#cotnl

Politics + Geography

After winning the War of the Gods, but before Narinder’s imprisonment, all 5 of the Bishops split the land into equal parts for them to rule over, and molded each of their domains to their will. Both the landscape and the political borders of the Lands didn’t always used look like this, but gods shape the world to their liking, and as the lady remaining gods to walk the Lands, the Lands shifted in their image.

The Bishop statues on the map above roughly indicate the placements of their cults. There are many smaller cult campuses scattered across their domains and the Lands in general, but the ones marked on the map are the main settlements, and the ones the Bishops themselves inhabit.

In the middle of the island are the Bishops’ meeting grounds. They were built there so each Bishop could easily access them when the five of them had to meet up to discuss important matters. Each Bishop’s domain has a clear path to access the meeting grounds, and those are the paths the Lamb takes when going on crusades. The land the meeting grounds are built upon doesn’t belong to any Bishop. It is also where Narinder’s chaining took place.

All doors directly connect to the Bishops’ respective domains, except for the one leading towards The Gateway, as it’s not so much of a literal door as it is a portal to the land of the dead. Post-game, the Mystic Seller also manifests there, but its portal now leads to the Ether instead of the Gateway.

Anchordeep has more than 50% of its territory under water, and the rest is still mostly in damp, dark caves. The Lamb’s crusades here take place on the area above water. (And Sfish helps them take care of some underwater camps as well! Thanks Sfish!)

Kallamar’s temple is unfortunately also above water, because all Bishops put their temples in a place that all of them could access, in case one of them quickly needs to find the other. Seeing as the others can’t breathe under water—he ended up with this. It never even occurred to them that it could be a liability in the future.

After his imprisonment, what was formerly Narinder’s land has now been deemed “cursed ground,” and none of the other four gods have come forward to claim it as their own land ever since. Followers of the Old Faith still set up camp there, but they do so independently of the Bishops. Some autonomous communities, such as the pilgrims, also choose to live there due to the lesser pressure enforced on the area’s residents by the Old Faith. The Lamb’s cult—the Vanity—is located in the northern-most part of the Cursed Grounds, closest to the meeting grounds.

The location of The Vanity was also formerly the location of Ratau’s cult, but the original Cult of Death might’ve been located in a different part of the Grounds.

Long ago, the Cursed Grounds used to be filled with off-shoot camps of Death Cult followers, and great structures built in their deity’s image—ones that rivalled the beauty and excellence of every other Bishop’s domain.

Since then, however, a majority of the Death Cult and its following has died out, leaving nothing but ruin in its place. The Cursed Grounds are depicted as almost entirely overground/empty on this map because of this.

The fauna in the Cursed Grounds also appears to be much more normal than that in any of the other four Bishop’s domains. No longer being contorted by the whims of a god for the past one thousand years, nature has slowly managed to reclaim its course over this territory, and restored it to its initial state.

(Perhaps the reason Darkwood’s fauna is the second most normal looking out of the five is that in his reign, Leshy chose to embrace the “chaos” of nature and not interfere too much with it running its course, seeing it to be against his principles to try controlling the uncontrollable.)

And maybe, now that the gods who used to rule over the other four domains too have been slain, the nature there could also start returning to its original glory…

There's a line of tall mountains that runs across the northern-most part of the island. There may be something on the other side, but few have tried scaling them to cross over, and none have lived—or at least none have returned—to tell the tale.

Gameplay (crusades)

Instead of taking place in unique, randomly generated dungeons like the ones in-game—crusades consist of the Lamb making their way through each Bishop’s territory. Slowly cutting their way through, they eventually reach the center of the Bishops’ cults, where they can finally confront the Bishops themselves.

Summoning circles like the one at The Vanity’s entrance are scattered across the Lands, but many of them haven’t been maintained and no longer work properly because of it. At the end of each crusade, the Lamb finds one of these circles, restores it back to functionality, and uses it to teleport back to the cult. They also serve as “checkpoints” for the next crusade, allowing them to continue where they left off instead of fighting their way through the same part of the land again.

Another reason for them to fight on the crusades instead of just running by, is because filing down the amount of worshipers a god had also directly weakens the god, as touched on in my Devotion worldbuilding post.

Design/thought process

The way you unlock all the secondary locations in-game is by running into NPCs native to those areas on crusades, and being invited to come over, which then unlocks those areas on your map.

The locations of said areas on my map were chosen after the domain you first encounter their respective NPCs in (Spore Grotto -> Anura, Smuggler’s Sanctuary -> Anchordeep, Mida’s Cave -> Silk Cradle)

The only exception to this rule is Pilgrim’s Passage (which should be located in Darkwood), because putting the Cursed Grounds up north ended up causing way more problems than just swapping its place with Darkwood’s, so going with this small inconsistency instead seemed like the lesser evil.