I've been making random notes about a new campaign setting, which I'm naming "Ralsenna" after the main continent, since mid-summer, and feel like I'm getting to the point where I feel comfortable enough to start sharing the details. I'm going to start off with a history lesson, so if you're into more crunch, feel free to pass this post up (but you shouldn't because it's flippin' awesome!).

A Short History of the Gods

The Ur-Revon, known also as the "Old Gods," are unfathomable; they are things without shape, minds without thought, stains on the void of space. At some point in the distant past, the Ur-Revon created a number of entities possessing nearly equal power called the Om-Revon.

Scattered information has led to the widespread belief among academics that the Om-Revon were created primarily to serve the Ur-Revon, though in their terrible power they managed to accomplish much even while keeping the Ur-Revon satiated, including crafting the first of what we’d recognize as life on many planets throughout the universe. One of those planets would one day be known as Telios, the planet that Ralsenna sits upon.

They cultivated plants and animals and things so varied and alien that we have no names for them. The universe is nothing if not vast, so it took many billions of years for the Ur-Revon to discover this life, and it enraged them. They slaughtered all they could find as well as the Om-Revon.

All they left of the Om-Revon, the Dead Gods, were smears of spirit-energy on the ethereal plane. These ghostly remains, still possessing much of their sentience, gathered together the spirits of their dead creations and fled. In the present age, these entities are known by most as the Ghost Lords.

Only one of the Om-Revon is known to have survived, hiding deep in the muck of its world while the rest of its kind rose to fight and die. This was the Newt God, and he managed to secret away himself and his favored creatures, the primordial ancestors of modern reef-newts, on Telios. For eons he laid low, becoming less than the powerful thing he used to be, an Om-Revon, and more a reclusive sea monster. Over the millennia, life evolved naturally across Telios, becoming wild and unruly without a god to watch over it.

To replace the Om-Revon, the Ur-Revon created a new race of servants, the Om-Utek. They were first tasked with consuming the ethereal remains of their predecessors, but they managed to resist the will of their masters. The Ghost Lords told them of a time when life flourished across the universe, and the Om-Utek listened. They were told there was yet some life that endured, and they sought it out, finding Telios and the degenerate life forms that covered it. After attempting, unsuccessfully, to communicate with the mad Newt God, they hid the Ghost Lords and their dead children away on the planet.

Eventually, the Om-Utek decided they’d try creating new life. They limited themselves to only Telios, and started with only microscopic organisms. The interactions of these tiny creatures fascinated them, and they made more and eventually created larger things as well. It was an estimated 38 million years after the first creation of the Om-Utek came to life that the first of the common races, a very primitive version of the modern human, was created. Over the following 10,000 or so years, the Om-Utek only became more engrossed in Telios.

However, the Om-Utek were so occupied by their creations that the Ur-Revon began to notice. The Om-Utek were better prepared than the Om-Revon though, and the first lash of the Ur-Revon failed to strike Telios. The Om-Utek tried to strike back and destroy the Ur-Revon, but their attacks proved ineffective. After about five centuries of battle, the Ur-Revon began making significant advances toward Telios, and the Om-Utek made the decision to hide the planet away far from the Ur-Revon in a distant part of the universe.

This was when Tek-Arkon was constructed. Despite their fascination with life, the Om-Utek saw how erratic and unreliable they could be, and they lacked the knowledge of how to create a new one of their own kind to watch over Telios. Thus, they built a machine. Tek-Arkon is a massive, dimensionally phasic, self-aware mechanical entity that was infused with the will of the Om-Utek and tasked with hiding and watching over Telios and its star system.

That was a little less than 500 years ago, and there has been no meaningful contact from the Om-Utek since. Many conjecture that, since the Ur-Revon have not yet destroyed Telios, they must still exist somewhere, but others say this is merely proof of Tek-Arkon’s ability to keep them hidden. A few whisper that Tek-Arkon is exceeding it mandates, developing a will of its own and keeping Telios hidden from both the Ur-Revon and the Om-Utek. And, though few speak of it openly, all look to the Ghost Lords and their misshapen children in moments of melancholy and wonder how long it will be until they too suffer a similar fate.