I may be running the next session on Saturday, so hopefully I'll get started on continuing Broken Temple this next week! In the meantime, I thought I'd post some other stuff I've been thinking about.
A Bigger Picture
The PCs come from small villages and towns in the Theralis Valleys, and for the most part, they've seen their home town, the road to the city of Theralis, the city itself, Eastpass, and 50-100 miles north to the Bunahken tribal camps. Athan, under the tutelage of his mother, spent some time in the east-side wilderness of the Theralis Valleys, and Merideth did a fair amount of trade travel along the river through the canyons where the Broken Temple is located.
The Theralis Valleys are a reasonably large place, and you could visit a hundred small villages, patches of wilderness, subtly different local wines, old ruins, strange towns, secret caves, glorious views of nature, abandoned vineyards, hermit herbalists, and genuinely dangerous areas of deep forest without exhausting their scope. But there is a bigger world out there, and one which the PCs will eventually come to know.
Theralis is located in a set of valleys within a peninsula mountain range; wilderness and coast is to the west, and orc tribes are to the east. To the North are the trade routes to other city states, and beyond that, the mainland.
City States
Theralis is not the only city-state of its kind, although the others possess their own unique cultural personalities. I don't want to give up too much here, but suffice it to say that they are also fighting orcs, and may be potent allies or hindrances in the future.
The Civilized North
Farther north are the great cities and kingdoms. They are the real power on the peninsula, and compared to them Theralis is a poor, backwater, third world country whose wine-based economy is largely dependant upon northern demand for it. The trade route north travels through the city-states, but ultimately arrives here.
According to Theralis knowledge, the north has mighty arcanists who can rain fiery death upon entire armies, summon earthquakes, and travel to the outer realms of existence; healers who can bring an entire warband from the brink of death to full health and cure terrible diseases; espers who foretell the future with frightful accuracy.
Also according to Theralis knowledge, the northerners are arrogant, soft and incompetent. So take either with a grain of salt.
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