Starcrosse -- the town in the clouds.

In the realms of man, the town of Starcrosse should never have been more than a curiosity, a footnote, but for a remarkable event that happened there in AF477, almost five centuries after the founding of Carlesi, the greatest kingdom of its age.  And some 100 years after the razing of the city of Carlesi itself, about which more will be written.

Starcrosse is our subject, but as it was built by the Carlesi, we'll spare a few words now.

The Carlesi were an industrious and resourceful people -- masters of diplomacy, warfare, and the grey area between the two.  After unifying their home peninsula, the Carlesi in a few short decades extended their dominion over almost all of the majority-human settlements along the southern coast of the great continent of Garal'mette.  Their hegemony was built upon the strength of legions rarely bested in battle, and a college of wizardry that groomed even the most modest of arcane talents into useful instruments of the state.

As Garal'mette's uncivilized north receded, cross-continental trade flourished, and naturally, the Carlesi devoted more and more resources to protecting it.  The wealth flowing to Carlesi itself made the city on the mouth of the river into the pearl of the known world.

Every legionary served 20 years for the reward of a farm, a young wife, money enough to build a family, and the implicit guarantee that the legion would protect its own.  But the very wealth that the legions ensured would pass to Carlesi made it impossible to keep finding homes for retired legionaries -- every scrap of land on the Barleni peninsula was already owned.  So the kingdom began to colonize in earnest an area some thousand miles away, a broad, flat, undistinguished but productive plain bordered on the south by a great marsh and on the north my the Starspire mountains, one of two great east-west ranges on Garal'mette.

The Starspires got their name from the reflective nature of many of its peaks, which in the first hours after nightfall could be easily confused with the closest stars to the horizon.  The mountains were notoriously impassable for a stretch of some 300 miles east-to-west, save for one broad-shouldered pass, almost perfectly in the middle of the range.

To the north of the Starspires lay a great swath of badlands that stretched all the way to the Arctic, known by a hundred names to a hundred different orcish and goblinoid tribes that warred -- mostly -- amongst themselves.  After a hundred years or so, the towns that had grown up in and around the countless farms of Carlesi legion veterans realized the strategic importance of the pass, and set out to build an outpost of the kingdom there.

The high point of the pass itself was gravely, sparsely vegetated, waterless save for snowmelt, and, it must be said, uninteresting save for its defensive value.  But the Carlesi were wealthy, and determined, and any kingdom in its swagger will produce a surplus of souls who want to live on the edge, but not over the edge, so gradually, the outpost became the town of Starcrosse, added to the rolls of the many towns of the Carlesi in AF290.

The hardy men and women who settled there built great apparatuses to collect and store water from the late spring's snowmelts, and though the town was reliant on agricultural imports, a number of precious botanical agents and delicacies thrived in the unique climate, so the town did pay its own way, though of course the bored garrisons (a far cry from the legions of the Carlesi's glory days) were paid by tax levies from far away.

Below them, to the south, the cities of the Revanki Plain grew more and more culturally distinct from the Carlesi, and also more and more fractious among one another, although Port Lewin, the umbilical through which much trade with home flowed, was generally first among equals.  And Starcrosse was mostly forgotten.  For truly, the orc tribes were passing through hard times themselves, and hardly capable of mounting so much as a determined raid across the Starspires, let alone a war band, for many generations.

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Then came the great war with the northern lords, and the sand shaiidi, and the sahuagin, and in the span of ten years, the great kingdom of the Carlesi was smashed to bits.  The great war, was of course the defining historic event of the last millennium, the beginning of Garal'mette's dark age, and much much more must be written about it.

But for the people of a remote garrison town, it was all rather undramatic.  The militia was there one month.  The next, no coin arrived.  The month after that, the men left -- some bound for Port Lewin, where the Carlesi regents were trying to muster forces to send east to defend the homeland... but in truth, many more, set off for adventure, or banditry, or both, as seemed to be the rage in the Revanki Plain those days.  And Starcrosse did what it could to get by, under the Warden of Cliffhaven... even if, before too long, merchant caravans dwindled, then stopped entirely.

The Carlesi fell, and the polity that emerged in the plain of Revanki was far too scattered to be garrisoning towns up in the mountains -- every petty duke kept his men close for fear of one another.  Gnolls -- the original inhabitants of the plain, before the Carlesi arrived, reappeared with a vengeance.  And up in Starcrosse, word began trickling in from the north, from the occasional orc loner who traveled up into the mountains, that the tribes were fewer in number, but each far stronger and more ambitious with each passing year.

In AF476, many plains half-orcs began fleeing up into the mountains, their settlements put to the torch by riders of the orc warlord Kotta Kuz. Those who would not swear allegiance to him paid a steep price, and half-orc were not to be tolerated. Starcrosse suddenly had a refugee problem, but at least the Dukes of the south took notice at last... though their response was catastrophically misguided.

The Regent of Port Lewin (men in these parts still kept to Carlesi titles though in truth, he was a petty tyrant, the son of a petty tyrant) mustered some 2,000 men and convinced the dukes of  Finich's Landing, Chancel, Loregal to do likewise, or as best they could.  This expedition, punitive in nature, was to cross the Starspires and give the orcs a lesson in warfare.  Predictably, they were routed out in the badlands, some 500 of the men returning to Starcrosse to tell the tale.  The last few who straggled in told horrifying tales of warhorns blowing through the night, hiding in tall grass from warg riders and orcish light cavalry.

The wizards of Port Lewin were not entirely without talent and made it their business to magically spy on Kotta Kuz, who was assembling a great host of infantry to follow the humans up into the pass.  Far from stupid, Kuz recognized that his warriors' strengths -- mounted warfare in the plains -- would count for nothing in the mountains, and set about to rectify that.  Meanwhile, the southern dukes fought among themselves about how many men each should contribute to the defense of Starcrosse.  The word went out to any ship, any trade caravan -- few though there were in those days -- that the civilized lands south of the Starspires were in grave danger.

Introduction.

This will be an ongoing work to develop my thoughts about a fantasy world that were seeded to me by my late friend, John Sharp.  What those in the world of role playing games might call a "campaign setting..." 

I don't have a particular rhyme or reason here.  I suppose that my long-term goal is to build a story, for a grand adventure or series of adventures, to share with friends.  That is all down the road, because, really, time is precious and fleeting.  I sure as hell know that better than I did a few months ago. 

John was special.  Beyond the way that "we all are" -- that's not bullshit, we all are.  He had a great talent for thinking in tangents and looking at problems, or situations, from askew.  When he told me that he was terminally ill, he also told me one of the things he wanted to do for his own enjoyment in the time he had left was to set down ideas for a campaign setting.  And that seemed to me like a great answer to the problem that everyone will contend with some day... do what you enjoy while you can.

I will write a lot more about John here in the days to come.  Right now, though, i want to roll up my sleeves and get into some of the ideas he shared with me.  I plan for some of these entries to be a gazetteer of the world he was trying to dislodge from his head.  I'll sketch out histories of cities, tribes, magi, monsters, in others.  Eventually, it might be a rich resource for me, to give to people who might want to adventure in that world... and of course it will help me then, as well.

But, aside from honoring John, I want to do this because a lot of the ideas were fucking cool, and they deserve to get out to like-minded souls.

Thank you for reading.