Setting Information

[Kylia Quilor]

I have, as I said, left most things open for players to work with and for further adventures to fill in, but there are some details that are set to start with.

I do have a map that further establishes what little else has been pre-set, and it will be posted up by tomorrow. In the future, that map will be filled in as appropriate to the course of play.
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831 years ago, a half-elven noblewoman named Katrina Watid and a human warlord named Vesperan Morgrave married at Sareltine Castle, and together declared the Sareltine Empire - and proceeded, over the next three decades, to make that Empire a reality. Conquering much of the continent, from the Solevri Sea to the Maytaran Mountains, from the cold steppes of the Frangian Tribes to the edges of the sunbaked savannahs of the Vatilian Elves.

The Empire was never truly some perfect golden-age state - such eras were long in the past, lost empires with ancient magics and mighty hero-gods, names all but forgotten, but under the Empire, there was general prosperity across most of its territory at any given time. A strong, able army kept bandits, foreign powers, raiders, savage humanoids and monsters at bay. The Imperial Talons kept covert threats, foreign and domestic, at bay with a ruthless but silent efficiency, sparing the public the knowledge of how close some cults, spies, assassins and subversive cabals sometimes came to causing mass destruction.

The Empire elevated nobles of all races - being largely half-elves or quarter-elves themselves, the Imperial Family elevated an unusual number of half-elves, proportionate to the population, such that even to this day, half-elves are overrepresented in the nobility - but the nobility came to include halflings, half-orcs, elves, dwarves, gnomes, even notably in one case, an orc (though his descendents went on to be half-orcs), and even odder or more uncommon races here and there, leading to very diverse nobility that rule over populations that tend to be majority human.

115 years ago, the last member of the House of Watid-Morgrave, Emperor Vesperan III, died without clear issue - a number of distant cousins had gathered in the capital city, Sareltine, to discuss the matter in anticipation of this occurrence. Within two days of the last , almost all of them had killed each other after violence broke out at the gathering, and the rest fled, gathering soldiers to their banner. They were all dead within two years.

And then... and then even more war. With no claim to central authority left, the last Imperial Chancellor declared an end to the Empire, Sareltine declared itself a free city, and generals, nobles, bandits, rebels, knights and mercenaries all began to pick at the corpse of the mighty empire that they had all once served or fought against. Perhaps it was assumed a new dynasty might form and undo the end of the Empire.

Instead, they carved it up. Thirteen larger Kingdoms and Grand Principalities, and dozens of independent or semi-independent marchlands, duchies, counties, baronies, lordships, free cities, clanholds and more. A new patchwork that has held for over a century. With the loss of Unity has come an increase in banditry, with hobgoblin pirates once more taking to the waters of the massive Queyol Lake, with orcs and goblins, gnolls and trolls, ogres and giants all pushing at the margins again, coming out from their warrens and lairs to threaten the lives of the innocent in ways they hadn't for centuries.

The current day sees many happy, peaceful lives, but that peace is far more conditional now. And in borderlands of the Kingdom of Vancia and the Grand Principality of Pellia and the Disputed Lands between them, that peace is especially conditional.

Edited January 13, 2023 by Kylia Quilor (see edit history)