The world is on the brink of disaster - food shortages, wars, environmental disaster - and you’re just trying to get by.
On the war-torn continent of The Meld, the time for solving problems has passed. Once in the not so distant past, people had hope. The engineers of Ravaldia discovered the steam engine, the druids of the North Marshes experimented with innovative ways of growing crops, and the Pact of Martoghast defied death with their healing magic. The old fears of war and scarcity faded.
But the leaders of Ravaldia yearned not for peace, but for power. A decade ago, a violent coup saw the city’s council dispatched and a powerful mage, Yarticus Triconocule, crowned in their place. Soon after, the invasions began. “They hoard the food our citizens need,” Triconocule said of the Marshes. “They withhold aid as political leverage,” he said of the Pact.” And so the banners were called, and the Mage Emperor of Ravaldia began his conquest.
Bloody years of fighting followed that left the land scarred with the calamitous effects of magical warfare. The Marshes burned, the Pact was infiltrated by Ravaldian loyalists and turned into a secret police force. The resistance coalesced around the city of Dark Gulch, where surviving druids of the North Marshes joined forces with exiled nobles and the city’s Thieves’ Guild to make a stand.
With their skills in sabotage, the Gulchers were able to destroy many of the factories of Ravaldia, halting their march across the continent and leaving the opposing forces in a bloody stalemate that lingers to this day. With technology shattered, the environment scorched, and healing magic turned towards destruction, people have lost hope. Food shortages and famine abound, and most people care not who wins the war - they wish only to survive.
The Mission
Your characters will start in Kersh, a city in the west that abuts a region known as The Highlands, a great plateau wasteland. Kersh is a middlingly-populous city that lies at the bottom of the plateau along the Fogbearer River. You are working for a prominent courier company, Bobart Goods Co. You’ve been working together for some time and know each other well. Your party is well-regarded in the company and are among the highest performers - you’re good at what you do. Business has been good, especially because Bobart Co will take contracts from virtually anyone to deliver virtually anything - and the Dark Gulch military needs lots of things to be moved around during wartime.
Your latest contract is to deliver a highly secure cart of goods to a private individual who wishes to remain anonymous. The customer, an extremely wealthy individual, has paid for the highest security and utmost discretion - hence your party being picked for this job. You are to prep the goods for departure and be ready to leave at dawn the next day. The delivery address will take you to a remote location in The Highlands. Who is this mysterious individual? What are they doing in the middle of the barren highlands? And what exactly do they need delivered so urgently?
If you’re interested in learning more about the setting, check Our Last Hope - Campaign Frame. There are a lot of details that are unnecessary to know there, so don’t worry about reading all of it. It contains specific information about how certain ancestries and backgrounds work in this setting, so will be useful when creating a character.