General Background

In this campaign setting, you will find yourselves in the United Republics of Haldeve and Nortonia, a human nation. In the Republics, rationality, pragmatism and ingenuity are valued to a high degree, no one believes in magic and few believe in miracles.

Non-human races are treated as "sub-human." Their ancestors, the indigenous peoples of lands occupied by the Humans, were massacred and enslaved, and almost all died of a mysterious plague that spread across the continent after the arrival of men. Non-humans are regarded as inferior, sad members of dying barbaric races whose woes are largely the result of their own inherent weaknesses, and who survive only due to human charity. They are generally regarded as shiftless, lazy, untrustworthy and potentially dangerous if allowed to congregate in large numbers. With the exception of Elves, who control an independent kingdom far to the north known as the Rouvanian League, the only non-Humans known to exist now are either slaves to Humans or are free but occupying the lowest rungs of Human society.

In all of the Human nations of this campaign setting, and most extensively in the Republic of Haldeve, magic does not work. Races who normally have spell-like abilities find they cannot use these abilities. No spell-casting of any kind -- divine or arcane -- will work either. Magic does appear to work far away from major human cities or settlements, and -- in somewhat limited fashion -- deep underground.

Players will start this campaign in the South Docks District of Silltown, which is the provincial capital of Karmarthia Province, on the far western edge of the Republic of Nortonia.