The History of (yet to be renamed) Post-Post-Apocalyptic NA

You should just call the continent, "Murka!" because hell yeah.

Have one of those surviving tribes and communities be known as the Lore Keepers or something like that. Where the most accurate information about the past comes from them, but because they were so isolated and less informed the info is still pretty vague. Possibly the more reliable Lore Keepers still live isolated lives and getting to them is difficult. You know like the fabled wise man on the mountain.

Bump.


I'm still hoping for some of the brilliant Block Party People to help me add some detail to this world. It's way too big for me to sketch it all out on my own.

Thanks!

this sounds almost like a very loose PRE-Shadowrun setting...Native Americans like elves, the world falling a part. Either way sounds fun to me!

Here would be my take on the Rocky Mountains. I would use the Rocky Mountains as a 'game changer', and what I mean by game changer is this would be the place that the a vital piece of information would be discovered about your world/setting/current campaign. The reason I picked the Rocky Mountains is because Norad is near by. With the rising sea level and the world falling to crap I could see some aspect of military command up and moving the NORAD center into the Rockies where they could better protect its secrets and watch the rest of the world. Not to mention the Rockies have a lot of cool spots to offer to 'set up shop' so to speak for some very private para-military group or even a faction still clinging to the ways of the U.S.

Just a potential idea, I hope it stirs something up!

I have in my notes from the DMB podcast an idea of having a guild of mages that specialize in teleportation magic. This would solve the problem of the continent being too big. Seems like a cool industry.

So, we had a little group get-together last week. It was good; our group was able to ask some sort of basic questions that will help them be able to start building characters.

One thing that came up is that one of my first-time players wants to play a half-orc. (He's the kind of guy who had read the entire rule book before our meeting, and makes very intentional choices.) I'm inclined to oblige him, despite the fact that I had originally decided that orcs were going to be more animalistic, less humanoid. So, I'm having to restructure the histories of the races in my world to explain the origin of the orcs.

Before, they were simply going to have come through an inter-dimensional portal along with the rest of the monsters, but, now that they're going to have to be a race where everyone doesn't simply kill them on sight, I want to give them a little more flavor.

Here's what I'm thinking:
Previously, I had the elves as Aztec-inspired tribal clans, coming up from central America as the planet's climate changed and their jungles became unlivable. Now, I'm thinking I swap that background out for the orcs, whole cloth. So, from whence, then, did the elves come?

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The elves came from Atlantis, which is under the Bermuda triangle. (Obviously, they wouldn't call them by those names, and the English names for them have long been lost.)

The entire Elven empire was once a giant underwater city. When the earth began spewing forth dragons and stuff (after the AI hit the reset button on humanity), many came from deep underwater canyons, and, unprovoked began attacking the Elven city. The elves were a proud people, so they fought a long and bitter war against the undersea dragons. But, the supernatural beings proved too powerful, even for the ancient magic of the elves. Almost all elves perished in the Last War.

A very small number of elves escaped the glorious city, and traveled to the eastern shores of north america, where they developed a few small settlements among the lush forests. They stayed hidden and kept their existence secret for many hundreds of years, no doubt for fear that they simply did not have the numbers to defend themselves against an all-out attack.

Now, their numbers have recovered slightly, and they have begun making contact with forts and border towns to initiate contact and forge trade relationships. It is still a tenuous time among the elves. They have no cities, no centralized government. They have kept their clusters very small. But, knowledge of their existence has wormed its way into public consciousness. An elf's appearance in a major city would be a non-event; some elves have begun living in the larger human cities. There are certainly still towns where an elf has never set foot, but even there, an elf would be met with curiosity, not fear, as they have earned their reputation as meek, gentle, wise people.

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As it is, the timing even works out that there may be one or two very ancient elves that remembers the Crossing (also called the Fleeing by younger elves who don't understand the full reasoning behind why the elves had to leave their homeland).

The only thing I haven't settled on (which doesn't seem entirely urgent) is how the elves managed to create an atmosphere at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Maybe it started of as a magical bubble that the elves were created in (or evolved within), and then much later they built a permanent structure to keep the water out should the magic fail. I don't know, but I figure I can deal with that detail later.

What do y'all think? Does this seem plausible and/or interesting?

This gives me origin stories for dwarves, elves, and orcs, with halflings and gnomes as derivatives. Seems like a solid base around which to flesh out the current world.