Setting Primer: The Old World

This is your one-page dossier on the Old World setting, and everything you need to know about it before starting a campaign. These are all the basic facts that every character is generally expected to know about the world before they get started.

You **will not be expected to know everything in this wiki!** This is simply a repository for the world's history and cultures for those who are curious; you are not required nor expected to read beyond this initial page. Characters may make passing references to things mentioned in details of the many pages, and any knowledge you gain from this wiki has the potential to be used practically in the campaign.

Above all else, this wiki is only to make the world feel whole, organic, and lived-in. Much like how you don't know the contents of every page on Wikipedia for our world, your characters are unlikely to be familiar with every aspect of every civilization, race, or religion. It's okay, that's a feature, not a bug.

This page is divided into three sections: an overview of the setting's mechanics, some details that are necessary to know about the world's history and civilizations, and finally an FAQ section.

## The Old World Overview

### Elevator Pitch

The Old World is alternate history meets historical fantasy. The setting is probably how a 14th-century farmer in southern Tuscany imagines the world to look like. There is a distinct difference between the mundane and supernatural, but magic and the gods have certainly played a major role in history. The day-to-day of your average person is unlikely to abound with magic, but for those that seek it out, adventure is to be had.

If you like genre labels, this is a cross between historical fantasy (King Arthur), sword and sorcery (Conan the Barbarian), and dark romance (Legends of Charlemagne).

### Tone and Characters

This is a broad category of fantasy that in and of itself does not provide direction as to what to expect. So, this is what I anticipate for this campaign:

* **Exploration**. An open world adventure in a deep setting provides many opportunities for rich encounters.
* **Political intrigue**. There are powerful people with violent ambitions that you will no doubt come across. You can handle these situations however you like, whether that is working for someone of higher status, or taking the reigns of power yourself.
* **Dungeon-delving**. The dense history of the world makes it so that there are no shortages of catacombs, dungeons, ruins, caverns, ghost towns, cursed lands, and supernatural realms to discover.
* **Mystery**. Maybe not quite as mysterious as the story of the Blades of Janeria, but plenty of mysteries to solve and learn about lurk in the setting.
* **Gritty combat**. Combat is not a good first solution to every problem. You put yourself at risk by drawing your sword. But then again, victory is just that much more glorious and your enemies that much more frail.

### Magic, What The Hell Is It?

Magic is unexplainable in this setting. There's no Weave, there's no midichlorians, there's no Light, and there's no single unifying theory. It encompasses a wide variety of cultural phenomena and can take shape in any number of ways. Magic is magical.

That isn't to say it's random or that it's unappreciable. Magic requires diligence, or it becomes dangerous. Magic can be used but never tamed, and it is thoroughly entwined with the supernatural, the divine, and the ancient. This means that using magic requires esoteric mastery of some type of mystical elements of the world, usually involving the Otherworld, stars, demons, plants, and mathematics.

In summary, if you want a good metaphysical explanation for it, you won't find it.

### The Gods Work In Mysterious Ways

There is no grand pantheon of gods to draw from. Gods are entities that are usually specific to a geographic region or culture, and act as protectorates to a community. They don't interfere directly - often, that is - but will grant blessings to their followers and reveal truths about the world to those who dedicate themselves to their gods.

Your gods exist somewhere, whether they inhabit a statue deep underground in your city's catacombs, or if they are a trickster god who appears as a white fox in the forests you spent your youth. Of course your gods exist, it's a matter of, what do you choose to worship?

Gods are worshiped as part of a religion, and religions are very often represented as a *mystery cult*. A mystery cult is a type of religious school and philosophy that usually requires one to be a member of a select group of people who worship a god, who perform rituals and are revealed truths about righteous living and the world at large, often through dreams, meditation, or mind-altering substances.

Some also choose to worship figures in history that they recognize as their ancestor, referred to as a heroic mystery. Regardless, religions provide special benefits to those who commit themselves to their reverence. Yes, in-game benefits. These include:

* Access to alchemy, aura reading, or other esoteric schools
* Resistance or immunity to certain types of magic
* Advantage on certain types of ability checks
* And much more!

We will work together to determine what benefits your character will gain from what mystery cult you belong to, as well as what the specifics of your religion is in regards to practices, worship, holy days, prayers, and taboos.

### Building a Background

It is pretty easy to roll a character out of the *Player's Handbook*, but I would like to take the extra time to work together and create a foundation for your character. To do this, we need to look at the main elements of putting together an original background:

* Decide what occupation or origin story befits your character, like if you are a volunteer guard for your town, or if you live off the land as a trapper and fur trader.
* Roll or choose from the tables under Backgrounds to put details into your character's life up until this point.
* Decide what two skills and two proficiencies would be appropriate for a character of your background.
	+ Remember, literacy in your spoken languages counts as one proficiency!
* Workshop a Feature for your background and discuss it with the DM. The Feature should have some roleplay value but not provide direct mechanical benefits.
	+ The general rule is that if an ability affects the outcome of a dice roll at all, or incurs a dice roll, it isn't a Feature.
* Finally, create a list of two Personality Traits, a Bond, an Ideal, and a Flaw based on how you think your character would behave given their circumstances. Consider how they might interact with the world based on their personal history.
	+ A good starting point for this is to give a character two conflicting traits (being naive in some cases and being cynical in others), and decide what kind of character would behave in such a way.
	+ Characters, before everything else, should be compelling. Beyond being relatable and easy to understand, they should have clear motivations, understand the means to achieve their goals, and have strengths and weaknesses. Ask your DM for Johnson's Character Page if you want to do more to create a dynamic, interesting personality.

## A Newcomer's Guide to the Old World

### What Is The Old World?

The Old World is a self-contained collection of islands, focused in the continents of Neuphany and Tyrrhos, which has history spanning back thousands of years. It is centered in a basin referred to as the Tomyrian Sea, in which it is in its north; it also borders a massive body of water known as the Shallow Sea on its east coast, and an unfathomable ocean called the Astoric Ocean just to the north.

The world is best explained by its provinces. Each province is diverse and nothing is so exact that it can be explained in one or two words, but for the most part, the following descriptions apply.

* Arborea is a heavily forested lowland inhabited by humans, and the birthplace of multiple empires. Its fertile soil means that it has historically been a bread-basket for the Old World.
* Arcadia is sometimes called the Forsaken Province, and for good reason. It is a dry steppe region that was once the kingdom of giants, that now lies in ruin, abandoned and mostly forgotten.
* Cascadia's highlands known for being the home of tieflings and later orcs. Its canyons are cut by wide rivers and waterfalls that would make this land uninhabitable, if not for innovation by those with no other choice.
* Gantelusia marks the western alpine coast and its rocky plateaus are impassible. For the most part, "The Gauntlet" is a depopulated region. It has a single city, Ketere, which has only ever been conquered once.
* Crotalusia encompasses the opposite side of Gantelusia's mountains, a series of descending plateaus inhabited by barbarians and bandit hideouts. Its most notable inhabitants are the reptilian Nodians.
* Laconia, composed of mostly deserts and rocky canyons, is amalgamate between the lands of men and the lands of elves. It is also a place believed to be the homeland of dragons.
* Bastria is a grand river valley which has provided the foundation for many great empires and rulers. It has been mainly grouped with Laconia, much to the discontent of its human inhabitants.
* Cisteria is the expansive land of the elves, once great forests that have seemingly blown away into the coastal winds and become golden plains. Its distinct culture makes this land a strange foreign place on the continent of Neuphany.
* Medea, or Tyrrhos, is the "Mountain of the Sea" south of Cascadia, ruled by both man and orc over countless centuries. Its dynamic environment oscillates between swampland and desert.

Though many civilizations exist outside of the Old World, and are by no means impossible to contact, most people in the Old World keep to themselves and don't fuss about the New World and beyond.

### Where Is The Campaign Set?

This campaign will begin in the marches of Arcadia and Cascadia. There are a few historic cities that have become depopulated in the past century, at risk of becoming ghost towns. Most people who live in these settlements get by trading with mobilized armies or plundering the ruins of Arcadia. Neither of these ventures are particularly lucrative, meaning that cities in the thousands today only have a few hundred at most.

The world uses the Mycenian Calendar, which is pretty close to our own.

### Current Events

#### Background

Less than forty years ago, Phillip III, the Ruby Prince of Kasmir and heir to the Crown of Darcedon, defeated the House of Merovia's army decisively and took over a majority of the continent. The battle was among the largest in recorded history, being followed previously by a century of war waged by the Ruby Prince's father, the Dragon Prince, where much of Neuphany was been depopulated.

The government of the subjugated people was put under control of a new Exarch of an alliance known as Duessel, and its rights over Arborea, Cascadia, and Arcadia were placed in the hands of a Darcedonian puppet.

In addition, a long standing organization to promote order and hold peace talks was embarassed and proven ineffective in a relatively minor conflict; shortly thereafter, its most powerful leader and organizer, a wizened man who had lived for almost a thousand years, was killed in his own palace. This has led to its use as a world congressional being abandoned, and apparently, any options of resolving this issue diplomatically have been dropped.

### Current scenario

About five years ago, the Ruby Prince's son Roland III was challenged by the new Exarch, Roland III, dutifully outraged, attempted to muster troops from other ends of his empire before disappearing mysteriously while inside a city under his control. His son, Phillip IV, declared a short-lived war that came to an inconclusive end after the Exarch and his allies achieved an unsteady peace treaty: Duessel was in no place to enter another war, being heavily depopulated and struggling to centralize its government; and the House of Darcedon was facing difficulties of its own economically and in terms of loyalties.

Recent developments include an organized mercenary
army known as the Ten Thousand have arrived on Arborea's southern border
 of Arcadia. The army, besieging the city of Arelon,
 was claimed by the Arcadian duke, with the intent to make claim to the
title of Exarch. The Merovian Exarch ordered the army to be moved from
Arelon by one week's time or Arcadia would be crushed by the Merovian
army. It has since been one month, and where this leaves the world is
unclear.