Markovia
Once a tropical paradise, Markovia is now a nightmarish landscape of warped life and violated nature—a realm where the boundary between beast, person, and terrain has been surgically and philosophically erased. Its ruler, Dr. Frantisek Markov, believes suffering and identity are mere ingredients in a grander design: the perfection of life through experimentation. But each failure—each scream—marks his slow descent into derangement, as both his mind and his paradise unravel.
Once a brilliant surgeon and biologist, Dr. Markov believed pain, fear, and death were problems to be solved with superior design. But his search for perfection led him to carve away the soul of things—and then his own.
- Markov now lives in Castle Avernus, a grotesque fortress of bone, sinew, and scaffolding atop a high cliff.
- Each day, he forgets a little more—a formula, a hypothesis, a face. The Mists curse him with brilliance that decays faster than he can record it.
- He is obsessed with creating a “pure” being, but each attempt fails more violently than the last, and his rage grows.
- The more his mind slips, the more he views himself as a god, his experiments as divine judgment, and the screams of his subjects as hymns of progress.
Markovia itself reflects Markov’s decaying mind and unstable hand.
- Nothing stays whole for long. Creatures degenerate, ecosystems collapse, even successful experiments mutate into failures overnight.
- Markov’s journals erase themselves. His notes vanish. Diagrams dissolve. He is cursed to never reclaim what he loses.
- His genius persists—but only in moments—lucid flashes amid madness. When he is at his sharpest, he’s also at his most dangerous.
Notable Locations
- Castle Avernus: A laboratory-palace of horror perched on a bloody cliff, echoing with screams and half-born thoughts.
- The Menagerie Woods: A vast jungle where escaped experiments breed, kill, and evolve into unpredictable new species.
- The Whispering Mire: A swamp full of semi-sentient plants that speak in fragmented voices of former test subjects.
- The Hall of Reversals: A subterranean ruin where failed prototypes are discarded—still alive, some crawling toward revenge.
Markovia embodies body horror, lost identity, and the terror of being remade.
- Identity Erosion: Who are you when your body changes? When your memories are stolen? When your name is sewn into someone else?
- Mad Science: Nothing is sacred. All things—love, will, flesh—are raw materials to be reshaped.
- Moral Collapse: There is no morality in Markovia—only utility, experimentation, and failure.
Geography
Markovia is a lush island, humid and verdant, veined with rivers and rising into jagged mountain ranges. But its beauty is a lie: every inch of its soil has been touched by Dr. Markov’s hand.
- The trees grow in unnatural spirals, their leaves marked with veins like muscle tissue. Flowers bloom in flesh-toned reds and pinks, and some whisper when approached.
- The animals are unrecognizable. Dogs with human eyes, apes with gills, goats with too many legs—no lifeform exists here without alteration.
- Patches of the landscape itself quiver, breathe, or bleed, evidence of Markov’s attempts to instill vitality in the very earth.
- Weather patterns fluctuate according to Markov’s moods, with storms arising not from atmospheric pressure, but from volatile neural implants seeded into the sky.
Fauna & Flora
Few survive long in Markovia unaltered. Most inhabitants are “New Men,” forcibly altered beings crafted from Markov’s grotesque experiments.
- Stitched hybrids, flesh-warped amalgams of species, wander the jungle. Some retain their minds and beg for help. Others have gone feral.
- The lost and the shipwrecked often end up as subjects, dragged from the shores by malformed servants.
- Isolated villages of survivors try to hide in the jungle, disguising their humanity to avoid capture. Some worship Markov out of fear, calling him the Father of Flesh.
- Infected wildlife carry erratic mutations, spreading Markov’s twisted designs through bites, pollen, and parasites.
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