The World

World.

The world is unique

Imagine a big butterfly. The center where the butterfly’s body is, is a HUGE mountain range, like the Himalayan mountains. Incredibly rough terrain and largely impassible. With those mountains exist many dwarven clans and is the dwarves racial homeland.

To the southwest, the mountains give way to the oldest forests in the known world and the racial homeland of the elves. While the oldest enclaves of elves tend to be isolationist, elven kind as a whole has adopted more progressive attitudes in a conscious attempt to adopt some human ways to compete against the shorter lived more populace race. Consequently, elves can be just as diverse in appearance, temperament, and philosophy as humanity.

In the far northwest is the Shandalarian Federation, the land turns very dry and deserts or desert like environments reign supreme. In those environs, certain types of humans have endured. First wild nomadic bands of barbarians have found ways to survive the heat and shortage of water through physical efficiency, intellect, secret knowledge passed down through the ages, and shamanic guidance. More populace, are the great cities, massive human centres located around large reliable sources of water, these societies are complex webs of organized criminal activities who rule by an informal council of the most powerful criminal families or gangs. They keep the bare necessities of social function going through fiat and brute force. Each city is a beast in its own, and while some loose affiliations exist between families or gangs between cities, but the cities themselves largely act as independent states.

The south east part of the known world is a vast human kingdom that is feudal in political (The Kingdom of Anaria), with a highly developed by dispersed political aristocracy. Likewise to the political aristocracy, there is a similar system for the magical orders both aristocratic which serves the mundane  lords of the realm, while having its own seperate formal ruling structure over magic, registration for varying levels of magical license, and informal awareness of but not officially recognised wilder mages.  The size of this kingdom is roughly that of the United States/Australia.

The northeast of the known world is populated by wild barbarism tribes, human/elven combined society (The Fe'ryr Penninsula, pronounced FAY-rear), while a loose federation of cities exist, each city or region decides for itself how it wishes to govern itself. Known as one of the more magically developed regions and societies in the world, fame and rumours exist some accurate, some not, and some hidden fears never dreamt of.

Pirates and trade ships dominate the coastlands, all vying for their fortunes and adventure. Some regions more prone to one or the other, but the sea is never safe. Of particular infamy are the central seas reaching from the center north down deep into the central mountains.

Gnomes are creatures of particular note, wickedly smart, but socially disliked to outright hated, after a gnomish experiment had split the world nearly in half maybe 3-4 thousand years ago. Time as salved some of the wounds and gnomes have been resurfacing on the mainland for the last few hundred years. Otherwise they presumably live on a large island on the far south east, places there after the Great Cracking.

Technologically, the world enjoys varying levels of 15-16th century technologies. Sometimes more or less developed depending on local conditions. Magically, the world is rich in magic, many sources of magical power both innate and learned, each society has developed independent measures to mitigate, develop, control, manage, etc magical talents, abilities, and the like within their societies. Some are regressive, some are extraordinarily well developed.