Kautuul

The world of Kau'tuul is a strange and magnificent place, wherein the multifarious energy beings known as "Gods" preside over the affairs of mortal man, and the land itself is much pockmarked by the effects of magic and the ancient civilizations of the dawn age.   But that time is come and gone, and now the world resides in the long lull of the age of Tythamor, the Twelfth Age, and the affairs of men are a small thing, petty conflicts between small, petty realms. Life exists in the way it always has, with little change or progress. It is a time of relative peace, and an age for exploration, when the sons of man and elf venture to stranger, more magnificent lands than their own, ruled by strange gods and governed by strange laws.   In this time the sons of man and elf have ventured to the east and come across the many lands of Theranthesse that the elves fled to after the violence overtook their empires of old. The sons of man and elf had journeyed also in silver ships to accursed Sundar, land of the elephant and the bronze mask and the purple sun, and beheld its wonders in its jungles and plains and caverns. They have colonized Scaril to the south and east, and delighted in its desert rocks and strange flowers.   And now the sons of man and elf are called to strange new wonders, chronicled within these tomes. We together will explore the world of Kau'tuul as I have seen it through my Draun's eye, and through my words I will hope to take you through capering meadow streams and massive rushing rivers, past their deltas to dance along the sunlit waters and find the deserts beyond the sea, the horns blowing from the forts in their high mountain passes, their secret god-gardens. I will show you primordial forests and vast windswept plains, lands filled with rune-carved seeing stones and strange elfin folk, the raft-cities of the east and the goblin slaveries and the tribes of the Panthaloen savannahs. All this I will show you, and more, forever your humble guide, Lumidian.