Dark Continent Redux: Setting Background

Dark Continent Redux

A Fantasy Core Adventure

© Jerry Harris 2016

Published here as Open Game Content.

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

Dark Continent Index

  

Setting Background

The Commonwealth is a global empire with colonies across the world.  The Africannes colony is deep in the interior of a jungle continent rich with precious ivory and gems.  The markets at the Home Station capital attract merchants and agents from other empires, such as the Hegemony and the Oriental Empire.  The foreign intrigue here is strictly limited to the coastal city however, with the Interior legally closed to them.  

Unlike the Southland, Africannes already had a native human population when the Commonwealth colonized it.  Compared with the Commonwealth, they were woefully primitive and politically and socially divided.  In spite of the natives’ much greater numbers, the Commonwealth’s superior weapons and magic knowledge allowed them to take over almost without conflict.  A mere show of force was typically all that was necessary to secure cooperation from most tribes.  Any battles were short and lopsided and ended in native surrender. 

The Colonial forces have not brutalized the natives en mass, nor enslaved them.  They need the workers for the mines and guides for the Interior.  The official policy towards the natives is one of enticement and remuneration for services and land.  Not to say it’s fair or equitable, but the natives are paid.  By comparison, the Hegemony states in Africannes have nothing but slave-driven economies, with their slaves made eunuchs, and in the Oriental Empire’s past, they simply exterminated native populations in invasions.  

The Africannes native population was effectively subjected.  The Commonwealth doesn’t call it that, or even see their colonization as invasion.  They do not see the natives as having any sort of organized political state with which to go to war.  The colonists see themselves as bringing civilization to the hinterlands.  Honestly, the average native is probably no better or worse off for the invasion.   Conquest and slavery have long ruled the area before the coming of the Commonwealth.  The natives are not legally citizens of the Commonwealth to this point, but have some legal rights and some small government representation, and have some money and access to more advanced goods.  Regardless, one thing is sure, the natives are not in charge of their own country.