Introduction to the Old World campaign setting, for player characters.

The land of Donaille wallows in medieval stagnation. The king and his court busy themselves with decadence and petty politicking, caring little for what goes on beyond the walls of the capital. The nobles who rule the provinces of the hinterlands spend their time warring against the savage tribes that press upon their borders, while often being little better than barbarians themselves.

The clergy of the Church of Pelor, god of the sun and master of all creation, seem to concern themselves mostly with preserving the status quo. Arcane magic exists, but the average peasant has never seen so much as a cantrip being cast; true adepts of the arcane are few indeed, and are found either serving some wealthy and powerful master or else ensconced in some remote and forbidding tower, avoiding all contact with the world.

The majority of Donaille’s people are peasant farmers who go a lifetime without leaving their home village; there, they spend their lives scratching at the earth, which gives up its fruits with ever greater reluctance.

Such a life was not for you, and you left your home to seek your fortune in Stavronne—capital of the Illustrious Kingdom, greatest (and, to speak frankly, the only) city in all Donaille, and center of the civilized world. You had great plans (vague though they were). Your disappointment was equally great.

Within a week of living in Stavronne, you realized that this was not a city for a man or woman of energy, of drive. The people of the capital, you saw, are concerned immeasurably more with appearances than with actions; they care for manners, breeding, minutiae of status; their ambitions amount to little more than jockeying for position in elaborate hierarchies whose nature you could hardly grasp—nor did you wish to. It would take you years to insinuate yourself into these petty games of power—and to what end?

There was only one place left to go, and that was—west.

To the west of Donaille stretches a great unbroken wilderness—a vast, arid wasteland. It has no single name; some call it the Empty Lands, others dub it the Dry Sea, still others merely refer to “the western wastes”. Where lie that wasteland’s furthest reaches—no one knows. What is beyond it—no one can say. It’s a scorching desert in parts, dry steppe elsewhere.

At the wasteland’s nearest edge is a frontier land, of sorts. People come here not because there’s a reason to come, but because they want to get away from everywhere else: from the stifling, oppressive hierarchy of the capital; from the grinding poverty and feudal servitude of the hinterlands; from the endless internecine war and violence of the savage lands to Donaille’s east and south. Of natural resources, here, there is just enough to survive, but not enough to thrive—which means, not enough to bother annexing, or conquering, or raiding.

But you have heard stories that out in the wasteland there are buried ruins, sand-swept remnants of mighty kingdoms that fell in ages past; and in these ruins, glittering treasures and ancient secrets wait to be discovered…