Welcome to Ald-Amura

Ald-Amura is a pangean supercontinent dominated by an enormous desert known as The Burning Sea. Surrounding this desert are a series of arid and dry mountain ranges that serve to trap moisture blowing in from the ocean to create temperate areas and forests at their bases. To the extreme north and south, fjords and subarctic biomes become more common, while the east and west of the continent are identified more by their seemingly endless forests and rolling hills. Ald-Amura also has several more alien biomes—The Burning Sea has patches of lavasand, a crystal grotto occupies some of the north west, mushroom rainforests occupy the island chain to the south, and a volcanic ash desert can be found in the valley to the west. Rumors persist of a coral forest on one of the islands to the west, and regions of temporal uncertainty abound.

Ald-Amura has one major river, the mind-bogglingly massive Ariaris. Almost every river in the world eventually finds its way to the Ariaris. Its above-ground body spans almost the entire length of the continent, and its underground caverns stretch across the rest of the continent in a vast network of caves that feed most of the groundwater reserves of the world. Even at its narrower points, the Ariaris is wide enough that you can’t see either side from the middle. The source of the river is unknown, but it is likely magical or Monster in nature. Its waters are supernaturally clear and considered by many to be deeply invigorating to bathe in or drink from.

The exact dimensions of the continent have yet to be mapped, but it’s well accepted that traveling on foot from the East Coast to the West Coast is a journey that could take a decade if one intends to enjoy the trek, but as little as two years if one rushes. No one has yet to travel the full length of the continent unassisted, but mounted convoys, boats, airships, and other assisted trips take somewhere between three months and a year, depending on the route and method of travel.

Ald-Amura as a world exists in a universe where time and physical space do not operate the same way they do in our world. As a result, the exact details of what is true about the world is constantly in flux and will differ from one Monster Care Squad to the next. Some people may have visited towns that don’t appear on your map or lived alongside Monsters that no library has any record of. If you see something in this document that doesn’t quite make sense to you, or that contradicts what you see in your version of Ald-Amura, that’s fine. Your version of the world is just as valid as this one, and we want to hear about it—maybe sharing stories from your Ald-Amura will help people discover the same locations, people and Monsters in their own worlds.

In plain English: Don’t sweat the canon in your work. This is Ald-Amura as we see it, not the authoritative version of the world. When people read games and pitches and store pages, the world they imagine is probably very different from the one we have built, and it’s okay to embrace that.

The ocean that surrounds Ald-Amura has many names, too many to list here, but you can get away with calling it The Ocean, as there’s only one, as far as the inhabitants of Ald-Amura know. Not many have journeyed far from the continent, and fewer have ever returned.

As mentioned earlier, time and space do not function as you might expect in Ald-Amura. In Ald-Amura, ideas have a certain mass to them, and just as a planet will bend and twist space to create gravity, in Ald-Amura cultural histories, stories, and ideas twist and bend the Truth. What this means is that the world of Ald-Amura is often a little inconsistent. Communities will remember certain events differently and know about places that aren’t on any maps. People will have cared for Monsters that nobody has ever heard of, or have magic that works very differently from what you might expect. Your Ald-Amura may differ from the Ald-Amura we discuss in this document, and that’s okay. Some ideas are so heavy, and so widely believed, that they become true everywhere, like the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy—this is how everyone remembers the fall of kings, for instance.

Pertinent to the Monster Care Squad experience, this also means cures and medicines that work in one part of the world won’t always work in another, sickness in one part of the world doesn’t always mean the same thing as it does in another, and Specialists must be careful to respect local knowledge above any kind of general wisdom. Indeed, the very idea of an objective, scientifically provable default is incompatible with Ald-Amura at large.

That isn’t to say that science doesn’t exist. It’s just very different, and more locally focused, than in our world.

Fauna and Flora

Ald-Amura has a vast array of life besides Humans and Monsters—animals both mundane and magical, plantlife both exceptional and ordinary. To list all the examples of life in the world would be the work of a hundred generations, but you can assume any given part of Ald-Amura has its own rich and complicated ecologies absolutely teeming with life.

The people’s relationship with the environment around them differs depending on the community, but the universal rule is that the world is a precious place and must be taken care of. Most towns are small, and they can survive comfortably on small-scale, sustainable, local farming, supplemented with the magic from local Monsters and humane hunting. For larger cities, great work goes into researching ways to create sustainable farming solutions and community gardens, complete with livestock cared for by everybody. Reducing waste is a priority in everyday life.

Technology

Technology in the world of Ald-Amura is a complicated topic. There is no universal tech level, and indeed understanding technology throughout the world in this way would be folly—instead, some parts of the world are better at certain kinds of things than others because they have invested time and resources into researching that field, either through interest or necessity. The best boat builders live on the Ariaris river or by the coast, and there they are able to do things with ships that the people who live in the Burning Sea couldn’t imagine—and similarly, the people of the Burning Sea have ways to keep cool, build homes on flowing sands, and have all manner of technologies to make travel across the limitless sands a comfortable and pleasant experience.

Complicating matters further is the fact that magic and Monsters create solutions that may seem technological to outsiders, but are magical in nature—or vice versa!

This is why in some parts of Ald-Amura they have trains, airships, personal flying machines, and other “high” technology, while in some places they do not. Different solutions work better for different people, and there is no one-size-fits-all technological solution to all the problems of the world.

Given that the people of Ald-Amura live lives of general comfort and leisure outside of the community work they do, many people are also engaged in their own scientific endeavors, developing strange devices, testing theories, and banding together to form unions and co-ops to develop larger ideas. It’s through initiatives like this that technology “advances,” but it also adds a certain amount of quirkiness to technology in the world. New tech tends to look personal, cobbled together, and a little prototype-ish. Even when refined, it retains a certain air of handmade charm.

Language and Naming Conventions

For the sake of simplicity, assume that everybody can understand one another in Ald-Amura. They may speak different languages, they may speak many languages, but if two characters are interacting, unless it’s a major part of the story you’re telling, people can understand one another. It was perhaps not always this way, when nations existed, but without that holding people back, everybody is happy to learn several languages, spoken or otherwise, until they’re able to communicate with the vast majority of the world.

There are a few small naming conventions that are generally held throughout the land, though they’re by no means immutable rules.

Cities

Cities are named after the traditional name of the region they’re in, with the suffix “-Mal.”

People

People tend to take the names of their partners when they marry or bond and add them as a suffix to their own. Sandra Bliss and Kalia Suntouched would become Sandra Bliss Suntouched and Kalia Suntouched Bliss. Children begin life with both their parents’ names, and a common coming of age ceremony is for them to pick a new name of their own. This isn’t considered a necessity by any means, and many people and confederations have their own conventions and traditions regarding names.

It’s very common in Ald-Amura for people to change their names, or to have names for specific contexts, such as a friend name, or a name they’re known by in their confederation. Honorifics are common, awarded by others or self-given. Many will introduce themselves with their name, and the name of whichever confederation or union is most relevant or most personally important to them at the time, e.g. Sandra Bliss Suntouched, of the Tinaris-Mal Union.

Unions, Leagues, Confederations

Communities are named simply in Ald-Amura, with the desire to convey quickly what the collective purpose of the community is. Simply the name of the location, the job, and the hobby, with perhaps a geographic specification, serves well enough for most people. Some larger unions or leagues number their subcommunities, e.g. The Ald-Amuran Historical Union Chapter 221.

Some of the more “interesting” confederations or unions have flowery names, but this tends to be a source of some frustration for people both within and without the groups themselves.

There are more confederations in the world of Ald-Amura than would fit in a hundred books, here’s a few interesting ones:

The Bookbinder’s League Of Tinaris Mal

Located in Tinaris-Mal, the omission of the hyphen between Tinaris and Mal is the source of more jokes than you’d think. Best book makers in the land, though.

Uringal-Mal’s Weathering Confederation

The brutal coastal weather once made Uringal-Mal Ald-Amura’s most terrifying prison—back in the days of kings. The Weathering Confederation’s extensive reworking on the area’s disaster policies and preventative infrastructure has made it a bustling seasonal vacation town.

The 87th Self-Defense Union

Originally founded in the vanguard period after the fall of Kings, the 87th were the first to abandon arms, and continue the long, hard work of de-weaponizing Ald-Amura.

Traveler’s Rest Confederation (East Wing)

Belonging to the wider TRC, the East Wing has done incredible work providing rest stops, cabins, and camp sites across much of Ald-Amura’s eastern mountain rangers. Considered impassable just a decade ago, the mountains are almost entirely safe to cross on foot now.

Sortis-Mal’s People’s Party

Principally concerned with the daily needs of the people of Sortis-Mal. Engaged in organizing the yearly region wide live action roleplay, Cults & Cutters.

Fish Catcher’s Union

One of the largest confederations in the world, the Fisher’s Confederation operates at once as an employment guild, political body, and scientific development team, constantly developing new safety technologies and fishing techniques.

Finder’s Guild

Seekers of lost items, and occasionally people.

The Alleviation Society League

Actively dedicated to the complete eradication of all suffering, Alleviators ferry food, building materials, medicines, experts and engineers to areas that are most in need across Ald-Amura.

Local 1st Labor Confederation

The first confederation, and the one that led the vanguard movement in the latter days of kings. At one time, it was by far the largest and most militant organization in Ald-Amura, with membership in the millions. These days they operate in their original form—a small labor organizing body covering a half-dozen villages outside of Ariaris-Mal.

Brotherhood of the Brick Confederation

Revolutionaries at the tip of the spear in the time of Kings were finally able to lay down their bricks, and did so with mortar between them. Now a confederation of master masons, even all these centuries later they pass on the teachings of their ancestors: when it is time to set bricks, and when it is time to throw them.

The Flaming Feet League

All those who dare to brave The Burning Sea are welcome to join the Flaming Feet Confederation, whose goal is to push the boundaries of athleticism and velocity in one of Ald-Amura’s most dangerous climates.

Felicitous Salutations! Poetry Society

The people of Petris-Mal either love or hate this long-standing, eccentric confederation of poets, preservationists, and serial procreators dedicated to the perpetual production of poetry ranging from poor to proper with atavistic affinity for alliteration and assonance.

Monsters

Monsters take their own names and most often will communicate them directly to the Humans they live around through some miraculous sign or reveal them when they share their Gifts with another (and convey their story to them in the process). This is then passed down via whatever means the local community opts to carry their local history—oral history, written record, large carved stone monuments, etc.

In the event a Monster is unable or unwilling to give their name, people tend to create descriptive terms to refer to them or borrow names from local animals and apply an honorific, e.g. The Great Elder Turtle Of The Petris-Mal Mountains. Should a Monster with such a name reveal their name to a community, they will obviously adopt it as soon as possible. Similarly, if a Monster reveals a new name, the community will adopt it as soon as possible.

The People

Governments

The last known King of Ald-Amura died over 1000 years ago in the Last War. Since then, people have moved past the need for hierarchy as we understand it—there are no presidents, no emperors, no kings or queens. There are no dictators, no oligarchs, no premiers or tzars. The very idea that one would structure their society in this way seems delightfully archaic to Ald-Amuran people, in the same way we look back on the feudal era with a sort of whimsy. At best, the idea of a supreme leader is good for stories and at worst it’s a violation of freedom as Ald-Amurans know it.

After a relatively brief transitory period led by a vanguard of workers around the world, Ald-Amura settled into dozens of systems of collective rule, the finer details of which are the subject of entire fields of study. The general model in most cities and communities is one where democratically elected representatives of the various subcommunities meet and govern via councils, with larger edicts being voted upon by the communities affected. When issues extend across physical communities, wider councils are formed, again via democratic means, to discuss and find solutions to the problems at hand. These collectives are often called confederations, unions, or leagues.

Do not make the mistake of assuming confederations are entirely geographical in nature—thanks to travel, mail, long distance communication, magic, and other technologies, communities can stretch across the entire continent—especially in the case of specialist labor such as Monster Care.

Similarly, an Ald-Amuran does not consider themselves a citizen of a specific place; rather, they are a member of one or more confederation—a person living in the grand city of Tinaris-Mal may be a member of the city’s confederation, the local weaver’s confederation, and a member of their local community garden’s confederation all at the same time, with each of these citizenships carrying the responsibility and history you may expect from a national identity.

Trade And Economics

Since the abolition of currency and the restructuring of society, trade looks somewhat different in Ald-Amura than in our world. Food, housing, medicine, clothing, and the other necessities in life are given freely to everyone, and every village maintains a large community stockpile of such things for when they’re needed. Regions which have an overabundance of a given resource (such as fish, or gold, or rubber) export their extra materials, either directly to regions which suffer from a lack of those resources, or to their nearest central planning confederation. These confederations (of which there are hundreds) maintain a massive, distributed trade network that stretches all across the continent that ensures nobody goes without, or at least not for long.

People still work, if they like. They are motivated by personal drive, passion, or a desire to build better worlds for their community, rather than by profit. Some communities have a work-token system, where workers are able to trade hours in exchange for luxuries, or other services from other laborers, but for most confederations, the work itself is reward enough.

Under the confederations system, even the most resource-poor village in Ald-Amura is prosperous. With resources centralized and plentiful, the individual cultures of the smallest village and the largest mountain city are alive with individual traditions, fashions, delicacies, and songs. The average Ald-Amuran lives richer than the old kings could ever have dreamed.

Prior to the end of kings, reactionary elements of society argued that these economic ideas would come with a loss of identity, that the self would be forced to give way for the collective. In reality, the opposite came to be. With the wealth of kings redistributed and the pressures of survival-work gone, suddenly people had time to pursue their passions. When you only work a couple of hours a day, there’s plenty of time for self-expression⁠—to learn an instrument, or make your own unique clothing, or paint, or draw, or sing, or build a library or a collection of weird shells, or to simply live authentically as yourself.

Crime

In a society where all of one’s needs are met, and with a deep focus on community, and solidarity, crime is very, very rare. The idea of policing would be alien to an Ald-Amuran, as would anything like a town guard, or a dungeon. In their place are community defense confederations, who mostly work to mitigate damage from natural disasters, or mediate issues between communities. De-escalation, restitution for the victims, and the rehabilitation of the perpetrator are universally the focus for any crime policy across Ald-Amura. No shame or stigma is attached to crime, and it is treated as a societal failure, rather than an individual one.

In the rarest of cases, when a perpetrator is unrepentant, or the crime is particularly egregious, a given community may vote on the right path to keep itself, and its members, safe. These votes are never taken lightly and are themselves considered a great tragedy, regardless of their outcome.

Relationship With Nature

Ald-Amuran culture all across the continent places an enormous priority on natural beauty and living in harmony with the world around them. This sometimes clashes with the basic needs of larger societies, but the issue is always given an enormous weight in discussions and debates on how to proceed with some project or another. Obviously, there are occasional disputes and disagreements about how one idea or proposal may affect the world, but the position most people begin from is wanting to do the least harm possible to ensure a comfortable and happy life for everyone—nature included.

Simply put, Ald-Amurans do not see themselves as beings apart from nature; they see themselves as a part of the landscape itself, and their relations exist in the same flow as the wind, the sea, the birds, or the bugs. Almost every Ald-Amuran knows the basics of herbology, farming, animal husbandry, and survivalism in the same way that most people in our world know how to read and count to ten. They’re considered basic life skills to be taught at a very young age by families and community schools. This lifelong relationship with nature leads to a very different attitude toward natural resources than we have.

In practical terms, this means sustainable farming practices, community gardens, and local small scale farms. Meat is still consumed, but on a much smaller scale than you might expect—mostly as a treat or as a larger meal during parties and celebrations, and great respect is given to the animals slaughtered for their meat, with a lot of work put into ensuring they live a comfortable life. Hunting is practiced, again as a part of a larger relationship with the land.

Above all else, waste is considered a failure of the community. This extends beyond food into building materials, coal, ore, and so on. Wherever possible, every ounce of mined or farmed or hunted resources are used to their fullest, with researchers and scientists constantly experimenting for more efficient and cleaner ways to use what they have. Where certain resources are unavailable, the first thing communities tend to do is find a way to solve the problem they face without it. A real life analogy would be instead of building wasteful air conditioning units, perhaps the people of Ald-Amura would build their homes in such a way that utilized the natural airflow to keep cool, or build underground, or avoid building communities in habitats unfriendly to their needs and desires in the first place. This also has the effect of making every community very unique, as each community faces the challenges of building their homes and lives in their areas in unique ways.

Ald-Amurans consider this approach to the world to be a responsibility everybody must carry, always seeking new ways to survive without harming the world around them or the people they live with.

Monsters

Monsters are as much a part of Ald-Amura as the mountains and the sands. They are grand and majestic, powerful beings. They are the source of all magic in the world and are ever-patient, ever-giving beasts that embody Ald-Amura itself. They are not quite gods—they do not sit above the people or make demands of them—but they are respected in a way the uninitiated could perceive as worship. They are inscrutable, often unknowable, but always allies.

Think of Monsters less as animals, and more as natural landmarks, national parks, or an active volcano: bigger than us, but still something we live alongside every day. Every Ald-Amuran has lived beside a Monster for the majority of their lives, and even hermits and perpetual nomads are likely to stumble upon a Monster before long.

What a Monster is physically is hard to quantify. They can take any form, of any size, and they almost all take a unique one. Some swarms, partnerships, families, and herds of a particular shape of Monster exist; the Bukull Migration Herd, for example, are a massive horde of bull-like beings which travel the Burning Seas. Ald-Amurans will know a Monster when they see it in a way that would be like trying to describe what something tastes like to someone who has never eaten food before. They just know. Maybe it’s the magic they exude, maybe it’s just a look in their eyes, but it’s as plain and obvious to an Ald-Amuran as the dawn.

The magic they command is just as variable as their forms but tends to be tied to whatever aspect of the land they appear to be a guardian of—Monsters that dwell in the skies and fly through the air can use the wind like another limb, for example. Monsters appear to be capable of miraculous acts and when they favor you things tend to go well for you and your communities.

Just as much, though, the people of Ald-Amura care for the Monsters by caring for the environment around them—by tending to the gardens Monsters live in or the seas in which they swim. Sometimes more directly, too, in the case of Monster Destinies, Humans directly aid Monsters in their grand and epic quests. Humans and Monsters coexist in an equal and symbiotic relationship founded on trust and mutual respect for one another.

Epic Destiny

As well as being guardians of Ald-Amura and embodiments of the various processes of the world, some Monsters have grand destinies. These quests are as ineffable as the Monsters themselves and concrete knowledge about them is hard to come by. Monsters guard the details of their destiny with a gentle secrecy, only revealing tiny slivers of it to their most trusted and closest Human allies when it is absolutely necessary.

These Destinies often appear to be a series of trials or tests that the Monster must endure or overcome. Stories tell of Monsters that were compelled to circle the entire continent of Ald-Amura, or live as a swarm of insects for a generation. How many trials a Monster must undertake, and what form these trials take, can only be inferred from the scant details the Monsters provide their chosen assistants.

What happens when a Monster’s Destiny is complete depends, like so much, on the Monster, but it’s always an event seen and heard around the entire world—massive yet harmless storms sweep the land, strange lights flash in the sky, the ground and trees dance, beautiful patterns and wonderful scenes play out on the rocks and canyon walls. Sometimes the Monster changes shape, becoming larger, more splendorous, and undoubtedly more powerful. Other times the Monster disappears from Ald-Amura entirely, replaced by a juvenile Monster that will quickly grow to take on the responsibilities of its predecessor.

Why some Monsters appear to have destinies and some don’t is unclear. It could be that all Monsters have Destinies but they take place over such a long stretch of time that it’s rare for Humans to be called upon to witness any part of them. It could be that some Monsters are chosen for destiny by some unseen force, or it could be that something in the Monster’s identity or role in the world thrusts destiny upon them. It could even be that the hundreds of tiny acts of kindness between Monsters and Humans that happen every day are all steps along the paths of many, many Destinies and that we simply don’t understand enough about the practice to see it.

Regardless, being chosen to assist a Monster in their destiny is a great honor, and will often involve the entire village or town. Lots of communities have ancient stories about how their little village came into existence by helping a Monster complete some arcane ritual or find a vital component of the Monster’s quest. Just as often, the Monster may pick just one person to aid them in their quest.

Monster Gifts

When Monsters take a liking to a particular person, they may opt to directly share something of their magic with them. This process gives both the Monster and the Human a look into the others true self, to see treasured memories and feel senses completely alien to the other. It’s a great honor to receive a Monster Gift, though a relatively common one—Monsters tend to be generous with the power they share, or Ald-Amurans tend to be worthy recipients.

Monster Gifts specifically confer special powers to the recipient, often by granting their natural talents and abilities a supernatural or magical edge. This power often reflects the Monster itself—a storm Monster may grant a blacksmith the ability to forge items out of thunderbolts or raindrops, a Monster in the desert may grant the sun’s heat to a baker’s hands, and so on. These abilities also come with Tells. Tells are an aspect of the Monster that granted the Monster Gift. This could be anything from a particular smell that wafts as the recipient uses their new magical power, to a new physical appearance, even to a song that plays in their head whenever they invoke the power the Monster has entrusted them with.

Given how commonly Monsters give out their gifts, every village or city has a sizable population of people with special tricks, magical abilities, or supernaturally good talent at certain tasks, with a good percentage of them having some outward appearance of the Monster Gift—tails, strange ears or eyes, unnaturally colored hair and so on. It’s a point of pride for a village to have a lot of people with Monster Gifts, as it represents the millennia-old relationship between Humans and Monsters.

The False Gold

Sometime in the last year or two, this relationship has been threatened. Monsters appear to become possessed by a painful rage and lash out at the communities they cared for for centuries. For a span, this was terrifying. Tinaris-Mal, one of the biggest cities in the world, was laid to ruin by a mighty wyvern-like Monster, with only other Monsters and collective action saving the lives of its citizens. The same disaster struck the cliffside cities of the Twin Snakes, its glass towers shattered by Nue, a beast whose gentle touch is celebrated in verse across the whole world.

At both sites, people reported seeing deep and strange Wounds which oozed a metallic golden fluid, thick like molten metal. After conferring with Monsters around the world and analyzing samples of the substance, the answer became clear—someone, or something, had poisoned the Monsters.

The response was rapid—across the world naturalists joined together in a rapid and ad hoc union, joined quickly by confederations of chemists, Monster experts, vets, scientists, and any other confederation with skills to lend. The search for a cure lasted almost a year before Nue and the wyvern were restored. A one-size-fits-all solution was impossible; not only would convoluted nature of time and space in Ald-Amura make that nearly impossible, the Wounds themselves seemed to change and shift depending on which Monster they presented on—some would have their feathers turn to metal plates, some would have glowing red spears of some unknown substance piercing their bodies. It was only by realizing that curing these Wounds would cure the poison entirely that the solution presented itself.

The Monster Care Squad

A new responsibility was born and many immediately rose to meet it. The Monster Care Squad is a continent wide confederation dedicated to the eradication of the False Gold, principally by directly curing Monsters of their Wounds and restoring them to their natural states. The Monster Care Squad isn’t centralized in any one location and there is no formal admission policy. Some Care Specialists are from grand cities and have trained at universities or with guilds that teach Monster care skills, others are those who have spent their lives directly beside Monsters and cared for them, others still are the recipients of the land’s folk knowledge. All of these people apply their skills—both alone and in teams—to seek out infected Monsters, uncover the nature of their Wounds, find local methods to cure them, and apply said cures.

Just as a Wound can be anything you can imagine, cures can be anything from a magic spell or ritual to a local herb prepared just the right way. They must stem from local knowledge, and it seems like the Monster’s usual patterns, guardianships, and history are often linked to the Wounds themselves—one Monster’s Wounds were healed by a Monster Care Squad’s acting out of a pre-War ritual that had been lost to the village they were working in—but just as often not.

It follows, then, that Monster Care Squads tend to be made up of many different skill sets. When a cure can be just as likely to be a well baked loaf of bread as a more traditional medicine, and given how center to life in Ald-Amura Monsters tend to be, the confederation is a diverse lot. Every imaginable professional background, gender identity, orientation, and ability level makes up its ranks.

One important part of a Monster Care Squad skillset is the ability to ask questions and respect the answers received—as healing a Monster requires local wisdom and methods, it’s less important to be good at brewing potions as it is to be good at listening to the recipe. If there’s one skill every Monster Care Squad member has, it’s that.

Being a Monster Care Specialist

The first thing to understand about being a Monster Care Specialist, is that there is no central agency handing out licenses, no governing body, no perfect ideal. What you have instead is a wide spectrum of guilds, schools, universities, unions, free agents, and driven amateurs united by their love and respect for the Monsters that they protect and heal. A Monster Care Specialist might be someone from a small village who was always good with animals, and set out to learn all they could on the road, they might be someone who opted to study the practice of Monster Care at their local university, or a specialist from a related discipline brought in during the False Gold crisis. Anybody can be a Monster Care Specialist, and nobody can tell you otherwise.

Even the uniform, the hooded long cape with the red edges, isn’t universal. Some schools have color-coded outfits which denote one’s experience, role, or profession, others give their specialists whatever they have on hand, and of course lone specialists will wear whatever they like, though they often end up wearing the cape sooner or later, it’s a useful traveling tool and stylish too! Many specialists customize their capes with extra pockets, decorations, and hidden tools as they become necessary throughout their work.

Thanks to this decentralized approach to the question of Monster care, specialists have a very wide range of skills—everything from chemists to knot weavers lend their talents to the cause. Many learn the core skills of the job while working—those being investigation, respect for local customs, and of course, the finer arts of Monster wrangling.

Who Caused the False Gold?

Inevitably throughout play, the question will come up—who did this? Who would poison the guardians of the world? Who would threaten a thousand years of utopia, and why? We’ve intentionally left the question open throughout the book—we don’t want to distract from the core experience we’re trying to build by giving players a big bad evil guy to hunt down. At the core, the False Gold exists to give the players an excuse to trek across the land and explore Ald-Amura, meet its Monsters, and do some good in the world. Pointing to a specific group as the responsible party feels like it would undermine that and take away from the collaborative atmosphere of the world.

That said, we know plenty of people want answers to these sorts of questions. The following section explores three potential groups responsible for the False Gold and their motives. None of these is “true” in any meaningful sense; they’re just suggestions. Use them, take inspiration from them, or discard them as you wish.

The Librarians Of The Golden Leaf

Deep in the underlayers of reality, there resides a universe brought into being by the aggregate imaginations of every living being. Every person that ever imagined a better life, every stone that imagined itself a mountain, and every toad that imagined itself a prince—these ideas coalesced, shoving aside realities unnumbered with countless elbows and knees, every chaotic narrative half-remembered in dream forcing the metaverse to make space for it, uniting until finally, a billion billion years after the last star died out, order was imposed.

Beings with sentience all of their own began walking the long, shadowed corridors that made up this library, browsing with casual interest the boundless shelves containing every story that will ever, has ever, could ever be.

The Librarians are the neighbors of every waking world. And they are unruly, cruel, and careless bystanders to a cosmos heaving with splendorous life.

Motive

Gifted with every single story that will ever be told, the Librarians quickly (relatively, for beings outside of time and space) grew bored of the same stories, the same structures, the same ideas. Every novelty was consumed as quickly as it was found, and each left the Librarians emptier than the last.

They tried to pen their own stories, but the very act proved impossible; pages weaved into themselves, the pens they crafted from forgotten bones became brittle when the ink soaked into them, the very ideas, once so clear, fractalized and became impossible to tame. They rampaged through the realm like wild horses, smashing against the borders of reality until finally—a crack.

The crack became a window, and the window became a door. A door to every world that will ever be, that has ever been, that could ever be. There was no vote, no conscious decision of any sort, really. The door opened, and the Librarians awoke to their new task. They would engineer novelty. They would force alien words into the mouths of the universe, no matter the cost.

Means

It didn’t take long for the Librarians to begin their new work. They abandoned their home and began experiments through the crack. Slick-haired dragons race chrome and steel engines to hunt murderers in the night.

A glittering city of lights and noise perches on the edge of apocalypse. The guardians of a tranquil utopia mutate horrifically and begin rampaging against their caretakers. The False Gold poured through this crack in thick, viscous strands, directly into Ald-Amura’s heart, coating its spirit in a sickly sheen.

No one even knew what it would do, the Librarians acting in a frenzied and random flurry of activity. But as it began to take hold, and the Monsters began lashing out, enraged by the interdimensional poison, the Librarians turned their heads to Ald-Amura and watched with the eager eye of an impresario on opening night, candle fire pupils dilating as the world shuddered under the weight of their newest narrative.

The Six Disciples Of The Golden Staff

Before The Last War, before the reign of Kings and Emperors, Ald-Amura was bound to the tyrannical will of just six men. These men were sorcerers of truly unimaginable power who ruled over the land with a brutally cruel hand.

One of their earliest works was to erase and rewrite the pre-Sorcerous history of Ald-Amura, and to weave a glamour of alternative history over the true way of things. This blanket of falsehoods still hangs, torn and weathered, over much of Ald-Amura’s ancient history, and impedes any real study of the Sorcerers themselves.

Their rule lasted, as best we can tell, nearly five hundred years, and it was five hundred years of putrid darkness. The people were tools in the hands of these fascists, magic smithed into chains around the mind of every living being in the land. Ald-Amura’s Monsters were torn from their destinies and their power perverted to the Sorcerer’s ineffable purposes.

The exact details of their fall is disputed, and would have happened differently across the land as the veil of false history was torn or ruined in different places. In the south, a mighty force of Monsters and Humans allied themselves at Dragon’s Head Point, marched on the Sorcerers’ volcanic fortress, and overthrew them in an epic, climactic battle whose wounds are still etched into the earth.

In the north, three of the sorcerers turned against the others, both sides twisting reality to breaking point until they removed themselves from the world. In the east, all six detonated after a bolt of fire and lightning from the sky struck their secret utopia, forming the great Burning Seas. All of these happened, and at the same time none of them did.

The sorcerors unseated, warlords filled the power vacuum, and the world was able to reassert itself once more. The rest, as they say, is history.

Motive

The False Gold is a sort of magical fail safe, forcibly injected or enchanted in every Monster across all of Ald-Amura. The Sorcerer knew their grip on the world might one day slip, and intended to use the False Gold as an alchemical ingredient that could be used in a ritual to resurrect them. The False Gold here concentrates the power and lifeforce of the Monsters.

If one were to study the fluid itself, apply the right ungulates, experiment with the right catalysts, and tease out its secrets, one would uncover a codex of magical rites and spells that could be used to uncover a hidden sanctum high in the Ander-Tinari Mountains.

The codex promises power, immortality, and more, but anyone foolish enough to follow its instructions and resurrect the Sorcerors would be hollowed, made into a shell, and filled with the wrathful soul of one of the most hideous and terrible beings to ever walk upon the soft sands of Ald-Amura.

There would be no great war, no resistance, no climactic battle between good and evil here. Once even one of the six return, they would rewrite reality just as they once did, and the world would fall once again into mistruth and servitude.

Means

The False Gold, or the spell that would begin the process at least, has been with the Monsters every day of the last three thousand years, flowing through their bodies like a time bomb, waiting for just the right moment to set in motion this millennia-long plan, but it could not act alone. Magic requires an intellect, and the Sorcerer’s knew they would need help. Across the world they placed secret caches of great magical power, artifacts and relics that could show someone how to move a mountain, how to break the world, and promises of so, so much more. Who is to say how the first one was found, how that doorway deep in the crystal caverns of Petris-Mal was opened? It doesn’t matter. What does matter is the world is now home to six new tyrants who believe that they will one day hold the world in their hands.

Meeting in the ruins of Old Aris, deep below the flowing rapids of the Ariaris river, the cabal named itself the Disciples of the Golden Staff and began their foul work.

After Tinaris-Mal’s ruination, during the cleanup, citizens found curious graffiti painted on the walls of the buildings most damaged by the rampaging Monsters. They saw the golden staff, an ancient symbol of the sorcerer’s supreme rule, glittering in the same sickly gold as the blood they’d cleaned from their guardian’s eyes and wounds. Above the staff, in paint still wet to the touch, was a threat:

“THE SIX HAVE RETURNED.”

The Golden Fist

There was once a time when gold controlled the land. Deeply entrenched into every aspect of society was the earnest belief that wealth would come to those who worked hard for it, and that every single person was responsible for the entirety of their lot in life. To be destitute, to be poor, or to be without, was to have failed in one’s duty to one’s country. To suffer was a righteous punishment for the sin of laziness. Community was a dirty word, and charity was rare.

This was a time when Kings and Emperors ruled with a supposed divine mandate. Corruption was the norm, but even Kings who ruled “fairly” still supported a system that would hold the vast majority of the population in abject poverty. A small few were able to escape the mire by lashing their fellow people into servitude, with only a pittance in return for their labors. The merchants, and the guild houses they controlled, quickly grew rich and powerful, with some of the larger houses threatening the power of Kings.

For a single heartbeat in time, even the serfs held their breath in hope. If Kings could be dethroned, perhaps the world could work towards true liberation incrementally. Wouldn’t it be better to at least have a chance at freedom, slim as it might be?

The Kings and Emperors were wiser than that, and quickly made peace with the new power. Near unanimously, instead of war, the royal power bloc consolidated with the merchant houses, and an alliance was formed. This alliance would, of course, become both powers’ undoing, as the self-obsessed greed of the merchants intertwined with the unqualified rule of the Kings until the people broke, and The Last War began.

For most in Ald-Amura, the above is a cautionary tale of what can happen when one forgets that society exists in service to the people. For some, unfortunately, the allure of gold and the promise of power overwhelms these obvious truths…

Motive

There exists a cult. Maybe one or two people in any given major town is a secret adherent to the principles of the Golden Fist. Their tenets are complex, contradictory, and largely inane. They believe many of the same obvious untruths the merchants and the kings did—that the land is something that can be owned, that meritocracies exist, and that freedom can be defined by how much of your will can be imposed on another.

To these people, the world would prosper if only they were allowed to hold the reins. If only their exceptionalism was rewarded with power, and wealth. In some communities, this is seen as a sickness of the spirit, and it is treated with care, and love, as are all things in Ald-Amura.

Some, however, do not get treatment. Some break away, and form failing enclaves in the woods and mountains where even the preparation of the night’s food must come with a contract, payment, service in kind. These people imagine themselves mini-Kings of their vast domains, embodied golden hands of a free market where the very best will see their efforts rewarded.

These groups are small, and their impact was minor, for the most part, until one branch of this cult turned their eye on the Monsters of Ald-Amura. They reasoned that the Monsters, like the trees and the water and the other animals of the world, were commodities, and should belong to those strong enough to break them.

Means

In a hidden village on the Sazar islands, the Golden Fist concocted the False Gold, using secrets from deep within the mycelium forest. Their plan was to inject this poison into the hearts of Monsters, and collect the rare gems, metals, fluids, and alchemical components that the Monster’s body would produce in response.

When Tinaris-Mal burned, the group released a statement, claiming responsibility but deflecting blame. The manifesto goes on for 60 nigh-incoherent pages, ranting against the confederacies that protect the rivers, slinging barbs at the communities that raised them, and above all asserting that it is their right to do whatever they like, regardless of the risk against others.

It wasn’t their fault that the Monster’s became enraged after being injected, it wasn’t their problem, furthermore. They did not live in Tinaris-Mal. The damage was a local matter.

Most dangerously, however, buried deep in the turgid ramblings of furious and impotent men, was the formula for the False Gold and a call to arms. And overnight, all across Ald-Amura, furious and impotent men saw gold gleaming before their eyes…