The Godforsaken setting is about brave souls venturing out of the safety and comfort of their homes into places as removed from all they hold dear as could be imagined. At the heart of the setting lies Bontherre, a place watched over by a pantheon of gods called the Sacrante. Bontherre is safe, as well as dull, at least if you're an adventurer. Players take on the role of those who leave behind the protection and blessings of their gods as they venture into the dangerous and strange Godforsaken Lands, where the power of the gods cannot reach. However, those regions hold wealth and magic not found in the Blessed Land, and those who do go and come back are both admired and idolised. They do it for the reason the proverbial mountain climber climbs the mountain: because it's there.
The setting-neutral information provide examples of:
- Agony Beam: Cambions can fire ruby rays from their finger that strike an enemy prone with torturous pain.
- All Trolls Are Different: A troll is a hideous humanoid standing at least 3 m tall that hunts more by smell than by sight. They are dangerous but not particularly intelligent. Always ravenous, trolls eat anything, and rarely take the time to cook a meal. Usually, they distend their mouths and throats and swallow subdued prey whole.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Merfolk skin ranges from all human colours to green, blue and grey.
- Animated Armor: Hollow knights are animated suits of armour with nothing inside except for the memory of the warrior that once donned the suit.
- Anti-Magic: Discussed. A world that has magic often has a way of suppressing or negating that magic. In an RPG, it introduces a large number of complex problems, partly because of game mechanics issues and partly because the PCs aren't following a script, so every unexpected action they take may require the GM to make another ruling about how antimagic affects them. From an overall game perspective, antimagic takes away much of what a magical character can do, which means it takes away the fun of playing that character. The Cypher System doesn't specify whether character abilities are nonmagical or magical, meaning that as soon as the characters encounter a place where magic doesn't work, the GM has to make a lot of rulings on the fly about whether an ability works there. A Warrior's abilities are probably nonmagical and unaffected, and an Adept's abilities are probably magical and affected, but it's not clear about Explorer and Speaker abilities.
- Asteroids Monster: If a troll suffers a particularly egregious wound, it divides into two smaller trolls. Spawned trolls that have access to food grow into full trolls within a few weeks.
- Basilisk and Cockatrice: A basilisk is a magical kind of serpent that resembles a cobra, has a series of scales on its head like a crown, crawls upright instead of slithering on its belly, and can turn enemies into stone. A basilisk's bite is venomous, and they constantly exhale a powerful toxic gas; as a result, their lairs become surrounded by dead vegetation, blackened earth and pitted stone. Their toxin is so potent that even creatures that are normally immune to poison can be harmed by it; only weasels are immune to it, while other mustelids have limited resistance. Basilisks feed on other snakes, and the sudden flight of snakes from an area is a sign that a basilisk has taken up residence.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: A demon lord can grant a mortal a wish in exchange for an appropriate payment or service, but the wish is often twisted or has hidden consequences.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: A manticore can use its poisonous scorpion-like tail to strike a nearby creature or hurl up to four barbs up to a short distance away, hitting one or more creatures in an immediate area.
- Black Knight: Blackguards are evil knights who serve dark entities or their own corrupt agendas and use high-quality equipment usually decorated with symbols depicting death, demons or evil gods. They are sometimes granted dark magic by their patrons.
- Cat Folk: Catfolk are humanoid felines characterized by an isolationist culture that avoids contact with other species. They are quick and agile, are skilled climbers, and can use their claws as impromptu weapons.
- Charm Person: Discussed. Magic that controls or influences minds is very common in fantasy, but is problematic from a gameplay standpoint because it means the player loses control of their character for a while. Furthermore, some players may get upset if mind control makes their PC (often seen as an extension of themselves) do something out of character. The GM should always be careful when introducing mind control to the campaign and make sure that the actions a controlled character takes aren't something the player doesn't consent to.
- Classical Cyclops: Cyclopes resemble massive humans that stand 15 to 18 meters tall and weigh about 4,500 kg. Everything about them is exaggerated, from the thick features of their faces to their oversized hands and lumpy, corpulent bodies. They clothe themselves in animal skins, scraps of cloth, or canvas stolen during their travels. A cyclops' most distinctive feature is the single eye positioned in the centre of its forehead.
- Crystal Ball: Some enchanted balls of glass or crystal can be used to observe events happening far away from the viewer.
- Death Is Cheap: Discussed. One big question about designing your own fantasy setting is whether people can use magic to revive the dead. Player characters engage in risky behaviour, and sometimes a PC dies because of a poor die roll. There have been many debates about resurrection magic in games, most of which is based on opinions or corner cases. Regardless of your position in that debate, there is one definite fact about character death: it punishes the player, because they aren't able to play until their dead character is revived or they create a new PC.
- Demonic Possession: Some creatures, such as demons, ghosts, entities of living mental energy, and so on, can possess a living person, taking over a character's body as if it were the creature's own. While possessing a character, the creature is immune to most direct attacks (although not so the host; killing the host will eject the creature). The text notes that, since possession takes away a player's ability to control their character, this can make some players very uncomfortable.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: Demon lords are mighty demons, commanding hundreds of lesser fiends and often ruling an entire hellscape dimension. No mere brutes, they are smart, wield powerful magic, make centuries-long plans of conquest against rival demons, and seek to corrupt and enslave powerful mortals. Some are nearly as powerful as gods and are worshipped as such by cultists or evil creatures, claiming ownership of a concept like murder, rot, undeath or seduction. They can grant wishes to mortals in exchange for service or favors, and summon lesser fiends to serve them.
- Draconic Humanoid: Dragonfolk have scales, fangs, claws, and magic — gifts of the dragons. They might have been born of dragonfolk parents, willingly transformed in a magical ceremony, or chosen by a dragon to be their agent or champion.
- Elemental Embodiment: Elementals are primal creatures that can arise spontaneously in areas where a specific natural force predominates.
- Air elementals are animated whirlwinds that form in clouds and among high mountains. They are wild and capricious things, amusing themselves by playing destructive tricks or spying on mortals, and in battle are very difficult to keep track of or strike.
- Thorn elementals resemble tangles of vegetations that arise in areas of dense forest or jungle when these come under threat. They are driven to protect their homes, and will remorselessly kill any who threaten them.
- Water elementals are masses of water that come into being in pristine fresh- and saltwater environments. They are functionally invisible in their native element, but when moving on land take shapes such as large waves, shapeless blobs or moving puddles.
- Elves Versus Dwarves: Discussed. Elves love trees and green things, dwarves love rocks and the underground, and never shall the two agree. This trope and its prejudices are common in most fantasy RPGs that have elves and dwarves. To make things more interesting, the GM is suggested to amplify the conflict so that an elven kingdom and a dwarven kingdom are openly at war, and all other groups of elves, dwarves, and their allies are forced to take sides, or invert this concept by having elves and dwarves be close allies who have no interest in each other's territory, and the other prominent species of the world compete for space with this powerful alliance.
- Evil Sorcerer: Some wizards and sorcerers are tempted by dark magic, inevitably damning their souls and corrupting their flesh as they cut corners and delve into forbidden lore.
- Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity: Dwarves most often use axes, hammers, and crossbows. Elves favor short blades and powerful bows. Halflings prefer weapons useable from range, such as slings and small bows, or knives for hit-and-run strikes.
- Fauns and Satyrs: Satyrs are muscular humanoids with long curved horns and furry, hooved legs. They are self-centred, greedy and sybaritic, dedicated to food, drink and other pleasures. They rob and steal from others as it pleases them, often relying on tricks and lies, or alluring music they play on pipes.
- Flaming Skulls: Dread skulls are wreathed in flame, the byproduct of souls that they burn away to feed on.
- Flaming Sword: Dragontongue weapons trail red fire and black smoke, and scourge their targets with flames.
- Gaia's Vengeance:
- Forests and jungles threatened by deforestation or pollution can spontaneously spawn thorn elementals, which then seek to protect their homes at any cost and will kill interlopers without mercy or remorse. Polluted water can sometimes spawn water elementals to a similar purpose, which will attack people until the mess is cleaned.
- Sapient trees often stand guard around the edges of forests, seeking to protect them against intruding animal life that might cause them or their unmoving kin harm.
- Harping on About Harpies: A harpy is a hideous, filthy creature with the body of a large vulture and the neck and head of an ugly human. Their breath reeks of decay, their wings and talons drip with an unpleasant oil, and their eyes shed acrid tears. They love to torment people and lure them to their deaths, and can place people under a magical trance with their song.
- Hellfire: Cambions can call up hellish energy in the form of an explosion of soul-rending black and crimson fire.
- Hobbits: Halflings stand about three feet tall and tend to be personable and easy to get along with. They prefer to lead quiet lives at home, either in their own villages or in mixed communities with humans, but are taken by the itch for adventure every now and again. When they do join adventuring groups, they often do so as burglars and scouts.
- Hydra Problem: Hydras sprout new heads when wounded, except when they are injured by extreme energy attacks like fire and electricity.
- I Know Your True Name: Each creature has a name written on its soul in the ink of its very essence. Some call this name a true name, soul name, or secret name, and it is never the same as the name that they're known by in the world. Most creatures don't know their true name. It is commonly understood that knowing a demon's true name gives a person power over that demon; what is not as well known is that this applies to any creature.
- Living Shadow: Shadows are semi-intelligent patches of darkness roughly in the shape of a humanoid creature's silhouette. They creep along walls, floors and ceilings, blending in with actual shadows, peeling themselves free only when ready to clutch at a victim with their cold claws.
- Living Weapon: A demonic rune blade is actually a powerful demon transformed into the shape of a sword. The demon cannot speak directly to the wielder, but it can make its desires known by emitting bass rumbles and dirgelike melodies, and by pulling in the direction of its desire.
- Lizard Folk: Lizardfolk are fierce predators who live in isolated, territorial communities in wetlands far from civilization. They are viewed as savage and barbaric by city-dwellers, but their low-tech culture is complex and sophisticated in its own way.
- Medusa: Gorgons are mortals cursed into hideous shapes by gods whom they offended. A gorgon has the upper body of a human of perfect form and physique, and the lower body of a giant serpent, complete with rattling tail. Instead of hair, serpents crown a gorgon's head, snapping and hissing at anyone who draws near. Their gaze can turn any creature to stone.
- The Morlocks: Morlocks are degenerate, blind cannibal humanoids that avoid light. They have prominent teeth, piglike eyes, loose skin, and stooped postures. They avoid bright daylight and prefer to hunt and forage when it is dark out (or at least under the twilight-like canopy of a heavy forest). Morlocks may be descended from humans or near-human creatures, twisted and ruined by inbreeding and mutation.
- No-Sell: Weasels are completely immune to basilisk venom. Weasel-like creatures such as otters, ferrets, and badgers may have limited immunity.
- Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Demons are often genderless or capable of changing their gender at their whim, and typically use whatever gendered terms or titles strike their fancy.
- Our Dwarves Are Different: Dwarves are clannish, slow to trust and slower to forgive. Dwarves found outside their traditional lands are usually explorers or traders.
- Our Elves Are Different: Elves spend their long lives pursuing many different interests and quests. As such, adult elves have often mastered numerous skills, and almost all know a bit of magic. Elves encountered as adventurers tend to be driven by curiosity about the world or to have set out in search of abstract goals such as the perfect sunset or love song.
- Our Fairies Are Different: Faeries are magic creatures of music, mirth, tricks and taunts. Some might only perform a silly song or follow people for a while, flitting around and asking questions like an annoying young child. Some are crueller and delight in stealing clothing, equipment or prized objects. A few are downright malicious and, under the guise of a helpful guide or a pretty light in the distance, lure lost travellers to various dooms. The less malicious ones can be bargained with using offerings of sweet foods or wine, but still tend to have short attention spans.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: When a spirit of a dead creature escapes, fails to find its way to the afterworld or is summoned forth by a necromancer, it may become a wraith: a bodiless spirit of rage and loss. A wraith appears as a shadowy or misty figure that can resemble the person it once was. Some wraiths not too far gone still remember their life and may respond to questions, seek to locate their loved ones or enemies, or even attempt to finish an unfinished task. But in time, even the strongest-willed spirit's mind erodes without physical substance to renew it, and it becomes an almost mindless monster of destruction.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: Jotnar are a type of giant — large, somewhat intelligent, bad-tempered, and cultured in their own way, but generally hostile to little folk. They range from three to six meters tall, are strong, have long hair, and wear armor and use weapons like humans do. Some are hideous, some are attractive by human standards, and some have multiple heads. They live in caves, lodges, or large castles. There are two main types of jotnar: fire and frost.
- Our Gnomes Are Different: Gnomes are a short people characterized by their love of craft, creation and exploration. Other races perceive them as a sort of middle ground between the elves' love of nature and the dwarves' love of craft.
- Our Hydras Are Different: A hydra has five or more writhing serpent heads, each of which constantly exhales a venomous plume. They are well over six meters long from the tip of their longest heads to their thrashing tails, and have the magical ability to sprout new heads when wounded. Some are terrestrial, while others are aquatic. Most seem to have been set as guardians of important places by higher powers, which is probably why they're so difficult to kill.
- Our Liches Are Different: A lich is a powerful wizard or priest who has used their knowledge of necromancy to bind their soul in a magical object called a phylactery, making them immortal and undead unless the phylactery is found and destroyed. Having corrupted its own life energy in an obscene ritual, a lich can pursue its other magical goals, usually the acquisition of more wealth, magic, and power. A newly made lich may look like a recent corpse, but maintaining its physical vessel becomes less of a priority as the centuries pass, so over time liches tend to look withered or even skeletal. Liches often work with or command other undead, such as wraiths, skeletons, vampires, and zombies.
- Our Manticores Are Spinier: A manticore is a fearsome predator that resembles a maned red lion with a human head and a scorpion's tail. The head is bearded and has three rows of teeth in the upper and lower jaws, like a shark. The scorpion tail is covered in multiple barbs, and the creature can flick its tail to hurl these barbs at its prey. Classical manticores were not described as having wings; modern interpretations often give them wings (perhaps due to crossbreeding with chimerae) but say they are poor fliers.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Merfolk are intelligent creatures with humanlike bodies from the waist up and scaly fish bodies from the waist down. Some have small fins on their heads and elbows or webs between their fingers. They can breathe air or water but prefer the sea for its beauty and their better mobility.
- Our Minotaurs Are Different: Minotaurs are aggressive bull-humanoids who enjoy human flesh. Some legends say the first minotaur was the result of a curse from a god, and others suggest it was created by a demon, but the truth is lost to antiquity; the minotaurs themselves do not especially care, and mostly lead primitive lives alone or in small tribal groups. Minotaurs are interested in mazes and mazelike spaces and like to wander within them, memorising the paths and finding good places to stage ambushes.
- Our Sphinxes Are Different: A sphinx is a magical creature with a large lionlike body, feathered wings, and a head that is like that of a human, hawk or ram; regardless of type, they are always efficient carnivores that can devour creatures as easily and quickly as a lion. Wise and fierce, sphinxes have a connection to the divine and are often found guarding temples or persons of great interest to the gods, although whether they serve good or evil depends on the individual sphinx. They wield powerful magic, including the ability to force people to answer difficult riddles.
- Our Wyverns Are Different: Wyverns are aggressive lesser cousins of dragons. Their bodies are about the size of a heavy horse but their wingspan makes them seem much larger. Lacking a dragon's fiery breath or other magical abilities, wyverns rely on their strong flight and deadly stinger to catch and kill their prey, typically humanoids or large animals. Wyverns have four limbs — two legs used for clumsy walking and two arm-wings used for flight and balance.
- Religion of Evil: Evil priests are worshippers of evil gods, demons, devils, strange malevolent forces from beyond known dimensions, or even death itself. They lead cults, corrupt the innocent with lies and twisted ideologies, and enact the will of their patron in the mortal world. The most insidious ones are able to infiltrate good churches and secular organisations in order to tear them down from the inside.
- Riddling Sphinx: Sphinxes can confuse other creatures by forcing them to answer difficult riddles. If their riddle is answered, they can be quite talkative, if arrogant.
- Ritual Magic: Fantasy has many examples of complex magic that takes minutes or hours to complete, involves multiple participants, and is at risk of being delayed, disrupted, or otherwise interfered with by entities who don't want the magic to succeed. This longer form of magic is called ritual magic, and adding it to a fantasy game creates interesting encounter opportunities and world flavour, showing that magic is a process as well as an outcome.
- Semi-Divine: Cambions are cursed creatures, born of mortal and demonic parentage, and are also sometimes called helborn. Most cambions give in to what everyone expects of them, and embrace evil.
- Soul Eating: Soul eaters maintain their existence by absorbing the spirit or mind of living victims, burning the soul away in the process. If a dread skull isn't destroyed within twenty-four hours of eating a soul, the victim's essence is fully consumed.
- Spell Book: A Book of All Spells is a heavy tome containing instructions for casting hundreds of different spells, if not far more.
- Taken for Granite: Anyone who meets the gaze of a basilisk or gorgon risks being turned to stone.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Many cambions turn to evil due to it being the only course left to them in a world that has always expected them to become destructive monsters.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: A character who Takes Animal Shape is a shapeshifter that can take the form of an animal: a werewolf, selkie, kitsune, swan maiden, or similar magical creature that has full control over their transformation and mind in either form.
- Was Once a Man: Gorgons were humans once. After they offended the gods with their vanity, they were transformed into hideous monsters.
- When Trees Attack: Sapient trees look like normal trees until they reveal their true nature, with limb-like branches and faces in the bark of their trunk. With effort, they can uproot themselves and walk about, but usually do so only when no one is looking. The origin and temperament of sapient trees varies; they might be haunted trees possessed by spirits, trees animated by magic spells, or ancient mythical beings. Some are peaceful and noble, but others are downright wicked and cruel.
- Wicked Witch: Hags are evil magical creatures distantly related to the fey. They resemble withered ancient humans with obvious inhuman features — dead eyes, green or purple skin, metal teeth, webbed fingers, and seaweed-like hair are common traits. They love corrupting pure and innocent things, and feast on the dreams and flesh of their victims.
- The Worm That Walks: Each worm that walks is a mass of psionic grubs squirming through a slush of salty ooze. Individually the grubs are harmless vermin, but together they're a sapient entity, a single psionic mind formed of thousands of tiny, maggot-like pupae.
The Godforsaken setting provides examples of:
- Alien Sky: In the Godforsaken Lands, the sun and the night sky are both different from those of Bontherre and each other:
- In Flevame, the sun appears slightly smaller, its light is slightly more pale, and the night sky bears no moon. It is possible to stand on the River of Souls and see two suns, one on each side, or to see Bontherre's moon from the banks of the Flevame side of the river.
- In the Firmament, two suns shine in the sky: one is similar to Bontherre's, the other is very small and red, but grows larger for a year every century or so. All of the Firmament's six moons are smaller than Bontherre's, and they are never all visible at the same time.
- The pale white sun of Korak-Mar gives off far less light than the sun of Bontherre, and does not move across the sky. Its numerous tiny 'moons' are actually pieces of stellar debris that orbit around the sun, but frequently pass close enough to the planet (which has no natural satellite). To people from Bontherre, they might seem like moving stars, unless they pass in front of the sun, at which point it's clear that they do not emit light.
- Amplifier Artifact: Spirit threads are strands of invisible, ethereal matter that, if cut and woven, can be worked into magic items to make them more powerful.
- Arboreal Abode: Long ago, in the Forest of Rotting Castles in Korak-Mar, trees that must have been a thousand feet or more in height and hundreds of feet across grew to the sky and were carved into fortresses by a long-vanished people. All that remains are the burnt stumps of eighty-seven of these colossal tree-fortresses.
- Bat Out of Hell: Charnel bats have a wingspan of 1.5 m and hunt in packs, during which one bat can emit a strange pale red light from its wings. This energy fills the area, and within this red glow, a charnel bat claw or bite passes through flesh and muscle as though it did not exist, grasping a bone and pulling it free.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Lavrenos are testy herbivores whose tails bristle with spikes.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies:
- Krao control 2.5m long ant-like insects as mounts and guardians, and employ 1-foot (30 cm) long insect builders to build tunnel-ridden mounds of hardened earth.
- Aarak are beetle-like insects that range from the size of a large dog to that of a small horse.
- Binary Suns: Two suns shine in the sky of the Firmament. One is similar to the sun of Bontherre — perhaps a bit brighter — but the other is very small and red. Every hundred years or so, the red sun grows slowly larger until it is the same size as its companion, bathing the land in a reddish hue. After a year or so, it shrinks again to its small size. Exposure to the Firmament's brighter sun and its second sun causes sunburn almost twice as fast.
- Blob Monster:
- A cold slime is a patch of animate, semi-intelligent slime attacks any living creature it finds.
- Aevae are undulating masses of green and white gelatinous goo that can harden their fluid forms temporarily to create strangling tendrils that they use to kill and consume prey, adding the biomass to their own, and merge with each other to make a larger one.
- Blood Bath: Legends speak of a magical pool of ancient blood in one of the Rotting Castles. Anyone who can find this pool and bathe in it is granted great unholy power.
- Blood Sport: The Club of Gore is a forlorren secret society that appreciates dark entertainments of bloody fights and gruesome displays of violence. They kidnap other forlorren and pitthem against yammers, vorks, forlorren and more.
- Body Horror: The bite of the snakelike hass causes victims to grow random and disfiguring mutations, such as huge nodules of fat or useless extra limbs. This serves to both incapacitate victims and provide more food for the snake.
- Cargo Cult: The mirrormen literally worship liquid mirror. To them, every bit of it is part of a vast deity, a sacred object or being they are not worthy to touch — but neither is anyone else. Damaging liquid mirror is the greatest sin imaginable, and creating art with it is considered damaging it.
- Creepy Centipedes: Devilworms are six-foot-long millipedes with a venomous bite and surrounded by toxic gases native to the Wilds of the West in the Firmament.
- Death World: Korak-Mar is a dimly lit place of cold winds and bare, black rock. The acidic air burns the inside of one's nose and throat, and its caustic rains burn the flesh of non-natives and eat away at soft materials brought from other lands. Its white dwarf sun suffuses the land with radiation, and, although no native creature seems affected, the flesh of a visitor grows raw, their eyes ache, and even their bones seem to weaken. It is geologically unstable, and riddled with active volcanoes and hidden vents of boiling water. For good measure, it is also home to seemingly endless swarms of biting insects. For Bontherrians, Korak-Mar is a particularly nasty place to visit, even by the standards of the other Godforsaken Lands.
- Dem Bones: Skeletons, human and otherwise and given a semblance of life by dark magic, comprise the vast majority of Crumellia Encomium's undead hordes. They are more automaton than anything else, following orders but not truly intelligent.
- Egopolis: A variant. The two halves of Vothe are named after the sorcerers who built them, Nenne and Nanne, although this was done posthumously.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Azure birds screech in times of otherwise unseen danger, from the presence of a disease to thieves breaking into the house.
- The Exile: When a moord commits very serious crimes, they are typically exiled into the wilderness. Most such individuals die alone. The most powerful or capable, however, find allies amid the Rotting Castles (or possess such skill and strength that they don't need them). Collectively, people refer to them as blackguards.
- Extreme Omnivore: Multilimbed monstrosities as big as elephants, esecran eat anything and everything.
- Fantastic Flora: A peculiar black vine covered in thorns, called deathsgrip by some, grows thick in the Crumbling Mountains of Korak-Mar. It seems to do its part by slowly crushing the red stones within its embrace over years. Somehow, it has no roots, taking what it needs from the air and the acid rains.
- Fantastic Metals: Bellerite is a blue-black metal found only in Korak-Mar. It cannot be damaged or manipulated by magic of any kind, but neither can it be enchanted.
- Festering Fungus: Corpses of creatures that die in the Firmament are sometimes infested with fungal spores that produce fruiting bodies over a few days. By the time much of the flesh has rotted or been eaten off, these fungal growths connect the bones and remaining flesh like muscular tissue, animating the corpse. The fungus possesses a rudimentary intelligence and uses its new body to carry out the will of its god, Uruthuscamosh the Debased. Dwelling deep beneath the surface, Uruthuscamosh continually spreads its spores and seeps further and further into the heart of the world.
- Floating Continent: The Ephemeral City floats in the clouds of Flevame. When visitors approach, if the shoum wish it, the city lowers to the ground to give the newcomers access, should they provide the spirits with a good reason to let them in.
- Flying Seafood Special: Skywhales look just like their oceanic counterparts and also sing whalesongs, but they swim through the air.
- Giant Spider: If the Spider Collective wishes, it can take a few thousand (or more) spiders and have them form a huge spider-shaped mass that can act as a single enormous spider.
- God Is Good: The rulers of Bontherre are literal gods whose wisdom and understanding far exceed that of mortals, and whose ability to act on their insight and knowledge is overwhelming. The gods prevent any sort of catastrophe from coming to their land: no dangerous storms, no swarms of crop-devouring insects, no plagues, and no incursions by foreign invaders. Life in the Blessed Land is safe, peaceful, and comfortable.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Queen Seppar is, to put it mildly, a cruel tyrant whose life has been extended over and over again by magic. Her people put up with her strict rule because Ragelith is quite safe, prosperous and healthy.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Niamos' temper is as short as his patience, and it's not out of the ordinary for him to be pushed to sudden, violent outbursts.
- Haunted Castle: The undead dwell in dark castles of cold stone here and there in the Wilderness of Krym. Each is usually ruled by a vampire who commands a variety of undead soldiers and servants.
- Heavy Worlder: Bontherrian plants and animals acclimated to Flevame, whose gravity is somewhat greater, are stouter, lower to the ground, and generally stronger.
- Hive City: Vothe, a city in Flevame, bgan as a pair of twin Mage Towers whose original owners died long ago. Afterwards, other people came to live in the empty towers and gradually modified them, expanding them and adding additional structures until they grew into a rambling vertical city, many hundreds of meters tall and bristling with dozens of turrets, residential blocks and balcony-markets, that still ultimately consists of two very tall and interconnected buildings.
- Hive Mind: The spiders of the Comerelk jungle are moved by a single mind shared among their number, which moves each individual spider as a regular creature might move its limbs or fingers.
- Humanoid Aliens: Forlorren, the dominant native species of the Firmament, are short, broad, muscular humanoid folk with brilliant golden skin and billowing, silvery hair; moord, the dominant native species of Korak-Mar, could be mistaken for hairless humans with vinous flesh. The 'alien' part comes from how each of the Godforsaken Lands is actually on a different planet, even though the people of Bontherre lack the context to grasp this concept. This doesn't mean that Godforsaken is a science fiction setting; travel to and from the Godforsaken Lands is done via magic, and each world presented is a magical one.
- Human Sacrifice: Krao conduct bloody rituals to appease their apparently always-hungry ancestral ghosts.
- Jekyll & Hyde: The moord's temperament depends on the elaborate movements of Korak-Mar's multitudinous tiny moons. 90 to 95 percent of the time, the moord live calm lives of subdued contemplation and careful, considered action, sleep fairly often, meditate at other times, and do not eat, mate or hunt. The rest of the time (called feasts), moord engage in revels of reckless abandon, hunt wild game with ferocity and bloodlust, eat voraciously, and engage in vigorous sex. However, the changes do not alter the overall ethics of the individual, only the chosen actions and responses to stimuli; a feasting moord becomes more fierce, uninhibited and barbaric, but not insane.
- Kill and Replace: Mirrormen infiltrate communities one individual at a time, murder a carefully chosen victim, take on their appearance and steal their memories in an act of perfect duplication. This is not something they can prevent: if they murder someone, they automatically steal the victim's appearance and memories. Non-mirrormen in the Firmament can also be cursed with this trait, causing them to take on the appearance, memories and nature of anyone they kill: a heroic knight who kills a bandit slowly becomes a cutthroat liar and thief; a sorcerer who slays a ravenous beast becomes savage and voracious.
- Lazy Bum: The mirrormen are inherently lazy, don't repair or replace damaged things and certainly don't craft or build anything, leading to the decay of any forlorren settlement that they take over.
- Living Statue: Vintaak resemble stylised statues of humanlike figures, with intricate patterns etched into every surface, adorned with jewels and precious metals in aesthetically pleasing ways.
- Lizard Folk: Krao are reptilian humanoids who prefer to eat mammals of any kind.
- Mage Species:
- Each hederar has a single innate magical ability. While most are innocuous, like producing a small flame or having a supernatural sense of balance, some hederar can conjure violent storms or teleport hundreds of miles, and there seems to be no way to tell how powerful a hederar is just by looking.
- The forlorren wield powerful magic, and their magical powers are so innate and subtle that they don't even realise they are using such abilities.
- Mage Tower: According to legend, the city of Vothe originated as a pair of towers built by two sorcerers, twin siblings, in which to reside and work. They were originally built many miles apart, but the link between their owners caused them to drift together over time. In the modern day, despite having been built over and modified by centuries of habitation, the city still resembles a pair of hodgepodge, rambling towers standing side by side.
- Magic Music: Rastikar are magical birds with an enchanting song which makes those who hear it fall into a calm, almost blissful stupor. Not surprisingly, predators like to wait near (but not too near) where a rastikar is singing, so that when the bird is done or flies off, they can easily reach the stupefied prey.
- The Maker: Riamanne created and continues to create everything that exists. Living beings may thank Eviraimon for their life, but they have Riamanne to thank for their physical body. This god created every rock, every blade of grass, every storm, every creature in Bontherre.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Vintaak are living creatures made of metal and stone that insist that they were not crafted or created, but born naturally from the soil of Korak-Mar.
- Mood-Swinger: Allafreda's demeanour changes as easily as her shape. She adores you one moment and is bored of you the next.
- Mordor: A blasted heath, occasionally punctuated by copses of shrivelled, grey trees, the Wilderness of Krym is exceedingly dry and perpetually withered, forever in the process of dying. Other than the occasional carrion birds or biting insects, no living creature resides in this wilderness.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Esecran are multilimbed monstrosities that can attack every foe in close range with a different limb.
- Multiple Head Case:
- The predatory hass resemble 3 m pythons with two heads.
- Vork-wolves have two heads, each with powerful jaws. They can attack a single foe twice or two foes at the same time.
- Nature Spirit:
- Each shoum is intrinsically linked to a natural element of Flevame, whether it be a tree, a stone, a body of water, or something similar. As ethereal creatures tied to physical aspects of the world, shoum possess a dual nature. Although spirits, they can manipulate their associated matter to affect the physical world. Thus, a stone shoum spirit can move or throw rocks, while a river shoum spirit can control the flow of water.
- Voroon are spirits of the Comerelk forest, given physical form by inhabiting pieces of decaying vegetation. They are related to the shoum, but do not coexist well with them. The voroon can be more contemptuous of material creatures that enter their domain.
- Nightmare Sequence: In the Dreaming Mountains, slumber brings lucid dreams of distant worlds and alien beings in cyclopean cities. The longer one experiences such a dream, the harder it is to awaken. Some dreamers eventually disappear altogether, presumably dwelling henceforth in regions beyond even the Godforsaken Lands.
- Non-Human Head: Grave behemoths are towering giants 3.5 to 4 m tall with thick, muscular bodies whose head has been replaced by a gravestone.
- Non-Human Undead: Plenty of skeletons in Crumellia Encomium's army used to be clearly animals, nonhuman humanoids, or beasts that are difficult to recognise.
- Non-Indicative Name: Mirrormen is a misnomer in every way: these creatures have no gender, and do not reflect appearances — they steal them.
- The Omniscient: Vanemerre, reportedly, is all-knowing, at least in regard to all things Bontherre. She knows where everything and everyone is, and she sees what the future will bring. All paths through time and space are known to her.
- One Person, One Power: Each hederar has a specific supernatural ability that it can innately access. These are entirely random and can range from trivial in scope, such as being able to emit a specific pungent smell or create a candle-sized flame, to fairly useful, such as telepathy, immunity to fire, or electrified physical attacks, to extremely powerful, such as being able to summon storms or teleport hundreds of miles.
- Orcus on His Throne: Crumellia Encomium, the immortal necromancer who rules over the deathly lands of Flevame, is a surprisingly passive figure, as she has no particular interest in expansion — she is perfectly content to stay in her palace and experiment with magic, does not particularly desire new lands or more subjects (she can always make more servants if she so wishes), and doesn't really care about the living people who dwell on her land. She would be no real threat except for one thing: she deeply hates the adventurers who come from Bontherre to steal her treasures, loot her castles and destroy her creations, and does everything in her power to keep them out of Flevame and kill them if they come anyway.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The forlorren are muscular and broad-shouldered humanoids that stand only about 1.5 m tall. They dwell in small holdings that exist both above and below the surface, built into the sides of their hills, and employ magic that they call 'engineering'. The forlorren worship no gods, but they deeply respect and revere both sky and earth, and think of them as sacred. They are a practical folk, although they appreciate the aesthetics of both sight and sound.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts are ethereal undead created by the necromancer Crumellia. They have no memories of or attachment to their former lives, and instead delight in serving as spies for their dark master.
- Our Ghouls Are Different: Ghouls are undead humans created by the necromancer Crumellia as shock troops and elite soldiers, and lair in dark pits until she unleashes them to hunt down those who have earned her wrath. They bear no resemblance to their living selves in body or in mind, and are savage predators that attack anything that lives unless explicitly ordered otherwise. They get their name from their love of hunting and devouring the living — they don't need to eat, they just like doing it.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Hederar are goblin-like humanoids native to the Comerelk jungle, small of size and selfish of spirit. They make clothing from furs and skins, weapons of sharpened wood or stone, and various crude tools. They eat flesh and greedily lust after shiny treasures of any kind. They live in small, wandering bands and sometimes capture and force other creatures, like wolves or hyenas, to serve them. They also each have a unique, and mostly random, magical ability that they can innately access.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires are powerful undead created by the necromancer Crumellia to act as her assassins, generals and advisors. Unlike other undead, they are free-willing, and some have chosen to desert their creator and strike out on their own.
- Physical God: The Sacrante, the gods of Bontherre, have physical bodies and appear human, but their inexplicable majesty cannot be mistaken. Almost always accompanied by a retinue of carefully selected mortal attendants, they dwell together in the city of Coerve or apart in individual palaces scattered across Bontherre. This means that mortals can see the gods walking among them, and this kind of proximity creates a bond between a worshipper and the subject of their worship. The Sacrante are not distant, removed entities whose attentiveness (and maybe even existence) can be at times in doubt. Everyone in Bontherre can see that their gods truly exist and maintain awareness of all that transpires.
- Physical Religion: In Bontherre, where the gods are visible, perform miracles every day or empower their priesthood to do likewise, disbelief isn't just rare, it's idiocy. A few people renounce the gods and refuse to give them worship, but most want to show their gratitude and fidelity to the beings that make their lives so good. People who don't want the Sacrante in their lives probably move to a Godforsaken Land; those who remain in Bontherre are generally treated by society with condescending patience, as though they are quite mad. This makes it a bit difficult for Bontherreans to interact with people from the Godforsaken lands who worship more distant or abstract things, since they are not used to faith in the unseen being a part of worship.
- Poisonous Person: Devilworms have a venomous bite, and emit toxic vapours all around them when they wish through spiracles all along their body.
- Precursors: South of the Comerelk forest in Flevame lies a land filled with crumbling ruins and abandoned cities. The people who built and inhabited these structures are long gone, but many of their ghosts remain.
- Retired Badass: The legendary adventurer Turion is an old man now and has chosen to live out his days in Castle Turion, a safe refuge for those following in his footsteps to explore the Firmament.
- Rock Monster: Stone shoum can take the form of a giant humanoid made of moving stone.
- Shadow Walker: Disciples of the darkening way can move from any shadow in the land to any other shadow, instantly.
- Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The art of the necromancer Crumellia Encomium shows her wearing a chestpiece made from ribs and a human skull, hip pieces fashioned of animal crania, boots made from shaped vertebrae, and a crown of splintered bone.
- Sky Whale: Skywhales are creatures native to Bontherre that resemble regular whales in everything except that they fly and are blind, relying on echolocation to navigate. Domesticated skywhales, which bear gondolas both above and below their bodies, are to move to and from the plateau-city of Setvesous and the gate to the Firmament that lies high above it in the sky.
- Sorcerous Overlord: Crumellia Encomium is an undying necromancer of great power who once ruled over the entirety of the lands immediately across the River of Souls, before years of incursions drove her hordes away.
- Stalker with a Crush: Recently, a deceased man named Corve rose from his grave, eventually slipping into the shadows of Vothe. Skulking there, he began breaking into the home of Zabyn, a woman with whom he was obsessed in life; that obsession has continued into death. Corve doesn't seek to harm her, but his entreaties of love seem menacing and ghastly now that he's dead. Zabyn needs the help of someone who can either destroy her undead harasser or convince (or force) him to leave her alone.
- Stealthy Colossus: Stone shoum are very large but are usually invisible unless they cause a stone to form a humanlike face to interact with others.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: The forlorren don't consider magic supernatural, and simply think of it in a very scientific fashion. Talk of spells, rituals and the like sounds like nonsense to them. The way they understand it, when they create a flying machine or a floating tower, it works because they fashioned it in a particular way, not because it's imbued with magic. They believe that with the right training and practice, anyone can command magic (they are wrong) and that it's just harnessing the natural laws of their world (perhaps true, but not as literally as they believe).
- Summon Magic: Moord sorcerers summon strange beings from somewhere else. These entities perform services for the sorcerer and then return whence they came.
- Supervillain Lair: Rising out of the bog like a monolith, Crumellia's palace is a snarl of grey angles and jutting iron extremities. Its many towers spew forth smoke both dark and green, the by-products of her foul magical practices.
- Swamps Are Evil: The northern part of the Wilderness of Krym in Flevame is a stinking, mostly lifeless bog, with the exception of poisonous serpents, bloodthirsty leeches and scuttling creatures. The bog is filled with the remains of ancient dead, ensuring that Crumellia never goes without raw materials for her dread sorcery.
- Temple of Doom: Legends say that a temple built by unknown hands lies submerged under Autarch's Lake. In its inner sanctum, the dead can be brought back to life, but would-be explorers need to actually survive the cold, dark deeps and find the temple.
- Those Magnificent Flying Machines: Turion has a magical flying craft that looks like an enormous falcon made of wood.
- Tidally Locked Planet: Korak-Mar is tidally locked, as it closely orbits its white dwarf star. The pale white sun gives off far less light than the sun of Bontherre, and does not move across the sky. Korak-Mar has no day nor night, just a sickly dim twilight lasting an eternity.
- Traveling Salesman: A male human roams the wilderness of the Firmament in a brightly painted wagon, pulled by a pair of blue horses. He sells a variety of magical potions, charms, and other things. This mysterious, unknown man speaks the language of seemingly every being in the Firmament, and while he is welcome everywhere, no one seems to fully trust him. Where does he get his wares, and why is he so interested in selling them? And is it true that he knows secret paths through the wilds that no one else knows?
- Tree Top Town: The shaliss build crude shelters on the branches and canopy of the Comerelk forest.
- Tunnel King: Some moord possess the strange ability to tunnel through space, creating invisible passages. Though no faster than walking above ground, it does allow one to move undetected and untouchable.
- Underground City: Fully half of Ettatomain lies underground, within and beneath the hills. Almost every structure extends down into the earth as much as (or more than) it exists above the surface. These are not mere cellars or basements, but functioning parts of the town, connected by broad subterranean passages just as they are connected by streets above.
- Utopia: Bontherre could almost be considered a paradise, as the power of divinity nurtures, protects and provides. While life is not free from toil — farmers still till fields and tend flocks, merchants still transport and sell goods, workers still build and repair, and so on — it is virtually free from poverty, disease and war. Even in the wilderness, the gods' influence keeps people relatively protected. That's not to say that no one ever runs afoul of a predator or gets caught in an avalanche, but it's very rare, and rescue or healing is never far away, thanks to the priesthood and those armed with divine artefacts.
- Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Lorria are six-legged deer that navigate the rockiest, most uneven terrain in the hills of the Firmament with ease.
- Vice City: Many criminals from Bontherre come to Vothe to hide from the authorities. This makes it a dangerous city with a large number of cutthroats and murderers. Worse, they are paranoid cutthroats and murderers, wary that anyone coming from the Blessed Land might be there to apprehend them.
- The Virus: Sometimes, fungal dancers capture a creature to sacrifice and immediately turn into another of their own kind.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Allafreda often appears human, but she is not, and can change her shape as she wishes.
- Walking Ossuary: Many of the skeletons that serve Crumellia the necromancer are chimeric hodgepodges of mismatched bones, many of which were likely created more as grotesque works of art than anything else.
- Wicked Wasps: Yammers are dangerous hornet-like insects as long as a person's arm, with grasping mandibles and massive stingers. They first bite and latch on, and then sting a victim repeatedly until they break free or die.
- The Worm That Walks: The spiders of the Comerelk jungle are moved by a single Hive Mind. At need, this mind can gather up a few thousand bodies and arrange them into a single mass in the form of a colossal spider.
- Your Magic's No Good Here: Since the gods of Bontherre cannot extend their divine might into other solar systems, magic from the Sacrante or originating in Bontherre is useless in the Godforsaken Lands. Although personal independent magic has far greater limits, requires far more skill and practice, and pales in comparison to magic wielded by the priests, or to the creations of the gods (let alone the gods themselves), it's the only magic that works in the Godforsaken Lands.
