u/BeginningSome5930

This is meant to be a steampunk-inspired fantasy world where people can manipulate a magical metal called quicksteel at will.

The “Stillwater Incident” is a mysterious disaster that took place in 1375AC in the city of Stillwater, Orisla. The cause of the incident is uncertain, but is believed to relate to oldstones, the magical objects burned to power steam engines. Some speculate that a particularly powerful oldstone may have been burned in a factory in Stillwater, triggering the event. Others suspect that the Church of Stones and Stars, a cult religion that worships the oldstones, carried out some sort of oldstone-based terrorist attack.

Incident

The first unusual event reported on the day of the incident was the dismissal of several first-shift workers from the Cope Co. locomotive factory in Stillwater. These men had been deemed unfit to work on account of apparent delusions. Hallucinations are not uncommon among those in proximity to oldstones, but usually not until after a long period of exposure. Yet these workers had broken down almost immediately and refused to work even under threat of being sacked. They were promptly fired, sparing them from the fate of the rest of the factory.

The incident officially began when a fire broke out at the Cope Co. factory. Firefighters arrived on the scene, but no one was rescued. Every worker and supervisor in the factory appeared to have thrown themselves into the machinery, leaving no survivors. The firefighters proved unable to contain the fire. Several machines, clogged with corpses, broke down, resulting in steam engine explosions that fed the flames. Most of the firefighters were forced to flee, but several perished. Accounts differ as to wether these men gave their lives fighting the fire or willingly submitted to it.

The blaze began to consume the city blocks surrounding the factory, causing many to flee the city. From these survivors come many reports of unexplained phenomena witnessed during their flight: Pleading voices in unknown tongues, visions of sand and metal and blood, confusion and despair. Many citizens apparently took their own lives, and quicksteel objects allegedly took on lives of their own, flying into the fires.

The most unbelievable claim, yet one made by nearly every survivor, is that of a great quicksteel tendril that emerged from the burning factory, or perhaps the ground beneath it. Towering over its surroundings, the thing thrashed about as if groping blindly, leveling the burning buildings as it did so. Some survivors believe that the entity was Botar, the demon-god of the Lucist faith, in the form of a great serpent.

Such a claim would defy believability, were it not verified by various sailors in the Stillwater harbor, who reported no visual and auditory hallucinations. They agree with the survivors that the entity thrashed about for several minutes before seemingly collapsing back into the earth, leaving the ruined city to continue to burn. 

Aftermath

The Stillwater Incident was over two decades ago, and much knowledge of it has been censored. Many living survivors are confined to institutions (including the somewhat infamous “Ulkazak Man,” who endlessly repeats the word “Ulkazak'' but panics if anyone else utters it), but more stable survivors will not speak of what they experienced. Much of Stillwater has since been repaired, but the site of the Cope Co. factory has been left bare, allegedly standing as a memorial to those killed in the mysterious incident. Keener minds agree that the site remains untouched out of fear.

The desert frontier of No Man’s Land has a reputation as a place where anyone can make a name for themselves. A place where surnames and past exploits do not matter, and the ambitious chase their dreams under an endless blue sky. But the romance of this reputation has been challenged many times, never more than during the Railroad War. It was true that the figures who rose high during the war were men and women of ambition, but their success was often paved with brutality. Hewg the Huge sacked cities, Rex the Red slew all challengers, and hundreds died in petty power struggles. However one name stands out for its reputation for brutality: Rich the Razor.

Rich was present in Dodgetown on the day the railroad worker’s strike turned violent. When Rex the Red, the greatest outlaw in No Man’s Land at the time, led the sacking of the city, Rich was among the most destructive and gleeful of the rioters. It was during the sacking of Dodgetown that he was first identified, as numerous survivors recalled or bore wounds from his distinctive spiked quicksteel whip. The Railroad War had begun, and Rich’s rise to infamy with it.

When he departed the city, Rich took a handful of fellow rioters with him, the core of the gang that would go on to terrorize the frontier. This gang would swell in size over the course of the war, including names near as infamous as Rich’s, such as the Laughing Samurai and the Blue Tolmikan. Victims impaled on razor-sharp spikes became their grisly calling card. While other players in the Railroad War fought to take control of the desert, decide the fate of the railway, or to settle old grudges with rivals, Rich delighted in chaotic violence, attacking targets almost at random. If he had a grudge, it must have been with every man, woman, and child in No Man’s Land. Those warlords who sought to harness the outlaw’s destructive impulses quickly regretted it; Rich would happily accept an alliance only to sack the city he was hired to defend, or burn the caravan he was hired to escort. Money appealed to him only in so much as he would loot before burning.

In the final days of the Railroad War, when trade in No Man’s Land had all but ground to a halt, Rich the Razor set his sights on the so-called “last caravan” a collection of refugees fleeing the frontier for the safety of Sandport to the south. A day’s ride from the town, Rich and his gang, now over a hundred strong, caught up with the caravan. The thirteen samurai hired to guard the refugees stayed behind to ensure their escape. In the fight that followed the samurai were slain, but not before a quicksteel mace bashed Rich’s head in, ironically leaving a spike impaired in his forehead. The outlaw was unconscious for several days, but ultimately created a pair of quicksteel horns to cover the disfigurement, which he wears to this day. The Order of the Peacekeepers, which now protects the towns of No Man’s Land, was inspired by the sacrifice of the samurai who stopped him.

(A guide to duneworms here)

Looking at yesterday's poll, it seems likely that we might be in for a series of posts about duneworms very soon! I figure that makes it as good a time as any to consider something I've been wondering about for a while; Should they really be called duneworms?

The name duneworm is of course meant to be a very obvious reference to Dune. I didn't think the name had to be particularly subtle because in their earliest iteration (which predates this sub), the duneworm was only a neksut mythical creature and not a real one. However when I was fleshing out ideas of the Elders and oldstone entities, I figured the duneworms could be some of them! They've since gone on to become some of the most prominent oldstone entities in setting.

However, I've gotten comments over the years that the on-the-nose reference of the names of these worms is annoying or immersion breaking to some people. I think that makes a lot of sense since they are so important. As a rule I try very hard not to make major changes because I don't want these posts to be more convoluted than they already are and I don't want anyone to feel punished for remembering something only to find I changed it on them. But I thought I would ask about changing the name duneworm in this case!

What do you think? Should the name change? What would you change it to?

Though it was surpassed in terms of number of combatants by later battles of the Century War, the Battle of Worms was the largest single battle the world had seen until that point, pitting Zen Oro, the Samurai Emperor of Ceram, against the mysterious King of Ildraz.

Prelude

Zen Oro’s invasion was part of a lifetime of conquest. Born the fifth son of the emperor, he had been raised as a samurai with no expectation of inheriting the throne. Upon becoming emperor in a convoluted turn of events, Zen Oro brought a warrior’s mentality to the position. He personally lead his armies to conquer the behemoth kings of Samosan, proving himself to be a great general and a superhuman combatant in his own right.

With Samosan conquered, the only remaining power in the region was Ildraz, a land that remains as mysterious today as it was in antiquity. According to local custom and law, the king of Ildraz is treated as if he has only ever been the same single individual, despite his appearance, age, and sex changing countless times over the centuries. At the time of Zen Oro’s invasion, the king was a young woman with wild eyes and blood upon her brow. Historians in Ildraz would have us beleive this is the same person who currently reigns there.

Armies

Zen Oro’s army was the largest ever assembled up until that point, including over 100,000 infantry, two samurai legions, and 1000 war behemoths (gigantic elephants) from Samosan. By comparison Ildraz’s forces were pitiful, less than 25,000 men, most of whom seemed more afraid of their King than of the enemy.

The armies met on the highlands near the border of Samosan and Ildraz. The King chose the terrain well, as it was quite rocky, forcing Zen Oro’s army to array themselves wildly and preventing them from marching forward in perfect order. Both the Samurai Emperor and the King led their armies personally.

The Battle

Zen Oro, ever eager for personal combat, lead a charge, aiming to crush his outnumbered foe. But the King of Ildraz only laughed, his crown digging into his skin, drawing blood. He spread his palms, and there was a rumbling in the earth.

From out of the ground a great worm burst forth, a titanic spinning tendril that towered over the battlefield. Another followed, then a third, and in the end five of the things answered the King’s call. The worms panicked Zen Oro’s men, but more disastrously his behemoths, many of which fled the battlefield, plowing through allied troops in their terror. Only the second samurai legion stood its ground.

Zen Oro however, only seemed delighted by this new enemy. In the end the Samurai Emperor would personally slay two of the creatures and the Second Legion would defeat another. The others vanished beneath the ground after crashing through Zen Oro’s armies several times.

Long after the worms had disappeared and most of the soldiers had fled, Zen Oro and the King of Idraz waged a great duel upon the highlands, both of them showing a mastery of quicksteel. Scholars consider their clash to be one of the greatest fights between quicksmiths in recorded history. After days of fighting, the two seemed to gain a mutual respect for one another, eventually parting without words.

Aftermath

The Battle of the Worms marked the end of Zen Oro’s conquests, though he ruled his holdings for many decades to come. No army has dared to attack Ildraz to this day.