The Empty Throne Campaign: Opening Thoughts

05 May, 2026

Initially serving as a conglomeration of fantasy tropes - it didn't even have a name aside from "that Saturday game" among me and the players until I wrote this post - this campaign has become the "primary" game in which a more traditional pseudo-mediaeval fantasy experience can be had, as opposed to the Wulfwald game which is far more episodic - in the sense that it allows for easy interchange of PCs on a per-session basis. Because of the greater significance of each player's involvement, the Saturday Game tends to run only when The Gang™ is all here, with notable absences resulting in switching to the Wulfwald game. This has led to a perverse situation where the "side" campaign has become a more frequently run game than the "main"...

Heavily derivative of various Soulsborne games (Elden Ring more than most) as well as history (the Macedonian civil war among the Diadochi serving as the primary skeletal frame) the players nevertheless seem to find it entertaining enough, no doubt assisted by the fact that none of them played the relevant games. Amusingly, an unexpected reprieve from the players was given in the form of a Tom Bombadil-esque moment in the midst of their flight after the opening act, sorely needed given the serious beating they received from the not-Nazguls... but more on that on the next post.

This campaign runs each Saturday at one of the player's house as two sessions - morning, pause for break, then afternoon. Due to various commitments from other players (the Ukrainian is in an amateur choir, and must needs vacate the premises for a measure of two and a half hours around noon before returning to progress the game onwards; the Indonesian player often finds other callings for her time, such as singing Chinese songs in a karaoke) it has been slow but steady going.

SETTING

Much of the place-names and motifs come from my 40k play-by-post campaign that has been going on since 2019. It, in turn, "borrowed" names and nomenclatures from Disco Elysium, Dune, and other suchlike sources which sounded nifty to me.

The general premise, put simply, is this: Viridia is a continent of squabbling kingdoms. Then from beyond black jagged mountains whose lands cause death and monsters roam comes a man with golden eyes and obsidian skin and white hair with brass golem legionaries and does a clean sweep across the pseudo-mediaeval central europe coded landmass. He consolidates his reign, pushes north toward the not-Scandinavia and is repulsed by their own old gods and magics, then tries for the quasi-Persian east and is slain¹.

Before he dies, however, he leaves behind a centuries-long legacy of Empire. (Wars of conquest - especially one spanning entire continents - aren't done in mere months or years!) Bureaucracies, inter-regional correspondence and trade and movement of goods and peoples, standardisation of languages and legal codes, the brutal institutionalisation of an Imperial identity among these disparate peoples and once-kingdoms, all the things that are needed for efficient resource extraction to support large armies - feeding, arming, and manning them. Our Kyros, it turns out, is not merely an Alexandros, but a Qin Shi Huang Ti as well.

Also, he made a lot of children. A lot of children. Some of them demigods. And they are fighting each other to try and gather more of the dead god-emperor's Essences, each attempting to become the Heir to the throne. Did I mention Kyros was worshipped as divine? It wasn't just ceremonial, either, he evinced some serious super-human capabilities - or so they say, anyway. Who can say? It has been two hundred years since his death. With his absence, Throne (the capital city, built by Kyros himself) has shut its gates, preventing anyone to come in... or come out. Sounds of human butchery and cries of despair are said to have emanated from the cocooned City. It takes little imagination to figure out what would happen to a sprawling metropolis with zilch food production capabilities (at its heyday, Throne had nine major gates all working full time to let caravans full of food and potable water into the City) after it's quarantined itself for two centuries.

And so the Imperium is rife with civil war, each imperial province becoming little more than breeding ground for soldiery and warmaking for ambitious proconsuls and warlords who pledge allegiances to this or that imperial scion. It is a time of chaos and disunity.

In the midst of all this kerfluffle, our bold and level-1 players meet each other in a tavern with no knowledge of each other - and then get conscripted. Yep, that's the opening of the campaign.

Vaasa

Tundras and frigid wastes, Vaasa was never fertile enough to support the creation of a great nation. Small kingdoms rule piecemeal lands amid frozen fjords and ice-riven dales, ruled by still-tribal chieftains and petty princes. The greatest of the northern kingdoms is Karya, whose king Wenceslas the Fifth dreams of uniting the north, as had his father before him. Vaasans tend to be of middling height, stocky, pale or even lightly blue-skinned, golden-haired and blue-eyed. They are considered uncouth and savage by Altamirans, northern barbarians who are best used as fodder for the colosseum’s gladiatorial arenas or as hired mercenaries.

Old Viridia

The oldest, and most populous of the three Isolas, Viridia was once the center of the Ekumene - the Nine Provinces wherein Imperial settlers founded a new home for themselves. Chief among the three provinces of Viridia was Anatoleikos, where the previous seat of the world-capital, Mirova is located.

It is no surprise then that Altamiro, the homeworld dialect of the Merovecht Dynasty, was once considered the courtly speech of Karya. Even now many highborn in Meridia and Samara who fancy themselves as guardians of an elder age use the archaic version of the tongue, although vulgate descendants like Yvexoise and Mirascan have long superseded the nearly-dead tongue for more than two centuries now.

Viridians are usually tall, slim, and range from dark gold to dark red in colouration. The purest bloodlines with ancestry linking back to the now extinct Imperial household sometimes birth obsidian-skinned scions with gold-flashing eyes, a sign of ancient royalty. Their eyes tend to be amber or red, just like their hair.

Phanar Trade-Republics

The Phanariots are a seafaring people who plied the trade-lanes since time immemorial. Their archipelagic home of rocky islands with sparse vegetation has perhaps had a hand in forcing them to take to the seas for sustenance and survival, and the Phanarii tend to be hardy sailors and experienced marines.

Phanariots tend to be olive-skinned and brown-haired with green eyes.

Southern Reach

Unlike the other Meridian Houses, many barons of the Reach take pride in tracing their bloodline back to Viridian forefathers, remembering a time when Meridia was merely the agricultural colony of Old Viridia.

Reachmen share much of the colouration of Viridians, though separation from the old homeland and mingling with other ethnicities have given them increased variance.

Samaryan

The dominant ethnic group in Samara, and the people for whom the isola was (re)named. Their ferocity and hardiness in extreme eco-zones led to their use across the most difficult theatres, and granted them a reputation as a fierce warrior-people. Although they were sidelined in favour of the Khusravi in the first century, the diminishing of that once royal tribe of men resulted in many rulerships being filled by Samaryans chieftains.

Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with black curly hair.

There exist numerous tribes within the Samaryan banner, not all of whom are on friendly terms with one another.

Khusravi

Builder of empires, land-merchants, caravanmasters. The Khusravi, called thus after their first padishah-emperor Khusrav, once held an empire that rivalled that of the Imperium of Old Viridia, but have now fallen to disunity, becoming a bunch of squabbling city-states across massive agrarian plains. That has not prevented them, however, of rallying around the Cult of the Moon Goddess Ishtar when the Imperator and his brass legions marched east. It was in Khromos, the ancient bastion, that Kyros was slain.

Kharakid

The fearsome horse-nomads that was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Khusravi Empire. They are not a unified entity, being in truth a loose confederation of nomadic war-tribes called Banners or Toumens. Four large groupings exist:

Uriankhai, the Wardens of the Forest - Sombre, quiet. The Uriankhai are not given to outbursts of mirth and rage like their more fiery-blooded cousins. Theirs is the silent stalking in the night, the little daggers in the dark.

Tielie, the People of the Carts - Always on the movie, the Tielie adapt quickly to new lands, reading the earth-signs to know of the terrain. They were the traders and carriage-minders for the Banner when they still lived in their homeworld of Kharakid, maneuvering great land-fleets of carts laden with war materiel for the Khagan’s eternal war against the hain.

Khereid, the Sky-Touched - The Khereid make their home in the low mountains of Oldoghtengr, contemplating upon the mating of Father Sky and Mother Earth. Of all the peoples of Kharakid, from them are born the majority of the star-touched psykers.

Khalka, the Protectors of the Plains - It is a good sign when the Khalka riders are full of mirth. The only alternative for them is fury. Easy to anger and easy to laughter, the Khalka are the most numerous and the most powerful faction in the human confederation of Kharak. It is they who are at the forefront in the eternal skirmishes against pockets of the green-skinned hain that have plagued their world for as long as the Khereid seers can remember.