Personnel with the Office of Causal Whatever I Called It

Oversight. Causal Oversight. That's it.

Racine Zed

Human female, 70 years old. Long and varied career, including merchant, smuggler, pirate, fence, and for the last 30 years, the captain of the Nails.

Tall (though getting a bit bent now with age), and still deceptively tough. Gray hair, hazel eyes. Still strong, though fighting off a bit of a gut. You can tell that she was once mildly pretty, if not outstandingly so, still has a very commanding presence.

Sarcastic sense of humor. Wickedly smart. Good with secrets, and nobody can be said to know all or even most of the projects and agents she is running at any point in time.

Tinkered with a bit of alchemy in the past, but has avoided the Blood.

Commands great respect from her people, who also (very reasonably) fear her.

Two husbands plus a Sava lover, three children, seven grandchildren. Has apartments within the trade quarter, as well as a modest estate outside the city walls.

Kepli Thikt Sen

Male Shar, Blooded Mage, and a close advisor to Zed, who is the only person in the Office who is aware that he is blooded. String willed, he has so far avoided any physical changes from the Blood, but it had started to affect his mind. Friends have noted that he is getting more paranoid and insular. Small, with blue and black stripes.

Taen Shalun Marithire Ru'Halena ma Sheer (Tall red blossom in the outer reaches of the high forest)

Called "Taen" by most non-Aelth, or "Red" by friends.

Female Aelth, former scout and mercenary with a Traveller's Society, joined customs and the Office about ten years ago, recruited by Zed. Thin, deep yellow skin, red hair and eyes

Landscape feature - Craters

Giant craters, leftover from the gods' wars, that breach huge networks of tunnels, and all kinds of strangeness.  Come up with a suitably dramatic name

The craters make up a significant portion of the landscape.

In the time since the gods died, natural weathering and growth have started to change the landscape. Plantlife begins to reclaim the blasted lands.  The huge craters that broke open underground cities and networks of ancient tunnels have turned into cities reminiscent of Native American pueblos.  The great Geb city of (whatever it's called) is one example.

More on the death of the gods

The virus (for lack if a better term) that destroyed the gods was not of this world.  It was found in the outer reaches of the universe  by one forgotten god, modified and unleashed.

The virus was inimical to the stuff that the gods were made of. Not matter per se, as the gods were never truly material in the way we think of it, but they did have a real substance to them. Not anymore, they were utterly unmade.

The virus' effect on other things is less predictable.  Magic is similar to the power of the gods, but not identical.  Thus magic carries the virus, but is not destroyed by it.  In fact, the virus itself being made up of an incredibly powerful and strange energy, magic was in many ways made stronger, if far more dangerous.

As for mortal flesh, life on this world was altered drastically by the gods, and infused with a portion of their power and essence. Thus, the virus is almost always  inimical to it. But unlike the gods, who were helpless before it, mortals are made of different stuff that gives them strengths and options that the gods did not have.  Thus usually they are unmade, but sometimes they are only changed.

Work on making Blood-touched mutations and changes more Lovecraftian in tone than straight up undeath, at least in its greater forms.

I keep thinking I should come up with names for this stuff - the blood, the virus, the dead gods, etc.   But I kind of like having the stuff unnamed.  The names of the gods have been deliberately forgotten.  Nobody understands the virus or even know it exists really, so it just the blood as far as they know.

Time Line

I guess I have to decide once and for all how long it has been since the gods died.  I've been somewhat inconsistent over the course of my writing.

I've been vacillating between 1000's of years and just a few.  I think I need to sort of split the difference and make it a several hundred years, maybe between 500 and 800. I want enough time for society to rebuild in a new image, and for a lot of knowledge to be lost, but not all of it, with new technology/magic to be derived from the remnants of the old.  This also makes it long enough for archaeology to be a significant factor in the rediscovery of old knowledge and power.

So there was a bit of an apocalypse maybe 600 or so years ago. Civilization survived in isolated pockets until about 100 to 150 years ago, when isolated populations started to reconnect with each other.

That's not to say that those isolated populations had been idle all that time.  Ammadhur for example has been growing steadily for the entire period, exploring the ravaged world and starting to reconnect with whomever they could find.

There are some groups that have banded together - by choice, conquest, or whatever - into budding nations. But most of the world - or at least of this continent - remain smaller city-states, some like Ammadhur with areas around them that depend on the city for any number of things, like unofficial de facto nations.

Not with a bang...

The virus (for lack if a better term) that destroyed the gods was not of this world. It was found in the outer reaches of the universe by one forgotten god, and unleashed.

The virus was inimical to the stuff that the gods were made of. Not matter per se, as the gods were never truly material in the way we think of it, but they did have a real substance to them. Not anymore, they were utterly unmade.

The virus' effect on other things is less predictable. Magic is similar to the power of the gods, but not identical. Thus magic carries the virus, but is not destroyed by it. In fact, the virus itself being made up of an incredibly powerful and strange energy, magic was in many ways made stronger, if far more dangerous.

As for mortal flesh, life on this world was altered drastically by the gods, an infused with a portion of their power. Thus, the virus is almost always deadly to mortals that encounter it. But unlike the gods, who were helpless before it, mortals are made of different stuff that gives them strengths and options that the gods did not have. Thus usually they are unmade, but sometimes they are only changed.

Work on making Blood-touched mutations and changes more Lovecraftian in tone than straight up undeath, at least in its greater forms.

I keep thinking I should come up with names for this stuff - the blood, the virus, the dead gods, etc. But I kind of like having the stuff unnamed. The names of the gods have been deliberately forgotten. Nobody understands the virus or even know it exists really, so it just the blood as far as they know.

Shar city

Found this picture of a town in Buenos Aires that was underwater for 25 years after a dam broke, and is now being revealed again. I'd like to use this as the basis for the map of a Shar city.

The Office of Causal Oversight

Ammadhur's legal system, like every other aspect of its governance, is an immensely complicated tangle of rights, duties, obligations and spheres of influence. The guild of barristers is quite powerful as a result.

The city being a central port and hub of mercantile activity, the role of the customs office is extremely important, and they are universally given a surprising amount of leeway in the legal system. Some time ago, a smart Tyrant took advantage of this by creating a small cadre of the customs police whose job was ostensibly to investigate corruption at the highest levels, and who were answerable to nobody but the Tyrant himself. He then manipulated changes in several bodies of law to make sure that certain holes were left unfilled, and which resulted in the group having no charter to speak of, and few if any legal limits on their powers.

That group has the innocuous title of The Office of Causal Oversight, but are referred to by most as "The Nails", for reasons lost to history. In effect, they act as the Tyrant's own hounds and secret police. They recruit their numbers from many sources, not the least being Ammadhur's prisons, where any number of pirates and smugglers have found themselves shanghaied with the simple choice of service or death.

It is rumored that the Nails have dealings with the Blooded, possibly even with Blessed, and may harbor some within their numbers. They are suspected especially of having several Skinwalkers in their ranks.