I'm starting to get a bit burnt out on some of this, maybe because I'm creating all the flavor on my own, rather than having much of the flavor provided by the generator. I may start adding in just-for-flavor details to all characters, instead of just having them for NPCs. Probably doesn't help that I'm trying to figure out how to make the settings into a series on the side, working on the list-of-episodes generator right now.
Check out the tool if you're interested!
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For centuries, the Adamin Commonwealth was the world’s
political center. That all changed when the winds shifted and started pulling hot
air from the eastern steppes. Over a few decades, the intricate irrigation systems
went dry, the lakes burned down to small oases, and the cities built on their
backs stayed just as populated, but without the power and influence that had
kept them united. The new dust towns are dominated by barons who control the cities’
cisterns – what remains of them.
At least, everyone thinks it’s because of the change in the
winds. In truth, the environmental change was only the primary factor, there
were other elements in play. The water barons took power because they were the
only ones whose water sources remained in play, and they ensured that outcome
through blood magic, manipulating the flow of sacrificial blood on a micro
level to create macro effects on water’s flow and disappearance from the
Commonwealth. The cabal emerged slowly, as the future barons realized that they
could strangle the united Commonwealth government and divide the cities between
them. Now, with the waters concentrated in their own estates and doled out under
their power, they keep the stepped pyramids of their forefathers pristine, with
floating gardens thriving in the water-filled channels carved in each layer.
Each baron on their own is weak, decadent, and inclined to underestimate the
party; if they ever unify, their hold over the populace might prove lethal to
heroes needing popular support.
Dayna is one of the few who knows the truth… though how she
knows this is a mystery, even to her. Her memory only goes back to when she was
banished from the city of Malano, cursed to be a waterless exile. As she
staggered through the desert, exhaustion giving way to auditory hallucinations,
she finally fell unconscious onto the ground. Before she hit full blackness,
though, she heard the words ring through her head: “They took the water.” While
unconscious, she dreamed as a drop of water, flowing through the lands of the
Commonwealth in its prime, coursing through irrigation channels towards fertile
farmland… until being pulled away
from gravity’s flow, being pulled through hidden channels into the cisterns of
the future water barons. When she regained consciousness, she was in the middle
of an oasis, suddenly erupted from the ground around her. More than that, she dug
away at the ground and uncovered the old underground structures the water
barons had used to pull away the water. Now she travels from city to city, trying
to break apart the water monopoly of the barons, drawing on a forgotten history
as a swordfighter to protect herself, and infiltrating cities with a different disguise
each time.
There’s only one person she can’t fool with her disguises:
Declan, the best-paid bounty hunter of the wastes. He’s chasing her and her
band of rebels, but more important is that catching Dayna would lead him to Cassandra
Caylil, the current leader of a traveling merchant culture that adapted well to
the sands. Their caravans evade the official patrols, bringing water and weapons
to the underclass in the cities, fueling the resistance. Declan is also an
amnesiac, and although he doesn’t know it, his “reawakening” happened at the
exact same point as Dayna’s. Unlike her, though, he awoke around people of
power who could tell him who he was, and his skills as a brawler backed it up.
Whether they’re telling him the truth or not, that’s another question.
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