WOTC Setting Losers (Like me) Post here!
Let's roll out the non-winners! I'll go first.
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The Reborn World
Ethos: It is a world both newborn and ancient, a world of bronze, not steel, a world where the newly Freed fight ancient Abominations...and create legends.
1) Who are the heroes? They are the Freed Races, men and elves and dwarves and orcs and others. They are delvers, kings, explorers, crusaders against the darkness and the midwives of gods.
2) What do they do? Driven by pride, greed, or both, they are humans seeking to learn the secrets of dwarvish ironworking, or dwarves who seek to protect this knowledge against thieves. The priest-kings defend their against invasion by men or monsters. The explorers chart the rivers, cross the mountains, and dare to sail beyond sight of land. The crusaders return to the vast realms below the ground to battle the Abominations. Wizard put their minds and souls at risk to discover the secrets of the arcane, while others attempt to master the sorcerous taint within themselves. The faithful see their faith given form as new gods, young yet eternal, arise in response to their belief.
3) Threat, conflicts, villains: Man made the gods, but the gods did not make man. That task was done by the Abominations, the things which lived below the scarred and airless ruin of the surface. Slaves they sought, and the lakes of flesh gave rise to all the ancestors of those who now live in the sun. Then, the gods came, forged of pure faith, and they remade the surface into a land of seas, and forests, and life, and they led the faithful from their bondage. Now, the old masters remain below, cursing the gods and their followers, endlessly plotting a return to the old order, but this time, they shall dominate the surface world as well as the lands below. Safe far below the ground, they loose an endless stream of new horrors on the world above.
Furthermore, in the time since the gods departed, generations ago to humans and almost yesterday to the elves, conflicts have arisen among the Freed. Humans have spread far, encroaching on the lands of other races. Dwarves guard their secret knowledge jealously. Elves watch the world change in an eyeblink, and begin to fear...
4) Nature of Magic: Divine magic is everywhere, the gods newly formed out of the protoplasm of raw faith. The entire surface of the world is a product of divine creation, an event which occurred just beyond living memory, and the power of the gods still permeates every rock, every tree, every drop of water. Arcane magic is the magic of the Abominations, and what the Freed know of it, they know by theft and trickery. Those who delve too deeply into its secrets find only madness, but the Freed fear that, without the power of the arcane, they will not be able to withstand the Abominations should they rise from the depths. Some believe the answer lies along a third path, and odd cults and secret cabals seek to master the power of pure thought.
5) What makes it different? A world untamed and unexplored. A world where an iron sword is a treasure in itself. The First Cities, built by the gods as models of all cities to come. The death of a single elf, and why it caused the gods to no longer live directly among men. Men who create Gods.