Welcome to my new blog and the campaign setting I hope to explore within it. Any good fantasy world, from Robert E Howard's Hyborian Age, JRR Tolkein's Middle Earth, Gary Gygax's Greyhawk and onwards have benefited immensely from maps to show geography and how the nations and natural features fit together. And so I present the initial map for this setting:
 |
| Map of the Sorquos Region |
As the title of this blog suggests, I will try to keep this setting compatible with Pathfinder RPG published by Paizo. I have the 1st Edition of Pathfinder, so I will be using that.
There are 4 city-states in the Sorquos region: Ironport, Vareshiss, Delliron and Quarll. They are all effectively autonomous though officially they are colonies of the Illyrian Empire hundreds of miles to the south. Like four sons with an absent father, these city-states are often self-willed, squabbling, rivalrous and occasionally outright rebellious. Yet they are also bastions of civilization in a harsh and monster-haunted wilderness. Much of the Sorquos region is considered borderlands - humans and other civilized races can survive and have established villages and farmstead, but it is by no means safe and secure from the creatures of the wilderness. The areas immediately around a city are generally safer and are where most of the food for the cities is grown. But other areas are completely untamed - the Haemos Hills, the Marshsoil Forest, Urdenir Mountains and the whole of Estaar are effectively untouched by colonists of the Illyrian Empire.
The Sorquos region is cool temperate bordering on the subarctic - it is nearly always below freezing during the winter months, while the summers are mild and rarely uncomfortably hot. The continent of Estaar to the north of the City-States is subarctic in the areas close to Sorquos, but further north it becomes fully arctic, with snow-fields and icebergs.
Dotted around the region are ruins of an ancient, lost civilization known as the Vanae. The major ruins are shown in purple on the map. These are known to contain treasure from elder times, as well as hideous monsters and cunning traps. An entire profession, the adventurer, has emerged to explore and plunder these ruins.
Of course, exploring these ruins of the Vanae is certainly not the only form of adventure - there is exploring the wilderness, intrigue and crime within the cities and their nearby towns, and even occasional episodes of open warfare (sometimes between two or more city-states, or else between civilized forces and monsters from the wilderness).
I hope to explore this new world in manageable chunks as this blog progresses, and I hope you will enjoy the journey with me.
No comments:
Post a Comment