Tabletop Game / La Notte Eterna

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La Notte Eterna (or "The Eternal Night") is a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons created by Jason Forbus and published by Al Ribelli Edizioni. Originally developed for the 3rd Edition of D&D in 2010 and published in Italian, it has since been translated into English and updated for D&D's 5th Edition.

Nearly two centuries ago, a war broke out in the heavens over the world of Neir, and Laon, the god of the sun, was captured by his enemies. To protect Neir, Laon gave the last of his power to the moon, and now Neir exists under an eternal night. In this world, the High Vampires (or Hjilaki) and the cruel, greedy Karevi reign supreme, while the beast-like Urakians and the magic-wielding Wiloi are wildcards. Times are so dire that humans and elves have set aside their differences with longtime enemies like the orcs and goblins.

This game contains examples of:

• Absolute Xenophobe: Najestarr the Tyrant is already pretty intolerant, being a chauvinist Wiloi, but on top of the usual prejudices, he also deeply hates anyone who isn't a magic-user.
• Aerith and Bob: The dwarves may have disappeared centuries ago, but thanks to their heavy trading with the other races in antiquity, their language heavily influenced the languages of the humans and the Karevi, and thus in the human-dominated Duchy of Ouin, it's possible to find humans named Elthoras or Kivan alongside more conventional names like Matthew or Howard.
• Agent Peacock: Baron Hulbert of Mubunash may seem like a bored, irresponsible fop, but he's a deadly swordsman when provoked, and when actually pressed to carry out his courtly responsibilities, he is a shrewd statesman.
• Always Night: Neir has been under perpetual night for over two centuries thanks to a war in heaven. The sun god Laon was captured during this war, and without him, the sun went away. A significant amount of the corebook is devoted to laying out how the lack of sunlight and warmth have altered the environment and society.
• Beast Man: The Urakians were mutated by the magical energies of the Ashen Land, the desert where they live, so that they have the traits of animals on humanoid frames. Individual Urakians resemble only one animal, but can have the traits of any kind of mammal or bird; some resemble cold-blooded animals, but by the second century of nighttime such types have become rare.
• Blood Magic: The vampire-exclusive ability Blood Bath allows a vampire character to absorb the blood of their enemies and either use it to recover their energy or turn it into a projectile.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: The Empire of Hidden Lands is currently ruled by Emperor An'Rao IV. While he would be considered an adult by human standards, being thirty years old, by Karevi standards, he's practically a teenager.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Before he was captured in the Celestial War, Laon was the most commonly worshiped god on Neir, and the most lawful good one.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: At 17th level, Chosen of Darkness can turn themselves into intangible shadows as long as they stay within the darkness.
• Elves Versus Dwarves: After their corruption at the hands of the Demon Princess Izafer, the elf-descended Klorss waged a cruel and bloody war against the dwarves to take over the Cloudy Valley and establish a brutal dominion. Eventually, the dwarves made alliances with the elves and drove the Klorss underground, where they sought simply to live in peace with their surroundings, but the dwarves have not forgotten their horrible deeds.
• Eminently Enigmatic Race: The dwarves of Neir were once so commonplace that they influenced the development of the Karevi and Oud languages, but they went into seclusion centuries ago, and many of Neir's inhabitants think that they're just a legend.
• The Empire: The Karevi all belong to the Empire of Hidden Lands, a vast subterranean empire ruled by a cruel emperor and that worships an evil god.
• Enemy Mine: Thanks to the growing dangers of the eternal night, a lot of the races have set aside their past differences in the interest of survival, and thus elves and humans fight alongside orcs and ogres.
• Evil Counterpart Race: The Karevi serve as evil counterparts to the dwarves, while the Klorss are evil counterparts to the elves.
• Forever War: The Celestial War, in which the lesser gods have tried to overthrow the gods of the sun, moon, and darkness in order to conquer the divine realm of Rengaria, has been going on for over 161 years, and shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
• Fungus Humongous: As much of Neir's plant life has died off from a lack of sunlight, forest of massive bioluminescent mushrooms have sprouted up to fill in the biological niche that the trees once served.
• God Is Dead: The sun god Laon was a casualty of the Celestial War nearly two centuries ago, captured by his enemies and imprisoned somewhere far enough away that his light no longer reaches Neir. The war also outright killed Lanie, the moon goddess, although her essence lives on in the mortal Wiloi sorceress Nelen Deseziath.
• God of Darkness: Garod is the Lawful Evil god of, among other things, darkness. He used to be a member of the ruling Triad of gods alongside Laon of the sun and Lanie of the moon. In the wake of the Celestial War, Laon's imprisonment, Lanie's death, and the fall of The Night That Never Ends, his star is ascendant and he is the most powerful and widely-worshiped of the gods.
• God of Evil:
  • Garod, the god of tyranny, is listed as Lawful Evil. He is worshiped by the evil races like the vampires and the Karevi, but, in the absence of the sun and moon gods, his influence has grown to the point that even non-evil races worship him in his capacity as a god of order.
  • Demien, a lesser god, presides over evil as a concept. His cult is full of nihilists who see the unending night as an inevitability.
• God of Fire: Bakraag is the Chaotic Evil god of fire. Mortals have a complicated relationship with him; his flames are a welcome respite in the endless night, but he needs to be carefully placated to keep his fires from becoming wild and destructive.
• God of Light: Laon was the Lawful Good god of the sun and a member of the ruling Triad of gods alongside Lanie of the moon and Garon of the darkness. He was imprisoned and sealed at the start of the Divine War, which marked the beginning of The Night That Never Ends.
• God of the Moon: Lanie was the Neutral goddess of the moon and a member of the ruling Triad of gods alongside Laon of the sun and Garon of the darkness. She died at the start of the Divine War.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: On Neir, the gods are very desperate for their followers to keep praying to them so that they can survive the Celestial War, and thus any mortal who performs a sufficiently heroic (or especially devious) act in their god's name can obtain Divine Inspiration points, which can be spent on miracles; get enough Divine Inspiration points and be at a high enough level, and you can become an avatar for your god.
• Grey-and-Black Morality: Neir is a very harsh and unforgiving world, and as such, those who seek to survive it must make tough choices. For example, the Duchy of Ouin openly uses slave labor in order to maintain its industries, though the slaves are nearly all convicts, and with the exception of manslaughter (which is a capital crime) and involuntary manslaughter (which earns a life sentence), there are limits to how long they can be forced to provide labor. The Duchy allows this because it's the only way for their economy to remain competitive with the far less scrupulous Empire of Hidden Lands.
• Hidden Elf Village: The dwarves have been secluded in the Cloudy Valley since long before the Eternal Night fell., and they generally don't encourage visitors to their hidden kingdom.
• Maddened Into Misanthropy: Rakilia was once a dedicated Protector of the Oasis before her peers left her to die in an urakian attack because she and her unit were all gnomes. When she survived, her superiors falsely accused of her of being negligent and allowing her unit to die, and thus she was sentenced to death. She murdered her jailers and escaped into the desert, eventually taking over a gang of bandits. She has no loyalty or faith to anyone anymore, devoting all her time to the pursuit of wealth and power.
• The Night That Never Ends: The sun has not risen over Neir since the sun god Laon fell 161 years ago. Life survives, just about, only because Laon was able to give a sliver of his magic to the moon before being captured, allowing it to shine with its own light; that and deliberate magic are all that prevent Neir from becoming an uninhabitable ball of ice and rock. Even so, the cold and darkness have taken a heavy toll on the world. Plant life is greatly reduced — giant fungi make up the bulk of most forests now — and heat-loving animals survive only in isolated pockets; reptiles, for instance, are functionally extinct except for in one magically-preserved forest in the dragon lands. Agriculture almost vanished from the world, leading to widespread famines that were ended only by the introduction of specialized crops from the Hidden Lands and magically-modified plants. Evil races that in the past were constrained by their weakness to the sun's rays, such as the vampires and the Karevi, now openly rule large tracts of the world.
• Order of Scholars: The Guild of Archivists is an order of bards based in the city of Munbunash who have dedicated themselves to collecting information about every conceivable topic in Neir. Most of them spend their lives transcribing old manuscripts, recording oral traditions, writing chronicles and almanacs, and generally spreading knowledge wherever they can. Many of them work as advisers to the various political leaders that populate Neir, though officially, they've all sworn to be politically neutral. Some of the less scrupulous ones also exploit their knowledge (and more importantly, their access to Guild libraries) for personal gain.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The dragons were driven out of Neir and into the western continent of Larass'hra, where they have formed a prosperous civilization. To the people of Neir, where nobody in living memory has seen a dragon in the flesh, they are the stuff of myth and legend.
• Our Dwarves Are Different: The dwarves of Neir went into isolation in the Cloudy Valley centuries before the coming of the Eternal Night, and thus, for most other inhabitants of Neir, they might as well be the stuff of legends. In their place are the Karevi, who are as far from the stereotypical dwarf as possible, being skinny, thieving bastards who excel at lying and stealth.
• Our Elves Are Different: While Neir's elves largely follow the standard D&D stereotypes, there's also the Klorss, a race of elves who were banished from the surface centuries ago and took up residence in a system of caves in the northern region of the Hidden Lands.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: The gnome-like Nuno have a symbiotic relationship with insects that gives them various bug-related abilities.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The High Vampires of Neir call themselves the Hjilaki, and up until the sun went away, they were a largely subterranean species, seldom venturing onto the surface. Now that Neir is under a never-ending night, they've made an outpost for themselves on the surface, the tyrannical Blood Domain, from which they wage war on Ouin.
• The Republic: The Duchy of Ouin is ruled by an elected duke, or more recently, by an elected duchess. It is not necessarily a democratic republic, however; a new duke or duchess is chosen by the masters of its orders of knights, rather than by the people.
• Self-Made Orphan: After his father, the previous Emperor, died of old age, An'Rao IV discovered that his mother, the concubine Kiwruel, was planning to usurp him. He conspired with the priests to have her locked up and sacrificed to Garod in exchange for granting him a guardian erinyes named Ziria.
• Shadow Walker: At 6th level, Chosen of Darkness can teleport at will as long as both they and their target location are in shadow.
• Shout-Out: There's a pair of Talking Weapons named Yolandi and Nindja.
• Sinister Scythe: Yolandi is a marilith demon bound in the form of a living, talking sickle, adorned with jagged edges and a staring eye, that retains a great and cheerful lust for evil.
• Talking Weapon: Among the things that players can find in fallen meteors are Yolandi the Sickle and Nindja the Sword, a pair of demonic siblings who were bound into the forms of weapons long ago. Both retain the power of speech and their ancient lust for evil, and seek to manipulate their wielders into freeing and reuniting them.
• Unknown Lands:
  • The Cloudy Valley, homeland of the dwarves, has been largely unmapped, as most inhabitants of Neir don't even know if the dwarves still exist. The mountains surrounding the valley and the hostile, isolationist government within have made it difficult for outsiders to get information on the modern dwarven principality.
  • The Empire of Hidden Lands, home of the karevi, is vast but still encompasses only part of the total Hidden Lands, which run through the entire continent of Neir and are mostly unknown to outsiders.
• War God: Luzagaar, the Chaotic Evil god of destruction, is worshipped primarily by warlike, primitive tribes to whom he promises an afterlife full of bloody battles.
• Was Once a Man: The demon Urudrav was once a mortal paladin who worshiped Garod fervently. For his loyalty, Garod elevated him to become his champion on Neir.
• Weakened by the Light: The Karevi have very photosensitive eyes, and are blinded and disoriented in intense light. In the past, this forced them to live in the Hidden Lands deep beneath the earth; however, the fall of the endless night has allowed them to spread their rule over much of the surface world.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The Destiny Wards, a ranger subclass, dedicate their lives to patrolling the dimensions to make sure the various spellcasters, fiends, celestials, and gods don't screw around with destiny. They answer directly to Doomkhan, Neir's god of destiny.