The World of Sheol


Sheol was a grave planet. A home to mountains upon mountains of heaped dead; the continents carefully separated by quarantine level, or by level of importance. It was a global necropolis, home of skulls and rotting flesh alone.

Although the name remained, the purpose of Sheol changed at the whim of necessity. The Gods decreed that the land of Sheol be re-shaped, re-formed, and eventually populated. And for a time, the Gods lived side-by-side with the technologically infantile people of Sheol, each God aiding his or her own favoured peoples.

But then everything changed. For reasons none could at first comprehend, the Gods withdrew from Sheol, leaving the people to fend for themselves. They were abandoned in darkness, and soon the planet of Sheol was once more littered with the broken, diseased bodies of the dead.

But the Gods left the nine races with one gift - one beacon of light to fend off the impending darkness and ensure their survival. Magic.

And so the tales of Sheol begin. In a world plagued by war, corruption, hatred, fear and power hungry sorcerers. Where nothing is what it seems, where good and evil are merely points of view, the Tales of Sheol span many thousands of years of history, charting the progress of the nine distinct races and their struggle against one another, against the hordes of demonic monsters ... against even the corrupt Gods themselves.

Links

The Science of Magic: Volume 1

The Science of Magic: Volume 2

The Science of Magic: Volume 3

The Secret War RPG

Legends of Sheol

Map of Sheol


close Excerpt

    "For him, it was as though he had been possessed by a thrashing, wretched demon of wild wrath. He was a spectator to his own actions - yet his heart failed to believe that he was capable of the dark deeds that he watched his own body perform. Death fell away from him as if he were a tree and his seedlings were the ruined forms of tattered Human carnage. He shed death; he exuded it. And worst of all; he enjoyed it.

    ‘Vengeance’ screamed out in his mind, as if he and it were lovers locked in a climactic, animal embrace of passion. Fury, in that moment, was his all, and he prayed silently that it would never end, for when it did - he knew - he would have to mourn just as wildly. And thus he held faster still to the sweet taste of overwhelming, burning, fervent rage.

    In that tranquil world of pure, unblemished fury, he became a god. Not one of the gods that the people of Ryadell worshipped from afar, that never showed their faces, ‘nor their miracles. No, he became a god in judgement. Face to face with his subjects, and most of them became horror-struck, seeking desperately to flee or to beg for their lives as their god-made-flesh rampaged amongst them.

    The look on his face was inhuman. The speed of his sword arm was like the blurred thrashing of a hummingbird’s wings. There was no stopping him.

    An arrow passed close to his eyes and seemed to slow to a stop before falling away to the ground. A sword came at him from another place, flashing dawning sunlight into his bloodshot eyes, which streamed openly with tears of both wrath and grief alike. But the sword struck thin air and rattled. He turned it away with a blink, and watched helplessly as he run the assailant through, yanking the soldier towards him, even as he felt the flimsy spine give way under his inhumanly strong thrust. He snarled, hating this stranger - hating even the smell of his hair as he pulled him close, hating the way the man twitched and gasped. He twisted his blade and wrenched it free, enjoying the fact that he had brought an end to such a despicable wretch."

    (The Hunter falls, excerpt from chapter 1 of The Science of Magic: Volume 2.)

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