Skandia

A world of island nations largely disconnected from each other. Built by the volcanic actions of the planet, which is primarily a water world. The rules of the world are similar to earth in the physics, but the world is ruled by the gods of Chaos, Order, Destruction and Creation, who are the original powers but largely lie dormant and not widely accepted as the true power, but only due to the ignorance to their existance. The apparent rule is of pantheons of gods and goddesses that influence the world on a daily basis. The gods take champions from the races of sentient species in order to fulfill their desires, or to wage war, or commit a cleansing.   The world is a mixture of the European "dark forest", the Mayan Empire, The Viking Empire, the Asian Empires. Races encompass the range of fantasy creatures with sapient species being varying sub species of Humans, Elves, Golems, Orcs, Faefolk, Satyr, Reptilians, Aquatic lovecraftian species, and the breadth of non intelligent species.   The magics of this world vary by the people that use them. The "magical races" Elves, fae, reptilians and deep ones have inate magic, that they are born with, and which powers increase over the years of their lives and training, their magic systems are primarily soft magic. And the other races have the ability to learn the magics of the magical races, but only through study and practice, their abilities are the result of rituals and the cost is the vitality drain and physical blood loss.