Gothic Aphrodite on The Cross (3.5e Campaign Setting)

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Gothic Aphrodite on The Cross

Foreword

The author is not racist and does not at all sympathize with the world he creates,
rather he enjoys the degeneracy and the absurdity of it but first of comes its a style.
Becouse gothic fiction and exoticism is often racist, the setting is created that way.
In exoticism writing style, other cultures only exist as symbols of the romanticists restrained
primitivism and as a tool to confirm how "dull" their civilisation is.
The concept is a gothic and New Art hybrid, a fantasy world with both the dark and the light
expressed in by the style in the artwork and paintings.
It might be confusing and contradictionary at best, but the concept is an uncut diamond.

Civilisation

All buildings and all things, all civilisation are ruins and all ruins representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations
celebrate the beauty of death and decay. In fact, humanity always retroactive “have” created against all logic, extra buildings just so they are decaying.
Still it is a very urban civilisation which makes the cities scary and the country sides filled with haunted castles and terrors beyond the forests.
On the other side the there are modern and bright half,  new and daring, dynamic and beautiful buildings in glass and steel using electric lights to shape buildings of flowers and spinning,daring bending forms. 
Civilisation is art Nouveau at the day or for the rich
and Gothic for the poor or at night. 

Themes

The themes are fear and love and parody,satire and black humour.
A lot of melodrama.
This embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere.
This emotion must also be be punished with tragedy  like all things must root otherwise it is not beautiful and it has to be self-destructive and Gothic.
The author does not suggest a serious anti-intellectual moral message, rather he portrays
the anti-intellectual emotions in a sympathetic light within the dark. 
The intellect aspect is represented by the dualism between a rp misrepresentation of Art Nouveau
and a rp interpretation of the Gothicism. Just as everything decays there are always enough creation and artifice for the Gothic to punish and damn.

Concept

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This  setting is a not a solid one. Rather it is a concept based on Art Nouveau and neogothic style.
The world culture is a combination of the high middle ages at the 13th century before the plague and the renaissance, the high URBANIZED Gothicism of the 16th century and 19th century anti-intellectual
and would be racist and revived romantic Gothicism.
The ghotic aspect represents a dark and terrifying world, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals.
The Art Nouveau aspect represents a light and refined world,characterized by alure and beauty, energy and youth of the world.

Morality

Morality is parodist, pre pubertal and Victorian.
Everyone must play characters from the aristocratic elite, who are extrovert and passionate
but remember to reject clarity and rationality. Celebrate ignorance and pathos.
Every character that seeks knowledge is dark and evil wizard or demented
and God will really damn him. Deviants and heretics are really are striken down by thunder,
ill fortune or they just become sick because they are evil.
Women are chaste virginal icons of virtue or totally evil.
All authority figures are tyrants that makes murderous outlaws look like heroes.
Damnation and madness and remember unexplainable bad luck
happens to characters who don't take the Victorian “ignorance is bliss” or the chastity
and the meek passivity seriously.

The characters are ignorant and humble, chaste and pure or you are evil,
and the setting is invented foremost so every character has TO BE EVIL.
The idealisation and beauty of evil is the core of the appeal.
Whatever the player and GM knows is good because of our enlightened modern time
is actually evil and what we know is evil actually good. Racism ,bigotry and moral prejudice are facts.

Emotion

It is an emotional and chaotic world, where you must be torn between extreme passions of fear and love that rebels against society or emotional void in silent desperation.

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Magic

It is a heavy magic setting.

Science

Despite it being a irrational civilisation, there is an elite of Faustian scientists and wizards
that provides the British with heavy mind blowing steam punk and electricity.
There are advanced arqebus.

Fighting

The world is swashbuckler and filled with 16th century gun powder and agile light fighters.

Society

Always evil Priests or neutral and morally weak flock the cities and act like dire preachers or fiends of hell.
Aristocrats are born to be experts of all well paying professions
and they are always higher ranking officers in the army.
The rest of the population are stupid and will less servants
and those that do not bow to their betters are evil bandits however a bandit mights often find a place in society if he is evil enough.
All aristocrats that enforce law and order are always tyrants who plot to sabotage their underlings 
religion,marriages and everyday life. The majority of the aristocracy
are doctors and artists and useless socialite brilliants. Women are either virginal saints or fiendish whores. The rabble and the noble are superstitious beyond collective madness
and a few geniuses are evil and demented enough to provide the entire civilisation
with industry. All production and all money is wasted on art, religion and buildings
and other beautiful decaying creations of mankind.
Murderous rouges are basically idealised outlaws next to the omnipresent tyrants.

Nature

Nature is always exceedingly beautiful beyond rational approximations. The most wild and unkempt forests looks like like skilfully kept garden of flowers, unless some evil force controls the land. Sprites and spirits run as messages between unwary travellers and the sentient souls of the trees and stones themselves. Anyone that tries to measure and cataloguer nature is obviously evil and will be slaughtered by the good fay guarding the forest. The forest is never depleted no matter how many trees you cut down, and there are always plenty of giant oaks, they grow with retroactive centuries and very old. The more cute and beautiful an animal is the more good it is and can be considered an trained pet for all purposes, but scary and ugly or just not cute animals are “evil” and must always be killed, there are always an endless supply of bad animals to kill. A good animals can be killed without remorse for the trophy because it represents the hunters inner quest for virtue.

Races

• Human.
• Elves
• Vampires
• Succebuss.
• Lycantropes.

Base Classess

• Aristocrat, evil.

• Expert, evil.

• Ranger, any

• Fighter,take the Feat Soldier at first level. Lawful evil.

• Swashbuckler, becomes base class instead of prestige class.
• Dread Pirate, becomes base class instead of prestige class.

• Warlock, replaces Sorcerer, Evil

• Dire Singer, replaces Bard., Evil

• Wizard, any

• Rouge, evil

• Assassin, evil

Human Races

Depending on the persona of the character, the GM penalties or encourages evil characters instead of good with the following bonuses.

• Naive Human(chaotic good)

-4 Intelligence;-2 wisdom; +2 Charisma.+2 Dexterity.

• Virgin( lawful good)

+2 charisma;+4 wisdom; -4 intelligence

• Humble and ignorant(chaotic good)

-4 intelligence, ;2 +charisma +2 wisdom,

• meek and passive(true good)

+4 charisma, -4 intelligence;

• Religious (lawful evil)

-4 intelligence; +4 wisdom;-4 charisma

• Human Sociopath (chaotic evil)

-4 intelligence. +10 Charisma and +2 Dexterity.

• Human Psychopath (neutral evil)

+4 Intelligence, -4 Wisdom, -4 Charisma.

Savant Human (Evil) +4 intelligence.+4 Wisdom,-2 Charisma.

Religion

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The religion of the world is Christianity which always is lawful evil.
Negroes worships evil lovecraftian Gods and the Arabs and the chinese
are heathen incapable of true religion,. Islam or Asiatic religions don't exist
other than dark cults and rabble of witches.

use Gods and Demigods

• Jehovah, the Biblical God who is evil.

• Aphrodite who is chaotic evil because she promisciolus.

• The Greek Gods.

• Pheobo and Eros, Fear and Love. Love is fear, Fear is lust and fear is love.

• The Lovecraftian Mythos.

Scientific Advances

Humanity have have access to machines and luxury items since the Reformation, though the majority of mankind only mindlessly copy machines without understanding how they work and are incapable of modifications and wild inventions. There have only been a few advances in basic mathematics ever but a excess of advances have been made in history, religion,artist skills and writing skills even since the dark ages. The factories are driven by elemental magically enhanced steam machines and electricity. Such factories born by forbidden knowledge still overwhelm society and fill it with luxury products and fine food creating an constant temptation and despair because the world is so filled with sin and profanity. The balance between constant stopping of all sinful welfare and the evil production of sinful welfare rarely swings in the favour of either. All production goes to luxury items and not to building big ships or to help pavement or build buildings. Popular products are advanced and fine clothes, glass items, houses of copper and glass, There are no conservation of food products and thousands of people starve just to supply the aristocracy with more cakes than they can eat. There are many doctors but no discoveries in medicine have been made since the early dark ages. Physicians have mysterious magical medicines and can wash wounds, perform rudimentary surgery but they have no idea how the body works nor what sanitation is. There are no systematic documentation of diseases and the magical medicine are rare,expensive and unreliable.

Weapons

The British Civilisation have long had access to advanced crossbows, and composite bows. After the reformation firearms have been the standard in the army. Spears are still used in combination with firearms. The guns are advanced arqebus, not as precise or as long raged as a riffle but has a skill dependent precision and are extremely fast to reload. There are powerful but small and light crossbows that can rival the arqebus and exceed in power and range. Large composite longbows have extreme ranges and can fire multiple arrows. Both bows and crossbows are however inferior in terms of speed of reload and requires more training and higher level to use. Arqebus are easy to learn but their precision increase with skill and level. All armour are lights and there are no efficient way to increase armour against the guns. All melee weapons are light or very small, such as sabres or rapiers.

Rationality

There are a lot of steam punk and dark wizards in the world.

History

At the equivalent of the 12th century, feudalism and rural society was abolished and replaced by a strong organized state church under a centralized religiously absolute tyrant. A strong trend of anti-intellectual, anti-individualistic and pro-doom and pro-gloom created a dark monolithic urban society. Guilds,dark age democracy and free cities where never created and instead the urban lower classes where urban serfs void of property and rights and forced into low-payment and low status jobs. Social Inventions such as the equivalent of the printing press where suppressed in their cradle and the Guttenburg bible never printed and there where no renaissance genius and no renaissance at all. The black death never happened and therefore the old conservative was never challenged. Knights are replaced by a fat and useless aristocracy no longer need to serve in the army, instead they automatically get all the high profit and hight status professions though many many have had spend time as high ranking officers in the army. Battlefield chivalry where exterminated early by crossbows and advanced composite bows. Honour and chivalry is replaced by swashbucklers, pirates and duellists are little but legal murder during this period. Instead of the equivalent to the 13-16th century there where no renaissance and instead of there was a Late Ghotic Age. Society advanced directly from high medieval society to a Late Gothic Age that replaced the renaissance and producing some progress that our renaissance did but only focusing on the Late Gothic style and reinforced,expanded and refined the high midieaval culture instead of rebelling against it as our renaissance did. The religious advances of Late Ghoticism advanced society to the bloodiest imaginable version of the reformation of the 16-17th centuries. It was a century of religious warfare between newborn Protestantism and Catholicism instead of the crusades against Islam that happened in our reality. The Reformation advanced state churches that created a minor version of the combination of limited renaissance(equivalent 15-16th century) and limited enlightenment (equivalent 18th century). The protestants where the only in the world to bring some printing inventions, improved trading and art technical discoveries. There where no anti-reformation, instead Catholicism revived anti-intellectualism and blind faith and made it more extreme. There where never any enlightenment nor age of reason, and no French revolution. Instead of the age of reason, the age of passion. The industrial age was instead an emotionally and artistic focused age rather than a scientific and academical one.

After the Reformation( equivalent to the 17th century) the National Romanticist-Gothic Romanticism happened with the equivalent of the 19th century. The century was characterized by a outcry and rejection of all the intellectual advances of the previous Reformation and the celebration of the irrational,spiritual and extremely over-emotional against all odds, with a great deal of idealised death wish. It was also characterized by a return to the wild and barbarian dark ages. Tribal states with newly created romantic heathen-inspired cults of race where created by artists. The century was characterized by wasting all resources and production on useless items such as art, luxury and or at useless services and actives, such as at religious and parties. Also nation states where invented where every culture was supposed to have its own land and race and racist nationalist rebelled against their Kings. Blood Cults around nationality and insane artists ruled a unstable and infighting society.

Gameworld History

• 400 AD. Early Dark Ages
• 700 AD. Late Dark Ages
• 800 AD. High Medieval Age. Centralized and urbanized tyranny, invention of absolute monarchy..
• 900 AD. Reformation. Religious genocides and war. Protestants creates limited progress.
• 1000 AD.Late Ghotic Era
• 1100 AD. Ghoticist Romanticism. Rebellion against the Kings return to dark ages.
• 1200 AD. The players setting.

Links

http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/artnouveau.htm

Humanity

Humanity is stupid and extrovert, extravagant and charismatic.

Geography of the world.

The finest civilisation in the world is an all British civilisation continent surrounded by barbarous Negroes to the north and the hedonistic and filthy Arabs to the east. Far to the east is the exotic Xamadu, a heathen civilisation almost as great as ours. The British Civilisation is a continental half isle connected to a crescent shaped desert land where the evil Arabs live. She shores of good folk are safe from the black continent behind a ocean between Brittish Coast and the Negro Coast.

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