The Continent

About four hundred years ago, the entirety of the Continent north of the Pineswood and east of the mountain range called the Triangles got lost. Travelers headed in those directions found themselves turned around and disorientated, stumbling back in the direction from whence they came. Whether by foot, horse, carriage, or ship, one day everyone seemed to forget how to get to the rest of the Continent. If the Continent is shaped like a roughly squared circle (and it is), and you were to divide that Continent into four roughly equal quarters each corresponding to the directions ‘northwest,’ ‘northeast,’ ‘southwest,’ and ‘southeast,’ it seemed like one fine day everyone in the southwest corner (now referred to colloquially as 'the Stillhere') suddenly couldn’t remember where they left the other three. This frustrating cataclysm has been referred to ever since as The Misplacing.   A number of changes have taken place in the Stillhere. These rich lands depended on exploiting and exporting their resources – especially lumber, wheat, stone, and precious metals, for great forests, plains, quarries, and mountains are located here alongside a diverse people willing to exploit them. But with nowhere to send the wheat, harvests were left to rot. With so few left to buy the stone, the mines were slowly abandoned. And, perhaps most frustratingly, the great pine forest surrounding the Town of Pines became an impenetrable maze no longer possible to log, existing as it does at the very limit of what can still be found.   The years following the Misplacement were nasty, brutish, and long, as this society anchored by its resource exploitation suddenly found itself without any buyers. Subsistence living in a finite space took its toll and paranoid city-states warred for one hundred years, took a short break to catch up on their correspondence, and then warred for one hundred more.   About 200 AM (After Misplacing), a guild of inn keepers, cooks, and middle managers met at a hotel in the city of Southport and declared the wars Very Expensive. With the help of a group of devoutly religious knights, the newly formed Hospitality Guild put an end to the fighting by putting in place a massive network of restaurants, hotels, banks, and taverns that would provide the population with a place to earn and spend gold and so restore stability to the land. Its first leader was the half-orc Hardigar Rardigar, General Manager.   In 400 AM, the Hospitality Guild remains the supreme binding agent of the land. No progress has been made in determining what caused the Misplacing, although some still insist on exploring the borders. A delicate dance of scarcity and abundance keeps the standard of life more or less stable (although certainly not equitable) and the resource rich lands around Southport have so far been able to absorb a slowly growing population.   Recently, reports have surfaced of anomalous magical activity centered around pre-Misplacing sites of arcane or religious significance. Well-known figures, like the Unholy Reading Room's enterprising Shrimpf Book and the wealthy Rardigar heir Romo, have begun recruiting adventurers and travelers to investigate these occurrences, expand their knowledge and influence, and shape the story of what comes next for the Stillhere and, indeed, for the Continent.