This short guide provides an overview to the inhabitants of Taelgar, its magic and religions, and basic geography, places, and history. It is written loosely from the perspective of an educated commoner in the 1740s, by the common reckoning of human scholars, or the 5880s, as the dwarves count the years of the world.

Taelgar is a world of good and evil, where valiant heroes strive against the forces of darkness, created by evil gods seeking to undo all existence. While there is room in Taelgar for all kinds of stories and many shades of gray, many tales in Taelgar feature unredeemable evil, unambiguous villains, and noble heroes. Taelgar draws inspiration from many sources, especially classic D&D settings, high fantasy, and world history. Magic is rare and powerful, but once was much more common; while Humans dominate much of the world, they live alongside Dwarves, Halflings, and other sentient species.

Geography and Culture

The lands best known to scholars of northwestern Taelgar stretch roughly 2,500 miles from the great city of Chardon in the west to the shores and islands of the Green Sea in the east.

This is a world of old roads, young empires, fortified frontiers, and mountain kingdoms, where the scars of old wars still touch the land and heroes are needed to defend against evil. Settled regions include:

• In the west, the Chardonian Empire rules from Chardon, a vast city of scholars, soldiers, and dangerous ambition. Chardon is the greatest center of arcane learning in the west, and its power rests on the Chardonian Legion, the powerful magic of its academic institutions, and the wealth of its magical industry powered by Chalyte.
• Beyond the Chardonian frontier live the northerner peoples. The Deno’qai inhabit forests and foothills near the Sentinel Range, keeping their own language and small-gods religion. On the rocky Mawakel Peninsula, the Mawar live from the sea, proud of their independence and their old coastal traditions.
• The forests between Chardon and the Sentinel Range preserve the memory of Ainumarya, once a great elven land. Since the Great War, many elven places have fallen silent, and most humans know the Elves more from stories than from daily life.
• South of Chardon, the Nevos Sea links the empire to Illoria, a seafaring island protectorate only recently brought under Chardonian rule.
• The Sentinel Range runs for more than 2,000 miles, dividing the western coast from the Green Sea lands. The greatest Dwarven Kingdoms lie among and beneath these mountains, and many Stoneborn communities keep to the high places.
• South of the Sentinels lies Dunmar, an arid land and theocratic monarchy of horse lords and herders, sustained by the seasonal monsoon rains. The Dunmari remain united by devotion to the Five Siblings, though the realm is culturally divided between settled western regions and more nomadic central and eastern lands.
• East of the Sentinels and along the Western Gulf is Sembara, a fertile hereditary monarchy, the breadbasket of the Green Sea and still remembered for its strong armies and landed knights that helped win the Great War.
• North of Sembara, the Free City of Tollen sits on the Volta, ruled by guilds and enriched by dyes, cloth, ships, tattoos, and extensive trade networks. Across the gulf, Cymea is a region of proud coastal city-states, still maritime and still ambitious, though no longer the dominant maritime power it once was.
• Farther north, Vostok is a cold, river-crossed land of forests and scattered settlements, while Skaerhem is a stormy island region shaped by the sea and the ancient worship of Kaikkea.

To the east, south, and north, and perhaps even across the Endless Ocean to the west, stranger lands exist in rumor and imagination. Few common folk of northwestern Taelgar have met anyone from those distant places.

History

Taelgar’s oldest histories are half myth and half theology. In the first ages of the world, the gods and other powers shaped the multiverse, and the oldest peoples came into being: Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Lizardfolk, Stoneborn, and stranger beings whose histories are less familiar to human scholars. Much later, Humans arose on the island of Hkar, gifted with the Divine Spark: the mysterious power of human belief to shape and sustain gods.

Hkar was destroyed in a cataclysm remembered as The Downfall. Refugees founded the city of Drankor, and from that beginning grew the Drankorian Empire, a vast magical civilization that spread its language, scholarship, roads, law, and religion across much of the known world.

Roughly seven hundred years ago, the First Plague destroyed Drankor and broke the empire. New powers rose in the aftermath: Chardon in the west, Sembara around the Western Gulf, Tollen on the Volta, Dunmar in the old imperial heartlands, and many smaller realms and cities.

Two hundred years ago, Cha’mutte, a shadow wyrm of terrible power, tried to overthrow the gods. The Great War ended with Cha’mutte’s defeat at Urlich Pass in DR 1545, but the victory came at a great cost. The Plaguelands mark one of the deepest scars of that war, and for generations afterward hobgoblin armies and other terrors haunted the borders of human realms.

In the present age, the world is recovering. Chardon has become an empire, Sembara has rebuilt its farms and castles, Tollen sends ships across the Green Sea, and Dunmar endures on changed lands behind its divine protections.

Inhabitants

Humans are the most numerous sentient people on Taelgar, and human cultures dominate many of the known world’s cities, kingdoms, religions, and histories. They are not alone. Taelgar is home to many peoples with their own gods, languages, customs, and ways of understanding the world.

• Elves are ancient, graceful, and deeply magical, bound to the long rhythm of the ka. Most live apart from human society, and many carry the grief of losses suffered in ancient wars and the Great War.
• Dwarves dwell in mountain kingdoms, carving halls of stone and light beneath the earth. Their lives are shaped by clan, craft, history, and the thuhr, a uniquely dwarven institution that is part guild, part spiritual calling, and part second family.
• Halflings wander roads, rivers, and sea lanes as traders, sailors, storytellers, innkeepers, and caravaneers. They have no single homeland, but their communities are held together by kinship, memory, song, and a mystical shared ancestral mind.
• Lizardfolk live where land and water meet: swamps, marshes, river basins, and coastal wetlands. Their communities are often guided by elders, ancestors, dreams, and careful stewardship of the living land around them.
• Stoneborn are rare mountain people, large, disciplined, and reclusive, renowned for mastery of body, craft, and skill. They are most often encountered as travelers, students, teachers, or outcasts from high mountain communities.

Other peoples are less numerous, less familiar, or more often encountered only in particular regions. Centaurs follow long migrations and see themselves as guardians of Taelgar itself. Kenku, the birdfolk, are rare outside the Green Sea and the far north, but their wings and secretive histories make them famous in rumor. Visitors from the Feywild, including many kinds of Fey, sometimes cross into the Material Plane through old gates or to honor strange bargains.

Not all peoples are welcomed easily. Orcs are widely feared as the servants of Thark, though rumors persist of free orcs who have broken his chains. Hobgoblins are remembered as the disciplined soldiers of Cha’mutte and remain feared; the long history of hobgoblin wars left a bitter memory of conquest and suffering in bondage under their harsh rule. Goblins and Kobolds often live at the margins of other societies, sometimes as raiders or nuisances, sometimes merely trying to survive.

Religion and Divinities

Religion in Taelgar is not separate from daily life. Gods grant omens, answer prayers, inspire festivals, bless births, judge oaths, and sometimes work miracles through priests and other chosen servants. Divine magic is the most common form of magic in Taelgar, and most people have seen a miracle, or at least know someone who has.

Most traditions recognize a distant source of divinity, usually called the Divine Presence. In Mos Numena theology the Divine Presence is interpreted as duality, known as Arha and Malik; in other traditions it has other names and other forms. These highest powers are rarely worshipped directly and do not usually answer prayers in the way more immediate gods do.

Many non-human peoples honor creator gods, often called the Firstborn: Aldanor and Elmerca of the Elves, the Bahrazel of the Dwarves, the First Ones of the Halflings, Entamba of the Stoneborn, and the Tharzen Anzinakoa of the Lizardfolk. These gods are older and more fixed than the gods of humanity, and their worship is closely tied to the identity and magic of the peoples they created.

Human religions are more varied. Human belief, through the Divine Spark, sustains the Incorporeal Gods: gods whose power and presence are shaped by worship, tradition, story, and ritual. The most important human traditions in northwestern Taelgar include:

• Mos Numena, the Way of the Eight Divines, the dominant Drankorian-derived religion of Chardon, Sembara, Tollen, Cymea, and many other lands touched by the old empire. The Eight Divines are The Mother, The Father, The Night Queen, The Warlord, The Sibyl, The Wanderer, The Wyrdling, and The Wildling.
• The Five Siblings of the Dunmari, a family pantheon whose worship is inseparable from Dunmari identity and government: Jeevali, Laka, Aagir, Sonkar, and Chidya.
• The small-gods traditions of the north, including Tanshi Worship among the Deno’qai and the Kestavo in parts of the Sembaran highlands and nearby northern lands. These traditions focus on local or minor spirits who carry prayers to the Divine.
• The worship of Kaikkea, the Great Ocean Mother of the Skaer, an ancient mariner faith centered on the sea as source, protector, and destroyer.

There are darker powers as well: the Void Mind, the Three Despairs, Thark, Jinnik, and other forces associated with undeath, lycanthropy, endless war, madness, and the unmaking of creation. Most people know these powers through curses, monsters, old wars, and cautionary tales rather than formal worship.