Orilon is a continent, slightly larger than Canada in area. The bulk of the continent is in the east. Generally, the further east, the smaller the size of the realms. At the western end of the continent are two areas, Jolal and Chimix, known as the almost-islands. Chimix is a large peninsula, and Jolal would be a peninsula itself if it weren’t connected to Chimix as well as the rest of Orilon.
Orilon lies in a temperate band on the planet Sarpala. Ancient scholars named the planet after a mythological goddess of the old days, and then named the continent after one of her many daughters. The scholars knew the rough size of the planet and the size of Orilon. They assumed that there must be more than one continent the size of Orilon on the planet, since there was room for more. There are more continents, but none had ever been found in the past.
One other continent is mentioned as the ancestral home of a dragon in the short story “Ain’t No Such Thing as Dragons.” The final short story, “Still No Such Thing as Dragons,” also has a dragon, and another continent. It is deliberately unclear whether the continents mentioned in these two stories are the same one or not.
Emperors, kings, merchants all tried to discover these hypothetical other lands, but none did. Most ships went out and never returned. Optimists speculated the ships had found land and decided not to return. Pessimists believed the ships had been lost in storms or found hostile lands and their crews had been killed. A few ships did return after as much as two months, but none of them found land. They had turned back because the crews threatened mutiny if they could not go home.
Orilon has a long recorded history, going back several thousand years. There were kingdoms here and there that grew and shrank, combined and broke apart, for most of that time. Magic was a major feature of life throughout the continent. Wizards were familiar sights in all the different realms. There were not great numbers of them, but they were still common, more numerous than the nobility.
Wizards made magical items of all sorts and sold them to whoever had the money. Some items were made in great numbers and were relatively cheap. Some were made on order for rich and powerful people, items that were usually one of a kind. Some wizards roamed Orilon from town to town, others settled in one place. Most worked for kings and powerful nobles.
Fifteen hundred years before the time of the story, Zarbonius the Great created the first continent-wide empire. Other rulers had called themselves emperor, but he was the first to actually rule the entire continent.
His grandfather had begun the amalgamation of various states into a larger realm for himself. His father continued that work, and Zarbonius completed the merger of all other realms into his empire. The various existing kings and rulers were given positions of importance within the empire, mostly ruling over their old lands as his governors. But he was a strict ruler, and a governor who became too independent would be executed and replaced.
Once the empire was established there were few wars, except for the occasional rebellion by a former king who didn’t like being a former king. Eventually they ended, and many of the old royal houses died out, further reducing the chance of rebellions. For over two hundred fifty years there was general peace throughout Orilon.
Then the emperors started to get careless and incompetent. They let favorites run the government and appointed them as governors. Ambitious governors who were imperial favorites took liberties and made themselves more locally powerful than the early emperors had ever allowed. In time they began to borrow the customs of the imperial court for themselves.
At the same time the emperors were giving their sons more personal power and authority. The first emperors had kept a firm control on power, and only one son had a chance to succeed his father. Now two or three sons might be given a large share of the imperial power during their father’s lifetime. They aggrandized this power into nearly independent status. Who could stop them if their father wouldn’t? Fighting occasionally broke out between these sons, and also with the more insolent governors.
Starting about five hundred years after the founding of the empire the fighting became more frequent and severe. Imperial sons, grandsons, cousins, anyone with some ancestral claim to semi-royal estates, began to act as fully independent rulers. So did many governors, challenging the emperor and the other seekers after power.
To begin with they all sought to replace the emperor and rule in his stead. But there were too many claimants for total power and the warfare never stopped. One man might make himself emperor and kill many of his rivals, but he never lasted more than a decade at best. After a century of war the emperor still ruled, but his empire was fractured. There were not yet any truly independent states, but the emperor no longer had full control over all his lands. More fighting over the next hundred years resulted in the empire being broken into a dozen pieces, ruled by whoever had survived the fighting.
These kingdoms fought each other, some breaking into smaller states, some trying to rebuild the empire and rule all Orilon, some to gain some smaller advantage over this neighbor or that. A slice of a nearby kingdom made one’s own kingdom stronger and richer, and oneself more important.
Three hundred years of on and off warfare saw many changes to the borders of the several realms, but no great empire building. There were several long stretches of peace, and some wars only involved part of the continent. Then ambition grew again.
Three new powers rose over a century, building up the way the old empire had. Take a piece off that neighbor’s land, then another, then another, then swallow the rest. Marry into the line of a childless ruler and inherit his lands. Conquer a weak neighbor outright.
One of the three large kingdoms was based in the western areas of Chimix and Jolal. The other two split the rest of the continent, one in the north, the other in the south. Once these three kingdoms were formed it became just a matter of time before they were fighting to see which would rule them all.
A major war began and lasted for a century. It was called the Big War. Some of the wars over the division of the old empire had covered much of the continent. But they were long over and largely forgotten, and none had lasted too long. This war involved everyone and there were no long breaks in the fighting. Cities were burned, towns destroyed, villages vanished without a trace.
The Big War ended in a gigantic battle between all three kings. The legends say hundreds of thousands of warriors fought for months in an area of northern Radalis and southern Wilu which is still sparsely populated. It is called the Great Wasteland. No towns or villages in the area survived. The people were killed or fled and never returned. Disease would have destroyed all the armies, but they moved on as the piles of bodies rose in one area. Whole towns elsewhere in Orilon lost many of their young men, dying in this immense slaughter.
The three kings themselves were killed and their sons. No one knows how many warriors died in the battle, but the legends say it was almost as many as had fought. The three kingdoms collapsed into small warring states. So even more warriors were killed until there were few left to fight.
There was no more work for warriors as warriors, but most of the survivors knew no other work, having fought for most of their lives. They turned to what they knew, using weapons to make a living by using force to take what they wanted. They became highwaymen, bandits, brigands (more organized bandits), rogues, adventurers. As nobles recovered from the Big War, they began stomping out the worst of these men, often by using one band against another. After a long while the small groups of rogues left were ignored and survived.
Ordinary farmers who had been burned out of their villages sometimes came back and rebuilt. But many places were so destroyed that the former residents never came back. They took carts, often pulled by hand, filled with what little they had salvaged and their families. In time they stole horses or oxen to pull the carts, then built small huts on the carts for shelter. In more time, keeping on like this, they became the Wanderers. They traveled everywhere without regard for borders or the law.
They had simple weapons, knives, clubs, farm axes, almost never a sword. They rarely fought except in drunken brawls. They were afraid of serious combat and would run away if challenged by a strong looking body of men, even if small. They lived by stealing as they traveled, taking chickens, piglets, and lambs from farmyards.
They were infamous as horse traders. One of their favorite tricks was to offer a fine looking, obviously valuable horse at a very good price. If an ordinary horse was worth 200 moons and a nobleman’s horse was worth 500, this horse would look like one fit for a noble, but was offered for a mere 200 moons. The buyer would agree to the deal and go home for his money. He would be told to meet the seller at the crossroads outside town after dark. In the dark he would pay for the horse and take it home. In the morning he would find an old beat up wreck of a horse instead of what he thought he had bought. The Wanderer would have fled as soon as the buyer was out of sight.
Each of the kings assembled all the wizards he could, trying to use magic to win the prize. Each of them devised special methods of attacking the others’ wizards. None succeeded at the first goal, but they all succeeded at the second. By the end of the Big War there were no more wizards left in Orilon. Even the young wizards-in-training had been recruited to fight and were dead.
The wizards had schools for the training of new wizards, but all the teachers and students of any ability had gone to war. There were books of magical lore, grimoires, but they were written in a secret language that only properly trained wizards could read. Those students who had learned the language had been killed with their teachers. There were guides to reading the grimoires, but the kings who destroyed their rival wizards also destroyed their books. Some grimoires survived, but not the guides to reading them.
So the results of the Big War were the disappearance of all wizards from Orilon, the emergence of dangerous bands of rogues, the rise of less dangerous but equally thieving Wanderers, and the renewed fragmentation of Orilon into small realms.
The three big kingdoms lost their kings and heirs. Many of the major noblemen who would have taken their places were also dead. Even lesser noblemen had been killed in large numbers. But there were survivors. And there were ambitious rogues who took advantage of the chaotic times to seize power in places where the nobles were gone. The big kingdoms split into small realms, some expanding, some being gobbled up by others.
Fifty years after the end of the Big War found Orilon divided into a very large number of small states. A few tried to claim the title of kingdom, but most settled for more modest titles. Those that grew larger increased their titles as they grew. In the centuries since, many changes occurred, with realms growing and splitting. Rebellions were again possible, and many counties broke off from larger polities.
One kingdom has arisen, Taril, the largest single state at present. Several principalities and grand duchies exist. Most other realms are duchies, with a scattering of small counties. There are also a number of independent or semi-independent city states, Free Cities by name. (Shown on the map as white areas.) They were granted a certain amount of freedom by kings looking for financial support and enlarged on their freedom during the years of chaos after the Big War. They are rich enough to raise armies to defend themselves. Though their wealth tempts their neighbors, they are strongly fortified and can afford to hire larger armies if they need them.
The planet Sarpala has a year of 400 days. The humans of Orilon have created a calendar used across the continent of ten months of forty days each. Each month has four weeks of ten days. This makes for a very regular calendar. The first day of a week, the first day of a month, the first day of the year, all fall on the same astronomical day all the time. Days are not named in the stories. Yes, it would make for a little more realism, but the names would not be used often enough for the reader to become familiar with them. I plotted the story out on the calendar, giving specific dates for certain events, but left out that information as being unnecessary. Almost all the action occurs in sequential order, so the dates would be more confusing than helpful.
There are four intelligent races on Orilon. Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Trolls. Humans are just like Earth humans, although they all have the same skin color. You may imagine that to be whatever suits you. Their skills, arts, cultures are Earth-like. The society is roughly medieval, a feudal system with high ranking nobles who have enfeoffed subordinates. The peasants are free, not serfs or slaves. The existence of slaves is mentioned, but none are encountered in any of the stories.
Trolls are mentioned briefly in a couple of stories, but never appear. Dwarves have a brief, non-speaking cameo in one of the stories. Elves have a prominent role in one story.
Dwarves are short, bearded, and live in underground cities. These cities are deliberately carved from the mountain above them. Dwarves dig mines for minerals, gems, and other valuable stones. The mines are dug to form the cities; the production of valuable minerals, etc., is secondary to creating the cities. Dwarves have figured out how to get the smoke from their fires out of their tunnels, so they have forges and make items from the ores they excavate.
Dwarves’ flesh appears to be stony. It’s not stone, but it’s denser than human flesh, and tougher than even elf flesh. Their skin is grayish, like stone. They live underground like trolls, but they come outside more often, even in the day, so they’re not that pasty white like trolls. They have farms near their underground cities, and trade the minerals from their mines to humans for more fame produce, especially animals for meat.
Elves are roughly the same size as humans. Their flesh is sort of woody, which gives their muscles more strength, and makes it harder to cut them. Because they’re kind of part plant, elves have skin that comes in a varied mix of shades of brown and green, a little like a calico cat. This makes them hard to see in the woods, which is why some people think they can become invisible.
They live in forests, and do not use fire unless they can be absolutely certain it will not break out and burn down their forests. They have developed other means than cooking for preserving foods, including meats. Their dwellings are in the upper branches of trees, specially trained as they grew to provide them with living platforms. Their social life is largely conducted on the ground.
Elves trade dead trees and branches to humans for cooked foods, metal objects, beer, and wine. They object to humans cutting trees down, but are quite willing to trade away dead wood that would provide kindling for a raging fire.
Elves are skilled wood carvers, creating intricate designs, often of exceptional size. They will sometimes treat a whole dead branch as a single object to be decorated. Some of their carvings are traded to humans.
Trolls are much larger than humans, perhaps two feet taller than most humans, and broad in proportion. Same for strength. They live underground and are pasty white because they never get any sunlight. They don’t see too well in the daylight, it’s too bright for them. But in a cave, or at night, they see really well; they seem to sense body heat somehow.
In a fight, they know where to hit, and they hit hard. They use clubs mostly. They’ll use swords if they can get them, but they don’t make them. Trolls never have learned the Dwarf secret of getting smoke out of a cavern, so they can’t run forges or have any fires. So they can’t make metal weapons or armor. They are less intelligent than the other races, but they’re not stupid. People who treat them like dumb animals die a horrible death.
They sing and tell stories, mostly myths of their ancient times. They dance, after their own fashion, but few outsiders ever see any of this. They have no other arts of their own, but sometimes will trade with the other races for objects that appeal to them.
Trollish flesh is more like human flesh, but it’s very oily. Their skin is shiny from the oil, and they’re hard to grab because of it. Their bodies are more oily inside, too. That may be why trolls don’t care about having fires. They may be afraid they’ll burn up quickly if they fall into a fire.
Trolls sometimes fight with Dwarves over who will occupy a given mountain but not often. Trolls only live in caves, while Dwarves carve their cities out of the natural rock. Trolls hunt outside, at night, because they can’t grown food underground. They prefer larger animals, like cows, which makes human farmers unhappy. They trade with humans for some food and metal objects. They offer the only food product of their caves, the salakarna, a very large blind worm. It looks hideous, but its flesh is exceptionally tasty. Humans pay well for one.
At the beginning of the stories, there is no magic to speak of. Some rare magical items have survived from the older days, but no one knows how to make more. The existence of such things has kept alive the knowledge that there used to be wizards, rather than letting them become just a myth. But it has long been believed by all, that magic is gone, that no one can perform it, that it is effectively impossible.
Magic doesn’t require wands, incantations, or spoken spells. Instead of ‘spells’ a wizard performs ‘feats’ the way a warrior would perform a feat of arms. It is entirely performed by the will of the wizard, using his mental strength to manipulate the world around him. The stronger his mind and will, the more powerful his magic. Because the wizard uses only his mind, there is nothing obvious about his performing magic. A wizard sitting quietly in the corner might be preparing some spectacular bit of magic to spring on everyone about him, and they would have no clue.
Most magic lasts forever, unless deliberately dispelled, or the magical item is damaged or destroyed. Some magical feats affect someone’s mind, usually to put someone to sleep, or to persuade someone to do something. This is not hypnosis, but a type of extreme persuasion. Since it is backed by the strength of the wizard’s mind, it is harder to resist than a normal suggestion would be.
However, the person being persuaded has to be receptive, at least slightly willing to go along. A tired man is much easier to put to sleep than a man who has just awakened from a good night’s sleep. These ‘suggestion’ magics aren’t permanent. Someone put to sleep will only sleep for a few hours normally.
I have tried to use new terms for the magical feats in the story. Magical doorways to another place are called ‘portals’ because that’s a commonly used term for such things, and I couldn’t come up with something better. But a magical loudspeaker is called a ‘strongvoice.’ Teleportation is called ‘magical jumping.’ Projecting one’s thoughts into another’s head is called ‘mind speaking.’ Being able to see distant things as if they were close up is called ‘distant vision.’ Because of how they were invented, lamps with an illusion of a flame are called ‘elf lamps.’ Air can be compressed into a solid, called an ‘air wall’ which can be shaped in many different ways, including making small sheets to set into a shutter, making a modern ‘window.’
Serious wounds may be healed magically, but no wizard is able to resurrect the dead. Nor is any wizard able to cure diseases. There is no magical way to avoid old age or its discomforts. An old wizard who had trouble walking might float himself where he wanted to go, or do a magical jump. But he couldn’t offer this as an artifact to help someone else.
A wizard may create a flame on his finger, or any other object, but fireballs and lightning bolts are not possible. The stories mention, in a few places, that there is magic which will kill someone, but it is not described or used. It is only said that it must be done at very close range.
There is no magical way to heat or cool a place. Weather is also beyond a wizard’s abilities, mainly because the magic would have to encompass such a large volume of air and space that only a wizard with an astoundingly strong mind could attempt influencing the weather.
Wizards can’t create something from nothing, or change one thing into another. The closest they can come to doing this is to create an illusion. An illusion can hide the actual appearance of something, making it seem to have been transformed. Illusions have no substance, and trying to touch them will show them to be fake.
Most people have familiar Earth names: Ben, Theodore, Sadie, etc. Peasants and lower status people have names of one or two syllables. Urban dwellers have names of two, three, or four syllables, depending on their status. Merchants and priests have names of three or four syllables. Laborers and craftsmen tend to have two syllable names.
Nobles of all ranks have names of three or more syllables, all made up, none like any Earth name. I made no attempt to have family names for nobles, or for commoners, either. First names for everyone. Nobles with long, multi-syllable, names do not have nicknames or shortened versions of their names.
The Gods also have polysyllabic names of at least three syllables, except Death. (His exception is explained in the stories.) I have usually referred to the Gods by name, and their function, as in Pronustio, God of Commerce. This is because many of them are not mentioned often enough to become familiar to the reader.
Elves have polysyllabic names with lots of ‘R’s. No particular reason, except to make them different.