World Intro
Geography and History Overview
The continent of Yeros occupies a not insignificant chunk of the mid latitudes of the northern hemisphere, divided from the continent of Astritanos to the east by the great Astrividos mountain range and the continent of Arkal to the south by the waters of the Inner sea. Very roughly the continent is about 3500km wide from west to east and 1500km long from north to south. Climates vary from frigid tundra and boreal forest in the north, through more temperate forested climes to chaparral climates along the southern coast. Most of the east of the continent is dominated by a large stretch of temperate grasslands known as the green plains, whereas most of the rest is dominated by rolling hills, river valleys and broadleaf forests, intersected by a series of distinct mountain ranges. The continent has known habitation from sentient races (a mix of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins, Halflings, Gnomes and Saviri) for probably over 100,000 years though only developed its first settled agrarian cultures about 6000 years ago, introduced to the south-eastern corner of the continent by the early High Elf Civilization of nearby Yudon, along with various facets of culture and religion. It was humanity who first started to build the first large cities and the first small settled societies in the Ander and Kaldar regions, which very slowly began to percolate out across the rest of the continent over the coming centuries. Many of the city states of Ander were eventually unified under the first human empire on the continent, only to be relatively quickly destroyed by the newly resurgent orcish empire which in the coming years spread to encompass most of the continent. The orcish dominion however was not long lived and a mixture of infighting, plague and inability to embrace settled agrarian cultures saw most of the great orcish domains subverted by other races (primarily humanity) and thus allowed the first larger human cities and their companion cultures to be founded in regions far removed from the south east of the continent over the next two thousand years or so. The relative diaspora of the various races across the continent saw a great variety of different small regional states arise during the following years, with great leaps in technology, magic, culture and politics being first pioneered during this time with several large regional powers briefly rising to prominence. It was also during this period that humanity secured its position as by far the most dominant of the sentient races on the continent by virtue of their adaptability, combat prowess and relatively fast rate of reproduction. In time this eventually led to humanity having near total control over all the non-mountainous or heavily forested regions of the continent, though were still mostly content to have other racial minorities living amongst them (particularly High Elves). Out of this time of rapidly developing new human nations arose one who would eventually over the next thousand years come to dominate almost all of the continent, either directly or via proxy. This was known as the Yerid Empire, originally hailing from the city of Yer at the approximate heart of the continent and coming eventually to give their name to the entire continent (Yeros). It was the Yerids who ended up bringing the concept of developed ‘civilization’ to the furthest reaches of the continent who had thus far resisted its influence. Their culture and practices were effectively incorporated into the local cultures of the many areas they controlled, with the Yerid language and religion becoming the standard throughout the continent and still largely persisting in one form or another in most regions to this day. Though the Empire was mighty, it did eventually fall prey to numerous threats both internal and external. Though the Empire never truly ‘fell’ most of its outlying territories were subsequently abandoned as their cultural and military influence waned. What was left of the Empire fortified itself around its original heartland and over the following millennium slowly started to stagnate. The formerly Yerid controlled outlying provinces were largely left to fend for themselves with local rulers and migratory invaders fighting innumerable petty conflicts to secure local power, eventually leading to the formation of the forerunners of most modern nations. The cultures of these newly formed nations often ended up featuring a mixture of old yerid culture combined with local cultural influences and/or influences of outside peoples who had subsequently migrated and settled in these lands. Most influential however was the socio-political practice of ‘feudalism’ which eventually came to dominate most of the continent due to the now decentralized nature of power in the absence of the large central authority of the Empire. Military struggles would now on be based around the defence and capture of innumerable regional fortresses or ‘castles’ with a small professional military elite of (predominantly mounted) ‘knights’ commanding larger forces of quickly raised and trained peasant militias. Powerful families of military rulers came to eventually hold sway over large swathes of land and large populations of common folk, arranged in a hierarchy of military power and oaths of fealty. With the final collapse of what was left of the old Yerid Empire (and its subsequent reformation into the New Kingdom of Yer) at the hands of an ancient dragon, almost the entire continent is now dominated by powerful feudal kingdoms who have emerged the pre-eminent powers in their particular corner of the continent, most of whom share some measure of common culture and religion left over from the old Empire. Gods, Religion and Magic
It is almost completely accepted throughout all the peoples of the world that there exist ten primary deities (four of these are often unified into one), each of whom preside over each one of the elemental planes, these being: Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Light, Dark, Order, Chaos, Life and Death. These deities however are known to be largely ephemeral consciousness’s who almost never interact with mortals on an individual basis, as whatever passes for their immaterial ‘mind’ is so far removed from the perspective of common mortals. There do however also exists a great many more geographically tied more minor gods who may be interacted with more directly (though only slightly) via the intermediary of a relevant oracle. These more minor gods however are still always tied to one of the elemental planes and thus one of the main ten ‘supreme’ deities. All religious differences and conflicts thus arise from which of these two ‘levels’ of deities should be given precedence of worship and in what way they should be best worshiped. Magic is tied just as intrinsically to these elemental planes as any religious worship (drawing on and combining their energies to create spells) and as such there is no significant distinction between religion and magic. Indeed the only main difference between a ‘priest’ of a given plane/god and a ‘mage’ of the same plane is that one devotes the bulk of their efforts toward worship and the other toward practice. It is due to the powers derived from the elemental planes and the gods which inhabit them being freely demonstrable and extant in the world that there is almost no disagreement as to what the main ‘focus’ of all faith in the world should be, no matter the culture. Magic itself is therefore seen as a holy and a manifestation of the divine and any would-be mage practicing magic without suitable deference to the gods is almost begging for divine retribution. While there exist a relatively small selection of creatures which can utilize certain forms of simple magic innately, amongst all intelligent races magic is primarily a ‘learned’ skill. The utilization of magic by intelligent races can be likened to learning how to play an instrument; almost everybody has the capacity to do so but only a few are born with innate talent, with some races tending to produce a higher or lower proportion of individuals with an innate magical talent. However like learning an instrument (or in the case of learning more than a single spell, learning a selection of instruments), true mastery over magic will usually take many years of dedicated practice and study. This, combined with most magic spells being quite limited in their power/scope and the inherent dangers of magical misuse to the user combine to make dedicated magic practitioners a relative rarity amongst the overall population, though the usage of very simple cantrips to aid in more common trades is a good deal more common. Spells with the power to alter anything on a more than a very localized level are purely the domain of the gods and such world altering magic are only discussed in the realm of myths. The Three Aspects of Being
All sentient mortal races contain three distinct ‘aspects’ within themselves which are largely responsible for all the observed differences between different races. All sentient races possess differing levels of each aspect compared to each other. Non sentient creatures will never possess the Light/Dark aspect but can have Physical and/or Life Energy aspects far higher or lower than is possible for a sentient/semi sentient humanoid. The Physical aspect defines how physically tough and adaptable a race is. Note as the brain (and therefore the mind) is part of the physical body, mental acuity is also tangentially included in this. All races that are deemed fully ‘sentient’ however will share nearly identical capacities for abstract thought and problem solving. The Life Energy aspect defines how much life energy (in comparison to other sentient races) individuals of a given race can store within their body and how quickly they can recover lost energy from the surrounding environment. As internal life energy is used as ‘fuel’ to draw planar energies into the physical world, this broadly correlates to how easily a specific race can comprehend and utilize magical techniques. An individual’s store of internal life energy is commonly referred to as their ‘soul’. The Light/Dark aspect defines how strongly the effects of these two aspects (‘good’ and ‘evil’ respectively) innately influence the actions of a specific race. All sentient races will have equal ratios of light to dark within themselves and as such no race is inherently ‘good’ or ‘evil’ and will instead contain equal capacities to perform both types of action. Eg a race which can perform very ‘good’ actions can also perform very ‘evil’ actions. Races with a less potent light/dark aspect therefore will tend toward more ‘neutral’ forms of behaviour. Author’s Comment
This setting is designed to be a relatively standard western (Europe inspired) fantasy world, suitable for usage in games such as D&D. I have however strived to try and make the concepts of multiple sentient races as well as magic and fantastical creatures/items be as well integrated into the setting as possible. While the overall setting is most definitely high fantasy, magic itself is tends to be rarer/more difficult to learn and less powerful than in most standard high fantasy settings, though certainly commonplace enough that the existence of magic is never questioned by the average person. ‘Gods’ too certainly do exist but very rarely get involved directly in mortal affairs, with the direct influence of ‘prayer’ and ‘faith’ being only vaguely comprehended. As a result the overall ‘feel’ of the world would be much ‘closer’ to a historical late medieval setting (though with significant fantasy influences) than a setting built from the ground up to be as fantastical as possible. The overall history of the setting also therefore tends to very roughly follow real world European history in the broadest strokes. Many of the current or previous societies/nations of the setting might therefore quite closely resemble a real world equivalent, though with significant changes due to the presence of magic and other fantasy factors. The ‘morality’ of various individuals and groups in the setting is designed to be kept almost as ‘grey’ as events in real life. Though the overall concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ from a metaphysical standpoint do exist (due to all sentient races having some degree of a dichotomy between light and dark in their souls, with this being the most extreme in humans) its overall influence on the setting from a historical/magical point of view is fairly limited. The concepts of inherently ‘good’ or ‘evil’ creatures/races is entirely absent. Those who possess the greatest capacity for ‘good’ also have the greatest capacity for ‘evil’.
The continent of Yeros occupies a not insignificant chunk of the mid latitudes of the northern hemisphere, divided from the continent of Astritanos to the east by the great Astrividos mountain range and the continent of Arkal to the south by the waters of the Inner sea. Very roughly the continent is about 3500km wide from west to east and 1500km long from north to south. Climates vary from frigid tundra and boreal forest in the north, through more temperate forested climes to chaparral climates along the southern coast. Most of the east of the continent is dominated by a large stretch of temperate grasslands known as the green plains, whereas most of the rest is dominated by rolling hills, river valleys and broadleaf forests, intersected by a series of distinct mountain ranges. The continent has known habitation from sentient races (a mix of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins, Halflings, Gnomes and Saviri) for probably over 100,000 years though only developed its first settled agrarian cultures about 6000 years ago, introduced to the south-eastern corner of the continent by the early High Elf Civilization of nearby Yudon, along with various facets of culture and religion. It was humanity who first started to build the first large cities and the first small settled societies in the Ander and Kaldar regions, which very slowly began to percolate out across the rest of the continent over the coming centuries. Many of the city states of Ander were eventually unified under the first human empire on the continent, only to be relatively quickly destroyed by the newly resurgent orcish empire which in the coming years spread to encompass most of the continent. The orcish dominion however was not long lived and a mixture of infighting, plague and inability to embrace settled agrarian cultures saw most of the great orcish domains subverted by other races (primarily humanity) and thus allowed the first larger human cities and their companion cultures to be founded in regions far removed from the south east of the continent over the next two thousand years or so. The relative diaspora of the various races across the continent saw a great variety of different small regional states arise during the following years, with great leaps in technology, magic, culture and politics being first pioneered during this time with several large regional powers briefly rising to prominence. It was also during this period that humanity secured its position as by far the most dominant of the sentient races on the continent by virtue of their adaptability, combat prowess and relatively fast rate of reproduction. In time this eventually led to humanity having near total control over all the non-mountainous or heavily forested regions of the continent, though were still mostly content to have other racial minorities living amongst them (particularly High Elves). Out of this time of rapidly developing new human nations arose one who would eventually over the next thousand years come to dominate almost all of the continent, either directly or via proxy. This was known as the Yerid Empire, originally hailing from the city of Yer at the approximate heart of the continent and coming eventually to give their name to the entire continent (Yeros). It was the Yerids who ended up bringing the concept of developed ‘civilization’ to the furthest reaches of the continent who had thus far resisted its influence. Their culture and practices were effectively incorporated into the local cultures of the many areas they controlled, with the Yerid language and religion becoming the standard throughout the continent and still largely persisting in one form or another in most regions to this day. Though the Empire was mighty, it did eventually fall prey to numerous threats both internal and external. Though the Empire never truly ‘fell’ most of its outlying territories were subsequently abandoned as their cultural and military influence waned. What was left of the Empire fortified itself around its original heartland and over the following millennium slowly started to stagnate. The formerly Yerid controlled outlying provinces were largely left to fend for themselves with local rulers and migratory invaders fighting innumerable petty conflicts to secure local power, eventually leading to the formation of the forerunners of most modern nations. The cultures of these newly formed nations often ended up featuring a mixture of old yerid culture combined with local cultural influences and/or influences of outside peoples who had subsequently migrated and settled in these lands. Most influential however was the socio-political practice of ‘feudalism’ which eventually came to dominate most of the continent due to the now decentralized nature of power in the absence of the large central authority of the Empire. Military struggles would now on be based around the defence and capture of innumerable regional fortresses or ‘castles’ with a small professional military elite of (predominantly mounted) ‘knights’ commanding larger forces of quickly raised and trained peasant militias. Powerful families of military rulers came to eventually hold sway over large swathes of land and large populations of common folk, arranged in a hierarchy of military power and oaths of fealty. With the final collapse of what was left of the old Yerid Empire (and its subsequent reformation into the New Kingdom of Yer) at the hands of an ancient dragon, almost the entire continent is now dominated by powerful feudal kingdoms who have emerged the pre-eminent powers in their particular corner of the continent, most of whom share some measure of common culture and religion left over from the old Empire. Gods, Religion and Magic
It is almost completely accepted throughout all the peoples of the world that there exist ten primary deities (four of these are often unified into one), each of whom preside over each one of the elemental planes, these being: Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Light, Dark, Order, Chaos, Life and Death. These deities however are known to be largely ephemeral consciousness’s who almost never interact with mortals on an individual basis, as whatever passes for their immaterial ‘mind’ is so far removed from the perspective of common mortals. There do however also exists a great many more geographically tied more minor gods who may be interacted with more directly (though only slightly) via the intermediary of a relevant oracle. These more minor gods however are still always tied to one of the elemental planes and thus one of the main ten ‘supreme’ deities. All religious differences and conflicts thus arise from which of these two ‘levels’ of deities should be given precedence of worship and in what way they should be best worshiped. Magic is tied just as intrinsically to these elemental planes as any religious worship (drawing on and combining their energies to create spells) and as such there is no significant distinction between religion and magic. Indeed the only main difference between a ‘priest’ of a given plane/god and a ‘mage’ of the same plane is that one devotes the bulk of their efforts toward worship and the other toward practice. It is due to the powers derived from the elemental planes and the gods which inhabit them being freely demonstrable and extant in the world that there is almost no disagreement as to what the main ‘focus’ of all faith in the world should be, no matter the culture. Magic itself is therefore seen as a holy and a manifestation of the divine and any would-be mage practicing magic without suitable deference to the gods is almost begging for divine retribution. While there exist a relatively small selection of creatures which can utilize certain forms of simple magic innately, amongst all intelligent races magic is primarily a ‘learned’ skill. The utilization of magic by intelligent races can be likened to learning how to play an instrument; almost everybody has the capacity to do so but only a few are born with innate talent, with some races tending to produce a higher or lower proportion of individuals with an innate magical talent. However like learning an instrument (or in the case of learning more than a single spell, learning a selection of instruments), true mastery over magic will usually take many years of dedicated practice and study. This, combined with most magic spells being quite limited in their power/scope and the inherent dangers of magical misuse to the user combine to make dedicated magic practitioners a relative rarity amongst the overall population, though the usage of very simple cantrips to aid in more common trades is a good deal more common. Spells with the power to alter anything on a more than a very localized level are purely the domain of the gods and such world altering magic are only discussed in the realm of myths. The Three Aspects of Being
All sentient mortal races contain three distinct ‘aspects’ within themselves which are largely responsible for all the observed differences between different races. All sentient races possess differing levels of each aspect compared to each other. Non sentient creatures will never possess the Light/Dark aspect but can have Physical and/or Life Energy aspects far higher or lower than is possible for a sentient/semi sentient humanoid. The Physical aspect defines how physically tough and adaptable a race is. Note as the brain (and therefore the mind) is part of the physical body, mental acuity is also tangentially included in this. All races that are deemed fully ‘sentient’ however will share nearly identical capacities for abstract thought and problem solving. The Life Energy aspect defines how much life energy (in comparison to other sentient races) individuals of a given race can store within their body and how quickly they can recover lost energy from the surrounding environment. As internal life energy is used as ‘fuel’ to draw planar energies into the physical world, this broadly correlates to how easily a specific race can comprehend and utilize magical techniques. An individual’s store of internal life energy is commonly referred to as their ‘soul’. The Light/Dark aspect defines how strongly the effects of these two aspects (‘good’ and ‘evil’ respectively) innately influence the actions of a specific race. All sentient races will have equal ratios of light to dark within themselves and as such no race is inherently ‘good’ or ‘evil’ and will instead contain equal capacities to perform both types of action. Eg a race which can perform very ‘good’ actions can also perform very ‘evil’ actions. Races with a less potent light/dark aspect therefore will tend toward more ‘neutral’ forms of behaviour. Author’s Comment
This setting is designed to be a relatively standard western (Europe inspired) fantasy world, suitable for usage in games such as D&D. I have however strived to try and make the concepts of multiple sentient races as well as magic and fantastical creatures/items be as well integrated into the setting as possible. While the overall setting is most definitely high fantasy, magic itself is tends to be rarer/more difficult to learn and less powerful than in most standard high fantasy settings, though certainly commonplace enough that the existence of magic is never questioned by the average person. ‘Gods’ too certainly do exist but very rarely get involved directly in mortal affairs, with the direct influence of ‘prayer’ and ‘faith’ being only vaguely comprehended. As a result the overall ‘feel’ of the world would be much ‘closer’ to a historical late medieval setting (though with significant fantasy influences) than a setting built from the ground up to be as fantastical as possible. The overall history of the setting also therefore tends to very roughly follow real world European history in the broadest strokes. Many of the current or previous societies/nations of the setting might therefore quite closely resemble a real world equivalent, though with significant changes due to the presence of magic and other fantasy factors. The ‘morality’ of various individuals and groups in the setting is designed to be kept almost as ‘grey’ as events in real life. Though the overall concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ from a metaphysical standpoint do exist (due to all sentient races having some degree of a dichotomy between light and dark in their souls, with this being the most extreme in humans) its overall influence on the setting from a historical/magical point of view is fairly limited. The concepts of inherently ‘good’ or ‘evil’ creatures/races is entirely absent. Those who possess the greatest capacity for ‘good’ also have the greatest capacity for ‘evil’.
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