The World

The World Overview

Geographical Features
The Scars
The scars look like 3 giant orange-lit tears in the night sky. 
The Blackwave
The Blackwave is the sea that sits to the east of Freeport.  Its waters are usually dark, even on a clear and sunny day.
Andar and beyond
Andar is a powerful semi-feudal nation that lies one day across the blackwave by good ship from Freeport.  Andar is similar culturally to the British isles.
The Tortured Lands
Far to the Southwest is the tortured lands, a inhospitable desert.
The Devils Bog
A day or so to the north of Freeport lies thousands of square miles of fetid bogs known as the Devils Bog.  Tribes of lizardmen inhabit the bog as well as foul creatures and ancient temples to old gods. 


The City of Freeport
The game will centre around the city of Freeport, a sprawling neutral city-state on the coast of the Blackwave.  All cultures and nations have some sort of a presence here, often ghettoized into their own quarters or estates.  It is a city ruled by commerce, with sprawling slums, wizard towers, and the estates of merchants and nobles.  Various factions vie for control and power, but most of this goes unnoticed and uncared about by the masses.  Think Hong Kong meets Kings Landing meets Bravos meets Waterdeep.  Freeport is ruled by the Sealords, inheritors of a lineage started by pirate kings.  The Sealords keep Freeport sovereign through the magic of advanced commerce and by holding an iron grip on sea trade throughout the known world.  Foreign nobles hold estates here and often hire adventurers to take care of their business.  The adventurers should definitely NOT consider themselves to be the most dangerous thing in town.

Freeport is situated on a small bay, with good farm land for only a day or two in any direction inland.  Isolated Baronies belonging to Andar and wilderness lies to the North. 
The Gryphon Quarter
The estate and surrounding cityscape that are controlled by the Count of Gryphon.  Within the quarter is the Dancing Goat tavern, the Temple of Lythander, as well as the mage tower of Tubal Cayne. Captain Nathaniel Garro leads the Gryphon guard
Barony of Carth
3 days to the North of Freeport lies the Andaran Barony of Carth.  The Devils Bog lies between the barony and Freeport, making this a barely viable foothold of that nation.  Lord Bradley Tawley is fairly accepting of adventurers in his domain, after a plot by his brother-in-law was ended by the intervention of a company of delvers.  He has recently started taming the wilderness by recruited seasoned delvers to drive off threats. 

Peoples
Humans
Facsimiles of nearly any Earth based human culture exist here.

Andar lies about 1 day sail to the East of Freeport across the Blackwave by good ship 
Northmen
The gigantic Northmen thrive on battle and constantly raid the northern edges of “civilized” lands for honour and plunder.
Desert Tribes
The honour-bound desert tribes are inheritors of the ruins of an ancient southern civilisation and mover freely over the soft southern borders of the Marches.  Although not citizens of the Empire, they are accepted. 

Dwarves
Multiple underground and mountainside kingdoms and clans are spread throughout the Worldspine mounts and beyond.  Dwarven cultures range from the boisterous and outgoing hillside clans to the dour and suspicious deep dwellers.  Dwarves tend to take things to the extreme and all have one thing in common, their love for gold!

Elves
Elves are fairly rare in  as the mother forests are far to the east of the edges of the empire.  There are rumours of mountain elves, dwelling deep in the Worldspine, cold and cruel like the mountains that they inhabit.  Eleves tend to be the opposite of Dwarves in that they are an exercise in moderation and restraint

Halflings
Halflings are, in general, a happy go lucky folk and want to be left alone to relax and smoke their pipe weed.  They are, however, gifted and law-abiding farmers, so are well tolerated by other cultures.  Their villages and vales are almost always within the boundaries of more militaristic peoples. 

Gnomes
The gnomish mountain villages are on the eastern side of the worldspine and were conquered by the westward expanding empire long ago.  As a result, Gnomes are well integrated into human society and are known as artificers of great renown. 

Lizardfolk and The Dragonblooded
Lizardfolk are a savage barbarous folk who mostly keep to the swamps of the south west.  Dragonblooded are considered, by most, to be the same thing.  They are intelligent and rare in these lands.  Either and both are suspected of being criminals and or monsters in most of human society.

Religion
The primary religion of inplay is the church of the one god, Lythander the Dawn Father - Lord of Light - Giver of Life - The World Tree.  Multiple orders and sects exist that hold their own philosophies and confront evil as they see fit.  Other races and civilisations have their own religions, and are treated with reactions from mild dismissal to outright intolerance by Megalan citizens.