[D&D:ATFF] Setting Overview for New Campaign

So, my players have helped me decide on my next RPG campaign. I'll be running the "A Tale of Fae and Foe" campaign that I mentioned in my last post. For this campaign, I'm taking some of the common precepts of the default D&D 4th Edition setting and twisting them a little to create a world that feels more like medieval Europe. Below is a summary of the setting.

The main setting for our campaign will be the kingdom of Albirion. It is a relatively young kingdom. The reigning king, Aldric II, is only the fourth sovereign in the kingdom’s founding dynasty.

Albirion lies along the west coast of a massive continent, bordering the Great Sea. To the north are the Grimpeaks, an impassible range of snowcapped mountains. To the east is the much older kingdom of Leonis. To the far south is the vast Saralyn Empire. To the west, off the coast of the mainland, is the island Norbelkyn.

Since ancient times, Albirion had been inhabited by a great variety of different sorts of people. In the southern lowlands, the Briants were an ambitious people, giving a great deal of focus to building towns, establishing trade, and acquiring wealth. In the northern highlands, the Kints were a more pastoral people, valuing family and a quiet life, but fiercely territorial. In the deep woods of Albirion dwelled the Grinsfolk, a secluded, distrustful people who lived close to nature. In the far north, in the harsh environment of the Grimpeaks, lived the Tulag, a fierce people who were nearly giant-like in stature.

All of these people worshiped, to one degree or another, the Three Good Siblings – the sisters Melora and Sehanine, along with their brother Corellon. These three were deities of different aspects of nature and were also associated with magic and the fea. The Kints also worshiped a god named Moradin, perhaps a deified ancestor, who called for his worshipers to demonstrate tenacity, along with loyalty to family and clan. Alongside the Three, the Tulag also worship the Raven Queen, a cruel mistress of winter and death.

One hundred years ago, Aldric I was a young lord of the Briants. However, his mother was a Leonine lady, and she taught him much of the old traditions of her people. Among these teachings were the tenants of the Church of Pelor, the god of light. Aldric grew up on tales of Pelor’s exarches, noble beings that had achieved greatness in their earthly lives and had ascended to the eternal service of Pelor upon their death. Two that made the greatest impression were Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, and Erathis, the First Queen of Leonis. Bahamut was a champion of justice and righteousness, while Erathis had famously united disparate peoples in the cause of forwarding civilization. Distressed by the unending conflict in the land of Albirion, Aldric determined that he would unite the various tribes into a single nation under his banner. He would rule this nation by the principles of Pelor and his exarches.

There was a bloody war with the Kints, but eventually Aldric won the respect of their high chieftain who swore allegiance to Aldric, thus uniting their peoples. Skirmishes were fought with the Grinsfolk in their forests and the Tulag in the foothills of their mountain home. Faced with the combined might of the Briants and the Kints, these less numerous tribes soon bent the knee to Aldric as well.

King Aldric declared the Church of Pelor as the state religion, and all worship of the Three Good Siblings, or practice of the primal and arcane powers sometimes invoked by such devotions, became punishable as heresy. Moradin was adopted as an exarch of Pelor to appease the Kints. While nobody dares to openly worship the Three anymore, the Grinsfolk and the Tulag still practice the old ways in their secluded homes.

Since the end of the Unity War, the kings of Albirion have worked hard to build a strong alliance with the kingdom of Leonis. They’ve constructed a royal castle and a great cathedral in the Albirion capital of Brentlian, both built in the style of Leonine architecture. They’ve made the capital a bustling center of trade and commerce. Briant lords have married their sons and daughters to Leonine nobles in an effort to solidify this connection. Leonine nobles still regard the Albirion royalty as rustic, country cousins, but their respect is gradually increasing as Albirion grows in strength and influence by leaps and bounds with each new generation. Besides, since Albirion possesses abundant natural resources and a prime location for seafaring commerce, the Leonine nobles can hardly afford to ignore them.

To the west, on the island of Norbelkyn, the fierce seafaring warriors called the Nolds have been a thorn in the side of the Kints for time immemorial. They continue to raid Kint ports and fishing villages, though with less regularity, since the Kints have gained their Briant allies. In the south, the Nolds can sometimes be seen visiting Briant port towns as legitimate traders. The Nolds are tolerated, although there is still much bad blood between them and the people of Albirion. Not lending anything to their tenuous alliance is the fact that they worship their own pantheon of gods, chief among which is Kord, a god of storms and battle.

Far to the south is the distant Saralyn Empire. These dark-skinned foreigners have only recently begun to appear in Albirion, looking to trade their exotic goods and entertainment. Everyone is suspicious of them, but none can deny their foreign allure. The Saralyn do not worship deities, per se, but they do make deals with desert spirits they call djinn in order to gain power.