Pynthia

There is a land so torn and ravaged by war that the bones of the fallen have been accepted back into the soil, making a fertile valley in the midst of a blackened wasteland. This is Pynthia.   There are no gods, or if there are they have hidden themselves away, frightened of their own creations. A dozen races, splintered into kingdoms, factions, and orders, tear at each other, each able to wear down their enemy but never to deliver the final, killing blow.   Istrius, an ancient empire that now finds itself bloated, over-extended, and fragile, is crumbling under the pressures of a medieval world. To its east lies the slumbering empire of Vallonia, a vast and fertile land that was once a bastion of science and the arts, but is now stagnant and backward, its petty nobles ruthlessly exploiting their ignorant serfs and hoarding coin for themselves. To the north is the island kingdom of Azurah, a trading center positioned at the crossroads between two continents. But beneath the ridiculously-rich upper classes lie droves of illiterate wretches, lying amongst their own filth in the squalid streets of the island-city.   And around these nations lie dozens more petty kingdoms, each just as bad as the last. But in the very heart of Pynthia, there are no governments. The wasteland that is the interior of the continent is not inhabited by civilized peoples, but by savages, barbarians, and the creatures of nightmares. Orc war parties, bands of ogres and giants, and other foul beasts ravage the fringes of civilization.   And deep, deep, in the very heart of the wasteland, rises an old marble citadel, once the glorious capital of a mighty and ancient civilization, now a ruin of crumbling towers and caved-in halls. Inside the wreckage of this castle, shrouded in the darkness of the mountains, lies the root of all evil in Pynthia: The Lich.   That twisted, demonic being, once a pious servant of the old gods, has been twisted and corrupted by evil, having given up his very essence in exchange for immortality. Within those cracked halls he waits, brooding, biding his time, raising an army of increasingly terrifying and foul creatures, so that he can terrorize Pynthia for the final time.