"Behold the mortal world of Calera, a place of blood and death, life and light, where the First War is made flesh and flood the stars with pain."

Welcome to the introduction page for The 4th Race, a setting of histories, secrets and stories, that span across seemingly countless years. The great works of long-dead creatures litter the world and twist the present with echoes of the past. Most of the articles within this guide centre around Calera, a massive world of sprawling mountains, fiery deserts, deep seas and dark forests. It is the perfect home for life in countless forms and hosts a colossal variety of animals and creatures across its many continents and world-spanning oceans.
Calera has also given rise to four, distinct intelligent races, and while they have long since passed into the distant memory of the stars themselves, having achieved spectacular wonders of technology and magic. They left behind traces of their presence, some of which still impact the world today. The most recent race to arise are humans, a broad term that masks the complexity of sub-races, ethnicities and offshoots but humans are still a young race, full of promise, ambition and a thirst for knowledge and power. A thirst that many seem them rival the works of their predecessors or fail utterly in despair and slip into the darkness of the void.

Some of the knowledge and wisdom contained within this guide is obvious and requires little explanation, but the people living in the world don't have access to this same knowledge. For them, the world is full of evil spirits, gods, demons and mystical forces they can never hope to understand. They may live and die not only in a tiny pocket of the world but believing in the very greatest of lies.
Much of the world of Calera is unknown and much larger than you might expect. Nine great continents, lie across the surface of the planet and only two and inhabited by living humans.
While there are clearly defined laws of nature, those same laws can be twisted and negated by the presence of magic. A crushing and total force that reigns over Calera like an oppressive tyrant, its whims and wishes obeyed withing question by those with the power to wield it.
Even the pages of this guide are often left vague and unclear for a reason, sometimes there is no answer, no satisfying conclusion or secret that must be kept at all costs.

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Ancient Calera, 500 MYA

The history of Calera is very long indeed, stretching across millions upon millions of years. In comparison humanity as a whole has only recently forged the path towards civilization and have had little impact on the wider world. Huge cities and empires are rare, most cultures are simple and primitive. Many of the distant areas of the world have never been reached by even the early humans and the unknown depths are still very much a mystery. Dark and ancient secrets are still waiting to be rediscovered, left behind by the previous races that disappeared millions of years ago (MYA) when the world of Calera was a very different place.
Some of the pages in this guide describe events, creatures, places or characters that took place or existed long ago and have been extinct and seemingly irrelevant for many millions of years. Although huge amounts of time have passed since, their impact upon Calera was often so profound, that echoes and relics still affect the world even now. For the humans however, any knowledge of the previous races and events that took place in the prehistory before their cultures arose is completely unknown and they view any discoveries as either magic, or the results of dark powers they cannot understand.

Magic is an unknown force to nearly all living beings upon Calera, but this wasn't always the case and some of the previous races mastered magic and discovered its fundamental rules. This gave them unrivalled power and a grasp over the natural world that was unmatched and boundless, leaving even the gods powerless. Those that claim to wield magic among humans are often frauds, charlatans or shamans and elders with no real power. They might claim to cure sickness, bring the rains or bring luck but most exploit people for their own ends. Mages, wizards, warlocks and witches are all just names with little real meaning, anyone with a real connection to magic is harnessing it in the same way as anyone else.
Humans have only recently become aware of the mysterious and desolate Otherworld, the only other plane of existence that is tied to Calera in a way that few recognise or understand. It is from this strange realm that magic itself seeps its way into Calera, bleeding through reality itself to make magic the dominant force of nature that can rival all others.

Powerful beings walk the streets, travels the roads and live among the mortal humans on Calera. They are the Gods and Ascendants of Calera, immortal and powerful, but somehow just as vulnerable to death as the mortals they rule over. All the Ascendants claim an aspect from which they draw their power but such aspects are not universally controlled by a single Acendant, instead, multiple Ascendants can claim the same aspect and fight, bicker and scheme amongst themselves in games that last centuries in order to oust and claim that aspect for themselves.

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Sockets, Ascendant of Death

Ascendants are a very real part of the world, they do not reside in other realms, but have physical forms that interact and affect the world around them. They all have widely different goals and motivations, often opposing one another in long and complex games. These games may take many centuries to play out with no clear winners or losers. Some Ascendants have no interest in the world and are rarely seen, preferring to stay out of the affairs of others but the majority play critical roles in events that unfold within the world.
As many of the cultures are still relatively primitive and early on their development they rarely make any distinctions between an Ascendants and true Gods. This can become even more confusing as many cultures and peoples believe in and worship not only very real Ascendants as Gods but make up beings entirely and worship them as well. Sometimes an Ascendant will take over the role of a god in a culture in order to amass power and influence over gullible mortals. The real differnce between an Ascendat and a God is very subtle and not clearly defined.

These are some of the best places to get started in The 4th Race!

Geography

• Aterica is the largest continuous supercontinent that lies to the north-west of Jurin, north of Sulen and west of Alor across the vast Mesarian Ocean. Most of Humanity, its cultures and peoples reside upon Atercia.

• Sulen is an island based archipelago thousands of miles to the south of Atercia. Sulen was once a solid continent but all that remains of Sulen today is a series of tiny islands, narrow, twisting channels and shallow seas.

• Jurin is a massive unexplored continent that lies south-east of Atercia, across the Mesarian Ocean. Lying along the planet's equator most of the continent is home to a sweltering rainforest of gigantic trees and titanic wildlife that dwarves the creatures found elsewhere in the world.

• Alor is one of the smaller and least-known continents on Golarion. Known locally as The Bonelands, this realm is mostly comprised of a continent spanning wasteland.

Characters

• Laeona: The Wanderer, worshipped as the Goddess of History, she has few followers among mortals and often finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Laeona is one of the major writers and contributors to the articles of this setting guide.

• Soots: Ascendant & worshipped as the Goddess of of ash and dust, she is a relatively recent addition to the House of the Forge and has few mortal followers, she is greatly interested in creating power for herself but comes across as shy and timid.

• Sockets: Ascendant & worshipped as the God of the dead almost universally by all human cultures. He is not aligned with any other houses of the gods and rules over the continent of Alor as an Ascendant King.

Locations

• Leyfen: A tiny village on the coast of eastern Aterica, Leyfen is a perfect place to begin exploring the world of Calera at a small scale.

• Contera is one of the largest cities in the world, a trading hub and melting pot for many of the different human cultures from across Atercia.

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It goes without saying that this entire setting is a work in progress. Many articles are not final, dates are ever changing and names might not stay the same! If you have any suggestions or if this gives you ideas for your own worlds I would love to hear/chat about it!

Author

My name is Caeora and I have been working on The 4th Race for nearly 15 years, some of it has even been written down! A huge amount has changed since those early days. In the beginning The 4th Race was full of elves and dwarves, dragons and goblins but since then my ideas have evolved and changed. This is very much a work in progress and only a few articles have been put on World Anvil. While progress on this setting will be slow, if you want to follow some of my other work like mapmaking & writing then follow me on twitter and check out my patreon!

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Genre

While this setting guide starts out with some ideas that may seem rooted in science fiction, the world of Calera is a fantasy setting, and currently a very low technology place. Ancient sciences and wonders lost to time, lie in hidden areas of the world. The peoples that inhabit the planet are barely making their way into the early medieval era. Most cultures are living in a technology state equal to the greeks, romans and ancient Mesopotamian civilizations.

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Natural Historae

Most of the setting is written and described by a character within the setting called Laeona. Written as part of a series of tomes and books she calls the Natural Historae. While most of the pages are from her perspective and what she has learnt, she is not omniscient and has large gaps in her knowledge or missing information that she ignores or even leaves blank on purpose.