[Event Team 2.0] Lore Competition

[thesmellypocket 1859]

28 minutes ago, firespirit44 said:

 

 

Hey @thesmellypocket thank you for your submission. Unfortunately your submission doesn't fit in with the competition rules. The rule is to create region lore for this map, and we do not take in submissions from anything else.

 

Submit a piece of lore about a region in LOTC with a screenshot attached to it, and explain its characteristic or backstory of it.

 

We only take in lore for culture or animals if its a side effect for the region lore, rather than the main focus. It also does not have an LOTC region in it, so I'm sorry to say your submission can not be accepted. Go ahead and submit it to the lore team if you want though.

 

Okay, I'll withdraw then.

[Taketheshot 3834]

 

Haakons Folly

 

As you trudge through bushes, trees and flowers you slowly begin to ascend a small knoll. Upon reaching the top you look out at the scenic view and pay witness to one of the greatest Orenian conquests.

 

The sound of singing birds, the buzz of insects, the bubbling of the brook, the trees waving in the summer wind and the animals frolicking in the tall grass meet your eyes and ears. Although  it was not always this way. The land was once barren, lifeless and the sound of blood curdling screams as men were flayed alive was commonplace. To the average person the ruined overgrown structures would seem nothing special, but to just about every middle aged Orenian man this place was much more.

Emperor John III Owyn after leading the final charge into the Dreadlandic Keep

 

Haakons Folly was not always called this, it once held a much more sinister name, the Dreadlands. Ruled by Ser Haakon Ruric and his band of murderers and thieves, the stone keep covered in flowers and vines was once the origin of every terror attack launched upon the good people of the Empire. During the first few months on Axios the Dreadlanders reaped the small piece of land on the Isle of Asul. The Orenian empire decided enough was enough. His Imperial Majesty John III Owyn Horen called his levies and marched upon the Dreadlands, after a series of failed defenses the Dreadlands capitulated. Some had never lived in a world without fear of Dreadlandic terror attacks and welcomed the new peace. For others it was a change back to the ways of old. For everyone however the world was much different.

 

It was then that the Emperor decided that the newly acquired land would not be turned into towns, cities or farms. It became a nature preserve, a fitting change for the land that was once ruled by destructors. Held in trust by the Crown the land was never to be developed, it would be a permanent memorial to the many Orenians who fell in battle to take it.

The Story of Haakons Folly is a long and bloody one but the beauty of the land is unmatched and it has become a paradise on the Isle of Axios.

[Trenchist 864]

 

The Soil Canyons

 

The relentless of the canyons and valleys north-east to Tahn. All travellers and adventurers who dare laying foot at it’s shores will suffer scars of extreme weather and natural disaster, luckily even crawl his way out of it's borders.

 

 

With the birthing of the world, shaped by the aenguls and daemons, the few rocky hills which only dreamed of the clouds aged, and the richness of the salt sea splashed minerals, soil and salt upon the growing hills, and after long countless years it now towers above the skies and valleyeswhere light does not reach.

 

The seasoned ocean

The old tribes which inhabited it's surroundings told of a storm which rages four times a year in the heart of the ocean, as deep as the void and as relentless as fire, it brings the salt, the stones, the gems and the minerals from the center of it to the shores of the canyons, richening the scrapers.

Every season bring different soils with it, some salt, some stone, some sand and some gems, and left untouched-

It gathered, and layered, and stoned, shaped breathtaking views of nature’s own work, but the storm brought not only wealth, but also quakes of earth and swallows of entire mountains, shredding and crumbling the aging views in matters of minutes. These disasters formed gaps, tunnels and edges, all only to again shatter in the next earthquake or wave. The minerals mixed and blended, birthing new materials, creating gems and stones as dark as night and as sharp as lightning. Yet with every attempt of carving those precious hidden gems, a mountain crumbled and a hill swallowed to the depths of earth, dooming all thieves.

 

Spring-

It brought the sun and spread the clouds, the chilling breeze of the waves drifted around the mountains, splashing solid sand and dirt to reconstruct the hills.

 

Summer-

With signs of rain forgotten, the summer kicked the clouds away and let the sun burn the rocks. It is boiling, and the waters chill, dragging stones of salt to reaffirm the base.

 

Autumn-

Shoving the sun aside and winding the clouds back to cold, the autumn was well balanced, offering solid rocks and shapeless gems all to the far reaches the canyons, rapiding the storms and rains of chaos.

 

Winter- Shivering down to the heart, the region colds, it forces the mixed ice and the few gems, kicking them in rage as the high waves break the edges of the canyons, crumbling some mountains and reaching all  the way to the ice mountains.

 

Stone Flowers-

The only presumably 'plant' to manage in the extreme conditions were the gem flowers. These are a mixture of several minerals which were forced into each other in an earthquake, these shape sharp reef-like small stones resemble a glamorous gem flower. Even though it does not live , it can be used as a decoration if one manages to somehow reach it.

[Harri 4815]

since my good ally chef wud is banned, but still wants to contribute to our magnificent server here is his lore:

 

 

A belly full of greed

Its mouth-like aperture of reddened clay, and many wooden appendages; its hundreds of rudimentarily bored, perceptive globes and the acridity of its noxious innards; its fiery depths formed IT… an oblation of crimson and yellow and orange and white, packed from the crown to toe topful with flaxen-commodities that glimmered so awe-inducingly it instated an avariciousness unbeknownst to many of those who resided furthest from it. This earthly, natural abomination spanned itself several hundred meters above and below ground akin. Its heights acted habitually as a domicile for both the coeval Axians, and those who claimed this myriad of sizeable islands as ‘home’ in periods of yore. The flat peak of its cranium was uncannily welcoming, which juxtaposed profoundly with its gut - a graveyard to many. The many that rested eternally, deep within its winding, branching vessels and caverns were utterly alike to those byone. They were greedy:

 

This ‘cranium’ previously aforementioned granted its flat veneer to the prior caramel-toned residents of the deluging landscape. Pitched posts and cracked mud walls obtruded from the wizened, luster-lacking loam - carrion of a  people long lost and forgotten. These carcasses bore little insight to their lifestyle, bar one thing - they were avid miners, and the pickaxes that littered their homes, and the mining equipment that now retained dormancy inferred such. Alike to any miner, their underlying lust was to stumble across a vein of coruscating metal-ore, or something of equal wonder. This lust, however, ostensibly ushered them to their expiry.

 

Albeit one incident was recorded. Upon the ashen countenance of a cavern wall was rendered an arrangement of hieroglyphs conveying one victim’s experience.

 

Once decrypted it read:

 

“A rafter - a wooden appendage claimed by this fiery behemoth - has failed to support its own arresting form, so - thereafter - a cave in occurred and I now remain enclosed within its gut…

 

Within this blackness, the cold is bitter. It pierces my clothes and knives my flesh unimaginably, but if I delve onwards the heat will surely thwart my existence…

 

I see a carcass - the person that these bones belonged too is unbeknownst to me. I can, however, ascertain that they were a miner, for betwixt the curling grip of their lank, bony appendages is a pickaxe laden in thick potash and gold dust.

 

The flickering orange in my lantern is fading. The air is thick and pungent, and fails to balloon my lungs - I fear I will die…”

 

The hellish-hued mesa has since forgiven the offenders - the descendants - and allows them free passage within its dominion. BUT, if a single speck of gold leaves its enclosure, it will once more burden miscreants with its tyranny.

[Praetor 1550]

I know this is a long one but bear with me, it's as much a sp00ky story as a piece of lore and I think you'll enjoy reading it.

 

 

 

The terror below Johanesburg (or Why the Johanesburg sewers were never built.)

 

 

Beneath Johanesburg lies a terror, a terror I hate speaking of. To this day, the mere thought of the horrors that lurk below make my blood run cold. To think that the heart of humanity lives above such a blackened, awful corruption is truly a testament to our resilience. Who else but us could settle here, and survive without going mad? Perhaps only those who live in ignorance manage, for I had to bid farewell to my sanity many years ago.

 

This happened so long ago that those to which I spin this terrible tale no longer believe it. Indeed, they reject every word of it and threaten to report me to the guards! Me, the last living witness to those who died below. Yes, reader, that which I will now tell you is a secret that our lords and nobles buried beneath stone and a mountain of bodies. A secret that I survive to tell you of only through the grace of God.

 

Though I might be dead by the time you read this, know that every word is true. They are words and thoughts that weighed heavy on my soul and even now crush my shoulders like an anvil. To be free of them, to liberate myself of these fears through ink and paper is truly an experience that I will relish, even if it is only to put an end to my miserable existance once I am done.

 

I do not write this so that those who follow may venture into those God-forsaken tunnels and shafts. No, I write this to warn away all of you. Every single human being that still resides in Johanesburg, heed my words.

 

Never. Go. Into. The. Sewers.

 

————

 

 

The lord who commissioned this job spoke with the authority of the Emperor. He brought a signed letter to the workers to lil’Adunia, where I had taken up residence. See, I was a poor farmer's son and had no money when I arrived in the city. The few coins I had when I left our homestead were barely enough to pay for my trip to the Capital. Dreams of joining the army, fueled by my grandfathers experiences under the Imperium Tertius, were shattered upon arrival. My left arm had been broken as a youth and reset badly. The officer in charge of recruitment threw me out of the Bastille and left me to fend for my own.

 

Lil’Adunia welcomed me with open arms into its filth and pestilence. The forgotten, the rejected and the broken found their homes here. Men like me, who had come to the Capital only to find themselves wallowing in the mud of their own inadequacy. The sun rose and set and we remained here, slowly becoming one with the detritus around us. Occasionaly, an official would come to us and hire a few fortunate men for a job. Those men were smart enough to not return until they had spent their pay on whores and beer.

 

 

Then the lord came. I never learned his name, though it was written on the scrap of paper he presented us. Literacy came long after that fateful day, when I realized that it was my duty to immortalize the horror below, lest it be forgotten.

 

He offered us all a job. We would need strong backs, but we would be fed and payed richly as long as we swung our pickaxes and asked no questions. I of course complied, along with every other man desperate enough to find a home in Lil’Adunia. He smiled at us, like a shepard would to a flock of sheep, but my eyes were clouded by the promise of food and money. Perhaps it would be enough to buy myself a true home! Open a shop, import my fathers vegetables. Maybe the money I made from that would allow me to find a wife, begin a family… I only I knew. It pains me to think of such things, when what I bore witness to has condemned me to this half-life, this pseudo-existence in which I am forced to linger until I gather the courage to slide steel across my throat.

 

 

I started work on a warm spring evening. The rain had come and gone, leaving behind a refreshing breeze that brought life back to my starved limbs. Me and my crew began excavating our first shaft near the outskirts of the city. The architects and engineers -curse those cowards!- had many maps and plans layed out on tables, with complicated calculations scrawled into them. For me, it was a simple task of digging straight or digging downwards.

 

This went on for weeks, and for a while I believed that eloquent lord and his promise of good food and comfortable housing. He did indeed give us food, and he had shacks built for us, where warm bedding awaited us after a long day with a pick-axe in our hands. It was a good time, where honest work was rewarded and men could feel proud of the work they wrought with their hands.

 

One month after we began to build the Sewers of Johanesburg, the first man disappeared. He worked in shaft three, two away from my own. It was the busiest and deepest of the five shafts we had dug. It delved far below the city, even lower than the river that loops around it. Since the second week, men had been reporting strange smells and unusual patterns in the rock, but the Lord ignored them. The Emperor had commisioned him with the construction of the sewers and he was determined to finish it on time and on budget.

 

So I continued to mine. By now, my honesty and hard work had given me control of my shaft and the men who worked within it. We had not been touched by the strange occurence in shaft three, here in shaft one. However, we all felt a certain amount of unease. I saw it in the eyes of every man, in the fact that they always worked in pairs. How could someone just vanish in a busy shaft? Surely every nook and cranny could be searched, we had not gone that deep.

 

Another man disappeared a week later, in the same shaft. Once again, nothing was found of him. I met with the remaining shaft leaders and they all agreed to speak to the Lord in charge. One man disappearing could be a mistake, a collasped shaft he had started. Maybe he had run away. But two? In the same shaft where strange things were said to be seen? So I led these men to the surface and we found the lord, speaking with his architects.

 

“My lord,” I said in as polite a voice as I could muster.

 

He looked at me like I were some annoying gnat, quick to be forgotten. It made my teeth grind together. “What is it?” he asked, glancing at the architect as if I were some sort of joke to be entertained by.

 

 

“A second man has disappeared in shaft three, we think something should be done about it.”

 

The rest of the men looked cowed in the presence of the lord and I cursed their subservient nature. Lives were at risk! The lord did not think the same as I. Instead, he waved a hand in my direction and turned back to the architects. “Those peasants have no doubt run back to their farms. Get back to work or you will be replaced.”

 

What choice did I have? I returned to my shaft, picked up my pick-axe and dug into the stone once more. My fears began to dissipate as time went on. The men remained uneasy, but for two weeks, nobody disappeared and work continued on schedule. All was well, finally these strange disappearences were behind us! Oh how I cursed my naïvety today. I should have fled the moment that the first man was consumed by shaft three.

 

One month after the first man disappeared, the lord had us all gathered in the plaza near the shaft entries. As I passed Shaft three, I felt a shiver of cold run down my back and for a moment, I froze, my limbs refusing to respond to the urges of the man behind me. It had been bricked in, with only a thick iron door remaining of the once gaping entrance. Two guards stood beside the door and as I looked around the men gathered near me, a horrible feeling punched me in the gut and I faltered as the ground around me swayed.

 

 

Not a single man from shaft three was present.

 

“My good workers,” said the Lord, a benevolent smile on his face. “The Emperor has deemed this project to be an unnecessary expense after consulting with many experts on the subject. For this reason, we shall be shutting down every shaft and bricking it in as we have done to shaft three.”

 

“What about our pay?” yelled one of the men.

 

A small frown crossed the Lord’s face, barely perciptable. I saw it though, like I saw through his lies. “You will be payed for this whole month and sent on your way.”

 

I pushed my way out of the crowd and faced the Lord, my head held high. Father always told me to speak my piece and be honest. “Where are the men from Shaft three?” I asked, my arms crossed over my scrawny chest.

 

To this day, I am not sure what I fear more. What lurks within the shaft, or the smile the Lord gave me then. It was one devoid of all emotion, like a piece of stone with human skin stretched over it. His eyes gouged into mine like two shard of ice and with a flash of brilliant teeth, he answered. “They have already been… relieved of their duties. You shouldn’t worry about them.”

 

The rest of the men didn’t look further than their gold. Even the other shaft leaders only counted their coin and walked away, as if the fate of those men was nothing of importance. I knew better. Those lies that the lord had woven around us were naught but smoke and mirrors. An illusion made of money and smiles to distract us from the truth. The men of shaft three were still there, deep beneath the earth.

 

That night, I payed the guards at the door my months wage to get in. “Your grave,” grunted one of them before opening the door and letting me in.

 

 

“I have a months more wages if you open for me when I knock three times,” I replied.

 

Darkness surrounded me now, and I’m not even sure if he heard me. With a deep breath, I lifted my torch and lit it. The light burned bright, but only enough to illuminate the ground before me for a dozen meters. After that, the roughly hewn rock melded back with the shadows into an impenetrable wall that roiled and twisted like a living thing.

 

Gritting my teeth and remembering my grandfathers stories, I forged onward. He had told me of the uruks and the terror every man felt when they charged. The carnage they could inflict upon an entire squad on they went beserk. The dark was nothing compared to those red-eyed monsters. The deeper I went, the less I believed those words, until every instinct in me screamed to turn back and run for my life.

 

 

Those base-reactions went unheard as I forged onwards. The men of shaft three numbered in the dozens, surely they couldn’t be dead! Surely the lord hadn’t slaughtered them all! I needed to find them, to save them from whatever fate was reserved for them in this abandonned, godless pit.

 

“Help me…” I almost missed it at first. The voice rasped and gurgled like a man choking on his own blood. It came from an off-shoot of the main shaft and I edged into it carefully, my torch seeming to become ever-weaker the deeper I ventured into this narrow tunnel. Perhaps you have seen war before, reader. You must know them of the horrors of a wounded man, when his head is nearly cloven in two but he still screams, or when his guts spill out but some spark of life within him makes him scrabble to keep them in with bloody fingers.

 

Nothing compares to what I saw then. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! The man before me sat against the stone and where his stomach once was, a plant-like monstrosity now pulsed. Tubular things twisted and turned like so many worms. Worst of all, the man looked up at me then, with a face twisted into atrocious suffering. “Kill me,” he moaned.

 

 

I reeled back, my torch falling at my feet and turned around. But a man now stood between me and the main shaft. He was hunched and his head was tilted to the side. Behind me, the man moaned again, but his words melded into an incomprehensible gurgle that brought bile to my throat. Until the man stepped out of the shadows and into my torchlight. He stared at me with a confused expression on his face and pointed, his mouth opening. Instead of words, a strange red line crept down to his chin.

 

“You’re bleeding,” I said, taking a step forward. It wasn’t blood. Another root crept out of his mouth and ran up into his nostril. He stumbled now and his eyes began to fill with blood. I stared on in horror, backing away once more as his eyelids split and tore, a hundred tiny vines growing out from beneath them and wrapping around his eyeballs. It didn’t stop there, instead, his face began to twist and shift, his skin broke open and his flesh pulled back from his mouth. A choked scream escaped my lips as the man transformed without a sound.

 

 

I stumbled and glanced down. A pick-axe. A god-send. I grabbed it and lifted it just as the man began to stumble towards me, a groan emanating from his ravaged face. The pick-axe found its place in his skull and I didn’t look back to see if he had truly died. I fled, leaving my torch and the dying man to their own fate.

 

Somehow, I remembered to knock-thrice and fled that place.

 

Now I am here, writing these words. My mind feels raw, flayed from re-experiencing what I have been trying to forget for so long. These horrors though, they cannot be forgotten. The only way to erase such things from my memory is to end it all. Now that I have recorded what I have seen, I must no longer live in with the guilt of abandonning the men of Shaft three to their fate. I must no longer curse myself for hiding this for so long for fear of my own life should the lord learn it was me who spread the tale.

 

Reader, I beg of you to take these words seriously.

 

Never. Go. Into. The. Sewers.

 

 

-Excerpt of an unknown mans journal, found beside his body after it fell from the bell tower. circa. 1590.

 

[Wyvernbane 252]

4 hours ago, Praetor said:

-snip-

 

Great read! Really enjoyed!

[Reckless Banzai Screamer 15456]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJym34ffXe93GUzZWlncqoNO3El3Dev8Jg__T0emNVA/edit

 

*breathes heavily* I finished before due date.

[lawnmowerman 3040]

Just now, Good Guy Shady said:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJym34ffXe93GUzZWlncqoNO3El3Dev8Jg__T0emNVA/edit

 

*breathes heavily* I finished before due date.

 

my *** they tear u up .

[Lsuvsfar 255]

The Isle of the Haunted

 http://imgur.com/a/u9esh

 

Off the coast of Lorraine, there sits a massive island, known simply as the Isle of the Haunted. To those seeking fortune, this isle has long been a beacon for treasure and adventure. While some make it back with bags full of interesting treasures and gold, more still never leave the island, falling for its trap.

 

Long ago, before the people of Vailor had arrived, there was a small band of beings. No one can say exactly what they were, for that is beyond knowledge. However, what we do know is whoever these people were, they knew about this island and deemed that going there would be a great idea. Fools? Maybe. Who knows, maybe at that time the island isn’t what it is now. Regardless of that, the one thing we do know, is that it was a mistake. These people arrived, presumably hoping to settle the island and making a little place of their own. Unbeknownst to them, this place would be their permanent residence. Not long after arriving, their ship sunk close by the island. With no way off the island, people grew desperate. What killed them to us is a mystery. Maybe at that time the Isle of the Haunter was filled with mindless undead and monsters like it is today. Maybe it wasn’t that, and they died trying to make a new ship, finding that the trees of the island are unusually tough and massive, making the efforts of all but the strongest, most determined lumberjacks in vain. It also could have been that they discovered the massive trees of the island ate up all the sunlight, killing whatever crops they tried to grow, ultimately causing them to starve to death. Whatever the reasoning was, they died.

http://imgur.com/a/eaRvO

 

For a long time after that, the isle remained undisturbed. As the corpses of the foolish settlers sat there rotting, the darkness which permeates the isle caused their corpses to again rise, causing the population of mindless undead to skyrocket. To any adventurers before the people of Vailor arrived, the task of setting up shop on the isle was clearly something too daunting for them.

 

However, finally the people of Vailor arrived in Axios. While most still chose to avoid this island, some brave souls saw the riches and went there. Upon adventuring there, they would find many an odd thing, such as the souls of those who came before beckoning them further into the forest, like sirens. Dark magicians had clearly found an interest in the island at one point, leaving many odd relics around that adventurers over the years have stumbled across. Treasure troves could also be found in secluded parts of the island, likely left there by the pirates of old whom never managed to return for their hidden riches and trinkets.

 

While the isle may seem like a walk in the park if you have a few magicians and a seasoned company of warriors, be warned. The darkness there encompasses the island, thicker than even the darkest darkness if the most hidden of caves. While it is unknown what effects the darkness exactly has, one thing is truly known of it. The darkness wants nothing to do with people, and will do many things to ensure that the grasp of any person, regardless of species, nobility, religion, or magic affinity. All those that step foot on the island will face the darkness, and only the most cunning will have the chance to do so again.

[Taketheshot 3834]

On 12/30/2016 at 9:58 PM, Good Guy Shady said:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJym34ffXe93GUzZWlncqoNO3El3Dev8Jg__T0emNVA/edit

 

*breathes heavily* I finished before due date.

Hi, can we just give all the awards to shady?

[Taketheshot 3834]

@firespirit44 Is the contest closed, and if so when can we expect the results?

[Man of Respect 5471]

Submission time is over! Judging starts today and is expected to end on the 4th or 5th