Tales from the Forgotten Realms

Welcome

To the world of Faerûn, a place of great heroes and stark evil, encompassing lands of magic, mystery, and high peril. Bold knights dare the crypts of dead monarchs, seeking glory and treasure. Insolent rogues prowl the dank alleyways of ancient cities, plotting their next exploit. Devout clerics wield mace and spell, questing against the terrifying powers that threaten the land. Cunning wizards plunder the ruins of fallen empires, delving fearlessly into secrets too dark for the light of day. Dragons, giants, black-hearted villains, demons, savage hordes, and unimaginable abominations lurk in horrible dungeons, endless caverns, ruined cities, and the vast wild places of the world, thirsting for the blood of heroes.
This is the land of Faerûn, a continent of heart-stopping beauty and ages-old evil. It is your land to shape, to guide, to defend, to conquer, or to rule. It is a land trod by noble heroes and unredeemable villains, a great and terrible company to which you and your fellows now belong.

Welcome to the FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign setting.

The Land of Faerûn

From the bitter, windswept steppes of the Endless Waste to the storm-lashed cliffs of the Sword Coast stretches a wide, wild land of shining kingdoms and primal wilderness, Faerûn is only one continent of the world known as Toril. Other lands lie in distant corners of the world, but Faerûn is the center of it all, the crossroads and crux upon which all else turns. Dozens of nations, hundreds of city states, and countless tribes, villages, and settlements dot its expanse. The continent of Faerûn measures more than thirty-five hundred miles from east to west and twenty-five hundred from north to south. It includes sun-blasted deserts, vast forest deeps, forbidding mountains, and gleaming inland seas. Across this vast expanse travel minstrels and peddlers, caravan merchants and guards, soldiers, sailors, and steel-hearted adventurers carrying tales of strange, glorious, faraway places. Good maps and clear trails can take even an inexperienced youth with dreams of glory far across Faerûn.

Thousands of restless young would-be heroes from backcountry farmsteads and sleepy villages arrive in Waterdeep and the other great cities every year in search of wealth and renown. Known roads may be well traveled, but they are not necessarily safe. Fell magic, deadly monsters, and cruel local rulers are all perils that you face when you fare abroad in Faerûn. Away from the main roads and the great cities, the countryside is far wilder than the city folk remember. Even farms and freeholds within a day's walk of Waterdeep itself may fall prey to monsters, and no place in Faerûn is safe from the sudden wrath of a dragon.