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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 855658" data-attributes="member: 6533">Well in the last genuine Homebrew I did the world ended up taking some odd forms.The vast vast vast majority of the world was wracked by a horrible conflict between the Gnomish Imperium and the Orcish Khannate.   These two super powers had moved beyond the boundaries of their original nations to pursue their vindictive and awesome conflict across all the 'unknown' regions of the earth.PCs most often came from cultures that were being forced to take sides in the conflict as the war came to their homes and removed them.   The Orcs for slavery and the Gnomes for safety.So the largest area of the world could be described as a region in which various less 'developed' nations attempted to survive or resist the appearance of nation armies that more or less closely resembled those of Riegn: The Conqueror.There were exceptions.   The conflict had started on the banks of a large but largely landlocked sea in what could generally be called the south of the world.   In this sea was a sub-continental peninsula known as the Green Realms.These would have been the normal European area if the necessity of developing in response to recurrent invasions by the more highly organized Khanate, no more Orcish in fact than the Persian Empire was Persian.The Gnomes developed vast and unfathomable technological, magical, and martial prowress which they used to build a large and far flung empire that nicely avoided conflict with their local 'allies.'The Elves developed a very deeply militaristic and oppresive culture based on their enslavement of humans and myconids.  My players insisted on calling them the Reichselves.  More traditional types of Elves existed they were simpy deeply disenfranchised.Humanity, with the exception of certain far flung nations, was shattered into small communities.   The only real element of human culture is a common emphasis on training and exporting heroes and savants.   While they know that they can never rival the longer lived nations for knowledge and skill they also know that they can thus produce the perfect combination of disposability and power to make good 'adventurers' and generalists.  The other element of cultural unity is the Mountain, a large ruin/museum of the greatest human cultures and civilizations created by the most elite heroic orders of humanity, themselves the last recievers of the traditions and knowledges of the once grand human civilization of the Green Realms.  Most other nations allow the orders to cull their resident slave or refugee human populations for potential recruits.   The orders provide an even more valuable service than cheap smart labor.The Dwarves have become, beside the gnomes, the most succesful race of the Green Realm.   In reponse to the devastation of their homeland and the success of the Gnomish counter-attack they have become a the favored sons of the Gnomish hegemony and a people who know themselves as a nation though they have known of their own.   The Dwarvish corporation now has its hands in many pies and its people in many places.   They have also developed a strange sea culture by pioneering the use of submarines and floating controllable islands.The free regions make up the rest of the nations around the inner sea that are spared from the conflict.   These include an Al-Quadim style Caliphate that has extensive power and holdings of its own, but is primarily defended by its close ties with nations in the elemental planes.   There is also a Rokugan style coast, and then the Republic of Honri.A place that my players described as madness itself, but which I found rather pleasant.   The Republic was very large and powerful and populated by an Iroquis writ large confederacy of intelligent and highly evolved species of animals.   I'm not talking anthropomorphic, I'm talking about tool using evolutions of animals fit to ascend in their various environments.   Things like six armed sea otters who could propel themselves on very clever snake like tails.   Crane like beings with elaborately prehensile tails and bladed wings.   That sort of thing.There was also a very enigmatic continent which the Dwarvish Corporation had begun colonizing semi-secretly until all of their colonies suddenly dissapeared and they felt it necessary to call for a concerted effort of all the free nations and the Imperium to investigate what new threat might arise from them and renew settling.That's where all the PCs went eventually.   There were no native humanoids, though there were isolated and unexplainable communities of goblinoids, lizard men, and troglogdytes.  The rest of the continent was inhabited by the sort of hyper intelligent large monsters that gave PCs nightmares.  In most of the continent these were simply harsh harrasers of the invaders, primarily refugees brought here by the imperium.   The PCs spent most of their days keeping the monsters off of the back of the villagers, but they always knew there was something else going on.    Every day the imperium would send columns of men, supplies, and Engines into the interior, and few would ever return save for the Citizens, the elite of the Imperium, themselves.And one day the Citizens would come to the PCs and ask them if they would like to serve on the third front.  The non-Khannate action.</blockquote>

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