The Age of Elizam
[uh-lee-zam]
The year is 493 AS (After Split) in the Age of Elizam. A long 493 years since the last calamity tore the land, literally, apart at the seams. A moment not marking the beginning of the end, but one of many reminders that the history of this place has always been a march towards the end of the world. Now the seemingly last self styled
conscious-kind survive on
The Ristarcan Peninsula. A floating jut of land surrounded by an endless void. Fragments of written and oral stories indicate they come from a peoples scattered and clinging to survival long before
The Split. Here
Marsétan is the last known bastion of conscious-kind. A city of 250,000 resting on the edge of
The Lost - the limitless expanse of void that stretches below and byeond the peninsula.
Despite, or perhaps in defiance of these mysteries the people of Marsétan are by and large a pragmatic bunch. Questions of what was and how it came to be as it is now are speculations rarely entertained. Instead, for the past 493 years the focus has been on securing the Peninsula of Ristarca. A spit of land bordered on almost all sides by the Lost. Marsétan itself is built along the eastern edge, a city fragmented. Each of its seven major districts drawing on disparate traditions, cultures, and approaches to governance whose origins have often been lost to time. From the south to the west rises the Wall, a mountain range that has provided many of the materials necessary for an industrious but fractured city. While to the north is the Forest. By all accounts a mysterious and unending expanse of its own. A place where many adventurers have ventured in and a great many more dangers have crawled out.
The Age of Elizam is characterised by rugged individualism and listlessness. There are no avatars of the heavens and it is a land separated from history and context. Survival and distinction are held in highest esteem. Most commonly this is achieved through the exploration of the Forest often on behalf of various adventurers guilds. But others set themselves apart through underworld escapades, discovering essential secrets of survival, or in a multitude of other ways. In the end in the Age of Elizam it matters little why your name is known, but simply that it is. Little thought is given to the greater cost suffered by all those who never reach such heights or do and fly too close to the sun.
These, as the angler at the silent brook, or mountain-shepherd leaning on his crook,
Or gaping plowman, from the vale descries, they stare, and view 'em with religious eyes,
And strait conclude 'em Gods; since none, but they, thro' their own azure skies cou'd find a way.
From Book VIII of Metamorphoses
For more on the themes and goals of this setting refer to
Critical Themes.
