Player World Info

There aren’t many ways in which the Courts’ cosmology matches that of the usual D&D setting. As far as I’m concerned, there’s really just the one universe - no multiversal metalayered planar landscape exists in this setting. If you summon a fey crocodile, it comes from the nature of the world itself, rather than from, say, “the Feywild” or wherever fancy-pants sparkle crocodiles live. That’s not to say that there aren’t cosmologically significant locations in the world, but that if you know the right route, you could theoretically walk yourself into Heaven or blunder into Hell, if you had the right vehicle to do so.

The World We Know

Let’s talk about the Prime Material, shall we? In most ways, this place is just like it is in any other setting. Up is up, down is down, rain is wet and fire is hot. All the usual rules apply to the “world” of the Courts. Weather, land masses, etc. all function, from a human perspective, the way we expect them to. They’re just there, doing their thing, the laws of physics. The world itself is a globe, like ours, and if you sail west of the Court of Cups’ most western island, you’ll find yourself at the eastern territories of the Court of Coins. In the south, the deserst and mighty cities of the Court of Wands and in the north, the great mountains and jungles of the Court of Swords. There are places, in the world, that are older or newer - in the sense of having been discovered or rediscovered more or less recently. The Xu Lin Valley, for example, is very old but only recently really a focus for anyone’s attention. The beings that once ruled over the land known as the Courts spent a great deal of time and energy in that place, and when they went away, it was mostly forgotten. The world is a very large place and even though the Four Courts have done a fine job dividing it, there’s always nooks and crannies where things get forgotten. This is where all the best treasure inevitably ends up. The natural laws of the world around our characters are seemingly governed at random - the ocean currents have their way, the seasons come and go, five to a year, as expected, the river flows, the rain rains. Thing is, there’s a force that decides and manages that chaos.