Oliida

The end of the Infernal Wars marked the end of the Third Age.

For one hundred years, the people of Oliida fought to defend their world from the demonic forces of Hel itself. Countless mortal armies rose and fell with each passing decade, sacrificing their lives for the very survival of their world. Then, when all seemed bleakest, Zarina: Prophet of the Sun, broke her vow of sinlessness to raise a legion of the dead. The ghosts of the fallen repelled the ancient evils, forever locking them away back into the accursed depths from whence they came. The battered and battle-worn people of Oliida arose from the ashes of conflict victorious. But no rest came from peace…

With Zarina’s vow broken, the sun’s burning glow soon faded, leaving naught but a faint whisper of its former radiance. The world grew cold, freezing over entirely in a cataclysmic event known as the White Death. 

1100 years have since passed.

In wake of the global permafrost, society in Oliida has taken on a new identity. City states began to populate the frozen landscape, providing concentrated shelter to house technological progress. Trade between the mechas was tough and perilous. That is, until the invention of Steelrunners. These impressively sized locomotives ride the roads crisscrossing the continents like veins, fueling the survival of the metropolises and, by extension, the survival of the world. The cities have loosely connected themselves under a single multinational banner called the House Collective. The governing body was and still is stable, but flawed. In recent years, a separatist organization known as the Vironists, led by Siegesland matriarch Maxine Viron, declared independence from the world government, citing its gross and in some cases outright heinous oversight to numerous atrocities such as slavery and sanctioned genocide allowed to fester in multiple cities throughout the globe. For a few brief, tension-filled years, the two factions lived together in a semblance of peace. But, when an attempt on Lady Viron’s life instead claimed that of her child, she promptly declared war.

Month after month, year after year, the two factions have since lacerated the landscape of Oliida with trenches and explosive bombardment. Soldiers, both men and women, fight and die by the hundreds of thousands for a cause which so few of them even fully comprehend. This age of innovation and resilience, once promising a better tomorrow in a fallen world, has soured, culminating in a bastardization of progress informed by destruction and the machinations of warfare.

With heroes and villains on all sides, the people now struggle to navigate their lives in a world so fraught with chaos and confusion. During an era of hazy moral ambiguity, only one truth has and always will remain universal:

 The cold claims all under Oliida’s pale sun.