Sages call the planet Urth - but most people don’t care. The known world is a landmass in Urth (a continent) called Rûl.
Map of Rûl
‼ Clicking will open a 7 MB version of the map.
Geography and basic politics
Rûl is in the Southern hemisphere of Urth, so the South is freezing cold and the north quite warm. Most people will live somewhere in the Empire, which covers most of the continent.
The frontier at the very North is Desolation, where monsters live and no sane person wants to go.
At the East of the Empire the Shield Mountains give way to the Endless Steppes, where the Centaurs have always resisted the Empire. Further East there’s the Nyxian Ocean - difficult to access and the source of lots of legends about monsters.
To the West there’s the Auroral Ocean, which in some areas has lots of traffic. To the North of the ocean you find insular nations and territories like the Pirate Isles, the Kingdom of Sails and The Teeth.
On the Western part of the Empire there’s also the Confederacy of the Nine Cities, which are mostly autonomous, and that predate the (current) Empire itself. The cities are important political, cultural, and mostly economic centre.
At the very South, just out of Imperial lands, you can find the Patchwork Lands, where war-chiefs, counties and all kinds of territories continuously fight each other and change their configuration. To its West there’s the remnants of the terrifying previous Empire - may New God not let them ever return! -, the Kingdom of Skulls where the Dark Lady is said to live. Or not-live. Just South after the Patchwork Lands, the environment is really freezing and live is difficult - even without the native inhabitants. It’s the beginning of the land of the Jotun, enemies of the empire since a long time.
The Empire’s provinces
The Empire itself has existed around 1000 years, they say. The compositions and frontiers have changed with time - Balgrendia is a more “recent” addition than the rest, and the Northern Reach has only in the last hundred years or so really been colonised -, and the political relationship of the provinces with the capital changed over time, but (until now, see the current state) it was a symbol of stability.
The provinces (a line for each) are:
| Caecras | The capital, where the Emperor sits (or sat) |
| Holy Kingdom | Officially the Kingdom of Tarra, now the Cult of the New God is the big power here |
| Old Edene | It’s said to be older than the current Empire… and than the previous one (the Witch-King of Gog’s) |
| Tear | The newest official province, mostly pacified by Horus, Emperor Era’s son; separated from the rest of the Empire by the Deepings Gorge (and the Tumbledowns at the North-East too) |
| Grand Duchy of the West | Feudalism turned to 100, they are considered backwards by some of the neighbouring provinces |
| Low Country | The main food producer in the Empire; where most of the Halflins that immigrated to the Empire from the Endless Steppes settled |
| The March Lands | Fortified province at a dangerous frontier of the Empire |
| Balgrendia | With deep forests, a bulwark of the Old Faith, Balgrendia always had a lot of independence even after being annexed to the Empire |
| Northern Reach | The Northern frontier, barely colonised. |
Recent news
Old people complain that things are going for the worse. Whether it’s simply old people being old, or things getting more complicated may be different to say. What is clear is that some things may be changing. There are more stories over time of weird things happening and monsters acting, orcs have mostly started acting strange, and some people have said that, gasp, an Orc has killed the Emperor and has crowned themselves as Emperor. Refugees flock from place to place, and some of the provinces seem to be separating themselves from the Empire, but no one really knows what may be happening really.