"Rat-catchers, sellswords, tomb-robbers, heroes-for-hire, and the whole lot of them - we would have you think that we are noble, that we do what we do because no others can. In truth, it is good we are a rare bunch, that there are few who survive to maturity in our trade. If there were as many adventurers in this city as merchants, the whole place would be burned to the ground in under a single Green Moon."
-The Fighter, Ignatio of the Bloodless-Hammer
Welcome Adventurers!
You are currently entering the world guide for the fantasy world of Adra in the 3rd Era of the Common Calendar. On these pages, you can hopefully find any basic information that you would need to create and play a character in the world of Adra. Some of the content in these pages is mechanical in nature, some is informative, and some is both! From this page is a very broad summary of Adra in the third era, and after that, some links to help you navigate to the various other pages that you may be interested in reading for your character. Players are not required to read all of this, though players should find information that is relevant to the character that they are building. For example, a player building a character from a certain nation should read the background entry on that nation's dominant culture.
Adra in the Third Era:
Adra is a word with many meanings. Most specifically, it refers to two continents in the prime material plane, Adra Majoris, the largest of the continents, and Adra Minoris, the smallest of the continents. It also refers to the prime material plane itself, sometimes referred to as Adra Prime. Finally, it is the word for the world, and the planes as a whole. In Adra, there are a number of outer planes, where towering gods and powerful eldar scheme and battle, in an ever burning war between the forces of law and chaos. To some of them, the prime material plane, with its constraints and its mundanity, seems like a side show, to be safely ignored. In truth, Adra Prime is the stage for where the most influential forces ultimately make their most subtle plays for power. Its history stretches back many thousands of years, into myth and legend; each generation, each civilization dealt with their own challenges. In some period long ago, some long lost generation of humans, elves, and dwarves faced such strife that the heavens descended upon them – the Black Reach, a shimmering dark wall, towering into the sky for as far as one’s eyes care to go, rose all around Adra, splitting it off from… what, no mortals today know for certain. This Black Reach splits not only the folks of the Prime Material Plane from this other world, but the extra planar beings, and the gods themselves as well. Today, the Black Reach is a permanent feature on the landscape of Adra, and a subject of much inquiry from its most ambitious scholars. To many extra-planar beings, it represents the ultimate security from beyond, or the ultimate challenge to their ambitions.
During the 3rd Era, a new set of challenges faces Adra. The Era, a period on the Common Imperial Calendar, was marked by the loss of the second capital of the Arissian Empire, Aegyr, to an army of dragons. With its loss, a series of cascading defeats and disasters set the once indomitable empire to the very edge of its disintegration. Its provinces rebelled and claimed their independence, and those that didn’t were essentially left on their own to fend for themselves, with the imperial legions in ruin. Cities burned, emperors went mad, and the state of the world that held firm for more than a millennium had come to an end. The Arissians in the end were able to turn things around – a number of political and military reforms saw some ebbing away of the absolute authority of the imperial house, and a rethinking of the old ways of approaching war, for new enemies, and a new age of conflict. Today the Arissian Empire still controls one of the largest empires in Adra, and their capital of Eldios stands as the largest city in the world. Even still, their empire is a shadow of its former self. As their prestige has fallen, the prestige of their rivals has risen in turn – to the west, the Arissians’ longtime rival, the Tesiphonian Empire, has slowly entered a golden age, or at least a gilded one. Their economy thriving, and their hegemony over the western continent almost unchallenged, it is a good time to be a satrap. To the East of Arissia, the Aegyri Dragon Kingdom has fully emplaced itself in a complex feudal system, establishing a series of four Archduchies in the Lowlands, and turning the once second capital of the Arissian Empire into a city of dragons, of dragonborn, and a bastion of draconic culture and supremacy in the world, perhaps for the first time in thousands of years. It is a marked change in the relationship between Dragons and the folk of Adra – and only a few centuries after a cadre of dragons and their minions besieged and sacked the greatest and oldest of the Dwarvish Underkingdoms: Drumshiel.
Despite the loss of Drumshiel, it is anything but a time of insignificance and destitution for the dwarves at large. The dwarves, and their many nations spread across Adra, are in the midst of a long golden age, the momentum of which has been shifted by events in the last millennium, but certainly not halted. In the rolling hills of Malmuir in Rathia, the Hillen Dwarves live in an unprecedented age of peace and prosperity, growing valuable crops, unperturbed by the local powers. In the Wretched Spine Mountains, the Underkingdom of Broagdoor have finished their adamantine spire, a fortress built of pure adamantine, designed to resist the breath of the greatest of wyrms. While in the Wandering Mountains, an age of kinship and cooperation has sustained itself in the great valley of the ranges, where dwarves and other kith live together, and work to build a kingdom to rival even old Drumshiel. Still, all is not well – conflicts continue to spill out between old rivals in the Roughcut Mountains, two kingdoms trying to decide who ought to rule all of the ranges, while in the Storm Mountains, multiple disparate clans fight with no sign of a ruler arising any time soon to resolve the conflicts. Most worrying of all, after multiple previous engagements in years past, rumors have that in Qualaxi, the Valenteran Elves, those of the Eternal Empire, are now preparing for a full-scale war against the dwarves of the Firebrand Mountains.
The Elves of Valentera, and their tendency to transgress against the dwarves on their border, are hardly phenomena unique to the 3rd Era. The Eternal Empire has so far kept the promise of its title, remaining steadfast and stable since long before Arissia was even born. Their civilization, while formidable and comparable to the greatest kingdoms of the dwarves, has so far not created many waves in the greater political spheres of Adra – they have since their founding kept a tradition of isolationism, keeping almost all foreigners out, and keeping their own subjects from going abroad. Now however, their preparations for war seem more thorough and involved than ever before – should this most recent campaign foretell of more than their desire to clean up their borders, then the wider world may have a rude awakening in the years to come. Another part of the world has by now quite well come to such an awakening, as in Arathia, the once disorganized collection of jungle tribes has become a completely centralized nation, wielding some of the most advanced magic and mechanical devices in the prime material plane. The other nations on the continent have now had to either offer tribute, negotiate, or bend the knee, and the Gamorans perhaps, when one includes their tributaries, control more men, land, and resources than any people in Adra. Some are happy with the new order, and many more find themselves hating the Princeps ruling over them, but all find themselves having to accept the status quo, for now at least. And while the people of Arathia come to accept the rule of the Princeps, the people of the Wild Steppe now gather to decide their own, as rumors spread of a great moot to decide the new leader of the Great Khaganate – if they are able to decide on a ruler over the gathered hordes, itself a shaky prospect, let the whole world shake in terror at what the united Steppes can accomplish.
World Guide Sections:
Campaign Synopses
Appendix N