Desaroque

“the higher you build the deeper you dig

the thicker the magic the thinner the margin

between material and ethereal

between heaven and hell

between Desaroque and Oblivion”

    Continent of Desaroque was once home to two warring races, the Giants, and the Nagas. However, a magical cataclysm struck their civilisations down with only a few surviving groups of giants, and the Nagas thought to be extinct. The magical cataclysm left a dangerous barren land full tears to outside the material plane called Aether Scars, from old ley lines that will leak dangerous energy to new scars on the earth.   But centuries later, these are what made the continent flourish once more as dwarves, halflings, orcs and gnomes started to appear on the land, brimming with their own affinity or repulsion towards magic. Elves and humans are immigrants, both leaving their own continent and their plane to seek refuge in a tabula rasa of a continent, and as centuries go by, they learnt to make use of what was left on the continent to establish their own culture and technology.   But there’s a caveat, as is heard from an old elven melody, written the oldest tomes of the dwarves, whispered in the ears of the oldest orc shamans. The greater the magic a civilisation has, the thinner the boundaries the material plane with the churning chaos of the outside planes, giving raise to monsters, horrors, and corrupting magic. The ruins of the giants and the nagas, the artificial demi-plane in which most fey resided and the history and existence of the dwarves and orcs are the result of them, constantly reminding the new inhabitants of Desaroque to be careful with their developments.   And yet in this turn of the century, magic flourishes, artefacts are invented, and expeditions to old ruins discover powerful sources of magic no one has imagined before. The scars are getting agitated, old ruins spawn new monsters, and magical diseases plagued villages and sometimes an entire city. The eight nations on Desaroque are competing against each other in the realms of magic and technology, seeking to control the trade of goods that technology requires for their own power gain. The eyes of the world are on Desaroque, from the old dragons to the newly reformed Empire of Agra, waiting for a cataclysm to happen or for Desaroque to destroy itself from within.      

---

GM Note: Desaroque is my first campaign setting, a high-magic setting but with low fantasy feel. It was created based on another world I created when I was 13 or so, so in a way this campaign setting was something of a childhood imagination.   I intend to create this setting full with mysteries and the supernatural, where magic is common but their workings are still unknown and strange to the common people. Legends and stories of the old are well-known but they are not always correct. Most of the time, the gist and the spirit of the legends are true, but the details rarely so.   While the supernatural exist, the mundane problems still continues. Poverty, crime, and gang wars are more common than an aberration attacking a city. Most people in the world has human motivations and just wants to make their collective life better. Everyone has an opinion on what should be done and how, though, and most people just want to make their life "better". Although "better" can mean anything, really.   All in all, it is a mix of mystery, supernatural, intrigue, with a bit of crime depending on what the characters are doing.