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Description
For a few years now I've been slowly tinkering with this project. Inspired in equal parts by reading books on medieval history and rewatching Game of Thrones, wondering how the medieval world would look if it was united by a continental empire like Westeros. Over time more magical elements began to mingle in, trying to square common fantasy tropes with real historical nations and events. Diving into old myths and geographical misconceptions and making a world where they were all real, or at least partially so. The scope continued to grow until I was changing the entire basemap of the world. I would make small aesthetic changes, then spend some time mulling over pieces of the lore to fit them, then going back to making more aesthetic changes to better fit the lore, in a seemingly never ending cycle. I hope I've finally reached a point where the world itself is finished, where all of my ideas over the years have been synthesized together in a satisfying way, outside of changing a small island here or there now and again. I'd like to start focusing more on individual regions again going forward, and I want to start with deeper dives into Europe and the Holy Gothic Empire first. I think I might also look out into the bigger scale and work out the mechanics of a fantasy solar system as well.

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Earth, or Erthe in modern Gothic, is home to many gods, races, beasts, and creatures who toe the line between them. It is said that the gods are not as active in worldly affairs as they once were, but their effects can still be felt across every land. Magic is one of the chief gifts that they have given to mortals. With it, terrible monsters have been fought off and great empires formed.

One of these empires is that of the Goths. At one point, the Goths were just one of many human tribes subjugated by the elves of the Roman empire. But as that great empire turned to decline, it began to depend more and more on its human foederati to fill its armies. Imperial Roman authority started to fade away as its elites hid themselves away in the mysterious vampire cults they had resurrected from Egypt. More and more human foreigners were left in charge of matters of state as Emperors feeding off of their subjects went from metaphor to reality. The tipping point for the Romans finally came with the first outbreak of the Cyprian Plague, a disease that turned the living into mindless undead. Many vampiric nobility starved to death as entire cities were emptied by the plague, while others walled themselves up into crypts and used their blood magic to enter a deep sleep, hoping to wake up in a future eon when the chaos had subsided. Centuries of warfare and undead outbreaks depopulated huge portions of the continent, and opened it up for settlement by Vandals, Saxons, and other tribes from the north. The most powerful of these were the Goths, whose dragonlords soon began the work of restoring the empire. Over time, the name of their people would become an umbrella term for all of the loosely related tribes that would slowly coalesce into a single nation.

It is this Gothic empire that forms the "main setting" of the world, and a lot of future entries will be written from the perspective of someone from within this realm.

Scattered across the map are small religious symbols, representing holy centers of the various world religions, as well as large eyes that represent centers of daemon activity. See if you can find them all!

Description
For a few years now I've been slowly tinkering with this project. Inspired in equal parts by reading books on medieval history and rewatching Game of Thrones, wondering how the medieval world would look if it was united by a continental empire like Westeros. Over time more magical elements began to mingle in, trying to square common fantasy tropes with real historical nations and events. Diving into old myths and geographical misconceptions and making a world where they were all real, or at least partially so. The scope continued to grow until I was changing the entire basemap of the world. I would make small aesthetic changes, then spend some time mulling over pieces of the lore to fit them, then going back to making more aesthetic changes to better fit the lore, in a seemingly never ending cycle. I hope I've finally reached a point where the world itself is finished, where all of my ideas over the years have been synthesized together in a satisfying way, outside of changing a small island here or there now and again. I'd like to start focusing more on individual regions again going forward, and I want to start with deeper dives into Europe and the Holy Gothic Empire first. I think I might also look out into the bigger scale and work out the mechanics of a fantasy solar system as well.

-------------------

Earth, or Erthe in modern Gothic, is home to many gods, races, beasts, and creatures who toe the line between them. It is said that the gods are not as active in worldly affairs as they once were, but their effects can still be felt across every land. Magic is one of the chief gifts that they have given to mortals. With it, terrible monsters have been fought off and great empires formed.

One of these empires is that of the Goths. At one point, the Goths were just one of many human tribes subjugated by the elves of the Roman empire. But as that great empire turned to decline, it began to depend more and more on its human foederati to fill its armies. Imperial Roman authority started to fade away as its elites hid themselves away in the mysterious vampire cults they had resurrected from Egypt. More and more human foreigners were left in charge of matters of state as Emperors feeding off of their subjects went from metaphor to reality. The tipping point for the Romans finally came with the first outbreak of the Cyprian Plague, a disease that turned the living into mindless undead. Many vampiric nobility starved to death as entire cities were emptied by the plague, while others walled themselves up into crypts and used their blood magic to enter a deep sleep, hoping to wake up in a future eon when the chaos had subsided. Centuries of warfare and undead outbreaks depopulated huge portions of the continent, and opened it up for settlement by Vandals, Saxons, and other tribes from the north. The most powerful of these were the Goths, whose dragonlords soon began the work of restoring the empire. Over time, the name of their people would become an umbrella term for all of the loosely related tribes that would slowly coalesce into a single nation.

It is this Gothic empire that forms the "main setting" of the world, and a lot of future entries will be written from the perspective of someone from within this realm.

Scattered across the map are small religious symbols, representing holy centers of the various world religions, as well as large eyes that represent centers of daemon activity. See if you can find them all!