Delonis Setting

"“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.” - Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses"

Delonis, An Origin
It would be untoward of me not to put a pretty hefty disclaimer here. In many ways, Delonis is not an original creation of your dear Chev. Alas, I must confess that I drew significant creative direction from a certain show that will go unnamed here. If you are reading this, it is likely you already know what it is. If you don't, I suspect you can put the pieces together regardless.

I'm not terribly proud of the origins of this, my heartbreaker of a setting. I care quite a lot about Delonis and (by the time of writing) very little about the place from whence I drew so much inspiration. Delonis, now, is mine. It is mine alone. No one else may lay claim to it, and I would appreciate if no one were to claim it is simply something else wearing a funny hat. I know it looks very much like something wearing a funny hat, but I assure you, that is largely due to prior experiences with my own takes on that particular something.

Delonis is not that thing and makes no effort to be that thing. I hope it can stand well enough on its own.

Delonis, A Land Divided
"“Never was anything great achieved without danger.” - Niccolo Machiavelli"

At its core, Delonis is the tale of a series of events surrounding the Kingdom of Vallis. Delonis is the tale of a conspiracy that threatens not only to rip a nation apart, but to destroy the very world in its hubris. Delonis is the tale of a young man and the people he meets while pursuing the quest given to him by a goddess. Delonis is the story of the battle between love and hate, about the question of when one must put aside one's love for one's fellow man in order to do what must be done.

This story does not hem and haw over whether or not violence can be justified. The simple fact is that, at times, horrible deeds must be done in order to safeguard the innocent. Evil must be met and its methods must not be backed down from if it is the only way to prevent its victory. One cannot answer a knife with a hug and expect anything other than to be stabbed in the back; Delonis is a tale of valiant heroes accepting the brutal fate that befalls all warriors. Delonis is good people fighting and dying to stop bad people from plunging the world into death and madness. Because they must fight. You cannot simple meet evil in the middle, after all.

I am probably tipping my hand a great deal with regards to my politics and philosophy; Allow me to simply state this. Doing the most good for the most people often requires doing distasteful things to the worst people, the people who believe that the fewest people who by chance were born to a specific class or race are inherently better than others. I have this problem where I try to come up with a believable motivation for my villains and I have a hard time coming up with an explanation for evil other than white supremacy, capitalism, that sort of thing. The bad guys in Delonis are white supremacists and capitalists, their brainwashed followers, or people struggling to leave that life behind them.

Delonis is not a story about a white savior. In many ways, Lionel (the central character) is privileged. He is a cishet white man born to an aristocratic family in a monarchist nation. Despite his rough upbringing, he did in fact have many privileges over other people. His role is not to save the world, despite his quest. In Delonis, he is often observer to the stories of others and supporter to their own quests.

Delonis is a story about the necessity of the privileged to witness and learn from the oppressed, and to hear their cries for change. This is probably because I'm a cishet white man who believes it is vitally important for other white, cis, heterosexual, male people to stop and fucking listen to nonwhite, noncis, nonhet, nonmale people so that real change can be made.

Go figure.

Click here for the page for the page for Delonis the continent.