The campaign setting is something we’ve nicknamed the Pale Dominions and was cooked up by a bunch of us over a game called Dawn of Worlds. It’s got all of your typical Fantasy Heartbreaker features, so if you can imagine it as part of your character’s story, it’s probably somewhere in the world.

Geographically, the Pale Dominions are spread across one continent (roughly the size of western Europe) and two large and several smaller islands.

On the main continent:

• The northwest peninsula, isolated from the mainland by a forbidding mountain range and cradling a great shallow bay, is dominated by ancient swamps, forests, and a cursed city roamed by the spirits of the dead.
• The center of the continent is rugged and mountainous throughout, featuring two peaks: one is Anexus, the bridge to the heavens, and the other, Flametongue, is the volcano home to the tieflings and the azers.
• The west coast features an ancient forest inhabited by fey.
• In the north are fertile riverlands of the Afon river valley, inhabited by men known as the Afonites. They are bordered to their east by a large desert and their sister people, the followers of Aheknu.
• The southwestern peninsula is mostly low hills, fertile grasslands, and forests, and it is home to the Kingdoms of Rel.
• The south and southeastern coasts are rocky and wind-swept, home to the Sea Peoples and the Dwarves of the Hills and Seas.

To the east is a snowy and heavily forested landmass at the edge of the world, inhabited by strange men and dragons, and to the south lies another large island.

On the peoples of the dominions:

• The most ancient are the Darastrix, the High Dragons, masters of arcane magic. They watch events unfold below them from their floating city of Iskorkathel, although some of their number have departed for other locales.
• Aheknu, the eldest of the blue dragons, created the race of men to serve him. Many millennia later, a great prophet led tens of thousands of those men out of their desert home and to the Arian River in the Afon River Valley, turning their backs on their God. Aheknu and his people continue to build monuments to his own greatness, while the Kingdom of Afon forges on in its search for the truth of the divine.
• The other ancient lineage of men, calling themselves the First Men, sailed from the East and settled the southern coast. They have spread far and wide, bringing their seafaring expertise, their voluminous trade, and their penchant for war with them everywhere they go.
• The Dwarves are also an ancient people, and find themselves spread across the world. While they all consider themselves brothers and sisters, the clans of the Mountains don’t always see eye-to-eye with the clans of the Hills, to say nothing of their cousins on the Seas.
• The Elves once lived in the magical northwest of the continent in great numbers until calamity destroyed their greatest city and scattered them to the winds.
• The Halflings, too, had a great city by the bay, a great hub of commerce… but it was not even thirty years ago that it was sacked by Thrask, Warlord of the Sea Peoples, who now gathers his strength to strike back at the Orc Horde that has come hurtling out of the mountains.