As an overworked DM with over-splatbooked and rules-knowledgeable players, I was intrigued when I heard about the new edition of dungeons and dragons. I was promised easier preparation. More balanced math. A rules database that meant I didn’t have to track down a copy of Complete Broken just to make sure my players weren’t pulling a fast-one on me.

But it was the fluff that made me fall in love: A war between gods and primordial beings at the dawn of creation. Eladrin lords who make their home in the feywild. Ancient pacts between a corrupt empire and traitorous immortals.

Points of light in a big, dark world.

“This”, I said to myself, “is cool. I’m going to use this.”

So I started with the points of light. What did that mean? In discussion on ENWorld and elsewhere, it became clear to me that points of light were not--and could not be--stable. In one such discussion, I said “A candle is a point of light in the darkness, but that doesn’t mean it can survive a stiff wind”. There were wolves in the woods. The darkness was encroaching, and only the brave PCs could hold it back. And that seemed to be the approach taken in Keep on the Shadowfell.

But that’s only one possibility. What if that point of light wasn’t a candle in the wind? What if it was a spark in tinder? If empires crumble, then surely they must rise--That’s the model I wanted to use.

It seems like most of the fluff that WotC is giving us deals with the northern part of the former empire of Nerath. This is the part of the empire that was conquered by an army of gnolls and other evil humanoids (as detailed in the Dragon article on Yeenoghu. It’s also strongly implied that this area used to be part of the Tiefling empire of Bael Turath.

But what about Bael Turath’s ancient enemy, the Dragonborn empire of Arkhosia? We’ve been told that the dragonborn are a desert people, so it makes sense for Arkhosia to be in the southern part of Nerath and beyond.

So now we can start to form a picture of the Southern Lands. Since White Ruin’s Gnoll horde never advanced past the Nerathi capitol, the cities immediately to the south are in good shape. Without a central authority, they’ve devolved into city-states and petty kingdoms, but they still have enough wealth that the lives of their citizens aren’t as harsh as in the north. The petty kingdoms vie for dominance--sometimes through war, but just as often through trade and diplomacy. The arts, whether magical or mundane, are paramount. Something very much like renaissance Italy.

Further south, and our influence shifts to the American southwest. The area that was once the capital of Arkhosia has been transformed into a vast desert. Though the desert was technically a part of Nerath, the empire never exerted much control. Here we have small human trading settlements. Ground rich in precious metals attracts Dwarven and Goblin miners. Nomadic dragonborn wander the desert. At the far southern end of the desert lies a vast and unexplored jungle, patterned after the jungles of Central and South America. And that jungle, I’ve decided, will be the ultimate destination of the PCs.

Next: The Quest

arscott