Here's my old D&D campaign!
The Continent of Etrea
History, from the distant past to the fall of Alronia.
Sometime in the distant past, sailors from beyond the Benarian Isles found a large, sparsely populated landmass they called Etrea (which simply meant land in their language) and created several small settlements along its western and southern coasts. Their culture is hardly the oldest known to history (both the Kheimerian and lost Anniaki cultures can claim greater antiquity) nor is it true that these Etriad were the first to develop magic (for the Qiin to the far east and the Benarians to the west are innately magical people) but the Etriad were alone in their total embrace of the sorcerous, and their facility with and exploitation of magic were astonishing to all who witnessed their rise to power. In a few hundred years from their arrival on the shores of Etrea, Etriad sorceries had made them the unquestioned masters of the continent and a power to be reckoned with as far away as the Sifan Islands. Etriad navies conquered Kheimeria and Zharania, lay claim to the Serpent Isles and called the Enethyri Ocean 'an Etriad lake' with good reason. In the East, the Anniaki who inhabited what is now the Tarsan Dominion were the only holdouts preventing the Etriad from expanding into Qiin lands. War between these two nations was long and painful, and only the total destruction of the Anniaki ended it. Etrea seemed on the ascendant path to power.
Then, five thousand years or so ago, The Etriad Empire collapsed. With it fell magic...whatever it was that caused the end of the empire caused the nature of reality itself to realign, and for decades magic could not, or would not function. Some claim that the gods withheld it, others that there are no gods anyway and the ancient cataclysm proved that mortals, for good or ill, are unchecked by any higher powers. Still others blamed the dragons of the Isle of the Maker, but those haughty beasts did not seem to care to respond and those few who attempted to force a response from them were treated as snacks.
A thousand or more years passed before the chaos began to subside, and a nation which would harbor imperial designs as sweeping as those of the Etriad was forged by a young sheepherder named Alronius Mejur. It was Alronius, a boy who often spent his time herding sheep dreaming of the mythical tales of Etriad warships, their decks manned by sorcerer crews hurling fire and lightning at their enemies, who rediscovered much of the lost Etriad lore in a lost city on the shores of the Enethyri. While not a sorcerer himself, Alronius developed a system of magic based on his discoveries, creating modern Mejurianism and the Path of the Wizard. It was also Alronius who built a small city on the edge of that Etriad ruin, the city that would bear his name and create an empire of its own. (It's a sad fact that few today know that Alronius Mejur even existed, while Alron is the most famous city in Etrea, if not the world.) The Republic of Alron expanded to claim control over the entire northern shore of the Enethyri Ocean and the western shore of the Ebon Sea. Yet Alronia was often checked in its ambitions by its lack of vision...where Etriad sorceries had been wild and innovative, Alronian wizardry was efficient and orderly. It allowed for a more stable society within their borders, but expansion was slower and more laborious, and the Alronian Diet (the legislative body that ruled the Republic) often became split by dissenting voices. Eventually, the Republic reached a furthest expanse, bordered on their west by the Hentilar tribes of the mountains, to the north by the fractured nations of the Agathi and Naethdar peoples, and to the east by the equally ambitious Tarsan people, heirs to the Anniaki.. (Since the Anniaki gods are almost all dead, the Tarsans instead worship two fundamental forces, creation and destruction, and a few personified beings known as Ashurvans. Ashurvans lie somewhere between deities and mortals, beings of awesome power yet limited in many ways and servants of the fundamental forces of light and darkness, creation and destruction.) The clash between Tarsan and Alronian led to the creation of two empires, as the originally democratic nature of the Alronian Diet made it inefficient in wartime and the Tarsan tribes sought unity and strength.
For more than 2000 years, a state of equilibrium existed between these two mighty nations. The Alronians had the wild tribesmen of the Hentilar and the barbaric hordes of the Naethdar to contend with, but the Tarsans were constantly harassed by Netyri desert nomads and the Muragh. Both empires suffered from orc and goblin invasions. Both sought to exploit any edge to gain ascendancy against their foe. Equal and in many ways opposite, they faced each other across the Ebon Sea. It would take a mad shaman among the goblin peoples, a desperate magician on an island whose dreams were the sendings of a long-forgotten god, and a wild tribesman with eyes of fire to end the deadlock once and for all and create fifteen hundred years of chaos on the Etrean continent.
In the year AR 2302, three cataclysms shook the Alronian Empire. Any one of them might have been weathered, but all three combined saw the utter ruin of Alron as a world power as well as the fall of Tarsis. The first took place during the Prime Month, and it was an earthquake that split open the basin of the Ebon Sea, sending massive tidal surges washing along both shores. The Tarsis capital of Astilisar was devoured by the sea, as was the Alronian provincial capital at Trezentium. (Unknown to most, this disaster was caused by the Wizard-Prelate Husentia Marden, Governor of Trezentium, who had been driven insane by dreams sent by the imprisoned god Ebon and who used an ancient Etriad artifact to blast a channel between the Enethyri Ocean and the Ebon Sea, allowing the trapped god to escape his millennia of confinement.) Alron, although hit hard, was not entirely displeased: this disaster had entirely crippled their ancient enemy, and it looked likely that an Alronian Province on the Zharanian North Shore was finally within reach.
Three weeks later, news from the north that Salithe, long an Alronian client state and ally, had been ravaged by a goblinoid army so powerful that even the Orcs of Kolevara were being driven in retreat before it reached Alron. Battles with these retreating Kolevaran Orcs and Ogres were raging throughout the North, from Naethdar and Aghat to the Nyriean Mountains of North Alronia. Only the Hentilak Mountains served as a barrier, ironically sheltering one of Alron's greatest foes from the orcs while driving those selfsame orcish hordes south along the Alronian Imperial Roads...straight into the heart of the nation, the capital city of Alron. Rather than invading Zharania, the full force of the gathered Legions was hurled forward to drive away the orcs. The resulting battle, The Month of Red Ground, saw the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
Just in time for the Gobinar Horde of Dulkarnizein, the Hobgoblin Sword of the North, to march through destroyed and pacified Salithe, ford the Peng-Yan river and smash aside with contemptuous ease the armies of the Lich Agath (who was mysteriously absent from the battle) and burn the Alronian border city of Sarnalia to the ground. Dulkarnizein was a very extraordinary Hobgoblin, with a set of curved horns on his forehead that resembled those of a demon or red dragon and a set of crimson wings he usually kept furled under a cloak, only revealing them to leap skyward and surprise his enemies with a hail of magical missiles or balls of fire from his fingers. Rumored to be of infernal or draconic blood, Dulkarnizein (the name means The Two-Horned One in Goblin) easily unified his people through conquest and at the head of this army set the North afire, crushing all resistance...and now he sought to do the same to Alronia.
In the face of this new threat, Prelate Erich Darlusa of Alron (a transplanted Naethdar slave who had risen in the ranks to his position as overall commander of the Alronian army) sought the only ally he could find who had experience fighting the Goblin army...Drakkus Gruunar, Warfather of the Kolevara. While the orc had no especial love for his Alronian counterpart, he certainly hated the hobgoblin chieftain who had burned his homeland to the ground, and after a tense day of negotiation agreed to join forces with the Alronians in exchange for land within the borders of the empire for his people to settle. The combined Human/Orc armies, with Elven and Ogre allied forces, made their stand against the Goblin Horde at Nevren, directly at the ford of the Alia River which split Eastern and Western Alron and almost directly at the geographical heart of Alron itself.
The battle that followed is remembered at The Black Ford, for the mountain of bodies that dammed the river at its end, creating Lake Erich. The ogres died to the last standing against their bugbear counterparts, but they held the north fork of the river and allowed the elves to slay the advancing bugbears. The main force of hobgoblins and goblins slammed into the human and orc ranks at the walls of Nevren itself, retreating only after killing so many of the Alronian and Kolevaran armies that the pile of bodies actually blocked the river. Yet the humans and orcs inflicted savage casualties of their own, and Dulkarnizein had to abandon his dream of sacking Alron itself and retreat back to the north, even losing his hold on Aghat territory in the process. He did hold Kolevara and Salithe and started what would become Gobinar, the Goblin Nation, however, and a descendant of the Two-Horned One still sits on the Gobinar throne.
Dulkarnizein's dream of sacking Alron would, however, be realized. The Goblin Horde was thrown back in Tertius, and while the year had been violent and chaotic to that point, Alron seemed to have weathered the storms, weakened and bloodied yet intact. The orcs of Kolevara were now allies, and were settling the depopulated Nyrian region. Refugee elves from Salithe were settled into the Erythllyn highlands north of the river Mamers, long contested by Salithe and Agath the Lich and now free to their use. The hard and unusually long winter finally began to relent sometime before the end of Quintus, and it seemed as if a mild summer would allow Alronia to recover.
Instead, Endok the Wolfen would destroy Alron in order to save all mortals from eternal suffering and damnation. For during the dark of the Goblin Invasion, while all eyes were on the North, the Wizard Emperor Sajurk IV had sought aid from any quarter...and had been devoured by a demon servant of Verth the Dark Dragon who had taken his shape. From the Ancient Vaults of the Etriad within Alron itself, the beast in the form of the Heir of Mejur planned to enslave and destroy all humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs...all that lived would become fodder for the Killer of Gods, and then the world itself would cease to exist as the Dark Dragon walked the world. The sacrifices of the battles to date, while enormously powerful fuel for necromantic magic, were not enough to sunder the barriers between worlds and allow Verth to manifest in Etrea itself. But the death of an entire race...
The 'Emperor' knew that the Hentilar were the ancient enemy of Alron, and that they were the last remnants of the Etriad themselves. Many of the ancient devices of that lost people would only function for those of Etriad blood, meaning that only a Hentilar could use them. Within the Ancient Vaults were many such devices. Seeking to annihilate the last remnants of the Etriad and gain access to those awesomely powerful artifacts, the demon began moving the Alronian people and their allies to make war on the Hentilar, blaming them for the Goblin invasion, the disaster at the Ebon Sea (Hentilar sorcerers seeking to undermine the Empire...and wasn't it odd that, alone among the lands of the north, the goblin horde made no move to conquer Hentilar lands?) and he was remarkably successful. If Erich Darlusa had survived the Goblin Invasion, perhaps he could have prevented the war to come, or perhaps merely won it.
Instead, the Alronian Legions, repopulated with untrained replacements to swell its ranks beyond even its original size, surged into the killing grounds of the Hentilak Mountains. The orcs of Nyria and elves of Erythllyn, while both technically obligated to assist their ally, found ways to delay their participation, perhaps sensing the dark magics that swirled around the 'Emperor' like flies on a corpse. For six months, those Hentilar who were unfortunate enough to live in the disputed zone between their land and Alron were slaughtered or captured, dragged to Alron to serve the Emperor's depraved whim or forced to venture into the sealed vaults of the ancient city and die trying to retrieve powerful artifacts for the demon.
Then, as the winter began to return to the north, a vast horde of gryphon-riders and wyvern-tamers boiled out of the mountains and darkened the skies above Alron. The Hentilar, always fractious and rarely able to agree on anything, had been unified by the depredations of Alron. The War Host of the Hentilar, a great airborne army in the old style of the Etriad, swept down the valleys of Alron and blasted its enemies with ancient sorceries, the power of nature, and wing and claw. Perhaps a seasoned Alronian army, with its allies at its side, could have beaten back this arcane and archaic flock...but the bled-white and untrained version of it that the Demon Emperor had assembled did not stand a chance.
Alron burned. The Emperor was revealed to be a demon when Endok Wolfen, head of the Wolf tribe of the Hentilar, cut its head off with an ancient Etriad Sword of the Dragon looted from the very tomb the demon sought to use. The Hentilar flew back to the north with the loot from the grandest city on the Etrean continent, and while the Empire struggled on in its death throes for nearly another century, the year AR 2302 was the end of Alron and the beginning of the Etrean Dark Age.
Now is AR 3806, or rather 1504 by the Nazreal calendar put into place by Archpriest Hulzein of the Etrean Revised Church four hundred years ago, making the death of the Demon Emperor the beginning of the new count of years. Alron is long dead, but new lands born out of its destruction have been rising, and now at last Etrea is ready to take a place of glory in the greater world again, as it once did. Time has moved on, and the world enters a new phase.
Nations of Modern Etrea
Nazrael
The Nazri rule over the peninsula that stabs out into the Enethyri Ocean, the birthplace of the Alronian Empire and home of that magical and majestic ruin. Yet the Nazri look forward, never back...Alron is long dead, and the Nazri are concerned with the future, with trade, with arcane arts and sciences and efficient engineering. Nazri bankers loan money to most of the nations of Etrea, Nazri architects design the palaces of Etrean nobles and the towers of her wizards...and are usually wizards themselves. Nazrael, their capital city, is a shining beacon of elegant marble columns and everglowing crystals to provide light, powered by elemental engines that run cleanly and efficiently and require only that their enchantments be renewed. Golems of shining steel police the streets and handle the most dangerous criminal element...yet, of course, a criminal with an agile mind and dextrous hands can go far in the White City. Arcane Artifice is seen as the primary art of the Nazri, and they view their work as far superior to the whirring, clanking, belching steam engines and clockworks of the Benarians. The foreign quarter of Nazrael is larger than most cities. It's said that only Dunadon and Benarian can compete with the size of the White City, and no city anywhere in Etrea is as dazzling. People of every race and culture call Nazrael home, from the haughty elves of Erythllyn to expatriate hobgoblins from Gobinar.
Kolnyr
The Orcs have built themselves an unusual kingdom on the border of the Hentilak Mountains. Kolnyr today is considered a member of the Etrean community, a somewhat civilized (if reckless and brawling) nation. Orcish soldiers in plate mail wielding greatswords may be viewed as archaic by the Nazri or Benarian peoples, but they are the most sought after mercenaries in all of Etrea. The Kolnyr Orcs are always willing to adapt to the newest ideas in warfare...not a few orcs have a Nazri Firestaff or a Benar Arquebus strapped to their backs, ready for use. The one-shot nature of such weapons tends to keep the orcs practicing with their enormous blades, however. Orcs of the Kolnyr tend to be slightly shorter and less hairy than their wild cousins, and they have come to an accommodation with their human, elf and dwarf neighbors that no one would have believed possible when they were first settled in the mountains that they now call home. Prelyns, once an Alronian fort, is now the capital city of Kolnyr and while it may lack the grandeur of other cities, it would take a concerted effort of several armies to take 'Fortress Orc' from the Kolnyr. The Etrean pantheon is worshipped in Kolnyr, especially Ebon and Ionan.
The Naethdar Marches
The Naethdar are tall, shaggy people descended from Etriad stock who were stranded in the far north following the fall of their homeland, and who adapted to their circumstances as best they were able. Rough and hardly, Naethdar view this life as a series of tests that will eventually prove or disprove one's worthiness to sit in the hall of the Old God and do battle with his enemies forever. Naethdar are master mariners as well, and their ships travel down the river Mamers to Tarsan lands as well as the seaports of Etrea, Kheimiera and possibly even as far as the fabled Sifanji Isles of the far east....or the deadly Serpent Islands to the west of Etrea. They will not sail to the Isle of the Maker. Naethdar eschew most of the modern magics of Nazrael or the devices of the Benar, preferring to trust to their strength at arms and their faith in their gods. So far, it's worked for them. People from surprisingly far come to Archionisk to trade for Naethdar pelts and ships.
Nullgate
The city-state of Nullgate is named because there is no gate in the wall that separates them from the Aghat Free State. They want no truck with the nation of the Lich-King, and indeed, are remarkably suspicious and standoffish with just about anyone else, suspecting that any stranger could well be a servant of their undead enemy. The amusing thing is, if Agath spends any time at all plotting the takeover of his neighbor to the east, you wouldn't be able to tell by looking. This of course only increases the suspicion and paranoia among the citizens of Nullgate. They buy weapons from the Benarians, suspecting their contraptions less than the magics of the Nazri or the inhumanity of the Kolnyr, and prepare for an invasion that does not seem to be coming any time soon. Nullgate is scrupulously neutral in the affairs of nations, and all of its citizenry is trained to serve in its militia, making it a tough nut to crack for any invader. Many people of Nullgate (known among other nations simply as Nulls or Nullers) take several years after their initial tour of duty in the Null military to work as mercenaries in Etrean armies, inasmuch as their iron discipline is highly regarded by their neighbors. "Crazy, yes, but Nulls can fight" is a common Kolnyr saying. Null mercenaries are often Fighters, Rogues, Rangers or Wizards, or a multiclass combination.
Basilath
All that's left of the original people of the Nyrian mountains who were displaced by the Kolevaran orcs during their retreat from the Goblin army, the Basilath who settled to the south of Nullgate (then the Duchy of Null) are, by and large, a peaceful people. They tend towards blue or green eyes, pale skin, and are shorter than average for humans (many of them may have elven blood). They live in alpine villages, mostly grow cheese or other goat-based products like textiles, and are not very exciting. 35% of their population are gnomes, who create textile mills and suchlike for their neighbors and who are even less exciting. No one has tried to conquer the Basilath in the last 1500 years, and they have little experience of war.
The Aghat Free State
The Aghat are a bustling, metropolitan people whose cities (Trevin, Aardson and Peng-Yan) are each engaged in trade and industry and are full of life. It's hard to believe that the state religion is one that worships a lich, especially one who is the titular head of the nation. Aghat is mostly human in population, although a surprising quantity of dwarven engineers work on its many roads and bridges, which date back to the fall of Alron. A mountainous country, Aghat is mostly free from fear of invasion (the fact that a lich sits on the throne tends to dissuade the Gobinar, who last invaded in 1347 Nazri and were horribly butchered for their attempt to emulate Dulkarnizien) and is prosperous. They have mixed and matched the arcane artifacts of the Nazri and the steam and clockworks of the Benarians, liking the clean and efficient devices of the one yet recognizing the lower cost and nonreliance on magic of the other. Aghat troops tend to be armed with Benar arquebuses due to their immunity to antimagic fields.
Erythllyn
The kingdom of the elves. The last land left to these once-proud people, whose lifespans rival those of empires. There are ancient Erythllyn alive today who remember the fall of Alron, although these few are soon to die and at the limits of how long even an elf can live. Still, the average elf can live for 800 years, and many achieve a century beyond that, making them incomprehensibly old to the humans and orcs who must often deal with them. To an Erythllyn, the survival of the people is all...and by the people, they mean elves. Everyone else is Husqyllyn, not elves. This is not to say that they aren't living, sentient beings...but if an Erythllyn saw a elf about to die on one hand, and ten humans trapped in a fire, he'd save the elf. Understandable, to a people who nearly saw the total extermination of their race at the hands of the Goblin horde, but this attitude does little to make the Erythllyn any friends, and many elves who have made their homes in the Etrean nations have to deal with subtle bigotry from those who assume they share this attitude. Still, the Erythllyn live in cities made out of magically shaped glass, and are one of the few people left on Etrea whose approach to magic is a primal one. (Erythllyn elves can choose either Wizard or Sorcerer as their favored classes.) Erythllyn view the Nazri arcane artifacts as preferable to Benarian claptrap, but prefer a good old fashioned incantation to either. Amazingly, the Erythllyn and the Kolnyr orcs actually get along fairly well, with their common hatred for the Gobinar to smooth over their usual racial antipathy.
Gobinar
Not many humans or demihumans have ever seen the iron cities of the goblins. In the years since their ancestors carved a kingdom out of the bellies of the orcs, elves and humans of the north, the Gobinar have seen their fortunes rise and fall several times, locked in eternal war with each other and with their neighbors. Lacking a strong leader like the Dulkarnizein (whose name is still revered and who even has a strong priesthood in Cyner and Alderin...it is reported that his priests can even cast spells and turn undead) they have not been successful in any recent attempts to expand their territory, and the up and coming generation of goblinoids is the most vocal at questioning authority and demanding that Gobinar attempt to find a new path among the Etrean nations. It remains to be seen if they will actually manage to change the way things are done in the most militaristically-oriented nation on the face of the Etrean continent. Gobinar society is orderly (mainly because of the influence of the hobgoblins who make up the majority of the ruling class...they are a sizeable 35% of the total population, but a staggering 90% of the upper classes) and has been directed towards outward conquest for generations. Bugbears thrive in the northern Kolevaran wastes that used to belong to the Kolnyr orcs, and goblins infest the Salithe forests that were the ancestral homeland of the Erythllyn elves, as well as the long dead Salithan elves and their vanished Hanthalan cousins, many of whom survive in the blood of the common Etrean elf, who is of mixed Hanthalan and Erythllyn descent. The fact that Gobinar is built on these homelands, as well as territory once belonging to the Aghat and Naethdar, means that the Gobinar have few friends. Which suits them fine. Still, the Nazri often trade with them, as they do with most anyone, and the Tarsans have no animosity towards the Gobinar, meaning that their large army is well equipped with Firestaves and second-hand Arquebuses as well as cruel morningstars and greataxes. (Gobinar tacticians don't like relying on what is, to them, untested technology.)
The Hentilar Tribes
Fifteen hundred years ago, the Hentilar were wild barbarians who rode gryphons and wyverns (and the occasional bronze or copper dragon) into battle, who cast spells by the inherent power of their blood rather than wizard erudition, and who shattered the greatest empire on Etrea and in so doing may well have saved the world. They haven't changed much. If there is any people who have found a way of life that works for them on the face of Etrea, it may well be the Hentilar. All Hentilar are of half-elven blood...in effect, the Hentilar are a race of half-elves, each new generation born to parents who were born to parents whose ancestors were equal parts elf and human. The elves in question were the Hanthalan, who were nearly wiped out when the Anniaki and Etrean pantheons made war on each other, and the humans were the Etriad sorcerers whose Empire fell as a result of that same war. Bedraggled bands of each met in the mountains of the peninsula and were prepared to slaughter each other when the Anniaki outcast god Hentre appeared to them and offered his patronage and protection to them, if they would follow his dictates and unite in his service. They took his offer, and became the Hentilar. Outside of the Erythllyn and followers of the goddess Sathak, the Hentilar are the only sorcerers left anywhere in Etrea, and their facility with sorcery is great. Many Hentilar are either multiclass Barbarian/Sorcerers or devote themselves solely to one of the two classes, which predominate among them. Viewed with suspicion and awe by their Kolnyr and Arnas neighbors (after all, it's never a happy thought that an army of flying wildmen might rampage through your lands) the Hentilar keep to their mountains, suspicious of the ways of outsiders. If they knew of Nazrean arcane artifice they would be terrified and angered by it (such magics are all too reminiscent of the lost art of the Etriad) and they would view Benarian steam and springwork as unnatural. But while still a powerful people, time may be passing the Hentilar by.
Benar
The people of the isles are talented. Save for the Naethdar, they have no equals on the ocean. Save for the Nazreal, they have no rivals for invention. Save for the Gobinar, they are the most disciplined nation in Etrea. Save for the Kolnyr, they are the most free spirited. While many deride the Benar as 'second-best at everything' the Benarians view it differently. If, after all, they combine all the strengths of the other nations into themselves, what can't they do? Their capital city, Eloidain, is a mass of spires and castles that grew over the course of thousands of years, rivaling fabled Alron for antiquity, Nazreal the White City for beauty and Prelyns for impregnability. The harbor is a series of ringed wharves unlike any other city, a masterpiece of gnomish, dwarven and human arts combined into one seamless whole. The Benar embrace people of all races and cultures to some extent, seeking to become more and more capable by absorbing the capacities of other cultures. While they do not deride magic, they rely on it as little as possible, out of necessity...Benarian proximity to the Isle of the Maker causes waves of chaos to occasionally sweep their islands, causing magic to behave erratically and unpredictably. Only by resorting to the steam and spring technology that has made Benar famous could they weather the Makerstorms that sometimes act as enormous antimagic fields and at others amplify magics so that a small fire spell sets the docks on fire or an attempt to create a wineskin full of water floods a house. Rapiers and arquebuses have replaced greatswords and armor in Benar, and the sea provides both in food and commerce, as well as defense...most belligerent nations would have to brave the seas near the Isle of the Maker to attack Benar, and if they survive the dragons and chaotic magics of that place, they would have the cannons of the Benar Fleet to deal with.
Other nations include Eradnes on the Enethryi Ocean, Arnas to the south of Kolnyr, Nerev and Duradon to the north of Nazrael and south of Aghat, and Aresia, Saluriv and Murag. Those lands are more isolationist or less powerful than the ones named, but are not terribly different. Duradon is a sealed kingdom of Dwarves, and no non-dwarf goes there and comes back.