Day 17 - Wars & Battles
Day 17-Can you tell us about any famous battles or wars?
Tales of conflicts and combats abound across the multiverse! Any interesting ones in your setting we should know about?
Elowen’s Journal
"Witches do not remember wars the way other people do. Neither do ghosts.
The living talk about who won. The ghosts talk about what was never recovered afterward. Fields that never grew back the same. Songs that stopped being sung. Names no one says anymore because it hurts too much to remember them. Witches talk about what was lost.
I do not read about wars. I walk through them.
There are still ghosts here from what the historians call the Elf-Goblin Wars. That name is wrong. It always was. It was really a war between the elves of the old forest and the Mountain Orcs, long before humans ever came to the Haven Valley. The goblins were caught between them, and so were the dwarves. The dead remember confusion more than hatred. Orders that made no sense. Allies that vanished overnight. I cannot tell how long ago it was. A thousand years, maybe more. Time blurs when everyone involved is gone.
The conflict that shaped West Haven most was not really a war at all.
Before there was an East or a West, there was just Haven. One village. One valley. When fear took hold, fifteen women and men were accused of witchcraft by a mob led by a lay-priest of the Church of Light. The night they were meant to burn had already seen three days of heavy rain. Somewhere in the mountains, a glacier finally broke loose. The flood came down the valley and erased the village before the fires could be lit.
The witches survived. Most of the townsfolk did too. But Haven did not.
Afterward, people did what they always do. They moved apart. Humans went east to higher ground. Witches, both human and gnome, went west. Two towns grew from the same grief and the same blood and convinced themselves they had nothing left in common. When I walk near the lake, I can still see the old streets beneath the water. The ghosts remember when it was all one place."
Designer’s Notes
West Haven’s conflicts are defined less by battles than by their aftermath.
The Elf-Goblin War predates human settlement in the Haven Valley and was, in truth, a multi-sided conflict involving Mountain Orcs, Haven Elves, Goblins of the Wood, and Dwarves of the Rock. Its echoes linger in the form of lingering spirits, ruined sites, and long-standing cultural tensions that never fully healed.
The defining event for human history in the region is The Founding and the Flood. Originally settled as a spiritual utopia by followers of the Lords of Light, Haven later absorbed a second group of pagans, mystics, and practitioners of the Old Ways. Though uneasy, the two communities survived together until fear triggered witchcraft accusations and attempted purges. The Great Flood, whether an accident, fate, or an intervention by the gods, destroyed the original village and ended the violence.
It didn't end the distrust.
The resulting split gave rise to East Haven and West Haven. Both towns share laws, bloodlines, and trade, but diverged culturally and spiritually. That divergence, rather than any single war, is the wound that still shapes this setting. In West Haven, history is not past. It lingers, watches, and sometimes, if you know how to listen, it speaks.
Join Adam Dickstein of Barking Alien, and his RPG CAMPAIGN TOUR CHALLENGE 2026!
No comments:
Post a Comment