Silt & Stone
Silt & Stone is a World Setting
It is system-agnostic
The Living Land and Its Eternal Cycle
The world is shaped by an unrelenting geological and tidal rhythm. Every fourth generation, roughly eighty to one hundred and thirty years, the sea surges inward across vast lowlands in what the people call the Great Inundation. Salt water pours over fields, villages and forests, depositing thick layers of silt, gravel, boulders, and marine debris before eventually receding. The flood is capricious: it may last mere days or linger for several years. No pattern has ever been reliably predicted.
When the waters withdraw, they leave behind a reshaped landscape. What were once fertile plains become shallow lagoons, reed-choked marshes, or gently sloping silt flats. Former river valleys are now either narrow canyons cut through fresh sediment or broad, deceptive shallows hiding deep, unstable muck beneath. Over centuries the lowlands have steadily risen as each inundation adds another stratum of material; the once-towering mountains that ring the region appear shorter not because they have eroded, but because the surrounding land has been built upward, layer by layer.
Structures built directly on the fresh silt gradually sink, sometimes evenly, sometimes catastrophically, until their foundations eventually reach the firmer strata below. Only buildings anchored in ancient, pre-inundation bedrock or raised upon deliberately engineered stone platforms endure across multiple cycles.
The Cycle of Strength and Ease
Human society is caught in a parallel rhythm, one that the people themselves recognize and name:
"Strong men create easy times.
Easy times create weak men.
Weak men create difficult times.
Difficult times create strong men."
This cycle has repeated for as long as memory and stone carvings record. Yet two powerful institutions have arisen that actively intervene in the pattern, each convinced that only their path can secure the long-term survival of the people.
The Guild of Might believes humanity requires hardship to remain vigorous and capable. They deliberately perpetuate difficult times—through rigorous training regimes, controlled scarcity, destruction of softening luxuries, and the glorification of physical endurance and martial prowess. Guild members are renowned as master builders, quarry-workers, stone-haulers, and warriors. Their bodies are sculpted by labor; their ethos exalts strength, discipline, and sacrifice.
The Guild of Ease holds that ingenuity, comfort, and intellectual flourishing produce the tools, knowledge, and resilience necessary to survive the next flood. They preserve and expand lore, refine engineering, cultivate rare plants, develop new materials, and create labor-saving devices. Guild members are scribes, inventors, archivists, hydraulic engineers, and keepers of the most ancient records. Their minds are their strength; their ethos prizes foresight, creativity, and adaptability.
Though their philosophies stand in opposition, both Guilds are regarded as essential. Open warfare between them is rare. Instead they engage in subtle, generational competition—undermining one another’s projects, swaying public opinion, sponsoring rival settlements, and claiming credit when times improve. Most ordinary people navigate between the two poles, recognizing that survival demands both raw strength and clever invention.
Tone of the World
Life here is defined by impermanence above ground and permanence below. Every generation knows that what they build, plant, and love will one day be swallowed by the sea and covered by meters of silt. Yet the people endure. Not through denial, but through adaptation, memory, and the stubborn conviction that strength and cleverness together can carry civilisation through the next drowning.
This is the world into which your characters are born: a place of sinking stone, weeping trees, spore-laden winds, rival Guilds, and cities carved into the bones of the earth. Waiting for the tide to rise again.
The Barrows — Cities Beneath the Silt
Because fresh silt is unstable and prone to subsidence, the people long ago turned to stone. They construct barrows. Multi-layered subterranean complexes built predominantly from the flood-deposited boulders and from quarried stone hauled down from the mountains.
A typical barrow consists of large, flat, oblong slabs used for floors, walls, and ceilings. Smaller fill-stones are packed into gaps. The exteriors and interiors are frequently adorned with carved relief. Spirals, wave patterns, human figures, creatures, maps of forgotten coastlines, and abstract glyphs whose meanings have been lost or are fiercely guarded.
Older barrow networks are palimpsests of generations: each inundation buries the previous surface level, prompting the builders to simply quarry a new entrance higher up and continue living downward. Some complexes descend many levels deep and stretch horizontally for kilometers, linked by long tunnels. Newer barrows may have only one or two subterranean layers and are still sinking slowly as unified masses rather than collapsing stone by stone.
Most barrows are empty, abandoned, or forgotten. Silent stone archives waiting beneath the silt. Yet many remain inhabited. Families, clans, and entire communities dwell in the cool, stable dark, emerging to the surface for trade, farming, exploration, salvage, and the never-ending work of excavation and new construction. Digging out lost barrows or carving fresh ones is as fundamental a profession as raising surface structures during the brief windows between floods.
A network of hollow resin-bark pipes, carefully farmed and maintained, provides fresh water, ventilation and waste removal to deep dwellings. These living conduits are among the most valuable resources in the Silted Realms.
The Descent to the Sea
Beyond the plains lies the inevitable slope toward the gray sea—a liminal realm that never fully dries, never quite forgets the last inundation. Here the rivers born in mountain snows widen, slow, and surrender their clarity to brackish sprawl. The land does not snap back to meadow and lagoon as the higher plains do; instead it lingers in wet half-life, reshaping itself with every tide and every retreat.
BogFresh and SaltMarsh
Dwellers of these twin realms, called MarshFolk or simply Waders, live in fluid compromise between the two worlds. Their homes are raised on stilts of resin-bark poles and woven reed platforms, which break into rafts when the flood tide comes to transport them far inland, hopefully alive and intact. Skiffs, their shallow-drafted boats of lashed wood and reed, are poled or rowed through twisting waterways. Families move with the seasons: deeper into BogFresh during dry spells to gather herbs and trap Sneech, out toward SaltMarsh when seasonal tides bring nutrient-rich silt and spawning fish.
These people are the first to feel the flood’s return. When the sea surges, the marshes become a single churning sheet; platforms groan, skiffs are tied to the tallest reeds, and the people retreat to the highest barrows with the PlainsFolk or simply attempt to ride out the wave in their floating huts. When the waters finally draw back the land emerges remade: new silt-bank hills, shifted river valleys, channels carved where none were before. Most barrows vanish beneath fresh layers; only the tallest stand like broken teeth above the drying plain. Survivors emerge from sealed tunnels or high towers, blinking at a world rewritten, supplies rationed, air thin from long confinement.
The duration is fickle. Days, seasons, once (by legend) an entire generation. The Tale of the Long Drowning, is woven into an end-time mythos: a future flood that never recedes, claiming the plains forever, proving the Great Wall the last bastion of humanity. Another story speaks of the Dawn Flood, the first inundation that rose and fell within a single day. Many treat these as myth, yet the fear lingers, sharpening every preparation. Others regard them as the literal truth.
Peoples of the Heights: Mountain Folk and Quarriers
The mountains rise like the spine of some ancient, half-drowned beast—jagged, unyielding, crowned in mist and snow even when the lowlands bake or flood. Here, far above the silt-choked plains, two branches of humanity have taken root, each shaped by altitude, stone, and the long memory of the sea below.
The Reclusive High Folk
In the highest valleys and sheer-sided cirques, where the air bites and the resin-barks grow stunted and wind-twisted, dwell the High Folk. Reclusive herders who speak little to outsiders and less to one another unless the need is dire. Their homes are carved directly into living rock: shallow caves widened by generations of patient chisels, low doorways sealed with woven reed mats or slabs of fallen stone, interiors warmed by small hearths fed with dried dung and resin-bark kindling. Smoke curls out through natural fissures, staining the cliffs black over centuries.
They herd Mountain Shig, those compact, muscular crosses of sheep and pig, barely knee-high to a man yet leaping near-vertical faces with the sure-footed scorn of goats. A single herder can guide a flock across scree slopes that would break a plainsman’s ankle in moments. Shig provide milk thick with vitamins, meat that roasts tender despite their toughness, and wool matted into dreadlocks that must be sheared yearly lest the beasts drag half the mountain behind them. High Folk live simply: fermented milk curds, roasted spore-bud flatbreads traded up from below, hides tanned into supple cloaks. They brew bitter teas from mountain herbs, tell stories of floods that never reached this high, and mark the turning seasons with quiet rituals under starlight unfiltered by spore clouds.
Self-reliance is their creed. They plant nothing that cannot survive a late frost or early snow; they mend nothing that cannot be fixed with stone, bone, or sinew. Outsiders are met with wary hospitality, a bowl of milk, a night’s shelter but never invited to stay. The High Folk remember the cycles better than most; they know the sea may one day climb higher still.
The High Folk are also Miners, retrieving ore from their tunnels where they can, providing the heirloom tools relied on by those who remember the arts of Forging (smelting ore into workable metal) and Smithing (crafting metal into objects and tools). Metal and objects made from it is regarded as magical and often is. By far most of the world is stone-age. Money is not used per se because it's useless for survival purposes unless crafted, although pebbles of metal and ore are sometimes exchanged as trade items in groups which have knowledge of what to do with them.
The Quarriers: Keepers of the Great Wall
Lower down, where mountain valleys widen into defensible passes and the first veins of good building stone appear, live the Quarriers. A bridge-people, half mountain blood, half plains blood, yet belonging fully to neither. Their city clings to and is the Great Wall, a monumental bulwark raised against the creeping inundations.
The Wall is no mere barrier. It is a living, growing edifice of quarried granite, basalt, and limestone, angled sharply on the seaward face to shed water and silt like a ship’s prow, reinforced on the landward side by colossal buttresses that house tunnels, chambers, workshops, and armouries. Each generation adds another course of stone; the Wall inches taller year by year, its giant gates, arched portals wide enough for ox-teams and river barges, guarded by iron-bound portcullises that groan like waking giants. Through these gates flow the mountain rivers, channeled into an internal freshwater riverway that runs the length of the Wall like a vein. This waterway carries boats laden with stone outbound to the plains, returns with grain, dried fish, spore-flour, and luxuries; it also serves for washing, drinking, bathing, and the quiet movement of people between districts.
The Quarriers’ city stretches along the Wall’s crest and within its thickness: tiered stone houses with slate roofs, vaulted markets lit by winter-resin lanterns, forges ringing with hammer-song, scriptoria where lore-keepers copy flood records onto thin stone tablets. Knowledge is hoarded here more jealously than grain. Maps of old quarries, engineering treatises, genealogies stretching back through drowned generations. Tombs and forgotten tunnels honeycomb the deeper buttresses; the dead outnumber the living, it is said, and the living prefer it that way. Ancestors guard their own secrets.
To the Quarriers, the plains folk are necessary but primitive, peasants who scratch at silt and build barrows that sink within a lifetime, while the High Folk are admirable yet impractical, too proud to trade. The Quarriers alone master both worlds: they quarry the stone that anchors barrows against subsidence, trade for the food that sustains their masons, and maintain the Wall that shields the mountain approaches from the next drowning. Their culture reflects this duality—songs blend the stark mountain chants with the rhythmic work-hymns of the plains, clothing mixes rugged wool tunics with finer woven sashes, meals pair mountain cheese with plains flatbread.
Yet survival binds them all. The Great Wall’s granaries may be vast, but without plains agriculture they empty. The plains barrows need mountain stone to endure. And high above, the reclusive herders watch both, shearing their Shig and waiting for the day the sea proves them right.
In this tiered world of height and depth, flood and stone, the peoples endure, each convinced their way is the truest path through the inevitable cycle.
The Long Forest
Between the quarry-valleys of the lower mountains and the looming shadow of the Great Wall stretches the Long Forest. A wide, unbroken ribbon of green, home to the oldest and tallest resin-barks in the realms. Their trunks rise like living pillars, crowns interlocking so densely that sunlight arrives only in thin, golden spears. The understory is a sacred hush of ferns, fallen needles, and moss that muffles every footfall.
To the Forest Tribes this is no mere woodland; it is a living entity, ancient and jealous, deserving of reverence and ruthless defence. They patrol in silence, cloaked in bark-dyed wool and leaf-woven mantles, faces painted with spiral ochre. Wood taken here is a sin; they direct all firewood and timber demands toward the plains or the managed copses near the Wall. Chopping or burning without rite is met with capture or death on sight. Strangers, whether Mountain Folk, Quarriers, or Plainsmen, are intruders. Few return from the depths.
The Folk of the Green value two things above life itself: the forest, and the power of music and story. Their instruments, hollowed resin-bark flutes, strung sinew harps, reed pipes, produce sounds twisted and otherworldly, melodies that coil like Sneech through the mind. Their tales are living dreams, spoken in low, rhythmic cadences that can mesmerize listeners into trance. A entranced wanderer might kneel and offer their life to the Forest God, be initiated into the tribe, or be marked for the hunt.
The hunt is ritual: the intruder must escape the forest’s edge. Success is rare but known, enough that tales circulate, enough that most avoid the Long Forest entirely. Safe paths exist: the guarded roads and rivers threading from the Great Wall’s gates to the mountain valleys, dotted with abandoned watchtowers that serve as waystations against the green dark.
In this stretch of wood, the cycle feels slower, deeper. The trees remember every flood that lapped their roots; the Rangers remember every fool who thought the forest could be taken lightly. Between the sinking barrows, the rising Wall, and the patient sea, the Long Forest stands as both sanctuary and sentence, sacred, essential, and unforgiving.
Player Classes
In the original concept, the only Player Class available is the Plains Folk. Other groups emerged as the core idea expanded to integrate opportunities presented by the bordering domains. These are mostly to add flavour to characters on their travels, or to justify why and how things are as they are, or because the idea seems naturally possible and unique to this world as too juicy to not include it. The intention is to expand the regions and their unique cultures into Player Classes in the future with dedicated expansion modules.
Regions Recap
The Plains, wherein the Barrows
The Barrows, inhabited and abandoned or lost
The Swamps, BogFresh and SaltMarsh
The Great Wall
The Quarries
The Mountains & The Mines
The Long Forest
Flora of the Silted Realms
The dominant trees of the region have evolved in perfect synchrony with the inundation cycle. They are called Sap-Tree. These giants grow extraordinarily rapidly in youth, sending thick taproots downward through dozens of meters of silt to anchor in older, stable layers. Once established, they soar to great heights; the oldest specimens are revered as living monuments, their massive trunks marked by centuries of flood scars and bark layers.
Their life cycle follows the seasons:
Spring — vivid green sap surges upward; new shoots explode skyward at astonishing speed. This green sap is harvested for food, medicinal salves, and soap.
Summer — heat bakes the outer bark into tough, woody armour. The yellow sap thickens into a powerful natural glue.
Autumn — the trees “weep” through fissures in the bark, exuding brown sap that hardens into a durable resin used as a fixative and hardener.
Winter — the exposed sap crystallises into hardy resin, insoluble in water or oil.
All forms of sap (except fully wintered resin) can be dissolved in water or oil, though brown sap requires longer processing.
Another ubiquitous plant form is spore-grass. Unlike conventional grasses, it propagates primarily through wind-borne spores rather than seeds. After the flood recedes, the air fills with drifting white clouds of spores—“milk rain”—that settle across the landscape. Where grazing animals keep the growth cropped short, a soft lawn-like turf develops. In undisturbed areas the grass rises into tall, wheat-like reeds that eventually produce edible spore-buds rich in starchy flour.
Fauna of the Silted Realms
Sheeg are a cross between Sheep and Pigs. There are two sub-species; Mountain Shig and Meadow Sheeg. Mountain Shig have incredibly strong muscular legs which can leap up almost vertical cliff faces. They grow to no more than eighteen inches tall, two feet long, six inches wide. Meadow Sheeg grow to four feet tall, four feet wide and four feet long. They are perhaps the most stubborn creatures imaginable. Both species grow thick wool which often trails behind them in dirty, matted dreadlocks unless they are regularly combed and sheared. They are herd animals and taste great. Their hides (with or without wool) can be tanned into a leather. They live for approximately thirteen years. They are wild but can be domesticated. The females are good producers of strong vitamineral-rich milk from which various recipes are made. Their dung is a source of compost.
Auroch are giant bovine (cattle); a fully grown adult is nine feet tall, six foot wide, pure muscle. They have horns which continue to grow throughout the creatures natural fifteen-twenty year lifespan, capable of reaching a size of ten feet per horn. They are usually incredibly docile, although capable of fearsome malice when riled. They are a migratory herd species, usually found roaming the plains. Their hides can be tanned into a leather. They are wild but can be domesticated. The females are good producers of creamy vitamineral-rich milk from which various recipes are made. An Auroch stampede can continue for hundreds of miles. Their dung is a source of compost.
Panther are fast running predators. A full grown adult panther is the size of a small adult human. They have been known to be domesticated while young, usually reverting to feral with call of nature. They have razor sharp claws and teeth. Although their pelts can be tanned it is not as strong as Auroch leather. Unless coupled for parenting, panther are usually solitary although it has been known for them to form packs under a particularly strong and intelligent leader.
Rabbits are typical wild rabbits. They dig warrens and breed like rabbits. They can be bred in captivity for meat and pelt.
Sneech are a cross between Snake and Leech. They move equally as well through water or across land, have rings of fangs in their mouths, containing a venom which causes numbness or burning pain depending on the sub-species. Sneech can grow from anything between a couple of milimeters to fifty feet in length, suck blood if they can't swallow their prey whole and are solitary except for mating or if found as hatchlings. They spawn from gelatinous eggs, a delicacy, as is the meat. Their bodies stretch and can be used as an elasticated cord which dries into leather. They will burrow under shallow silt by wriggling their bodies but prefer to find cracks and holes to coil up in or tree branches to dangle from. Although they will attack any other creature they never attack each other.
Raptors are all of the various sub-species of Eagles, Falcons, Hawks, Vultures and Owls combined into one generic bird of prey. There are two subspecies; small ones (six inches tall) and big ones (three feet tall). They fly, high and fast, and they run, fast. Sometimes they are solitary, sometimes they flock and run in packs, depending on food scarcity. They are omnivores and will turn on each other if no other food is available. Adult males will fight to the death. Although reptiles they are often bred in captivity to perform the same role as poultry in providing meat, eggs and feathers. They do not have beaks like birds; they have razor sharp teeth and claws.
Fish can be found in lakes, lagoons, rivers. They're all the same regardless whether freshwater or salt water. They grow to the size of the container. After the flood recedes, remains of ocean fish can be found far inland which measure tens of feet from tip to tail.
Sqepa are originally giant squid washed up after the Great Inundation. Rather than dry out and die, they adapted to the terrain by tunnelling through soft silt before it dries and hardens into compact earth, forming subterranean tunnels. During this process their external skin hardens through abrasian into a chitinous exoskeleton. Their size is anything between an inch to a hundred feet from tentacle to tip. Sqepa are carnivores who will eat their own species. Although relatively rare, it is not unknown for breeding colonies to occupy a lagoon. Sqepa produce both ink and silk through different glands. They spin the silk into webs and cocoons and in the case of smaller specimens, into parachutes for wind-born travel. Sqepa are edible (except for their ink and chitin).
Birds there are many species of small songbirds measuring no larger than three to four inches and with a variety of brightly coloured feathers. They nest in trees and reeds depending on season, biome and subspecies type. They are edible as are their eggs which for storytelling convenience are an inch long.
Flies begin tiny, swarming in their thousands. If they survive to breeding age they grow to an inch long and are more solitary. They bite, which stings with severity equivalent to their size.
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