Name/Pseudonym: {gogibear}
Contact Info: {gogibear#8964 discord, gogibear twitter}
Ethereum Wallet Address: {0x79a555B77F09C3de481C4b412c14C25Ea78C79b5}
{The Shimmering Coast}
Shimmering Coast
Massive gold deposits on the coasts here have led to many shipwrecks littering the sea floor with gold coins. They shimmer through the perfectly clear tropical water when the sun hits the waves just right.
Lore Goal: to explain how/why so many gold coins have littered the sea floor here.
This is an early draft that is helping me go through the process of how to effectively build lore on top of prior information. I am sure the story is currently convoluted and needs a lot of refining.
Building off of previous lore/info or new info that is created in this story:
Themes: Order of Rage - Temper - Revenge
Themes: Order of the Fox - Cunning and Trickery
Age of Exploration (Cycle 2) (Pre-cataclysm)
Large Gold Deposits - Bingsen Mosi, Nikeh, Gegkieg (3 adjacent realms on the shimmering coast all with the gold resource)
Location: Crypts and Caverns - Catacomb of Song - near the shimmering coast
Genesis Adventurer - Name (how do I incorporate a GA into my lore, do I ask around until I receive someone’s permission?)
Need island and continent names - hard to refer to locations based just on Realm names
Need to name characters
Create goblin culture, give them relics/important rituals, enemies (kobolds in this instance) etc.
One type of goblin allied with order of rage?
Goblins transformed by magic into ogreish beings world bosses?
Alchemical silver is super effective against kobolds/demons?
Why was there so much gold on the water/sent by ship? Sent shipments of Gold:
In exchange for other resources?
To hire mercenaries?
Pay their standard army?
To store in royal treasury?
Pay a ransom?
Trade for valuables like spices?
Someone was looting the gold and extracting it?
To save it from incoming attackers?
Purchase of ships (or weapons, or magic, or machinery, or technology)?
General distribution to rest of kingdom?
Resettlement of entire kingdom (cataclysmic event)?
Hired goblin mercenaries because:
An order of rage’s prince went down into the Catacomb of Song chasing a beautiful aria sung by an unknown angel, thinking he would be saving the damsel and wanting her hand in marriage in return. He battled to the end of the catacomb with his party only to discover the music was sung by a succubus who’s minions tore him and his party to shreds. Two maddened soldiers were the only ones to escape the massacre and return to tell the tale.
The kingdom tasked a nearby garrison to punish the succubus led by a ‘Genesis Adventurer’. When they went down they fought to the previous encounter and thought they had the succubus Taliyah in their sights when she disappeared through a trap door into a cavernous chasm. With the scent of blood and revenge filling their nostrils the force of rage swept down heedlessly hacking down many of their enemies. They did not notice the dread silence and electric charge of magic in the air becoming more and more suffocating. An army of kobolds and other demonic creatures rushed through a portal that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Once again the soldiers of rage/party of ‘Genesis Adventurer’ were routed and very few escaped.
Already fighting an ever growing number of goblins in their northern territories and never trusting the other orders the King of Rage decided to make an alliance with one enemy and pit them against another. They held an adamantine crown and sceptre that the goblins revered. They offered it back to the goblins in exchange for their aid against the kobolds and succubus demon. Not only did the relics entice the goblins, their natural enmity with kobolds went back into time immemorial. However, distrusting the men of rage the goblin king demanded a ransom of gold before they would battle the kobolds and once they received the crown and sceptre they would return the bulk of the gold in exchange for it.
Doubting whether he was making a good deal the king of rage went to see the goblin kings army and was in awe when he saw the size of it. He wondered whether his forces would be able to withstand their forces if they decided to throw their full might against him. Ever distrustful of his alliances and constantly in agitation about an impending attack by his enemies he knew he had to pit the goblins against the demon forces in the catacomb if only to weaken them and cause them casualties. Little did he know all around the globe goblinkind had been multiplying unchecked and offered all kingdoms more trouble than they had in living memory.
Once it was decided, the king stockpiled massive amounts of gold in their largest gold producing region and the plan was to have shipped it up north along the coasts to the goblin king’s encampment. However, things would not go smoothly for the realm of rage.
Word spread of the stockpiling of gold and deal made with goblins and whispers spread to Eldhram island belonging to the order of the fox. There Lord of Gramkum was having discourse with his cousin who was a pirate lord and the dread of sailors of his time. Together they hatched a plan to win gold for themselves without spending a single life of their men. The lord of gramkum’s realm was poor in most ways yet rich with a small mine of adamantine. They forged a replica of the goblin crown and sceptre and the pirate lord set sail to the far coast.
The pirate lord set a meeting with the goblin king and brought his most stealthy hunter. At the beginning of the meeting after initial greetings the pirate lord revealed the goblin at the goblin king’s right side was a human hunter. This made the goblin king angry at the potential for an assassination rather than impressed at the stealth. With things already gone awry, when the pirate king brought up the idea that he could steal the crown and sceptre from the King of Rage’s fortress in exchange for the gold the goblin king scoffed and asked why he would trust a pirate and sent him on his way.
Not one to lose hope too easily the pirate lord spoke to lesser tribe leaders on his way back to his ships and convinced several to defect in exchange for the sceptre and the crown once he stole it from the order of rage. They were easier to convince than the wily goblin king. He travelled back to Eldhram and asked the Lord of Gramkum to grant him 2 more sets of adamantine relics. This was a significant request but the pirate lord promised they would be recovered and the gold itself would be worth the temporary investment. The Lord of Gramkum was not convinced, he told the pirate lord to bring back a troop of goblins as well to become performers in his court. The isle of Eldrahm had been hunted clean of goblins for many decades at this point and there was little entertainment in his austere realm.
The pirate lord once again sailed across the Feltic Sea with additional ships loaned by the Lord of Gramkun and three sets of crowns and sceptres meant for 3 tribal goblin leaders. Once on the far coast the pirate lord camped near the King of Rage’s fortress, making sure he was seen, long enough to make his story believable. He then travelled north to the 3 different encampments offering them the crown and withholding the sceptre until the theft of gold was complete. He told each tribe different spots along the coast to meet his ships. However, one of the goblin chieftains was old and wise enough to recognize the relics as fakes. He panicked knowing without both of the true relics his claim to the throne would not be recognized by his peers and he became very distraught. Unfortunately for him his ambitious son noticed this and killed his father, immediately heading for the goblin king’s camp to offer the replica adamantine crown as well as his father’s head hoping for recognition and reward.
The goblin king was enraged yet accepted the son’s offering and allowed him to live and become the new leader of his tribe. The goblin king sent word to the King of Rage and marched his own armies to the coast to kill the defectors.
The shipments of gold had slowly started leaving the ports at Nikeh, Bingsen Mosi and Gegkieg but they had been small. Only at that point did the majority of the gold begin to head north on massive transport vessels. The pirate lord filled his ships with the turncoat goblins and they lay in wait on the coast while the remaining traitors built rafts on shore.
One of the pirate lord’s ships had a different goal. They sailed the coasts until they found a small party of goblins and ambushed them, throwing them all in the ship’s hold before heading back to the Lord of Gramkum. This would prove to be a costly decision.
When the attack commenced it was instantaneously chaos. Too many goblins boarded the rafts and makeshift crafts and the humanoids were not especially good in the water to begin with. Even though the transports carrying the gold were not well defended, fate would have it that the speediest of the goblin king’s scouts had already reached the shore and were waiting for the betrayers to attack. The messengers sent to reach the king of rage had also done so quickly and his fastest ships appeared on the horizon just as the battle for the treasure began.
All of the sailors on the transport vessels were killed or thrown overboard but that was about as much success as the would be thieves managed. Very quickly it became a messy free for all with goblins and men alike gone mad at the sight of so many shimmering golden coins. Many sank attempting to carry the heavy precious metal on their deeply inadequate rafts. Most were slaughtered by the scouts of the goblin king and the sailors sent by the king of rage. The pirate lord himself disappeared and it was never found what became of him. (I would love to create a crypts and caverns module, the first one under the sea, which features the pirate lord lich as the main villain. I love when ancient lore mentions unsolved mysteries and the player gets to solve them in real time.)
Some of the transport vessels were commandeered by goblins and they attempted to sail away, none made it far. Some burned in the shallow waters. Some crashed into shore. The vast majority of the gold over the next fortnight would end up in the washing up on the tides or floating down to the sea bed.
The goblin king’s scouts by some stroke of fortune were able to recover the adamantine replicas. They now had 3 crowns and 3 sceptres. The sceptres were given to their shamans who infused the heads with alchemical silver creating a weapon that was deadly against demons.
The goblin king and the king of rage both furious about their betrayals came together to wreck havoc on their enemies. The goblin king promised to destroy the catacomb in exchange for ships to take them across the sea to Gramkum to destroy the realm for taking his goblins hostage, for they were close kin of his. Once the demons in the catacomb were destroyed they would also offer the king of rage the adamantine replicas for the true relics for they were from ages past and their power and meaning to the goblins was ineffable. The king of rage handily agreed as his heart was now set on punishing his enemies even if it was his final act.
The king of rage sent a powerful fleet across the sea with many goblin warriors and laid waste to an unsuspecting lord of Gramkum. The fields burned. The valleys echoed with pain.
The main goblin force made its way into the catacombs and engaged in fierce combat with their kobold enemies. There was slaughter on both sides. The succubus of song and the goblin king did battle in the depths of the chasm beneath the catacomb. The adamantine sceptre he wielded struck her temple and she fell to the stony floor with a wail of agony. Her scream seemed to pierce the fabric of reality as the portal in the depths glowed white hot and trembled, finally exploding with a pulse that shot out in every direction. Spirits of death rushed out of the portal into the world of men before the portal closed completely.
Five goblins absorbed some of the magics that were heavy in the air turning huge, powerful and grotesque. Two immediately fought one another and killed the other. Three ran attempting to escape the collapsing walls. Once they made it outside they fled into the forests. Many goblins and kobolds escaped, the goblin king was not one of them, many were trapped below. The trap door in the catacomb which once led down now opened to a bed of rubble.
The king of rage held to his word and gave the new goblin king their ancient relics and forged a strong alliance for the rest of his reign.
The catacomb of song was silent and the coasts shimmered with gold.
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