"It was no 'natural disaster' that sunk half the world and left a gaping hole in the sea! It was all the empires at war and their damned magic! Now we live in the ruins of a shattered lands and every week some fool gets the idea to become an adventurer and we lose someone else to the wilds! I tell you, we're cursed--!"
--Old Man Jenkins

The world is ancient, but all of it was washed away by years of war and a terrible disaster that sunk most of the continent and created a hole in the world. Where once the world was divided by kingdoms and empires at war, now are just pockets of the old world trying to hold back the darkness and wilds that claim the lands a little more each year. This is the world of Maelstrom.

This is a points of light setting where a magical disaster has destroyed the main continent that once held multitude of races, cultures, and kingdoms. Each player selects a racial "group" and builds some of the culture and background and put them in an assigned "broken island". The setting can support multiple different adventure locations and we can build a general history of the world. Because of the Old War and subsequent Maelstrom event, a lot of the races are mixed in areas, though the old ways still remain. Deities can be worldwide or racial group specific. There would be much less planar travel because of the disaster.

Core Assumptions:
A. Gods are distant. (No direct meddling from deities.)
B. Much of the world is untamed. (Post-apocalyptic return of the wild.)
C. The world is ancient. (Most know history is after the disaster with surviving records before very rare.)
D. Conflict shapes the world’s history. (Still some surviving old empires with old grudges.)
E. The world is magical. (Much of the high level magic has been lost.)