Odekor - Day 5

Elves.
Slender. Tall.  Elegant. Beautiful.
These were the elves.
Hailing from the continent of Ashada, the elves had built an empire of their own before they encountered humans.  They were the first race to sail the oceans of Odekor, the first race to encounter another sentient species.  The elves met the dwarves of Birichir four hundred years before they encountered humans.  They proceeded to enslave them.
Four hundred years later, the elves met humans.  The meeting did not go well.  The elves went to war with the Empire of Choan, confident of their superiority in all things.
This confidence was badly misplaced.
Humans had the advantage of numbers. They allied with the dwarves, and employed tactics and deployed resources that the elves had never encountered.
The Serene Kingdoms of the elves had existed for six thousand years.  Fifty years after declaring war on the Empire, the Serene Kingdoms were reduced to ash and bone.
Martial victory was not enough for the Empire.  Under the direct orders of the Emperor, every elf over five years of age was put to death.  The surviving children were sent to Choan, where many died in the laboratories of imperial wizards seeking to understand and possibly duplicate elven longevity.  The wizards never managed to duplicate elven longevity, but they did discover a means to eliminate it.  Elves would now live no longer than humans and many would not even live that long.
Elven culture was eradicated. Their language was outlawed. Within a single generation, the elves had been reduced to a minor slave caste in the Empire.
This was done, not only as revenge for daring to defy the Emperor, but as a very clear warning to the other races.  Fuck with humanity and this will happen to your own people. Watch. Learn. Obey.
When the War occurred, the elves were still slaves to the Empire.  Beautiful and submissive, they served in pleasure houses and as personal servants to the nobility. Most died beside their masters when the godstorms ravaged the planet.
A few elves, however, did survive.  Most lurk in the ruins of cities, stealthily avoiding the undead. Some have fled the cities, to eek out a crude and miserable existence in the ravaged wilderness.  However, after a thousand years of servitude, freedom does not come easily to the elves.  Most gladly serve new masters, no matter how monstrous or depraved, desperate for some sense of normalcy and continuity with their previous existence, before the War.
Beautiful. Slavish. Broken.
These are the elves of Odekor.

Odekor - Day 4

The Gnomes.
The Gnomish sense of humor is well known.
Gnomes love a good joke.
The biggest joke they ever pulled was the End of the World.
Sadly, it wasn’t a very good joke.
Gnomes originated on Leam, the smallest of Odekor’s five continents, but quickly spread across the world.  When the humans began to build their Empire, the gnomes were the first race to ally with them.  They were trusted and beloved allies.
The humans entrusted the gnomes to look after the Prophecies.  The gnomes surreptitiously altered the Prophecies, smudging a line here or subtly enhancing a certain phrase.
Gnomes, you see, were never mentioned in any of the Prophecies. As far as the gods were concerned, the gnomes weren’t important.  So, over the course of a couple of millennia the gnomes got their revenge by fiddling with the Prophecies.
Whether or not they intended to destroy the world will remain a mystery.  The gnomes responsible for fiddling with the Prophecies are all dead, as are most of their kith and kin. The survivors have no idea that their brethren were responsible for sabotaging destiny.
Not that it would really matter that much to them.
Not now.
The surviving gnomes, you see, have gone quite mad.
Not charmingly mad.  Oh no. They aren’t wearing funny hats and talking in affected accents.
No, the madness of gnomes is more subtle and dark.
Gnomes live in picturesque villages, scattered around the world.  If you stumble upon one of these villages, you’ll most likely be invited to spend the night. The community will share their meager rations with you. There may be music and dancing.  A lovely time will be had by all.
Until one of the gnomes sticks a knife in your back.  Then the rest will fall upon you, with blades and bare hands.  They’ll tear you to pieces and consume your still warm flesh, cramming it into their mouths the way a greedy child might eat a cake.
Then, their chins and hands sticky with your blood, the gnomes will throw off their clothes and fuck.  They will use your bones as sex toys.
If you’re lucky, that’s all they’ll do to you.  However, if there are necromancers among the gnomes, they’ll use their magic to bind your spirit.  They will defile your soul in ways that beggar the imagination.  Ultimately, they’ll turn you into a guardian-spirit, bound to protect the village that killed you.
And try as you might, you’ll never be able to warn the next poor, hapless soul that wanders out of the wilderness into the gnomes’ embrace.

Odekor - Day 3

Humanity.
Once the race of men swarmed across the face of Odekor.  Guided by their gods, they built a vast empire that spanned all five continents.  The other races either acquiesced to human rule or were ruthlessly subjugated.
The Empire of Choan lasted over two thousand years.  They built vast cities and criss-crossed the continents with well-maintained roads.  In their cities, they built temples to their gods and monuments to their own great leaders.
According to prophecy, the Empire of Choan should have weathered the War.  Humanity should have survived the End of the World, and ascended to the Fields of Joy to live in endless happiness and pleasure among the Blessed.
That didn’t happen.
When the storm swept the world, humanity died.  From the oldest grandmother to the youngest babe, the race was wiped from the face of Odekor.  The Empire of Choan ended in fire and pain.
Today, all that remains are shattered roads, fallen temples and shattered monuments to human pride.
Humanity died, but they did not remain dead for long.  The necrotic energies saturating Odekor revived most of the race as zombies.
Human undead stagger along the broken roads. They lurk in the ruins of the cities. Among fallen monuments, undead humans wait in ambush, ready to devour the flesh of the unwary.

Odekor - Day 2

The War.
The gods should have won.  All the prophecies and portents stated that the gods should have won. The forces of evil should have been vanquished.
And that happened.
Sort of.
At the appointed time, at the appointed place, the Armies of Heaven stood and waited for the Legions of Hell.  The Final Battle was upon the world.
The Legions of Hell did not appear.
Insulted by this slight, the Armies of Heaven descended into the Hells.  There they discovered two things: (1) there were only seven hells now, two having been completely obliterated, and (2) devils no longer reigned in the hells.  They hadn’t for some time.
Centuries ago, the Damned had risen against the Fallen.  The Fallen, for all their power, were few and the Damned were practically numberless.  The War in Hell lasted six hundred years, but at the end the Fallen were cast down.  The Damned ruled the Seven Hells and they had no intention of following the script that prophecy had laid out for them.  They chose oblivion over an eternity of suffering, but they were determined to take their oppressors with them, both the devils and the gods.
As the Armies of Heaven stood in speechless shock upon the Plains of Agony, the Damned slew the Fallen.  A wave of necrotic energy swept out, destroying everything in its path. The devils died. So did the Damned.
The Armies of Heaven tried to flee.  They opened portals to other planes.
This would be disastrous.
As the gods perished, their bodies released radiant energies that reacted cataclysmically with the necrotic death-storm.  The resultant, otherworldly explosion, tore apart reality.
The barriers separating the various elemental realms collapsed, and the Planes of Air, Earth, Fire and Water poured into one another creating a single Plane of Elemental Fury.  In the heavenly realms, the Fields of Joy burned and many of the Blessed burned with them.  The gods who remained were powerless to stop the cataclysm.
On Odekor, burning angels fell from the sky.  Some lesser devils, having escaped the destruction of the Seven Hells sought refuge in the Underdark.  Sadly, that refuge was short-lived. A planar breach flooded the Underdark, forcing its denizens to flee to the hated surface.  They found no respite there, only more death.
An otherworldly storm had swept across the world.  Continents burned. Cities melted.  Whole populations were obliterated.  Over four thousand years of prophecy-shaped history had come to an end.
A future that should never have existed now unfolded before the scant survivors.
Betrayed by prophecy, failed by their gods, most of Odekor’s survivors now looked at the world as a chaotic, unpredictable place.
As such, they began to refer to Odekor as the Crooked World.

Odekor - Day 1

Sunlight spills through golden clouds, illuminating a vast plain of parched grass and dusty ruins. These are the remains of Hakara and Odoro, two great cities built by men.  Dead now, like their founders. Dead but not abandoned.
Among the ruins, zombies stagger. This is what humanity has been reduced to, limping corpses shuffeling along paths existing only in the memories of their decaying brains.  They grunt and moan, aping the actions of their living selves.
Hakara and Odoro are dead and they belong to the dead.
Following the sun's trail, walking west, you leave the plains and pick your way through petrified forests.  If you are wise, you'll keep a weapon at the ready.  Many things shelter in the stone woods, monsters forced out of the lost Underdark: hook horrors, oozes and worse. Game is scarce in the stone woods, and your flesh would taste just as fine as any hunk of venison.
Onward, into the west, the ground breaks into deep chasms and crooked canyons.  In the canyon's perpetual twilight you can just make out small figures.  Duergar possibly, or gnomes.
Best to avoid them both.
As I said, your flesh would sate as well as any stag's haunch, and even gnomes cannot be trusted. Not here.  Not now.
Skirting the canyon's edges, you creep along.  The sun is far ahead now, halfway to the distant Mountains of Desh.  You adjust your cloak's hood, to protect your eyes from the glare, and press onward. 
As you leave the canyons behind, the ground begins to rise.  The parched grass is long here. A single spark would turn these hills into an inferno.  You glance at the sky, blue and clear, not even a wisp of cloud to mar its empty perfection.
When was the last time it rained? You can't even remember. You wonder some times if it will ever rain again.
The sun is falling now, dipping below the western horizon.  The sky is darkening.  It turns the color of an ugly bruise.  There is no moon. Not any more.  It was lost during the War.
Descending the hill's western face, you find unexpected shelter.  The shrine is half sunk into the hill, as if the earth turned to water around it, and the building sank like a boat.  Lighting a torch, you drop it into the shrine's gaping doorway.  The flames illuminate cracked marble floors and walls, a topsy-turvy altar to one of the Lost Gods.
It looks safe enough.  You crawl into the building and retrieve your torch.  Outside the night sky is slashed with red. You eat a handful of your rations, swallow a mouthful of precious water. 
You wanted to be in the mountains for the night. There are aarakocra settlements in the Mountains of Desh, and rumors of an angel. They say the angel weeps in its sleep, crying enough silver tears to form a stream.
You would like to see that angel.
You would like to kill it.
The thought warms you, as you extinguish your torch and pull your cloak tight about you.
You drift off to sleep and dream of the red night sky and angels weeping rivers of blood.