AN INTRODUCTION TO CALYDORN

When an adventurous mind sweeps aside the familiar, threadbare curtain, that backdrop of mediocrity framing our world – for want of the unknown, for craving of a lofty quest, for hunger of a world where steel and magic clash – one’s imagination passes into the realm of Calydorn. Here glitters a world with foundations sunk deep in ancient lore, where heroes rise and fall with each passing breath, but if you live long enough to savor the blood caking your brow and the sweat stinging your eyes – in that precious moment nursing wound and setting bone – you may well take your first step on the path of the Godquester. Only fools and fanatics dare face the ravaging forces that shape Calydorn’s mountains, sound her rivers or gust her sands; only desperados and heroes would dare challenge the empires, deities and horrors which inhabit her vibrant lands of legend. Their memories are but fleeting; their names not worth a whisper. Yet for some, whose footsteps are trod in the eternal sands of myth, there shines glory upon glory to challenge even the gods themselves.

Only fools and fanatics dare face the ravaging forces that shape Calydorn’s mountains, sound her rivers or gust her sands; only desperados and heroes would dare challenge the empires, deities and horrors which inhabit her vibrant lands of legend. Their memories are but fleeting; their names not worth a whisper. Yet for some, whose footsteps are trod in the eternal sands of myth, there shines glory upon glory to challenge even the gods themselves.

The world of Calydorn is the stage upon which plays the epic drama of GODSLAYER; a bronze-age world of sword and sorcery; steeped in the ruins of ancient civilizations, where the borders of myth and reality blur. Classical empires clash, spear and shield, in contest for cultural dominance; brutal barbarians command the skies astride the backs of giant avians while slave-caravans wend their way across endless deserts with their cargos of the conquered.

Flying ethership galleys deliver legionnaires of the macabre Mortan Empire to do battle upon the floating skylands which crowd the heavens. Hoplites trudge through steaming jungles of giant flora, seeded from the land of the gods, to combat creatures from a time the world forgot. Mystical druids seek to master the secrets of celestial alignments built into the stone-circles which predate recorded history, and which hold clues to a cataclysmic enigma. Dwarves of Nordgaard and their human Skannfyrd allies battle terrifying Shadow-Trolls upon the arctic ice to control mountain-chains which constitute immense runes of cosmic power.

All the while, sinister forces muster on the outer continents, including menaces such as the graceful, haughty and cruel Malentians, who once enslaved the world and humbled the gods; the savage and bestial abominations called Banebrood; and cold, sinister demons born of an alien cosmos.

Calydorn is a world of wonder, where cities of living stone are molded by the will of their denizens, and where sacred groves awaken with sentience in the face of an undead blight that sweeps the world, devouring great swaths of nature’s verdant glory.

Calydorn is a world of doom, where demons and wicked gods cavort amid the thunder of errant magic-storms which level entire cities in their path; and beyond reality the Arch-God of Entropy manipulates a thousand puppet-strings to unravel the cosmos.

Calydorn is a world of untold promise, where heroes quest to uncover ancient arcane lore or to discover and consume the divine anima of the dead Mother of the Cosmos – thereby elevating their own souls to the stature of deities.

Calydorn is a world of moral ambiguity, where tortured anti-heroes wage ceaseless war on sinister enemies; where evil is a matter of perspective, and where even the brightest heroes are scarred with dark character flaws.

Calydorn is a world of towering tragedy and epic drama, unfolding across fourteen continents and across fifty millennia, yet defined by the momentous events of the here and now.

 

The world of Calydorn is endowed with unique and richly detailed cultures – conquering empires on the rise, disintegrating cultures in decline, and decadent nations wallowing in memories of their erstwhile glory – from the sinister society of the Mortan Empire with its legions, necromancers and alchemists to the noble culture of the Halodyne pantheists and their city-states; from the nature-worshipping Wyldfolk dedicated to the resurrection of The Goddess to the wild berserkers of the Nordgaard’s Earth-god worshippers.

Six cultures are detailed within the factions section of this website, but forming the cultural backdrop of Calydorn are a dozen further fascinating civilizations. From the sun-worshipping Karkhos Nomads of the deserts to their rivals, the bedouin White-Horse animists; from the splintered fragments of the Kassobari Khanate to the metropolis ports of the Hedonite Coast, Calydorn is an exotic garden in which each culture has grown organically in the fertile soil of history. Breathe deep and savor the fragrance of this colorful and sensual world.

The GODSLAYER rulebook contains a wealth of further information for those interested!

The Seven Worlds