Exandria

Description

The world of Exandria is a planet with regular seasons and a wide variety of climes, ranging from frigid ice caps to arid deserts, temperate forests, windswept plains, sweltering jungles, and storm-tossed oceans. It orbits a single sun, is orbited in turn by two moons, and is surrounded by distant stars that twinkle in the evening skies.

The ancient people of Exandria told time by these celestial bodies, and the elves created a calendar based on their movements.

The main focus of the campaign is on the continent of Tal’Dorei. There are three other major continents.

Catha and Ruidus

When the people of Tal’Dorei gaze into the morning sky, they see the sun, a blazing disc the size of a gold piece, looking back at them. It is the domain of the Dawnfather, a god of life and light honored politely by nearly all the realm’s denizens.

At night, the skies are filled with countless distant stars, a gleaming silver-white moon called Catha, and occasionally, a dim, ruddy moon called Ruidus that is nearly half Catha’s size. Both moons are the domain of the Moonweaver, a capricious god of trickery and illusions, but there are sects throughout the world that believe only Catha represents the Moonweaver’s cunning and grace. Catha’s pearly glow is said to bless the just with cunning and caution, and to make hidden the goodhearted when they require stealth and subtlety.

Ruidus, on the other hand, is so surrounded by disquieting rumors and folkloric tales of misfortune that some believe another unknown god or power rules this small, reddish-brown moon. Cultures around the world tell countless legends of prideful rulers who made grand plans or attempted deeds under the moon’s full light—when it shines a brilliant vermilion rather than its usual ruddy color—and were forced to watch in horror as their endeavors fell to unforeseen misfortune. It is said those who fall afoul of Ruidus failed to give it the deference it is due—and so superstitious folk rarely dare to make plans while the full light of Ruidus shines above, let alone enact them.

Worse yet, some tales forebode dark fortunes for those born under the light of a full Ruidus, a curse of ill luck that will follow them throughout their lives. Though the cruel practice of moon-sacrifice is no longer permitted in any of Tal’Dorei’s cities, some far-flung settlements still secretly sacrifice children born under a full Ruidus to “save” them from a cursed life, and to appease the dark and unknowable appetites of the red moon.

Fortunately for the superstitious, Ruidus is rarely full. While its cousin, Catha, completes a full cycle approximately once a month, Ruidus’s haunting, half-year orbit, combined with its eerie and unexplainable tendency to simply not appear in the sky on certain nights or glow with unknown light, creating an unexpected full moon, has only added to its mythic reputation as an omen of ill fortune.

History of Exandria

The history of Exandria is made up of three distinct ages: The Founding, the Age of Arcanum and the Era of Reclamation.

The Founding

Long ago, this world was one of tumultuous and chaotic forces, naught but unbridled fire, seething oceans, and churning, gnashing rock. The first age of Exandria began when deities arrived on the planet.

From the divine hands of the Arch Heart sprung forth the First Children, the elves. A second mortal creation was wrought by the divine All-Hammer: the dwarves. A third people were given life by the passionate lovers of Order and Chaos, the Lawbearer and the Wildmother. Their children were the humans.

As inspiration flowed from the Protean Gods, other creations followed, giving life to Exandria’s many peoples. While the elves, dwarves, and humans were undeniably Exandria’s first races, the identities of the many Children of Creation that followed were left unrecorded.

The gods lent their children tiny fragments of their own power, gifts with which they might shape the world around them. This was the birth of magic, and with it the people of Exandria learned to bend the earth to their will, to tame its unyielding floods, and to make the hard earth soft and bountiful. Wandering peoples settled, language became commonplace, survival gave way to art, and governance replaced anarchy.

To protect their creations, the Protean Creators created the First Protectors: the Dragons Metallic of Tal’Dorei. These Protectors pledged themselves to defend the weak against tyrants.

Wrath of the Primordials

Beneath the elements, unknown to the Creators beyond the ashen skies, lived ancient beings who were born in the primeval chaos of the world the gods had found: the Primordials. These elemental titans that once dwelt deep within the land now rose from their unseen domain to sunder it once more. The gods watched as their children were crushed and fed to formless terrors unleashed in the wake of the destruction. Thus were the seeds of Exandria’s greatest cataclysm set into motion.

In this war against the Primordial Titans, the dieties split into two factions: the Prime Dieties and the Betrayer Gods. The betrayer gods wanted to abandon the planet in the face of all the destruction to go to another planet.

Beings of Order and Chaos spilled forth from the still-young multiverse.

Creatures of chaos emerged from a formless void that Exandria’s peoples came to call the Abyss. These demons fed upon the suffering of the wounded and the dying, and grew cruel.

Sentinels of order emerged from a distant realm of celestial harmony. The Prime Deities beseeched these celestials to aid them. In turn, the Betrayer Gods forced order upon the demons and made them devils, perfectly lawful soldiers who lived only to cause harm.

Seeing that their creations still suffered, the Arch Heart taught them the secrets of making magic themselves. The most intelligent and inquisitive mortal minds followed the path the gods had revealed to them, and created incantations and formulae to create new spells on their own terms, without the aid of divine power. These people called themselves arcanists.

With their potent new magics, these arcanists subdued the Primordials long enough for the Prime Deities to banish the Betrayer Gods to secluded prison planes. The defeated Primordials were destroyed, and from their ever-enduring essences, the gods channeled their wild and destructive powers into the Elemental Planes that surround the material world of Exandria.

For the first time since the Creation, Exandria finally settled into an idyllic peace. From this peace was born the first enduring mortal civilization, the heart of which was a grand city called Vasselheim, the Cradle of Creation and the Dawn City.

Culture developed anew, the races ventured beyond to explore and discover their own lands, and great music filled the air to give name to this world once and for all: Exandria.

Age of Arcanum

Ages passed, and society flourished. Great kingdoms sprung up. Castles were built in a day, accelerated by the arcanists’ newfound power. Even though magic could be used to complete the most difficult tasks with hitherto unknown speed, magic-users strove always to innovate. As mages practiced and perfected their powers of creation, they soon unlocked the secrets of life itself, giving birth to wondrous, dangerous new forms of life and power.

Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the very magic which allowed mortalkind to prosper also instilled a deep rot within their civilizations. The arcanists of the world grew arrogant. They came to see their arcane gifts as proof that the gods held no sway over their fate, and that with a sophisticated enough command of magic, they could become as powerful as the gods themselves. Though this hurt and surprised the Prime Deities who had imprisoned their kin for the sake of their children, they sought to sympathize with the willfulness of their creations, remaining out of love and hoping that the mortals would learn the error of their ways.

The advent of the arcane seemed to be the key to a bountiful age of plenty, but also proved to threaten it, as prosperity soon gave way to greed. Rather than universal goodwill and comfort for all, the Age of Arcanum came to be defined by endless petty squabbles over wealth and power among the elite, while those without magic hunted for their scraps. Tantalizing rumors of a path to immortality slithered through the most decadent circles of magi and nobility. One mortal mage, her name lost and presumed to be struck from history, crafted now-forbidden rites to challenge the God of Death, felling him and taking his place among the pantheon, making of her the first and only living mortal to ascend. The name of this original death god was likewise lost to history. Only the title of his now-godly successor, the Matron of Ravens, survives.

Her victory over divinity was a catalyst for many of the horrors of the Age of Arcanum. An archmage named Vespin Chloras, renowned throughout ancient Vasselheim for his wealth, skill, and cruelty, was inspired by this display. He sought the guidance and power of the banished gods, rending open the gates of their prisons and releasing the Betrayers into the mortal world.

In their imprisonment, these Gods of Hatred and Despair had warped their prisons into reflections of their depravity. The Abyss, once a formless place of chaos, a byproduct of the gods’ Creation, was twisted into a place of evil. Countless other planes of cruelty were born from the Betrayer Gods’ hatred, and those realms’ evil depths endlessly churned forth horrors that lived only to transform peace into suffering, and righteousness into arrogance and greed.

Released unto the mortal world once more, the Betrayer Gods’ urge to ruin was supplanted by the desire to dominate, and they turned their sights first to the archmage who had freed them, making Vespin the first of their many mortal thralls. Records of diabolical texts safeguarded within the libraries of the “Alabaster Lyceum” suggest that Vespin, now long dead, serves the “Betrayer Gods” to this day—now as a devil at the left hand of the Lord of the Hells. These corrupt gods sought out the shattered remnants of the devils they had crafted and the demons they conscripted, and secretly created with them a fearsome new kingdom on the far end of the world, the capital of which was named Ghor Dranas, the Gathering of Shadows.

In this land, where the twisted power of the “Betrayer Gods’” corrupted planes seeped into the world, the lords of evil welcomed mortals whose heartlessness and lust for power made them susceptible to the gods’ grand promises. The most fertile soil of all for these noxious seeds lay in mortal hearts obsessed with the infinite power of the arcane. With a legion of the damned behind them, the “Betrayer Gods” soon made their presence known to the world with a surprise assault on Vasselheim itself.

Though much of the city was reduced to rubble, Vasselheim weathered the initial assault, saved by the intervention of their protectors, the metallic dragons, and even a number of the “Prime Deities” themselves. The creators descended to trade blows with their former brethren. The battle, which pitted gods against mortals and heroes against demons, raged ceaselessly for twenty days and nights, until the dark forces were forced to retreat, their surprise attack thwarted.

Yet this victory was a tainted one. Evil had been repulsed momentarily, but the revelation of such a terrible foe incited an arcane arms race. Trust was shattered indefinitely: if mortals could fall under the sway of the “Betrayer Gods”, who could be true allies? If ruin like this could be unleashed under the watchful eyes of divinity, what value did mortal lives hold? Fearing all powers but their own, the most self-interested and singular human arcanists warped their greatest creations, magical instruments of prosperity and joy, into arms and armor of horrific power. The “dwarves’” fascination with rock and earth turned toward isolation as they burrowed further into the mountains, using their divine gifts to animate legions of autonomous golems to protect their ancestral halls. “Elves” used their understanding of creation’s beauty and intricacies to weave spells of unimaginable destructive force, the likes of which Exandria had never before seen.

For the first time since the awakening of the Primordials, the focus of magic was warfare. The gods themselves agreed to join their children on the field of battle, descending from the heavens to take up arms once more for the war now referred to as the Calamity.

The Calamity

Few records remain of the terrible war that followed, but its effects are still felt today. Most tales that remain are of great champions who the Prime Deities blessed with their power. Some deities created warriors of their own from light and holy fire. Others imbued fragments of their power into the weapons now called Vestiges of Divergence. More still bestowed blessings upon mortals and called them champions. One tale even tells of a champion blessed by three of the gods in their times of greatest need. Now all but forgotten, this Apotheon was forced by fate into terrible battles across the world.

The sheer magnitude of the energies unleashed in the ensuing battles of gods and mortals frayed the boundaries holding back the elemental chaos, spilling unbridled destruction into the world and bringing utter annihilation. Even the ley lines that direct the flow of magic across Exandria like veins direct blood through the body show signs of being warped by the raw power that the Calamity unleashed. Some well-preserved ruins of the ancient civilizations remain, such as the Drowned City of Cael Morrow in the lands of Marquet, but for the most part, all traces of the old world were erased from the face of Exandria.

So great was the loss of life during the war that even liberal estimates suggest no more than a third of Exandria’s population survived it. This unthinkable devastation inspired some civilizations to flee Exandria entirely and seek refuge on other planes, scattering the Children of Creation across the multiverse. By the war’s end, the only bastion of civilization left on the face of Exandria was the Dawn City itself: Vasselheim.

The Divergence

In the wake of the Calamity, the victorious Prime Deities once more banished their traitorous kin to their realms of deception and hate. The world entered a long, dark period of recovery, as history had to be recovered and purpose restored, and the threat of the Betrayer Gods still loomed heavily upon the minds of all. Even the Prime Deities felt guilt for their role in the conflict, for it was the unrestrained clash of divine power that had unleashed such horror upon the world.

The records of the Scalebearers assert that the Platinum Dragon and the Lawbearer descended upon Vasselheim and spoke a decision: the Prime Deities would depart from the world and establish a Divine Gate that would forever prevent any god from ever acting directly upon Exandria again. This proclamation shocked the other “Prime Deities” and the beleaguered survivors of the war in equal measure, but while mortals railed against this announcement, the other gods quickly realized that the decision of the two most dutiful and self-sacrificing of their number was unimpeachable and just.

Thus, in hopes of ensuring such ruin would not befall Exandria again, they left their children to rebuild civilization anew within the walls of Vasselheim and beyond. The Creators returned to their own realms, sealing all divine powers behind their newly constructed Divine Gate. Only in this way could they prevent their corrupted brethren from physically returning to the Material Plane.

Much time has passed since, and the world has been reborn once again. The gods still exhibit their influence and guidance from beyond the Divine Gate, bestowing their knowledge and power to their most devout worshipers, but the path of mortals is now their own to make. New cities, kingdoms, and cultures have retaken the world, building over the ashes of the old. New songs fill the air, and the hope of a brighter future drives people day after day, while buried ruins and forgotten relics remind all people of a darker time—and of mistakes that should never be repeated.

Names of the Divergence

Of these many formative events, the tale of the “Divergence” is the most oft-told among the many faiths and civilizations of the world. When seeking the truth of this event, the researchers of the “Cobalt Soul” found that it was called by many titles around the world, for many different reasons.

• The Second Spark. This name is most often used by those who study the arcane, for it was the gods giving them a second chance to use magic for the betterment of the world.
• The Penance. Priests, clerics, and religious scholars across Exandria refer to the departure of the gods by this name, for they see it as a self-imposed atonement for the gods’ role in the ravaging of the world.
• The Divergence. The most common name for this event, the “Divergence”, is used by people of all classes and creeds. This descriptive name simply refers to the gods’ final act of divergence from the mortal world.