Godkiller
An old enemy stirs within the kingdom of Taldor, and the city of Cassomir is pushed to breaking beneath the shadow of death. For months now the mornings have offered up the dead, found cold in places they should not be, and no hand can be named for it. The watch promises answers it does not have. The high houses look the other way. And in the silence where authority should stand, fear moves in to take its place.
It changes how people live. They move in groups now, never alone. The taverns close their shutters before the light is gone. A stranger's footstep in an empty street is answered with a drawn blade, because in Cassomir these days a person stabs first and asks their questions after. Trust has become a thing too expensive to spend. Doors that once stood open stay barred. Old debts are called in hard, old grudges settled quietly, and every kindness is weighed first for the trap it might conceal.
This is the cruelty that fear breeds, and it spreads faster than any plague. A frightened city does not wait to be wronged before it wrongs. It turns on its own, name by name and street by street, until the dread itself has done more harm than whatever first set it loose. Something has come to Cassomir that the people cannot see and cannot fight, and so they have begun, without quite meaning to, to become the very thing they are afraid of.
You did not come here for any of this. But the city is closing around everyone within its walls, and a storm like this one does not ask permission before it takes you in. What happens next is not yet written. Some of it, perhaps, will be written by you.
Cassomir sits at the mouth of the Sellen River where it empties into Star Bay and the Inner Sea — the second largest city in Taldor, and the seat of its greatest imperial shipyards. Timber floats down from the Verduran Forest to the north; ships leave carrying the Taldan sunburst into waters that once answered to Oppara's word. The fleet itself is stationed in the capital, but the shipyards remain, and the smell of blackwood tar — sweet and strange, like candy left too long in the sun — drifts across the city on most mornings.
On all landward sides, the Blackwood Swamp presses against the city walls. Cassomir has always been hemmed in by it, always fighting it back, always losing a little ground. The oldest districts were built on whatever solid footing the swamp would allow, and below the city — deeper than most residents care to think about — the tunnels of Corgunbier run through the dark. The dero who live there have been conducting their experiments for longer than anyone has kept records, and they know ways up to the surface that the city watch does not.
Governor Bozbeyli holds authority here, beneath the nobility and alongside them. Cassomir is governed as Taldor governs most things — through layers of precedent, patronage, and the careful management of appearances. It functions. It has always functioned. What it has not done, for three months now, is explain the dead.
Population
~35,000
Government
Governor and nobility. Current ruler: Governor Bozbeyli, appointed by the imperial throne in Oppara.
Exports
- · Warships and merchant vessels (Imperial Naval Shipyards)
- · Timber (floated down the Sellen from the Verduran Forest)
- · Blackwood tar (waterproofing material with a distinctively sweet smell)
- · River toll revenue (taxing all vessels accessing the Sellen)
Imports
- · Goods from the Inner Sea region
- · Trade goods from the Five Kings Mountains, Razmiran, Kyonin, the River Kingdoms, and Galt (via the Sellen)
- · Luxury goods and fine cloth from Oppara
Districts
Abbey Green
The oldest part of the city, built around the ruins of Quickfall Abbey — the ancient harbour that Cassomir grew from. The Abbey itself is long since ruined, but the district carries its memory in the green spaces maintained around the old foundations and the weathered street names that predate the empire's interest in the place. It is quiet, residential, and old in the way that makes people lower their voices without quite knowing why.
Old Cassomir
The original fortified town, enclosed by enormous ramparts that were built when the empire first recognised the harbour's strategic value. The walls are still intact and still impressive, though they have not been tested in generations. Inside them, the streets are narrow, the buildings are stone, and the residents have a particular pride about living within the old walls that everyone outside those walls finds slightly exhausting.
Grayguard's Shadow
Named for Grayguard Castle, the impressive fortress built two hundred years ago to anchor the city's defences on the landward side. The castle dominates its district as completely as its name suggests — everything in Grayguard's Shadow exists in relation to it. The garrison is housed here, the city's military authority is administered here, and the shadow the castle throws across the streets below is literal as well as figurative.
Threegates
The wealthy district — the part of Cassomir where money has been long enough to acquire manners. Broad streets, maintained facades, the kind of shop that does not display prices because its customers do not ask. The noble houses of Cassomir keep their townhouses here, and the district has a collective talent for being unaffected by whatever is currently troubling the rest of the city. It is, so far, being unaffected by the dead. This is beginning to draw comment.
Admiral's Fen
The swamp south of the shipyards was drained by imperial decree when the navy needed room to expand, and Admiral's Fen is what resulted: a district built on reclaimed ground that the Blackwood Swamp has never quite accepted the loss of. The streets are damp even in dry weather. Foundations shift. The tar factories of the Imperial Shipyards operate at the district's edge, filling the air with that disorienting sweetness. It is not a comfortable place to live, and its residents are accordingly pragmatic people.
Dog's Teeth
The unofficial district — a collection of small, rocky islands at the harbour mouth that were never formally incorporated into the city but have been occupied for as long as anyone can remember. No governor has ever successfully administered Dog's Teeth, and most have stopped trying. It is useful to have somewhere the city can look away from, and Dog's Teeth has always been happy to oblige.
Imperial Naval Shipyards
Less a district in the civic sense and more a city within the city — the greatest shipyards in Taldor, occupying an enormous stretch of the harbour's eastern shore. The dry docks can hold a dozen warships simultaneously. The smell of fresh timber, tar, and salt is constant. The halfling shipbuilders who make up a significant part of the workforce are famous for their ability to work in the confined spaces of ships under construction, and equally famous for the graffiti they leave behind in those spaces — commentary on their taller colleagues, legible only to those who know where to look.
Key Figures
Governor Bozbeyli
Ruler of Cassomir, imperial appointee
Holds authority over Cassomir by appointment of the imperial throne in Oppara, governing alongside the city's noble families in the layered, precedent-heavy manner that Taldor has refined over centuries. What the Governor makes of the morning dead — whether it is a matter of genuine concern or careful management of appearances — is a question Cassomir is waiting to have answered.
High Magistrate Seraphine Orvall
Chief legal authority
Responsible for criminal prosecution, civic law, and the theoretical oversight of the city watch. In practice, her court is slow, expensive to access, and structurally advantageous to those who can afford a good advocate. She does not take bribes — she takes precedent, and the precedent in Cassomir consistently favours the established. Her position on the morning dead is that until a perpetrator can be identified, the cases remain open. They have been open for three months.
Lady Vellantrix Cosso
Matriarch of Threegates' most influential noble house
A woman who has survived three changes of imperial administration by maintaining excellent records of who owes what to whom. She is old, sharp, and currently annoyed — two of the morning dead were Cosso retainers, and she has moved from concern to the kind of cold fury that tends to produce results where official channels have not.
Captain Ossa Vane
Commander of the city watch
Has been making promises she cannot keep about the morning dead for three months. Her credibility is gone, her officers are frightened, and she is running out of explanations that do not require admitting she has no idea what is happening. She is not a bad officer. She is an officer dealing with something that does not behave like a crime she knows how to investigate.
Brother Aldric Senne
Senior priest of Pharasma, Pharasma's Pulpit
The Pharasmin temple — Pharasma's Pulpit — has been logging the dead longer than the watch has, keeping careful records that the magistrate's court has so far declined to subpoena. Brother Senne manages the temple with minimal resources and considerable determination. He is the person in Cassomir who knows the most about what is happening, and the fewest people are listening to him. He finds this increasingly difficult to be patient about.
Godkiller begins with you already in Cassomir. You are not summoned, not chosen, not prophesied. You are simply a person who happens to be in the city when things begin to turn, and what you do about it is yours to decide. Before session one, spend a little time with the five questions below. You don't need a full backstory or any rules knowledge yet, just honest answers. We'll build the mechanics together at Session Zero. These are here to help you arrive with a person, not a stat block.
1. How long has Cassomir been yours?
Are you a child of these streets, a recent arrival, or just passing through? Long enough to know which alleys to avoid after dark, or new enough that the city still surprises you? This shapes how much you already know and how much its troubles feel like home.
2. What puts coin in your hand?
What is your work, your trade, your hustle, honest or otherwise? Everyone in Cassomir is busy with something. Knowing how you make your way tells us where you move through the city and who you rub shoulders with.
3. What keeps you going?
When the easy thing would be to walk away, what won't let you? Coin, a person, a debt, the truth, a clean start, a name worth making? This is the thing that pulls you forward when staying still would be simpler.
4. Who would come looking?
Family, a crew, someone you owe, someone you would cross the city to avoid? Or no one at all, and that is the way you keep it? Even one name gives your character roots, and gives the story something to hold onto.
5. The city is afraid. How does that fear sit on you?
Cassomir is a frightened place these days, and fear changes people. Do you keep your head down and protect your own? Hold things together where you can? Look out for yourself, whatever it costs others? Hunt for whoever is behind it? Or are you barely holding on yourself? There is no right answer, only yours.
Godkiller welcomes adventurers of every stripe, but it rewards a character with something to lose and reasons of their own. You don't need a grand destiny or a heroic calling. A sellsword chasing a wage, a merchant protecting a livelihood, a refugee looking for safety, a thief working the docks — all belong here. Bring a person who has a reason to be in Cassomir and a reason to care what happens next, and the story will find you.
Ready to join?
Book your seat on StartPlaying — questions welcome before committing.
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