Terra Advena

In your typical Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, you expect the players to be humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits halflings, and the like. If you're a group who happens to be fond of The Complete Book of Humanoids, Savage Species, or just 4E in general, you might have also developed a tendency towards including things like orcs, goblins, minotaurs, tieflings, dragonborn, and the like. And that's fine - but one thing it tends to accentuate is just how strange that the PCs happen to be. For this game, I didn't want to accentuate that, but I also didn't want to limit what the players wanted.

So we compromised. People chose races that appealed to them, and then we've built the world up around them with the understanding that those races are the norm, not the exception. We actually didn't get any humans in the first round-up, but since I (the DM) am fond of humanity, they're still around. They just haven't done anything significantly important. The end result, though, is a campaign world that feels different than most that we, at least, have played - where gnolls and kenku are far more likely to be spotted on street corners than elves. It's also a campaign world where we stole elements from a dozen others that we liked, and are currently working on sanding out the edges so they fit well together.

A Quick & Dirty Look

Terra Advena is a land where the elder races - dwarves, gnolls, dragonborn, and even wookiees - have only just begun their decline, and there's no reason to believe that humanity - the young, upstart race that it is - will ever amount to anything more than tiny fiefdoms that collapse when their founder does. Here, you can find a dwarven kingdom that spans the length of two continents, facing its first dire challenges as the once-majestic Brightways, underground roads stretching hundreds of miles between dwarven holds, have darkened and become homes for dangerous creatures that defy description. On the surface, the once-mighty gnolls ruled an empire spanning over a thousand miles of rolling hills and grasslands, and now they eke out existence in small clans, worshipping any spirit that might protect them from the ravenous orcs that were once their kin.

Elsewhere, dragonborn maintain cities scaled for their draconic masters, who vanished, en masse, centuries before. Some dragonborn hold hope that their majestic forebears will return, while others view it as a chance to seize their own destiny. Across the land, raven-headed kenku travel in well-maintained carts drawn by giant lizards, living off the land and what they can pinch from the towns and villages they pass. And in the deep woodlands, wookiees appear small next to the towering redwoods in which they make their homes, in perfect harmony with the forest.

Religions, Faith, and Outsiders

It is broadly accepted that the lands of Terra Advena were created millenia ago by primordial entities of enormous power and will... who discarded their finished project before it had even begun to settle, moving on to other great works throughout the universe. Some on the surface view them as gods, but most consider them to be long-gone forces who still exist only in memory and the legacies of their power. Despite this, relgions are common throughout the world, as societies struggle to find some higher purpose or that which defines them.

Outside of the worldy sphere, those seeking higher mysteries have discovered other realms populated by creatures strange and powerful. Some realms, such as the Feywild, lay just beyond mortal senses, close enough that they can be stumbled into unknowingly when the conditions are right. Others, such as the astral seas and the numerous worlds contained therein, are only reachable by powerful magisters.

The existence of such powerful otherwordly entities is the root of many religions, throughout the world.