Minde Forme
“Minde Forme is an ivory tower in a sea of filth. History will always wonder how so many advances in learning and magic grew out of such a cesspit of corruption.” ~ Jothan Blackkard, Gazetteer

Geography
Minde Forme is a nation of swampy lowlands and lakes to the east of Genmide, north of Taunuan. The land is dominated by swamps and honeycombed with flooded caves and sinkholes. The sandy coastline is rimmed by jagged reefs and steep continental shelf.

History
Unsettled until former Vishnari settlers arrived in the spirit beast haunted moors and fens searching for a place to start over after the War of Ascension. Bringing with them some of the most potent magical minds of the age, the settlers were able to establish the Crystal City of Ma’tang as well as enough operational mines and farming enclaves to for a nation in six short years.

Over the course of several centuries, Minde Forme grew into a sprawling feudal system, with the mages in the place of kings. The people enjoyed the benefits of a highly magic society in exchange for manual labor and society was peaceful.

It was not to last, however. With the minotaur exodus from Genmide between 3400 and 3500CA, a few ambitious minor lords took the initiative in assembling armies of minotaur mercenaries and attempted to topple the mages from their positions of power. The resultant war lasted twenty three years and is now seen as the beginning of the period known as the Age of Tragedies.

The victorious minor lords set themselves up as the new kings of the land, calling themselves the Sons of Vishnari. Unfortunately, they were in no way as skilled at politics and the running of a nation as the mages they drove off and in 3570CA, an even larger civil war erupted.

For chaotic centuries, numerous factions warred with one another for land and small, neglected villages were obliterated by the spirit beasts. Finally, Matsura Nagakuri, heiress to one of the more powerful lords and known as the Sword Princess, traveled to the Library at Siram Legate and found the names of the two surviving elven mages who once ruled Minde Forme and convinced them to return.

Backed by mages from Te’ran and warrior-poets from the Bardic College of Harpsfell, the elves, Toli Runeshard and Largo Foresight took back their throne and set up the modern mageocracy of Minde Forme.

Culture
Today, Minde Forme is a highly urbanized area, rife with magic. Unfortunately, the current rulers in the Tower of Arcana have been supremely irresponsible, not only turning a blind eye to law and order, but improperly disposing of failed experiment, therefore giving birth to horrors even worse than Spirit Beasts. Because of this lax leadership, Minde Forme is one of the more dangerous places on Ere, save the Ashed Lands.

Natives of Minde Forme are generally strong of body and weak of moral fiber, having grown up in harsh inner cities, or having spent their lives cleaning up the messes left by the mages. They are a tall and muscular people, sporting fair hair and green eyes.

Formeans are jaded individuals, fully aware of their government’s lack of cohesion, but unable and unwilling to fight and give up the material comfort provided by this disparity.

The mages of Minde Forme hold Dey in high regard as a goddess of duty, believing that the deity smiles upon their diligence in their chosen fields. A much smaller group of casters secretly worship Kayda as a god of magic and change, hoping to glean the secrets of the three-fold moon and the shades.

Common folk in Minde Forme are partial to the entire Greater Pantheon, with few being particularly adamant about a given deity. An increasing number of dragon cultists have come to Minde Forme in the past few years following rumors of draconic involvement during the Age of Tragedies.

Industry
Such as it is, Minde Forme’s economy is quite weak. Its primary exports of rice, sugar and clay are over shadowed by the mammoth influx of foreign trade goods into the market. This has led to a fledgling ceramics industry as failed clay producers try to recoup their losses.

There was a time that magic items drew a terrific price in Minde Forme, but the rise of Trestrolm Norry’s spellcrafting franchises has crippled this business as well.

Government
Minde Forme is ruled by the Senior staff of the Tower of Arcana, a research institute with deep connections to the Academy of Arcane Arts in Te’ran, and the Historical Guild of Kinos. The current heads of the facility are less concerned with the well being of their people and more concerned with carrying out their research unfettered.

To this end, policy is decided mostly on the merits of what effect it will have on the Tower. Funding for civil services, defense and increasingly important sanitation services are routinely cut to increase research finding. Minde Forme is on good terms with most other nations, thanks to free trade agreements and very low tariffs.

Out of sight and largely out of mind for the Tower of Arcana, the villages and towns far from major cities still maintain the old feudal system, with local lords live largely on the backs of the peasant class that works the crops and dredges for clay in the cloying marshes. These lords war constantly with one another for territory with little interference from the national government.

Organizations and Individuals of Note
The Emerald Sanctum
The collective name of the senior staff of the Tower of Arcana in Ma’tang as well as the assembly hall they meet in. The Sanctum is headed by the Dean of the Tower, who is elected by the Sanctum into a life long position. Below the Dean are his three advisors, holding the offices of Keeper of Tomes, Keeper of Arts and Sorcerous Raven.

The current Dean of the Tower is Erik Storm (Male human Wizard 10/Expert 4). Like his predecessors, Storm is more concerned with the advancement of the institute than the matter of state.

Those matters fall to Sorcerous Raven, Livia Westerwood (Female half-elf Wizard 8). As Sorcerous Raven, she is the voice of the school and thanks to Storm’s lax leadership of the nation, de facto steward of Minde Forme. Under her leadership, some effort to right the wrongs of past Deans has been made, including a push toward using more safe, albeit expensive means of containing and disposing of experiments rather than using the dumping grounds on the border with Genmide.

Librarians of Siram Leggate
The Library at Siram Leggate is an autonomous organization dedicated to the acquisition of information. It is governed by a highly regimented structure of command among its Librarians, a core group of men and women who have a deep seated devotion to the concepts of learning and the written language.
The Librarians as a group prefer books over people and care little for the good of the people as long as the people are still able to read, write and above all value the written word. They are staunch activists in promoting literacy and brutal opponents of any they feel re promoting ignorance.

But the Librarians aren’t zealous fools, they keep the most powerful knowledge to themselves; hoarding rare books and artifacts and selling the information to the highest bidder. Recently, they’ve also begun a program they refer to as ‘Biographers’; loosing spies throughout the world to consolidate information – both public and private on powerful figures.

As no one knows who the biographers have already learned of, no power players have attempted to move against the program yet. But as information of specific people goes up for sale… a confrontation may be inevitable.

Major Settlements
Ma’tang (Large City 146,000)
Ma’tang is the capitol city of Minde Forme, built in a formerly serene valley. The Crystal City no longer lives up to its name, the once crystal peaked wizardry towers given over to foundries and stone mills, churning out the components for magic item construction.

The hills that once formed the valley have been strip mined to mudflats for stone to build more buildings. The city is not a maddening labyrinth of stone walls and blind alleys known only by natives.

Crime is a constant problem, especially with a decree by the previous Dean of the Emerald Sanctum that all youngsters must be given rudimentary arcane study as part of their schooling. A number of unemployed youths, armed with cantrips has made Ma’tang’s crime problem that much worse.

Siram Leggate (Large Town 28,000)
The steady stream of scholars and adventurers to the Library since the Age of Tragedies encouraged the growth of a sizable waterfront town around it. The accommodations at inns in Siram Leggate are rarely better than ‘good’, but despite its size, the town is a close and friendly place.

The Librarians have been given control of the town by the Tower Arcana, but take little interest, letting public matters fall to a community-elected marshal (currently Simon Taang Male Human Expert 6).

Siram Leggate has a pact dating back some three hundred years with the bronze dragon Namumec’grov for his aid in protection of the city in exchange for a layer (an oversized and non-operational clock-tower to the south of town) and that the town pay his charges at the Library.

Locations of Note
Formeian Dumping Grounds
On and off since the Vishnari Empire and continually from the end of the Age of Tragedies to the present, the valleys and crags on the border with Genmide have been used as dumping grounds for failed, or outdated experiments and equipment by the mages of the nation. The results have been a number of incredibly toxic sites along the border.

While the actual environment of a dumping ground varies depending on the experiments dumped there, they generally follow the same basic description. The ground is soft and muck-like, often an unsettling and unnatural color. The air is filled with noxious fumes (Fort DC 15 or be nauseated for one round), and alive with the cacophony of magic resonating with itself. Any character attempting to detect magic in or looking at a dumping ground is blinded for 1d4 rounds.

The dumping grounds are also home to monsters born of or mutated from the unholy mess of the place.

The Library at Siram Leggate
Built on the border with Taunuan, from the wreckage of a mammoth hailene airship from the War of Ascension, the Library at Siram Leggate is the largest on Ere. It predates the current government of Minde Forme and is in autonomous. As scholars from all corners of the continent travel to the Library to study, the institution wields considerable power, which, in turn gives the Librarians of Siram Leggate their political power.

The Library itself is a thirty story hulk, two city blocks wide, made of magically petrified wood. The former forecastle and rails of the ship have been covered over by warp wood and shape stone spells. A stone paved plaza, where the flags of the Twelve Nations (ignoring Mon Sulus Kime and Nyce) are hung in a circle.

Inside, the hailene vessel has been gutted and new floors laid down, stone lifts, enchanted with levitate spells to carry patrons between floors. Information desks exist on each floor and guards are posted to each set of stacks. Fireguards, armed with rods of extinguishing patrol the floors periodically.

Studying at the library comes in three grades, call ‘intensities’ by the Librarians:

• Public, a free service of the Library that allows public to browse and read books from the public stacks (the bulk of the library) this provides a +2 bonus to knowledge checks made in the library.
• Private, a service that costs 30gp/day and grants access to a lead lined study room, discreet unseen servants and ring gates to retrieve books, and access to the general magic and rare books sections. This provides a +4 knowledge checks made in the library and access to spellbooks with spells up to level 5.
• Exclusive, a service that costs 500gp/day and special permission from the Librarians. This grants access to the lower vaults, where books of dangerous knowledge, as well as the stored artifacts the Library has gathered, both from the hailene hulk it now occupies as well as the results of expeditions. All study on such objects must be done in house.

Encounters
The swamplands and hills of Minde Forme are the ancestral home of tribes of trolls and ogres as well as less intelligent beasts such as hydra, stirges, plant type monsters, and giant snakes.

The Formeian dumping grounds are caustic soups of magical waste that mutate local wildlife and sometimes spawn totally new creatures. Monstrosities such as owlbears, chimera, otyugh, oozes and cockatrice can be found layering in and around these nodes of arcane corruption.

The major cities and townships are rife with crime and corruption, so PCs can expect to encounter gangs, organized crime and lucrative thieves’ guilds in the urban environment, was well as doppelgangers and other shapeshifters eager to take advantage of the political climate of the nation.