i: university of harlingstad moods
1. Easily intrigued by everything they hear, but not in a way that makes
them a generous listener. They only, truly, listen when they can
benefit from it.
2. Peppers their rhetoric with butcher pronunciations of words from
foreign origins; a sophist assured that their mangling of language
is irreproachable.
3. Arrogance rattles the whole of their being; they know better
and are beyond reproach. They hold no respect for anyone,
and only contempt to those who could shame them.
4. Absent–minded and all too easily absorbed in their work;
a focus beyond compare built from a cultivated ignorance.
5. Wields the false authority of intellect, acting as though revealing
the truth or knowing more than others makes them a saviour all
must supplicate.
6. Of waxy mien, the face of a sleepless scholar; their eyes do not blink
nor even twitch. Inspiration holds them in its embrace.
158 part iv
ii: university student aesthetic
More than anything, the students of Calmyn’s university wish to be
perceived as individuals of value. They wish to raise their families ever
higher and make names for themselves, hold a livelihood based upon
compounding the knowledge of mankind. Most will compromise such
youthful ideals of integrity in order to survive or at the command of those
stronger than they. They will go on to participate willingly in systems and
deceits they once held in low esteem, forcing the chance to change down
the line to the next generation.
1. Decked in the frocked regalia of a scholar, freshly manufactured
gowns of silk, hopeful that pedigree alone will make them notable.
Uniform in their ubiquity, devoid of individuality.
2. Wears the blackened waist coat of a junior legalist, with an ill–fitting
wig powdered in cinnabar that stains their temples.
3. Dressed for comfort rather than pretension; a cable–knit sweater
in the colours of the academy, pinned with honours, as if to speak
for merit over money alone.
4. Their gowns are frayed and their hair unkempt, with gum–tar
staining their fingertips and wax burns upon their flesh. A victim
of too many all–nighters.
5. Dressed in the finery of a vaunted house’s junior member, though
tailored to imply a student’s uniform despite their ostentation.
6. Ill–reeking and uncouth, wearing their academic regalia more as a
cape than as a frock. Has fashioned themselves a horned helmet;
clearly an aspirant of the Fraternity of Horns.
part iv 159
iii: university faculty aesthetic
Those employed by the University are seldom kind: for traits such as
empathy were readily beaten out of them, or have long since atrophied by
this point in their careers. Fear of government bureaucracies invalidating
their life’s work ensures that no faculty engages in libertine sympathies or
harbours desires of social reform. Instead they mould young minds to
respect and repeat their theories ad nauseum, with little independence.
1. The miscreant faculty, a very tall sort with very long bony hands;
with a horrid angular visage and personal hygiene more befitting a
swamp–dweller than a frocked scholar. Their voice is venom, though
seldom witty. Their smile is a rictus grin of yellow daggers.
2. The unpleasant faculty, a rail thin ghoul of an adult with stringy hair
like a nest of cobwebs. Their robes are ill–fitting, too large and thus
too flowing. Their voice is a cold, bitter drawl, as if every word not
related to their pedagogy is an effort to speak.
3. The goodly faculty, a short soul built stout and hearty, always willing
to wear a smile upon their cheeks—the sort that is a comfort in the
harsh halls of academia. Despite this, they do their best not to make
waves. They enjoy their work and know how fragile their position is.
4. The hateful faculty, a dishevelled entity who scorns the finery of
their station. Speaks down to everyone, and each day arrives to teach
again with some new minor injury.
5. The self–interested faculty, utterly forgettable and unimportant if
not for their work. They wear the standard frock and chaperone of
archaic academics, but discard both for comfortable workmen’s
clothes when in the field.
6. The misplaced faculty, who by all accounts is here by mistake. A shorn
head and uniformed look far more befitting a functionary of the Great
Banks, their voice quaking with nervous, nebbish energy. They are
an expert of nothing, but fear punishment if they act otherwise.
160 part iv
iv: university ambitions
1. The world is ignorant, and as such all the world’s wrongs and harms
are born of said ignorance. The University would seek to enlighten
all under the balmy beacon of what it considers to be truth. Where
possible, it will put to the flame those who would deny such a gift.
2. Truth is a fickle thing, and the University is begrudged to know a
truth that the Duchy has deemed ‘incorrect.’ The University
wishes to spread this truth until it cannot be denied: risk be damned.
3. Fearing their longevity and being reduced to little more than a rite
of pedigree, the University seeks to groom the next generation of
scholars to value education over Prosperity. They seek to engineer a
situation which will require further study and investment, regardless
of how many scholars and students are executed as a result.
4. A truth could cause damage to the University, and as such, they seek
to censor it before the intercession of Orders or politicians becomes
involved. It is a challenge to silence the student body, namely due to most
of them being from wealth and means. Still, it must be done. If the
University can place any blame or bloodshed on a rival, all the better.
5. Though the school is exalted for its historical location and architecture,
it is falling apart. The University is considering the possibility of
establishing itself on foreign shores, allowing them to spread Prosperity
and enlightenment, and also give their faculty the privilege of a high
station within a colonial enclave. They seek to establish this new
school, cost regardless.
6. The University has not hosted an exhibition of any novelty in some
time, and – much to their chagrin—rival schools have. The faculty
craves newly unearthed horrors and artefacts to study and to place
within the annals of history. They seek an inquest, intent on
plundering a culture’s darkest secrets.
part iv 161
v: notable academics of calmyn
The chief supreme minds in their chosen field are nearly always available
to give their insight on any subject, so long as the price is right and it will
be of a boon to their egos. They pen books and lecture in bleak rhetoric on
the truths they proclaim to be absolute, revising their belligerent stance
only when wealth, vengeance, or political coercion demands, but never in
the face of evidence. Academics will consult on matters of expertise for
coin, and in the event the subject is not the academic’s expertise, consider
it a passion project or libellous shoddy research work.
1. haarlert snell
Most senior mind in the school of phrenology; a physiker of renown.
Recently shamed in how Gastropodian sapience refutes his life’s work.
2. wallebrord acluus
Eminent scholar of social behaviours and the effects of affluence
upon the mortal soul. Has long held controversial beliefs regarding
necromancy and the Desecration.
3. kilan raanga
The beloved antiquarian, the wisest mind of an age who knows the
history of all the world more deeply than its peoples. Has ordered
numerous erranties to the Norui interior.
4. maauvra zeengwelter
Studied writer in the fields of the profane occult; a recreational
cannibal, butcher of the innocent, and binder of Cinderbeasts.
5. sylvina gestertog
A parasitologist, the self–proclaimed “Wizard of the Leeches.”,
with a festering personality and an addiction to her own medications.
6. thekla doorp
Prolific and ancient scholar of the Tower Antiquarian’s Theological
Artifice department; a windbag self–deluded into their own divinity.
162 part iv
v: notable academics of calmyn {cont.}
1. aandaliese okkerlend
Outspoken proponent of the Ineffable Order and expert on all
matters of blood alchemy; begrudgingly viewed as such even by
the Cult of Chalices.
2. gaitea yommish
Controversial theorist of unified henotheological esoterics, a writer
of cheap and inflammatory pamphlets. Was thought dead after a
Mothlighter walking holiday.
3. corrie schuufter
The foundational scholar for the design and artifice of the modern
vault. Considered a pale imitator of previous generations by
traditionalists in the Great Banks.
4. gaaster vas katz
The mastermind behind modern mutagenic theory and its
applications to the biological world. Scorned by cryptdiggers
for providing often deadly inaccurate monster lore.
5. isaake bredderhoft
Noted cultural anthropologist and proponent of the unified
Calmynite theory of erasure. Has penned numerous papers
on the benefits of making a culture wordless.
6. welhaaek vissch
Thrice–hunted Harlingstad botanist and enemy of elvenkind.
Plundered the edge of the Linwode for decades, losing only
a dozen adjuncts and a few pounds of flesh.
part iv 163
v: notable academics of calmyn {cont.}
1. piesster keye
Infamous surgeon and vivisectionist of non–human anatomy,
author of numerous organisational thesis on the hierarchy of being.
An open worshipper of the Wizard.
2. callian pons tromppelle
Firebrand academic who has penned many a horrifying text
concerning the Fae Courts of Lendal. Was lost for a time while
studying the automata of Torre.
3. jol gloriata vas yomundendamsen
Denounced and defrocked, on the precipice of being made fallen.
Chief scholar of fiscal means, economic reformation, and social reforms.
4. lesst bloock
The lecturer who validates humanity’s most brutal tendencies;
a scholar on matters of atavism and tyranny. Proclaims man’s
greatest achievements are born from monstrous means.
5. jooster carillon
Alienist and world–renown composer, studied and practised by the
Gergenbesch of Keene. Has written treatise on the concept of sound
as gateways into realms beyond mortal perception.
6. geer vas zoggleer
Master of markets and former steward in charge of ducal
propaganda; studied in the art of manipulating minds and means
with cunning rhetoric. A speaker of note.
164 part iv
fffffffcfffffff
THE VAALENGART,
COLLABORATORS,
AND THE
CONQUERED.
ffffffffffffffff
T
hey were someone once: individuals,
people, children of all the cultures across
the world endowed with the potential to
know a beauty unsullied by the ambitions
of empire. For a time, they knew a world of colours and
sounds, of flavours and stories—each to be celebrated
and to be cherished. Then they were taken. It didn’t
matter how hard they fought or how quickly they bent
the knee: they were taken and made proxy conquerors,
made collaborators, made guilty for sake of survival.
This is the common story of all who find themselves
within the Vaalengart: the remnants of cultures made
wordless, and people made thralls, allowed to live as an
epithet because Calmyn saw something of worth that
they could not boil down into a prize with anticipated
ease. They are pitiable, they are tragic, and they are as
bloodied as all others who serve the throne, conquered
F
or collaborators all.
part iv 165
i: vaalengart moods
1. Mumbles curse words in a foreign tongue, covering it with hacking
coughs if this misdeed is discovered.
2. Speaks bitterly in a harsh dialect, a bilesome rage colours their
rhetoric when they’re made to look upon what they’ve lost and
what they’ve given freely.
3. Mournfully hums strange songs as they go about their labours;
melancholy amplified by their deeds and far flung locale.
4. Bears a harsh, distant stare upon a stern face long denied a sense
of self or family.
5. Overcompensating with perfect posture and grooming; attempting
the ideal Calmynite demeanour.
6. Dead faced, as if reconciling ego death; as if shame might turn
to murderous rage if faced with the consequences of their position.
166 part iv
ii: conquered rank–and–file aesthetic
This is the way Calmyn brands its conquests, how it makes its collaborators;
how it humiliates those it incorporates into its melting pot of unkind
homogenization. Those who suffer and those who serve are made to grin
and bear the indignity, all for the honeyed promise that future generations
will be more acclimated and free from the lash.
1. Burnt hands, branded with the Flower of Prosperity upon the palm
and inked with the mark of house and conqueror upon the wrist.
An aching, maiming wound.
2. The iron masks of a prisoner; hammered to uniform aesthetic;
thick, heavy, made to force its wearer to look downward. Used to
break the individuality of a people.
3. Heads shorn of all hair and made to wear wire–woven cilice tunics;
every moment’s labour runs the risk of cutting into flesh.
4. Stripped to the rags of the cultural underclass but allowed freedom,
save for the broken bilboes emblazoned with the Flower of
Prosperity, which remains as a symbolic shackle.
5. Festooned in Calmynite colours, dressed like thrall labourers
on parade for the glory of their conquerors.
6. Allowed their cultural costume, but made to wear a clasp yoke
around their necks. An aching act of subjugation, and a hateful
reminder that they could be taken at any moment.
part iv 167
iii: collaborator aesthetic
These broken souls have offered up their services in the false belief that it
might allow them a chance to save their culture from the machinations of
Calmyn’s corruption. Masters of the violence taught in their homeland,
they are skilled in ways that the Ducal Throne considered worthy of study.
They are hated by their people and only of worth in leading Calmynite
soldiers against their former families and countrymen.
1. Once a duellist of Roche; wears the black and gold doublet of a royal
musketeer; but what is of note is their swollen cranium. A shamed
member of the Supremes, their path to mastery over the collective
unconscious of man as sundered by the ego death of subservience.
2. One of the Hexensknecht of Keene; laughing churlishly, for their
mortal form is a free agent: it is the curse–made creature that dwells
within them that is bound to Calmyn. So long as their acts serve the
White Tower, no matter how distantly, both parties act in unison.
3. A Jatel of Salver, a betrayer among betrayers. They wear an ivory
masked helmet in the shape of a horse, and they seldom speak. No
Salveri of worth will respect their words for their deeds of treachery.
4. A sorcerer of Tor Beleth, a heretic in need of punishment for their
crimes against the Wizard’s edicts. Their flowing robes of lunar
beast fur are constantly belching forth strange creatures and objects
from their sleeves. They know the hidden ley ways of the world.
5. Mighty is the Lysian, viewing their shackles as an alliance. A
towering figure wearing a crown of horns and wielding an ancient
spear in an augmented arm more befitting an automata war machine.
To shame them for the truth of their state is to invite ruin and death.
6. A scribe swordsman of Norui, a hostage and alleged spy in Calmyn’s
halls of the Vaalengart. They teach the art of blades and ask too many
pointed questions. They seek to find a weakness, but offer up too
much in the pursuit; all for a throne already bowed to the Wizard.
168 part iv
iii: collaborator aesthetic {cont.}
1. This Calveri Knight was disgraced, and to make mockery of their
failure, an iron mask was nailed into their skull. They exist in agony,
kept alive by Consortium poultices and drugs. They are unhinged,
denouncing all they once held sacred and chivalrous. A black knight
forged in hatred, to be turned on any who think themselves noble.
2. An Orc, but not of the Palemaw; they are the sole survivor of a
different clade. Calmyn claims ownership of the being, and the Orc
acquiesces in despair—to be the last of their people denies them all
of life’s joys. They design siegebreakers and vicious implements
for the Calmynites in the name of Vashni, and they serve in the
Vaalengart hoping for a death worthy of notice.
3. Cast out from their home in the Gorgon Coast, a degenerate spawn
of bestial mien sold away their individuality for the false camaraderie
of the Vaalengart. They speak of bloodying rituals and apocalyptic
apotheosis, offering up sacred Chalice secrets for false friendship.
4. Once the heir of Fal, now but a princeling shackled to the Vaalengart
as their freedom would mean admitting the failure of the inquest.
They are cursed, cold of soul and screaming in night seizures of
dragons at the edge of reality. Only an asset by virtue of their blood;
a hostage to be used against distant relatives all the world over.
5. A lamenter of antiquity, dragged from the tombs of Norui and
scorned by Vashni for crimes at the dawn of time. Willingly serves
the Vaalengart, for the lamenter sees them as tragic pawns. Was
almost consumed by addicts of their tarry mummified flesh, an
insult not yet forgotten and never to be abided by.
6. A speaker from Dupontaigne; the founder of a free city in the
wilderness—the Calmynites claim they went off to join the Lones
when they abducted them. The speaker is a chip upon the bargaining
table, a false “cure” for the Lones or a hostage to radicalise or shoot;
whatever is of benefit in shaming the upstart labourer’s duchy.
part iv 169
iv: collaborator ambitions
1. Bringing their previous folk to heel with the ambitions of Calmyn
will see them spared grander indignity for generations to come.
They must be made to obey, for the lash of the Vaalengart will be
kinder than any other.
2. Calmyn leaves all that is Calmynite alone, but they cannot allow all
other cultures that are not Calmnyite to exist for very long. If their
previous folk would bend the knee and accept a few concessions; so much
bloodshed and warfare would be avoided. They curse such stubbornness.
3. The people they came from deserve worse: they cling to tradition
like beasts backed into a corner, and only modernity will save
humanity from reverting into a bestial state. Only modernity can
offer comfort and salvation. Those who scorn it must be broken.
4. So rattled and broken by the long torments of being made Vaalengart,
they seek only to inflict rage of a kind upon those who could have
saved them. Sadistic revanchism has usurped their stability and
how they view the world.
5. Calmyn is weak despite its strength of arms; any and all can see this.
When it collapses, and it shall, the Vaalengart will hold specific
knowledge of former enemies who will hunger for revenge. The
collaborator must simply bide their time and ensure the downfall
occurs within their lifetime.
6. Joining the Vaalengart was the only choice they could make.
A purge is coming, and only those who willingly join with Calmyn’s
forces will survive what is to come. They must see as many of their
countrymen bend the knee, before all is lost.
170 part iv
part iv 171
fffffffcfffffff
THE
GUNSZELMARKT;
DEBTOR REBELS &
DESPERATE YOUTH.
ffffffffffffffff
A
nation that fails its youngest is a
nation that does not deserve to persist, and
Calmyn has reached that tipping point again.
It wages a generational war within its
boundaries, denying the next generation a chance at
opportunity, at safety, at hope—all for the want of
ancient hands to remain collapsed firmly upon the
coffers of a nation in its death rigours. The Debtor’s
Rebellion began ages ago, but it has never stopped:
the poor grow only hungrier, colder, and closer to feral
violence in their agony. Though they are new, the
Gunszelmarkt are to be feared. They are children of a
lost generation, angry and unwilling to settle for the
scraps that others demand they supplicate themselves
for. They are incapable of diplomacy, of charity, and of
cooperation defined by a common human dignity,
because they have seen that such things do not exist
in Calmyn. Given the chance, they’ll kill the duchy,
F
and the world will be better for the bloodshed.
172 part iv
i: gunszelmarkt moods
1. Rubs their fingers like they’re flicking a match; hunches their
shoulders if noticed, to obscure their face.
2. Twitchy, like their body is always trying to make the choice between
shanking someone in the gut or sprinting away.
3. Hope burns in their eyes, an insidious fire which guides them to
purpose in even their darkest, most doubtful moments.
4. Shifty–eyed, as if casing their surroundings; smiles calmly,
disarmingly, if noticed. The sort of smile one gives when a subtle
joke is shared. Incriminating.
5. Cruel sarcastic wit, a nihilist’s facade which they wear and carry
themselves with. Everything’s a joke, so it’s hard to tell what
matters to them.
6. Aloof posturing, to numb the wounds they’ve seen inflicted
upon the world; a casual first world indifference, albeit tinged
with disingenuousness and empathy.
part iv 173
ii: rebel rank–and–file aesthetic
Canon fodder and reckless youth, angry at the world—denied any other
way to voice it. These are the downtrodden, the forgotten, the truant and
the derelict; the sins of the last generation being paid by the new. They
are rebels all, destined for the firing squad or the conscript tent depending
on the inclination of whatever force seeks to dismantle them.
1. Carries themselves with a military demeanour, but their garb
is not fit for active combat—all pilfered from forbearers or corpses.
They rest their hand almost too comfortably upon their weapons.
2. The urban eclectic, festooning themselves with hand–made badges and
false valours; courting taboo in how they wear their hair, how they
express themselves. Uncouth, untoward; wholly unique and memorable.
3. They have the look of a street derelict, clinging to what little tattered
rags still cloy to their frame. They move silently, unnoticed, unthought
of, unseen; as if making use of how they’ve been cast down.
4. They garb themselves like a hooligan, like a masked marauder.
Their look is designed to terrify, and make the “civilised” world
uncomfortable. They shove spikes through leather flaps, slather
themselves in blood; atavists in wretched fashions.
5. They’ve adopted the common aesthetic of the Rochenne; revolution
is their clear desire. They wear a mockery of the national costume:
a frock coat in blue, pinned with a wilted sunflower.
6. They hide their face beneath a stocking mask, their clothes devoid
of identifying marks. They bind the hilts and embellishments of their
gear with crude linens. They are here to work, not to be recognized.
174 part iv
iii: speaker aesthetic
They must remain humble or their fledgling cells will find themselves too
easily corrupted into cults of personality, with soldiers aligned to the
speaker rather than to their words. These speakers lead the Gunzelmarkt,
still hopeful of change, yet sick of the bloodshed it will require.
1. The ex-militant speaker wears the great coat of a former officer,
stripped of medals and bearing bullet holes in the back. They speak
of what needs to be done to persist and see their foes perish, with the
weight of someone who knows deeply of war.
2. The former proselytiser, frocked in the garments of a Throneseeker
but with a voice downcast and empty of bombast. They know the
lies of Calmyn well and they speak them with sorrow, haunted by
their complicity. They know how to stoke the fires of hope.
3. The former Consortium speaker; mocked by their peers both rebel
and civil for presumed frailties of the flesh. A bold soul, knowing
what is right and what is wrong; dwelling not on their past and
seeking how to better tomorrow. They dress as their subordinates
dress, though it is ill–fitting and hangs wrong upon their frame.
4. The unexpected speaker did not want to lead: they expected to die a
follower. Stereotype of the traditional Calmynite plunderman: swollen
with muscles, towering and imposing. Their soul, however, is gentle—
not a coward’s gentle, but one who knows the world can be better.
5. The burnt–out speaker, little more than a drunk now. They go
through the motions, the scars of previous rebellions ache whenever
they look on a new recruit. They carry themselves with the
despondence of one waiting for a chance to die in a blaze of vainglory.
6. The erudite speaker; their time in service to Calmyn abroad opened
their mind to new ways of thinking. They are always calm; emotion
compromises them. They love their subordinates, but should they
die, the rebellion must live on. They dress like a foreign pilgrim.
part iv 175
iv: speaker ambitions
1. If Calmyn, in whatever form it will end up taking, is to be respected,
it must be free from the greatest sin man can inflict. Thralldom must
be put to an end. Those who practice it must be shamed to the last,
and all those afflicted by its touch must be given recompense for
their suffering.
2. The Wizard is the greatest enemy in all the world; for though
Calmyn was rotting before his Coup, it is he who enforced an edict of
human supremacy. It is he who caused the Desecration and allowed
an already stratified society to become even fouler. The Wizard
must be killed, his spies dealt with. Only then can change begin.
3. The Ducal Throne is a kleptocratic seat of authority, and it must
be truly sundered. Vaunted houses and fallen houses should hold
no sway; for Calmyn is not a feudal state! The people should guide
their fates and engage in democracy for a better future. Surely
giving everyone a voice would be better than just the few.
4. The duchy is beyond salvation, its people too entrenched and broken
by the hopeless state of things. Only a breakaway state, a new nation
founded on kinder ideals and free from the bleak legacy of their
forebears can allow for healing and change to begin.
5. If the people are to support rebellion they must sadly do so under
transactional rhetoric. The greatest failings of Calmyn upon its people
is in terms of infrastructure; as the duchy will allow whole cities to
become derelict and abandoned rather than repair a road or build
a new bridge. But, such projects have little glory to them.
6. Though it undermines them to speak about it, vengeance colours
the daily thoughts of the speaker and haunts their nightmares.
The weight of the crimes and atrocities performed by Calmyn
must be accounted for. Though change would benefit many,
they fear this is a price that can be paid only in blood.
176 part iv
v:
1. the gunszelmarkt
rebel cells of calmyn
The most successful cell in Calmyn, who brokered deals with goblins
and secured the destitute city of Parjwijk. These angry youths have
tasted a better life. They know that mankind need not purge its
neighbours; seeing personhood in those the Wizards deems beasts.
2. the grove of the butcher’s thorns
Ex–incarcerated from a derelict work camp in the Eindercrag.
Branded with the Butcher’s Thorns; they are “damned” to never hold
the Flower of Prosperity and return to civilian society.
3. the heir–saviour’s table
Fallen houses still wield power and authority despite their broken
state. The Heir–Saviour’s Table seeks to undo the hegemony of
nobility and uses their lingering wealth for this aims.
4. the unsilenced revolutionaries
Breakaways from the Vaalengart and children of the Taken Generation,
all from cultures which were made wordless by Calmyn’s demands.
They seek to keep their histories alive through oral tradition by
liberating cultural artefacts and by striking at colonial supply lines.
5. the etchlend reconstructionists
Abandoned by broader Calmyn, the Reconstructionists in Etchlend
seek to rebuild their territory to a graceful state, and have abandoned
many of Calmyn’s modern values to do so. Life is far fairer in their
territories, something the Throne has noticed and will soon “correct”.
6. novo libertoria
Students turned would–be leaders of state, manipulating legal precedent
of colonial orders, to allow any break–away colony to claim citizenship
of “Novo Libertoria.” This may stifle the ambitions of bureaucrats,
but legalism will not spare these infant states from violence.
part iv 177
v: rebel cells of calmyn {cont.}
1. the slabbhaus reformers
Physikers denounced for having the morality not to implant stolen
auxiliary organs into rich clients. The Slabbhaus Reformers operate
from morgues and ossuaries across Calmyn, offering services people
need in exchange for whatever can help them continue practising.
2. the anomnial house
The Great Banks, so grand in scale as they are, produce their small
share of rebel financiers. The Anomnial House are a libertine group
of new bankers who see society in need of change and who anonymously
syphon, divert, and embezzle funds on behalf of rebel cells.
3. the clade of saglash
The Clade seek to educate and vaunt the customs of their people
in ancient days, and to dismiss the cruel view of Saglash in the eyes
of the modern world.
4. the all flag’s union
A society of courtiers from every duchy communicate through
cyphers and codes, speaking of a coming age without the grasp
of Calmyn or the oversight of the Wizard.
5. the rogspoole army
Lord–General Rogspoole was condemned to the firing squad for
refusing the Consortium’s orders; but none of his men would fire
upon him. This armed force now makes amends for a life of
conquest, rendering them seditionists and enemies of the duchy.
6. the ettinscove blockade
They are far from the ideal assets for freedom fighters and liberators,
but the Ettinscove Blockade are rebels all the same. They assert that
the Ettinscove has long been neglected for matters beyond trade,
and they will harry and sink any trading vessel they see.
178 part iv
v: rebel cells of calmyn {cont.}
1. the mummer’s crusade
They dress as mummers and their crimes against the Great Banks
are nothing short of artistry. They suffered in the Desecration and
their petty necromancy has seen the ancestral geists proclaim that
the dead of Calmyn can only rest once the Banks are destroyed.
2. the debtbreaker’s collective
The Collective has been responsible for recent acts of arson across the
land. They have murdered catchpoles in front of their families and
gutted debtmakers, stringing them up by their tongues upon the street.
3. the raw red hand
Former thralls, the Raw Red Hand have been degloved by their
labours, and they inflict equal cruelty in kind. They do not expect
a kinder tomorrow, nor clemency for the crimes they will commit,
which will continue until all thrallmakers are killed to the last.
4. the free workers union
That trade shall have a union but labourers must still fend for
themselves and suffer violence at the hands of their employers is
anathema. The Free Workers Union fight for the labourers. striking
back at the legalists and goons who’d just as soon see them enthralled.
5. the false boeman’s network
The urban know–nothings proclaim that anyone acting out of sorts
must be a Boeman, and must be killed. Those who dwell in the
Mothlighters and know well the mocking menace seek to put a stop
this demonising judgement cast upon the hills and those dwell there.
6. the cuttingsway irredenta
The Cuttingsway saved many of the gentry during the Desecration
and the Irredenta call it home. They walk through bandits, brigades
and murdermen unscathed, and carry the fire that will burn the duchy.
part iv 179
ffThese
ffffffarefffthec fffffffff
downtrodden,
f
the forgotten, the truant
and the derelict; the sins
of the last generation
being paid by the new.
They are rebels all,
destined for the firing
squad or the conscript
tent depending on the
inclination of whatever
force seeks to dismantle
them.
6 PART V
Stains Upon the Realm.
Westergorms
Mothlighters
Ettinscove
Eindercrag
Swamps of Saglash
Vale of Sustern
Vale of Etchland
182 part v
D
espite its claims to reign eternal and the bloody
deeds it has enacted to withstand the cruel march of time,
Calmyn cannot remain belligerent against the strife within its
own borders. Though the Westergorms will forever remain a
bulwark in the north, bordered by the deep labyrinthine scar of the Eindercrag
and the wasted lands of the Etchlend; the territorial markers will shift and
change as petty lords and bursar bureaucrats seek to pad their portfolio of
holdings whilst discarding the unpleasant imagery of certain regions.
There is no singular canonical Calmyn: it is a place entrenched by its
culture and its failings, but not its lands. It will always be the same and
always different, depending on how the dice are rolled and how the
Doomspeaker wishes to portray the rotting heart of humanity.
i: generating regions & subregions within calmyn
The procedures for using this book are a matter of taste. If you would rather
play with broad regions and abstracted travel, you should simply observe
the various regions of this chapter and the urban enclaves of the following
chapter, then determine relative locations. For a more hex–crawl based
exploration of the duchy, consider the following:
1. An area will be defined by its urban centre, which will usually be
built upon a river so as to allow for ease of travel and commerce. If not
using one of the predetermined locations in part vi: the mantle of
modernity, tools to generate your own have been provided.
2. Expanding out from the Urban Centre will be lands related to the
biome of the area: fields, borderlands, swamps, canyons, coasts,
hills, or mountains. Pregenerated regions and implications therein
have been provided in this chapter.
The further one moves out from a major Urban Centre the more likely
it is to come across a lesser hub of humanity; the small points of
light where civilization still exists and which serves at the desires of
the Urban Centre. F
part v 183
184 part v
fffffffcfffffff
THE
WESTERGORMS
{MOUNTAINS}
ffffffffffffffff
T
he highest point in calmyn sits
at its northern border. The Westergorms
loom upon the north and west, a barrier
"the acts of against the ambitions of the Wizard of
the Wizard of the the White Tower and the advances of would–be
White Tower conquerors from neighbouring, resurgent Maigne.
are known all the Legends claim the Westergorms were cleaved by
world over, for his Calmynidus, made from the corpses of titanic usurpers
actions toppled who thought to destroy the Flower of Prosperity
Calmyn into and render such beauty to the hateful drake, Ados.
despair", Folktale in the region mock the fallen entities, saying
page 14 the mountains are their roughly hewn bodies, preserved
clawing towards the tapestry of night; all too aware that
they had been abandoned by the drake and would die in
"a flower which
sorrow by the hands of humanity’s chosen. The peaks of
brought them joys
the Westergorms are jagged, treacherously cragged;
not known since
and on windy nights even the most gentle of breezes
departing the
radiance of the
All–Father",
howls like the mournful sorrows of the doomed. F
page 12
part v 185
i: mountain {type}
1. Great jagged massifs, rock walls like the piled colossal dead of a
primaeval titanomachy. Riddled with hidden gorges and ankle–
snapping cracks.
2. Grand eroded plateau with a lone pyramidal peak impaled in the
centre of it. A treacherous alpine wasteland of rocky traversable flats,
and hateful headwalls.
3. Cliff–worn corries, overdeepened in times prior to mortal
comprehension, impaled by karsts like crucifying nails. Rockfalls
and shielding barriers prevent easy intrusion.
4. High steephead, riddled with ponors of ancient spring water
bubbling up from some dark abyss. Shrouded in marlstone dust,
so as to beckon travellers to misjudge perilous steps.
5. Winding rocks, ever ascending into the heavens. A desolation of
brutal, cutting stone sloped at harsh angles which force those
marching into a near knuckle–walk.
6. Prominently peaked range which dominates the horizon line. Composed
of dormant volcanic domes, bubbling low with noxious fires. Intractable
and inhospitable, traversed only by the bold and the damned.
186 part v
ii: mountain {ambience}
1. Snow cascades upon the mountain daily, coating the bare stone in ice
and filling unseen cracks with slush. When the wind swells, the snow
blinds. When noise from shot or scream carries, avalanches are risked.
2. Forests proliferate upon the mountain; spruce, conifers, and mountain
pines. Dazzling earthy scents, like a miasma. Beasts, homesteaders,
hooligans, and horrors make their homes here away from prying eyes.
3. Ash coats the mountainside, with scant few trees that are little more
than fallen timbers swollen with soot. Fire poppies bloom from the
blackened earth, like embers of renewal.
4. Large portions of the rock face are shattered, crudely cut by
generations of miners and left to collapse by the ravages of the time.
False paths, pitfalls, and abandoned shafts remain a constant threat.
5. Mist shrouds the mountain in the mornings and evenings,
preventing navigation and saturating a chilly damp to everything
it touches. Sounds carry strangely in the mist, echoing from distant
places and unknowable sources.
6. Maddening sounds carry on the air, like the cackle of demons
or the screams of dying children. Birds of ill omen hue–and–cry as
rocks tumble, a sceptic’s comfort that does not explain tormenting
whispers or howls of mannish agony.
part v 187
iii: mountain {interest i}
1. Towering upon a cliff ’s edge stands a carved dolmen plinth;
an obelisk from the Plundering Era. Only a scholar could discern
its purpose; be it a grave marker, a warning, or whatever the true
nature of its significance might be.
2. Hammered pitons bearing penat flags and knotted ropes; a map to
those who know the ways of the outcast and the smuggler. A guide
to safety, a route to avoid sight and to travel quickly. A fool’s doom,
should one attempt to use such things to climb.
3. The earth grumbles in horrid geomantic upheavals deep beneath the
crust of creation. Screams of the underworld pour from crags and
gorges, calling wicked things to order, hissing chthonic intonations
which beg for release.
4. Gorges upon the mountain are clogged with the dead, as if they were
carried here by guilty hands. Bones and corpses pile in mass graves,
rotting seals upon the wounds of the world. Carrion beasts roam the
charnel crags, and vermin buzz in a dinning choir.
5. Ghost climbers have long been associated with the folklore of this
range. Pale and delirious, always wounded, but hospitable sorts.
They guide the lost away from treachery, vanishing only with
the dawn or near their graves.
6. Red lights shine upon the mountain at night, like fire in the sky,
or bleeding stars. The phenomenon has been observed for eras;
some claim it to be the bleeding wound of Ados delivered by the
All–Father. Those caught in the light suffer nightmares which haunt
them until their dying days.
188 part v
iv: mountain {interest ii}
1. Distant observers watch from upper ridges, silhouettes in the day and
flickering candles in the night. Their identity is unknowable: all that
is clear is that they are watching and that they’ve chosen to be seen.
2. The far echo of an alpenhorn sounds out, blasting intonations to
indicate inclimate weather or other warnings knowable only to the
local municipality or experienced mountaineers.
3. The higher one climbs, the thinner the air becomes. Delirium takes
root, and time passes strangely. The sun closely watches those who
dare make themselves seen so high above the world; the moon
seems to sneer at those who blight its view.
4. Lanterns are affixed to pitons upon the rock wall, votive shrines to
the departed as they seek to ascend to the heavens. A folk belief,
one untouched by the Desecration. Some lanterns are ancient,
some new; who lights them each night is uncertain.
5. Scouring winds blast the slopes each night, eroding any sense of
permanence away. Trails and climber’s paths are made obsolete
with each setting of the sun, those who make camp in the wind risk
frostbitten flesh and dust–blinded eyes.
6. From the highest summit peak one can clearly gaze upon the Star
Tree of Xytok, basking in its effervescence and losing their grip on
reality as all that is beyond and beatific excoriates their mind.
The summit itself is seeded with an astral grace.
part v 189
v: mountain {hearsay}
1. The firmament grows thin upon the mountain, and on the equinox
the summit pierces through it. Agents of the beyond, the voidsent
and celestial alike, are said to touch ground on such days. Mortal
trespassers who try the same are lost forever.
2. Red lights upon the mountain reveal the worst natures of humanity;
for they are the spectral flame of Ados the Drake. Those who gaze
upon them are denied Prosperity and turn into blights upon the
realm, their hearts forever bound to dragon’s lust and hoard greed.
3. Lamenters from the Plundering Era dwell within their cairns in the
mountain crags, safe and at slumber from the Wizard’s Desecration.
They awaken only when modernity intrudes. Only here may the
dead cling to the wealthy they plundered in life.
4. An edict from a previous royal line still sees the local elderly ordered
to climb the mountain and throw themselves from its edifices. The
further one falls, the higher their soul shall ascend. All the bleached,
shattered bones are assumed to be those of elders.
5. A small cult of Throneseekers have established an enclave on the
mountain, fascinated by fire poppies which emerge after swidden
practices. They believe that the whole of Calmyn history is built upon
lies, and that their fire poppies are the true Flowers of Prosperity.
6. So far from the enclaves of humanity, living upon dour rocks and
meagre self–sustenance; any who dwell here must surely be violent
rebels or otherwise fallen sorts in need of the Hand of Prosperity
to lead them from their vulgar isolation.
190 part v
vi: mountain {sites}
1. A smuggler’s den has been established in an abandoned mine shaft,
reinforced with fresh timbers. They hold all manner of ill–
purchased plunder in their deeply–delved holds.
2. Rebels gather in a long–abandoned fort from a bygone era,
seeking to establish a foothold from which they will strike out
at the lowlands and assert their vision of Calmyn.
3. An abandoned tunnel project, a cuttingsway redacted from any
official record, cleaves deep into the mountain. It permeates with
darkness that hungrily snuffs out torchlight.
4. The estate of an ancient gentry house, now all but fallen. A grotto
manse carved into the mountain itself, lost to the dust of ages and
the groaning malevolence of the forgotten.
5. A great cairn structure of stacked stones and buried berdishes;
the burial site of an ancient Plunderman. Seemingly undisturbed
by the Desecration or mortal hands.
6. Blasted into the rock face at a strange, oblique angle; a crater of red–
tinted dust. It billows out its cinnabar stains upon the winds,
polluting the rainwaters, harbinging unknowable corruptions.
part v 191
vii: notable treasures
1. The crossed berdishes of a paired coupling; ancient axes wielded
in mutual love against a world made only for their plunder.
2. Strange reddening metals, like globular mercury but dense as steel.
Leaves a rash of tumorous pox when it touches bare flesh.
3. Fossilised titan’s blood, black as the void but scintillating with cracks
of thunder when struck.
4. Blade of ancient aspirants, a primitive sword design but shaped from
a single piece of ivory metals and embellished to resemble the Star
Tree of Xytok.
5. An urn bearing the skull and wealth of a soul untouched by the
Desecration; it projects an aura that shames the unclean dead who
look upon it.
6. A pale red star, a luminescent stone of errant warmth no larger
than one’s palm. Missing now from the firmament.
viii: names for mountains in calmyn

1. Mount Krummornr 1. The Stagchewers
2. The Yommculciber 2. Allkungsroot
3. Foul Adosia 3. Moderrsberg
4. Mount Taarnschlegg 4. All–Father’s Mound
5. The Bothvaar Summits 5. Gormrdrang
6. The Peaks of Eaelh 6. High Welkyngaunt
192 part v
part v 193
fffffffcfffffff
THE
MOTHLIGHTERS
{HILLS}
ffffffffffffffff
H
igh and winding hills whose loose rocks
bloom with moth larvae in the spring. They
feast on leaves left mouldering by winter’s
touch. Goblins creep about, emerging from
errant crags or pits. The night sky bewitches those who
wander here, spiralling shapes emerge in the tapestry of
void—baleful stars unaffixed to constellations or ancient
portents. The folk who dwell here are of strange mien,
insular and untrusting of any and all from elsewhere in
the duchy. Even the Great Banks are hesitant to "they control the
enforce their will here, too much time upon the hills wealth of all now,
have made embezzlers and robber–barons of usurers from the dead and
thought spineless. Thus it is a universal truth: nothing living alike",
good has ever come from the Mothlighters. But page 138
mankind picks at it like a bit of blistered skin all the
same; as if peeling back the swollen flesh might reveal
some hidden truth that is worth the pain. F
194 part v
i: hill {type}
1. Winding hills, like the humped back of a great and tangled serpent.
The grass grows bitterly sharp upon the hills, cutting into bare flesh
when wet with the morning dew.
2. Foetid pits run the hills here ragged, a trypophobic nightmare
sprawl of honeycombed hollows and half–collapsed burrows which
belch forth worm–bedraggled muck.
3. Tall grass covers the hills in a seemingly endless sea of green.
There is no rot, nor fallow acre here. A labyrinthe of leaves
and tangled roots, concealing long–consumed mounds.
4. False mounds, not true hills but rather sites of mass burial in
heathen days of old. Bones shattered and ground into dust, stacked
high and bound together by creeper vines and bitter brambles.
5. Dry grey hills, with hidden pits coated in brittle grasses. The moths
congregate here, gleaming in the night, swirling in strange patterns.
Their larvae dwell in the driest niches, thirsty for flesh to sustain them.
6. A copse–ragged set of hills, whose forests remain broken by the ebbs
and flow of the hills inclines. The trees grow jagged here, as if born
to be infested and desiccated; they provide no warmth at the fire or
shelter from the storm.
part v 195
ii: hill {ambience}
1. Mists clings to these hills like an infatuated bluebeard, swirling and
ensorcelling across the lands; ever watchful and always obscuring some
dread truth. They beckon and part only to lure others in deeper.
2. Rocks proliferate upon the hills, capable of causing a twisted angle or
batter a rib whenever someone trips. Patterns are chiselled white into
their surfaces, their meaning as dead as the language they came from.
3. When the hills break, it does so to reveal only a rugged heathland,
each choked with gorse flowers and bitter nettle weeds. There is no
respite or reorientation to be found in the heath; it becomes a mire
at the slightest rain and is rife with signs of predation.
4. Derelict idols of splintered wood, effigies of old, litter the hillsides,
dusty and brittle from years abandoned. Upon the highest hill sits
a copse grove, a place once sacred to the ancient clans. Scowling
visages, twisted by rage, viewed pareidolic in their brittle bark.
5. The hills sit upon an oxbow, with a long meandering waterway
having broken through them and ripped them apart. The lowland
crevices run wet the year round, full of bitter muck and quicksand
that drags horses and wanderers to an indignant death.
6. A large and barren hill sits, almost anathema to its surroundings.
Steep of sides and black as ash. Warm to the touch, always, even
in winter’s chill. Patterns seem drawn in the dust, shifting and
changing each night; appearing between blinks.
196 part v
iii: hill {interest i}
1. The staked flags of a prospector’s claim are hammered deep into the
hills in a strange swirling pattern. It is unclear if a seam of precious
minerals were found, but the hacking song of the prospector carries
strangely on the winds. A distant bellowing echo of greed.
2. A deep pit bubbles up with the sweet water of the deep dark earth,
a babbling brook which offers succour. With an ear towards the
water it seems to take on a rhythm like the hushed laughter of
mischievous children.
3. Though hard to see their full purpose when upon them, at a distance
one can see these hills are painted as if by a divine hand. Strange
symbols and horrific pictographics in chalk white powder tell an
epic on this earth which only those high above can discern.
4. The moths congregate here, spinning brittle spires of silk to festoon
with their young and to perch cloaked until the rising of the moon.
Each briar and bramble thorn pulls with it a thousand nearly
invisible strands, a hobbling barbed wire that disturbs the swarm.
5. At the bottom of the hill is a deep mire, a foetid sinkhole that
reeks like an infected wound upon the surface of the earth. Its mud
bubbles, belching forth bog bodies from across the ages; some
preserved, others masticated to little more than blackened bone.
6. Atop a hill, a ring of stones that spirals within the hollowed crown of
the mound. An ancient door, barred by timbers and scrivened with
emblems of an age before the Tyrant. A cairn for kings all now aching,
gnawing, clawing for release; long tormented by the Desecration.
part v 197
iv: hill {interest ii}
1. Dolmens carved by hands across a thousand generations, crowned by
a gash everburning from the Tyrant’s wyrmfire sword. A monument
to humanity and how it may rise, united. In truth, it is a graveyard:
slavering banshee trapped beneath the cyclopean stones howl in
hushed murmurs.
2. Nestled in the hills sits a failed estate, its foundations cleaved and
its architecture rent askew by the shifting of the land over time.
Its walls seem liable to topple at an errant breeze. Yet something of
it calls in the back of the mind, the half–remembered idea of a home.
3. The encampment of hunters and hillfolk, built on a platform of
wood high off the hillside proper with meat hanging from hooks
by the stilt ladders. Ramshackle, as if constructed in a hurry.
Moths flutter about, as if baited by whomever dwells within.
4. On a middling hill stands a knotted sallow tree, almost too
unremarkable to give notice beyond a passing glance. From a long
bough branch hands a noose of bound horsehair rope, older than
sin but freshly slick with the oily sweat of the throttled.
5. Wind blasts through the low cleaves of the hill land, roaring
like a beast from the bleakest abyss. It booms in profane howls,
swirling like a dust devil when trespassers are found. As if the
hills themselves were calling for the death of such interlopers.
6. In strange butchery, corpses are left upon the hill. Carved at odd
angles, immaculate in their cut flesh. Organs are missing, eyes sealed
shut by waxy build–up. No blood ever around the bodies, yet still
within. Mostly fowl and fauna, though on occasion a bear or vagabond.
198 part v
v: hill {hearsay}
1. They say no good folk dwell upon the hills, not since the time of the
Tyrant. Those who remained, scorned for not following Calmynidus,
turned upon the kin who shunned them. They ate those who bent
the knee, and all who still remain today are inbred man–eaters.
2. Sensationalism is common, though occultists are usually cautious
to provoke such a thing. In the cities they whisper that a moth has
come to herald the end, and those whose souls may yet endure must
flee to the hills and be as chrysalis for the coming race.
3. They claim that a brood of hillfolk here perform profane rites in the
name of the Moon. Hillfolk are always viewed as hooligans at best,
so the deep horror is ignored. They drink upon the greys of night
and keep dark–lights in their eyes, the full moon guiding them to
who it desires dead.
4. The hills here were used as a bottleneck during the Desecration,
and the dead culled the living down to the last. Unburied and
unremembered, their ghosts wander still, trapped in a cycle of
endless panic, fearing the arrival of revenants long since banished.
5. In the deeps of hill country is where the Boemen breed; some say
in a great garden of pupae and squamous larvae—like tuber roots and
tumours. They make mockery of the foolish men who wander here,
steal their form, and proliferate,; looking for cities to spread their spawn.
6. Too many houses were granted acreage in the hill country. Having
abandoned their people and their duty to the estate, such fiefs remain
as a stain upon the record books. The hills are cursed where their
borders were drawn, and no noble blood shall stay there; no servile
blood shall know peace there. At least not until the records are
wiped clean.
part v 199
vi: hill {sites}
1. Not a true hill, but a great mound of slag; a composting debris
hillock of blasted stone and scorched earth. Jagged blades and broken
muskets, bayonets strewn about in piles. A heap of all of mankind’s
waste, haunted by those who gathered it in obsession.
2. The crater in the hills goes for miles, a bleak abyss shrouded in an
endless miasma of lung–cutting dust. The worms grow large here,
bloated and long as a man’s arm. Changing, evolving, assuming
unclean forms beneath the loam of a fallen star.
3. This watchtower served the people in times of peace until it grew
too costly and was left to rot. Nature abhors observation, and when
it realised there was no eye in the socket which gazed upon it, it took
root in the tower and made it foul. A blightful plinth of stone.
4. The town here was noble for a time, it served the ambitions of its
estate well; people lived here, loved here, grew up here. Abandoned
by circumstance and bureaucratic misfortune, it sits ramshackle;
a thief ’s den and goblin town—a nest for fouler horrors.
5. The hills were shattered here by black powder, and the earth bled
its loathsome blood. The fires of an errant shot raged until there was
nothing left but a bubbling expanse of clinging tar under a cloud
of smoke. Dead from across eons are trapped within, struggling,
adapting to the cloying sluggish sludge.
6. The tunnels within the hills run like a serpent’s coil, twisting ever
deeper through brambles roots and under festering mire. Monsters
from a more heroic age still dwell within; comfortable in their long
silence—to be driven to ancient rage at the slightest noise.
200 part v
1. Silver silks made from the strange strands of the moths which
proliferate the hills. Soft and fine, unearthly; easily spun into a
sovereign’s robe or a killer’s throttle cord.
2. A totem of twisted brass cord and chalk–white stone, of ancient
pattern and pedigree lost to the hillfolk and deemed pagan, unclean,
elsewhere in the duchy. But it wards away vermin.
3. Yomundic treasures from a lost Plunderman’s hoard; the stolen
wealth of rival nations during the higher days when gold flowed
like wine into feckless artistry. A king’s ransom.
4. Man–cleavers, newer than anyone would care to admit. Blades
meant for the filleting and carving of human husks. Made of pig
iron and scrap, yet hammered with an artisan’s touch.
5. The banner of a house, not fallen nor vaunted; but merely forgotten.
It bears a heraldry unseen for an age. It is a banner one could flock
under, with which one could claim false valour.
6. Precious minerals are why any would ever deign to come to the hills.
Nuggets of gold and silver, blackened by a tarnishing tar and dusted
by the strange miasma of the moths.
viii: names for hill country in calmyn

1. Tarnsmound 1. Old Furrow Ford
2. The Stones at Saarn–Yom 2. The Motte of Yomskook
3. Wyrmswaif Hills 3. The Barrow Horn
4. The Tumults of Shand–Saag–Larr 4. Plunderman’s Pathing
5. The Mothmounds 5. The Scrawl of Lys
6. The Glyph of Prosperity 6. Wyrmsfire Cutting
part v 201
202 part v
fffffffcfffffffTHE
ETTINSCOVE
{COAST}
ffffffffffffffff
E
ttinscove, like anywhere else where
the land touches the sea in Calmyn, is
exploited to its fullest both by those who are
ignorant and those who ought to know better.
Though named for the immense bounty from the sea
which feeds the unending consumption of the duchy, it
would be a fool’s daftness to ignore that the folk of the
Ettinscove are born larger and more robust of frame.
Generations battered by the tides, made to toil in the
construction of warships, whaling and besting both
invaders and irredentists who dared seek justice,
ensured that only the strong could carry on their
bloodlines. But even after the long humbling of the
Wizard’s Coup, the folk of the coast have not truly
recovered—for they saw it fit to butcher those who they
deemed in league with the traitor–turned–God. They
drowned their witches by the score, innocent and
talented, young and old alike. And in this cruelty the
folk of the coast have become like their beaches and
shores: jagged and harsh things, cleaved in bitter angles,
F
as churlish and brute as a winter’s riptide.
part v 203
i: coast {type}
1. Shores of piled sediment, slick with algae and lapped at by rough
waters. Stones of pink, blue–grey, and ruddy red bedraggled with
green sludge and the cutting shells of invasive mussels.
2. Pebble beaches that run awash with fermenting brackish sargassum,
tangling over and obscuring sinking quicksand pits. The reek of the
shore grows foul as the sun rises high, diminished only when the
tides are high enough to drag the coastline.
3. The shores here are lined with great hexagonal stones, the shattered
causeway built by titanic hands in days before the Tyrant. Though
worn by time and tarnished by age, they cannot help but remind
humanity of their miniscule state.
4. Sheer sea cliffs of white chalk further bleached by the sun, the salt
spray, and the clinging ordure of maritime birds. Access to the water
requires the use of ropes, a winding path upon the steep stone,
or the foolishness to jump.
5. Often flooded chenier coastland, barren of plantlife save for at its
borders where tick–filled grasses grow tall and shield the world from
the muck. Sand fleas and mud roaches scuttle through the murk,
the only sojourners here unbothered by its grasp.
6. Rugged dunes thatched with pale white grasses and littered with
flotsam carried by the tides. The sound of the lapping sea carries
ever present betwixt the dunes, an almost hypnagogic tone that
dulls the senses and calls for rest upon the tidal line.
204 part v
ii: coast {ambience}
1. Shipwrecks crash upon a nearby sea stack, a pillar of stone which
looms out from the water like a dreadful monument. The splintering
of recent timbers can be heard upon the waves.
2. The tide rolls in each day with a death stranding which chokes the
shore with the mangled carcasses of whales. They bloat and explode
in showers of gore when the sun bakes their inside, coating the coast
in blood and swarmed with blackflies.
3. Jetty rocks, bound in chains with pitons hammered deep into the
stone, sit in the deep waters. No bird dares perch upon the stone,
and a hoarse cry is heard between the lapping of the waves.
Beneath the water are witches, forever condemned to drown.
4. Icy floe lingers well into the following autumn as isolated floats of
unnatural cold. Clear as glass when night is upon them, they break
hulls and act as the masticating, gnawing teeth of the sea.
5. The gulls collect in great floating swarms, like false islands
composed of an avian amalgam. They feast upon any spare bit
of chum, be it unfortunate mariner—dead or alive—reducing any
edible matter to a spill of red blood within minutes.
6. The collapsed wreckage of recent industry sits upon the coast like a
keratin scar; little more than a husk of battered timbers and broken
iron. Looters and ill–tides have pulled away all that was of
worth,leaving only the salt–bleached bones of a failed venture.
part v 205
iii: coast { interest i}
1. The tides herald the arrival of void–hearted mariners, the dreaded
revenants of a dying world from the distant past or one yet to come.
They sail in the mist, out of phase with reality, seeking entry as all
shadow–clad, thirsting grimm are wont to do.
2. The jangling of a chains heralds the curse of witches being made
manifest. The fog rolls in from the coast and in silhouette they beg
and plead for living hands to cut their shackles. They offer secrets,
planting bleak truths in the minds of the weak.
3. Seals make merry off the coast, playful until they notice they are
being witnessed. Then they float still, watching as they bob within
the water. Some go under, emerge wearing horrid masks of mud
which vanish in a blink. They resume their play once unobserved.
4. Albatross, always solitary, seek wayfarers upon the coast. They
land out of reach and speak terrible portents in voices of auspicious
mimicry. Some claim them good souls condemned by false claims
of witchcraft, others believe them heralds of the Archfiend.
5. An ancient rite, born of the Tyrant’s rule, sees the waters beside the
coast filled with the drowned statues of the divine. Gods who would
demand worship for prosperity, gods who would demand fealty or
grant only doom—all drowned, all worn faceless by the tide.
6. A long, rickety boardwalk sprawls hundreds of feet out into the
ocean; coated by years of barnacle and brackish tidal leavings.
Swollen wood, rotting but held together by bitter nails and the
sorrow of those who tread it. A long widow’s walk, where hope dies.
206 part v
iv: coast {interest ii}
1. Loam soil can be found in stripes across the coast; blacker than the
tapestry of void and cold to the touch. Sinner’s soil, the locals call it;
though it grows rich harvests, those who reap such crops reap also
the sins of their ancestors.
2. An estuary cleaves into the coast here, cleaving further inland with
each passing year. The brackish water, a filthy salinated soup, stings
the eyes of those made to traverse it. The lagoons formed between
the spits play host to all manner of poisonous kraits.
3. Stones the size of barrels cling to the coast at odd angles; moving
when the air is chill or blood is scented. In truth, barnacles from the
deepest trenches of the world march upon the surface by an unseen
hand. They strike upon those who rest, and bloat dead bodies to the
brim with larvae.
4. Seaglass is found commonly upon these shores, a beachcomber’s
delight. The twice–tossed glass has the look of any bauble, the
origins obscured by weathering waves. Some shimmer strangely,
reflecting scenes of distant shores in their gleaming.
5. Tidal pools play birthing places to harsh broods of saltwater
hellbenders; snot–soaked salamanders whose bites seldom clot
and who strike with a sadist’s cruelty. Though a menace, their eggs
are worth a small purse to chefs of the duchy’s interior.
6. Shattered wharfs float out on the coastal waters, like wayward rafts
or the scuttled timbers of a broken ship. Carried out by storm waters
years prior, they were never reclaimed; the waters beneath them
taking on a cruel shimmer. Even the birds keep their distance.
part v 207
v: coast {hearsay}
1. Shipwrecks are growing more common, enough to shutter a few
towns in the region if things don’t let up. The survivors of the wrecks
are dragged from the shores, missing tongues and fingers; unable
to speak truth or settle to the satisfaction of insurers.
2. A song upon the wind has turned popular, canted by children and
goliard alike; even reaching the interior. It calls folk to the coast,
makes it seem appealing. Those studied in the occult and musical
theorem have noted the tune is complemented by unseen voices.
3. Drowned witches are not uncommon in Calmyn: such was the
violent response to the Wizard’s Coup by those without the power
to do more than act in rage. But rare are new witch drownings, and
news is abound that a most devious witch is to be drowned soon.
4. The roughnecks of the coast do not abide pirates, but they also know
that one day’s pirate is another day’s patriot against foreign dogs.
The Consortium has decided otherwise here. They pay a bounty for
pirate scalps, and display the dead scum impaled upon the shores.
5. They say the tides are coming up higher and higher each year;
not by erosion nor by any natural means. The ocean is crawling in,
looking for something—maybe someone. You can see it on the
shoreline of the coast, on the rivers and the marshes. The water lives.
6. If the gossip of servile thralls is to be believed, the spouses of several
vaunted houses make secret pilgrimages to the coast under the full
moon’s light. They are leviathan lovers, pledging themselves to
profane benthic powers—not for wealth or control, but for love and
delights granted only from the deep places where no light is held.
208 part v
vi: coast {sites}
1. A grounded ironclad ship is impaled into the coast: it was once the
pride of Calmynite ingenuity, and has now been left to rust. Subtle
hammering and the occasional groaning of the boilers suggest some
force has seen fit to occupy it.
2. This toppled lighthouse, recently broken by a fierce storm, sits upon
a rocky isle not far off the coast. There are seldom kind things to say
about wickies: the long isolation drives the mind to dark places.
This would not be the first lighthouse to become a profane site.
3. A smuggler’s ark runs through the waters of the coast, looting and
pillaging, dealing in all manner of goods licit and illicit. The captain
defies all authorities, not even offering the customary bribes of their
profession. Those who have traded with the ark speak of foreign
atrocities bound in iron beneath the deck.
4. A grotto sits in a knotted hollow cove within the stone of the coastlands,
ancient and near inaccessible. Plundermen made use of it in days of
yore to escape the ships of rival nations, and its current malignant
occupants act in much the same way.
5. To the shame and fury of investor, insurer, and mariner alike; a
blockade is runaground upon the shores of the coast. Dozens of ships,
rammed and crashed upon one another; creating a veritable forest of
splintered planks, spilled loot, mangled dead, and rats. Looters and
amphibious horrors make use of the bickering politics to ply dark deeds.
6. A long abandoned site of execution, the effigy for a witch worth only
to burn still lingers half–consumed by cinders. Smoke bellows from
its wicker form, and the breeze carries the echo of hatred and fear.
At night, it is as bright as the blaze of that distant day long past;
a step back into the dreaded past when one enters the smoke.
part v 209
1. A gilded shackle, inscribed with a missive of love and rage towards a
witch condemned to drown. To hold it is to feel confined with the
knowledge that such a gesture is far more cruel than the fear or hate
which saw it performed.
2. The buried wealth of the Plundermen of old, uncovered by the tides.
A bound iron trunk, containing the suffocated luxuries of antiquity,
untouched and unsullied for an age.
3. A dozen wedding bands sit upon a silver cord, coated in barnacles
and tarnished by the salt. A collection of sorrows released by widows
and widowers, to free themselves the burdens of those lost.
4. Slime saturated egg sacs, like a waterskin made of snot and filled
with the pulsating young of a coastal hellbender. A delicacy to the
gourmand, a curiosity to the physiker—impossible to hold tightly.
5. Jewelled crabs, a rare omen of good fortune—tiny scuttling crustaceans
that affix themselves with shiny gems from the deep. Living brooches
fit for a vaunted gala robe or pried apart to pay one’s debts.
6. A horrid mask of loam mud and deep ocean filth, it almost seems
liable to drip away in one’s hands. It suffocates the wearer, but grants
a sight of a world beyond the vulgar physicality of the prime material.
viii: names for coastal waterfronts in calmyn

1. Closureclasp Cape 1. Floodplains of Pons vas Holmgaang
2. Bay–on–the–Brack 2. Drowner’s Gulch
3. Goosetongue Berm 3. The Paarmalk Coastlands
4. The Sundered Shore 4. The Ettinsrutting
5. Witchwater Bay 5. The Beacon Coast
6. The Tidal Marches 6. The Hag’s Grasp
210 part v
part v 211
fffffffcfffffff
THE EINDERCRAG
{CANYONS}
ffffffffffffffff
O
ut beyond and betwixt the etchlend
is a shattered expanse. It is a labyrinth of
canyons and crags cleaved by the Tyrant’s
hand, comprised of the battered corpses
of titanic bodies cast from the sky, and ravaged into a
no–man’s–land by the acts of the Wizard’s Desecration.
This is the Eindercrag, the end of the civilised world:
beyond it and within its winding bottomless chasms,
there is only treacherous barbarism. To traverse it is
often a necessity if one wishes to strike out at the realms
beyond Calmyn’s inland borders; but the safe paths
are secrets fiercely guarded by those who know them.
It is a wound upon the world, a deep gash of treacherous
walls that lead only, always, ever deeper into realms
rivalling the Great Dark. It is a place of outlaws and
traitors, of lost legions and fallen irredentists turned
inbred atavists.F
212 part v
i: canyons {type}
1. The rocks shift in colours, as if painted by supplicant hands to
honour the dead. Dark stone streaked with great scars of bone white,
mottled grey layers like rotting flesh left to petrify complimented
by blotches that bleed a ruddy red sediment.
2. Great jagged rock formations, wind–eroded titans of stone which
shift in agonised form as the blustering breeze and shadows of the
high sun play tricks upon the sight. Water is scarce in this cragland.
The earth steals what it can like a maddened bootlick under the
hateful glances of the stone.
3. The canyon delves deep here, a steep cleaving into the earth itself
where any safe route is only so generously named in comparison to a
dead drop. The earth is black as slate, displaying the long desiccated
remains of waterways not seen for an aeon.
4. A dizzying descent following an ancient river path which winds and
jags beneath precarious overhangs. Pools of ferrous sludge bubbles up
slurry hot from beneath rocks, the earth bleeds as one goes deeper—
until red fumes become as knives to the lungs.
5. The valley between the walls is wide here, like a nation trapped
between cruel stone hands. Outcrops of compressed clay rise over
the low dusty grasses of the interior, pock–marked with erosion and
crudely scaffolded by those foolish enough to settle here.
6. The canyon here is almost a thing of beauty; lush with greenery
upon its walls and broken so that water emerges in bountiful spouts
and waterfalls that cascade to the floor. The warm waters and the ever–
present scent of sulphur are dizzying upon too much exposure. The
further one delves here, the greater they are to find volcanic doom.
part v 213
ii: canyons {ambience}
1. A lonely massive rock towers above all others within the canyon,
a karst–like plinth constructed by inhuman hands in a time before
time. The winds batter it, and storm clouds strike it with lightning—
it endures, a stoic malice in its silence.
2. The edges of the canyon walls are run ragged with jagged outcroppings,
like the hooked and grasping fingers of the angry earth. Carrion
birds nest within the rocks, ever watchful over their domain.
3. Petrified dunes of clay and sand make rough terrain of the canyon
floor. When it rains the whole of the canyon becomes impassable,
the clay mud affixing itself to bootheels and refusing to release.
The dunes take on a hexagonal pattern, stained like long dried blood.
4. The canyon becomes desaturated at a point where a line of white
marking the end of what was known and the start of a pale expanse
forward. Salt has stolen away the colour here, as it steals away moisture
and life. The winds here can reduce a man to a husk overnight.
5. A sinkhole into oblivion shatters the canyon floor, requiring traversal
among the walls or across narrowing stone bridges for miles on end.
Echoing from the great dark below, the sound of labours and toil—
silent only when spoken to. Always seemingly growing closer.
6. A fool’s errand saw the canyon encroached upon by human hands;
with hammer marks and carving labours showing their scars upon
the stone. Who thought they could colonise the Eindercrag are
long since vanished. No bones remain—only pale dust.
214 part v
iii: canyons {interest i}
1. The low walls of the canyon reveal miles of mankind’s earliest artistic
ambitions; hand prints stacked upon another—the stones run smooth
by the touch of ten million earlier human hands. Concern is roused
by the presence of palms inhuman, larger and profane by their proximity.
2. Ramshackle cliff–dwellings mark the walls of the canyon; half–
carved into the stone and half built by bone and the timbers of
wagons. It is unclear how long this makeshift enclave has been here,
but at night one can hear the maddened weeping of occupants.
3. Carved into the stones of the canyon are strange effigies: humanoid
forms with heart–shaped faces and marked with carved with strange
symbols upon their bodies. Aspects of them look cleaved in a Torrean
style, as if made by primevil mechanisms by the Tyrant’s command.
4. A shantytown of burnt timbers and sacked ruins remains in the
canyon, though it provides no shelter nor reprieve beyond an orienting
point. It bears all the markings of a hubristic endeavour by a vaunted
house to expand their holdings, with the most complete building
remaining being the scaffolds of a manse.
5. At night the sky runs red with a swirling aurora that looks down
upon the canyonlands. It swirls and shifts, almost like the eyes
of a gas giant from some alien world. They seem ever watchful
for something, scrutinising the wound upon the world.
6. Stone cairns, stacked with every loose and sizable rock, make a table
and seats for gigantic entities; placed as they are within the canyon
like markers for some grand and ancient moot. Rarely, but observable
often enough, the stones are marked with yellowed cloth and
festooned with ancient brass bells.
part v 215
iv: canyons {interest ii}
1. A recently abandoned camp, the embers of its campfire still red.
Precious rations still stew in a cook pot, and the tents are still staked
in the ground. No footprints in the dust show a sign of egress,
but no one is here. An eerie silence carries in the air.
2. A large stone cliff wall bifurcates the canyon, forcing a crossroads
path with no easy means of scouting ahead without wasting time
to double back. Neither path is inviting, each offers—seemingly
the same hostility as the other; with no exit readily found.
3. Once paved roads are buried beneath the stone and dust of the
canyon floor; cobblestones and brickwork once immaculate but
tarnished by the elements. The further one follows it, the more
primitive it becomes in material, in design, and in the diminished
comfort it provides in a wanderer’s hope of civilisation.
4. The further one traverses into the canyon the more the walls overhang
until one is marching through a series of labyrinthine tunnel corridors.
One is given sight of the sky by only a thin crack in the stone.
When rains do come, the floods consume all those trapped within.
5. Lining the canyon wall is a small, single stretch of recent atrocity.
Blood marks baked by the sun stain the stone, and the dehydrated
husks of a troop executed by firing squad lay stacked upon the
ground. Their bones and flesh, gnawed upon; by carrion beasts
or survivors driven to ghoulishness.
6. A lonely well of stacked stones, offering up a sickly sweet but deeply
cold water for those in need of a quenched thirst. The water
is almost a sticky smooth, disconcerting to those with the mind
to question their drink rather than quaff it.
216 part v
v: canyons {hearsay}
1. On the edge of the canyon the children sing of “the Hollering Man”
who wanders the canyons, deathless and old since before old was
young. All he does is roar: his language lost to time and his people
buried beneath the stone. He’s angry about the stars and about the
sun; he craves only night and for his work to be done.
2. Prospectors warn of the moon–eyed wanderers of the crags; ghoulish
survivors from lost armies. They are born and bred within the canyon,
blind from its dust, and their heads swollen by the rumbling stones.
They cannot be appeased, but they fear the stones that “look like them.”
3. Though scholars are reluctant to speak of it, there is cause to believe
mankind in Calmyn originated in the Eindercrag. That they go
unsilenced by the Order of Imperial Conduct is a curious thing.
Only the occultists who proclaim that mankind is fated to die in
the Eindercrag are silenced, for they hold the Engine–Mind has
played with time therein.
4. Bastard clans from derelict houses, vaunted and fallen alike, linger
in the canyons. Unable to reconcile the many travesties inflicted
on Calmyn by the Wizard, they fight for dominance over this
no–man’s–land, believing that it is all that remains of the world.
5. Those who worship the Wizard, both in Calmyn’s fringes and in
distant Keene, believe that the ravages of these canyons were done
to seal away a foul entity—or perhaps reveal a profane truth to
humanity bold enough to seize it. Zealots make pilgrimage to the
crags, to kill intruders or bid they join them in venturing deeper.
6. Wandering pillars of stone, great caryatid karsts, proliferate
throughout the canyons. Some believe them constructs; others
claim they are young titans lost of purpose. Those who dwell
on the periphery claim them a colossal horror akin to trapdoor
spiders and bagworms. Seldom are they seen though, leaving
them perhaps just the hallucinations of the lost and delirious.
part v 217
vi: canyons {sites}
1. A lonely, half–collapsed mine shaft; inviting one to delve down its
vertical corridor into the infinite black of the Great Dark below.
With an almost living malice it allows torchlight to glance upon the
glimmer of gold and silver seams, enough to bait one into the darkness.
2. Woods, perhaps once, now a petrified forest of stone columns.
Dust chokes the ground and sound carries strangely here. What
fae things may once have dwelled here have not passed on to other
groves, as fossilised and belligerent as the copse.
3. A meandering maze of piled slag powder; as if a giant was sifting
a mandala of greys and blackened earth with a mighty hand. The
winds whip into dust devils, stripping away flesh and colour from
those caught in their bluster. Reducing bone to pale powder.
4. Geometric patterns and strangely quarried cubes of stone are carved
from the canyon here. Metals boil in the stagnant air, becoming
almost liquid and easy to sculpt. Those in helmets hear the whispering
static of the Engine Mind, bidding they build and submit.
5. A former toll fortress, abandoned and half–collapsed for generations,
looms over the path. As if animated by remembrance of its purpose,
errant stones topple towards those who do not hail an absent herald
and make the appropriate sacrifices.
6. The petrified but tar–dripping corpse of some gargantuan entity;
perhaps a god humbled by the Wizard or a titanic warlord slaughtered
by the Tyrant. Half–buried in the earth, its wounds produce all
manner of unearthly blights—and its wheezing death rattle conjures
forth dust bowls.
218 part v
1. Corrupted raw iron made from the diluted blood of the dead;
a horrid ritual metal from a more barbarous age. It hungers for fresh
blood to join it, as if magnetically pulled to wound the living.
2. Deadman’s tar is a hedonist’s delight. Though importing mummies
to process from Norui is the usual means, enterprising individuals
know a more potent source can be rendered in the Eindercrag.
3. Fossilised firearms of designs not conceived of by modern minds,
limbs of flexible earth, sculpted claws meant for rending—all found
in the Eindercrag, all calling for their bearer to serve a known fate.
4. Cave art, if properly extracted with chisel, is worth a large sum to
members of the academic community and the Order of Imperial
Conduct itself. They contribute to a narrative that the powers that
rule desire be told; ever fearful of the alternative.
5. Stone masks, heart–shaped and malformed in human visage.
When worn they fit snugly, comfortably, as if meant for the wearer.
They whisper in panicked voices, hard to discern but when
concentrating—they will lead one out of the winding canyon paths.
6. A cask of advanced iron locking mechanisms, holding within a liquid
brass that is cool to the touch and easily sculpted by mortal hands.
To consume it is to glimpse the City of Brass and all that shall be.
viii: names for chartered canyons in calmyn
1. Redbramble Gulch 1. Ossenhaert’s Maze
2. The Butcher’s Crown 2. The Chalice Gutter
3. Delvingreach 3. The Cleaving Cut
4. The Crack of Dovos–Maarn 4. Tongesnair’s Temptation
5. The Cliffs of the Masked Men 5. The Limb of Laange
6. Swellingschrick 6. Goddel’s Spiral
part v 219
220 part v
fffffffcfffffff
THE SWAMPS
OF SAGLASH
{BOGS}
ffffffffffffffff
I
f the theurges are to be believed,
mankind in the region first emerged from the
bogs and foetid swamplands. However, to believe
a dreary marshlander riddled with botflies and
cackling to the leeches upon her breast is considered a
fool’s pursuit in this modern age. The Swamps of Saglash,
much as any other wretched mire of the duchy, is a
miserable place of eternal storm clouds, parasites of
every spade and colour, crocodilian horrors of
antediluvian origin, and no small amount of threats
both goblin and rebel who make use of the unending rot
to ply their clandestine agendas. No civilised person,
even among the lowest dregs of society, would dare
claim to dwell within these sprawling rotlands—lest they
be looked upon as a trench footed corpse liable to
explode into a bursting pool of fluke worms. But of
course people do live in the swamps, both in Saglash
and across the duchy; for they are rich in resources and
ample potential profit—provided one is discrete and can
F
suffer the bully pulpit of urbanite banter.
part v 221
i: bog {type}
1. Treacherous is the bogland here, for it looks to be little more than a
great expanse of golden grains. Marsh hay grows tall and is flattened
by the bellies of bloated herons which make nests upon the bent strands.
To walk within such ‘fields’ is to march waist deep in brackish waters,
surrounded by bottom dwelling creatures obscured from sight.
2. A dreary morass of sunken grasslands, where the peat grows rich
and blueberries are awash in the reedbeds. The grasses here once
thatched the roofs of the nation, only to be left unharvested for
generations as infrastructure changed. The only remnant of its
former prominence is found at its border levees.
3. A raised bog of damp saturated mosses and fragrant orchids, beset
by many floating quagmires which offer small reprieve from the
murky waters beneath. On balmy summer days, the mud shifts
and bog bodies from ancient times are released to float and bloat,
occasionally bursting to feed the plantlife with time lost minerals.
4. The bog here is cold near the whole year round, its spongy earth
composed of rotting plants from ages before mankind first crawled
from the muck. The waters hide an uncountable swarm of mosquito
larvae, prevented growth by the chill climes. If warmed, their numbers
would blot out the sun in a buzzing storm of bloodthirsting umber.
5. A stinking billabong of a swampland sprawl; the waters sucked deep
into the watershed, leaving behind a foetid expanse of rotting trees,
muck, and malodorous mud flats. When the water returns at odd
hours, it brings the swill and backlash of the deep earth with it;
making the water near rust–like in colour.
6. A drowned forest which seeks to grow from the water–swollen heads
of its predecessors beneath the swamp waters. The water is strangely
still, almost thick in consistency; all too easily concealing movement
beneath the surface. Such tell–tale signs are found only in the rustle
of the bullrushes.
222 part v
ii: bog {ambience}
1. Palsas grow in strange connected circle shapes within the bog; with
their dry peat keeping out the wet and allowing them to swell and
subsist in spite of the swampland. They steal away the warmth of the
region, like a cruel void that sends the local wildlife into a state of torpor.
2. The swamp here shifts with hillocks of woody plants which desperately
clump together in the hopes of escaping the wet. These islands of
brittle wood serve as nests for birds and slithering beasts, and their
flimsy surfaces are prone to shattering under the weight of a traveller.
3. Trees grow tall and winding out of the mud, braiding their limbs
upon one another as if throttling a rival. Spiderwebs and hanging
moss collects upon the tangled of wood, making ready use of the
tight spaces to harvest songbirds or spread itching parasites.
4. Fungal bloats across the vegetation of the bog; bracket fungus and
puff balls, poisonous phallic caps and hearty truffles for the bold
to profit from. A miasmic cloud of spores makes the eyes bleary,
and unless properly deloused a traveller will begin to sprout
mycelium within days.
5. It is not just the swamp that rots here, for the concept of decay seems
present unto itself. The stench of mouldering; corpses, trees, waters—
all that can fade and be tarnished, carries like a stagnant fog upon
the air. To wander here is to suffer the death of many years as the
elements themselves succumb to entropy.
6. Illness is born in these stagnant marshes. The water is as thick as a
dead man’s ichors and runs the rancid rust–yellow of a dying man’s
piss. The fumes are as liable to serve as vectors for pestilence as any
other parasite or hungering vermin in the region. This ensures an
indignant death on those ill–prepared for such hazards.
part v 223
iii: bog {interest i}
1. The leeches of this swamp gather in squamous collectives, like a
perennial flower bulb of blood–sucking worms huddled for warmth
and bound together by mutual hunger. When in a spawning frenzy
they become a slithering orgy of swirling teeth, pursuing the scent
of blood for miles.
2. Botflies work with insidious methodology in this swamp.
Their worms bury themselves deep in the flesh of living hosts,
and rest in the warmth of infected flesh. Eventually, they grow
into broodmothers which continue to produce spawn until the
unfortunate soul hosting them is devoured down to the marrows.
3. The toads feed on the blood–hungry vermin of the swamp. They
peel the flesh from unfortunate travellers, with their venoms causing
chunks of skin to slough from the unclotted wounds of their victims.
They then wait for their bait to bleed out and their feast to begin.
4. Venomous snakeheads crawl through the mud and swim in the vile
waters of the swamp. They pursue their prey without rest for days
or weeks on end, halting only at the swamp borders. Vile amalgam
of fish and slithering creature, they can grow to the size of a
longship and act with spiteful viciousness in their hunt.
5. A wretched mist clings to the surface of the waters just above the
muck, reeking like a dying man’s breath. It swirls into the lungs of
those filled with spite and rage, a ghastly miasma that does not allow
the dying their rest. It makes hungering wights who roll about in the
filth, eager to sate a desire for their jaws to snap upon the soft and weak.
6. Cackling, hunched figures lurk in the trees and deep muddy niches;
the hags and hag–men of the interior—uncivilised occultists exiled
even by the theurges of their swamp–dwelling cultural neighbours.
They seldom speak; their laughter is cadence enough. It rouses
in sync with the heartbeats of their victims.
224 part v
iv: bog {interest ii}
1. Within the dark of the fens dwells the night–goer beast, born
of Adosian corruption and warped into draconic mien. They are
grand crocodilian ogres, once the stuff of folktale and mighty deeds.
Now they’ve awakened from time lost slumber to pursue the
sounds of mankind’s dominion and steal away all that Prosperity
has granted mortal usurpers.
2. The Desecration blighted the bogs, but the dead could not so easily
rise from the deep mud. Generations later, do these tarry–fleshed
dead rouse from the primordial filth to seek treasures and mortal
flesh. They are horrid creatures who slink in shadows, limber from
bones bound by sinew, guided by whispering maggots in their eyes.
3. Swamp goblins are a foul sort, more mannish than their cousins.
They are of a sickly pallor, their bodies beset by tumours and bloated
parasite infections. They proliferate in these bogs, in facsimile of
civilisation—enough to damn human bog dwellers by proximity.
They cringe at iron and walk in horrid commensality with the rot.
4. The market ships of smugglers run through the backwater,
harvesting all manner of dread creature and wretched wealth
to traffick with others of a similar bent. Thralls sent to the bogs
are chattel to these ships; made to row until infection takes them.
The smugglers are always in need of new blood to serve and to sell.
5. Stilted posts impale deep into the mud; narrow platforms at their
top; perhaps perches for great avians or the lingering foundation of
bog–dwelling habitation. Profane offerings of peeled flesh or casked
blood are left to bake in the sun atop the stilts, with little more than
muddied handprints to imply who climbed out of the mud.
6. The gaseous balm of the swamp grows thickest in the deep marshes,
where an errant thunder strike or gunshot can see even the waters
set ablaze. The conflagrations last for weeks, choking the region in
smoke—setting insects to slumber but larger predators to action.
part v 225
v: bog {hearsay}
1. Witchlights are a common topic of folklore, though their portents are
unclear. Some claim them the souls of those stripped of their bodies
during the Desecration, others view them as the only fire the Hags
can conjure—so denied they are of the All–Father’s warmth. They
always lead one into danger, but seldom will they lead one astray.
2. The Consortium has made several attempts to encroach upon the
bogs, as the most ancient peat is allegedly a powerful source of fuel—
it combusts at a hateful heat and consumes flesh and bone with ease.
The wreckage of their failed mercantile endeavours are alleged to
litter the darkest parts of the swamp like shrapnel in a festering wound.
3. The bog was smaller once, but in rage at a vaunted house it spread
and corrupted their holdings, tarnished their wealth, and drowned
all their servile retainers into the muck and mire. A great treasure
hoard lingers in the waters of the swamp, cursed to spread the
rotting earth towards whoever claims it as their own.
4. Sacred pig iron is what the bog–dwellers call it, said to be the first
iron wielded by mortal hands in service and against the Tyrant. It
cuts with a festering keenness, and though the art of it is lost to all
but Hags and theurges—legend claims it the weapon that can fell any
creature, for it spreads the pestilence of vengeful malice in its cuts.
5. More than a few Plundermen thought to explore the foetid bogs
and marshlands in ancient days, and their longships of stolen wealth
were never recovered. Occultists hold that these failed voyagers are
the origin of the mythic draugr, though the Ducal Throne disdains
such slander on a cultural institution. Regardless, their wealth is lost.
6. Beneath the swamp, the mire, and mud enough to drown the world
is alleged to exist a temple where mankind first learned to worship.
It calls to the godsmen, to those in need of faith: the dying echo of
laughing divinity. It is enough to drive the bog–dwellers to atavism as
Hags and Hag–men, or to seek death by feasting on mud and leeches.
226 part v
vi: bog {sites}
1. Run aground between two trees is a smuggler’s ship, slathered in
mud and stained with blood enough upon the hull that the waters
are beset by a floating tide of leeches. From within, the echo of
violence and the harsh, misbegotten threats of the living.
2. Roughshod shacks built upon stilts and affixed crudely to rotting
trees; connected by floating planks and meagre rope bridges.
A silence from the natural world smothers this place: no birds call,
and no frogs croak. It is unclear who dwelled here, be they smuggler
or cottager, bog–dweller born or a transplant. But at night, lantern
lights shine subtly within.
3. The rot hangs heavy in this part of the swamp, clinging slick to
half–sunken dolmens. Effigies of flayed flesh and blood–filled gourds
hang from the trees. The clouds overhead swirl like a hurricane,
but rumble only in discontent. From the shadows comes laughter.
4. The swamp goes dry here, the stinking mud descending into a
sucking wound upon the world. Water seems reluctant to enter this
pit in the bog, as if the elements themselves rebuke its presence.
Mummified arms, clung with mud, beckon the foolish to enter.
5. The primordial bog cavern, the sort of image conjured up in children’s
tales of legendary deeds and dark things lurking just out of sight.
The water runs deep here, up to the navel; and shattered logs float
idle—makeshift dumping plates for the bones of man, fish, and beast.
The air is rich with the stench of recent death, of blood spilt in malice.
6. Rain pours down upon a great stone plinth, as if the heavens have
laboured for untold aeons to wash away the sins which stain the
dolmen’s crown red. Only upon approach does the rain cease,
ever hopeful that a goodly soul might bring something other
than violence to the site. In the mists and between blinks watch
generations of spectres.
part v 227
1. The severed head of a hag or hag–man will still cackle in the face
of that which defies the heavens; it is a useful tool for those who seek
to combat threats from beyond the prime material.
2. The jaws of an Adosian horror, like any draconic beast, may serve
as a fine mantle for those who have triumphed over lesser greeds.
The mark of a dragonslayer for the modern age.
3. Blades forged from sacred pig iron leave stinging wounds which
never truly cease to pain their victims. Though profane for the
claims they grant the swamp–dwellers in the politics of the duchy,
this deep violence cannot be denied.
4. Clay–forged jars of innocent flesh and blood; a rarity in this world.
A sacrifice stolen from horrid creatures, bait to lure them, an
offering to give to things fouler still who will delight in the larceny.
5. A leather satchel of spores kept within a glass jar, waxed shut.
To break the seal is to condemn all present to a choking death
and a new life in a myconid infested form.
6. Bloated leeches in a state of torpor, limp and thus easily trained by a
wise hand to feast on specific humours in the blood. A grand trophy
for any physiker or druggist.
viii: infamous bogs & swamplands in calmyn

1. Pikkenbog 1. Swamp of the Seer of Eld
2. The Rotten Neck 2. The Bile March of Ados
3. Swamps of Sunderlend 3. The Haunt of theurge Cor
4. The Flodderway 4. The Rot of the Thrallmakers
5. Bog of the Blue Corpses 5. The Boarmukker
6. The Miller’s Mire 6. The Tarry Deeps
228 part v
fffffffcfffffff
THE VALE
OF SUSTERN
{FIELDS}
ffffffffffffffff
T
he fields and vales sustain the
whole of Calmyn, and nowhere brandishes
this truth more proudly than the Vale of
Sustern. The crops grow plentiful and the
fields sprawl beyond the blearing edge of one’s own
vision: a fact which has driven a few urban Calmynites
to panic and nigh–on madness in the face of the great
empty flatness of the world. Small hubs of humanity,
errant cottages, and sharecropping ventures are
common throughout the vales of Calmyn—though the
folk who dwell there are seldom kind. Long denied the
respect of their urban counterparts, the rural sorts are
as ornery as their livestock and as overworked as any
fief–dwelling serf to be found in a lesser civilisation of a
more barbaric culture. But still, there is beauty here
and there is a pastoral comfort to be found—most often
by those whose eyes have seen too deeply the horrors of
the world and may notice the travesties here are more
easily ignored. F
part v 229
230 part v
i: field {type}
1. Rolling fields sprawl out as far as the eyes can see, growing the
bounty that feeds a nation and allows it the means to expand.
The wafting scent of hearty grains, honey sweet and nostalgic,
dances with the breeze like young lovers at a gala.
2. Sunflowers grow tall for miles, turning the world into a sea
of golden yellow petals sojourned by songbirds and swarms of bees.
Pollen winds cascade, glimmering like the wealth of ages and causing
hacking fits on those not acclimated to their everpresence.
3. Heather fields cast the horizon in a delirium inducing haze
of violets and purples, perfuming the air with their calming odours.
At twilight the sky mirrors the earth in its colours, such that even
the birds in the heavens may run aground in confusion.
4. Like a grand tapestry woven by the most artful hands using only the
most luxurious threads, is a swirling horizon of patterned tulip fields
which paint the countryside in a dazzling display. To gaze upon too
long is almost dizzying, sickeningly gaudy.
5. Fruited fields grown in a sharecropper’s fashion, with every inch of
the earth exploited to harvest. Thralls and serfs work the land under
the watchful eyes of armed guard who value the produce more than
those who produce it.
6. Long grazing pastures of tall green grass which rolls gently out until
the horizon looks flat. Goats and wild horses make merry upon the
fields, but one cannot help but feel small—like prey, almost—with no
shade to hide under, and nowhere to run that is not just further
green grass.
part v 231
ii: field {ambience}
1. On the edge of vision the fields turn amber and break into steppes,
granting an orienting point upon the horizon and a sense of place
beyond a great empty flatness. These amber steppes, too far to be
harvested, too easily forgotten year after year—hold lost truths from
a time when they mattered for what they were, not where they are.
2. Frost licks upon the fields here each morning, the dew freezing upon
leaves and petals with a petty malice that stains them—wounds them.
With nothing to hold back the wind or break at the weather, the cold
settles in quickly and is loath to depart.
3. Pollen and chaff dust the tips of the fields, blown about in blinding
breezes that sting the nose and cut at the eyes. When drenched by
rainwaters, they form into a slurry powder that clings to skin and
cloth like an itchy, crude adhesive.
4. Copses of pine and birch occasionally rise from the fields like
tufts of stylish hair upon an otherwise uniform pate. Fauna,
deemed unbecoming by human encroachment, cling to these
shadowed boughs, striking out only under cover of dark.
5. Fallow farmland stretches for a wide swath upon the fields; a ruddy
expanse of broken grain stalks. Sound carries strange upon this big
empty, as if one screaming next to you can scarcely get the noise
out of their throats. As if nothing here can grow in size or scope.
6. On the edge of the fields and cutting into its periphery is a long
march of wasted land, harsh scrub and desolate bramble weeds which
scrape into the dirt and catch fire at the slightest touch of an ember.
232 part v
iii: field {interest i}
1. Meandering aurochs have wandered these fields since the early
days of grassland clan lords and the coming of the Tyrant. Time and
modernity have moved forward, but these primaeval behemoths
remain belligerent against the march of ages. To butcher one is a feat
unto itself, for they are as resilient as they are strong. As such,
few care to even try.
2. Irrigation ditches set in a grand pattern inscrutable to all but the
most organised minds, hidden beneath the grasses and fences of the
land—liable to snap an ankle or send a drunkard drowning if stumbled
into. Clogs of blown debris or dead livestock have led to more than a
few blights.
3. Great harvest effigies are roused in the field; would–be titans made
of wicker and festoons in floral motifs. Raw meat is cast within their
caged forms, enough to call the crows and carrion beasts into their
frame—trapping them until rot overtakes the whole sculpture and
fertilises the field with the dead.
4. Old stone cleats dot the far edges of the fields, laid out in the early
days of clans settling in the region for purposes of agriculture. Tools
and food preserves are stored within, out of sight from their rightful
owners; ripe for the plunder if one were truly desperate enough.
5. The Desecration saw little need for the continued use of graveyards.
As such, many a former potter’s field were given over to agriculture.
The stones and gravemarkers line the fence borders, the only waking
memory of a kinder time. In the cold moonless nights, faceless ghosts
are said to roam the fields—identities lost, now but desecrated vestiges.
6. Paved roads from a current land expansion project are being put down;
with thralls and felons working in chain gangs to split the earth and
line up squares of stone. The work is never done, the conditions
never kind, and the warden could always use fresh bodies—none
in this world are innocent enough to avoid such aims.
part v 233
iv: field {interest ii}
1. Gibbet cages hang atop high poles, an institution which lasted only for
a few generations when thrallherds and debtor–slaves were considered
undignified. Nowadays those who break the rule of law are made to
toil in the fields; only those to whom a most grotesque punishment
is desired are thrown in the gibbet—to bleed and feed the crows.
2. Debtor posts mark the meagre roadways and the exits of rural town–
ships; little shacks where petty bureaucrats play at postured power.
They wish to keep ample documentation and learn why you do not
work the fields. Surcharges and fees to travel come up randomly, ensuring
that even free citizens are treated as little more than ducal serfs.
3. The overgrown estate of a vaunted house lingers, its fields robust
but unattended, given bounty only by the will of the heavens.
The master of the estate does not receive guests, though clearly
still dwells within—a light in the attic each night serving like a
beacon to those wandering the great empty grasslands.
4. Errant cottages occupied by curmudgeonous rural sorts dot the fields
here; they’ve no time for urban waywards and even less time for
plunderous cryptdiggers. They carry themselves like their homes:
in isolation, and as though never a kind word was shared about either.
5. Derelict windmills churn slowly on cresting hills near these fields,
grinding grains into flour and turning with a creaking groan that one
cannot help but find either hypnotic or distracting. In more humble
days, these were symbols of prosperity—but industrialization has
seen them neglected, considered homespun—antithetical to modernity.
6. Still smouldering in the field is a burnt barn, its timbers crackled
and all that was once within reduced to ash. Carbonised bones
caught in a death rictus of agony speak to a fire far hotter than
one which would ignite only a barn—but of the surroundings,
only this sole structure was burned.
234 part v
v: field {hearsay}
1. The long empty nothing of the fields is a blight upon modernity, and
the dizzying horror they can inflict upon a traveller is a clear sign of
this. Cities must run over the fields, their jagged stones must upturn
the earth. The heavens should not gaze down upon an empty canvas;
in doing so they will see only mankind’s feeble struggles—not their glory.
2. For all the beauty the fields provide and all the bounty they must
produce, famine is inevitable. Each year the soil quality drops, and the
roots cling less in the soil. Locusts gather in prominence, and even
they shall go without—if not this next harvest, then the one after that.
No one cares to hear this, and from this belligerence is born only doom.
3. Burnt offerings may yet renew the fields, for though the All–Father
reigns above all other deities in the hearts of all true Calmynites he
is not the lord of the field nor hearth. So denied are the other deities
that only lives most sacrosanct will suffice as sacrifice; innocent blood
spilled to show true devotion—to save a nation from any petty discomfort.
4. It was a youth who claimed to see it growing in a back field—the Flower
of Prosperity, just as the stories described it. Parents and siblings
sought it and saw it; what was once a secret became cause for calamity.
The Ducal Orders and their Bureaus are soon to swoop in, to ravage
the land in search of the flower—to reap a symbol for themselves.
5. The beauty of this land will not endure, for it is here that the
vaunted will make their next war. The well–to–do know that another
borderland skirmish will not catch the eyes of the public nor shame
their rivals, so they will drench the fields red with young blood and
make famine with fire and shot—all for sake of ego.
6. These fields have never failed to produce an exorbitant bounty, and
for this the locals are cherished. They celebrate around the maypole,
festoon visitors with flowers and corsages—then, such honoured guests
go missing. And the next year the harvest is even bigger than the
last: infinite growth as is desired by the Ducal Throne.
part v 235
vi: field {sites}
1. Insular towns are not uncommon in the field districts: they crop up
on dusty crossroads where cottagers make their homes, far from any
other jurisdiction or illusory safety. They never welcome outsiders;
anything they haven’t known for decades is cause for alarm. They
act in less than subtle threats. People go missing all the time, after all.
2. The fields here are flattened in strange patterns, rune marks in
circular that none can readily discern or even properly view from
their place upon the ground. At night, metal sings a static song in
the veins of those who wield it. Hair stands on end. Something is
watching that is beyond the mortal ken of those who toil here.
3. An abandoned bar at a crossroads post, one that ought to have been
boarded up years ago. It reeks of cinders and sulphur piss, and even
the most rough sort who enter don’t seem to leave. Some say it’s
a hellmouth, a bastion for Cinderbeasts. But those who tell such
tales are too easily branded cowards—they never went in, after all.
4. An old stone bridge over a large irrigation channel, allegedly haunted
and marked with a placard indicating it a last stand for a village lost
during the Desecration. The waters here run calmly, almost invitingly.
They conjure up memories—false or otherwise—of life as a child, invited
to swim with friends. Their faces are lost. The water seems cold.
5. The old charnelhouse served its purposes and was condemned not
for the strange butchery it produced when some folk went missing—
but instead in favour of more tasteless wheats. The blood it spilled
tainted the groundwater nearby, so it sits surrounded by nothing of
worth; just a blight of old stone and chains jangling in the wind.
6. Trenches from an abandoned irrigation expansion, claimed like a
child might claim a bit of woodland as their fort. Perhaps a haven for
young lovers looking to roll in the dirt, or a petty staging ground for
would–be rebels playing at soldiers. Whoever holds it has dug deeper
than they should, and they’ve found old bloody knives in the rich loam.
236 part v
1. A crown of flowers, a sign of Prosperity, fertility, and all the bounties
of the harvest. Locals pay attention to those who wear such a crown;
they don’t want them to come to harm or to go without a fine meal.
2. Precious horn from an auroch, a trophy from a bygone era made
from a material beloved by artisans. Used to hold drink and it’ll never
bleed through, used to hold powder and it won’t catch errant spark.
3. Gilded lilies, a botanist’s creation and a popular token in the capital.
Flowers that grow petals of gold foil, a sign of devotion and promises
of wealth. Tasteless to consume, causing fell visions and high fevers.
4. Gibbet spike, the size of a piton and razor–sharp. If nailed into a victim,
no movement can do anything but cut them further. Corporeal dead
fear its touch, knowing it binds them to an unescapable punishment.
5. A token of Prosperity, a gift once popular but now considered home–
spun and yokel–wood carved flower motifs resembling the Flower of
Prosperity as only a farmer might know it. Can be exchanged for a
meal and a beer in most rural districts, working as old company scrip.
6. Exotic fruits, the sort one should not be able to grow in Calmyn—
the sort that could only come here by way of conquest and plunder.
Botanists have tinkered with its nature to make it survive, and
though a novelty, its taste can only be called alien or wrong.
viii: named field districts in calmyn

1. The Prosperity of Gaanstreek 1. The Expanse of Ponsenstreek
2. The Beem of Yomundsmound 2. The Astergrasp
3. The Peel of Grebbe 3. The Fields at Gollard
4. Shelgsstreek 4. The Bollenweil
5. Old Polder Rising 5. Old Wendingduin
6. The Brambles of Vlieldenlock 6. The Belt of Friisweil
part v 237
238 part v
fffffffcfffffff
THE VALE
OF ETCHLEND
{BORDERLANDS}
ffffffffffffffff
O
n the edge of a savage frontier
sits the Vale of Etchlend, a place of traitors
and aspirant warlords as vile as any land
untouched by the Hand of Prosperity.
Maignish irredentists, Jerrodine hired guns, Tauroch–
talian abomination cults, and the slavering hordes of
those born in the direct thrall of the Wizard’s White
Tower—all dwell within the Etchlend, seeking to pierce
"out beyond it and the Eindercrag, then reap the gilded Flower
and betwixt the of Prosperity that is Calmyn. Those Calmynites who
Etchland is a dwell in the borderlands are a people unto themselves; a
shattered expanse." bulwark against the foreign savages and a knife ready to
page 211 plant into the back of their countrymen. They receive
little from their duchy for all their suffering, but they
are taxed all the same—blamed even more should things
"a flower which fall short or enemies reach the interior. Alas, Etchlend
brought them joys and its surrounds are the hold of many an estate left
not known since unclaimed—and thus houses fallen may rise anew here,
departing the and houses vaunted might make themselves known by
radiance of the
All–Father",
page 12
securing their lands. F
part v 239
i: borderlands {type}
1. Rough woods marr the borderlands, their trunks ravaged by errant
shotmarks and their bark shredded by human malice.The forest
buckles and cracks when struck by the wind, like a cringing victim
of a world which offers only abuse.
2. Dirt flats spread out for miles; any small bit of greenery or
hospitable view has long been choked away in favour of soil and filth.
Nothing can hide here, for there is no shelter from the elements.
When the rain falls, the whole of the region becomes a sucking mire.
3. A blasted valley, cleared of any comfort by bombard blast and
generations of arson. A path beaten down by jackboots and war
marches cuts through the land like a fresh flogging wound;
the only bit that hasn’t scarred over or fallen into ruin.
4. These borderlands are drought–stricken and sundered by a constant
fog of choking dust; ensuring it a no–man’s–land undergoing
desertification which none should ever be made to die for. Corpses
are left where they fall, to be buried under soot and shroud of dirt.
5. The earth has collapsed here, making it little more than a sinkhole
country where one’s footing is never assured. Drop outs and cracks
spread quickly, almost hopeful to bury those who dare trespass
through the broken ground.
6. The expanse of this borderland is arid and wasted, as cracked
as an old man’s hide under the beating sun. The earth, greedy
for moisture, sees only the most twisted and bitter roots take hold.
There is nothing here that is not wasting away, malnourished,
and driven near on to madness by want.
240 part v
ii: borderlands {ambience}
1. Rough rocks are thrust into the earth, like the leftover shot of a
trebuchet. Embedded deep, they provide no shade nor comfort.
Serpents bask upon the surface, mindful of mankind’s intrusion
and violent towards those who trespass upon their small paradise.
2. Thatched upon the borderlands like a roof of kindling, is a winding
wooded way of trees more akin to matchsticks than any majesty
found in nature. They can offer little in terms of shade or sustenance;
they serve now only as a fletcher’s fodder or an arsonist’s ambition.
3. Sand blows over the soil, stripping it of nutrients and burying even
the weeds which might sustain some semblance of life. The world
grows coarse as one wanders through these borderlands, fraying
at cloth and rendering any bare flesh raw.
4. There was a mountain here once, but it has collapsed. Its top blasted
off with all the black powder that mankind could gather. Its stones
coat the earth, mournful for this quick destruction in the face of
time’s endless march.
5. Bones are piled here, impaled with swords and pikes not used in
generations—an ancient battlefield on the edge of the ‘civilised world’
where the dead aren’t buried nor honoured. In this wretched place,
the dead seem more prone to mourning their own than rising to
continue a ceaseless conflict.
6. Only the carrion birds find comfort here: they gather in swarms
from miles away when they catch the scent or sight of those
who’d foolishly walk these lands. They watch and stalk, seeking
the first to fall. Then they rend and rip and feast.
part v 241
iii: borderlands {interest i}
1. A border fortress sits, half–ruined by generations of use: it was
abandoned by the Ducal Throne under the guise of ‘cutting costs.’
Those who would occupy it are as capable of heinous violence as
those it would stop. It is not a place of honour, only tattered banners
and broken corpses.
2. Upon a high hillock stands a watch tower, a plinth of stone that still
flies the flag of Calmyn in its glory days. It offers no succour nor
peace, manned as it is by bastards and prisoners who exist only to
light a signal fire and strive to a futile, defiant image.
3. The ground descends here, like a bowl of filth and bramble thorns;
within rut boars of heinous size and vicious tusks. They smell blood
as readily as they smell fear, and possessed of a cruelty that only the
starving find tolerable, they will harry their prey for miles on end—
snapping bones and allowing the quarry to struggle crawling in vanity.
4. A lonely tree bears vile fruit, bent under the weight of too many a
hangman’s noose. The bodies rot until they drop, their bones broken
under whorling roots which have grown swollen over generations of use.
5. In a long trench scraped into the bitter earth is a mass grave, where
the dead have been left to bake with little to shade them but a covering
of dust. The Desecration does not seem to hold power here; mankind
has proven itself far more hateful than the wicked geas of the Wizard.
6. An upturned caravan, its horses butchered recently; a worldly mind
would think it a highwayman’s desperate tactics but desperation is
assured in all things upon the borderlands. A campfire crackles low,
and all that remains within the wagon are signs of violence—recently
inflicted and far sloppier than even the worst villain would ‘deserve.’
242 part v
iv: borderlands {interest ii}
1. When the rains come here, rare as this may be, seldom cease without
taking life. There was a town here once, but it is now buried; swallowed
up in a mudslide. Limp limbs scratched their way to the surface but
could not gain air—and thus the land here seems sculpted by a cruel
potter’s hand, expressing only the grotesque indignity of the dead.
2. Fire cleaved through this land only recently, and the smoke still
lingers low to the ground; choking and blinding, obscuring all but
shadows of the damned. Mixed between the popping crackle of
charred earth are the echoes of those put to the torch—for a
borderlands fire is only ever enacted by hateful hands on foul deeds.
3. Dry as the borderlands can be, never spared the risk of floods. When
the rains begin they do not cease, the All–Father looks down upon
this failed place and seeks to wipe it off the world he like a stain.
Beasts that hibernate deep beneath the soil emerge like worms
caught in a downpour, disturbed and roiling with rancorous rage.
4. Only the desperate and the dying dwell in the borderlands, and this
burning hamlet is just another casualty of life upon the periphery.
Bonepickers and wild dogs sift through the ashes for what might soothe
their hungering bellies. Any and all present will walk away scarred.
5. In the wrecked heap of a once vaunted estate sits the throne of a
warlord who has taken the earthly comforts and set up their own
principality within. As military juntas go, it is organised; it bleeds
water from the stone that is the borderland. Its people subsist here
on the fringes, hungering for a chance to plunder the interior.
6. Roving marauders kick up dirt in the distance, a warband formed
by the victims of Calmyn’s expansionist hubris—brought to the edge
of their own humanity in pursuit of irredenta. They fly their own
banners, denouncing those who bent the knee and those who were
pacified. They would sooner die to the last than be made wordless.
part v 243
v: borderlands {hearsay}
1. That this sundered land was once the ancestral hold of the most
vaunted of houses ensures that it shall never know peace nor recovery.
Freeblades and fools will always be hired by the score to fight and
die here so that a posh noble might claim they seek their birthright—
to abandon the claim would too easily allow for the betterment of all.
2. The wealthy and the powerful can seldom be called to account, but
a duel ordered upon the borderlands cannot be denied by a worthy
challenger. Many a retinue of bodyguards are hired to escort parties
into the dust and nothing, to serve as witnesses for duels waged in ego.
3. A vantage point over hated foreign foes can be found in the borderlands,
and thus the Ducal Throne funds forays here. Those who serve seldom
survive, for they might claim that Calmyn holds no dominance at its
borders. This slight against the national image will never be tolerated.
4. Petty warlords from the lands of old foes turned trading partners make
belligerent last stands here, all for sake of pride. They encamp them–
selves with artillery upon a hill, seeking to strike at Calmyn until their
rations run out and their men turn brigand. Calmyn will not respond
to this unless silence could tarnish the image of the Ducal Throne.
5. A watchtower in the deep of the borderlands has been maintained
for generations, fed only the smallest bit of supplies and made to
starve on the belief that their service protects the nation. Bribes
from foreign powers may lead to inroads to Calmyn, for only they
know the safe and hidden paths.
6. On the edge of oblivion is where the heretics make their stand:
Adosian aspirants backed by Chalice cultists in search of baleful
apotheosis, Wizard lickspittles with access to the finest Jerrodine
rifles, and those who cling to the image of the Tyrant Calmynidus
spurred on by the mechanisms of the Engine–Mind. They spread
like a cancer, subtle save for their tumorous intent.
244 part v
vi: borderlands {sites}
1. The hold of a clan lord in the days when dark alliances were made
with a foreign Tyrant enraptured by sight of a flower. It is primitive,
abandoned, but always sought by those who must prove the
worthiness of their blood. A wrecked fortress of burnt timbers and
sundered stone, occupied foremost by the vicious devils of history.
2. Upon a thunderstruck mesa sits a ring of honour, or so those who
died there would wish it believed. The site of honour duels and
holmgangs from a time when the grasses grew tall here and such
bloodsport was cheered. Standing on the well–worn stone, one can
almost hear the echoes of a time when this land would be celebrated.
3. A company town, one that the Consortium refuses to acknowledge
they lost, lingering as a bulwark against the hegemony of wealth.
Collapsed by the weight of ages, the cruelty of the elements, and no
small amount of sabotage. This wound shows they can be broken,
they can be beaten back—though at an all–consuming cost of life.
4. The wreckage of a grand bombast, a cannon that could kill a nation.
It aims towards the direction of the Wizard’s demesne, and thus none
should be surprised that the iron monstrosity of war is a cursed and
ravaged place. The Ducal Throne does not acknowledge its existence—
that would speak to seditious thought—but they crave its power.
5. A keep sits in silence upon the borderlands, old stone from a time
when that was enduring enough. The grand dungeons beneath have
long since been overrun; prisoners from what the Duchy calls ‘lesser
nations’ have bred amongst themselves and born monstrosities.
6. The marauder encampment waits for its chance to strike further;
it can be built and disassembled within a matter of hours. Like a
hungering wolfpack it stalks the borderlands, putting down stakes
and tents only long enough to reap fresh meat and slumber before
pulling out and seeking further food to fuel its hunger.
part v 245
1. A blackened bell of Maignish origins. It tolls not when rung, but
when held near an open flame. The clapper pulls at flames with a
beckoning hand. To hold it is to feel comforting warmth, only known
when sharing with others by means of boiling tar and burning torch…
2. Sentient tumours grow on rock, beast and plant alike. They spread
like amoebae upon mortal flesh, taking up a visage of their host. They
whisper profane truths of all living anatomies—if allowed to spread.
3. Ancient fire–irons, born from the severed tongue of a wyrm. Though
modern metallurgy would consider this folkloric marketing at best,
those who work the tarnished ore know too easily a dragon’s thirst.
4. Troll bones, carved down into dice and plastromantic oracle tools.
A mark of mockery against those who failed to claim the mantle of
humanity. An open slight against their primitive sense of honour.
5. An antiquated star–map totem from the pre–Yomundic Era;
a puzzlebox in truth, for only those who know the proper prayers
can stroke its woodburnt branches and reveal a hidden coffer within.
6. Tattered and disgraced is the vellum of this house’s writ of station.
Many lay discarded here; some for houses that may have risen back
to prominence and been cast down again for lacking their bona fide.
Worth a petty ransom to anyone seeking to falsely claim nobility.
viii: names for borderlands in calmyn
1. Gutter’s Grasp 1. The Shackled Frontier
2. The Feculent Wastes 2. The Festering Republic
3. The Gibbet Principality 3. The Exurbian Hinterlands
4. Gnarl–Up–Country 4. The Shattered Marches
5. The Desolation of Haarled 5. All–Father’s Country
6. Debtor’s Disgrace 6. The March of the Wordless
6 PART VI
The Mantle
of Modernity.
Established Urban Centres of Calmyn
Facets of an Urban Centre
Lesser Hubs of Humanity
248 vi
fffffffcfffffff
C
almyn exalts itself on its modernist
distinction, for there are no cities in the
current age as large and as enduring as those
in the duchy. Such enclaves exist only by
generational plunder, land theft, and thrallmaking.
Beneath the fine bastions of brick and cobblestone is the
rotting truth of how such modernity is achieved: by
becoming the bleak heart of humanity where the poor,
the enslaved, the desperate, and the destitute toil in
disgrace for the disposable comforts of their metropolitan
betters. Whether they fester in the alleys and gutters of
the urban centres, or in the backwater burghs of the
countryside; only those vaunted and wealthy truly
dwell in Prosperity. All others are as free and fortunate
as any fief–bound peasant found in any “lesser culture”
across the known world.
vi 249
fffffffcfffffff
generating the cities and towns of
calmyn
The mantle of modernity ensures that the various
civilised realms within Calmyn are nearly uniform
when they reach a certain population size; a rural burgh
ceases to keep its local culture once it swells to become
an urban centre of prosperity—and any defiance of this
order is viewed as a betrayal of the cultural image. Thus
there are only two true types of settlements in Calmyn:
urban centres and lesser hubs of humanity.
1. To generate an urban centre, roll to determine
major sites and features, then roll on anything else
that is necessary as the company further comes to
know the settlement. An Urban Centre dominates
the biome it was built in, such that only those
without wealth must suffer the common struggles
and inconveniences of location.
To generate a lesser hub of humanity, roll a
single major site or feature, and then roll on the
appropriate table for features of a Lesser Hub of
Humanity at the end of this chapter. These small
towns and failed cities suffer the long rot of both
fffffffcfffffff
humanity and the biome they were built in.
There is seldom more there than is initially rolled;
F
as they are smaller in scope.
250 vi
fffffffcfffffff
ESTABLISHED
URBAN CENTRES
OF CALMYN.
ffffffffffffffff
grand calmynswaard
The new capital, the hub of modernity. A city of winding,
antiquated streets paved with stones after the Banking
War officially ended. Sweatshops and shanty towns
make up the outer rings of the urban centre, with
manorial towers, high rising villas, and all manner of
statue lined plazas upon the interior. The Ducal Throne
rules from its palace here, constantly engaged in shadow
wars with the Consortium and the Great Banks who are
far more lionised than the Duke who sits upon a throne
more befitting a king.
yomundendam
The Old Capital, rich in history but not power. Its
wealth was taken during the Banking Wars and its tower
sealed by edict of the Wizard. The palace here was
stripped to mere stones, many of which were used to
seal shut old cairns made inhospitable in the Desecration.
Only sharecropping keeps the city afloat, but one cannot
make farmers out of Plundermen then expect them to
be joyous. The Yomundendamites toil in the shadow of
Good King Yomund’s legacy; and many of the young
generation begrudge their betters for their poor luck.
vi 251
fffffffcfffffff harlingstad
The Great Banks claim this place as their former seat
of power, though they have become widespread and
more entrenched elsewhere. A university town where
academics work under the watchful eyes of various
government agencies—all to ensure history tells only the
truth that best fits Calmyn’s image. It is a place of grand
disparity, of cultivated facades worn by students often more
in debt than the thralls who keep the urban centre afloat.
fort grendelock
The Seat of the Consortium, an enduring city that looks
upon the state of the duchy and cannot help but snarl at
its diminished power. The military academy and siege
penitentiary within the high walls of the urban centre
hold both the next generation of warlords and those
they’ve taken as prizes from overseas. It is here that the
Consortium’s purpose as the military might of Calmyn
is so present that it cannot be ignored. This is a town of
militants, not mere merchants.
parwijk
A destitute burgh of old quarried stone, left derelict and
fallow by the whims of the Ducal Throne. Abandoned
by the duchy, it survived by the hands of the young—
and it grew to thrive by their willingness to cast down
the institutions of old. It is here the Gunszelmarkt were
formed, and it is here that man and goblin work in
tandem—as if such things could be mutually civilised.
The Ducal Throne views this city as a blight upon
Calmyn’s cultural heritage; but to strike at the urban
centre is to validate the threat such change could bring—
and the Steward will not make martyrs of one generation
only to suffer the harm of the next. F
252 vi
FACETS OF AN
URBAN CENTRE.
vi 253
i: the urban centre {part 1}
1. Fortress walls built several stories tall entrap the settlement, forcing
it to build its buildings tall and its streets narrow. The folk are
protected from the horrors of the outside world, but they are cramped—
life here is too often a claustrophobic agony of winding alleys.
2. Market streets make up the coiled heart of the settlement, corridors
of shops and consortium backed franchises which seek to commodify
every human experience at a high mark–up. Arson and back alley
brawls between burghers is far from rare here.
3. Bustling industry ensures the settlement survives, though to thrive
is to dream beyond one’s station. The sky is choked with smog and
dust, the buildings cramped together—narrow and ramshackle,
all at a premium cost of rent. Union busting patrols ensure no one
has time or energy enough to organise or rebel.
4. Adherence to tradition is placed above progress here, causing an
eclectic albeit belligerent look of turf houses, stave chapels, and market
hof barns built in the layout of a ring fortress. Cobbled streets and other
modern amenities can be found, though the dwellers are scornful
to those who dare cling to anything of mass produced artifice.
5. Banking and finance are the lifeblood of the settlement, with a great
vault of the Great Banks firmly entrenched in the urban centre like
a grand fortress. Costs are cut to enshrine the authority of the Bank,
ensuring the poor are made debtors and the rich mind their place
lest an error be made in their accounting.
6. Hateful snobbery colours the urban centre, for the rich and vaunted
congregate in well–to–do estates walled away from the countless poor
and enthralled who allow such luxury to be lived. A stroll down the
wrong alley leads one away from marbled houses and paradise into
an undercity of the destitute, the downtrodden, and the damned.
254 vi
i: the urban centre {part 1, cont.}
1. Sprawling slums spill out from the urban centre like the blood of a
stuck pig; a spillage of shanty towns, ramshackle tenement buildings,
and half–collapsed complexes. A blight upon all the senses, where
life is cheap and hope is a luxury only the rich dare afford.
2. Towering tenement houses of half–timbered yellowed brick scrape
out at the sky in ruddy rows which blight the skyline. A population
packed densely within the urban centre where the temperatures are
always sweltering, even in the coldest winter. One cannot help but
worry that one of these towers may topple over at any given hour.
3. Despite the accident occurring decades ago, much of the urban
centre is still a slag–choked site of atrocity. Tar and soot cling to the
cobblestone streets, the buildings shudder at the timbers, and the
echoing cough of the populace is ever present. The darkest alleyways
are huddled with half–carbonised vagrants and desecrated corpses.
4. The urban centre sprawls well out into the surrounding environs,
with serpentine streets and meandering avenues which are lined
with rows of terraced tenement housing. Parks and small votive sites
to the glory of Calmyn are established in neighbourhoods to ensure
none can easily denounce the history of the duchy.
5. Enclaves of wealth carve up the urban centre into modern fiefdoms.
Towering marbled estates of the vaunted loom over crude brick
two–stories built cramped next to one another in near favelas styles.
Carriages and ratways ensure the poor and the rich seldom look
upon another—unless desired, or at one’s own peril.
6. Old money supremacy has the vaunted of the urban centre dwelling
beyond high castle walls in fortified estates whilst the servile classes
dwell in a half–life of modernity of saltbox houses and brick–paved
roads. Monuments to the many purchased triumphs of the vaunted are
festooned gaudily, though the locals pay the false honours little heed.
vi 255
1. This urban centre makes itself a haven for the arts, with the brick
stonework of its buildings awash with the works of patronised artists
who paint the edifices with panoramic displays of Calmyn’s glory.
The rich dwell in bohemian comfort, and the poor toil out of view
so that which is unsightly does not blight the cultivated image.
2. The vaunted dwell in hilled enclaves, preserved from their fallen
brethren houses by walled flower bed gardens and rocky outcroppings
carved into the earth. The tarnished opulence of the fallen see them
lord over their lessers from petty government positions, ensuring the
urban centre’s bureaucracy slowly throttles any beautification or change.
3. Great towers which pierce the skyline are part of the duchy’s
national image, and this urban centre plays host to such a grand
structure of spired stone. It dominates the area like a spear against
the heavens, its shadow casting heavy upon the shacks and stone
townhouses of those unworthy to dwell beyond its presence.
4. Old stone walls established during the early reign of the Tyrant still
run criss–cross throughout the urban centre, bifurcating properties
and causing no small amount of disputes. Old law requires they not
be touched or moved. The architecture is a malformed mess of
stilted stone and plankwork to ensure structures remain compliant.
5. Nestled within circled terrace houses of finely dressed ashlar masonry
stand plinths from the dawning era of Calmyn’s distant past.
No building casts shade upon them, nor does any structure tower
over them: instead, architecture digs deep into the earth here.
6. Whitewashed stone built atop the old foundations of buildings lost in
the Desecration make up this urban centre. In many ways it has the
looks of a colonial outpost; as it was built by the survivors of bitter
times and fortified for their survival. Even in this age of modernity,
the architecture is designed to be enduring, not aesthetically pleasing.
256 vi
i: the urban centre {part 2}
1. A stave–built jarl’s house built during the reign of Good King Yomund
still sits in this urban centre, ostensibly owned by a vaunted family but
kept now as a bit of public infrastructure. Its purposes are ornamental,
though when local government needs to play to pomp and circumstance
they don their horned helmets and furs and host court herein.
2. This settlement was founded by Plundermen, and the oldest buildings
in town are clearly built from the hulls of their longships. Though
most of these sites are honoured and well–kept, one might occasionally
stumble across their odd aesthetic in the slums or undercity districts—
serving as outposts for fallen houses or marks of ignoble legacy.
3. Grand stone towers built across ten score generation loom above the
urban centre like the graves of giants. Quarried from stones taken
from across the world, stacked with fallen dolmen plinths and sacred
markers, rising ever higher. The people live in the long shadow of its
presence like ants scurrying in the dark, impermanent and feeble.
4. An elder vault, forged by the debtor–dwarfs of Clan Throneward,
thrums like an iron heart beneath the centre. Lavish plaza roads lead
to its barred entrances, only key–holders of vaunted station can enter.
Those who dwell near the vault’s entrance are prone to burn scars
and dragon–sickness, as if Ados himself was chained beneath.
5. The settlement hosts the tarnished castle estate of a house made
fallen during the Wizard’s Coup. Cursed by the scorn of the powerful
and the masses alike, it is populated by a joyless staff and a family
deemed lamenters or abominations in the eyes of the public.
6. Nestled in the urban centre is the fortified enclave of a foreign
culture, transplanted here first as hostages and then as prizes for the
powerful. The artefacts of a culture now made wordless are kept present,
as trophies and taxidermied institutions; meant for display and shows
of dominance. Those descended from the stolen generations are sullen,
discriminated against for perceived defiance of Calmyn’s supremacy.
vi 257
1. Grand collegiate architecture dominates the urban centre, like cathedrals
dedicated to all the knowledge that the Hand of Prosperity might
grasp. Frocked students walk the streets, pompously assured of their
own supremacy. The further one strays from the centre, the greater
disparities become clear. The enlightened, as ignorant as any other.
2. This urban centre is home to a tower archive library, where members
of various Ducal Orders work in tandem with scholars to preserve
useful knowledge from conquered civilisations. The great structure
is unadorned, a smooth brick monolith populated primarily by
government functionaries and soldiers who keep out the local rabble.
3. The urban centre plays host to a grand bazaar, a campus for the Cons–
ortium to reign over. They offer the assimilated artifice of conquered
lands and are praised for their devotion to Prosperity. They dwell in
cramped housing units beyond the campus squares, but so thoroughly
indoctrinated as they are, they view it a privilege to rise from.
4. The faux–gilded statue of Ser Midanian, tall as a castle tower, reigns
from the urban centre; their cloaked and sullen form given offerings
of joss money and heirlooms. The people of the city have fetishised
resilience—fearing not death, the dead, or the loss of wealth to either.
5. A great bridge spans over a gap in the terrain, and through strange
histories of reconstruction a grand stone hospital has been built upon
the span. To travel through the urban centre rather than circum–
navigating it, one must pass under the gloomy gaze of the hospital.
Superstition and rumour are whispered by gossips and children alike.
6. An ancient fort sits in the urban centre, built by belligerents who
sought to deny the Tyrant their due. The names of traitors,
recidivists, and oathbreakers are carved into the stone: an invitation
for the powers that be to strike them down. As such, the populace
here is known for their grudges and the employment of hired killers.
258 vi
1. This urban centre is home to the founding branch of one of the Great
Banks, who have ensured it looks befitting of this honour. The roads are
finely paved brickwork pieces of art, the homes cultivated in uniform
whitewash with steepled roofs. Those who serve—who would blight
this branding – dwell in cramped hovels beneath the streets, called
by bells and given the light of the sun only when deemed worthy.
2. On the edge of the oldest section of the urban centre is a converted
barracks, now an officer’s club for freeblades and conquerors who
dwell in nostalgic reminiscence of atrocities past. Its members act as
agents of the status quo, leveraging influence and favour to assure
only those who will lead Calmyn to war enjoy positions of power.
3. The headquarters of a famous cryptdigging company is based within
this urban centre. The cryptdiggers recruit many young souls,
sending many them off to their doom after a visit to their high halls.
But the company brings wealth and fame, and thus they are tolerated—
more so by those without children to die for a fool’s dream.
4. The urban centre keeps a fierce curfew, the streets are barren save
for patrols. The folk gather when called by the bells, donning
ghoulish masks to hunt outsiders. The Desecration put the itch of
cannibalism deep in the bloodlines of the citizenry. Red–stained
trails mark the way to the the larder doors of the truly rich.
5. Resurrectionists make their trade in the slums and back alleys of the
urban centre, hunting the dead of generations past and ringing the
curfew bell when incursions of Desecrated souls are nascent. The city
is a sepulchral thing, a quaking cadaver where all but the most trained
butchers cringe away from each errant twitch of a death rattle.
6. Breweries line the waterways of the urban centre, belching pollutants.
The heady stench of beer and mead hangs in the air like an acrid mist.
Wars among members of the Burser’s Alliance are waged in the streets,
as would–be–gang bosses seek to control the flow of booze.
vi 259
260 vi
iii: urban amenities
1. Libraries are open to the public here, though the narratives they put
on display are barely half–truths and exist only to exalt the actions
of the duchy. Private collections and illicit archives are available to
those with friends in high places, or with favours owed to them.
2. Even under the mantle of modernity, there will be easily found
charlatans, occultists and godsmen peddling all manner of petty spells
from the pre–Yomundic era. Trinkets, effigies, blessed silvers, and alien
baubles may provide worth against the evils few wish to admit still exist.
3. The halls of the Plundermen have long been a cultural institution
in Calmyn, and those that exist within this urban centre celebrate
cryptdiggers and other agents of capital. For a modest price,
one can study the treasures of foreign lands. Many private collectors
seek out new hires from those who donate to such institutions.
4. Only in the urban centres can one find the two premiere beverages
of Calmyn in as many varieties as there are peoples conquered under
the sun. Coffee and mead flow from the cafes and breweries, their
flavours and potencies serving as the calculated curiosity of artisan
mixologists and would–be vaunted who seek to make their mark.
5. Woodworking, often in the practice of shipbuilding, is a cultural
aspiration of the Calmynites dating back to the Plundering Era.
Though artisan woodworkers generally work from their homes in
more rural areas, the offices to commission them operate from the
urban centres—establishments staffed by bureaucrats and apprentice
children who lack the knack.
6. Vaults buried deep in the earth, holding the riches of families lost in
the Coup and roused in the Desecration. A fee is paid to those bold
enough to delve for proof of ownership, and percentages in plunder
offered could certainly fund a fledgling Cryptdigging Company.
Open to the public, though most visitors are merely speculators.
vi 261
iii: urban amenities {cont.}
1. Arms dealers ply their trade, barking and busking in back alleys
and open markets. They have guns from Jerrodine factories, and all
the finest approximations made by Calmynite craftsmen. They do
not wish to know why you want such things, and offering up such
information will only increase their prices.
2. Chocolate—a luxury from Salver, southern Torre, and Norui—
is sold by artisan confectioners. They brag of the cost in lives and toil
needed to produce these sweets, claiming that a customer can feel
akin to a conqueror knowing how many suffered for such a small joy.
3. Mercenaries from across the world offer their services with sandwich
board signs or the barking bragging of their heralds. They offer
insight into how to best butcher their countrymen and to loot their
homeland, all for a pittance and a cut of the profits.
4. Luxury imports from colonial outposts and plundered civilisations are
trafficked through this urban centre. Smugglers and back alley dealers
offer fine works to the truly wealthy, those who can afford the genuine
article rather than a Calmynite crafted simulacrum. Such luxuries,
be they beast, artefact, drug, or spice—often cause widespread harm.
5. Thralls, sold in the streets or kept in crowded dehumanising kennels,
are readily available in this urban centre. Cannon fodder for the
Calmynite war machine, chaff to be fed to the dwellers of the Crypt,
or merely unfortunate souls forced into servile roles regardless of
their origin—human flesh of all caste and creed—ready for purchase.
6. Gunneryworks sit in their own quarter of town, obscured by smog
and balmy by the heat of an ever–burning furnace. Firearms in
emulation of Jerrodine styles, bombards and cannons meant to
destroy cities as a whole—developments all in need of funding and
available to those with wealth.
262 vi
iii: urban amenities {cont.}
1. Though unable to compete with the Valcomean Temple of Torre,
the cartographers at work in this urban centre are more up to date
with the shifting borders of the world. They offer maps and decent
pay for those with up–to–date information on natural calamities
which might make a recent work obsolete.
2. Seldom are researchers appreciated in Calmyn, as most conclusions
have already been decided upon—and as such, those in need of coin
offer their services to cryptdiggers. Such researchers can access
private libraries and they will gladly become nearly cracked over
a subject, provided they can pay their debts and aren’t put further
into harm’s way.
3. Fledgling members of the Ducal Orders offer their services in this
urban centre, wishing to prove their skill in the field. Primarily censors,
legalists, and agitators, they will ruin the day of anyone from any
level of society—assuming it allows them proof of their expertise
and coin enough to bribe their betters to overlook any misgivings.
4. Back alley dealers and young rebels offer explosives to cryptdiggers
at a modest fee, as they are easily made despite their illegality.
Pipe bombs, shrapnel bombs, explosives wrapped in blighted guts,
or bottled fire—all available and easily cobbled together at short notice.
5. Moneylenders make their trade in this urban centre, though they
hide the truth of their art. Though most are bankers or bursars,
some are merely collectors, but all happy to exchange the Duke’s
silver sceptres for the King’s gold sovereigns, illegal since the coup.
6. Old style armour, suits of plate and other artisan protection all
too easily forgotten in this age of mass manufactured modernity—
for sale out of a small workshop run by a second generation wordless
smith. This is how they keep their people alive, even if it must be
in service to their conquerors.
vi 263
264 vi
iv: urban jobs
1. Guns need to be run through the territory of those who will be
harmed by them. It needs to be done quickly, quietly, and without
alerting anyone of the atrocities soon to unfold.
2. Local militants are in need of targets to practise their weapons
against, and only the arrogant flesh of unbroken enemies will suffice.
The pay is high for officers and rebels.
3. In the depths of the urban centre a brutal fight club has formed,
where the young and the vicious unleash their rage. They seek
foes with a fire in them, fresh meat to bet on and to beat down.
4. A local military institution needs to be sabotaged from within,
its commanding officer killed. It all needs to be covered up in what
appears to be an industrial accident.
5. Imported corpses from foreign lands need to be hijacked and
delivered instead to the client. It will likely be used in some baleful
ritual or to be ground up and consumed as a narcotic.
6. A large gala event will be held in the urban centre, and members
of multiple tiers of society need to be killed during the event.
Their heads must be served upon a silver platter before the main
course of the feast is unveiled.
vi 265
v: urban jobs {cont.}
1. The heir of a vaunted house has acted too often in ways which
tarnish the reputation of the family. They must be abducted, it must
look like the underhanded work of an enemy, and they must be
removed from Calmynite society—never to return, but unharmed.
2. A client saw an item in a Plunderman’s hall which caught their fancy,
but they’re unwilling to pay. They’ve chosen instead to hire
cryptdiggers to perform a heist. They can get the company in and
out. All they want is their treasure—nothing else matters.
3. Infuriated by the work of a rival scholar, a client wishes to pay a
large sum to see their thesis proven incorrect, their work viewed as
foolish, and their life utterly ruined such that they can never again
show their face in academia.
4. A fallen house has begun backing a rebel movement, offering them
access to old legal documents and hidden meeting places. This must
be dealt with, lest the Ducal Throne get involved and massacre
whole swaths of the urban centre to silence the cause.
5. War between branches of the Great Banks is being waged by proxy;
the client needs a small branch to be robbed and all its workers left
to suffocate in the vault. It is hoped that this will see them rise
as undead and cast the worth of the institution in question.
6. Local vaunted nobles wish to see their children undertake the Grand
Tour of Plunder; and they will bankroll the cryptdigging company
for months if they can take these pompous brats into a crypt,
let them feel heroic, and ensure they come to no harm.
266 vi
vi: urban obstacles
1. Riots have overtaken the streets, preventing easy movement
throughout the city. Enforcers are attacking with reckless abandon,
and a cryptdigging company has all the looks of paramilitants in
their eyes. Travel will end only in violence.
2. Historical revisionists seek to get chummy with the cryptdiggers,
to rephrase their deeds and stories so as to benefit the Calmynite
image. They will engage in campaigns of slander and manipulation
if they are scorned, denied, or corrected.
3. The Consortium has increased tariffs on necessary resources as a
means to flex their influence upon the Ducal Throne. The people
are starving, filthy, and furious. The presence of anyone well fed
or from outside the city will make for an easy scapegoat and a mob
of short–tempered citizens.
4. Bank robbers have taken hostages. They are making their escape
through the same area as the cryptdiggers, bringing with them the
full indiscriminate wrath of the Great Banks and local law enforcement.
5. Local enforcers for the law and the Bursar’s Alliance have chosen
to act additionally drunk with their power, looking for outsiders
to mug, beat down, and extort. Only those of great political power
can get them to stop, even if only for a day or so.
6. Gunszelmarkt terrorists have slipped into the urban centre, one
of their plans almost come to fruition. Security forces are on high
alert for any suspicious activity, and those young or unknown to
the community are guilty until proven otherwise.
vi 267
vii: urban obstacles {cont.}
1. Visiting cryptdiggers from a rival company, setting up shop and buying
out resources and services to undercut the party. They strive to gain
the favour and fortune of the city and to deny all others that chance.
2. Agents of the Wizard, clad in seraphic white robes and ivory masks,
parade through the city in a show of dominance. They look for that
which would displease their master: non–humans, would–be
usurpers to his claim, and those who would rouse the rabble.
3. Revisionists working on behalf of the Order of Imperial Conduct
and the bribes of a fallen house are playing a seditious game of
manipulating the perceptions of recent events. They need saviours
as much as villains. Cryptdiggers make for easy marks as both.
4. Rebels have begun to make their presence known, collecting allies
and territory from which to operate. They preach of a better tomorrow,
arming the underclass and gutting those who plead incrementalism.
More people will die under Calmyn as it is, than Calmyn as it could
be. As such, they shall pay for their sins only in death.
5. Occultists gather in seance rooms and dank corridors, their ritual
hour nearly at hand. They wield the latent trauma of a broken
empire, of the Desecration, and of all the souls lost in the name of
Prosperity. They seek to make themselves greater than the Wizard
who sundered the nation into a mere duchy. No price is too much
to pay for that.
6. Secret police working on behalf of the Consortium and the Ducal
Throne are each seeking to plant the cryptdiggers against the other
power. They seek to make proxies and pawns of the company,
and to cut them loose if these conflicts prove too costly.
268 vi
viii: names for urban centres in calmyn
1. Luilekkerswaard 1. Hullenvort 1. Nidusrond
2. Grondamster 2. Hoogelvinde 2. Ettelbagh
3. Stavvenswaard 3. Culedebaum 3. Etchenskerk
4. Ponsteffel 4. Graandstak 4. Yommsgraaf
5. Gaanstelhout 5. Yomundschote 5. Gormsdal
6. Laassiden 6. Brohlstadt 6. Sustenlopp
1. Lesser Geldrecht 1. Balkinggnor 1. Fort Thegnlaaf

2. Obberbant 2. Fort Wigwulf 2. FortWealfhinghruntr
3. Old Gormingr 3. Fort Akkerbalk 3. Yomundschaans
4. Dambergeest 4. TheLine–at–Kenningsdir 4. Thorkell–by–the–Hill
5. Vikrspeet 5. Borbenwaal 5. Lyfdaeming
6. Yomunswoude 6. Paardenbak 6. Fort–at–Sustinkark
vi 269
270 vi
fffffffcfffffff
D66 LESSER HUBS
OF HUMANITY.
ffffffffffffffff
T
hese are the remote and isolated
communities which exist upon the fringes
of Calmyn. Not yet derelict, but perhaps
soon; they are small, enduring, and alone.
Urban Calymnites dismiss these rural holds as
backwaters of little consequence, and those of wealth
and power view them only in the capacity of how they
serve the grand apparatus of largesse. But to the rural
Calmynite, these places are home. They are beautiful in
their humble standing, and they are truthful in their
histories—for seldom has any Order of the Duke’s
thought to silence their small narratives.
generating lesser hubs of humanity
When generating a Lesser Hub, incorporate aspects
of the regional biome, grant them a single trait or
feature of an Urban Centre, and then add the additional
Detail of Note which makes them stand out as a Lesser
Hub of Humanity.
vi 271
11. An old pub still stands in proud defiance, a remnant of many bygone
ages and scarred by generations of conflicts both petty and grand.
Grumbling taverners train their successors in the art of cookery
and hospitality on the occasional guest.
12. The town endured the worst battle in the history of a grand conflict,
its walls reduced to rubble and its people granted reprieve only by foolish
fortune smiling on them. The buildings have been repaired since, but a
placard upon the town centre describes the locality’s resilience.
13. A hero was born in this town in the not–so–distant past. As such,
the locals have done everything in their power to preserve the former
home for posterity. Not all agree on the appropriateness of this act,
but local scholars deem it important for the land’s cultural heritage.
14. On the outskirts of the township sits a narrenturm: a fool’s tower,
an asylum of social alienation where those compromised by the cruelty
of this world are hidden away from the public eye. Feldshers cycle
through this small town to serve at the post.
15. In the region’s earliest days this area was considered a site of miracles.
Its trees bore fruit in the dead of winter; hungering beasts would circle
the area, but feared entrance. The town is far removed from such early,
blessed events, but its folk are faithful and they keep a votive shrine.
16. The town is surrounded by graveyards, hills upon rolling fields of the
dead and buried. The Desecration nearly wiped the town from the face
of the earth, but the dead were driven back by the united community.
There exists, now generations later, still a palpable fear of incursion.
272 vi
21. This town was constructed on the site of an ancient clan moot,
where the Tyrant Calmynidus bound the chieftains to the pursuit of
Prosperity. Though the town did not flourish to a large urban centre,
those who claim descent from the chiefs of that time are viewed
in high regard.
22. The Wizard condemned this town during the Coup, damning its
Vaunted masters to indignity. The locals are a miserable lot, as decrepit
and ramshackle as their masonry. The town is bewitched, and though
many families have left, the fates conspire to drag them back here.
23. This town still suffers from the schism of an early Debtor’s Rebellion,
for it tasted liberty and was crushed from within. Kinstrife and feuds
ensure bullet holes remain peppered across the town square. Only the
local branch of the Great Bank remains mockingly immaculate.
24. The Great Banks decimated the town during the Banking War,
gerrymandering and conscripting based on unknowable algorithms.
The bad blood still lingers in the current day, even though the Great
Banks have abandoned the town. Their hallowed halls are little more
than ash.
25. Despite numerous appeals to the Ducal Throne, this town officially
doesn’t exist. It does not matter that it has raised and bred generations
of Calmynites, nor that it has a chartered archive of its history. It is not
officially recognized, and thus its people are squatters.
26. This town was saved from the brink by an influx of cryptdiggers who set
up shop, quartered themselves, and reinvigorated the economy. Though
viewed as a lawless place, and is still in places a shantytown,
its folk know how to treat those daring fools who plunder dark places.
vi 273
31. This town was founded by a Plunderman gang and their many captive
spouses. They, in turn, saw it change from being a mere Calmynite
burgh to something of a cultural enclave over the generations. Its styles
and beliefs, more amalgamated than appropriated; a rarity in Calmyn.
32. On the edge of town, overlooking the common folk, is a grand estate
long since abandoned. The locals claim it to be a witch’s house, a place
of phantom shades and Boeman breedings—a place best left undisturbed
lest it bring ruin upon them all.
33. Harvest traditions are the lifeblood of the town; on the solstice,
they build their effigies high. Children sing in uncanny unison as adults
set fire to wicker dragons so that Ados cannot hoard away Prosperity. A
haven of agrarian faithful, their homes distant enough for secrecy.
34. The town nearly fell to the predation of goblins last year; and the repairs
are still underway. Sinkholes are still being filled, buildings being
reinforced. The locals have filled their sorrows with cruel reprisal;
goblin hunting is sport for them. They gather in the pub to brag of
the daily hunt.
35. In days long past this town served at the behest of a vaunted house
which made use of their resources to perfect their leisure hunts.
Nowadays its folk are denied such purpose, but they are crackshots, and
have taken to breeding hunting dogs second–to–none in the duchy.
36. In a throwback to the early Plundering Era, though the buildings
are made of brick and enjoy modern commodities, they are built
in a circle moat around a grand feasting hall turned town centre.
Berdishes hang above the door of the hall, unmoved for generations.
274 vi
41. The town has long honoured the miserable tradition of the attestupa.
For this, they have constructed a grievously large and rickety widow’s
walk on the edge of town. It overlooks a deep trench of rich boggy loam.
The elderly view the tradition with gruff acquiescence.
42. The Midanians hold sway over the town. As such, the ossuaries are
filled deep with gilded dead and bejewelled corpses. A large stone chapel
claims this town free from the Desecration’s touch, but the godsmen bar
the heavy door to the crypt with heavy timbers.
43. The town suffers from the ravages of the undead. A bursar family
thought to bury their fallen with their wealth in life, and the Desecration
took hold. The people have risen the barricades, and all walk about with
weapons. They hope this evil shall pass in time, and vengeance be had.
44. To the wrath of many, this town hosts an almshouse. Its preacher speaks
that the Hand of Prosperity can be offered without debt, attracting the
poor and the disenfranchised. The bursars and better–off see this as a
blight that will make thralls of them all in the eyes of the duchy.
45. Though a small hub of humanity and of little circumstance, this town
does bear host to a small and eclectic private museum. A cabinet of
curiosities, stored here where rivals would not take it, nor judgmental
peers find it. The intrigue of its items have inspired many a youth.
46. On rainy nights in this town, the elderly partake in oodening; guising
themselves in sackcloth and mounting themselves upon a grotesque–
headed hobby horse. They wield lanterns and throw shears at those
who walk the streets. A warding ritual, allegedly, though none will
speak as to what.
vi 275
51. The youth work the town, scampering about like rabbits as they fix
shingles or whitewash masonry. They are oddly cooperative, bent under
the authority of an elder nearly upon death’s door. Parents
and siblings old enough to fight were conscripted a few years prior,
and none returned.
52. Though fallen into disrepair over the generations, the ringing of
hammers and the cacophony of sawblades speak to a reinvigoration
in the town. A vaunted house has bequeathed it to a feckless failson
whose only ambition is to dwell in an estate by a nice town.
53. The town has suffered greatly as the house it is bound to was recently
made fallen. Revitalisation projects and new constructions came to a
halt. Those who had the means to escape and flee their fate did so.
It sits now, half–abandoned and on the verge of collapse.
54. Untoward as it is to advertise it, this town celebrates that it was the sight
of a famous murder. A steward of a previous administration was brutally
dispatched in the town square, their body left bleeding upon the
fountain. The locals often remind visiting authority figures of this.
55. Though the town portrays itself as rural destitute and appropriately
frugal, its underbelly is rife with riches. Interconnected cellars, ratways,
and abandoned cuttingsway tunnels allow for smugglers
to ply their trade with ease. Rebels, killers, and fouler things dwell
in the shadows.
56. The town stands still as a love letter to traditionalist Calmynite
architecture: white wash and brick masonry, paved roads and dyke
paths to keep out the wet. A windmill overlooks the path into town,
though it has long faded in prominence. The locals view themselves
as heirs to the only proper way for a Calmynite to live.
276 vi
61. This town was cherished once: it was built on a crossroads of trade,
and it catered to all who came. Its Plunderman hall proudly displayed
treasures and cultural riches, looming over the centre of town like a
proud father. That this place has faded into obscurity, never to grow
larger than a lesser hub, has left its people bitter across generations.
62. Bespoke craftsmen still maintain their workshops here, scorning mass–
manufactured munitions and other urban banality. Their work sees the
coffers of the town overflow and such artifice transcend from master
to apprentice. This town lives and dies upon commissioned work.
63. This town is an insular place, its people as vile and withered as its
architecture. They rush trespassers in–and–out, lusting only for the coin
they bring. When they find those with greed in their hearts, they seek
to make them stay. In the attics of this town are carved idols to hated
Ados, whose hoarding desire keeps all here from death but not safe from
time. And the idols demand constant sacrifice.
64. A small town is meant to be a safer place, free from the crowds and
the unknowable strangers of larger enclaves of humanity. The children
here feel no comfort though. They sing songs of horror lurking in the
nearby wilds, a song passed from one generation to the next. The adults
know the tale, but dismiss it lest they look superstitious or foolish.
65. The town is perpetually swathed in heady fog and overcast skies,
a lingering remnant of a once prominent secret society which sought to
block the heavens from viewing their dark work. Folk still dream only in
nightmares here, and any townsfolk is as liable to exalt
a cabalist as they are to lynch them. All know the only way out of
this occult oppression is through it.
66. This town has long been maintained by order of the Ducal Throne,
and is kept afloat by the whims of the Steward. The fine townhouses and
petty villas ensure a sense of leisure and lazy comfort for the well–
enough–to–do. Behind closed doors, this town is a host to important
hostages. Such individuals remain out of sight, but always in comfort.
vi 277
i: d66 names for lesser hubs of humanity
11. Grebbenstad 41. Gelderholme
12. Elginswaal 42. Manderstad
13. Verrmhuis 43. Calmyndrart
14. Rijnriver Running 44. Bruggthorst Pass
15. Gotargil 45. Ponslypping
16. Susturl 46. Moundmorence
21. Snolgam Mound 51. Hoomhem Bridge
22. Gamledger 52. Beeldorde
23. Wealthegn 53. Lower Ponstadt
24. Overgaan Hall 54. Yomunshent
25. Yommwild 55. Goghentwerp
26. Grettiskleg 56. Echtenrok
31. Alvmidan 61. Sluicetter’s Watch
32. Skaphovel 62. Hoekcrag
33. Wastvisk 63. Lobbwijk
34. Sloinwijk 64. Ponsrop
35. Falktgeld Field 65. Hrothseel
36. Bromslash 66. Klinkswaard
278 vi
vi 279
fffffffcfffffff
THE COLONIAL
OUTPOST.
ffffffffffffffff
C
almyn maintains its grip upon the
world by way of its colonial outposts, though
the duchy is not unique in the atrocities
man will commit upon their fellow man in
the illusion of sovereignty. Regardless what banner it
flies under, be it a duchy or a company, it is a place of
brutality which exists for the sake of exploiting the land
F
and its people. It is not a place of honour.
280 vi
i: outpost {appearance}
1. Palisade walls secure the borders of the outpost; an interior ring
protects the settlement directly, with a no–man’s–land of deep,
spike–filled trenches running between the interior ring and an
exterior palisade wall with high watch towers.
2. Heavy stone fortifications, six feet thick and towering imposingly
see the settlement walled off the outside world. Manned hoardings
oversee the ways in and out of the outpost, ever hopeful to make
use of the murder holes.
3. This was a sacred place once; perhaps a temple, or a family estate.
The edifices of its long and storied history have been toppled,
defaced and obscured by the banners of the colony. Strategic points
have been reinforced, hidden ways barred off and guarded.
4. This outpost was here long before the colonists, but they broke it
and took it for their own. They built new walls, put stone over
ancient stone, killed its name and proclaimed themselves the new
masters of this place.
5. This was a crypt once, a gateway to dark and horrid places;
but the colony was fouler. They extracted the horrors like they
were a parasite, all for the sake of the body’s many cancers to bloom.
This outpost is a fortified hellmouth, ruled by the foulest of men.
6. The colony was forged only recently, a pioneer’s affair of homesteads
and an administrator’s office of public affairs. In time it will have
walls and new masters, it will lionise every violence that allowed
it to come into being. But for now, it is young.
vi 281
ii: outpost {people}
1. The colonial masters have established a work camp, claiming none
in their outpost will ever suffer unemployment or unspent labours.
The wages are all but a pittance, and the bulk of the force work
without pay—owing their masters deeply for quartering them.
2. Those who were not killed during the initial occupation were enthralled,
conquered like chattel and forced into the yoke of enslaved servitude.
They toil in the worst roles this society forces upon them, giving
them little, offering them only exploitation and abuse.
3. Officers from the colonial government lord over the populace like
petty lordlings, abusing the power they hold so far from any who
could hold them to account. They take what they desire, and order
violence upon those who deny their extortionist aims.
4. Freeblades perform combat drills in the streets of the colony,
psyching themselves nigh on to chomping at the bit. They are the
cruel, crude law of the colonial oppressors; obedient attack dogs
who are callous and uncaring for anything but their coin.
5. The colonial masters have chosen their flock from the most zealous
and vitriolic fundamentalists of their homeland. They practise their
faith with ironclad assurance that this shall be their heaven on earth,
and a wasting hell to those who deny this glory.
6. The masters of the colony look out beyond their borders with
avarice in their eyes. Their followers, loyal to a similar greed,
feel the same thrumming call. This colony shall be the harbinger
of empire, the head of a serpent that will devour all it can view.
282 vi
iii: outpost {open oppression}
1. The corpses of those who fought against the occupation until their
dying breath are left to hang across a heavy wooden beam outside the
entrance gate; to bake in the sun and be picked at by carrion birds.
2. The enemies of the colony; any who would dare fight against the
occupation or disagree with the new masters can be found impaled
outside the outpost gates. Some squirm, clinging to the last moments
of an agonising end.
3. The grounds beyond the outpost are burnt to ashes and soot, a clear–
cutting so as to cull back the wild and prevent the natural world from
interfering in the colonial affairs of man. In time, these scars shall be
colonised and forgotten.
4. Above the entrance to the outpost is a high plinth festooned with
barbed cages, filled to the brim with the dead and the dying. Caged
in indignity, the gibbets cut and pierce the flesh. The prisoners
scream for freedom, for mercy, for any help to find them.
5. On a single wall on the exterior of the outpost are a set of wooden
poles and a blood–stained length of masonry. Bullet holes marr
the wall; flies still swarm where lives were freshly ended. A firing
squad’s working place, on display for all to fear.
6. The former locals are stacked side by side in a mass grave just a short
distance from the colonial outpost. Their bodies are left to bake in
the elements, just long enough to ensure a message is sent and none
can rise. They will be burnt and forgotten.
vi 283
iv: outpost {lasting harm}
1. The enslaved and the conquered outnumber the colonials. Though
they despair at the loss of many lives and the destruction of their
culture, the fire of revolt burns in their hearts. They are closely
watched, for the colonial masters do not wish to scare their flock.
2. A collaborator has been granted a position of power, a seat upon
a throne once praised by those who are now shackled. The colonists
do not trust the collaborator, for they are not of their kind. The people
displaced shun their gaze—theirs was the hand of ruin.
3. The militants who took this land are still quartered in the homes of
the civilian colonists, causing the whole of the outpost to feel cramped
and all parties to be at their wits end. Violence between occupiers and
unarmed occupiers will favour only the vicious.
4. The labourers who saw the colony fitted and fortified now find
themselves unpaid and overtaxed by their betters, seeding strife
which will bloom into rebellion and murder as the disparity grows
more strained. They toil still; to do otherwise is to risk starvation.
5. A speaker for the original people of this land is marched through the
outpost under armed guard, prodded at by bayonets and pelted by the
colonists with foetid filth. They scream the glory of the conquerors;
they bid no one to resist. They are broken.
6. The next wave of colonists; recent arrivals to this outpost, spit upon
the pragmatic rule of the colonial masters. They seed dissent, treating
the outpost as though it were not at risk of failing tomorrow by an ill–
stroke of luck. They curry influence and will not be refused.
284 vi
v: outpost {point of interest}
1. A fighting pit, hidden beneath the cellar of an innocuous home.
Dogs, fowl, thralls and braggarts spill blood and entrails for the
atavistic bloodlust of a gambling crowd.
2. A house of pleasures, where drugs and flesh are traded in coded
phrases to avoid scandal. It is a reprieve, all too often hypocritically
blamed for the evils of the colony.
3. A den of smugglers, all but official given their clientele. They can
acquire all the comforts of home for a steep price and the risk of
associating with known criminals.
4. In the centre of the outpost stands a great iron cage, where thralls
are held in bondage and mocked by the passersby. They are sold by
the pound during the day, and at night piecemeal to more discerning
and profane purchasers in need of blooded sacrament.
5. A celebrated office of administration: the plunderer’s hall,
where the trophies taken during the initial push for colonisation
are left on display—a mocking goad to thieves and the displaced.
6. Cryptdiggers maintain a camp on the outskirts of the outpost,
a shantytown of camp followers, officers, and ne’er–do–wells.
They assert a degree of authority, but are kept from usurpation by
way of bribes to their Council and little oversight to their own justice.
vi 285
vi: outpost {rumours}
1. The locals whisper of reprisals from the displaced: a war host
gathering beyond the borders, waiting to strike and ‘steal’ the
settlement. The fires of factionalism are stoked, breeding animosity.
2. A preacher in the outpost proclaims the folk to have lost their way,
to have fallen into heathen godlessness. They call for a purge: a
culling of the unclean, those sullied by the taint of this foreign land.
3. A change of management has occurred in the homeland, with new
officers who controlling the lifeline of finance. The outpost will be
made to endure new tariffs, and the cost of simple comforts will grow.
4. The leader of the colony has fallen from grace in the eyes of the
homeland, their line denounced and fallen. It is unknown whether
they shall be removed or betray their own to save their reputation.
5. Planned expansions to the outpost have been delayed, with the
colonists grumbling of officers engaged in land grabs, sharecropping
schemes, and the petty games of territory.
6. The colonial masters have learned that their outpost has come under
the direct ownership of the Watts–Calmyn Consortium, specifically
a branch notable for thralltaking and cutting–and–running. There is
a chance all here may be made thralls, and the outpost abandoned if
it seems a poor continued investment.
i: d66 names for colonial outposts

1. Fort Smeersbhald 1. Prosperswaent
2. Pinniped Point 2. Holddenswaard
3. Camp Yommibice 3. Fort Gaansgrooter
4. Wattstown 4. Plunderstown
5. Fort Sormayen 5. Camp Aljaard
6. Midanian’s Touch 6. Grand Yommsland
6 APPENDIX
Names & Titles.
288 appendix
westergormer surnames {vaunted}
1. Gaan Bergouden 4. Mijnheer
2. Gaan vas Gulzucht 5. Gestennier
3. Pons Righeizgul 6. Gaan Aardenkleiv
westergormer surnames {fallen}
1. Leemsmalm 4. Zeengtog
2. Klipp 5. Doenwiegen
3. Vernauw 6. Gietengraag
mothlighter surnames {vaunted}
1. Gaan Heuvelbad 4. Pons Vlindermot
2. Gaan Gilzvester 5. Uilvorst
3. Gaan Schaftkram 6. Junchermot
mothlighter surnames {fallen}
1. Ingelbrood 4. Krokelmijn
2. Veelblott 5. Zoekgriem
3. Stummpard 6. Smerigrein
ettinscover surnames {vaunted}
1. Gaan vas Grootzleg 4. Pons Vissergond
2. Gaan Vlootmacht 5. Paarlemot
3. Gaangstheer 6. Marjinkrown
ettinscover surnames {fallen}
1. Aaltpale 4. Zeebancht
2. Modenslug 5. Haringtor
3. Slijmpracht 6. Laagwater
appendix 289
eindercragsman surnames {vaunted}
1. Pons Grofmotter 4. GaanWreedbar
2. Pons Stroefklant 5. Kloofenkarst
3. Gaan Crukappen 6. Slachtersteen
eindercragsman surnames {fallen}
1. Janbloed 4. Zottlugen
2. Mopperen 5. Eindermien
3. Posenmacht 6. Gekkender
saglashed surnames {vaunted}
1. Gaan Achterpomp 4. Gaan Saglascht
2. Gaan vas Kranzing 5. Ondermoer
3. Pons Opgezwold 6. Drasvoett
saglashed surnames {fallen}
1. Sagglarn 4. Meesterglarb
2. Saggardt 5. Zwoeggrub
3. Gleshengaan 6. Kolverfeek
susternfolk surnames {vaunted}
1. Varkenschoot 4. Gaan Zonnebloemer
2. Baumgaardler 5. Gaan Grofsommor
3. Aankweker 6. Gaan Sterkpaard
susternfolk surnames {fallen}
1. Varkenmoot 4. Voettender
2. Gistenwerker 5. Slofmundle
3. Sustkrachter 6. Boerenbeidle
290 appendix
etchlender surnames {vaunted}
1. Gaan Kelppernacht 4. Geenkrans
2. Pons Grenzenkant 5. Hengelstrife
3. Gaan Bannen 6. Ranselflog
etchlender surnames {fallen}
1. Etchdeel 4. Etchenik
2. Gemenbeul 5. Vaanenloos
3. Voosward 6. Vreemenin
d66 calymnite surnames {common}
11. Wagenne 31. Yommel 51. Banksman
12. Hauer 32. Midantoor 52. Vaultsman
13. Crabbe 33. Zantwalle 53. Lockleary
14. Dreel 34. Soorten 54. Zonnenbloem
15. Heestelt 35. Fochtengrond 55. Prosper
16. Goovyer 36. Vlinderman 56. Bloeiman
21. Radelmakke 41. Vermault 61. Waalenvert
22. Struyeker 42. Gelderman 62. Gaanswort
23. Cortfoch 43. Hrothlorn 63. Ponsweldt
24. Jans–Martijn 44. Weelder 64. Yomundsgaan
25. Mascht–Peeren 45. Vloedvelk 65. Yomundspons
26. Raadin 46. Rijkmound 66. Vas Yomuns
appendix 291
11.
d66 calymnite names {vaunted, masculine}
Jeronymus 31. Petrodorus 51. Basdrin
12. Wilhelmus 32. Ransbrandt 52. Ceespartel
13. Rorensaal 33. Uyster 53. Diergin
14. Gies 34. Staffitias 54. Claesbert
15. Bracher 35. Guusdrick 55. Klaumannus
16. Hinchshaw 36. Klusehoud 56. Stoffelniek
21. Pilkingr 41. Oomslach 61. Riklof
22. Wraggcliffe 42. Noortman 62. Yobus
23. Boudewylk 43. Brugkert 63. Yosmund
24. Okkerlaas 44. Jongkaalf 64. Fridomerk
25. Reimerjop 45. Saarbrink 65. Roelrard
26. Jokobine 46. Beroen 66. Huriantus
d66 calymnite names {vaunted, feminine}
11. Talina 31. Dorika 51. Ykensdotte
12. Geesjimina 32. Roeloffina 52. Anselijda
13. Veerlegonda 33. Moenriette 53. Petronika
14. Hilletje 34. Sina 54. Barthamarit
15. Greetagont 35. Adraskia 55. Oosterika
16. Klaastruide 36. Catharuska 56. Olgandort
21. Kaummerelle 41. Etandalenne 61. Moninsaer
22. Vossnaunt 42. Sandoba 62. Ans–Mechtel
23. Heemstappe 43. Troostessel 63. Conhilda
24. Coosjenne 44. Velleena 64. Riescheer
25. Maykeretha 45. Tilledelon 65. Baandermont
26. Yosshelmina 46. Peertgren 66. Yommanke
292 appendix
11.
d66 calymnite names {vaunted, ambiguous}
Euphrosine 31. Ottrien 51. Maarkoen
12. Manon 32. Aaloures 52. Cuyler
13. Haast 33. Janus 53. Bhanleuven
14. Bosch 34. Joddenmal 54. Veerheutz
15. Sommer 35. Guustoris 55. Hoekenbrach
16. Oomse 36. Epoudewylk 56. Faulkenward
21. Leenkrom 41. Marijk 61. Loashlock
22. Patinhem 42. Rijnboock 62. Scrottipher
23. Dedelcort 43. Fransdier 63. Walwinn
24. Voswiese 44. Claesian 64. Youldend
25. Arendirk 45. Toomes 65. Yomundelve
26. Osselard 46. Theuntys 66. Grendimoore
d66 calymnite names {common, masculine}
11. Otto 31. Miess 51. Klerik
12. Phelix 32. Claeese 52. Brousmach
13. Maanst 33. Uunos 53. Stapenkrom
14. Gormann 34. Daenger 54. Kaliff
15. Jansos 35. Piettenhelm 55. Klaasterwyk
16. Sydowine 36. Vodahm 56. Poorthen
21. Manceszen 41. Mokkman 61. Malastise
22. Craster 42. Aernstel 62. Haecklekoch
23. Andulle 43. Veldiveun 63. Geertencort
24. Batkin 44. Swaardsten 64. Neefter
25. Caadwood 45. Ophundaal 65. Mytte
26. Jarmoi 46. Noorhagen 66. Siegsmerund
appendix 293
11.
d66 calymnite names {common, feminine}
Addelia 31. Tesset 51. Tendelle
12. Claasina 32. Malou 52. Meulenja
13. Gerta 33. Baasatrix 53. Nienke
14. Jannika 34. Doortjea 54. Aletta
15. Katrien 35. Famikke 55. Dideria
16. Letjeonora 36. Skinlar 56. Rotta
21. Truidwig 41. Anoukelle 61. Sybheide
22. Chantaal 42. Amalinka 62. Wiesenwoad
23. Kaatja 43. Basilia 63. Nelleke
24. Wierlindis 44. Gnisha 64. Rozalysa
25. Yhara 45. Eddavole 65. Aloiya
26. Sotte 46. Schyle 66. Yaurentide
d66 calymnite names {common, ambiguous}
11. Bas 31. Ostlerblaeu 51. Vocht
12. Noorn 32. Kruggler 52. Daern
13. Careel 33. Jonios 53. Taynwelk
14. Gysl 34. Gooster 54. Feare
15. Lijns 35. Bruins 55. Coerlender
16. Woutlund 36. Leesaen 56. Aylikke
21. Roosejack 41. Jillianger 61. Niddirn
22. Vriedekk 42. Augure 62. Gheilaert
23. Knipp 43. Brayhael 63. Jarncleft
24. Vossborough 44. Saaleska 64. Gloeklave
25. Wijnwillet 45. Gurrignon 65. Barrom
26. Muldoon 46. Joyberic 66. Diondenys
294 appendix
11.
d66 calymnite titles {vaunted}
The Silvershaver 41. The Enthroned Banker
12. The Dandy of the Hour 42. Of the Banker’s Investiture
13. The Fop of Grand Calmynswaard 43. The Sacred Simonist
14. Of the Self ’s Concern 44. The Rake of Riches
15. The Gilded Popinjay 45. The Grand Tourist
16. The Fortunate Child 46. The Prodigal Pursemaker
21. The Fribble of the Market 51. The Shameless Spendthrift
22. The Pence’s Pinch 52. The Libertine of Progress
23. The Untrammelled Host 53. The Magnificent Miser
24. Of a Wyrm’s Worth 54. The Escheoir Easemaker
25. Of the Plate of Laute 55. The Allodial Lordling
26. The Mentifactotum 56. The Robber Baron
31. Of the Leisures 61. The Freeholder
32. The Socialite 62. Of the Seigneur Maxim
33. The Light of Humanity 63. Of the Octroyer’s Line
34. Anointed by the Foils 64. Master of the Mint
35. Of Goldborn Glory 65. Of the Vaunted Vault of Kings
36. The Consecrated Coffer 66. The Flower of Prosperity
appendix 295
11.
d66 calymnite titles {common}
Twice–Debted 41. The Industrialist
12. The Thrallblooded 42. The Heir–Saviour
13. The Rat Boiler 43. The State Extortionist
14. The Usurer 44. The Roadstone Inspector
15. The Pawn’s Friend 45. The Testator
16. The Broker’s Pursestring 46. The Bankrupted
21. The Coffer’s Lock 51. The Carver
22. Of Joss Worth 52. The Fairtrader
23. The Debtor Bondsman 53. The Trustmaker
24. The Mercantilist 54. The Bookrunner
25. Of the Gilded Freeter’s Society 55. The Plough’s Sharer
26. The Wagemade 56. The Fool–of–Rags
31. The Cogger 61. The Moonshiner
32. The Invisible Hand 62. The Carpetbagger
33. The Crony 63. The Bridgemaker
34. The Protectionist 64. The Debtor’s Heir
35. The Towerlent 65. The True Witness
36. The Labourer 66. The Fool’s Client
296 appendix
11.
d66 calymnite titles {criminal}
The Merchant of Harsh Angles 41. The Youthbroker
12. The Master Chisler 42. The Elderthug
13. The Purloiner Princeling 43. The Hooligan
14. The Yegg of Yomundendam 44. The Masked Mugger
15. The Listless Larcener 45. The Crocodile’s Mummer
16. The Miscreant of the Markt 46. Of the Broken Back
21. The Cracksman 51. The Unburied
22. The Swagman 52. The Unsmothered
23. The Shanker 53. The Stonethrower
24. The Gutshot 54. The Keelbacked
25. Of the Rusted Noose 55. The Unboiled
26. The Lossless Larcenist 56. The Debtor Rebel
31. The Plunderman 61. Of the Brazen Stranglecord
32. Of the Poisoned Ear 62. Of the Order of Eels
33. The Unkind Host 63. The Beggar
34. The Swollen Hand 64. The Grendelock Scourge
35. The Thieving Finger 65. Of the Lost Generation
36. The Swine of Sedition 66. The Perfidious Proxy
appendix 297
11.
d66 calymnite titles {academic}
Of the Order Precursor Gloriata 41. The Docent
12. The Prodigious Mind 42. The Literary Revisionist
13. Of the Order Relicuos Gloriata 43. The Censor Emeritus
14. The Chrematistician 44. The Tenured Scholar
15. The Anointed Phrenologist 45. Lektor of Affairs
16. The Greatest Mind of a Generation 46. Vocate of Liminal Matters
21. The Craniometrician 51. The Errantry Researcher
22. Of the Order of Imperial Conduct 52. Of the Genealogical Supreme
23. The Unfalsifiable 53. Studied of the Yomunds
24. The Preater Ignoratio Elenchia 54. Of the Tower Scholarium
25. The Scholar of Syllogisms 55. The Paleobroker
26. The Lecturer 56. The Import Magistrate
31. The Habilitationer 61. The Legalist of Vaults
32. Rector Emeritus 62. The Legalist of Gentries
33. The Decaan of Studies 63. The Commoner’s Legalist
34. The Aspirant Mind 64. The Archivist Laureate
35. The Student Doyen 65. The Banker’s Hollowman
36. The Renowned Hoogleraar 66. The Gilded Wise of Pari Passu
298 appendix
11.
d66 calymnite titles {military}
The Nail of Witches 41. Beknighted in Blossoms
12. The Catchpole 42. The Unyielding Vine
13. Proctor of Indulgences 43. The Unquelled
14. Twice–Made–Palmer 44. The Appeasing Arm
15. The Knatcher 45. The Debtmaker
16. The August Virtue 46. The Widowbred
21. Justice of the Coin 51. The Unconquerable
22. Justice of the Flower 52. The Eye of Imperialism
23. Justice of the Camp 53. The Atavist’s Rebuke
24. The Gilded Sumner 54. Born of Crowns
25. The Burgess–at–Arms 55. The Arkfuller
26. The Toller–Reeve 56. The Gilded Fusilier
31. The Pepperbox Deadeye 61. The Dread Dragoon
32. The Bullocksblade 62. The Horizonbringer
33. Of the Grendelmen 63. The Sword of Modernity
34. The Gammelshot 64. The New Sun
35. The Pettifer 65. The Breaker of Tongues
36. Of the Iron Thrush 66. The Armiger of Avarice
appendix 299
11.
d66 calymnite titles {colonized}
The Shackled 41. Of the Exterior
12. The Kinslayer 42. Of the Failed State
13. The Collaborator 43. Of the Declining People
14. The Guided Brute 44. Of the Land of Few
15. The Artful Proxy 45. The Appropriated Scion
16. The Sullen Wolf 46. Of a Wordless Realm
21. The Vulgar Beast 51. The Graceless Host
22. The Ignoble Autocrat 52. The Burdensome Lout
23. The Sluggard Belligerent 53. The Bondburner
24. The Uncouth 54. Of the Failed Irredenta
25. The Colonial Advocate 55. The Unredeemed
26. The Doughty Host 56. The Wasted Flesh
31. The Blade Against Venality 61. The Revolutionary
32. The Charter–Killer 62. The Mutineer
33. The Hound 63. The Rattlechain
34. The Worldly 64. The Unsevered Hand
35. The Delftmonger 65. The Keeper of Tongues
36. Of the Menagerie 66. The Revanchist Threat

Throne of Avarice

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BRIAN YAKSHA'S

Creation, Writing and Art Direction by brian yaksha

"... the remnants

the dead, and provide no comfort to any who might seek

ii: born in vanity:

iv: born in vanity:

iv: born in vanity:

vi: born in vanity:

ii: d6 vaunted moods

iii: d6 fallen moods

viii: d6 scholarly moods

ix: d6 military moods

xi: d6 westergormer moods {mountains}

xiii: d6 ettinscover moods {coast}

xv: saglashed moods {bogs}

xvii: etchlender moods {borderlands}

"Hand of Prosperity Priest"

"Blackened Tongue Cabalist"

"The Cuttingsway Slasher"

"The Academy Berdisher"

"The Metropolitan Everyman"

"A Goblin-Hunter Freeblade"

"A Gunzelmarkt Secessionist"

"The Learned Druggist"

"Forward Brigade Protagonist"

"Seeker of the High Strange"

"A Gilded Hand Envoy"

"Ueteran of the Banking War"

25. the goblinscalper gang

33. the adosian order

41. the unsullied fraternity

44. the eindercult

46. the house of the unanointed

62. the carrion march

64. the heirs–sunderthrone

ii: ducal rank–and–file aesthetic

ii: crest mantling

iv: crest motto

vi: vaunting of the house

viii: the falling of the house

viii: names for mountains in calmyn

viii: names for hill country in calmyn

viii: names for coastal waterfronts in calmyn

viii: infamous bogs & swamplands in calmyn

viii: named field districts in calmyn

1. Lesser Geldrecht 1. Balkinggnor 1. Fort Thegnlaaf

i: d66 names for colonial outposts

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