Agdaron: a world in brief

This is the Agdaron a traveller could learn from an atlas and a tavern. What lies underneath it belongs to the campaign.

Two kingdoms and a bad twenty years

The Eastern Continent is dominated by two powers that share a border and very little else.

Elleria is the elven kingdom, ruled by a High King from the City of Elleris, and it reaches the sea through the Falliel Bay in its southeast. Malinar is the human kingdom, closer to the coast, and moves its trade through ports along the Rovari.

They spent nearly twenty years killing each other. It began as a border dispute. Armed forces came to blows at roughly the same moment as a major political gaffe, and the war that followed was fought over land and so-called honour.

It left the rich richer and the poor poorer. Elleria's middle class shrank to a fraction of its former size and has not grown back. Crops have come in thinner each year, and the problem is not confined to the elves.

The fighting ended with the Tofordian Treaty, negotiated by the Halfling Council of Elders because neither crown would sit down in the other's capital. Trade caravans run the agreed routes again. Neither side trusts the other, so every caravan travels with soldiers or mercenaries.

Beyond the borders of both kingdoms lie the wild lands: monsters, bandits, brigands and adventure.

The City of Elleris

Elleris is a grand city, and on the surface a whimsical one.

Its walls are tall and its streets are cobblestone, whorled with colour. The Lower District is trade — merchants, blacksmiths, food markets and a great many taverns. The Middle District is where common elves and everyone else actually live, alongside the public schools and most of the entertainment. The Upper District belongs to high elves, private academies and expensive shops. The Court District holds the diplomats, the nobles and the High King.

The Church District holds small temples to the gods, and almost nobody visits them. Arathis, goddess of the elves, died in the Cataclysm, and the elves have never entirely forgiven the divine for it.

Castle Elleric stands at the southwest of the kingdom: five towers on a pentagonal inner wall, brickwork and vinery swirling up them in colours that make the whole thing look unreal, multi-coloured domes above, white marble and gold filigree within. It is the finest building in the kingdom.

Beneath all of it lie the Cisterns — a wandering maze of pipes, sewers and tunnels running out of the city in a dozen directions, and the place where the campaign begins.

The mountains

Northwest of the kingdoms stand the Barazig Spires, magical mountains holding three of the five dwarven Underkeeps. Barazar is the great one; Frostspire lies to its northwest and Iron Deep to its southwest, and the road splits between them beneath torches the dwarves keep lit year-round.

Barazar is a city inside a mountain. The approach runs through a working quarry and onto cobblestone laid with King Aghat Umraz's heraldry. Automatons of bronze, silver and gold stand guard at regular intervals, humanoid from the waist up and rolling on a single sphere. Rail carts carry visitors inside, driven by a conductor with one hand on a crystal.

The Market district beneath the mountain has a ceiling so high it passes for a night sky, lit by drifting mage-lights and one brighter light standing in for the sun at roughly half strength. It is enough to keep a visitor comfortable. Prolonged exposure brings on the under-dwelling madness regardless.

The neighbours

• North — the Frostwind Knolls, home to the Frost Giants, and past them the Frozen Wastes and the Hoarfrost Waters.
• West — the Ligonqui Settlements, where the Aasimar live. Further west lies Logaara, where the last of the Orcish Encampments hold on.
• Southwest — Toford, the halfling holes, among them Beyhearth and Ashbluff. The Council of Elders there brokered the treaty that ended the war.
• South — across the Falliel Bay, the Republic of Dolerith, a human democracy, with Dolonde as its capital and Dryar as its second city.
• Southeast — the Bright Sahra and its mountains, homeland of the Tabaxi.
• East and northeast — the Rovari Sea, where pirates are known to lie in wait, and Serpents Bay beyond it.

Malinari cities are laid out on a grid rather than grown into one: a Temple District for holy power, a Court District for the legislature, an Army District for the barracks and training grounds, a Middle District of good shops and schools, and a Lower District of bazaars and travellers that the guard patrols less than it should. Part of that last district sits unofficially outside the city gates altogether, the Dragon and Badger Inn included.

The edges of the map

Across the Rovari lies the Western Continent, which the Cataclysm mostly destroyed. Very little should be able to live there. Whatever does must be strange indeed.

The Far West of the Eastern Continent is largely unexplored. Its jungles, forests, deserts and tundra are saturated with wild magic, and the beasts living in them have been warped by the magical backlash of the Cataclysm. Agdaron keeps a guarded border along the Western Forests and leaves the rest alone.

Beyond those forests, across the remainder of the continent, lies the Evatnian Ocean. None of the living races have sailed it in a thousand years.