Southland: The Commonwealth Colony

THE SOUTHLAND

A Fantasy Core Setting

© Jerry Harris 2014

Published here as Open Game Content.

(This link will take you to the Fantasy Core Index.)

Southland Index

THE COMMONWEALTH COLONY

The Convicts, Military, and Government Officials

Prospectors, Settlers, and the Rest

The Founders and the Cartel

The Settlements

Colonial Defense

Colonial History

Emperor Leon may have decreed a new colony, but actually colonizing a hostile continent takes more than words.  The Southland is not adjacent to the Commonwealth homeland, in fact nearly a half a world away.  Finding a large, unclaimed property doesn’t happen everyday.  Speed is of the essence in such a situation.  Thankfully, the Commonwealth Navy and civilian shipping are up to the task.  The question is, who’s going there to stay? 

Let’s look at the hypothetical brochure that a prospective colonist might read about the Southland.  After a long, dangerous sea journey, the colonist could expect to find a completely undeveloped sliver of coastline, with little arable farmland or other apparent natural resources.  Oh, and there’s hordes of Humanoid monsters just over the mountains, who are going to want to kill and eat you and your family.  Talk about an easy sell. 

There were only two groups of people in the Commonwealth who could realistically move to such a place.  Here’s a hint; neither of them had any say in the matter: convicts and government employees (like the military and various officials).  The willing settlers would not appear until they were given a really good reason to do so.  Discoveries of gold, diamonds, and Philosopher’s Stone (an aid to magical spells, also called Uranium) would bring the prospectors.  With a bit of civilization, the families of settlers would arrive to make the Southland home.

The discoveries of large deposits of valuable resources turned the Southland from a point of pride for the Commonwealth, to a point of extreme strategic interest for the Commonwealth.  Other nations were interested but observational before, now they are fully engaged in trying to get their own cut of it.  The Southland has since become a major deployment of Commonwealth armed forces.  They are determined to a deterrent to any military incursion.    

So where’s all the magic and magical artifacts?  Explorers and scholars have found odd stores of various forms of documentation (some actually written during the Catastrophe), but all of it has been mundane.  The speculation is that the “good stuff” is somewhere hidden in the Outback.  Much of the Ancient civilization simply disintegrated, a byproduct of a devastating war and magical construction, likely weakened by the Catastrophe.  Remaining sites are often teeming with Humanoids and monsters that have resisted random, scattered interlopers pretty well.  Even getting to these is the well-known sites is difficult.  However, there’s no telling how many undiscovered sites there are.