Somna Lore Drop: History, Culture
It’s time to drop a bit more lore about my home campaign setting: Somna, the Cursed Lands. Last time we did a high-level cruise-by. Today we’ll be looking at what the general populace is aware of, as well as information that can be gleaned from those who are proficient in the History or Culture of Somna.
Basic Lore
The following lore is common knowledge for most folk in Somna.
The Triune Magiarchs and the Great Curse
Those familiar with The Ballad of the Mad Mage (a popular version of the tale which has made its rounds to even some of the more remote areas of Somna) would know the story of the Great Curse:
Somna was once a land rich with natural resources and powerful magic. The gods and their children walked among mortals. The nations were united under the three empires and the Triune Magiarchs that governed them.
Then came the Mage Wars. The Triune split apart and the three empires marshaled their considerable forces in an effort to gain unified and ultimate control. But they were too evenly matched, no side winning the clear upper hand, and war dragged on and off for centuries. Entire regions were won and lost, some contested areas changing hands over and again until their landscapes were reduced to rubble and wasteland, and in the end, abandoned altogether.
Noone knows exactly how or why the war started, but everyone knows how it ended: the Great Curse. As told and retold many times (with almost as many variations), a powerful magician, driven to desperation and the brink of insanity by the horrors of war and senseless destruction, laid a terrible curse upon the source of all the trouble, on magic itself.
Immediate and Ongoing Impact
The three great Magiarchs were said to have self-destructed nearly instantaneously, so powerful were their spells (and thus just as powerfully susceptible and vulnerable to the effects of the curse). Their grand armies of magic users and holy knights succumbed to the magical chaos as well, those surviving the initial backlash scattered to the wind. With the Magiarchies thus toppled, the world entered dark times, bleaker in some ways than even the countless years of war had been.
But life finds a way as they say, and the people of Somna are resilient survivors. For years, people have been searching for, and finding with some limited success, ways to mitigate the effects of the curse. This has given rise to magical alternatives such as the natural sciences and alchemy or mechanical constructs and advanced tinkering. While advancements of this sort are still in their infancy and prone to much trial and error, they have much improved the quality of life and increased the overall reliability of magic use.
Historic Lore
Those proficient in History would generally know these things.
The Dissolution of the Heraldic Orders
In the golden days of the Triune Magiarchs, the Orders of Heraldic Knights (known colloquially as Paladins or Heralds), were divinely blessed warriors sworn to protect the three empires and uphold the law across all the lands.
But when the Triune turned upon itself, and each Mage Emperor and Mage Empress began vying for ultimate dominion over the others, the Heralds also divided their ranks and waged war against one another in the name of their liege lord or lady. Ultimately, the Great Curse that ended the Mage Wars proved to be the downfall of the Heralds as well.
In the early years following the Fall of the Magiarchies, as the chaos of cursed magic spread throughout Somna like rampant wildfire, the Heralds were helpless to contain the resulting death and destruction. The instability of their own divine magics only served to exacerbate the problem. Having so utterly failed in their duties, the Orders dissolved and its regiments of knights disbanded, their highly codified training practices and teachings gone with them.
The Rise of Familia Bardica
When the weave of magic came crashing down all around them, most mages, wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers faded into anonymity. Some suppressed their talents and attempted to live out normal lives as farmers, tradesmen, merchants, tinkers and the like. Others hid away from the world, far from prying eyes.
But some became wanderers, keeping mostly to the broad expanses that sprang up between the emerging nations of the new age. Traveling in small groups and picking up world-wise vagrants here and there, they eventually became a people unto themselves. Their nomadic lifestyle made it critically important for them to develop and maintain an oral tradition of lore keeping (as traveling with an entire library of books would have been impractical, if not impossible). Thus the Familia Bardica was born.
Over the generations, the Familia Bardica diverged into the distinct branches known today: the Consilia, the Risus, the Tenebrae, and the Basia. In general, the four branches of the family work together, with the Consilia acting as the defacto head and serving in the executive capacity. The Risus are the martial arm of the family, the Tenebrae maintain the intelligence networks, and the Basia conduct public relations. While the individual branches consist mostly of those trained in the bardic traditions of entertainment magic, they also have a number of non-bards among their number.
Cultural Lore
Those proficient in Culture would generally know these things.
Nomansland
Where once existed the three far-reaching Magearchies that spanned the whole of Somna, a host of individual kingdoms, fiefdoms, and city-states now dot the landscape, with unclaimed or contested regions of varying sizes between them. The “lands between lands” are collectively known as No Man’s Land, or Nomansland.
With magical transportation becoming either completely unusable, or at best, wholly unreliable, geological barriers have once again asserted their influence on travel, commerce, and politics. Some oceans, mountains, and deserts became nearly impassable, cutting off whole populations from each other. Merchant trade routes were established by La Familia Bardicum, who now facilitate trade, travel, and communication between the nations. Of course such services rendered are not free, and all nations, large and small, pay tribute to the bards.
Homeland Bound
The elves, many of whom were well integrated within the courts of the Wizard Monarchs, made mass pilgrimages to their two great ancestral elven homelands (one deep in the heart of the Silverwoods, the other in the relative seclusion of Celestine Valley), to regroup and investigate the problem of the curse. Today, this once proud culture is now largely mercenary in nature, loaning out archers and blademasters in exchange for goods and capital to support their efforts to rebuild.
Dwarves have returned to their roots as well – mining, stonework, and metalsmithing – but with only the most adventurous of crafters forging magic into their works. Their partnership with the deep gnomes has become somewhat strained due to the increasing overlap of subterranean territory, and all the while, other creatures of the dark are seeking to claim dominance and territory in the deep places of the earth.
Creeping Wood
Ever since the cataclysmic collapse of the mageocracy, strange and curious occurrences have been reshaping the world of Somna and the lives of its inhabitants. The shadowed world of death and the surreal world of dreams seem to manifest themselves in everyday reality, with spirits rising from the grave and nightmares spontaneously appearing from thin air.
Stories of a feyfell forest where these wild and disparate energies clash are prevalent across the land. Named after myths of old, the Tuhlgey Wood is more than haunted, appearing in random locations and at unpredictable times, sowing chaos wherever they land, and disappearing as suddenly as they came. With its penchant for releasing dangerous monsters into a locality and the number of missing people that disappear in its wake, it seems almost sentient and is more feared and reviled than any bogeyman.
Author’s note: This post expands a bit on the high-level overview of Somna from a prior post and introduces knowledge that can be gained through acquiring proficiency in certain skills, in this case History and Culture. We’ll continue on this trend in the future for other skills (such as Arcana and Religion).
