World Background From a Hob Farmer

 Folk say the world’s big and old and full of secrets, but a Hob like me only knows what blows in on the wind, what comes down the king’s road, and what tramples the turnips when trouble’s afoot.

What Hob Knows Of History

The old learned types talk about a time they call the Breaking or the great cataclysm, when the world ended and started over.
Elves pulled a lot of folk through that fire, or so the stories go, and ever since then the tallfolk say we’re supposed to speak nice about them and their secret book-houses no one gets to see.

For a few hundred years after the Breaking, nobody wrote much that ordinary folk can read, or if they did, the words are in some dead tongue that not even wizard-minds or their spells can untangle.
The king keeps any old writings the gleaners find, locking them away like seed corn, and the magicians mutter about how the old way of making wonder-things is lost for good.

Kings, Houses, And Other Tallfolk Nonsense

Somewhere around the year they call 572, five mighty families grabbed hold of things and set up a king to sit in the middle of it all.
They say King Janus Akreaon was the first, and after him came a whole stew of kings and queens, wars and roads and laws, enough to fill more books than any Hob has time for between planting and harvest.

These days King Calos the Wise sits the throne, the one who saw the trouble at the western sea coming and built The Wall of ten great towers to hold back the nightmares from the Fadewound.
Around him crowd the five big houses—Shamolon for building, Hedges for fighting, Galamons for magic, Kencorn for coin, and Stormblade for law and quiet knifework in dark corners—and a clutch of lesser houses trying not to get stepped on.

We Hobs mostly care about which banner’s colors pay fair for grain and which ones trample fences; still, even we know House Hedges trains more Goliaths than a Hob can count and Stormblades are the sort you want on your side in a quarrel.
The Shamolons make the bridges and wagons stay standing, Kencorn keeps the king’s coin flowing, and Galamons squint at magic trying to remember how the lost enchanters, the Macasters, used to make shovels dig themselves and blades sing with power.

The Fadewound And The Wall

Out west, where there used to be three busy ports and a floating wizard-tower full of Macasters, there’s nothing now but the Fadewound: a wall of fog that eats ships, men, and good sense.
Folk say some unknown sea power hurled a relic from the End of Time at the coast, smashing the ports and the mages in a single day and leaving behind that cursed mist.

Not long after, monsters began crawling out of the fog—things with too many teeth and not enough mercy—so King Calos spent his Magiaum riches and raised ten towers along the shore.
The tenth tower, down in the south, near broke under the first great onslaught, but with help from towers six and eight it held the line, and the few dozen who lived are called the Heroes of the Fade to this day.

Now The Wall stands like a line of stone and steel against the fog, always hungry for more soldiers and more coin and, truth be told, more foolhardy adventurers.
A Hob like me stays far from there, but the price of salt and fish hasn’t been the same since, and that’s how simple folk feel such things in our bones.

Murk, Gnomes, And Vanishing Years

Up in the northeast there’s the Murk—Murkwood, Murkwater, whatever you call it, it’s poison.
The druids keep watch from one side and gnomish alchemists from the other, all of them trying to heal the land or at least make its foulness useful, but the black swamp grows, slow as mold on hard cheese.

Stay there too long without sacred healing and you start getting sick in every way a body can: vomiting, rashes, bleeding, hair falling out like wheat under a scythe.
Even those who seem to recover often die within a handful of years, and the ones who don’t get healing never last beyond fifteen once the sickness shows.

Still, the gleaners have pulled powerful relics from the Murk’s edge, so wagons keep rolling in with bright-eyed treasure hunters and rolling out with fewer wheels and fewer souls aboard.
The gnomes north of the Murk make strange brews from what they find there—potions that work wonders for a week or spoil before you can get them home—so most farmers like me prefer good old ale and honest manure.

Gleaners, Coins, And The King’s Long Reach

There’s a guild called the gleaners of the lost, but most folk just say scavengers or gleaners and spit for luck.
They’re the ones who tag and tally magic items, handing out papers that say who owns what so the crown can keep its list and its claws on anything shiny.

The king holds what they call the King’s Right of Refusal, meaning any magic found in his lands is his to take first, though he seldom snatches gear won fair in battle.
If you don’t register a magic trinket, you might lose it or at least pay a heavy fine in coin or in “points” the guild uses to promise future favors.

House Kencorn minds the Royal Mint now, turning metal into proper coin since old House Purehart, who first brought corn to these lands and set up the mint, overreached and went bust.
Some tallfolk are scheming with Kencorn papers that say you own a bit of a business instead of real coin, leading to the saying, “Is that real coin or just corn?”—which never sounds good to a Hob who prefers clinking metal to fluttering promises.

Talc Riders And Why Hob Stays On The Ground

Now, you wanted to hear about the riders, didn’t you? Hobs like me don’t know much of war, but everyone knows you don’t cross the Talc riders.
Up in the frozen north there was a barbarian tribe who made a home in a harsh mountain pass, and though they bent the knee to the king, they stayed wild in their hearts.

In return for being left mostly alone, the Talc folk pledged wyverns and riders—hardy warriors who dive out of the sky like winter hawks on rabbits.
The king outfits them with top-grade steel and magic, the sort of gear most soldiers only see on parade days, and even then there are said to be only about fifty of them in all the realm.

Folk mutter that some of that fine gear “finds its way back north” to their kin, but no one says it too loud when a Talc rider’s in earshot.
They may not be book-taught strategists, but any Hob who has watched one stoop out of the clouds knows they’re bad news for anything on the wrong end of those talons.

So yes, the Griffon—Wyvern, Talc, whatever you call them—riders are proper bad asses; you don’t mess with them unless you’re tired of breathing.
Problem is, there’s not near enough of them to chase every bandit from the Rossian black market, hold the Fadewound, watch the Murk, and still scare sense into every orc or goblin that peeks over the hills.

Other Lands Beyond Hob’s Field

South and east of here lies the sea trade, or what’s left of it.
There’s a little kingdom called Yaunto that sails faster and farther than anyone, building some of the best ships afloat and trading with folk beyond our maps.

They used to deal mostly with Pridiyan until the Fadewound swallowed the ports, and now they slip more often through the Rossian Confederation’s black market, buying and selling things that never see the king’s taxmen.
Some say they know who really hurled the doom that made the Fadewound, but if so, they keep that secret locked tighter than a Hob keeps winter grain.

As for Rossian, it used to be a proper confederation of baronies and city-states, but now it’s more like a nest of fighting rats.
Their barons squabble and war, and out of that mess spill smugglers, slavers, and bandits who trouble honest folk all the way to our own hedgerows.

Why Hob Says The World Needs Adventurers

Between the Fadewound’s monsters in the west, the slow poison of the Murk in the northeast, and the rot spilling over from Rossian, there’s more work than even the Talc riders and the king’s Wall can handle.
The nobles send levies, the goliaths march, the Stormblades judge and fight, and still the roads grow less safe and the rumors darker each year.

The gleaners post notices in every town about lost relics and bounties, the temples pray for champions, and the crown quietly hopes more heroes will walk in out of the rain and offer their swords for coin and cause.
A Hob like me just wants to see the fields safe, the roads clear enough to take grain to market, and the sky free of anything that isn’t clouds or harmless birds.

So if you’re the wandering sort with steel in your hand and a bit of bravery (or foolishness) in your heart, know this: the realm is short on hands and long on danger.
The Talc riders cannot be everywhere, but if you keep your head low when shadows cross the sun and do your part on the ground, maybe—just maybe—the next harvest will come in without screams on the night wind.