Note: This world shares some similarities to that of Freyk’s Wall and the Sign of Shadow stories. It is not the same world. This world is an exercise in leveraging the work done in defining those worlds but creating a setting with the same flavor as Kaja and Phil Foglio’s Girl Genius. I would argue that Girl Genius is the greatest comic ever. If you like evil geniuses and steampunk, or just Phil’s artwork, check it out (https://girlgeniusonline.com/).
The dragons lost. Long ago, a rift had opened between this world and the plane known as the Chaos Realms. The Realms is a great sea of pure energy. Substance - liquids, objects, even living beings - is created and destroyed, seemingly at random. A few consciousnesses can forge matter from the chaos. The dragons would name these beings the Chaos Lords.
How the first rift was created is lost to time. A Great Wyrm exploring byways now unknown. A human archmage experimenting with magics beyond their control. A dalibor delving too deeply. An eruption of energy from the Realms itself. Its origin was not important. Its very existence was.
The rift revealed our world to the Chaos Lords. In the Realms, existence was conflict. A Chaos Lord existed only as long as they were at least as powerful as other Lords. A Lord demonstrated their power by creating a material realm. The larger the realm, the more sentient beings within it, the more powerful the Lord. A Lord whose realm was destroyed by a more powerful Lord would be discorporated or even absorbed into the conquering Lord. Even the most powerful Lords could never rest - a concept they would find incomprehensible anyway - for the chaos energy could create a new lord at any time.
Our world aroused both confusion and avarice in the Chaos Lords. Being imprisoned in a single form is the greatest torture that can be inflicted on a Lord. A huge realm where everything and everyone was static was inconceivable to many of the Lords. Trying to understand our world drove many Lords mad, losing control and discorporating back into the chaos. Chaos Lords that could tolerate existing in our world soon learned that they themselves were fonts of chaos energy, energy they could increase by opening new portals to the Chaos Realms. Chaos energy could infuse lands, objects, and creatures in our world. A Lord could control that energy. What they could do was limited compared to what they could do in the Realms. After all, everything infused with chaos energy was still mostly matter. Changing creatures into other creatures, terrain into other types of terrain, or buildings into other structures was relatively easy. Getting a swamp to stand up and walk away or creating an intelligent shade of purple was much more difficult. Their true power would come from infusing the locals with chaos energy. When this was done, a Lord could control the forms of the infused much as it had in the Chaos Realms. The Lord could also warp the minds of the infused, instilling absolute obedience to the Lord and instilling desires and behaviors that it might previously have found totally foreign or abhorrent. Someone could be tainted by chaos energy just by being too near a Lord or a portal. The dragons called these creatures “wild ones”. If a Lord did not actively control a wild one, the creature would act aimlessly, controlled by their basest desires. Some may devote themselves to violence. Some may be uncontrollably hedonistic. Whatever they want, they unconsciously warp their form to reflect that need. Werewolves and succubi are said to be descendants from some of the early wild ones.
The Chaos Lords understood nothing but the need to gain more power. In the physical world, as in the Realms, a Lord rules only as far as it can personally control. The size of its demesne depends entirely on how far it can spread its own particular flavor of chaos energy. The most effective way of increasing its power would be to absorb a weaker Lord, taking that Lord’s energy as its own. A less effective way is to increase the number of its chaos-infused minions and spread them far and wide. These minions act as weak batteries of their master’s chaos energy. Put enough of them in an area, and the Lord will add it to his demesne. This is risky, as a minion in the demesne of another Lord for too long will have its chaos energy replaced by that of the other Lord. The change of energy also means a change in loyalty.
At first, the Chaos Lords saw the dragons and their armies as just another foe to conquer. They soon found that dragons were superior minions. They could be infused with much more chaos energy than a lesser minion. They were also resistant to having that energy replaced with that of another Lord. An attack by a single dragon could greatly weaken an unprepared Lord. Once the effectiveness of chaos dragons was known, it led to an arms race. The Lords focused on capturing and corrupting dragons.
The dragons did not appreciate being used as weapons by other beings. They had ruled an empire for millenia. They were the alpha predators. They would not be controlled. They went to war.
The war lasted centuries. Chaos Lords could not cooperate with one another. The power of the Lords waxed and waned wildly. The dragons could focus their forces on a weakening Lord, reclaiming its realm and driving the Lord back into the Realms. The dragon armies - made up of humans, dwarves, dalibor, centaurs, and other peoples of the empire - were vulnerable to chaos taint. Close combat often ended with the dragon troops being infused with their opponents’ chaos energy and becoming servants of the Chaos Lord. An eruption of chaos energy could cause an entire division to defect or go wild.
Slowly, the dragons began to lose the war. More and more younger dragons were corrupted by chaos energy. The Great Wyrms were a match for even the most powerful Chaos Lords. But the Realms continually spawned new Lords that could replace those that the dragons defeated. The destruction of a Great Wyrm permanently weakened the dragons.
The dragon’s resistance collapsed after Xasilax, the last Great Wyrm, died closing the rift in the city of Acadena. Now, the only opposition to the Chaos Lords was other Chaos Lords. The Lords extended their internecine struggles from the Realms to our world.
This conflict damaged the Lords more than the dragons ever had. Extending their influence in the physical plane took much more power than it did in the Realms. A Lord focusing on our world left themselves vulnerable in the Realms. A Lord who was overcome here could retreat to the Realms. A Lord overcome in the Realms would cease to exist.
Gradually, the Lords all returned to the Realms for good. They left our world forever changed. The rifts they created remained. Chaos energy spread to all parts of the world. It was more concentrated near the rifts, but nothing and no one was free from the taint of chaos.
As a result, nothing is predictable any more. A verdant plain one year can be a murky swamp the next. The perpetual winter of the Snow Kingdom exists within the otherwise scorching Farnanor Desert, and it is expanding. Recently, the great fortress of Rostak was destroyed when its stone walls all turned into vibrantly colored silk cloth. No one has been able to enter the rather phallic Crimson Tower that appeared outside Nuaver five years ago, despite the fact that anyone within ten yards of it clearly hears an invitation to come in.
Chaos energy twisting terrain, weather, and structures occurs relatively rarely. The forms of living beings, which were inherently dynamic even before the opening of the first rift, are much less stable. Cross-breeding between species, even between sentient and non-sentient ones, is possible. In areas near rifts, it can even be common. Offspring may not breed true, even those from unions of parents of the same species. On the streets of Osamont, no one would think a man with ram horns or a woman who is a giant snake below her waist as any more unusual than an apparently purebred human. Only the strantor and the zlobra, two races long adapted to chaos energy, can resist this effect.
Nor can anyone assume that they will retain their birth form for their entire life. The onset of puberty often causes a metamorphosis, as can moments of extreme stress. In these changes, physical changes are the most common. Major and minor shifts in intelligence, wisdom, tastes, attractions, morals, and inhibitions are not unknown, however. Some people have even claimed to gain memories that were not theirs.
Human mages may inadvertently cause chaos metamorphoses. Some scholars believe that magic and chaos energies are complementary. The world can only support so much of these energies. As the amount of chaos energy increased, the amount of magic decreased. A few scholars even claim that magic energy turned into chaos energy or that chaos energy somehow devoured magic.
Whatever the reason, mages sometimes accidentally draw on chaos energy as well as magic energy to cast their spells. The more powerful the spell, the more likely that it is at least partially powered by chaos energy. When this happens, the effects of the spell are unpredictable. A spell used to light a candle can create a bonfire or a frog. An ordinary flying spell can cause the mage’s arms to turn into wings or the mage themselves to turn into a flying carpet. It is thought that an errant curse by the witch Syliwa caused all the inhabitants of the town of Bremor to grow wool like sheep.
The effects of misfired spells cannot be controlled, as far as has been determined. This is not true of the workings of chaos masters. A chaos master can control chaos energy in much the way a mage can control magic energy. Unlike control of magic, which can be learned, chaos mastery is an inborn trait. The dalibor have the greatest propensity for chaos mastery. Most of the masters, and all of the really powerful ones, are dalibor. Almost all of the other masters are humans.
Chaos masters manipulate existing chaos energy, either ambient energy or that already infused into objects or beings. Anyone who has any ability over chaos energy is called a master. In truth, few are more powerful than a novice or adept mage. If manipulation of chaos energy could be measured, then the relative power level between masters reflects both how much energy a master can manipulate and how much control they have over that energy. A master that can marshal a lot of energy with little control can be very destructive but could achieve little else. A master with a high degree of control can perform wonders but only on a small scale.
Those masters who can control a large amount of energy are invariably mad. Rarely are they the type of madman who gibbers in the corner. Usually their madness takes the form of a compulsion to conquer the neighboring mountain and subjugate the shepherds that make it their home. Perhaps the megalomania of the Chaos Lords is reflected in their lesser echos.
The world is dotted with petty kingdoms ruled by a chaos master. These kingdoms are all centered on a rift to the Chaos Realms. Unlike the realms of the Chaos Lords, whose size was determined by the distance over which a Lord could project their own flavor of chaos energy, the size of the masters’ realms is determined the old fashioned way - by conquest.
The armies that chaos masters field are not old fashioned, however. Infantry and cavalry units are only a small part of these forces. The key components are devices and creatures created by the masters. The dalibor as a race have a propensity for tinkering. In the time of the empire, they excelled at inventing and crafting clockwork mechanisms. Control of chaos energy has allowed them to invent and craft devices and creatures not previously possible. In the last battle to feature infantry to a large extent, the troops of Gutbold the Hairy were massacred by egg bombs laid by Gwendevere the Hearty’s Sulphur Eagles flying above them. More recently, the Sonic Tanks of the Kingdom of Qryssis were toppled by the Magma Lizards of the Duchy of Laffna emerging from the ground under them.
Unlike the Lords, the masters are capable of cooperating. A petty king getting too powerful is likely to face a coalition of his neighbors. Once his heirs are in power, those neighbors would go back to squabbling amongst themselves. Forty years ago, Empress Frantis Belloma managed to create the Frantite Empire with an alliance of petty monarchs from the Ausperga Mountains. It is thought that she manipulated the chaos energy infused into the kings, queens, and other rulers to ensure their loyalty. Needless to say, the empire collapsed within hours of the death of the Empress.
What are mad scientists without minions? Some chaos masters have the skill and experience to control minds. They generally do not have to do so to get a coterie of minions. Less powerful masters, as well as non-masters imbued with a large amount of chaos energy, naturally seek out powerful masters to serve. Of course, there are always those who serve the mighty in order to use some of their ruler’s authority to their own advantage.
Den of the Red Wolf 