Innistrad

The World

On the plane of Innistrad, horrors stalk the shadows and scratch at doors in the night. Humanity is beset on all sides: vampires thirst for human blood, werewolves live for the thrill of the hunt, the restless spirits of the dead haunt the living, and no corpse is safe from reanimation at the hands of cruel necromancers or cunning scientists. Only their grim determination—and their staunch faith in the protection of their patron archangel, Avacyn—has allowed humans to survive in this nightmarish realm.

Horrors of the Night

The people of Innistrad are surrounded by monsters. Almost without exception, anything that is not human, whether it’s a rat or an angel, is a potential enemy. Even the traditional allies of humanity—from angels and gryffs to herons and hounds—are unreliable at best, as the madness that grips the angels seems to seep into every living thing. And at the same time, humanity’s age-old enemies grow ever more dangerous. The specific horrors that the people of Innistrad fear most are all reflections of humanity’s darker nature. Werewolves are a living embodiment of the secret rage and violence that hide in the human heart. Vampires are the bodily manifestation of carnal desire, hedonistic cravings, and bloodlust. Zombies and geists—the restless spirits of the dead—paint the eventual future of all people in the starkest terms, underlining the grim truths of human mortality. Demons are the unholy inversion of humanity’s spiritual longings—the shadow side of the angels’ brightness. Still, the most dreadful creatures of Innistrad lurk within human towns and cities, pursuing their twisted schemes and unholy desires in the heart of civilization. These are the humans that have been consumed by Innistrad’s darkness. Sinister cultists give themselves over to demons and other dark forces. Depraved necromancers raise the dead to do their bidding. Obsessive scholars pry into secrets best left hidden. Crazed scientists toy with forces of life and death in their effort to create artificial life or harness the energy that remains in the spirits of the dead. And even among the common folk—on Innistrad as on every plane—some simply give in to selfish desires and violent rage, killing with knife and garrote rather than sorcery.

Defenders of Humanity

Humanity is not without protectors in this nightmare land, and the foremost of those have always been the angels. Led by the glorious archangel Avacyn, the hosts of angels is few in number but has long stood with the people of Innistrad to face the horrors of the night. Except in rare cases where the angels directly involve themselves in combat with monsters, their power is mediated through the Church of Avacyn, which serves as both spiritual and temporal authority in the four provinces of Innistrad. The priests of the church perform ritual blessings on the faithful and their homes to ward off evil, and the church’s soldiers and inquisitors have long hunted vampires and werewolves that prey on the people in their charge. But that was before Avacyn went mad. Without warning, the searing fury of the archangel—usually reserved for the greatest foes of humanity—was turned on villages full of seemingly innocent people. Angels under Avacyn’s leadership impaled the innocent on their spears and scoured the earth with celestial fire. Convinced that the sins of humanity had brought down Avacyn’s wrath, the church took up the archangel’s cause and sought to purge all sin through inquisition and execution. With even the angels and the church turned against humanity, few were left to take up arms against Innistrad’s evils. Here and there, renegade cathars disobeyed the mandate of the church and continued to hunt vampires and werewolves instead of punishing the innocent. But increasingly, the common folk—farmers with their pitchforks, smiths with their hammers, and retired soldiers taking battle-worn swords down from above the mantle—discovered new reserves of strength and resiliency to stand against the horrors of the darkness, even when those horrors were parish priests and holy knights.

Type

Dimensional plane

Included Locations