Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Up Up And Away!

Its probably been noticed already that aircraft plays a big role in Frozen Skies, chiefly as the main way of getting around Alyeska and quite possibly as a mobile base for the players.

Conventional aircraft have been mentioned and even featured in the Alyeskan Tales short stories, but there are other aircraft besides this. Gyro-copters have been mentioned, the Wolfbane Commandos are known to use troop carrying versions. There is another type of aircraft that plays a role in the world of Darmonica.

Skyships.

Theses levitations of the sky are derived from Ancient Terran technology that has managed to survive the eons, though they have only returned in the last century as the capacity to rebuild was once again to hand. It is generally known that a reprocessed gas called Liftorium is used to give the skyships their lift, though only the Skywrights Guild knows the full secrets behind them. Skyships are also prohibitively expensive and saw are generally only found in the hands of trade consortiums rather than small outfits due to the costs involved in running them. The various military forces operate aircraft carrier versions with more conventional blimps as escorts, though these rarely venture far outside of a nation's borders. The biggest user of skyships remains the Skywrights Guild, they alone have the resources to maintain a fleet and have the capacity to build more, however there are various small ventures attempting to break the Guild's monopoly despite efforts by the Guild to stop them.

Even though the Guild won't openly admit, they do have a rival in the form of the Iron Collective. After the collapse of the Holy Sodkan Empire many of the Guild's facilities within the Empire fell into the hands of the then newly formed Collective, but thus far the Collective has only been interested in building up its air fleet rather than try to corner the market. But the Guild isn't alone in keeping a wary eye on the Collective's ambitions in the skies...

Monday, 17 November 2014

Time And Time Again

Tis time to talk about, ugh, time.

Or more accurately Darmonica's calender.

The Calender (for the current lack of a more unique name) came into being following the Fall of the Ancient Terrans, with the Fall being used as the start of the current epoch. Before Fall and After Fall are therefore used to denote dates from either the Ancient Terran era or the current era, typically as an abbreviation placed after the year typically as BF and AF respectively. With this in mind Darmonica's current year is listed as 1836 AF.

A typical Darmonican year is split up into 13 months, each of which are comprised of 29 days. There are then weeks that are made up of eight days each, giving just over three and a half weeks in each month and 377 days in a Darmonican year. There are then 47 weeks in a year with one spare day, which means that for example the first day of each month is always on a different weekday to that of the last much like with our own calender.

The weekdays and months still have to be named, something that will be posted on this blog in the near future. Least with the former I have a couple of ideas like Kingsday and Queensday, which still leaves another six days to name. Months are a little trickier since I'm kicking about the idea of naming some of them after the deities of Darmonica, though as of yet only deity has been named and that is Taran the Goddess of the Sky. So maybe something like Tarblawan for a month famed for being very windy?

Friday, 14 November 2014

Prints, Prints And More Prints!

Some of the Frozen Skies artwork is now up on DeviantART, the artist has given their full permission for the art pieces to be sold as prints. Money from each print sold will go towards funding Frozen Skies and getting the book completed.

http://stormwell.deviantart.com/gallery/51849361/Utherwald-Press

Sunday, 2 November 2014

The Ancient Terrans

Since the earliest drafts of what has evolved into Frozen Skies I've always been rather keen on having a fallen ancient civilization, partially because old ruins and artefacts always help provide a plot hook for adventures. The Ancient Terrans seemed a natural fit as a name for this lost civilization, if anything it helps muddy the waters as as history is concerned in the world of Darmonica.

The inspiration for the Ancient Terrans seems from the old PC game Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura, there was a ruined city called Vendigroth that had been the heart of a highly technological culture and had been destroyed. Certainly the part about its high technology being destroyed along with the city greatly appealed to me, especially the aspect of the world's technology level gradually recovering over time but still a far cry from what had existed. Also the fall of the Ancient Terrans would help with regards to working a calender and a timeline, a reference point for dates and stuff if you will.

In Frozen Skies there is the Monolith that stands as the most visual remnant of the Ancient Terrans, its ruined spire sitting forlornly in the heart of the impossibly flat and circular Chillwynd Marches. In addition there are various old ruins scattered throughout the continent of Alyeska and beyond, some of which have been adapted as the foundations for modern settlements or became snow-bound piles of rubble. I had envisioned Ancient Terran artefacts sparking a 'relic rush' when the well-monied started taking an interest in them to grace the display cabinets of their billiard rooms and later on curious inventors sought to unlock the mechanisms of some of the devices that the ice gave up. But not all of these artefacts are harmless.

Course I'm going with something that caused the downfall of what could be described as Darmonica's technological equivalent of our own world's Roman Empire, though for now I intend to keep that something vague and let players and their GMs determine what happened to the Anicent Terrans in their game.