General Background

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at the moment just to place hold until the cat decides he needs his dinner or his litter tray & moves because he is asleep on top of them as I type.

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The Cat has moved so I have grabbed my notes & here the are just less screwed up & covered in ginger cat hair than the real thing....


Play starts in the Provincial capital of Anzer Province of the Celestial empire, Kultekakun the province and its capital are a back water and have been for around the last two hundred years since the so called Devils war where half the Province was over run by Devils and human cultists and the capital besieged. For six weeks until the Imperial armies under the "Paladin" Emperor Saladish relived the town and brought the Archfiends and there allies to decisive battle near the them small town of Kulkis. Here he defeated them in the so called seven days battle and was killed slaying the Avatar of the Archfiend which banished his Devils allowing the Imperial legions to crush their human cultist allies.  Before the Devils war Anzer province was the bread basket of the empire and since the climate has become much dryer its population fallen and its farms fallen fallow.

Over the last century the current Emperor Valkarish and his predecessors  have allowed the nomadic Geopi gnomes to move into the area causing a renaissance as the gnomes are famous horse breeders but none of the provinces indigenous population a mixture of humans half elves and halflings like this, particularly the halflings who lost most from the decline of farming. There have been fights between Halfling and Gnome and the outer parts of the province are scared by banditry with many of the bandits being displaced halflings.

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To the south east of the Province lies the Marlani hills which is an area of increasingly rugged wooded hills which is Surounded by Provinces of the Celestial Empire. As well as being the source of the provinces major water ways.

It  is inhabited by small communities of wood elves which whilst not actually part of the Celestial empire have coexisted peacefully with it for as long as it has existed and form where most of the Elves who live in the Anzer Province come from originality as well as the elven ancestors of many of the half elves. The land is not suitable for farming on any sort of scale due to its ruggedness, particularly not the scale that used to occur to the north west of it in Anzer Province or in the other surrounding Imperial Provinces.  The Local elves tend to farm small garden plots and to supplement this by hunting the areas rich game, though in the manner of elves they do so with great care and do not over strain the regions resources, the area is famous for its rangers and for the fine crafts the elves make from the local forest produce.


This is where Gildor comes from by the way.

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The Celestial empire

Ancient history
Was founded according to traditions over ten thousand years ago by an alliance of three gods of good who wanted to establish a bastion of good in a prime material plane much beset by great evils. They sent three of their angels Kel Iba & Tez to parley with the petty warring kings of the area which is now the core of the empire persuade them to make peace with each other and together build a font of good in the mortal world. According to legend these Angels guided the nascent empire for over a thousand years and founded a nobility of half Angels called the Celistae locally but known to scholars in the wider world as Aasimarbefore returning to the heavens. The Celistae continued to rule and guide the empire as it expanded and their rule was fair and good for many thousands of years but as the years passed the heritage of the angels faded until none of their descendants where true Celistae  just normal humans. In time the lines of nobles who claimed decent from the ancient Celistae thinned and where replaced by newer ones and the Celestial empire became no diferent exept in name form any of the other human kingdoms & empires of the world.

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It remained  a basically good nation but the founding three gods religion also faded even though its great temples still stood in the major cities of the empire the worship there moved to that of the individual gods and to hero's of the ancient times who had reached the status of gods themselves.

Geographically the empire reached its limits bounded in the east and south by endless oceans in the west by impassable jungles, full of strange monsters and tribes of giant ape men and savage mountains the home of a kingdom of half men half dragons and in the north by fierce tribes many of them humanoids whose hordes of mounted warriors proved to be beyond the empires ability to defeat and when driven south and east by unknown forces proved a considerable threat to the empire chewing off whole provinces and slaughtering armies until the Celestial empire walled its northern approaches and doted them with Cyclopean fortresses that no horse barbarian could hope to take. the empire turned in on itself and though it remained mighty it was riven from time to time by civil wars both minor and major and a more insidious  threat that of devil cults just the sort of thing that where so prevalent amongst humans before the rise of the Celestial empire in the first place started coming back with a vengeance and several internal revolts occurred backed by these cults building to the worst which was a little over five centuries ago and which set half the empire in flames before it was put down. Since then the have been only one small one in Anzer province which whilst it lasted less than a year and was rousted out by the paladin emperor himself was the only one to have the presence of an archfiend Vigiorth lord of putrefaction and decay confirmed as it acted  as the risings overt leader