Terra Advena

Okay, so I'm still getting all the setting details written up and online. This page is a summary of information about the setting that hasn't been written up in more concrete form and placed on its own page.

Races

Race information here. Will be removed as I write it out fully, and relocated to their own page.

Gargoyles

They used to be flesh and blood.

Their country is over a long forested peninsula/island chain, primarily jungle-type forests.

The nation was one supported on arcane accomplishments and high magic (reaching "as tech" levels)

Some long time ago, >800 years, a plague struck the country and they couldn't find a cure as it tore through their population. Desperate, they worked a great spell that transformed the entire race into living stone, immune to the plague, so as to give them more time.

The plague, lacking carriers, died away, but the gargoyles were unable to transform back. Maybe the ritual required blood and they don't have it anymore, or something like that.

Since then, they've neglected their entire civilization, since they don't need to eat, drink, or have other mortal needs. Their attention has been focused on personal pursuits and/or finding out a way to turn back.

Why turn back? Because they can't reproduce any longer, either. Every gargoyle in existence is one who was changed when the spell originally went off. And while they don't die of age, they can be destroyed, and they'd like their nation to not fall apart.

While their body is capable of living forever, their minds aren't. Some snap and just go completely nuts. Others go into a form of torpor for years at a time, eventually waking up with no more than the slimmest of memories about their past (effectively a new individual).

Religion: Unknown.

Dragonborn

Dragonborn are concentrated on the eastern continent, though they can be found anywhere. At one point, dragons ruled an empire centered around the desert, but most of them vanished. Dragonborn live in the remants - not ruins, but there are hundreds of abandoned buildings because dragonborn alone just don't need as much space as dragonborn + dragons.

Dragonborn are a true-breeding race, but they originally, and still can, come from unfertilized dragon eggs. Being egg-born is a significant thing in the culture, and most dragonborn can tell you exactly who, and where in their bloodline, their most recent egg-ancestor is.

Religion: Worship dragon-gods as creators. Dragon gods being distinct from actual dragons, about whom dragonborn may have mixed feelings.

Dwarves

Dwarves are natives to the western continent and almost exclusively live in the mountains - the two ranges there, as well as the range on the eastern continent between the gnolls and the dragonborn. They used enormous, Dragon Age-style Deep Roads to connect dwarven holds without ever having to go to the surface, but the Roads connecting to the eastern mountain range have become overwhelmed by abberations, cutting the two groups off from one another.

Religion: Believe in creator spirits (primordials?) who created the world and races, but aren't worthy of worship. Instead, dwarves revere ancestors who they believe watch over them from the afterlife.

Wookiees

Wookies can be found all over the place, but primarily the two woodlands on the eastern continent. They greatly prefer forests and maintaining subsistence-level living - their forests provide them everything they need. On southern half of the western continent, smaller bands of wookiees have fled their elders to start a more aggressive, in-the-world society.

Wookiees are one of two races not native to Terra Advena. Millenia ago, they fled the destruction of their homeworld through great tears in space, some of the species ending up on this world. Due to their prodigious lifespan, that means there are wookiees alive today only two or three generations removed from the event.

Religion: Some form of nature-spirit respect moreso than worship.

Elves

"Elf" is just a name used for "humanoids from the Feywild", where the Feywild is a semi-mirror world of faeries. Elf, in Terra Advena, encompasses things such as pixies, satyrs, dryads, and eladrin. Eladrin are the traditional pointy-eared bastards. Eladrin are the sort of "upper class" of the Feywild, and they firmly believe that mortals aren't "people". Eladrin like to pop into reality and hunt mortals like medieval nobles hunted fox.

Elves on Terra Advena may be of a number of different races, and are usually here due to some sort of political fallout in the Feywild that got them exiled to "that mortal place". A rare few are actual explorers, though.

Religion: Quasi-athiestic, elves ignore deities of other species. They do, however, venerate and sometimes worship extremely powerful archfey, with titles like "Lord of Winter" and the like.

Kenku

Kenku are a secretive race that tends to keep to themselves. They do a lot of traveling in families living in wagons drawn by enormous lizards (think bird-gypsies). They interact with many other societies, but rarely become a part of them. Kenku have a reputation for 'ignoring' property rights, and they're thus distrusted in a lot of places.

Kenku like to know things and have a tendency for *actually* knowing things. Lots of things. As a race, they have something on the eladrin of the Feywild that not only gets them excused from being hunted (most of the time), but an open invitation to visit the Feywild in the course of their travels, for trading and exchanges. More importantly, the invitation bears with it the understanding that kenku are allowed to *leave* when they choose.

Religion: Think everyone else is crazy, and there are no "gods" or "demons". Immortal spirits with power? Yes, but the names they're given are just descriptions, not *what they are*. Kenku generally react to them the same way they do anything with a lot of power. And aren't completely convinced that it's not possible to steal it.

Humans

Humans are a new race on Terra Advena, or at least the continents we're playing on. They come from across the western ocean, and arrived several hundred years ago. They've mostly settled in the lands throughout the middle of the western continent, where most of the other races weren't. Their societies tend to be small and feudal. Humanity brought horses with them when they arrived.

Religion: believe in a pantheon of deities, sorta like the Greeks and the Olympians. The whole pantheon is divine together, and they pray to whichever is relevant to their current needs/desires. Uses PHB core pantheon.