Faerun

They say there are many worlds, many more than our own. Each world has its own history. Its own story. Among the greatest, is the world of Abeir-Toril, a world of a great many races, creatures, magic and mystery. A grand place, fit for a setting of adventure and intrigue, especially on the coastal shores of Faerûn. Above and below...   This is a world whose mountains house not just magma and stone, but twisting mines and cities of the Svirfneblin, Deep Gnomes, who harvest the rubies, gems and other precious stones with their stone weaving. In the deep depths of their mines, they carry no lights, for their eyes see in the dark. They watch for Underdark creatures, Hook Horrors with blades for arms, Gricks who meld into the stone wall, and, most dangerous off all, the other intelligent denizens of that world: the Illithids, the wicked Drow and the Duergar. A dangerous place. An entire world, beneath the surface. More dangerous than the land above, but not by much.   That surface world would look familiar, to you or I. There are cities and forests and lakes and bogs. And yet their harbor their own dangers. The wooded groves outside the cities are the haven of bandits and thugs, but also creatures of the wood: Goblins and Bugbears, Shambling mounds who can devour a horse whole, Harpies who steal children in the night and Wyverns who make their roosts in the forests that line mountain ranges.   The bogs are home to lizardfolk, bullywugs and mongogols, not all that dissimilar from one another, yet they wage war none-the-less, the lizardfolk fighting for the chromatic dragon they worship, the bullywugs and mongogols for territory or game. Crones, nighthags and greenhags, make the bogs their coven, where they trade in trinkets and baubles — a voodoo doll for a besmirched lover, fingernails of a thief, the scalp of a forgotten King, a pickled cyclops eye, jars filled with green and fleshy things — and obtain ingredients for their black magics that prolong their unnatural lives.   Magic is common here, and comes in many sizes and forms. Both Good and Evil; the restoration of health, or necromancy and defiling of corpses. Among the most novice, parlor tricks can be performed: changing the color of lights, producing the sound of whispers, preventing a bouquet of flowers from wilting. And among the powerful: teleportation across worlds — through worlds — reclamation from death, tearing open a void to satiate an ever hungering Elder Evil, or a Wish that could change the outcome of the future … or the past. Magic that can pierce the veil that separates the many planes; the material, the astral, the Hells, Feywild or the Abyss. Shadowfell mimics reality, a reflection or echo of our the material world, but cast in bleaker tones. A desolate place, and the planar home of the Raven Queen, a deity of fate and destiny, and therefore death.   There are many Gods who watch over Toril. Men and women of valor and glory live in this world as paragons and lightning rods for their god. Clerics channel their devotion to them and can commit great acts of kindness or malice. Fanatics for their god can be those who give everything for the poor and downtrodden, or they can be the fanatical variety that partake in human sacrifices and restoration of power for their betrayer god. This is a world of spectrum, of great good and great evil, but most reside somewhere in the middle.   The cities of Faerûn function much likes any other: they are places of both wealth and poverty, of corruption and goodness, of opportunity and pitfalls. Hubs of commerce and culture, these are places with rich history. Neverwinter, a city who sits upon a great hot bed of magma, never feels a cold day. It nearly succumbed to the Spell Plague and evil devices of a Necromancer who took up residence in Neverwinter Wood.   And many more, like Baldur’s Gate or Waterdeep, two more coastal towns with their economy or culture. Or Ten Towns, the coalition of settlements that make up Icewind Dale, a frozen tundra often called the Savage North. It lives up to its name, a place where the cruel barbarian tribes pillage the small fishing and trading towns. Those that survive must also endure the beasts of that winterscape, the centipede-like Remorhaz, devilish Ice Mephits, or Winter Wolves. Exploration is dangerous, stray too far into the mountains and you’ll lumber into a Yeti or, worst yet, Ice Giants; lumbering beasts capable of intelligence, strength, misdirection and magic.   Adventure awaits for those who seek it.