The Corpse of Cascera

We've raised the dead to labor for us. Why not a nation?

— Dākuho Bitto, Shinomas General

Cascera was one of the five great powers who sparked the Great War. Each of them believed it would be a quick war with easy spoils; decades later, the war has dismembered the once rolling hills and verdant valleys of Cascera, its cities gutted to hollow ruins. Every part of the land has felt the impact of a shell crushing against the soil or seen the threads of the mighty Gigant Battle-Barge as they plod through gas-choked wastelands.
The people of Cascera have long since fled or become fodder for the four remaining nations as they fight over the savaged remains of what was once a prosperous nation. Countless coal-plants shroud the skies with smog, churning endlessly to power the Nekrobiotek and millions of their Undead.

Zombie Soldier by Live Rasoloarison

Sundered Lands

Years of artillery duels, trench-digging, and magical duels have turned once prosperous fields of crops and lilies into muddy wastelands. Craters dot the landscape between trenches, with the remnants of demolished cities sticking out of the muck like broken bones. Barbed wire sprout across the dead nation like weeds, rusting away in forgotten parts of the war. Nothing lives here, except vast swarms of rats that haunt the battlefields like a plague.

There are many ways to die in Cascera, but being gnawed to death by hungry rats rank among the worst. So bad is the problem with these swarms that each nation is turning to gradually more extreme means of killing them.

At any given time, someone is dying somewhere in Cascera. Even with the Undead doing most of the fighting since many years prior, the war always finds a way to kill someone somewhere. Every day, the conflict grows more savage and mankind finds some new way to inflict death upon one another, or some fresh horror to unleash from laboratories and armories. Nekrobioteks strive to best each other with every new creation and spell.

Geography

After the long years of war, Cascera is unrecognizable from any old map. Its corpse has been carved up between the four great nations, divided by a chasm of no-man's-land and relentless war. There are more Undead than living in Cascera now, with vast hordes of the Undead being committed to labor or fight in the blasted land.

by Tim Löchner

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The land itself has begun to change, warping in ways never seen before. There are murmurs of some sort of magical pollution that have seeped into the soil, and people look at the factories of death in their cities.

Soldiers speak of strange weather and eerie skies, and swear that see hungry maws in the silhouette of thunderstorms and dreams.

Federation Holdings

The Obryad Federation hold the north and eastern parts of Cascera, as well as a sliver of coastline just to the south. Though slow to grasp some of the intricacies of the evolving war, the Federation Nobles have a disregard for losses, both human and undead, that have seen them adopt the slow, grinding war of attrition. Plagued by dissent at home and rivalry between various factions among the nobility and ruler class, the Federation Holdings are currently the weakest in Cascera.

Abhimaan-Korec Territory

Sprawling across the length of the western coast, the combined territory of the Abhimaan Monarchy and Koreroc republic is the latest turn of the war, spurred on by atrocities and terrors unleashed by the Magocracy. Together, the two nations hold the largest part of dead Cascera, but the dynamic of power shifts as readily as the frontline. Without the weapons and manpower from the Republic, the Abhimaan monarchy may crumble - but without the monarchy's fleet, the Republic would struggle to even reach the war. Together, uneasy progress is starting to be made.

Magocracy Dominion

While the other great powers decline, the Shinomas Magocracy ascends. Their whole-hearted embrace of Industrial Necromancy and terrible Warbeasts have allowed them to again and again take their foes by surprise. Their dominion over Cascera sprawls, tendrils reaching deep into the No-Man's-Land. This success has become a weakness, as their forces begin to stretch thin to hold it all.
Terrors unlike any other stalk the barbed-wire trench lines of the Magocracy Dominion.

No Man's Land

The wasteland between each nation's enclave is a place of rust and decay. Lost Undead wander the broken fields, waiting for orders until another charge or another artillery duel sweeps them away. Resurrection Brigades plunder the fields, picking through the debris and scattered barbed wire for another corpse to use, another limb to put to work.
Only the bones of cities and villages remain, buried again and again as the war grinds any trace of the nation that once was into nothing but dust.

Death of a Nation

Despite initial enthusiasm for the war, Cascera quickly found itself besieged on all fronts. While its Nekrobioteks were undoubtedly some of the greatest necromancers in the world, the old nobility had not adapted to a world that had changed from that of their distant childhood.
With lives prolonged by necromancy, Cascera's entrenched nobility thought this war would go like any other and end as they usually had: glorious victory, easy riches, and back to their estates.

by Jacko Wins

But the world had moved on. With electricity more abundant then ever, the energy constraints that hampered Nekrobiotek shackled it no longer.
The undead were no longer used in the thousands, but raised in the millions to charge across barb-wire battlefields and against machine-gun nests.
Cascera failed to adapt, and its small, elite force was eaten alive.

Titans of War

Gigants are enormous, threaded vehicles that serve as both bastions and platforms of war. Their size and function have earned them the nickname 'land-ships,' though many have come to dwarf even the battleships that dominate the ocean wars.
Each gigant carries enough firepower to level a city and enough undead to wage war. They are hungry beasts, ever-demanding new corpses to reinforce their losses and push the line.
In the Long War, it has become a common axiom that where the Gigants are, there is the war.

When Gigants duel, the sky breaks, and land shatters from its colossal cannons and the arcane might of the Nekrobiotek on board. Undead spill out of its holds like a tidal wave. Storming a Gigant is among the most dangerous and most bloody action any soldier can ever undertake.

A People Lost

When Cascera died, its people were scattered throughout. Those who couldn't escape the war died, choked by gas, riddled by bullets, or collected by Resurrection Brigades to feed the hungry war-machines. Survivors have become refugees, left to the mercy of the four great powers.
The able are often mustered into labor-legions, while the fate of others depends upon which great power has collected them. Among them, only the Shinomas Magocracy has raised no refugee camps and any who seek refugee there disappear.

by Daniel Kamarudin

The Free League

A band of assorted minor nations, the Free League have aligned to pursue their own interests under the shadow of the Long War. Though they have proclaimed neutrality, they sell both weapons and corpses to the higher bidder and have even been known to act as mercenaries to whoever will pay.
While too small to pose a serious threat, none of the four powers want to open another front necessary to deal with them more permanently. As the great powers bleed each other dry, the Free League is there to drink deep.

Every year, the weather in Cascera seems to grow worse. Whipping gales, monsoon rain, horizon-spanning thunderstorms all serve to make a miserable war even worse.

by Giorgio Baroni

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Death means little in Cascera. Every soldier slain joins the toiling hordes of undead. The fighting continues, even as every man and woman responsible for its beginning have passed and even as magic seeps deep into the soil. Something stirs.