Vahevia.com - Official Site
"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Prepare to be corrupted."
FAQ
(Or just "AQ", because not all questions are frequently asked)

General
Who the hell are you?
What inspired you to start Vahevia?
What do I do with this material?
Are any personal details collected from this site?

About Vahevia
What is Vahevia?
Is Vahevia science-fiction or fantasy?
Vahevia is hopeless, isn't it?
The hell are you supposed to fight crovalahn?! From their description, they seem nearly unbeatable!
There's heavy metal in Vahevia?! Are you serious?!

General
  • Who the hell are you?
    I'm the psychotic idiot whose empty life is blessed with loads of free time and a healthy obsession for creativity and dark writing. What you're reading is the answer to the same question the site's author asks himself each sleep-deprived morning (afternoon, actually) he stares into a reflective surface. Call me "John", or "Alhadis", or "a verbose rambling Australian who could talk under wet cement", but it doesn't matter; you probably aren't reading this site because you want to know about the webmaster. xP

  • What inspired you to start Vahevia?
    A healthy disregard for fantasy stereotypes and a growing desire to create something that existed far outside the 'conventions' of today's fantasy archetypes. Look at D&D's primary settings, like the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and even 'alternate' settings like Eberron and you'll see at least some measure of "Tolkienesque" or generic influences. Even if it's just something as simple and fundamental as swords, bows and axes, they're all derived from the same blueprints. I wanted to get away from all that. I wanted a world where players would relax without seeing elven rangers, wizards cast spells in ways different to that ruled out in the Player's Handbook, and generally explore a setting that spat in the face of the commonly-used, 'traditional' fantasy cliches. Sure, a world of alien darkness doesn't scream "I'M NEW AND CREATIVE!", and it sure as hell doesn't match to the creative genius of settings like Discworld (Terry Pratchett shall forever remain an idol to me... o_0;) But face it... the biggest issue concerning originality in fantasy RPGs these days is exploring different concepts. And hopefully, readers will think I've done a good job of it.

  • What do I do with this material?
    Read and enjoy. Or attempt to, if you find the latter impossible. xP You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy what I've written, but it *does* help get more out of the setting's materials. Remember, Vahevia is, first-and-foremost, it's own entity; not a setting moulded around RPG mechanics and rules. So don't expect there to be statistics blocks for everything, or for things to read like they've been copied from the description written for a rulesbook. Therefore, I hope for both gamers and readers of dark, twisted fantasy to enjoy reading what I've slaved on over the years.

  • Are any personal details collected from this site?
    No, none. Excluding Hit counters, I don't see any point in logging visitor details that might threaten my credibility. If there's ever downloadable programs from my site, rest assured they'll be utterly spyware, adware, virus (etc; the whole lot) free. Sure, I consider myself morally upright and honest, but even if I did happen to be a manipulative, greedy little snitch, I *still* wouldn't have any use in people's personal information. That's like opening up a diary written by some Russian girl; all you're doing is reading stuff you don't understand or care about while making yourself look bad (I just wanted to answer this question because, unlikely as invasion of privacy might be, it still pervades some user's concerns.)

About Vahevia
  • What is Vahevia?
    Vahevia is an fantasy setting intended to be used as the setting for various creative outputs in fantasy writing; RPGs, creative writing, video game design, etc. I originally developed it back somewhere around Februrary 2003, to serve as the basis for my Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. Since then, it's grown, prospoured and evolved dramatically; but the fundamentals haven't changed. Vahevia is defined by the dark, twisted and often disturbing subject matter that give the world it's eerie, unsettling feel.

  • Is Vahevia science-fiction or fantasy?
    The *only* reason I'm actually bothering to answer this question is because somehow, it found it's way into the old FAQ section, and readers with long-memories might actually remember reading it and questioning whether or not Vahevia is at least partly science-fiction. Well, time to fix that; there's nothing even REMOTELY 'science-fiction' related about Vahevia. What many people often forget is that the word 'alien' doesn't necessarily have to refer to something that came straight outta 'Aliens VS Predator', or even inspired by Science-Fiction. If you had to lump Vahevia under a certain genre, it'd be "Dark Fantasy", pure-and-simple. The sickening, twisted kind that makes your stomach churn, the same feeling Ridley Scott meant to inspire in viewers when he produced 'Aliens'. Sure, some Vahevian creatures might strongly resemble a facehugger-type alien, but who the hell says Science-Fiction has the rights to that concept?

  • Vahevia is hopeless, isn't it?
    Assuming you're referring to the atmosphere's feeling of 'we're outmatched, there's no hope for survival', then no. Not exactly. Of course, the odds are going to be unerringly stacked against players, and the setting itself should remain consistantly dark and harsh (however, be sure to never spare players the chance for *some* feeling of safety and security within the walls of cities. See more about the ideals of 'low-adventure gameplay' in the section covering Roleplaying guides). But Vahevia itself isn't hopeless. You grow strong from difficult experiences, and Vahevian characters can seriously apply boot to alien ass at higher levels after they've survived the worst. Of course, it *isn't* entirely optimistic, but it ain't completely "let's all lay down, die and save the crovalahn the trouble of hunting us." To fight and survive is a core aspect of Vahevia; if everything were entirely hopeless, characters obviously wouldn't survive for very long. And thus, the setting would lose it's most important ideal of all; survival.

  • The hell are you supposed to fight crovalahn?! From their description, they seem nearly unbeatable!
    Crovalahn are extremely powerful, but shouldn't necessarily be a death wish. For the most part, encountering them in a campaign should result in either one of two encounters; a difficult battle, or an impossible battle (whereupon the best answer would be to retreat; remember that not every encounter in Vahevia can be resolved by combat, and knowing when to flee and when to fight is an important thing). The fact that they're some of the most powerful foes players are likely to face (second to demons), should behoove DMs to never use Crovalahn lightly. Sure, higher-level fighters will gloat at the opportunity to hack through waves of lesser-ranking crovalahn warriors, but remember that Crovalahn aren't there to be puny, easily-toppled enemies like Orcs are often used as in generic D&D. Slaughtering lower-level crovalahn will result in much higher-ranking warriors and priests of the Crovalahn's priesthood hunting that human down for his or her tresspasses (provided they weren't dishonoured warriors sent to their deaths.)

    Remember, there should always be a reason behind fighting mid-to-low level crovalahn warriors; so players don't ask "If the crovalahn are so powerful, how come we managed to defeat a whole party of these guys that were attacking the village?" Crovalahn have deeply-rooted religious reasons behind every battle, some of which are to send dishonoured warriors to their blatant deaths. An example of such is dispatching crovalahn against higher-level characters; a disgraced crovalahn's last desire is to die in a shameful battle against the one species Crovalahn consider to be unworthy of the word "dangerous". Another reason might be because these crovalahn warriors are only inexperienced fledglings, seeking to earn greater favour and prestige among their people's rigid and brutal heirarchy by performing basic rites of slaughter. Remember though, that even these low-ranking warriors shouldn't *ever* appear to be pushovers; all crovalahn are swift, lethal and co-ordinated, and their techniques should show in even the lowliest warriors. Knowing that they've defeated a small number of weakling warriors should leave players wincing at the knowledge of what it must be like to fight higher-ranking soldiers, after having seen the already impressive display of techniques among the now-slain crovalahn grunts.

  • There's heavy metal in Vahevia?! Are you serious?!
    Yeah, I'm serious alright. While it might just be my love of heavy metal music that's prompted me to include the genre in Vahevia, I actually feel it fits right at home in the setting (see the description of Vahevian music in the culture section for more details). After all, many performances of fantasy music are drawn from real world history (orchestral, symphonic, opera, etc), so heavy metal is only another parallel to the real world's music, albeit from a drastically different time period. For me, the difficulty remains having to avoid making Vahevian metal sound too much like our world's metal, whilst still maintaining the distinguished sound. Sure, they're both "heavy metal", but there's no electric guitars in Vahevia, or any electronic musical instruments. How could I hope to implement the thundering, powerful roar of metal that I love so much, in a world where the instruments used to make such are all but absent? Aside from that, but it's also important to avoid making heavy metal music appear to much like a pop-culture reference (which would only damage Vahevia's credibility). As of yet, I'm still having troubles envisioning how I'm going to describe the sound of Vahevian metal without having it sound too much like a real-world parody, but one thing's for certain: the loud, powerful sound of Heavy Metal is far too appropriate for Vahevian culture to simply discard it.