Milieurth
Scope
The motivation behind building Milieurth
I'm building this world for the Gygax 75 Challenge, to participate in Adventure April, and to show off the Million Colored Sun sword & sorcery rules for QAGS that Leighton Connnor, Josh Burnett, and I crowdfunded during Zine Month 2024.
The goal of the project
Some supplementary material for Million-Colored Sun and another world to play with.
Milieurth's Unique Selling point
The basic idea is "Arthurian-inspired apocalyptic pulp sword & sorcery."
- Arthurian-inspired: The game doesn't take place in an Arthurian setting--there's no Arthur, Camelot, or Lady of the Lake (at least not by those names), but it does kind of rhyme with the Arthurian stories. It's just a lot grungier and weirder.
- Apocalyptic: There's a massive war coming between the followers of King Oberon's fairy court and the Dragon's demon hordes.
- Pulp Sword & Sorcery: Despite the coming battle, the setting is decidedly low fantasy (the "grungy and weird" mentioned earlier).
- PCs are human, but can have demon or fairy blood.
- The world lies between the fairy and demon realms. Both of those realms are counting down to an apocalypse. When it happens, the armies of the demons and the fae will flood into the earthly plane and wage an epic battle for control. Until then, how they can interact with earth’s inhabitants is limited, but they use what influence they have in order to prepare the world for their victory in the final battle.
- Human civilization is generally allied with the fairies, worshiping King Oberon and other highly placed members of the fairy court as gods.
- Most intelligent monsters and uncivilized humans worship the demon gods, most notably the Dragon.
- The lands are littered with ruins from an ancient fallen empire that worshiped the Dragon.
- The campaign begins on the frontier of the kingdom, beyond which lies the savage wilds inhabited by the demonborn.
Theme
Genre
Pulp sword & sorcery. More primitive than most high fantasy stories, weirder monsters and magic, etc.
Reader Experience
Gritty, brutal, and dangerous, with the added bonus of impending doom.
Reader Tone
Dark but not grimdark.
Recurring Themes
- Neither of the supernatural factions in the coming war particularly cares about the fate of humanity, both seeing the people who currently inhabit the world between thier realms as nothing more than resources to be used to their own ends.
- The ruins of the fallen kingdom hold powerful magic secrets that could play a key roll in the coming battle.
- Things aren't as black and white as they seem. While most humans side with the fairies and see demons as evil, and demons due tend to be more brutal, neither race has a monopoly cruelty or a reasonable claim to holiness.
Character Agency
It's built around an adventure, so there's sort of an assumption that the PCs will eventually decide to explore the dungeon, but otherwise they're free to do whatever they want. I'll try to provide plenty of hooks go give them some solid options.
Focus
Drama
Taming the frontier.
Friction between humans with demon and fairy heritage.
Probably something to add urgency to exploring the dungeon.
(c)2024, Steve Johnson