Hey everyone! This is where im gonna post the step by step creation of my homebrew campaign setting for use with Metal, Magic, and Lore (the finest rpg I've seen thus far!). Ok, as maybe a few folks may know I've been using my setting Arko for 8 years now and it has been a high fantasy setting of Elves and magic and fey and high adventure. My tastes have changed in the rules I want to use and the settings I like to GM. MML (Metal, Magic, and Lore) is a very realistic ruleset where combat is very dangerous and bloody and even a simple monster like a skeleton can pose a serious challenge for a character.
So I've tooling around with ideas and concepts for a new gritty real setting for use with MML, but my heart keeps returning to Arko. I've spoken with some players of mine back in the states and I've decided to just pretty much redo Arko from the framework up to make it compatible with MML.
It will still be solely about Elves and their place in the world but a darkness and seriousness underlies their situation. Magic has left the world except for a single magical tree in the island of Arko, and the Elvish inhabitants of Arko, the last Elves in the world, defend it at all costs. Fae dwell in the shadows of the wild island of fog-shrouded woods and jagged peaks, but they arent the mischievious free-spirited faeries and unicorns from other rpgs. They are dark and sinister and alien and spoken of in whispers and bared blades by the Elves of Arko.
My goal with Arko using MML is to show a land where Elves can be shown in a more gritty and realistic light in a darker more mysterious island than before in a world bled dry of it's magic.
While im deployed Im going to start a pbp on this forum to playtest the mood of the setting while not really using MML rules yet. It will be more of a combined storytelling effort. I will begin the playtest using an alias called Arko GM.
So I will start with only a brief description of the setting as a primer. Enjoy!
A Preface to Arko
The most powerful of all the races of the world, Elves, has fallen. Driven from their homelands by Mankind and seperated from the magic that had once thrived in their immortal minds, the final tattered remenants of Elfkind left the shores of the Great East Continent and disappeared into the Sea. And they all but vanished from the memories of Men.
But Elfkind didn't perish on the High Seas as was commonly thought. They finally, after treacherous months asail, landed upon the rocky shores of an abandoned wild island. This island they named Arko, the ancient word for 'Home', and they found it to be a place of vast primeval woodlands, quiet jagged mountains, dark ancient ruins, thick roiling mists, and sinister fleeting fae.
As Elfkind traveled deeper into the heart of the old oak and aspen woods they called the Arkwood they came upon a single oak tree in a wide meadow. This oak had bark as white as clouds and leaves of glorious yellow and orange, even in summer, winter, or spring. The Gifting Tree, as they came to call it, was found to never change color nor grow, and it was found to grant a few very rare Elves that touched its magical bark the ability to use life elementalism.
Thought to be the greatest secret of the world the Elves of Arko built the walled city Norych, 'Guardian' in the Ancient Elvish tongue, around the Gifting Tree and it became the true heart of Arko, last stronghold of the final Elves of the world.
Centuries of peace followed, and now the children of Arko's settlers have grown into adulthood. Their sagas are about to begin ...
Next will be the physical details of the actual island itself.