Frog Dragon
2012-06-26, 01:08 PM
Some days ago I had the beginnings of a setting idea. It started as a random bit of dwarven philosophy/religion, and expanded to include other tidbits and ideas I had thought up before. Then I thought up a planar system, some organizations, a new role for the fey and elves, and finally the lifeflood itself. I realized that it's slowly starting to look like a setting.
Of course, there's a lot I'm still not sure about, such as how much magic should be in the setting, what kind of cultures there should be (except for one) and so on. So I'm taking suggestions.
Also, I'm kicking alignment.
Here's a world map randomly generated in Fractal Terrains 3. It represents an area about as large as the earth. The island continent on the right is named Minovi, whereas the larger landmass is treated as two continents. The northern continent of Edrimas and the southern continent of Torin.
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/4643/lifeflood.png
And a Hammer projection to correctly represent sizes.
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5358/lifefloodhammer.png
Map of Edrimas (with regions). (http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6461/edrimasregions.png)
That map is pretty massive by the way, and I haven't figured out names for every region yet.
The Planes
There are 5 planes. The first is the Material Plane, which became roughly as it is today about 90000 years ago. The second is the Borderworld, the place where the other planes meet. The third is the Elemental Churn, a chaotic landscape where the primal forces of the elements fight each other. The fourth is the Light, font of life and home of the fae. The last is the Dark, antithesis of the Light, home to the undead.
Borderworld
The borderworld is connected to all the other planes, and shares a basic structure with the material plane. However, it has qualities quite unlike the material plane. Being tied to each of the planes, some parts of the borderworld exhibit some influences more than others. For example, being influenced by the Elemental Churn might make an area hotter, raise the moisture level, make it unnaturally windy or unnaturally still, depending on what element dominates the area of the Elemental Churn that section of the borderworld is tied to.
The Borderworld has all sorts of inhabitants, including celestials, fiends and elves. The elves have a city in an area perpetually dominated by the planar influence of the Dark. Elsewhere on the plane, celestials and fiends fight unending wars, the boundaries of their dominions shifting as the planes move.
The Elemental Churn
The Elemental Churn has all four elements in equal amounts, and they are constantly shifting. The elements constantly attempt to displace each other, and the places where elements meet create paraelements. These paraelements are mud, magma, dust, cold, steam and smoke.
The Light
Home to the fey and the celestials, the Light is a source of positive energy. It is a vibrant plane filled with life, both animal and otherwise. However, it is not a benevolent plane. The celestials are more present on the borderworld than the Light, and the fey generally have a flippant disregard of mortal life and rights. They still keep many slaves.
The Dark
A cold, dead plane, the Dark still remains attractive to some. While the elves do not venture within the Dark itself, they still live within its area of influence, and the Kaorti make their home here, as do many fiends. Undead also find the Dark a pleasant place.
Races
Aberrations
Most aberrations were created 90000 years ago during the lifeflood. They are the warped remains of ages past. There are as many kinds as there were races in the old world, but they share one trait in common. They do not like the new world. While the aberrations are unable to remember the circumstances of their creation, they know that they do not belong in the new world. In creatures of lower intelligence, this manifests only as violent hate towards the new races, but some smarter aberrations, such as mind flayers and aboleths, have sought to understand what they are and why they do not belong in the world.
Elans
When the kaorti realized that the lifeflood had made them unable to reproduce, and thus, propagate their race, they began scrambling for ways to survive. They realized that the only way to make more kaorti would be to warp new world creatures into them. After awakening and finding creatures that could be turned, they began experimenting. While most of their attempts were abject failures and mindless monsters, the creation of the elan gave them hope. Though at first, they thought the first elan had not been transformed at all, closer examination revealed that it had. Though originally kept around as a symbol of progress, time revealed a very useful quality in elans. They were immortal. While the kaorti died in a few centuries, an elan could outlast them all. The kaorti knew that the time it might take for them to reach their goals could see them forget their ancestry.
So the elans, despite being much duller of mind than the kaorti, were taught everything there was to know about the kaorti. They were sequestered for protection and given a mission to maintain the kaorti culture. Most of these first elans live on today, and their existence as the living libraries to the kaorti people is a closely held secret.
An elan may be created from a wide variety of creatures, though the process warps them more or less depending on the original creature. Elves, orcs, humans, dwarves and various other creatures all qualify to be transformed into elans, though their creation is very rare nowadays.
Elves
Originally created from human stock, the elves of today can be split into three categories. The free elves, the slave elves and the dark elves. The free elves include most existing elves, and they are the descendants of those who rebelled against the fey 1100 years ago. Due to this, the original free elves sought to create as much distance as possible between the fey and their kind, resulting in their eventual settlement in the Dark dominated areas of the borderworld.
Free elves are mostly a monoculture with a strong military tradition and an eye for technological progress. However, they also strongly value individual freedoms and abhor slavery as a culture.
Slave elves are the descendants of those elves that did not manage to escape from the fey 1100 years ago and continue to serve their fickle and capricious masters. The fey have sought to advance the physical qualities of these elves and stagnate the mental ones, making them less likely to rebel successfully.
Dark elves are the descendants of a group of free elves that entered a pact with the fey. While the exact terms of the pact are lost to history, the dark elves did gain powers from it. It is not certain what the fey gained from this deal.
Stat-wise, free elves are PHB high elves with their racial proficiencies replaced with the ability to treat firearms as martial weapons. Slave elves are wild elves and wood elves. Dark elves are dark elves.
Fey
Natives to the Light, fey, as understood by most people, are the epitome of evil. Their kind has instigated two devastating attacks on the material plane, both only for slaves, and they seem to have trouble with the concept of personhood for mortals. However, this image is not entirely accurate.
While many fey, particularly the more powerful ones, have a flippant disregard towards the rights and life of mortals, this is not an attitude shared by all of them. In particular, the more reclusive fey in the material plane are generally ambivalent and sometimes even benevolent towards mortals, only hiding their existence due to their bad reputation. However, among the fey in the Light, the view of mortals being cattle is much more common.
Halflings
Halflings are a varied lot, and the prevailing stereotypes regarding them generally depend on the region. They can be found almost everywhere, stemming from a quality that has remained unchanged throughout the halfling cultures. The halflings have a rich naval tradition, and the race is generally believed to have originated from Minova.
Though halflings are consummate explorers and sometimes, expansionists, it has been noted that actual halfling armies are a rarity. Instead, the halflings have a history of getting what they want through cultural and social maneuvering. This community-minded bent of the halflings means that they integrate easily into societies. Though not necessarily more diplomatic than anyone else, a halfling feels at home wherever there is community. Halflings are never alone.
Halflings have most significant presence in the Mitrika region, in northern Minova, as well as in Voranth, particularly the province of Gonth, and the Isles of Nimmar east of Voranth.
Kaorti
The kaorti are the oldest race that hails from the prime material. Over 90000 years ago, the kaorti wrought great works of technology and magic in the old world. Then the lifeflood struck. Unlike others from the same period, the kaorti managed to partially evade the effects of the lifeflood by fleeing into the Dark. They are the only true survivors of the lifeflood.
However, the lifeflood still had horrific effects on the kaorti people. They ceased being able to reproduce, and are now reduced to transforming existing races into more of their kind. In addition, since the kaorti stayed mostly as they were in the days of the old world, the new world is effectively toxic to them. Nowadays, the kaorti use other aberrations as agents to safeguard the ruins of their days of glory from the inhabitants of the new world.
The kaorti alone possess the knowledge of what the civilizations of the old world were, but they are not sharing that knowledge, even going as far as directing their agents to hamstring and attack those that might come close to discovering something about them.
Their ultimate goal is to restore their ability to reproduce and survive on the material plane, as well as take back their old holds. Perhaps luckily for the new world however, they have no idea how to make any of this happen.
Regions
Taog
A strip of land uniting the continents of Torin and Edrimas, Taog is notoriously hostile to travelers. It is covered with rainforest, and the temperature, with the exception of a few mountain peaks, floats around 20 to 30 celcius throughout the region. As Taog sits at the equator, there is little variance in temperature.
Taog might have thriving populations now were it not for a simple fact about the rainforest's wildlife. Most of it is not natural in the least. Taog has significant amounts of ruins, though most are deteriorated beyond recognition. They are accompanied by aberrations that have, in times past, wrecked the local ecology and substituted their own. Though most of them are mindless beasts, they are notoriously aggressive and far more dangerous than normal wildlife.
Organizations, Groups and Nations
Athesia
A kingdom in eastern Edrimas, Athesia has been plunged into disarray following the Royalty Purge four years ago. The dukes rule their duchies in practical sovereignty, since every candidate for the throne has been declared illegitimate by most of the dukes, as well as the survivors of the royal court. As no one can establish the support or power base to actually ascend, the country has no ruler.
Athesians are mostly human, though the country has a significant dwarven minority, as well as notable halfling and goblinoid minorities.
Kroth
A country in the Morn Peninsula, south of Voranth, Kroth is the recently realized vision of a Blue goblin warlord who wished better for the people of Morn. While many in Morn are still barbarians and raiders, the warlord Kroth has managed to impose order on a slice of land, though he has had to take drastic measures to do so.
Kroth knows that his nation is very useful for everyone else in the region. In trying to force civilization upon the people of Morn, he is preventing them from attacking their neighbors. Kroth has only existed 14 years as a country, but it has been expanding constantly to cover more of the Morn peninsula.
Marching Hordes
Steady civilization is rare on Edrimas. Much of the land is still bound up by small independent communities and city states. These communities don't always get along, and there are many avenues for feuds to crop up. The Marching Hordes introduce a dangerous wildcard to all of this. Not an organization in the traditional sense, the Marching Hordes are a group name for a number of traveling mercenary armies, mostly orcish. To them, war is business. They sell their services to the highest bidder, as long as they believe they have a fair chance of winning and the bidder is not in a position to screw them over after the fighting is done.
The marching hordes tend to leave temporary camps behind them as they go. Children aren't fighters, and thus they are raised in camps until the horde comes back to annex them into the main fighting force. Often, this annoys locals, and marching hordes are careful not to establish camps in places where the local authority might conceivably evict their children and their guardians.
Though different marching hordes might fight each other if hired by opposite sides, there is one thing marching hordes will not do to each other. Every marching horde leaves camps alone unless they want to be stomped over by a union of their fellow hordes. In general, marching hordes, while unruly and disorganized, fight a surprisingly clean war, tending to leave noncombatants alone. Of course, there are always bad apples.
Old World League
The Old World League is a group headed by the kaorti to protect their cultural heritage from the new world. Their membership includes many kinds of intelligent aberrations, and they make use of many less intelligent ones. The kaorti manage to recruit aberrations to their cause by leveraging their knowledge of the old world, and those aberrations without interest in their origins are generally stupid enough to be controlled through other means.
The Old World League infiltrates new world societies to hamstring any attempt to research or make use of old world ruins. They are willing to use any means necessary for this purpose. The Old World League itself is highly secret, and pretty much no-one except its members know of its existence.
Olinites
Named for the town of Olini the marching horde used as their primary base, the Olinites are the people that the term "Nimmari" is generally understood to refer to. Being the larger of the two Nimmari factions, the Olinites are much more visible to their neighbors.
However, the Olinites don't have the best of reputations. After the Nimmar war, bad times drove many halflings to piracy against the ships that moved through the island cluster towards Mitrika. The Marching Horde on the isles quickly got involved, and the sight of pirates, mostly halfling and orcish, but including other races as well, is now common on the waters around the Isles of Nimmar.
In addition to the pirates, many towns and villages charge fees from outsiders to travel through waters perceived as their territory, and the lack of a central authority among the Olinites exacerbates this problem. There is no single authority that can be appealed to help ease trade through the island cluster. All of this has caused the Olinites to be viewed as greedy at best and criminals at worst.
Temnini
Though the town of Temnin was burned down in the Nimmar War, the name remains. An insular and relatively unknown group, the Temnini live on the cold, northern islands of the Nimmar island cluster. The Temnini are a much smaller group than the Olinites, composed entirely of halflings.
While the Olinities see trade, the out of the way location and the frigid environment ensure that the Temnini see few outsiders. Most Temnini are subsistence farmers and fishers who live a quiet life, though many are still embittered by their losses of life and land in the Nimmar war. This leaves them suspicious of outsiders, especially orcs, trolls and other races that most often make up Marching Hordes.
The Temnini are not getting any larger as a faction either. Many young halflings leave the villages to seek a better living, as the Temnini communities lack wealth and the opportunities to develop skills notable in the world at large.
Voranth Provinces
An enormous nation in northwestern Edrimas, Voranth is split into 11 provinces and is ruled by a queen, though in practice the provinces retain a fair bit of independence, including separate laws, local government and advisors sent from each to the royal court in the province of Vorn. However, the queen still has a fair bit of power, even if it is only from her influence as a figurehead.
Voranth came into being when the humans of Vorn and the halflings of Gonth joined forces, and the old halfling religion of the Mother Goddess is now dominant in Voranth. After its creation, the Voranth Provinces started rapidly annexing and conquering other nearby areas and they now control most of the Great Voranth region they take their name from.
Wyrmpeaks Alliance
The Wyrmpeaks are a loose alliance of four dragon-controlled nations in Edrimas. These nations, named after their founders, are Detharixa, Khalit, Inkrimane and Thatavor. The alliance is mostly a defensive one, the founding dragons having figured that tyrannies backed by four dragons work better than tyrannies backed by one dragon. All but one of the Wyrmpeaks nations are iron-fisted tyrannies, with the dragons imposing absolute sovereignty through draconic servants.
However, the Wyrmpeaks alliance is starting to falter. The green dragon Thatavor died three years ago and his son is not very fond of the Wyrmpeaks alliance. While Thatavor is still a member of the alliance, the new ruler, Avorikat, is distancing himself from the alliance and might be plotting to destroy the other Wyrmpeaks alliance members entirely.
Timeline (The numbers indicate how many years ago the event happened. A "~" means an inexact date whereas a "-" means an exact date
90000~ Lifeflood cataclysm. The energies of The Light flood into the material plane, forever devastating what came before. Most beings on the material plane were destroyed, while others were transformed. The newly transformed creatures forgot their heritage and knew only hate towards the Light that destroyed them. A single race manages to partially evade the cataclysm by escaping into the Dark, though they find themselves unable to reproduce due to the effects of the lifeflood. This race, known as the Kaorti, resigns to waiting for races to develop into forms they can transform into their likeness. They seal their entire race in stasis. This cataclysm creates many aberrations while other creatures begin slowly developing into the modern races.
45000~ The kaorti awaken and begin testing their methods. Eventually, they manage to create kaorti.
21000~ The races have taken the forms we now recognize.
10000~ The fae descend upon the material plane in an attempt to gain slaves for their own use. Even the dragons find themselves utterly overmatched by the fae and no-one is organized enough to properly resist. The fae leave the little civilization that existed in ruins, killing entire cultures. Many people are abducted into the Light. The fae create the elves as a slave race from the various creatures they had captured. The races begin rebuilding from the ruins.
8000~ The dwarves of Thandur find ruins of the ancient Kaorti. The knowledge, magic and technology in them enable the Thandurites to impose dominion on their neighbors.
7800~ The Kaorti take note of the dwarven empire piggybacking on their achievements and decide to act. Through a long and difficult campaign, they manage to bring the empire to its knees and seal off the ruins the dwarves had discovered. As the Thandurites were never very liked by their neighbors, the weakened empire is destroyed by foreign conquerors. The Kaorti begin seeding their ruins with thralls to avoid the people of the material plane finding and using them.
1500~ The halflings first arrive on Edrimas.
1100~ The fae slavelords attempt to assault the Prime Material using their elven slaves, believing it to be as easy as last time. Instead, the since advanced prime-dwellers manage to instigate the elves into an open revolt. Most of the elves are freed and they settle in a region of the Borderword dominated by The Dark. The fae begin breeding and modifying their remaining slaves for stupidity so that they do not rise again.
800~ The halflings of Gonth and the humans of Vorn unite under one flag, creating the Voranth Provinces.
750~ A group of elves secede from the main civilization of free elves. They court the fae for power and get it, all the while believing themselves to be manipulating their former masters. The main group considers this a dangerous heresy and names the renegades the Dark Elves, or Drow.
217- Although the elves had previously opened a portal between the Dark dominated portion of the borderworld their capital resided in and the material plane, they had yet to actually create presence on the material plane. Now they do so, beginning to annex various human cultures while spreading their own.
68- A group of four powerful dragons appear, carving out their own tyrannical empires and forming a loose alliance known as the Wyrmpeaks. These dragons are known as Detharixa (Red dragon), Khalit (Black dragon), Inkrimane (Silver dragon) and Thatavor (Green dragon).
44- A Marching Horde offshoot arrives on Nimmar. However, when a group of drunken trolls rampage across one of the islands, a sentiment develops among some of the halflings that the Marching Horde should pack their stuff and scram. Not all halflings share this sentiment however.
A few months later- The trolls appear on the island they had previously rampaged on, but are instead lynched by the natives. The Marching Horde is outraged that the trolls were killed on what was supposed to be an apology visit and ransack the villages involved. The Nimmar War begins.
43- Many villages have flocked to strike back against the marching horde who are using the villages and towns dominated by their more tolerant peers as bases. Eventually, however, it becomes clear that the Nimmari halflings are no match against a Marching Horde. Before more people are killed, the halflings organize an exodus to the north. The Nimmar War ends, splitting the Nimmari into two groups, the Temnini, and the Olinites.
14- The goblin nation of Kroth is established.
4- The entire Athesian line of royalty is killed down to the last cousin, leaving the kingdom without any legitimate successors. While many have stepped forth claiming long lost ancestry to the royal line, none have been accepted by the dukes governing different duchies. It is not known why the Athesian line was slaughtered, or by whom.
3- The green dragon Thatavor dies. His son Avorikat ascends to the throne and is now struggling to improve his kingdom while distancing himself from the Wyrmpeaks.
As you can see, there are a lot of empty sections and the timeline is rather work in progress as well.
I have other material on the setting, but it's not codified enough to be typed up yet.
Edit: List of ideas I've been throwing around, as well as other random thoughts.
Three dwarven philosophies/religions, named the Aspects of Earth. Stone represents conviction, courage, community and stability. Sand represents life, death and the natural cycle. Steel represents progress and self-reliance.
Doppelgangers being opposite to the kaorti. While kaorti are the last surviving old world race, doppelgangers are the only old world race mutation that has started to belong in the new world. This leaves the race between the old and the new world. Though immensely useful to the Old World League as infiltrators, doppelgangers are also a weak link, as they are most likely to sympathize with the new world. Some doppelgangers even interbreed with new world races, creating changelings.
Disbarit. A mighty crime syndicate that is believed by some to be divinely backed. In particular, they operate safehouses all over Edrimas, which have proven to be quite impenetrable to the uninvited. (This needs work.)
Possibly making the setting E-something. However, the presence of high-level magic is necessary for the setting, even though too much of it makes the setting start to break down. For example, the elves have a permanent portal to the Borderworld.
Halfling pirates. Halflings have an entrenched naval tradition, and they work well even in unstable communities. Though they might recruit other races into their operations as well, halfling pirate ringleaders from Nimmar could conceivably stomp on intercontinental trade....
I have no idea what to do with gnomes.
Of course, there's a lot I'm still not sure about, such as how much magic should be in the setting, what kind of cultures there should be (except for one) and so on. So I'm taking suggestions.
Also, I'm kicking alignment.
Here's a world map randomly generated in Fractal Terrains 3. It represents an area about as large as the earth. The island continent on the right is named Minovi, whereas the larger landmass is treated as two continents. The northern continent of Edrimas and the southern continent of Torin.
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/4643/lifeflood.png
And a Hammer projection to correctly represent sizes.
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5358/lifefloodhammer.png
Map of Edrimas (with regions). (http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6461/edrimasregions.png)
That map is pretty massive by the way, and I haven't figured out names for every region yet.
The Planes
There are 5 planes. The first is the Material Plane, which became roughly as it is today about 90000 years ago. The second is the Borderworld, the place where the other planes meet. The third is the Elemental Churn, a chaotic landscape where the primal forces of the elements fight each other. The fourth is the Light, font of life and home of the fae. The last is the Dark, antithesis of the Light, home to the undead.
Borderworld
The borderworld is connected to all the other planes, and shares a basic structure with the material plane. However, it has qualities quite unlike the material plane. Being tied to each of the planes, some parts of the borderworld exhibit some influences more than others. For example, being influenced by the Elemental Churn might make an area hotter, raise the moisture level, make it unnaturally windy or unnaturally still, depending on what element dominates the area of the Elemental Churn that section of the borderworld is tied to.
The Borderworld has all sorts of inhabitants, including celestials, fiends and elves. The elves have a city in an area perpetually dominated by the planar influence of the Dark. Elsewhere on the plane, celestials and fiends fight unending wars, the boundaries of their dominions shifting as the planes move.
The Elemental Churn
The Elemental Churn has all four elements in equal amounts, and they are constantly shifting. The elements constantly attempt to displace each other, and the places where elements meet create paraelements. These paraelements are mud, magma, dust, cold, steam and smoke.
The Light
Home to the fey and the celestials, the Light is a source of positive energy. It is a vibrant plane filled with life, both animal and otherwise. However, it is not a benevolent plane. The celestials are more present on the borderworld than the Light, and the fey generally have a flippant disregard of mortal life and rights. They still keep many slaves.
The Dark
A cold, dead plane, the Dark still remains attractive to some. While the elves do not venture within the Dark itself, they still live within its area of influence, and the Kaorti make their home here, as do many fiends. Undead also find the Dark a pleasant place.
Races
Aberrations
Most aberrations were created 90000 years ago during the lifeflood. They are the warped remains of ages past. There are as many kinds as there were races in the old world, but they share one trait in common. They do not like the new world. While the aberrations are unable to remember the circumstances of their creation, they know that they do not belong in the new world. In creatures of lower intelligence, this manifests only as violent hate towards the new races, but some smarter aberrations, such as mind flayers and aboleths, have sought to understand what they are and why they do not belong in the world.
Elans
When the kaorti realized that the lifeflood had made them unable to reproduce, and thus, propagate their race, they began scrambling for ways to survive. They realized that the only way to make more kaorti would be to warp new world creatures into them. After awakening and finding creatures that could be turned, they began experimenting. While most of their attempts were abject failures and mindless monsters, the creation of the elan gave them hope. Though at first, they thought the first elan had not been transformed at all, closer examination revealed that it had. Though originally kept around as a symbol of progress, time revealed a very useful quality in elans. They were immortal. While the kaorti died in a few centuries, an elan could outlast them all. The kaorti knew that the time it might take for them to reach their goals could see them forget their ancestry.
So the elans, despite being much duller of mind than the kaorti, were taught everything there was to know about the kaorti. They were sequestered for protection and given a mission to maintain the kaorti culture. Most of these first elans live on today, and their existence as the living libraries to the kaorti people is a closely held secret.
An elan may be created from a wide variety of creatures, though the process warps them more or less depending on the original creature. Elves, orcs, humans, dwarves and various other creatures all qualify to be transformed into elans, though their creation is very rare nowadays.
Elves
Originally created from human stock, the elves of today can be split into three categories. The free elves, the slave elves and the dark elves. The free elves include most existing elves, and they are the descendants of those who rebelled against the fey 1100 years ago. Due to this, the original free elves sought to create as much distance as possible between the fey and their kind, resulting in their eventual settlement in the Dark dominated areas of the borderworld.
Free elves are mostly a monoculture with a strong military tradition and an eye for technological progress. However, they also strongly value individual freedoms and abhor slavery as a culture.
Slave elves are the descendants of those elves that did not manage to escape from the fey 1100 years ago and continue to serve their fickle and capricious masters. The fey have sought to advance the physical qualities of these elves and stagnate the mental ones, making them less likely to rebel successfully.
Dark elves are the descendants of a group of free elves that entered a pact with the fey. While the exact terms of the pact are lost to history, the dark elves did gain powers from it. It is not certain what the fey gained from this deal.
Stat-wise, free elves are PHB high elves with their racial proficiencies replaced with the ability to treat firearms as martial weapons. Slave elves are wild elves and wood elves. Dark elves are dark elves.
Fey
Natives to the Light, fey, as understood by most people, are the epitome of evil. Their kind has instigated two devastating attacks on the material plane, both only for slaves, and they seem to have trouble with the concept of personhood for mortals. However, this image is not entirely accurate.
While many fey, particularly the more powerful ones, have a flippant disregard towards the rights and life of mortals, this is not an attitude shared by all of them. In particular, the more reclusive fey in the material plane are generally ambivalent and sometimes even benevolent towards mortals, only hiding their existence due to their bad reputation. However, among the fey in the Light, the view of mortals being cattle is much more common.
Halflings
Halflings are a varied lot, and the prevailing stereotypes regarding them generally depend on the region. They can be found almost everywhere, stemming from a quality that has remained unchanged throughout the halfling cultures. The halflings have a rich naval tradition, and the race is generally believed to have originated from Minova.
Though halflings are consummate explorers and sometimes, expansionists, it has been noted that actual halfling armies are a rarity. Instead, the halflings have a history of getting what they want through cultural and social maneuvering. This community-minded bent of the halflings means that they integrate easily into societies. Though not necessarily more diplomatic than anyone else, a halfling feels at home wherever there is community. Halflings are never alone.
Halflings have most significant presence in the Mitrika region, in northern Minova, as well as in Voranth, particularly the province of Gonth, and the Isles of Nimmar east of Voranth.
Kaorti
The kaorti are the oldest race that hails from the prime material. Over 90000 years ago, the kaorti wrought great works of technology and magic in the old world. Then the lifeflood struck. Unlike others from the same period, the kaorti managed to partially evade the effects of the lifeflood by fleeing into the Dark. They are the only true survivors of the lifeflood.
However, the lifeflood still had horrific effects on the kaorti people. They ceased being able to reproduce, and are now reduced to transforming existing races into more of their kind. In addition, since the kaorti stayed mostly as they were in the days of the old world, the new world is effectively toxic to them. Nowadays, the kaorti use other aberrations as agents to safeguard the ruins of their days of glory from the inhabitants of the new world.
The kaorti alone possess the knowledge of what the civilizations of the old world were, but they are not sharing that knowledge, even going as far as directing their agents to hamstring and attack those that might come close to discovering something about them.
Their ultimate goal is to restore their ability to reproduce and survive on the material plane, as well as take back their old holds. Perhaps luckily for the new world however, they have no idea how to make any of this happen.
Regions
Taog
A strip of land uniting the continents of Torin and Edrimas, Taog is notoriously hostile to travelers. It is covered with rainforest, and the temperature, with the exception of a few mountain peaks, floats around 20 to 30 celcius throughout the region. As Taog sits at the equator, there is little variance in temperature.
Taog might have thriving populations now were it not for a simple fact about the rainforest's wildlife. Most of it is not natural in the least. Taog has significant amounts of ruins, though most are deteriorated beyond recognition. They are accompanied by aberrations that have, in times past, wrecked the local ecology and substituted their own. Though most of them are mindless beasts, they are notoriously aggressive and far more dangerous than normal wildlife.
Organizations, Groups and Nations
Athesia
A kingdom in eastern Edrimas, Athesia has been plunged into disarray following the Royalty Purge four years ago. The dukes rule their duchies in practical sovereignty, since every candidate for the throne has been declared illegitimate by most of the dukes, as well as the survivors of the royal court. As no one can establish the support or power base to actually ascend, the country has no ruler.
Athesians are mostly human, though the country has a significant dwarven minority, as well as notable halfling and goblinoid minorities.
Kroth
A country in the Morn Peninsula, south of Voranth, Kroth is the recently realized vision of a Blue goblin warlord who wished better for the people of Morn. While many in Morn are still barbarians and raiders, the warlord Kroth has managed to impose order on a slice of land, though he has had to take drastic measures to do so.
Kroth knows that his nation is very useful for everyone else in the region. In trying to force civilization upon the people of Morn, he is preventing them from attacking their neighbors. Kroth has only existed 14 years as a country, but it has been expanding constantly to cover more of the Morn peninsula.
Marching Hordes
Steady civilization is rare on Edrimas. Much of the land is still bound up by small independent communities and city states. These communities don't always get along, and there are many avenues for feuds to crop up. The Marching Hordes introduce a dangerous wildcard to all of this. Not an organization in the traditional sense, the Marching Hordes are a group name for a number of traveling mercenary armies, mostly orcish. To them, war is business. They sell their services to the highest bidder, as long as they believe they have a fair chance of winning and the bidder is not in a position to screw them over after the fighting is done.
The marching hordes tend to leave temporary camps behind them as they go. Children aren't fighters, and thus they are raised in camps until the horde comes back to annex them into the main fighting force. Often, this annoys locals, and marching hordes are careful not to establish camps in places where the local authority might conceivably evict their children and their guardians.
Though different marching hordes might fight each other if hired by opposite sides, there is one thing marching hordes will not do to each other. Every marching horde leaves camps alone unless they want to be stomped over by a union of their fellow hordes. In general, marching hordes, while unruly and disorganized, fight a surprisingly clean war, tending to leave noncombatants alone. Of course, there are always bad apples.
Old World League
The Old World League is a group headed by the kaorti to protect their cultural heritage from the new world. Their membership includes many kinds of intelligent aberrations, and they make use of many less intelligent ones. The kaorti manage to recruit aberrations to their cause by leveraging their knowledge of the old world, and those aberrations without interest in their origins are generally stupid enough to be controlled through other means.
The Old World League infiltrates new world societies to hamstring any attempt to research or make use of old world ruins. They are willing to use any means necessary for this purpose. The Old World League itself is highly secret, and pretty much no-one except its members know of its existence.
Olinites
Named for the town of Olini the marching horde used as their primary base, the Olinites are the people that the term "Nimmari" is generally understood to refer to. Being the larger of the two Nimmari factions, the Olinites are much more visible to their neighbors.
However, the Olinites don't have the best of reputations. After the Nimmar war, bad times drove many halflings to piracy against the ships that moved through the island cluster towards Mitrika. The Marching Horde on the isles quickly got involved, and the sight of pirates, mostly halfling and orcish, but including other races as well, is now common on the waters around the Isles of Nimmar.
In addition to the pirates, many towns and villages charge fees from outsiders to travel through waters perceived as their territory, and the lack of a central authority among the Olinites exacerbates this problem. There is no single authority that can be appealed to help ease trade through the island cluster. All of this has caused the Olinites to be viewed as greedy at best and criminals at worst.
Temnini
Though the town of Temnin was burned down in the Nimmar War, the name remains. An insular and relatively unknown group, the Temnini live on the cold, northern islands of the Nimmar island cluster. The Temnini are a much smaller group than the Olinites, composed entirely of halflings.
While the Olinities see trade, the out of the way location and the frigid environment ensure that the Temnini see few outsiders. Most Temnini are subsistence farmers and fishers who live a quiet life, though many are still embittered by their losses of life and land in the Nimmar war. This leaves them suspicious of outsiders, especially orcs, trolls and other races that most often make up Marching Hordes.
The Temnini are not getting any larger as a faction either. Many young halflings leave the villages to seek a better living, as the Temnini communities lack wealth and the opportunities to develop skills notable in the world at large.
Voranth Provinces
An enormous nation in northwestern Edrimas, Voranth is split into 11 provinces and is ruled by a queen, though in practice the provinces retain a fair bit of independence, including separate laws, local government and advisors sent from each to the royal court in the province of Vorn. However, the queen still has a fair bit of power, even if it is only from her influence as a figurehead.
Voranth came into being when the humans of Vorn and the halflings of Gonth joined forces, and the old halfling religion of the Mother Goddess is now dominant in Voranth. After its creation, the Voranth Provinces started rapidly annexing and conquering other nearby areas and they now control most of the Great Voranth region they take their name from.
Wyrmpeaks Alliance
The Wyrmpeaks are a loose alliance of four dragon-controlled nations in Edrimas. These nations, named after their founders, are Detharixa, Khalit, Inkrimane and Thatavor. The alliance is mostly a defensive one, the founding dragons having figured that tyrannies backed by four dragons work better than tyrannies backed by one dragon. All but one of the Wyrmpeaks nations are iron-fisted tyrannies, with the dragons imposing absolute sovereignty through draconic servants.
However, the Wyrmpeaks alliance is starting to falter. The green dragon Thatavor died three years ago and his son is not very fond of the Wyrmpeaks alliance. While Thatavor is still a member of the alliance, the new ruler, Avorikat, is distancing himself from the alliance and might be plotting to destroy the other Wyrmpeaks alliance members entirely.
Timeline (The numbers indicate how many years ago the event happened. A "~" means an inexact date whereas a "-" means an exact date
90000~ Lifeflood cataclysm. The energies of The Light flood into the material plane, forever devastating what came before. Most beings on the material plane were destroyed, while others were transformed. The newly transformed creatures forgot their heritage and knew only hate towards the Light that destroyed them. A single race manages to partially evade the cataclysm by escaping into the Dark, though they find themselves unable to reproduce due to the effects of the lifeflood. This race, known as the Kaorti, resigns to waiting for races to develop into forms they can transform into their likeness. They seal their entire race in stasis. This cataclysm creates many aberrations while other creatures begin slowly developing into the modern races.
45000~ The kaorti awaken and begin testing their methods. Eventually, they manage to create kaorti.
21000~ The races have taken the forms we now recognize.
10000~ The fae descend upon the material plane in an attempt to gain slaves for their own use. Even the dragons find themselves utterly overmatched by the fae and no-one is organized enough to properly resist. The fae leave the little civilization that existed in ruins, killing entire cultures. Many people are abducted into the Light. The fae create the elves as a slave race from the various creatures they had captured. The races begin rebuilding from the ruins.
8000~ The dwarves of Thandur find ruins of the ancient Kaorti. The knowledge, magic and technology in them enable the Thandurites to impose dominion on their neighbors.
7800~ The Kaorti take note of the dwarven empire piggybacking on their achievements and decide to act. Through a long and difficult campaign, they manage to bring the empire to its knees and seal off the ruins the dwarves had discovered. As the Thandurites were never very liked by their neighbors, the weakened empire is destroyed by foreign conquerors. The Kaorti begin seeding their ruins with thralls to avoid the people of the material plane finding and using them.
1500~ The halflings first arrive on Edrimas.
1100~ The fae slavelords attempt to assault the Prime Material using their elven slaves, believing it to be as easy as last time. Instead, the since advanced prime-dwellers manage to instigate the elves into an open revolt. Most of the elves are freed and they settle in a region of the Borderword dominated by The Dark. The fae begin breeding and modifying their remaining slaves for stupidity so that they do not rise again.
800~ The halflings of Gonth and the humans of Vorn unite under one flag, creating the Voranth Provinces.
750~ A group of elves secede from the main civilization of free elves. They court the fae for power and get it, all the while believing themselves to be manipulating their former masters. The main group considers this a dangerous heresy and names the renegades the Dark Elves, or Drow.
217- Although the elves had previously opened a portal between the Dark dominated portion of the borderworld their capital resided in and the material plane, they had yet to actually create presence on the material plane. Now they do so, beginning to annex various human cultures while spreading their own.
68- A group of four powerful dragons appear, carving out their own tyrannical empires and forming a loose alliance known as the Wyrmpeaks. These dragons are known as Detharixa (Red dragon), Khalit (Black dragon), Inkrimane (Silver dragon) and Thatavor (Green dragon).
44- A Marching Horde offshoot arrives on Nimmar. However, when a group of drunken trolls rampage across one of the islands, a sentiment develops among some of the halflings that the Marching Horde should pack their stuff and scram. Not all halflings share this sentiment however.
A few months later- The trolls appear on the island they had previously rampaged on, but are instead lynched by the natives. The Marching Horde is outraged that the trolls were killed on what was supposed to be an apology visit and ransack the villages involved. The Nimmar War begins.
43- Many villages have flocked to strike back against the marching horde who are using the villages and towns dominated by their more tolerant peers as bases. Eventually, however, it becomes clear that the Nimmari halflings are no match against a Marching Horde. Before more people are killed, the halflings organize an exodus to the north. The Nimmar War ends, splitting the Nimmari into two groups, the Temnini, and the Olinites.
14- The goblin nation of Kroth is established.
4- The entire Athesian line of royalty is killed down to the last cousin, leaving the kingdom without any legitimate successors. While many have stepped forth claiming long lost ancestry to the royal line, none have been accepted by the dukes governing different duchies. It is not known why the Athesian line was slaughtered, or by whom.
3- The green dragon Thatavor dies. His son Avorikat ascends to the throne and is now struggling to improve his kingdom while distancing himself from the Wyrmpeaks.
As you can see, there are a lot of empty sections and the timeline is rather work in progress as well.
I have other material on the setting, but it's not codified enough to be typed up yet.
Edit: List of ideas I've been throwing around, as well as other random thoughts.
Three dwarven philosophies/religions, named the Aspects of Earth. Stone represents conviction, courage, community and stability. Sand represents life, death and the natural cycle. Steel represents progress and self-reliance.
Doppelgangers being opposite to the kaorti. While kaorti are the last surviving old world race, doppelgangers are the only old world race mutation that has started to belong in the new world. This leaves the race between the old and the new world. Though immensely useful to the Old World League as infiltrators, doppelgangers are also a weak link, as they are most likely to sympathize with the new world. Some doppelgangers even interbreed with new world races, creating changelings.
Disbarit. A mighty crime syndicate that is believed by some to be divinely backed. In particular, they operate safehouses all over Edrimas, which have proven to be quite impenetrable to the uninvited. (This needs work.)
Possibly making the setting E-something. However, the presence of high-level magic is necessary for the setting, even though too much of it makes the setting start to break down. For example, the elves have a permanent portal to the Borderworld.
Halfling pirates. Halflings have an entrenched naval tradition, and they work well even in unstable communities. Though they might recruit other races into their operations as well, halfling pirate ringleaders from Nimmar could conceivably stomp on intercontinental trade....
I have no idea what to do with gnomes.