-To the veterans of the Crusade it has been only a short time since their return home. After the defeat of Demogorgon it took nearly a year to march the entire army back to the heart of the empire, confirm each soldier’s identification, and verify that they had served in the war- all so that they could be paid their salary and benefits. Desertions were at a record low for this period of time, anxious as the soldiers were to return to their homes nobody wanted to leave without getting paid.
After payment a majority of the enlisted men returned to their homes and their lives. Many of them married, have had children, and become involved in family business. Others were not so lucky. The images of demons, death and corruption haunt many veterans and leave them spending their military wages on ale and drugs in a desperate attempt to forget the creatures that hunted them for 8 long months. The number of shattered veterans is not high… but there are enough of them that the crown has taken notice. Those that are better adjusted are split, many of them refuse to talk about their times in the Mobb Lands. Others recount each glorious detail of their battles (and others too) as if they personally served by Gwideon's side.
Those that didn’t go to War kept the empire running for almost 2 and a half years and many of them had to adjust to the return of the old hierarchy. When knights and nobleman left to fight their wives, husbands, brothers, cousins, and friends took over their duties, their powers and responsibilities. Individuals that were used to running things a certain way very suddenly had to adapt to being second in command again. Others who had just barely held everything together were faced with the sudden realization that the master of the estate was not coming back and that the problems they had been putting off were there’s alone to deal with.
War orphans are not uncommon, especially in the cities. Otep is not an easy world to live in. While the cities are safer from monster attack they have more diseases and are at risk for violence.
Avingrad and the Paid Men
Due to the mass gathering of soldiers in the middle of the empire a small tent city was formed… and it remains to this day. Many of the younger veterans of the war decided that they would rather enter the adventuring or mercenary lifestyle than return home to work in the farms, vineyards and industries that had previously been their familial inheritance. The tent city, Avingrad or as the soldiers refer to it “Payday”, now rivals the Free Kingdoms capital of Boss Rest for a sprawling mercenary complex. (Payday is located in the middle of the continent, a halfway point for Elora and Whiteport, at the very tip of the Greater Forrest).
Avingrad is on its way to being the next official “City” in the Empire. Allready merchants are using it as a major stop over, permanent buildings are being erected and settlers are arriving. Many of these settlers are the wives, brothers and children of injured or dead soldiers who have come to claim the payment owed them by the empire. Many of which are then introduced to the friends and squadmates of their dead relative and small communities form. Other settlers are those that inevitably follow soldiers… prostitutes, innkeepers and weaponsmiths.
Unlike the Free Kingdoms mercenary bands, which are given amnesty due to the rights of the free, these new Imperial groups are held to the strictest standard of Imperial Law. In the last 5 years many of them have gained impressive criminal records for failing to follow them. These groups have quickly assembled a strong customer base, ranging from merchant lords to whole towns, hired to do jobs that were formerly held by adventurers or men from the Crusade who never returned. Not every job the Veterns are payed to do involves violence, illegal activity, or the like… but enough do that the “Paid Men” have a rather dim reputation among the populace.
Due to their imperial training and equipment Imperial Mercanary bands are often very well supplied and efficient… but lack the variety of skills and experiences that their Free Kingdom Rivals favor. The average group of Paid Men is consisted of 5-10 spear men, a commander, 2-3 swords men and possibly a cavalry lancer or two. Magical ability, divine or arcane, is almost unheard of and the “healers” that accompany these bands are usually field medics, trained in basic first aid and stitching but nothing more.
Jobs Paid Men will do that are legal: Guarding Merchant Caravans, Guarding a Town, clearing out animals (or monsters) from areas in or near town, serving as body guards, and odd jobs in town such as repairing, carpentry and blacksmithing (depending on the level of skill).
Jobs Paid Men will do that are illegal: Safety and protection rackets, banditry, enforcers for local criminals, smuggling, arson and on occasion assassination (Note that this is not the sort of killing an “assassin” does, with finesse and skill, but rather the brutal and simplistic tactics of a killer for hire.)
The Nobles
The Nobility of Otep was relatively split when it came time to fight in the Crusades. On one hand they were duty bound to supply either funds for the war, men, or themselves… but the Emperor made it clear that it was a preference that all 3 be dispatched. Eager to curry imperial favor, and swept up in a tide of patriotism and hope, nobles from all over the empire signed up for the Imperial Armies. Some arrived with only a personal servant, others arrived with entire staff’s and a few arrived with the entire male population of their domains; having enlisted each man for his squad.
As a result of this massive enlistment many nobles that had no business on a battlefield ended up dead, trampled beneath Demonic hooves or pierced by barbarian weapons. After a particularly blood battle known as “Ruslin’s Folly” Gwideon personally relieved many of the noblemen, putting them in command of things that they were better suited too… counting money and distributing goods. The few noblemen that were equipped for war, having served in the army previously or having spent time as adventurers, quickly won the respect and adoration of the men who followed them. Many of the unsung heroes of the Crusade are the Noblemen who led men from their own estates, keeps and towns into battle against the demonic horde and held their own against insurmountable odds. Yet for each of these glorious victories there are five stories that do not have a happy ending as entire male populations of hamlets and keeps were lost beneath a demons spell or barbarians axe.
The loss of noble blood is felt sharply today in the southern lands near Murkeye and Ladd, the primary residences of many noble families. These are not the Svarlocks and Dustins, powerful courtiers or warlords, but rather the lords, dukes and counts who oversee grain fields, mills and vineyards. In these rural areas, where the loss of the men folk is felt keenly, there is also a great lack of male leadership as only the very young or very old remained behind to care for the
estate. As a result many sisters, wives and mothers have stepped up to leadership roles. In more progressive families they have received full titles, in others they are reagents waiting for their sons, grandsons or brothers to grow up and inherit the lands they have learned to rule. In another 5 years time, when the young men reach maturity it will be the telling moment… will the women who have ruled for 10 years be willing to give up their power or will the next generation of noblemen be puppets for their more powerful and experienced relatives?
For the city nobles, the more powerful families with ties to imperial blood, the year and a half without the Emperor was supposed to be a time in which they grew mighty in power. Instead they found themselves stymied by the Empress Sophitia Xelesta. who ,despite the opinions of her courtiers, was not the weak naïve woman she appeared. Aware that both the Dustins and Svarlocks were preparing to participate in political power plays, power plays that would end with them in a position to usurp the Gwideo line of emperors should her husband die, Sophitia went on the offensive. She publicly shamed and demoralized both houses, revealing secrets to the public, manipulating them into spending vital resources gaining back public approval rather than moving against the throne. Simultaneously she invited several other noble families to join the ranks of the political elite, gaining the support of beloved “local” nobles and cementing the power of the imperial line… with or without Gwideon.
When the Emperor returned he found the Dustins and Svarlocks properly cowed and obedient. He also found the two newly elevated houses of Nain and Voxi staunchly in his corner. His throne was secure… but Sophitia had miscalculated. Although the Dustins have returned to the fold under the leadership of Gwen Dustin, the Svarlocks had been pushed to the brink and now plot along with a rogue element in the Vulture Knights (see the Vulture Knights) to place themselves in power.
The Player Characters
NPC’s
Gwideon- Gwideon spent the entire year following the Crusades in the city of 
He is very much aware of the dangers that still face his kingdom, so much so that he has possibly become too cautious in dealing with them. His actions against the Sol have been mostly those of an economic nature. He enacted laws that increased the tariffs on their goods, made local delicacies of similar stock cheaper, and supported patriotic “Support your local merchant” campaigns in an attempt to stop trade with the Shadowy Invaders… enemies that he fears may invade an empire that is unprepared to stop them. The alteration to the wards and specifically the rules of magic have left him capable of more sorcery than ever before… but between his explorations of new magic, his advancing age and time spent in court his physical abilities have been weakened greatly. His search for a court archmagus is only a half truth, Gwideon may be the single most powerful wizard on the plane. Between his brilliant intellect and unswerving will, along with the mystical phoenix brand upon his chest, Gwideon remains the heart of the empire… even if that heart is heavy with guilt.
Ninev- Ninev returned to Whiteport around the same time as Gwideon, but her whereabouts for the first year remain unknown to the public at large. Shortly after the battle of the Obsidian Pitt the renegade Sol known as Vlad took Ninev to perform the same ritual that Thanos performed to cleanse himself of the Fading. With Ninev Vlad had much more time to prepare. He guarded and sustained her while enacting new wards and protections to hide his intentions.
When the time of cleansing came, Khali-Ama was unable to enter the Primordial Isle and Ninev was successfully purified… at cost of 100 years of life. Returning to the Empire Ninev took up her position as Champion… but her arrival was too late to stop the decay of relationships between the Underfolk and the Empire. For the last several years Ninev has been leading the quite fight against the Sol, gathering allies and hunting down people who have made deals with the creatures. Her duties as Emperors Champion have called her back to Whiteport again now that Gwideon is consumed with the coming birth of his next child. During the last 5 years Ninev has grown more confident in her leadership role and is an inspiring presence on the battlefield or in the court. Additionally during her year abroad she has mastered the uses of her reforged sword, once the blade of Justice, it is now as “The Champions Blade.”
Sophitia- During the two years her husband was away Sophitia ruled the empire in his name… and she was very very good at it. Possibly better than he is. Unlike Gwideon who enters the political arena only when forced, Sophitia was born and raised to be a master manipulator. Her actions confirmed the power of the throne 
but also set into motions a potentially fatal conspiracy. Sophitia refuses to believe that her daughter is dead and constantly holds out hope for her return. Her pregnancy doesn’t worry her, Sophitia’s celestial nature almost assures that she will survive the ordeal. Although Gwideon is officially the leader of the court Sophitia continues to run things on a daily basis now that her husband sees that she is capable of doing so. See “The Nobles” for more details on Sophitia’s actions in the last 5 years.
Orfan- When news of the successful Crusade reached Orfan he was overjoyed, his allies in the surface world had finally succeeded in freeing Otep from the taint of Demogorgon. But after receiving word of the death of both Kri-Ala and Trab, his 
successor and protégé, Orfan became less and less stable. When it became clear that Ninev wasn’t going to pressure the Empire to assist the Underfolk, and that Gwideon wasn’t going to dispatch his gathered troops underground Orfan abandoned the plans to rebuild the
Admiral Bronze- 
Admiral Bronze is fading, the deal he made with the Sol to have his wife restored is eating away at his life force like a cancer. For 5 years Bronze has woken up each morning and expected to see the Merchant coming to collect him and in a horrible way he looks forward to it. Bronze has an ace up his sleeve, a second deal made with a Sol. When the Merchant comes to collect Vlad will be waiting for him, and its possible, oh so slightly possible, that it will be the day Vlad adds another shrunken head to his belt. Bronze doesn’t expect to survive the conflict, but he has prepared the Sea Bulls to fight an enemy that may be the end of freedom and thought. He does it for a woman whose name he can no longer remember, a colorless thing that retreats from his bedside to weep tears of peerless azure.
Factions
The Vulture Knights- 
While the vast majority of other organizations were dispatched to the south, the Vulture Knights remained in the Empire fulfilling their duties. Their inability to stop the attack on Whiteport by the unknown Necromanctic order is a mark of shame on a formerly peerless record. As a result of this failure there is a group of Vulture Knights that has increased the severity of its methods, to them the strength of the Empire is all important and no price (including innocent blood) is too great to assure that. The lack of an Emperor’s Secret has caused problems in disciplining these men and women as philosophical differences began to take lives. Within the last 2 years many of them have been apprehended and reprimanded in their duties but this has only served to alienate a significant portion of the Knights. These Knights have begun to question their current leadership and the regime that appointed it. When approached by the Svarlocks many of these dissidents have begun to change their allegiances away from the crown.
The Cloaked Ladies- 
Without the omnipresent threat of demonic invasion the Cloaked Ladies have returned to their goodly works. Many of them spend time among the veterans of the last war and many more have returned to their original communities to help with work that requires strength or training. Carpenters, Blacksmiths, and other formerly jobs that formerly belonged "To the men" are now being performed by friendly cloaked sisters in communities that have lost many of their husbands, sons and fathers to the war. The Cloaked Sisters are also responsible for multiple Orphanages throughout the empire, set up and funded by their order. The martial sisters, and those trained in exorcisms or the dark arts, remain in their normal duties protecting against the threat of hidden corruption. A sect of Cloaked Exorcists was completely wiped out by the agents of the god Asmodeus during his co-opting of the Cult of the Serpent, a crime which remains unsolved. Other cloaked sisters have begun to speak to the few representatives of the Goddess Avandra some of them abandoning the faith to join in shaping the fledging church. When questioned they point out the similarities between the Cloaked Lady and the goddess, claiming that the Lady was just another incarnation of a much greater figure.
The Platinum Orders
- The Steel Falcons took heavy losses in the Last Crusade, and the creation of mercenary bands out of the veterans has hurt many of their recruiting strategies. Currently the Steel Falcons are desperate for new men and can only field a force a 5th of their former size. Recruiting houses are growing more and more aggressive, a strategy that has greatly increased the number of assertive and ambitious women in the formerly male dominated order.
- The Conflagurators are attempting to rebuild, but the huge loss of men has nearly crippled them. As such they have opened up their recruiting to include veterans and descendants of crusaders that meet their strict criteria. Their basic teachings offer immunity to the madness that infects the lands of Gra making their rebuilding a necessity in the eyes of the Sea Bulls and other would be explorers.
- The Brotherhood has shut itself off from the empire, completely withdrawing in on itself as it ponders the essence and mysteries of the reshaped universe.
- Since the sacrifice of Dustin Dustin became known the Order of the Storms Eye has become a breeding ground for young adventurer’s, the death defying initiating rituals have become more and more dangerous as each new initiate desperately tries to outdo the previous.
- When the relations broke down with the Underfolk the Order of the
- The Ruby Servants serve a new master, or the same one they always have, now that Asmodeus has ascended to Godhood. Only the highest among the order know the truth, and they grow fat on forbidden knowledge taken from the defeated Demonic Mobb. (Seriously I named them Ruby Servants, who didn’t see this coming?)
- As far as the empire is concerned the Lost Flock is dead. With the imprisonment of Demogorgon, the death of their leadership, and their sacrifice in the battle against the Whispering Fiend the survivors no longer felt that the order had a purpose. As such they have donated their chapter house to charity and vanished. Rumors place them alongside Ninev as her closest allies against the Sol.
Magic
The moment Demogorgon shifted into the Prime Material Plane, and by doing so destroyed many of the wards keeping the plane secluded, the rules of magic changed… and not just for the citizens of Otep. Imagine Otep as a large flat rock carefully suspended above a lake. Below it swim million of salmon, each of them sensing its shadow yet unable to reach it, some unable to even perceive its existence. The strongest and most willful leap out of the water, land on the rock… and are robbed of their strength without the lake to sustain them. This was Otep while the wards were in place. Now imagine that instead of a salmon, Demogorgon is a great white shark who leaps atop the stone.
His very weight brings it crashing down, breaking the suspensions and sending the stone into the pond. The ripples blast out from the fallen stone, upheavals swell from the bottom of the lake and resettle… but over time the lake returns to placid stillness. To an outsider the lake is as it was, but to something living in the lake, or living on the stone, the world will never be the same.*
*Also there’s a shark tied to the top of the stone, halfway submerged in the water, desperately thrashing around trying to get free. Also how did a great white shark end up in a lake? Who knows.
To the multiverse the crash of prime back into its collective “pond” sent ripples throughout all of existence and transformed the 3.5 cosmology into the 4.0 cosmology. Many of the planes remain exactly as they were, but some were cast adrift into the
Normally the destruction of a prime material plane, or in this case its reintroduction to the world, could never have created such a great stirring… but Otep contains the essence of the Leviathan- the creation chaos. Its central purpose is to destroy what came before… a process that has begun with its reintroduction to the multiverse in such a spectacular way.
The change in the fundamental nature of magic has not gone unnoticed… but it has yet to affect the world in a particularly large way. Those that could wield magic of any significant power before the fall of the wards were in positions of power and influence or wandering adventurers. Both of these two groups have continued doing what they had been, growing more powerful as they adapted to their new abilities and reaching previously unexplored heights. The change in Sorcery, specifically the loss of conjuration, is blamed on the reconstruction of the planar landscape.
The greatest change to the nature of magic comes in the form of those known as “Warlocks”.
Previously Warlocks and Binders, men and women foolish enough to barter with creatures from beyond the vale, were rare and quickly noticed. Those that made deals with dark powers were eliminated, while those who worked for the interest of the Empire (of whatever society/group/nation they were born into) rose to positions of power and influence with their strange abilities. The Fiends and Fey are more common now and so too are their pacts … making the surveillance of such men and women who accept these powers harder. Additionally there is talk of other covenants that can be made, covenants made with things that have no permanent shape or name who bend and squeeze their way into this reality for moments at a time in the dark of night. Those that search for information on these powers quickly end up either mad… or missing.
Magical items are similarly affected by these new laws. The empire is attempting to gather as many magical items, weapons, and sets of armor that it can… but the sheer number of treasure seekers throughout Otep makes such a persuit nearly impossible. Where once a magical blade covered in flame was priceless, it is now merely a bauble to be traded among treasure hunters. *
*Most new found magical items in Otep are at the lowest possible 4th edition level available to them. The exceptions to this are their Pre-Devistation equivalents which are often power and thus more prized.
The Swap
Murkeye has always been a city of trade. Legal or illegal, magical or mundane, in Murkeye there was no limit to what one could find as long as the money continued to flow. Now that magic has altered, and magic items are more common, those who wish to purchase such goods without drawing the eyes of Imperial Agents come to a meeting known only as “The Swap.”
Populated mostly by criminals and adventurers, the Swap is a place where magic items can be valued and traded for items of a similar value or sold for prices that are truly astronomical. After all, what merchant will really pay you his entire life savings for a single magical blade… even if you swear it truly is worth that much! After all the merchant isn’t going to be able to sell the flaming sword to any passing customers and he certainly wont use it himself anytime soon. Instead, Adventures bring their treasure, loot and ill gotten goods to a group of likeminded individuals who understand what kind of power comes from wielding such objects. What they do with such power… best not to think about it if you still want to make a tidy profit.
The Swap is also a place to gather illegal merchandise such as poisons, cursed items, pre-devistation level magic (which is still claimed as Imperial Property due to its relative power level), and contraband (Sol items, Grimstone Items). Start a fight, raise moral issues or steal from another person here and you wont be invited back or informed of where the next Swap will be meeting. The few troublemakers that refuse to stand down at a Swap quickly find them selves not only outmanned, but also outgunned as the entire arsenal of magical weapons in the location is used against those that would break the rules of fare trade.
Most visitors to the Swaps are going to be fellow Adventurers who have found similar treasures in their own journeys, Noblemen and Women seeking to arm themselves or their men in the best weaponry money can buy, Criminals that have “Liberated” such items from Tombs and Estates, and finally outsiders- a Sol Merchant, Duergar Smiths with tentacled idols, and occasionally Demon Worshippers with black bound books of unspeakable rituals.
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Ok folks, that’s it for this article. I put off the munchkiny Cleric article for another week to get this out there and hopefully inspire a few more games. So I’m going to leave you with these parting words. Double Bonus Exp if you get the reference.
If you had a tattoo, that wouldn't matter
If you had a shaved head, that would be cool
If you came from Spain or Japan
Or the back of a van
Just as long as you're not from Hebrew school
I'd say, "Now I'm getting somewhere!
I'm finally breaking through!"
I'd say, "Hey! Hey! Shiksa goddess!
I've been waiting for someone like you"
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