Earthdawn Setting Information

Mercato

Formerly a trading post at the junction where the Neise River joins the Great Ocean founded by orc traders from Mountain's Reach looking to expand their routes to the sea, Mercato has grown to a bustling city in its own right. While city politics is dominated by the wealthy orc merchant houses, the city population is increasingly filled with the other badlands peoples as well as those arriving from the west in a time of growing exploration, interconnection, and trade.

With the city's wealth and power rising, the newly-selected merchant prince Kurduuumm Kurank claimed his office on a platform of bringing Mercato out from the shadow of Mountain's Reach to engage in diplomacy of its own, and has wrangled the corresponding funding for the blood bowl team necessary to his ambitions.

Kurduuumm Kurank

The charismatic young merchant grew his family's fortune with a full embrace of the metahuman population of Mercato, expanding the Orcidas clothing brand to include products for centaurs, dwarves, skaven, ogres, and even a line of athletic shoes for snotlings. Having leveraged his newfound fame into politics, he's promised to bring the same sort of forward thinking to his administration.

Morga Tagzuk

A talented offensive assistant coach with the Mountain's Reach blood bowl team, Morga was recruited by the newly-selected Kurduuumm to build and lead Mercato's squad. Dedicated to proving herself, she's reaching out to retired players she thinks still have some more games in them, current members of the Mountain's Reach team she might be able to poach, and raw talent in Mercato and the badlands in general that with the potential to be shaped into a blood bowl player.

Common Calendar

The dwarven calendar has largely been adopted for tracking time. It is divided into twelve thirty-day months:

• Strassa
• Veltom
• Charassa
• Rua
• Mawag
• Gahmil
• Raquas
• Sollus
• Riag
• Teayu
• Borrum
• Doddul

Post-Emergence Civilization

The following information is from the perspective that Raifwise the Half-Elf might have provided to the players over the course of one or more of their social gatherings.

Race	Patron	Elf-voice	Enclave	Home City	Enclave Language
Centaur	Khorne	Gennermain	Iranna Mountain	Ka-Sahan (Lost)	Khazalid
Dwarf	Earthroot	Riellair	World's End Mountain	Silverhome	Khazalid
Goblin, Hobgoblin, and Troll	Alamaise	Maelyrra	Mountains of Mourn	none	Potwor
Halflings	none	none	Iverna	none	Therian
Human	Vestrivan and Vasdenjas	Illelis and Illanmaen	Sky Point	Thera	Therian
Ogre and Snotling	Usun	Iyralbeth	The Great Maw	Ul	Or’zat
Orc	Mountainshadow	Gaessandror	Dark Tooth Mountain	Mountain’s Reach	Or’zat
Skaven	Rathorn	Ulsinlis	Skavenblight	Kavzar	Kish
T'skrang	Aban	Lanulthir	The Mist Swamp	Niall	(telapathic)

Timeline

0	Humans emerge from Sky Point
18	Skaven emerge from Skavenblight
19	Dwarves emerge from World's End Mountain to both west and east
19	Centaurs emerge from Iranna Mountain
19	Trolls and goblins emerge from the Mountains of Mourn
20	Orcs emerge from Dark Tooth Mountain
24	T'skrang emerge from the Mist Swamp
26	An incident within World’s End Mountain severs eastern dwarves from western, rumored to be the awakening of a buried Great Horror
45	Fort Amazonia establishes a permanent human presence in Lustria
63	The Bronze Fortress is constructed, in what will ultimately be the southernmost advance of the chaos dwarves
74	The Southern Horde arrive in the Waste, beginning a shift in power from the dwarves to the centaurs
80	People living along the shoreline of the Aras Sea witness a night-long series of violent explosions of light and sound on Atlia, one-time home of the draconic senate, with the island missing, apparently destroyed, come the morning
82	The dragons withdraw to their enclaves and produce the elf voices to appear in their stead
96	Human sailors make contact with the island of Iverna and the halflings and treemen living thereon
114	The Mercato Council is formed independent from Mountain’s Reach by orc families growing wealthy from the development of deep-water sailing and the associated fishing and transportation industries
117	The centaurs rebel against Khorne and attempt to kill Gennermain. In retaliation, Khorne destroys Ka-Sahan, breaking the backbone of the centaur empire
123	The first blood bowl match is played. Introduced by the elves as a method of resolving disputes with reduced bloodshed, the humans and orcs fought for the right to settle the land where the match was played, in what is now Bretonnia.
135	Previously only inhabited in the warmer months, permanent settlements of hunters, trappers, fishermen, and miners develop at Kislev and Norsca
141	Ogre emigrants arrive in the Badlands from the east
159	Maelyrra begins releasing hobgoblins into the Badlands from the Mountains of Mourn enclave
174	First appearance of a player with a mutation in a blood bowl match. While rumors of their existence had circulated for years, Khutan Snakebringer (chorf blocker, tentacles, foul appearance)—who, in an interview with Jim and Carl, proclaimed his mutations a gift he received after a dream visitation from Khorne—proved their existence to the world.
176	Maelyrra ceases production of hobgoblins and establishes her independent domain north of Alamaise’s enclave
183	The first airship launches from Kavzar. Initially used for aerial scouting, while limited in number due to their great expense, they spread skaven influence across the Waste
208	Khatan Stonehoof, one of the last surviving Bloodletters from the days of the Southern Horde, takes control of the Bronze Fortress to worship the supposed minotaur prophet Bloodthirster living within

Dragons and Their Wards

Earthroot of the dwarves exercises the most direct authority of any of the dragons, involving itself in the day-to-day management of Silverhome, which exists more as an expansion of the dwarven enclave than a distinct city. In conjunction with this, Earthroot makes less use of elves than many dragons, delegating to dwarves whenever possible. The dragon's elf-voice, Riellair, serves more as an external diplomat to other races than as Earthroot's voice to its people. The chaos dwarves, severed from this relationship, were left to find their own way in the waste.

Vestrivan and Vasdenjas fancy themselves the gods of the humans, with Illelis and Illanmaen their seniormost angels. While they leave the details to their human subjects, Vestrivan and Vasdenjas provide the "Ivory Path" for the Theran empire from within Sky Point. Illelis and Illanmaen are commonly found in the royal court observing that the dragons' decrees are carried out.

While Mountainshadow humbly labels himself as merely the 'teacher' of the orcs (and, of course, anyone else wise enough to embrace his lessons) he nevertheless remains actively involved in the affairs of his wards. While refraining from directly commanding any particular course of action, the lectures his elf-voice Gaessandror delivers in Mountain’s Reach's Pride Hall are rarely unrelated to the issues facing the dragon's people.

Rathorn holds herself just far enough apart from the skaven to be able to send her elf-voice, Ulsinlis, in as an impartial arbiter when the great clans are unable to settle a dispute. While she possesses a philosophical style somewhat similar to Mountainshadow’s, she’s less inclined to offer a steady stream of gentle advice than to intervene strongly at key moments for the skaven people as a whole.

Prior to the rebellion of the centaurs, Khorne was a fickle leader. He might spend a month personally directing the preparations for a minor battle—in early years in person, in later years through his elf-voice Gennermain—then spend a year ignoring his people as they waged a costly war. When the dragon attempted to reassert control halfway through a protracted campaign, undermining years of work, the centaurs turned against him and his avatar. In retaliation the dragon destroyed their home city of Ka-Sahan and withdrew completely from the centaurs. Following a brief appearance in Mountain’s Reach by the elf to prove his regeneration, neither Khorne nor Gennermain have been seen in nearly a hundred years.

While a generous patron during the Scourge, Alamaise divorced herself from any leadership of her wards soon after the trolls and goblins left the Mountains of Mourn, encouraging them to find their own way in the world. Apart from the magical experimentation of her elf-voice Maelyrra, including the creation of the hobgoblins, Alamaise has made little public contribution to the world since the time of the emergence.

The dragon Aban is known to dwell within the deep mire of the Mist Swamp, her elf-voice Lanulthir an advisor among many in the court of the t’skrang. Due to the telepathic nature of the lizardfolk, little is known to outsiders of what advice she provides.

The halflings claim that Iverna houses neither dragon nor elf, and that while the horrors may have roiled the ocean they made no effort to come on land. The treemen only talk to the halflings, who refuse to translate a question they claim to have answered satisfactorily.

The names of the dragon Usun and of its elf-voice Iyralbeth are known only from the stories of the ogres. They have never been seen in the known lands. As little is known of ogre interactions with the patrons as is of the rest of their civilization.

The Practice of Magic

A Brief Primer on the Study of Magic Within the Known Lands, Part One of Two
Prepared by Raifwise the Half-Elf
Printed in the Badlands Bulletin, 12th Raquas, 213

While I do not claim to be an expert in the magical forms, having never taken up their practice myself—a reaction, perhaps, to the considerable inherent superiority that the full elves possess in this regard—I have nevertheless been exposed to various information regarding their exercise, whether in person or through information relayed via those with more immediate experiences than myself. I prepare this primer in the hope, therefore, that this information proves valuable, or at least a distraction, to those who chance upon it.

My first home was with the orcs and I found myself in position to view a number of their rituals given my perceived connection to the dragon Dark Tooth. (That is, Mountain Shadow, though the orcs prefers teeth to shadows and adopted for him the name of the mountain he sleeps beneath.) I did inquire one time to Gaessandror regarding the Mountain’s thoughts on this substitution among his people, and was informed that the dragon likely gave little thought to the details of mortal language, that being a detail he left to the person of his elf-voice. An observation that an opinion might have formed in the period prior to the creation of the elves received a terse response that the dragon would not be pestered with a mater of historical trivia.

Though this connection is more a half-connection, in truth, I was included in all manners of community ritual, from harvest celebrations involving a significant percentage of the city population (quite fun, orc rituals always involve a good deal of sport, food, and drink) to smaller rituals such as welcoming a new birth (in which my presence in the birthing chamber was despairingly expected during those early years of novelty in which every highborn in Mercato needed to be blessed with the presence of the city’s almost-elf).

That this is the form of magic provided to the orcs is, I think, one of the great wisdoms of Dark Tooth. We see, as will be discussed below, the extent to which the individual collection of power has led to the greatest abuses of it. By grounding the practice of magic in community and family, orcs have been shielded from the worst excesses of spellcasters. Which is not to say that an unscrupulous ritualist cannot betray his people. Ritual politics are still politics. But the dependence on the voluntary participation of others provides a recourse for a community that other traditions of magic lack.

The great Shadow describes the heart of the orc ritual as the “communal demand.” In a sermon delivered in the thirty-second year since the orcs’ emergence, “Magic is a claim pressed upon the world. From the hand of stability, to the fist of change, it is what would not but must nevertheless be. That the rain will fall; that the crops will grow; that the children will be strong. That your mount will not tire, that your step will not falter, that your axe will cleave shield, that your blade will find your enemy’s throat, that your hands will claim what once was theirs. Demand these things. Demand them of yourself, of your fellow orcs, of your leaders, and of the gods. For what all demand together, what they will not accept otherwise, is the call that reaches even to the highest.”

The shaman Ard’ed Ironhide contextualizes this directive in his commentaries, noting the expansion of the humans in the west, contrasting the prayers of the humans (“the mewling of kittens,” in the words of the shaman) to the ritualized claims made by the orcs. Whatever the invocation of claims before the gods, there would have been no question at the time whose throats these demands would truly have been pressed upon.

But in this, a certain safeguard of the people against their leaders. The rituals can only provide what is insisted on by the aggregate, with the shaman a conduit for this claim, not the originator of it. Who commands the land the rain falls upon, who leads the axes against the enemy, the rituals cannot collectivize these questions. But if there is to be war strengthened by the magic of the people, it is the people must be driven to demand it of the gods themselves.

Mercato is also, of course, home to practices of magic other than orc rituals. You can find a number of goblin tinkerers here, both master creators with full apprentice workshops and the lone inventor, and you see their handiwork throughout the city, from the gear-work traffic directors keeping our busiest intersections running smoothly to the sewage dissipation system making Mercato one of the cleanest cities in the world. As the saying goes, if you shit in Mercato, at some point a goblin got paid, which has given their union (the GFA, Goblin Farmer’s Association, named for an earlier time when goblins were appreciated merely as cheap farm labor) considerable influence that they’ve eagerly taken advantage of (and reasonably so). But tinkerers produce more than traffic signals and toilets, well known to anyone who has seen a goblin-equipped team take the blood bowl field.

While their ingenuity has made goblins an invaluable addition to Mercato, few would welcome the arrival of a trollish spellcaster, the much-feared good-thinker. I’m reminded of a play I saw put on by a travelling skaven crew of performers in which they portrayed a group of drunken dwarves hunting a good-thinker. With the first half of the performance meandered through an excessive number of bawdy drinking songs, the second half provided a compelling portrayal of a troll magic-worker, the good-thinker using its telekinetic powers to dismember and decapitate the members of the hunting party. This portrayed through an ambitious application of pouches of fake blood secreted beneath the performers costumes, much space being made available through their attempts to convey the impressive stoutness of a dwarf, a dedication of effort much appreciated by the orcish audience in attendance as the removal of a limb would result in blood arcing across the stages. To which point, the chaotic and violent nature of troll magic has led to it being poorly understood, as any emergence of it is responded to violently by anyone with the means and the sense to nip a potential disaster in the bud.

During my time at Kavzar, I did have the privilege of befriending a number of skaven sorcerers (who, incidentally, are not exclusively located within Clan Moulder, despite their well-earned reputation for excellence in that area of study). The fundamental principle of skaven sorcery, as I understand it, is in the formation of what they call “imago," a mental construct embodying the spell. This imago persists in their mind until such time as it is released, imposing the spell upon the world. Most of the time this is a one-and-done sort of thing, with the imago having to be reconstructed again for the spell to be used again. However, imago can also be impressed, through repeated application, on material devices, enhancing them.

This requirement of mental focus does put its practitioners in an unfortunate spot that, once an imago is forming in their head, they must maintain a certain level of discipline lest they lose control of it. This results in many of them spending much of their time in semi-isolation amongst their peers, limited in stimulation, until such time that they emerge to cast their spell upon the world. In an incident I’m familiar with, an unfortunate young skaven sorcery apprentice (whose name I will withhold as he now holds a position of some importance with his clan’s magisterial council and I would not want to embarrass him for some youthful indiscretion), lured into a tryst at the compound library, found himself in a position of heightened distraction among the book stacks, leading to a most indecorous burst of what I was later informed was a partially-constructed imago of Dancing Lights.

Some skaven scholars consider this instability a beneficial part of the schema of sorcery, that it is their embodiment of the protection against power-mad spellcasters. If successful sorcerers require peace and quiet to operate, a community can disrupt their schemes through little more than a collection of noisemakers. A spellcasting caste that must live in isolation is one that inherently must have outside support, as the thinking goes. Though this would, in comparison to the orcish solution, seem to miss the circumstance in which a sorcerer’s skills might allow them enhanced ability to fulfill the obligations of their craft without the support of their fellow skaven.

In regards to the practice of skaven sorcery, an opportunity to correct a common misconception. Warp stone (the green, glowing elements you’ve seen sticking out of skaven throwers’ throwing arms on CabalTV) powers skaven engineering, such as the airships they use to supply their outposts, the rock cannons they use to defend their city, and such relatively minor feats as the aforementioned ball launchers. While sorcerers may chose to use their magic to manipulate or study warp stone, so may such manipulation and study be applied to any other element of skaven life, with no particular connection between the two other than the obvious interest in warp stone given its prominent use elsewhere in skaven life.

My experience with human thaumaturgy is more limited, gained during a chance few weeks of a visit to Mountain’s Reach at the time of a Blood Bowl match against the Amazonia city team (a dispute regarding control of a vein of silver discovered on a coastal mountain range). One of their players (who, incidentally, introduced me to the delicacy of smoked tegu eggs) spoke of her opinion of religion as practiced in her own city as well as the cities of Thera and Bretonnia, though, as the information regarding the latter is now doubly removed, it should be absorbed with care.

In regards to the Amazonian, she eagerly displayed the sanctified tattoo their war priest had inscribed on her left flank (a benediction of stamina, blissfully) and spoke of the painted markings used for temporary blessings that she had received in the past, their location and design, which I have recreated to the best of my ability on the included drawing.

She was quite critical of the apparent recently-adopted Theran practice of the consumption of bread as part of the weekly blessing provided by their priests. Presented as a symbol of the bounty provided by so and so, she chastised it as a sop to halflings in an attempt to convert them to human religion, which she suggested might be more successful if they replaced the piece of bread with a full McMurty’s sandwich (in regards to which’s founder she intimated a torrid forbidden romance some years back, with a refusal to elaborate despite the utmost efforts on my part, the truth of which I cannot vouch for but most truly personally believe).

But this pattern reflects the nature of human magic. As with the orcs, an empowered few perform blessings upon their communities, but rather than the magic powered by a group ritual, the power bestowed in the individual minister (whether Amazonian war priest, Bretonnian cleric, or Norse goði). This has resulted in a disparity of access to these benefits excess in that seen in Mountain’s Reach and Mercato, such that the bulk of society receives a brief touch or a splash of paint granting some measure of grace while a small number receive the full might of Vestrivan’s strength or Vasdenjas’s wisdom.

I set aside my pen now for the moment, but I promise you, whoever might be so charitable to have read so far, that I will continue my overview of the study of magic with haste, in which we will discuss the rumored delights of halfling gastrology, the mysteries of t'skrang psionics, the utility of dwarven arcane engineering, the lost (and rediscovered) practices of khemri necromancy, and the sad story of the true loss of the art of centaur kinematics. Until then, I bid you farewell.