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Survey Nine - AI-generated fantasy World

Survey Nine

Worlds
World · A round world

Survey Nine

Every border is a bill someone else must pay.

Overview

Survey Nine is a grim, ordinary world made cruel by the lines drawn across it. Its old royal maps still determine taxes, roads, and the reach of law, even where rivers have shifted and villages have vanished. Magic is common but costly, and the dead can trouble the living if denied burial. Three lean harvests have sharpened every dispute: rulers need grain, towns need protection, and border communities refuse to pay for land they never agreed to own.

The world

ShapeA round world
What it is likeA single inhabited planet with broad oceans, familiar continents, and no supernatural break in its natural form.
How people travelPeople travel by road, river, and coastal ship; passes and ferries are controlled by whoever can enforce a toll.
Themes

Grim survival, Contested law, Costly magic, Buried complicity

Laws of the world

The rules

MagicMagic is common enough for villages to know hedge-wizards and temple healers, but every working takes a visible toll such as fatigue, spoiled food, or a shortened lifespan.
TechnologyMedieval tools, mills, castles, crossbows, and sailing ships are common; skilled smiths are scarce where the war has taken charcoal and iron.
Death and soulsSouls depart after death, though a body left unburied may rise as a hungry corpse; families pay the parish or burn their dead to prevent it.

Special rules

A sworn boundary witnessed by three people can bind a creature or bar its passage until the witnesses release it.
A corpse named aloud by a close kin cannot be raised by ordinary necromancy.

The skies

SkiesSmoke from charcoal pits and burned fields often dims the sky, while the moon's pale light makes old boundary stones easy to see.
Moons and stars

The Sun, The White Moon

SeasonsThe year has four familiar seasons, but officials divide it into twelve tax months whose dates govern rents, harvest levies, and military service.

Ages

3 ages
Three failed harvests and a costly border war have left rulers taxing the dead, villages guarding seed grain, and old maps newly contested.

Powers

4 powers · 2 conflicts

Powers

  • Crown and CouncilUneasy royal and merchant government
    Reach: The capital, main roads, and the towns that still pay their levies.Keep the tax rolls and old borders intact, even when enforcement costs more than the land yields.
  • The Ninth ParishTemple network
    Reach: Scattered villages and town churches across the settled districts.Preserve burial rites and claim authority over bodies, cemeteries, and the use of healing magic.
  • The Grain FactorsMerchant league
    Reach: River ports, storehouses, and the trade roads between regions.Keep the grain moving and secure contracts that let merchants survive the shortages.
  • The Road CompanyRaider bands
    Reach: Remote roads and settlements beyond regular garrison reach.Take food and arms wherever the army cannot protect them, then sell safety back to the desperate.

Conflicts

  • The Eighth Line
    Sides
    • The Crown's surveyors
    • The villages beyond the old boundary
    A disputed map line decides who pays taxes, who may gather timber, and whether an army can legally seize the land.
  • Grain and Iron
    Sides

    The council's merchants, The Crown's garrisons, The hungry towns

    Whoever controls the last reliable grain road can feed the cities or force them into submission.

Atlas

8 regions
Grain heartland

First Fields

Temperate farmlandOld survey posts divide prosperous fields, and each harvest brings another argument over who owns the crop.Where: Western interior
Next to

Secrets

Secret 1 · GM only
Secret 2 · GM only

Plot hooks

4 hooks
  • 1
    Salt for the GravesescortA parish hires the party to escort a cart of burial salt through territory where the dead have begun following the old road.
  • 2
    The Missing GraininvestigationA newly uncovered tax roll proves that a garrison's food stores were seized from villages now facing starvation.
  • 3
    Stones Before DawndilemmaA border village asks the party to move its boundary stones before Crown surveyors arrive with soldiers.
  • 4
    A Cure in Yearsmoral choiceA hedge-wizard offers a cure for a spreading fever, but the price is years of life from everyone who drinks it.

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