Virmondus

Virmondus is a long-lived and storied world of humans, evolving naturally and slowly without the aid of magic or direct divine intervention. The Weave exists here, woven throughout every particle of existence just as it is in any other material plane in the multiverse. Nonetheless, its ties to the other planes of reality are almost all entirely cut leaving it out of touch with the magics and heavenly relationships that are commonplace elsewhere. The Weave is frayed at the edges, weakened, and vulnerable.   The course of history on Virmondus will be recognisable to anyone familiar with non-magical human histories. People here developed language, agriculture, and civilisation. All at around the same time, with no clear sense of what happened where first. From there, civilisations rose and fell. From war, political upheaval, and occasional revolution; from famine, disease, and sheer bloody stubbornness; great empires and tiny hunter gatherer communities collapsed. When they left something behind, it grew and changed. Technology grew, a new suite of powers rose in the respective parts of the world. Each hungry to make a name for itself. Each advancing military technology as far and fast as they could. Science, philosophy and art grew too, but it was the earliest guns, and greatest archers that drove the kingdoms of the world's industry. And the ships.   When the powers began to explore beyond their horizons, they encountered each other. At first the skirmishes came thick and fast. Battles by sea were signalled by rolling cannon fire, smoke and spray filling the air along with the battle-cries of the sailors. By land, every nation was scrambling at conquest. Unfortunately, each of the great states had spread its influence so thoroughly that the only way they could expand their borders was outright war with one of their new rivals.   Although they had developed their technologies separately, and with different resources and needs, they were well matched. Where one had superior cannons and artillery, another had superior defences. Where one had the largest, most well equipped army of foot soldiers, another may have more effective spy networks, or a powerful cavalry. What could have become the First Great World War, instead became an almost instant stalemate. This required a different approach.   And so it was that the four great powers of Virmondus began to collaborate. Trade and negotiation became the watchwords of the age. Peace proliferated throughout much of the world. Conflicts tended to remain at the small, petty scale between individual vassal states within an empire.   Over the next 200 years or so military technology took a back seat to communication and transport technology. Weaponry advanced to a roughly turn-of-the-20th-century equivalent: 6-10 round pistols, shotguns, increasingly accurate but still difficult to use rifles, and heavy artillery machine guns operated by 2-5 people. However, most other technology has roughly caught up to the 1990s: computers are commonplace among organisations, governments, and businesses, and increasingly so in private homes with the relatively new Home Personal Computers, and occasional and expensive laptops. There is an internet of publicly available information, blogs, funny picture websites and so forth, although it has not been hooked up everywhere yet. Walkie-talkies and satellite phones are relatively common, but the mobile phone is still in its early development years.