Genesis

This is Zahnnie's daydream doodle. At some point, possibly, it would turn into a D&D game for one, MAYBE two PCs. They'd need a really solid reason to trust each other.

Setting

It's a quiet medieval world consisting almost entirely of humans. Other races are rumors and legends, for the most part: halflings exist as traveling gypsy-types, and occasionally you'll get a small dwarf settlement crop up in the foothills of some mountain range. But no one's ever seen an elf since before great-grandpa's time, etc.

There is almost no magic, either divine or arcane. Your average village is composed near-entirely of Commoners, with a few Merchants and Nobles. There are VERY few Heroes (translation: folks with character classes). See the Heroes section for more info.

There are monsters in this world, oh yes; villages without walls of some sort are very rare, and usually very short-lived. Cities without walls are even more rare. Geography to be fleshed out at some later point.

Heroes

There are a limited number of Heroes in the world- a mostly fixed number, in fact. Heroes are not born- they are made. When a Hero dies, some sort of spark that is in them is dispersed. Usually the Hero dies because another Hero has murdered them to harvest that seed; but sometimes they don't manage to capture it all, or the Hero just actually dies of other reasons. When that happens, the seed travels and lands on some poor schmo who was just tending his potato fields or something.

Life is not great for this once-potato-farmer, now-Hero. As he is now a weeny first level something, he's easy pickin's for more powerful Heroes to come harvest his seed, his hero genesis spark. A smart dude will hide his changes until he's managed to pick up enough stuff to defend himself. But he'll ALWAYS have to be on guard.

The commoners have a love-hate relationship with Heroes. They're big and terrifying, but necessary for defending them from monsters, etc. A commoner militia can deal with a loose boar or wolf, maybe... but that's about it. Still, while most Heroes start out with the best of intentions, most of them end up having to sacrifice their morals and pretty much turn out Bad.