From Green Ronin:
Seven decades ago, there were cities upon cities.
Kingdoms and nations; the remains of ancient empire. Cultures at war and cultures at trade. Humans, dwarves, elves, and others. Magic and monsters, rare but real. And so it was for millennia, through two dynamic ages the lorekeepers and scribes called Ascensions.
Until the world ended.
Most call it the Fall, but whatever term a given people choose to use, it marked the time when everything changed.
Nations crumbled. Races died. Magic sputtered. Nature sickened.
The dead woke.
***
Welcome to Zileska, a world ravaged by death and undeath. In the Lost Citadel Roleplaying game, you take on the role of a last remaining survivor of your race, be it human, dwarf, elf, or ghûl.
Seven decades ago, the Second Ascension came to a brutal end in a worldwide cataclysm called the Fall. During this period of stark decline, magic began to fail even the mighty elf civilization that was the pinnacle of the age, and as it did, the world’s fallen began to rise from their graves. Whether because the doors to the Underworld flew from their hinges, or because the God of the Dead went mad (a popular theory), the end result was the same:
The dead became the Dead.
Bidden by the Venmir, the humans of the nearby hills and mountains, the other desperate tribes of humanity followed suit: The Ouazi, nomadic clans from the sands of the Eternal Sea. The proud Surinzan, denizens of Zileska’s forests and riverlands. The Menhada, peoples of the steppes and former allies of the elves. And the Angat of the southern plains, who until then boasted the most powerful human civilization of the age.
All that remained of huddled humanity found refuge behind Elldimek’s dwarf-built walls.
Seven decades is a long time, however. More than enough time to watch refugees become rulers; to see hosts become slaves in their own homes.
Come the modern day, Elldimek is no more. It has been replaced by the city of Redoubt, so named and decreed in the Accord of Last Redoubt — a human treaty drafted by an Angat-led power structure called the Magisterium. Under its terms, the dwarves were stripped of their claims to the city, and those dwarves who weren’t executed or exiled became slaves to human masters. In the time since the Accord, some have earned back their freedom, but many still toil under indenture.
Life in Redoubt is especially hard for the poor and the non-human under the Magisterium. Its draconian system squeezes resources and civil liberties alike, all in the name of protecting all that’s left of civilization from the threats and depredations of the Dead. Security trumps all concerns.
Redoubt is big, larger than many modern-day cities, home to hundreds of thousands of people. It requires over a day to cross. Its districts are, in some respects, fiefdoms unto themselves, and while they currently work together to rule what remains of sentient life on the planet, every leader knows that ultimate authority is only a few schemes away.
Stiflingly tyrannical where the rich and powerful dwell, hideously crime-ridden where want and poverty nest, and all around — sometimes within the walls themselves — the ever-hungry Dead. Redoubt is a city, a culture, possibly even an entire world, in what certainly seems to be its final hours. And with the exception of certain religious zealots, still convinced mankind is merely being tested, every man, woman, and child knows it.
