Game Concept: The Lands of Mirhne

Art by Michal Kvac.

A random thought evolving into a potential future setting, likely to collect dust alongside all my other abandoned ideas because I can't get everything done. Ah well, the usual. The concept of Mirhne (and indeed, even its name which seemingly mean nothing) came to me at utterly random, following a bit of a rant with someone at how people really don't get Lovecraft and don't know how to use his material even slightly correctly. The Lands of Mirhne were conceptualized as a mixture or bridge between several disparate ideas which are that I wanted to do, among other things: a (very) low fantasy setting, the idea that 'less is more', run something more akin to Sword & Sorcery, take cues from historical settings and finally return eldritch horror to a status that's a bit more accurate to what the genre is about, namely fear of the unknown.

Facts About Mist-Haunted Mirhne

Currently the lore for Mirhne is a bit sparse because the setting only exist as a series of bullet point notes:

• The Lands of Mirhne are, as far as its people are concerned, mostly all there is to the world. It consist of an island chain. There are traders from far away lands but they remain mostly alien to the the people of Mirhne.
• The land is cold and mist-haunted, with very few of the lands ever experiencing a truly warm summer. It is loosely similar to a mixture between the Scandinavian lands and the British Isles, to get a loose ideas of what its geography would be like.
• Mirhne is very loosely at the level of the early iron age, too crude to be properly called 'medieval'. Its people are a harsh people, formed into large clan, tribes and early kingdoms who frequently war with each others.
• Mihrne is a human-only setting and is somewhat of a Sword & Sorcery setting, just one trying to be a bit more coherent and historical than pure pulp cheese. The land is cruel, harsh and often wars can be bloody and pointless.
• The primary enemies are human and, initially, mere 'bandits' (read: men serving a rival lord). Other enemies include the barbaric and inhuman near-Men who live beyond the light of civilization and live in the woods.
• The Beasts of Mirhne are said to be immortal until slain and the land has many beasts which have grown truly massive with age and possess a cruel, almost alien intellect. Black wolves the size of a horse haunt the land, as do the Spiders of Mirhne, which are unnaturally large and intelligent. Crows and large sea-beasts almost haunt the land and are increasingly common where once they existed in myths.
• Speaking of myths, Mirhne's extremely low magic status leave much ambiguous as to what is indeed truly 'magic' and what is really just a natural part of the land. Are the spiders large due to being some antediluvian terror or is that just natural to spider biology in that world? Are there truly 'goblins' hidden in the forest or are they just another, more primal branch of humans? Or maybe they are just a myth spread by bandits. In Mirhne, the players will not know what is truly tall tale and myths and what is truly supernatural until they encounter it. The land has many myths. Some are true, some are false. Or maybe they are both and neither at the same time.
• As the campaign advance, the Mist and the eldritch will slowly grow in power. The curse which haunt the lands of Mirhne will grow in potency and the age of the world will turn to a new page. Monsters will be born more and more both from beasts and men alike.
• There is a chance that any myth, any fantastical element in Mirhne ties into a greater 'mythos' of eldritch terror. The Old Gods are indeed real but they are alien beings which the primitive men of Mirhne cannot hope to truly understand. There is a dark secret or ten hidden in Mirhne but, currently, not even I know what it is or how it might develop.