INTRODUCING BÖDENGÄRD
Bödengärd (Bottom Earth) is the strange, sepulchral continent that is much like & yet very different than our Earth. Like Earth, Bödengärd contains many peoples with distinct, sometimes competing, sometimes complimentary civilizations.
The Würstreich is just one empire on the continent of Bödengärd within the vast world of Ludia. The Würstreich was thrown into chaos by the freak coronation of the Jester Emperor. This disturbance has made the very uncivil nature of their society plain.
Secret societies, Arcane orders, Insane Wizards, Monsters, Ganglords & other bad actors took advantage of this disorder & made their move. Amidst this disorder & jockeying for power, the Würstreich still struggles to understand & deal with the consequences of printing, the factory, gunpowder & electricity. It is an empire fighting to make the difficult transition from medievalism to Modernism.
Long ago, the Würstreich began in the west. It was originally a place populated by a tribal people called the Valhal. Some of the Valhal opened the Pandora’s Box of the ancient civilizations that lay around them like an enormous graveyard & breathed in the contents deeply & with that, the tribal Valhal were no more.
These people that confronted this potential called themselves “the Würst.” The Faustian Civilization that they created became the “Würstreich”.
Those that chose to maintain the old ways, living close to nature called themselves “the Gütter”. For a while they thrived until the Wurst decided that their ways were an embarrassing reminder of their past & began to wage bloody war on them..
The Eastern Borderlands of the Würstreich are chaotic, falling apart, cursed & desperately clinging to order. Having just barely survived the Necromancer’s Hand of Doom, the east is now contending with many plagues. Disease, fungal infestation, the pagan Gütter, Goblin hordes, the curse of the weirds & competing Royal Hauses, gangs, secret societies & monstrous infestation are just some of the things plaguing the borderlands.
To the east of the Würstreich is the Reptilian empire of the Ka-Sen. It is a place of advanced technology used by a devolved Reptilian race of the same name that live amidst blundering saurians, disruptive, violent geology & the world’s end where the land appears to stop.
Just to the south of them is the mighty Solar Empire, a bloody, highly religious, hierarchical society of Ziggurat dwellers ruled over by a maniacal priest class. The people are served up as sacrifices to their bloody order.
To the north are the Goblin wastes. A baked, stinking land where the ground is pecked bare by flocks of debased Goblin Chickens & the skies are blackened by horrible bat things as they swirl around the ominous tower of Gobble & evil wizards constantly raise dark armies & plot destruction.
To the northwest are the deep, tangled forests of the Wyrdwood that border on the cold, mountainous Hinterlands. Crawling with Trolls & worse, this cold land is harsh & unforgiving.
To the northeast is Pilzgehirn, a once great Empire that has been overtaken by a wild, ancient jungle, the Eindringling. This holds an equally archaic fungal web that has grown underground with it & developed consciousness over time.
Deep in the jungle are the crumbling remains of the ancient temple city of Alter Schwach. Only monkeys & an ancient, terrifying relative of humans live in the woods now. The humans that once made up the Empire decided to live slower lives in the many villages that surround the jungle long ago.
To the Southwest of the Würstreich are the Soggy Bottoms. The Soggy Bottoms are a desolate, soaked land occupied by cities that are perched on the shells of giant Snails. Egg-obsessed marsh dwelling tribes tremble among the massive slime trails.
The Soggy Bottoms are older & more stable than the Würstreich but with that age, strange traditions that confound outsiders & contain complex problems that have become completely entrenched over the aeons.
A true understanding of history is forbidden by any group that is trying to establish supremacy even when some very superficial digging shows that the real history is more complicated & shows that the strong have risen & fell repeatedly which dwarfs the controlled narratives of the new orders.
The Moon is the glowing lord of the night, surrounded by an endless council of whispering stars. Worshipped by the pagan Gutter it is a place of mythological importance but it can be visited.
The Moon holds a lofty, decadent civilization of moon people that is contested by Reptilians & Insectoids. The moon is riddled with so many tunnels as to be almost hollow. An enormous moth lives in these tunnels where it is fed bones.
It is a mystery if these travels are real or just the dreams of the insane, drug fiends or worse. Few travel to the Moon & fewer will discuss their travels.
The use of magic is rare on Bödengärd, but not unheard of. People rightfully don’t trust those tampering with the unseen machinations of reality.
Wizards, hell bent on domination & bending the world to their will are known but seeing them is another story.
Magic isn’t trusted, crazed wizards have been competing for control of the empire for ages & have only increased their attempts as things have gotten more unstable.
The idea of Gods is alien to the people of Bödengärd, the spiritual is understood as directly connected to the material world. Death is harnessed for its magical power. The Imperial religion is a death cult, tinged with Necromancy.
Conformity to the Empire’s excessively complicated & voluminous law is brutally enforced by truncheon & dungeon. Nearly half of the population find themself imprisoned & a quarter of the free people are enslaved by addiction.
There is a crushing, claustrophobic dimension of endless possibilities known as the Void. Gates into the Void, remnants of an attempt by some ancient civilization to control the chaotic nature of interdimensional travel, appear at random.
Other realms of cosmic horror are implied by Demonic races that appear at the fringes. These creatures would be understood as aliens or extra-dimensional visitors in another time.
Racially, the humans are mutts, bred from many different peoples over time. Skin color is not a hierarchy signifier. Everyone is a sort of yellowish brown, there are variations, but it hasn’t been useful as a caste signifier for ages.
Similarly, gender & sexuality aren’t important, people make more people, form families to take care of each other, it was never politicized. These things are unimportant to the majority of the humans of Bödengärd except for the cult of No Man who wants to destroy humanity entirely & have everyone replaced with efficient, obedient automatons.
Everything is lightened by parodic caricatures of today’s world & our common history with a generally goofy & absurd view of life. Even though these are life or death struggles, they are also comedic, unexpected & bizarre, just like real life.