Thule Island - Nations, History & Weather

Nations

Westernesse  - The Keltoi kingdom on Thule Island prior to the Imperial invasion. The Kingdom was somewhat analogous to a tiny version of Anglo-Saxon England with a pseudo-Celtic polytheism. The language of the Keltoi people is known as Cant. It has been adopted by beggars and thieves throughout the Empire.  The language of  built on Common Imperial, but contains numerous words from other, older languages. There is also a strong component of pseudo-sign language involved in communicating in Cant.

The Empire - A highly populated Empire analogous to the Holy Roman Empire in over-the-top style, religious fervor, zealous trade, and technological advancement. The Empire is a Monotheistic society that had a crusade to destroy the Keltoi culture and Old Faith on Thule Island over a century ago, a crusade that fractured the Empires own religion.

The language of the Empire is Imperial Common or common. The language is a hodge-podge of words from different languages making it easy to learn but complicated to master. There are two main strains of the Imperial Language, High Imperial (spoken by nobles and those trying to keep up appearances of such) and Low Imperial (spoken by the common folk). The speakers of one can easily understand the other although the social class of the speaker is usually obvious.

The Marches

Politically the island was declared a March. The March Lord answers only to the Emperor and has minimal tax requirements. This is intended to help the March Lord pacify the March as quickly as possible.

Recent History

All dates are rough and based on Year 0, the year the Lough (pronounced Law) crusade "conquered"  Thule island. Anything more detailed than that makes it harder to drop into a campaign setting. When in doubt about the different cultures case the GM should lean towards describing Keltoi as Celts and Lough worshipers as Medieval Germans.

The Seven Wizards

Worth a mention as their names are likely to pop-up in future blog posts and to allow GMs to use the names in their own games. The Seven Wizards are responsible for a number of lairs, and magical items, and possibly even spell names. At least three are currently liches, the others would all be over a century old and are probably dead. They are:

• Cholson the wicked
• Ee the Deadeyes
• Herland
• Oslof Firehammer
• Quays
• Rampier
• Tus

Shadowmen

The Shadowmen, aka Mole Men, or Chud are humanoids that live in the caverns below ground. They only come to the surface at night as the light appears to hurt their eyes. They raid the surface only rarely and capture people and livestock. In game terms the Shadowmen can be Grimlocks, Morlocks, Lovecraftian Ghast, or even Orcs. Whatever suits the campaign. The people of Thule Island call them Shadowmen and they are the boogeyman parents use to scare their children, except they are real. 

Geology/Geography

Thule Island is a semi-vertical limestone karst that has been weathered into karst towers. Ontop of the limestone karst is a thick layer of volcanic soil that has made the islands fertile and enabled more natural drainage than karst areas normally see. This limestone was punctured by a geothermal hot spot in the North which has resulted in a small volcano and geothermal hotsprings.

The limestone is riddled with tunnels. Legends say one could walk the entire way from the base of Fire Mt in the North to Broken Fang Mountain below ground the entire way. Problem is these caverns are filled with inhospitable nasties that spew up from time to time to attack the surface dwellers.

Thanks to Tour Guizhou (without permission) here is a nice bit on how Karst towers form. 

Weather

Weather is damp. Roll 1d4-2. The results (including negatives) move you up and down the weather possibilities for that season. Any results that lead off the Season should stop at the last result for that season.