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Description
A map and scenario expanding a bit on the world described in Clifford D. Simak's novel, "Where the Evil Dwells" (All rights estate of Clifford Simak, this ain't for profit, etc.)

The Wild Ones – the many-shaped almost-people and strange beasts of the forests, the mountains, the deserts, and the swamps, of deep caves mysterious green mounds, had been around, as far as anyone knew, as long or longer as humanity, but their origin always was disputed: there had always been a view that they were a separate and perhaps inferior creation, springing from a different source than humanity and the more common beasts of farm and field and woodland. According to some, they had been let into the world from elswere long ago by the folly of ancient wizards seeking beyond the ends of the Earth: according to others, they had been created as a plague upon mankind by evil, ancient Gods.

The relation between humans and the Wild Ones had often been tense and prone to violence, but a sort of grudging co-existence had been the norm until after the days of Jesus and the founding of the Roman Empire. Growth in human population, the cutting down of forest to build farms, the increasing hostility of the Christian church, which took the refusal of the Wild Ones to come out of the woods and kneel before God’s altar as a sign they were those tares to be put to the fire, the turning of the Wild Ones to strange and ugly new forms of worship in response to an increased sense of human threat and hostility – there were multiple factors driving tensions to a new level.

In the early fourth century tensions boiled over, and open war broke out between humanity and the Wild Ones. Europe was soaked in blood, and distant reports of other great battles against Wild Folk of alien sorts came from the reaches of Asia. The Wild Ones were fighting on two main fronts, so to speak, against the somewhat gone-to-seed but still strong Romans and against the Germanic folk of the north and Scandinavia, who while not Christian still saw the Wild Ones as unnatural, servants of Loki and Hel, among the enemies that would fight Odin/Wotan/Woden/whoever when Ragnarok came.

In the end, after a series of defeats (in Europe and Hither Asia it was said one in two of the Wild Ones had vanished, banished from the world by a great and holy saint – others said a wizard/wizards did it, or maybe saints and wizards working together) the Wild Ones were driven from human lands, but rallied with their backs to the wall, forming a stubborn defensive posture across the center of Europe. If Christendom and the Pagan north had truly cooperated, it is said, the Wild Ones – or the Evil Ones, as increasingly they were known in Christian lands – could have been defeated once and for all, but the followers of Christ and of Wotan did not trust each other, and in their secret hearts the leaders of Rome and the Church thought it a fine thing to have the Evil Ones form a barrier between Christendom and the bloody heathens of the North. And so, things stayed.

It is now the year of Our Lord 1982, although the exact date is disputed by many. Technology has advanced slowly to late medieval levels, and the printing press exists, but science is nonexistent, save in the peculiar researches of some Wizards, in as much as that can be called science. The oppressive, censorious hand of the Imperial state and Church, combined with a new great eruption from what is now simply called “The Evil”, strangled the feeble shoots of this world’s equivalent of the Renaissance. Gunpowder is a closely guarded Chinese secret, the Guns of the Golden Empire warding off both steppe barbarians in the north and the Asian versions of the Wild Ones/Evil Ones to the south. The Americas remain undiscovered, although that may soon change.

The Empire remains the greatest power west of the Golden Empire, although there has been some decay. The economy is shaky, and population densities are high, with little land for second sons: if it weren’t for some magical and theoretically-Church-banned-but-generally-studiously-ignored contraception techniques, society would be pushing hard against the Mathusian limit. Most of Mesopotamia is back in the hands of the latest incarnation of Persia. The now thoroughly Greek-speaking East has grown distant from the Latin far west, and local strong men largely run things in the Empire’s name, while Lusitain has become an essentially independent vassal on the level of the Berbers of Mauretania or Georgia, the Warden of the Mountain Passes. (Of course, there are further sub-divisions: southern Gaul is considered a pretty barbarous place by Byzantine officials dispatched there, but they in turn consider themselves as highly cultured, and the northern marches with the Evil as little better than Britain) Still, the notion of the Empire as civilization itself remains strong, and nobody really wants to break it up: and while locals handle minor eruptions and clashes along the borders, when the Evil as a whole grows restive the Empire sends its legions to bolster local forces, and the Legions are still considered the finest troops in the world, or at least west of China and its clearly sorcerous weapons.

Speaking of Sorcery, magic is used by both humans and the Evil. Wizards and witches of various levels of power exist as a society slightly separate from the nonmagical masses. The most powerful can do things like call down the lightening on their enemies, but this sort of thing is rather exhausting, and an exhausted wizard is as stabbable as anyone else. More consistently useful effects can be created by “craftsman mages”, who can create magical items or golems which can perform superhuman acts as needed. Some have found ways to animate trees to move and fight on their behalf (again, with the use of previously constructed magical artifacts, not waving of the hands), and others can create barriers that the Evil cannot cross.

As wielders of power outside the normal channels of the state and Church, they are looked upon with suspicion by the authorities, and at times may be expelled from one province or Exarchate or another, and face substantial prejudice from those who suspect them of working with the Evil or the devil. On the other hand, the Church holds, unlike OTL, that there is “natural” magic which is not inherently evil, as well as “holy” magic accessible to saints, so being a witch or wizard does not come with an automatic label of Satan-worshipper. They are also simply too useful to dispense with, like European Jews before the commercial revolution, and unlike medieval Jews, can be individually powerful enough that few will try to lynch one without the army behind them, or at least an extremely large mob. In some places, like Alexandria, they are accepted if somewhat disliked part of everyday life: in others, especially in the “semi-barbarian” exarchates of the west, they are rarely seen, and while some people in their ignorance spin all sorts of ghoulish tales about them, others who have never seen a powerful wizard or witch at work think magic is simply some sort of elaborate con.

The more intellectual sorts of wizards are rather frustrated that magic as an art does not seem to be progressing – indeed, it may be retrogressing, in that most of the greatest wizards of history are just that – history. The trouble is that magic remains quite poorly understood and non-systematic, mostly being a compilation of “what works” with no real understanding in most cases. A small class of genuine “magical researchers” has emerged, struggling to find a systematic basis for it, but their efforts are hampered by the tendency of most wizards and witches to hog useful knowledge to themselves, and efforts to create a magical “community of letters” are hampered by the fact that you really don’t want to be sending theoretical spells by the regular (unreliable) postal system, and that the witch or wizard you are corresponding with may just be trying to steal your secrets rather than contribute anything useful.

Another, little known sort of magic, is bardic or musical magic: bards and their power are greatly respected in the pagan North, and still have a high repute in the British isles, but are rather looked down upon by the wizards and witches of the Empire, and many people are highly dubious about their effectiveness in the case where swords and steel and Greek Fire are needed. In fact, some bards can indeed charm the savage breast with their music, and one great troubadour of southern Gaul actually lived among the Evil for a number of years, charming great multitudes into harmlessness with his music, until he was finally murdered by a stone-deaf ogre.

The Church remains powerful and unified: the power of Holy Magic (there actually are certain people of exceptional spiritual power whose designation as Saints by the Church really does seem appropriate), fabulous wealth, and width and age of its institutions has allowed it to emerge from under the shadow of the Emperor and retain a certain degree of independence – the Empire is not “Caesaropapist” in the Byzantine sense, although there is no all-powerful Pope either, and councils held by the chief Patriarchs and Bishops of the Empire are the ultimate source of Church authority. Admittedly, the power of the Church increases the further one is from Constantinople: while the Patriarch of Constantinople defers to the Emperor, the head of the Church in Eire is the one authority that can ride herd over the squabbling kingdoms and sub-kingdoms of Eire.

Church authority is greatly enhanced by the fact that souls are something which is “scientifically” demonstrable as existing: very real ghosts and hauntings exist and require exorcisms, while some powerful sorcerers have successfully trapped souls in magic crystals (something punishable by an extremely gruesome execution under Church law, BTW). People who die in fear and pain, in violence and unshriven by the Church often remain trapped as spirits, and require the aid of spiritually advanced Church folk and occasionally actual saints to move on (spirits of those who die far from human habitations in places such as where the Wild Ones/Evil dwells may remain trapped for a long time). The Church prefers people not dwell on the fact that specialized wizards and witches can also help spirits move on, and downright denies rumors that people in non-Christian Asia and the still-Pagan north have their own spiritual powers which can aid spirits move on – Shaman-Priests in the north, Gurus in India, Enlightened Masters in China, etc.

It is said that the spirits of great wizards and saints still dwell close to the Earthly realm and can at times when called by upon by great wizards break the barrier between death and life to create magics greater than any single living saint or mage can perform. (This is not exactly Church orthodoxy: according to the Church the spirits of Saints can reach out from heaven to create miracles when called upon by living recognized saints of the Church (or important Church officials, ignore that wizard in the corner).

The identity between “Rome” and “Christendom” remains strong, and the Church is less interested in converting outsiders by force or missionary activity, although they have no problems with saints or charismatic preachers who travel beyond the borders of the empire to spread the faith. Britain (and with it, Norway, whose kings had more men and more tax revenues in Britain than in Scandinavia) was lost and regained for the faith, and there are Christian states (if often unfortunately heterodox) in west Africa, and Ethiopia has been Christian for ages, and western Arabia for over a millennium. Rumor holds of Christian communities of great size in India and the Golden Empire of China, and imperial geographers have been putting Prebster John’s Kingdom at varying locations on the map for centuries. The Church is also generally more tolerant of non-Christians, as long as they don’t try to convert people to their faith: there still remain a few pockets of old-style pagans in the backwoods here and there, although Wotanists generally are not tolerated due to their supposed human-sacrificing ways. Jews also are tolerated, if kept under certain legal restrictions. (They are not a numerous people, there being no great tolerant reservoirs like the OTL Polish republic – many have immigrated to more tolerant, or at least more indifferent lands in further Asia, and vanished among the multitudes). [1]

The Wild Ones – now simply and collectively known as the Evil – are the dark side of the world, the Other, the menace. Their lands shrink and grow over the centuries as human states wax and wane in strength, but never have been eliminated. There are countless types and forms, although these vary with location: the Evil of Europe differ from those of Asian mountains and jungles, and in turn differ from those of the African wastes. Most form a sort of “people”, in the sense of being able to talk and reason, but there are also a number of beasts that are considered part of the Evil, due to an ability to cooperate with other kinds vs. humans, or due to sheer oddness. Common sorts include ogres, a foot taller than men and twice as wide, barbed tails a-dangle behind, fanged, clawed, and offensively naked: trolls, hairy, snaggle-fanged, with an obsession for bridges and an occasional appreciation for pockets: imps, brownies and gnomes, twisted little men, the riff-raff of the Evil’s armies, leg-stabbers and murderers of the badly wounded: harpies, with twisted human faces and claws and fangs that carry deadly infections; fairies, nasty little creatures who fly in “shoals” on insect wings and stab people with little thorns like wasp stings; pixies and sprites, larger and with a tendency to lead people into swamps and bogs; dragons, great flying man-eating lizards large enough to carry off cows and horses which fortunately do not actually breathe poison. Some have nasty magical abilities, notably elves, fairies, and goblins, the toad-like swamp goblin being a particularly unpleasant creature. Mostly it’s illusion of one sort or another, although a few can twist time and space to make a short walk seem to last for days or trap one in a wood. (Fortunately, some of the very worst kinds were banished by a saint/wizard/wizardsaints/whatever). Fairies are fond of spoiling ale and beer and curdling milk.

In the east, nearer to the Balkans, one finds satyrs and cyclopes, which are essentially one-eyed, plus-sized ogres.

A few species are considered part of the Evil while not actually getting along with other members: unicorns, which will kill almost any non-virgin sapient beings which get too close, (not fairies, for some reason: unicorns tolerate them and they in turn dote upon the unicorns) are the best known. Another is the ghoul, sharp fanged and slack mouthed, with glowing eyes and dark hair greasy with unmentionable stuff, an almost mindless creature of pure appetite which even ogres find distasteful.

Aside from the elves and some sorts of gnomes and goblins, which have underground burrow societies (glamour makes them look lovely, but don’t be fooled: it’s nasty), most of the Evil live with very few civilized accoutrements, although they may erect stones to their vague and shadowy gods. Many do not have any real tool-making skills, and indeed in battle several species, including ogres and trolls, disdain the use of any weapons more advanced than a sturdy club or just some choice throwing rocks, depending on their superhuman strength and ferocity in battle against humans. Goblins and others have copper and stone knives and spears, while elves avoid direct combat, preferring to use spells and to pepper humans with their cursed stone arrowheads from behind cover (the ogres and the elves mutually despise eachother).

The lands of the Evil are not entirely devoid of humans. In times of peace, human travelers with a glib tongue and a harmless appearance may cross the land with only minor harassment as long as they don’t run into things like dragons or unicorns. Traders and peddlers can pass through on certain accepted routes because they bring useful goods, news and gossip. Some with medical skills, especially magical medical skills, are tolerated as permanent inhabitants: the Evil may have magic, but very little of it is of a healing sort. There are always some people trying to convert the Evil, although the Church discourages it nowadays as certain unshriven death: most die quickly, but some are kept around because they amuse the Evil. Also, some are employed as caretakers: while most of the Evil care little for human treasures, there are many who loot simply because they know humans appreciate these things and will be unhappy if they take them (goblins do have a fondness for shiny things, as do dragons): in some cases, rather than throw treasures in a hole, they have some enslaved humans in an old church or villa to take care of them and keep them clean and shiny.

Of course, this is in peaceful times: at times, the Evil seems overtaken by a furious madness, war with the human lands breaks out, and the only humans who can survive in the lands of the Evil without hiding are the personal slaves of strong members of the Evil, and even they are at risk.

The Church holds the Evil have no souls. This is a matter of debate between Witches and Wizards: it is a fact that nobody has ever seen or heard from the ghost of an ogre, elf, or fairy, and no wizard has managed to catch the soul of a member of the Evil in a crystal. Of course, they rarely have an opportunity to experiment.

Aside from the Evil, there are other intelligences in the world. One of the most curious are the people known as the Knurly Folk, an ancient breed of men which now exist only in a few mountain refuges, although some are scattered about Europe working as soldiers for hire or woodland guides. Where they live they generally still pursue a mostly hunter-gatherer lifestyle (although they may maintain groves of fruit and nut trees) and their knowledge of nature and the wilderness is unparalleled. They are generally looked upon as strange and a touch magical, but not evil – they are, in fact, old enemies of the Evil themselves, and are known as doughty fighters against its many-shaped representatives. They are, they claim, a folk older than the Evil, who inhabited the world before modern-type people ever existed and before the Evil appeared (they say such things only to those they can trust, since the Church frowns on claims of the world existing long before the creation of mankind). Although putting on a show of faith in Christ when among Christians, and Valhalla when among Wotanists, the Knurly Folk are generally non-religious: they have seen Gods, and didn’t like them much.

The Knurly men and women are broad, long armed, almost neckless, muscular, sloping browed and with prominent brow ridges – what we would call Neanderthals, basically. This identity is unclear given the magical nature of their world – they appear to have been around rather longer than their equivalent in our world, and they are extremely long lived, some living a thousand years or more. The Knurly Folk never grow old and weak and senescent: when they die, they do so in full possession of their faculties. They also possess a sort of ancestral memory: at times of need, secret wisdoms and techniques known by their remote ancestors can be recalled.

Older still, older perhaps than animal life more advanced than insects, are the Elementals, creatures born of Earth and decay, in the soil of damp places where vegetable and animal matter rot and combine with the Earth. Purposeless, random, ancient, they despise intelligent life, including, some say, themselves. Normally merging with the humus or swamp ooze, they take form as vaguely humanoid but largely shapeless masses of mold and soil, animal bones and twigs, slime and rot. Paralyzing their victims with an incredible stink and a powerful aura of hate and evil, they mutilate their victims with teeth and claws made of chips of bone and stone: if the victims survive (extreme terror-shock, uncontrollable vomiting adds to the effect of injuries) they soon perish from the festering of their wounds. Some people are more resistant to the stink and the aura than others and can break free, but the best thing to do is run: if you catch one by surprise you can smash an elemental to pieces, but they will sprout from the earth again before long, and it may gather any others in the neighborhood to come seeking revenge, while the pure aura of hatred a group of them can generate can kill by itself. Fortunately, running water is a barrier to them, and they cannot travel many miles from where they are born. Never numerous, they are rare nowadays, their habitat shrunken by the plow and ax, and slain by wizards when they find them, and are hardly seen outside the lands of the Evil as often as once in a blue Moon.

Whether the Elder Ones pre-exist the Elementals is unknown. They ruled the world in the early days of the Knurly Folk, but were already fading: their power rises and falls in aeon-long cycles, and they may have ruled the world in previous aeons. The Elder Ones come in many kinds, or perhaps there is only one kind that comes in countless forms. There are the things which come as black sucking tornadoes from the skies, the things that slither and have no front or back end, the things that slobber and drool, the things that gibber things that cause insanity if you listen. The things with many glowing, golden eyes, the things which chitter in the corners, the things which scamper on hooves, the things that purr like a million cats as large as elephants.

They are all the Elder Ones, the things from the furthest reaches of beyond, now weak or perhaps simply far away, waiting to build again. Beware the ancient places of their temples, because time and space can be confused in such places, and a temple now tumbled stone may appear whole for a few hours, and those foolish enough to enter may find the entrance passages oddly moved around, and discover rooms with indefinitely distant walls, where the darkness glows a poisonous green and the chittering and gibbering and purring grow louder. If this is the case, you had better have a master wizard on hand, or a Knurly Man or Woman, for they may remember the ancient magical chants of protection from an age of awful darkness. They cannot destroy or permanently banish the Elder Ones, but they can undo the twisting of time and space and send the dead past back to where it belongs.

They wait, and their patience is endless, humanity a mere mayfly of the moment. They do hold grudges, though, and they hold one against the Evil, which aeons ago stole some of their secrets to escape their service. Some of the Evil now wish for the assistance of the Elder Ones, and try to worship them in their own crude way, fumbling ancient mostly-forgotten rites. The Elder Ones neither forget, not forgive, and care not for their worship. Using what influence over them they still have, they occasionally stir the Evil to near-mindless violence, like humans disturbing an ant nest for their amusement. When they return, the Evil, if humanity has not wiped them out themselves by that time, will be the first to be swept away…

[1] There are in fact some Jews in the Wotanist lands, but they’re considered weirdoes and unclean by more orthodox Jews in the empire – they tend to be heavily represented in the warrior bands and associations that patrol the borders with the Evil and occasionally raid into it, the Wotanists feeling that Valhalla isn’t picky about anyone willing to fight the enemies of Mankind to the death. What sort of Jews would feel pride in being reportedly more vicious than a drunken Finn?

Description
A map and scenario expanding a bit on the world described in Clifford D. Simak's novel, "Where the Evil Dwells" (All rights estate of Clifford Simak, this ain't for profit, etc.)

The Wild Ones – the many-shaped almost-people and strange beasts of the forests, the mountains, the deserts, and the swamps, of deep caves mysterious green mounds, had been around, as far as anyone knew, as long or longer as humanity, but their origin always was disputed: there had always been a view that they were a separate and perhaps inferior creation, springing from a different source than humanity and the more common beasts of farm and field and woodland. According to some, they had been let into the world from elswere long ago by the folly of ancient wizards seeking beyond the ends of the Earth: according to others, they had been created as a plague upon mankind by evil, ancient Gods.

The relation between humans and the Wild Ones had often been tense and prone to violence, but a sort of grudging co-existence had been the norm until after the days of Jesus and the founding of the Roman Empire. Growth in human population, the cutting down of forest to build farms, the increasing hostility of the Christian church, which took the refusal of the Wild Ones to come out of the woods and kneel before God’s altar as a sign they were those tares to be put to the fire, the turning of the Wild Ones to strange and ugly new forms of worship in response to an increased sense of human threat and hostility – there were multiple factors driving tensions to a new level.

In the early fourth century tensions boiled over, and open war broke out between humanity and the Wild Ones. Europe was soaked in blood, and distant reports of other great battles against Wild Folk of alien sorts came from the reaches of Asia. The Wild Ones were fighting on two main fronts, so to speak, against the somewhat gone-to-seed but still strong Romans and against the Germanic folk of the north and Scandinavia, who while not Christian still saw the Wild Ones as unnatural, servants of Loki and Hel, among the enemies that would fight Odin/Wotan/Woden/whoever when Ragnarok came.

In the end, after a series of defeats (in Europe and Hither Asia it was said one in two of the Wild Ones had vanished, banished from the world by a great and holy saint – others said a wizard/wizards did it, or maybe saints and wizards working together) the Wild Ones were driven from human lands, but rallied with their backs to the wall, forming a stubborn defensive posture across the center of Europe. If Christendom and the Pagan north had truly cooperated, it is said, the Wild Ones – or the Evil Ones, as increasingly they were known in Christian lands – could have been defeated once and for all, but the followers of Christ and of Wotan did not trust each other, and in their secret hearts the leaders of Rome and the Church thought it a fine thing to have the Evil Ones form a barrier between Christendom and the bloody heathens of the North. And so, things stayed.

It is now the year of Our Lord 1982, although the exact date is disputed by many. Technology has advanced slowly to late medieval levels, and the printing press exists, but science is nonexistent, save in the peculiar researches of some Wizards, in as much as that can be called science. The oppressive, censorious hand of the Imperial state and Church, combined with a new great eruption from what is now simply called “The Evil”, strangled the feeble shoots of this world’s equivalent of the Renaissance. Gunpowder is a closely guarded Chinese secret, the Guns of the Golden Empire warding off both steppe barbarians in the north and the Asian versions of the Wild Ones/Evil Ones to the south. The Americas remain undiscovered, although that may soon change.

The Empire remains the greatest power west of the Golden Empire, although there has been some decay. The economy is shaky, and population densities are high, with little land for second sons: if it weren’t for some magical and theoretically-Church-banned-but-generally-studiously-ignored contraception techniques, society would be pushing hard against the Mathusian limit. Most of Mesopotamia is back in the hands of the latest incarnation of Persia. The now thoroughly Greek-speaking East has grown distant from the Latin far west, and local strong men largely run things in the Empire’s name, while Lusitain has become an essentially independent vassal on the level of the Berbers of Mauretania or Georgia, the Warden of the Mountain Passes. (Of course, there are further sub-divisions: southern Gaul is considered a pretty barbarous place by Byzantine officials dispatched there, but they in turn consider themselves as highly cultured, and the northern marches with the Evil as little better than Britain) Still, the notion of the Empire as civilization itself remains strong, and nobody really wants to break it up: and while locals handle minor eruptions and clashes along the borders, when the Evil as a whole grows restive the Empire sends its legions to bolster local forces, and the Legions are still considered the finest troops in the world, or at least west of China and its clearly sorcerous weapons.

Speaking of Sorcery, magic is used by both humans and the Evil. Wizards and witches of various levels of power exist as a society slightly separate from the nonmagical masses. The most powerful can do things like call down the lightening on their enemies, but this sort of thing is rather exhausting, and an exhausted wizard is as stabbable as anyone else. More consistently useful effects can be created by “craftsman mages”, who can create magical items or golems which can perform superhuman acts as needed. Some have found ways to animate trees to move and fight on their behalf (again, with the use of previously constructed magical artifacts, not waving of the hands), and others can create barriers that the Evil cannot cross.

As wielders of power outside the normal channels of the state and Church, they are looked upon with suspicion by the authorities, and at times may be expelled from one province or Exarchate or another, and face substantial prejudice from those who suspect them of working with the Evil or the devil. On the other hand, the Church holds, unlike OTL, that there is “natural” magic which is not inherently evil, as well as “holy” magic accessible to saints, so being a witch or wizard does not come with an automatic label of Satan-worshipper. They are also simply too useful to dispense with, like European Jews before the commercial revolution, and unlike medieval Jews, can be individually powerful enough that few will try to lynch one without the army behind them, or at least an extremely large mob. In some places, like Alexandria, they are accepted if somewhat disliked part of everyday life: in others, especially in the “semi-barbarian” exarchates of the west, they are rarely seen, and while some people in their ignorance spin all sorts of ghoulish tales about them, others who have never seen a powerful wizard or witch at work think magic is simply some sort of elaborate con.

The more intellectual sorts of wizards are rather frustrated that magic as an art does not seem to be progressing – indeed, it may be retrogressing, in that most of the greatest wizards of history are just that – history. The trouble is that magic remains quite poorly understood and non-systematic, mostly being a compilation of “what works” with no real understanding in most cases. A small class of genuine “magical researchers” has emerged, struggling to find a systematic basis for it, but their efforts are hampered by the tendency of most wizards and witches to hog useful knowledge to themselves, and efforts to create a magical “community of letters” are hampered by the fact that you really don’t want to be sending theoretical spells by the regular (unreliable) postal system, and that the witch or wizard you are corresponding with may just be trying to steal your secrets rather than contribute anything useful.

Another, little known sort of magic, is bardic or musical magic: bards and their power are greatly respected in the pagan North, and still have a high repute in the British isles, but are rather looked down upon by the wizards and witches of the Empire, and many people are highly dubious about their effectiveness in the case where swords and steel and Greek Fire are needed. In fact, some bards can indeed charm the savage breast with their music, and one great troubadour of southern Gaul actually lived among the Evil for a number of years, charming great multitudes into harmlessness with his music, until he was finally murdered by a stone-deaf ogre.

The Church remains powerful and unified: the power of Holy Magic (there actually are certain people of exceptional spiritual power whose designation as Saints by the Church really does seem appropriate), fabulous wealth, and width and age of its institutions has allowed it to emerge from under the shadow of the Emperor and retain a certain degree of independence – the Empire is not “Caesaropapist” in the Byzantine sense, although there is no all-powerful Pope either, and councils held by the chief Patriarchs and Bishops of the Empire are the ultimate source of Church authority. Admittedly, the power of the Church increases the further one is from Constantinople: while the Patriarch of Constantinople defers to the Emperor, the head of the Church in Eire is the one authority that can ride herd over the squabbling kingdoms and sub-kingdoms of Eire.

Church authority is greatly enhanced by the fact that souls are something which is “scientifically” demonstrable as existing: very real ghosts and hauntings exist and require exorcisms, while some powerful sorcerers have successfully trapped souls in magic crystals (something punishable by an extremely gruesome execution under Church law, BTW). People who die in fear and pain, in violence and unshriven by the Church often remain trapped as spirits, and require the aid of spiritually advanced Church folk and occasionally actual saints to move on (spirits of those who die far from human habitations in places such as where the Wild Ones/Evil dwells may remain trapped for a long time). The Church prefers people not dwell on the fact that specialized wizards and witches can also help spirits move on, and downright denies rumors that people in non-Christian Asia and the still-Pagan north have their own spiritual powers which can aid spirits move on – Shaman-Priests in the north, Gurus in India, Enlightened Masters in China, etc.

It is said that the spirits of great wizards and saints still dwell close to the Earthly realm and can at times when called by upon by great wizards break the barrier between death and life to create magics greater than any single living saint or mage can perform. (This is not exactly Church orthodoxy: according to the Church the spirits of Saints can reach out from heaven to create miracles when called upon by living recognized saints of the Church (or important Church officials, ignore that wizard in the corner).

The identity between “Rome” and “Christendom” remains strong, and the Church is less interested in converting outsiders by force or missionary activity, although they have no problems with saints or charismatic preachers who travel beyond the borders of the empire to spread the faith. Britain (and with it, Norway, whose kings had more men and more tax revenues in Britain than in Scandinavia) was lost and regained for the faith, and there are Christian states (if often unfortunately heterodox) in west Africa, and Ethiopia has been Christian for ages, and western Arabia for over a millennium. Rumor holds of Christian communities of great size in India and the Golden Empire of China, and imperial geographers have been putting Prebster John’s Kingdom at varying locations on the map for centuries. The Church is also generally more tolerant of non-Christians, as long as they don’t try to convert people to their faith: there still remain a few pockets of old-style pagans in the backwoods here and there, although Wotanists generally are not tolerated due to their supposed human-sacrificing ways. Jews also are tolerated, if kept under certain legal restrictions. (They are not a numerous people, there being no great tolerant reservoirs like the OTL Polish republic – many have immigrated to more tolerant, or at least more indifferent lands in further Asia, and vanished among the multitudes). [1]

The Wild Ones – now simply and collectively known as the Evil – are the dark side of the world, the Other, the menace. Their lands shrink and grow over the centuries as human states wax and wane in strength, but never have been eliminated. There are countless types and forms, although these vary with location: the Evil of Europe differ from those of Asian mountains and jungles, and in turn differ from those of the African wastes. Most form a sort of “people”, in the sense of being able to talk and reason, but there are also a number of beasts that are considered part of the Evil, due to an ability to cooperate with other kinds vs. humans, or due to sheer oddness. Common sorts include ogres, a foot taller than men and twice as wide, barbed tails a-dangle behind, fanged, clawed, and offensively naked: trolls, hairy, snaggle-fanged, with an obsession for bridges and an occasional appreciation for pockets: imps, brownies and gnomes, twisted little men, the riff-raff of the Evil’s armies, leg-stabbers and murderers of the badly wounded: harpies, with twisted human faces and claws and fangs that carry deadly infections; fairies, nasty little creatures who fly in “shoals” on insect wings and stab people with little thorns like wasp stings; pixies and sprites, larger and with a tendency to lead people into swamps and bogs; dragons, great flying man-eating lizards large enough to carry off cows and horses which fortunately do not actually breathe poison. Some have nasty magical abilities, notably elves, fairies, and goblins, the toad-like swamp goblin being a particularly unpleasant creature. Mostly it’s illusion of one sort or another, although a few can twist time and space to make a short walk seem to last for days or trap one in a wood. (Fortunately, some of the very worst kinds were banished by a saint/wizard/wizardsaints/whatever). Fairies are fond of spoiling ale and beer and curdling milk.

In the east, nearer to the Balkans, one finds satyrs and cyclopes, which are essentially one-eyed, plus-sized ogres.

A few species are considered part of the Evil while not actually getting along with other members: unicorns, which will kill almost any non-virgin sapient beings which get too close, (not fairies, for some reason: unicorns tolerate them and they in turn dote upon the unicorns) are the best known. Another is the ghoul, sharp fanged and slack mouthed, with glowing eyes and dark hair greasy with unmentionable stuff, an almost mindless creature of pure appetite which even ogres find distasteful.

Aside from the elves and some sorts of gnomes and goblins, which have underground burrow societies (glamour makes them look lovely, but don’t be fooled: it’s nasty), most of the Evil live with very few civilized accoutrements, although they may erect stones to their vague and shadowy gods. Many do not have any real tool-making skills, and indeed in battle several species, including ogres and trolls, disdain the use of any weapons more advanced than a sturdy club or just some choice throwing rocks, depending on their superhuman strength and ferocity in battle against humans. Goblins and others have copper and stone knives and spears, while elves avoid direct combat, preferring to use spells and to pepper humans with their cursed stone arrowheads from behind cover (the ogres and the elves mutually despise eachother).

The lands of the Evil are not entirely devoid of humans. In times of peace, human travelers with a glib tongue and a harmless appearance may cross the land with only minor harassment as long as they don’t run into things like dragons or unicorns. Traders and peddlers can pass through on certain accepted routes because they bring useful goods, news and gossip. Some with medical skills, especially magical medical skills, are tolerated as permanent inhabitants: the Evil may have magic, but very little of it is of a healing sort. There are always some people trying to convert the Evil, although the Church discourages it nowadays as certain unshriven death: most die quickly, but some are kept around because they amuse the Evil. Also, some are employed as caretakers: while most of the Evil care little for human treasures, there are many who loot simply because they know humans appreciate these things and will be unhappy if they take them (goblins do have a fondness for shiny things, as do dragons): in some cases, rather than throw treasures in a hole, they have some enslaved humans in an old church or villa to take care of them and keep them clean and shiny.

Of course, this is in peaceful times: at times, the Evil seems overtaken by a furious madness, war with the human lands breaks out, and the only humans who can survive in the lands of the Evil without hiding are the personal slaves of strong members of the Evil, and even they are at risk.

The Church holds the Evil have no souls. This is a matter of debate between Witches and Wizards: it is a fact that nobody has ever seen or heard from the ghost of an ogre, elf, or fairy, and no wizard has managed to catch the soul of a member of the Evil in a crystal. Of course, they rarely have an opportunity to experiment.

Aside from the Evil, there are other intelligences in the world. One of the most curious are the people known as the Knurly Folk, an ancient breed of men which now exist only in a few mountain refuges, although some are scattered about Europe working as soldiers for hire or woodland guides. Where they live they generally still pursue a mostly hunter-gatherer lifestyle (although they may maintain groves of fruit and nut trees) and their knowledge of nature and the wilderness is unparalleled. They are generally looked upon as strange and a touch magical, but not evil – they are, in fact, old enemies of the Evil themselves, and are known as doughty fighters against its many-shaped representatives. They are, they claim, a folk older than the Evil, who inhabited the world before modern-type people ever existed and before the Evil appeared (they say such things only to those they can trust, since the Church frowns on claims of the world existing long before the creation of mankind). Although putting on a show of faith in Christ when among Christians, and Valhalla when among Wotanists, the Knurly Folk are generally non-religious: they have seen Gods, and didn’t like them much.

The Knurly men and women are broad, long armed, almost neckless, muscular, sloping browed and with prominent brow ridges – what we would call Neanderthals, basically. This identity is unclear given the magical nature of their world – they appear to have been around rather longer than their equivalent in our world, and they are extremely long lived, some living a thousand years or more. The Knurly Folk never grow old and weak and senescent: when they die, they do so in full possession of their faculties. They also possess a sort of ancestral memory: at times of need, secret wisdoms and techniques known by their remote ancestors can be recalled.

Older still, older perhaps than animal life more advanced than insects, are the Elementals, creatures born of Earth and decay, in the soil of damp places where vegetable and animal matter rot and combine with the Earth. Purposeless, random, ancient, they despise intelligent life, including, some say, themselves. Normally merging with the humus or swamp ooze, they take form as vaguely humanoid but largely shapeless masses of mold and soil, animal bones and twigs, slime and rot. Paralyzing their victims with an incredible stink and a powerful aura of hate and evil, they mutilate their victims with teeth and claws made of chips of bone and stone: if the victims survive (extreme terror-shock, uncontrollable vomiting adds to the effect of injuries) they soon perish from the festering of their wounds. Some people are more resistant to the stink and the aura than others and can break free, but the best thing to do is run: if you catch one by surprise you can smash an elemental to pieces, but they will sprout from the earth again before long, and it may gather any others in the neighborhood to come seeking revenge, while the pure aura of hatred a group of them can generate can kill by itself. Fortunately, running water is a barrier to them, and they cannot travel many miles from where they are born. Never numerous, they are rare nowadays, their habitat shrunken by the plow and ax, and slain by wizards when they find them, and are hardly seen outside the lands of the Evil as often as once in a blue Moon.

Whether the Elder Ones pre-exist the Elementals is unknown. They ruled the world in the early days of the Knurly Folk, but were already fading: their power rises and falls in aeon-long cycles, and they may have ruled the world in previous aeons. The Elder Ones come in many kinds, or perhaps there is only one kind that comes in countless forms. There are the things which come as black sucking tornadoes from the skies, the things that slither and have no front or back end, the things that slobber and drool, the things that gibber things that cause insanity if you listen. The things with many glowing, golden eyes, the things which chitter in the corners, the things which scamper on hooves, the things that purr like a million cats as large as elephants.

They are all the Elder Ones, the things from the furthest reaches of beyond, now weak or perhaps simply far away, waiting to build again. Beware the ancient places of their temples, because time and space can be confused in such places, and a temple now tumbled stone may appear whole for a few hours, and those foolish enough to enter may find the entrance passages oddly moved around, and discover rooms with indefinitely distant walls, where the darkness glows a poisonous green and the chittering and gibbering and purring grow louder. If this is the case, you had better have a master wizard on hand, or a Knurly Man or Woman, for they may remember the ancient magical chants of protection from an age of awful darkness. They cannot destroy or permanently banish the Elder Ones, but they can undo the twisting of time and space and send the dead past back to where it belongs.

They wait, and their patience is endless, humanity a mere mayfly of the moment. They do hold grudges, though, and they hold one against the Evil, which aeons ago stole some of their secrets to escape their service. Some of the Evil now wish for the assistance of the Elder Ones, and try to worship them in their own crude way, fumbling ancient mostly-forgotten rites. The Elder Ones neither forget, not forgive, and care not for their worship. Using what influence over them they still have, they occasionally stir the Evil to near-mindless violence, like humans disturbing an ant nest for their amusement. When they return, the Evil, if humanity has not wiped them out themselves by that time, will be the first to be swept away…

[1] There are in fact some Jews in the Wotanist lands, but they’re considered weirdoes and unclean by more orthodox Jews in the empire – they tend to be heavily represented in the warrior bands and associations that patrol the borders with the Evil and occasionally raid into it, the Wotanists feeling that Valhalla isn’t picky about anyone willing to fight the enemies of Mankind to the death. What sort of Jews would feel pride in being reportedly more vicious than a drunken Finn?