My take on the Lands of the Old Faith because the in-game map(s) are confusing/inconsistent and I needed something concrete for my AU! Messily drawn and kinda wonky but it gets the job done.
Long list of explanations/lore/headcanons underneath the cut!
Politics + Geography
After winning the War of the Gods, but before Narinderâs 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 didnât 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 Bishopsâ 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 Bishopâs 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 doesnât belong to any Bishop. It is also where Narinderâs chaining took place.
All doors directly connect to the Bishopsâ respective domains, except for the one leading towards The Gateway, as itâs 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 Lambâs crusades here take place on the area above water. (And Sfish helps them take care of some underwater camps as well! Thanks Sfish!)
Kallamarâs 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 canât breathe under waterâhe 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 Narinderâs land has now been deemed âcursed ground,â 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 areaâs residents by the Old Faith. The Lambâs cultâthe Vanityâis 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 Ratauâs cult, but the original Cult of Death mightâve 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 deityâs imageâones that rivalled the beauty and excellence of every other Bishopâs 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 Bishopâs 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 Darkwoodâs fauna is the second most normal looking out of the five is that in his reign, Leshy chose to embrace the âchaosâ 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 gloryâŚ
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 livedâor at least none have returnedâto tell the tale.
Gameplay (crusades)
Instead of taking place in unique, randomly generated dungeons like the ones in-gameâcrusades consist of the Lamb making their way through each Bishopâs territory. Slowly cutting their way through, they eventually reach the center of the Bishopsâ cults, where they can finally confront the Bishops themselves.
Summoning circles like the one at The Vanityâs entrance are scattered across the Lands, but many of them havenât 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 âcheckpointsâ 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, Smugglerâs Sanctuary -> Anchordeep, Midaâs Cave -> Silk Cradle)
The only exception to this rule is Pilgrimâs 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 Darkwoodâs, so going with this small inconsistency instead seemed like the lesser evil.
I do think the Cursed Grounds being south still makes some sense tho, as when we walk across the frozen sea with the Woolhaven DLC installed, we see old remnants of structures with Red Crown iconography on them (and no such thing for any of the other Crowns!) which to me implies part of Narinderâs following could have been situated nearby in the past.
The Blunderbuss Fleece is complete! This one took several months to get right. I also took some creative liberties, mostly with the hat. But I think this might be my favorite fleece yet!
personally yes ive seen the fandom has become more for shipping than it used to be and while that is its own issue, simply saying "don't look if you don't like it" doesn't exactly help people who are after the same type of content find each other. that's why we have tags. that's why the main tag just ain't working for the people who don't want to see only shipping content and want to share their ideas regarding gameplay/lore speculation in a place where the people looking for it will find it instead of just shouting into a sea of shipping content.
there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to carve out a space for specific content
funny thing i have 2 main aus for cotl that i came up with as a joke and honestly now that i think about it, satire of the more common aus i saw trending at the time. i made a fankid bc i hated the notion of fankids (they would not be parents) and the au for that fankid is mostly to explore themes of parental abuse and as a massive middle finger to the heteronormative family structure that i see a lot in most shipping circles. even if they all agree that lamb is nonbinary there's always this heteronormative aspect to the fankid aus i see that always irked me. i saw a spoiler for a comic and it really just shows how pervasive this idea that the canon nb character usually falls into the "woman-lite" type of nonbinary. i'm not naming names and i don't intend to call anyone out on this but it's something i see often.
