Player Guide to Kyahida

This guide serves to help you create a character that meshes into the context of a Kyahidan adventure! I recommend at least skimming the first three sections, and reading the rest as is relevent to you.

The Campaign

The campaign I'm running will happen every other week on Wednesdays at 6:00pm at ReRoll Tavern. It's an open table game, and I'll have pre-gens available. Each session is designed to return the party back to a central location every evening: this makes it easy for absences and late campaign joiners to happen any session.

Player characters have been handpicked by their tribes of origin to be drafted by the King of Kyahida into an 'Erikander': an adventuring party chartered to perform a task in his service, to the benefit of civilization. They have been sent to shore up the troubled tribe of Chief Kyske after several severe setbacks in luck.

Six Big Facts about Kyahida

The World is an Island

The whole known world is an archipelago about the size of the state of Hawaii. Everything is, in principle, a day or two by boat. One political state can rule the whole of civilization, and the number of towns and settlements barely exceeds the dozens. Everything is local.

The Kyahidan Civilization is a Stone Age One

The people of Kyahida have clothing, tools, houses, and vessels more reminiscent of America in the 1200's than Europe in the 1200's. Heavy inspiration is drawn from the old days of the Aztec, Incan, Salish, and Mississippian cultures. Things are made of leather, stone, shell, horn, bone, and wood, with metal being restricted to expensive bits of copper. Llamas are the main domesticated animal.

Civilization is Under Perpetual Siege by Titanic Golems

Large tracts of Kyahida and its surrounding ocean are the domain of mechanized beings, some miles-long, who attack any concentration of people that grows too large. Think 'SIN' from Final Fantasy X. Golems shoot lasers and wrathful magic in devastating attacks that can light entire forests on fire. The few towns survive by forcing citizens to migrate regularly between alternate sites.

Magic is Narrowly Granted by the Gods

Magical spells, rituals, potions, and techniques are only effective insofar as it pleases the god sponsoring the magic. Most magic cast outside special sacred sites is invoked by way of Makka, the God of Death. Her domain is the preservation of people even beyond death and the destruction of Golems.

Necromancy is Pervasive

Kyahidans serve their nation, even in death, as soldiers. When a Kyahidan dies, their skeleton is removed and engraved by craftsmen called Bonesingers, who knit the bones into a puppet. This puppet is then annointed by its own heart by a Necromancer, who animates it into a servant to guard against Golems. These 'longmen' are posted as sentries and used en masse to defeat and drive off golems, and they are honored and ubiquitous in Kyahidan society.

Magic Weapons are Advanced Technology

The defeat of a Golem can yield intact artifacts of tremendous power. These can vary from laser rifles to force fields to nanobot medical machines. Kyahidans lack a reliable power source for most of these devices, but rare batteries can be recovered for them, and some are solar powered. Possession of these artifacts attracts Golems like sharks to blood, and so they are considered taboo until they are properly stockpiled away from the tribe by an Artificer.

Character Creation Rules

Here are the rules for character generation in this campaign.

Notes About Magic

Spellcasting in Kyahida is done through exhortation of a god to allow access to the Weave. Further, gods tend to only listen to such requests when standing on Hallowed ground dedicated to them (via the Hallow spell). This would greatly impede the adventuring spellcaster, except for the fact that Makka is incredibly liberal in sponsoring spellcasting anywhere in the world. Her main stipulation is that the magic provide aid in the crusade against Golems or secure the continued survival of Kyahidans, even unto undeath.

As a result, non-divine spellcasters (warlocks, sorcerors, wizards, and bards) tend to honor Makka as their chief patron. Primal spellcasters (druids, rangers) tend to serve Sidhya, who considers most deep forests hallowed ground. Clerics and paladins can serve any god, but if they serve a non-Makkan god tend to spend vast amounts of time in prayer in the village temple asking for supernatural intervention in the field: after sufficient supplication, Kicab will aid in acts of law, and Deshya in acts of crime.

Magic that would displease the god sponsoring the spell fizzles, and wastes a spellslot (if applicable).

Kyahidan Pantheon

Kyahidans are polytheistic, and acknowledge all the gods in this section.

Languages

These are the languages available to Kyahidans in this campaign.

Classes

This section tries to give a succinct description of what a class might look like in Kyahida.