DM's Guide to Menos and the Taerekel World Anvil

What is Taerekel and what is Menos?

Taerekel is a campaign setting for D&D 5e that is part urban fantasy, part alternate history. It includes re-tooled lore from the Forgotten Realms setting as well. This planet, named Taerekel, has survived conflict after conflict in its long history and has changed hands between dominant societies many times over. Wars and catastrophes that wiped out entire nations, destroyed entire land masses, and even drove the Deities themselves in to hiding have taken place here, but as of yet no seeming-apocalypse has been enough to stop the resilient peoples from bouncing back. Civilization is now entering a mostly post-industrial era in the cities with rural areas struggling to catch up. Adventuring is not considered a modern profession. While technology is in many ways equal to or even exceeding our own in the real world, it also lacks in many ways with availability of technology artificially regulated by class.

• Menos is the massive super continent on which all of known civilization exists. Here modern society tries to co-exist with a natural state of a world filled with monsters and powerful magics, preventing it from being truly conquered. Bastions of civilization are surrounded by untamed wilderness. Caravan roads cut across the entire continent like arteries and serve as the main mode of transport, smaller roads trickling from them to their eventual end in villages, towns or cities. There are eight provinces in total on Menos: Inlet Province, Northern Province, the Sea of Lights, Southern Province, Eastern Province, Western Province, Northwestern Province, and Central Province.
• Islands and island chains of note near Menos include the Cat Tail Keys, Peakburst Isles, Islands of Shorooste, and the Harbor of Teeth. There are other smaller islands out there but they are too far from the mainland and too small for people to typically be living there. Perhaps there are some oddballs...
• Katcheetinal is theorized to be another massive continent but no one can really be sure. It has been cut off from from Menos since the early Age of Dragons, a time before written history. From then and on to the modern day it is shrouded in an opaque bubble, so encrusted with salt pinkened by red tides that there are miles of an arctic-ice like wasteland between the wall of the bubble and wherever a ship can hope to dock.

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There are lots and lots of sub-folders. These are so you can browse by area and narrow it down to what NPCs are possibly present as a default.

• Bars and Inns are never listed in sub-folders beyond which city they reside in.
• Restaurants, Temples, Police Stations etc. are listed in sub-folders though.
• Purely Meta information will be in the Meta folder, like this article.

Currency Related

D&D currency makes no god damn sense, and this is a pseudo-real world setting in a sense. So when deciding prices for items that are non-magical (magic items are way more difficult and need to be priced from a balancing standpoint) here are some RL comparisons:

• 1 Platinum = 100 Dollars
• 1 Gold = 10 Dollars
• 1 Silver = 1 Dollar
• 1 Copper = 10 Cents

Electrum is not a relevant piece of currency and is not used.

Art Asset Related

• Art here is by Spooky unless otherwise mentioned.
• Spooky art is not for re-use/re-posting without personal permission.
• Art by other artists will have a source and are used only as permitted!
• Follow external source links to find the permissions that artist has.

Time Related

Seasons

They advance with the same weather patterns as the US, with the north being inherently colder and the south being inherently hotter. Other than that this is a land that was warped in chaotic ways long ago. General weather or environment might not be what one would expect.

Dates, Days, Hours

Here is the Taerekel calendar.
Taerekel has 24hr days. Because photoperiod is more maintained by the presence of a literal sun god than by the tilt of the planet there can be places with unnaturally short or long days. For example: The Sea of Lights and its eternal night.

Holidays

The most commonly celebrated holidays in the US are represented with a fantasy variant for all but Halloween, which is already perfect so it just gets made a bit longer. These holidays are:

• Awakening Eve (New Year's Eve)
• New Year's Rise (New Year's)
• Height of Winterbloom* (Valentine's)
• Summer Solstice (Less a holiday, more a shared date)
• Pride Month (Some places are so hot they hold their pride parades in the fall)
• Halloween*
• Favored Harvest (Thanksgiving)
• Hearthgather* (Christmas)
• Winter Solstice (Less a holiday, more a shared date)

* = Multiple day holiday on the Taerekel calendar.
There are original holidays made specifically for Taerekel's calendar that don't have real world equivalents to draw from. These holidays are:

• Mark of Survival
• Day of Rain
• Day of Fire
• Forest Guardians' Feast
• Bloodboil Festival
• Day of the Eight
• Day of Guardians
• Day of Twilight
• Day of Quiet

Language Related

Draconic still uses Iokharic script. It uses this specific translator. Humanoid individuals who have draconic as a first and only language for a significantly long period of time have an accent vaguely in the australian flavor. This is largely associated with poor or isolated dragonborn and kobold communities.
Thieves cant is largely spoken and uses this translator. The further away from a significant trade route one is, the more likely it is even someone completely fluent will encounter phrases they don't know, since it is an ever-evolving language. In isolated areas new phrases may crop up and never spread or outdated phrases might never be cycled out. This is known as local jib, and some insular thieves guilds rely entirely on it.

Race & Monster Related

Dragons: The Chromatic Extermination is a major historical event within the last century that is widely believed to have been a successful effort. Chromatic dragons were hunted and slain to the point of extinction out of fear thanks to the actions of the red dragon Tchazzar. The vast majority of people think every last chromatic is dead. This is how a DM should play it unless specifically introducing a chromatic dragon character or plot element, because they very nearly were driven to true extinction. A small smattering survives spread thin across the continent hidden in polymorph in society or in the most humanoid-inaccessible regions, such as the highest mountain peaks and the deepest parts of the Lotus Tendrils. Some managed to take refuge in the Southern Province where they were granted a blind eye turned by the various bodies of government. There are very, very few. A chromatic who isn't well traveled might actually believe they are the last of their kind, or might be so isolated they either never knew the Chromatic Extermination took place or don't know it finally ended.

• Short of having a significant reason to have interacted with a chromatic dragon in some capacity in their background or being an ex-southern provincial government figure of high rank, your PCs should have no reason to be aware chromatics exist inherently- not even highly educated ones.
• Individuals have varying opinions on the chromatic extermination and in some circles it can be incredibly divisive. Some call it exactly what it is: a horrible genocide punishing multiple similar sentient creatures for the crimes of one. Others think it is a necessary evil, a conspiracy, divinely demanded, awful but so were the chromatics in their opinion, and so on. There are all forms of takes, and everyone seems to have one.

Dragonborn: The purer a dragonborn's draconic blood is, the more likely they are to have related health problems. They might appear more like their dragon ancestors but that isn't always good. Yellow dragonborn are prone to spinal issues because of elongated vertebrae and the weight of their rib cages, for example. They are also prone to various congenital problems with organs, such as oversized hearts, poorly functioning kidneys, undersized elongated lungs, and pinched nerves. Gravid individuals may be prone to egg binding because of oversized eggs. While there are plenty of healthy dragonborn with high percentages of dragon blood anyone who has known a significant number of them has probably met one or two with a serious disability. Keep this in mind when designing NPCs.

• Goblins and Kobolds abhor each other as a general rule because of their history, which is fairly uncommon among other races.
• Drow, Gnolls and Orcs are the people society kicks the most. That said, it is mostly humans and other elves who look down upon them- or any other races for that matter.
• Humans and elves, particularly high elves, tend to get away with their racist bullshit just based on being a majority. Human and elf supremacy movements are both concerns, especially in the central, north, eastern and outlet provinces.
• Aarakocra from their originating isles tend to be xenophobic as all hell and don't like anyone. They are distrusting and paranoid, and thus remain insular. This is not true for aarakocra populations in any other region or island chain.
• Minotaurs, aarakocra, kenku, gnolls, triton, dragonborn, tortles, lizardfolk, firbolgs, loxidon and tabaxi cannot breed with most other humanoids*. This is either because of severe difference in reproductive anatomy (egg layers w/non-egg layers for example,) parental care (lizardfolk, tortle, aarakocra and triton can't nurse mammals,) or sheer anatomical disparity. Some similar enough races, such as lizardfolk and dragonborn or aarakocra and kenku, can cross. They must be nearly identical in all 3 of the above categories. *This list may not be complete.