> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Elandis > [![[Elandis_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Elandis.webp) > ###### Location Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | World | > Defining Feature | The material plane — a world remade by catastrophe, now slowly rebuilding across four continents | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Active | **Elandis** is the material world — the plane of existence on which its peoples live, die, and build across four great continents. It is a world defined above all by catastrophe: by [[The Shattering]], the wound inflicted twenty-five centuries ago when the Dragon Queen tore a rift between her realm and the mortal plane, and by the five hundred years of war that followed in the [[Chaos Wars]]. The world that exists in the year 2506 is not the world that existed before. That older world — an age of iron and steam whose civilisations and accumulated knowledge are now entirely lost — was so thoroughly unmade by the wars that consumed it that it survives only as garbled legend. The Elandis of today is the world that rebuilt itself from near-nothing: magical, monster-haunted, scarred in places that will never fully heal, and almost entirely ignorant of how deep its own past runs. ## Geography Elandis is a world of four continents separated by open ocean, girdled at its northern and southern extents by polar ice. In the northwest lies [[Valtorra]], seat of the [[Valtorran Empire|Crimson Empire]] and the most politically volatile of the four at the current hour. To the north-centre sits [[Seraphon]], a smaller continent of long winters and very old cultures — the furthest from the Shattering's epicentre and the slowest to forget what came before it. At the heart of the world sprawls [[Aetheris]], the great central landmass and the site of the Shattering itself; its interior remains the Shattered Wastes, a broken expanse of scarred terrain and wild magic from which civilised life has retreated to the coasts. To the east stretches [[Eldara]], the largest of the four — a continent so vast it spans the equator and both polar circles, and the most populous and commercially powerful landmass on the world. Two moons — **Sel**, the bright, and **Sha**, the dark — hang in the sky of Elandis. Their interlocking cycles govern the tides, the seasons, and the holy days of the moon faith, and their names are older than most people know. The [[Calendar of Elandis]] holds the full account of how time is measured across the world. ## History ### The Age Before The world that preceded the Shattering was not a world of magic. It was a civilisation of iron and steam — cities and trade networks and accumulated knowledge built without a single spell. Almost nothing of it survives: no books, no maps, no living memory. What exists is a garbled folk-song, the "Legend of Elandis," performed at campfires and caravan stops by singers who have no understanding of what it once described. Scholars who have tried to reconstruct that older world have found only ruins so ancient that the stone itself gives no certain answers. ### The Shattering The catastrophe began on the continent of [[Aetheris]], where a power known only as the Dragon Queen tore open a rift between her realm and the mortal plane, loosing magic, dragons, and monsters upon a world entirely unprepared for them. The [[Riftshard|Riftshards]] scattered across the world are the physical remnant of that rupture, cast across every continent by the force of the breaking. See [[The Shattering]] for the full account. ### The Chaos Wars Five hundred years of war followed — the near-extinction of every people alive, ended only by the Sacrifice of the Seven: an act that sealed the rift, banished the Dragon Queen, and became the founding event of a new faith within a generation. The [[The Pantheon|Seven Divines]] emerged from its wreckage as the gods of the new world. See [[Chaos Wars]] for the full account. ### The New Age The two thousand years since the Chaos Wars ended have been the slow, painful work of reconstruction. Cities have risen again. Trade routes have reconnected the four continents. Faiths and traditions have taken root in the soil the wars left behind. But the scale of what was lost means the world of 2506 is still, in many ways, a world that does not know itself — its history fragmented, its oldest ruins unexplored, the deepest truths of its own past buried under centuries of forgetting. ## Peoples & Species No single people dominates Elandis at the scale of the whole world. Humans are the most numerous and widely spread, present on every continent in every climate, and constituting the majority of most cities and empires. Dwarves are found principally in the mountain ranges, where their crafting traditions and long memories have preserved something of the pre-Shattering world in stone and ore. Beyond these, each continent has shaped its own cultures, peoples, and traditions across two thousand years of divergent rebuilding. The diversity of Elandis at the continental level is best understood through the Continent entries themselves. ## Continents | Continent | Description | |---|---| | [[Valtorra]] | The northwestern continent, currently under the iron rule of the [[Valtorran Empire\|Crimson Empire]]. Home of the campaign. | | [[Seraphon]] | The smaller northern continent, seat of the world's oldest surviving cultures and home to a powerful arcane institution of global reach. | | [[Aetheris]] | The great central continent, site of the Shattering. Its coastal societies thrive; its interior, the Shattered Wastes, remains dangerous and largely lawless. | | [[Eldara]] | The largest continent, spanning the equator and both polar circles. Divided between the ancient northern empire of Valdremis and the trade-built southern empire of Solareth; the mercantile and demographic heart of the world. | ## Magic & Power Magic existed only very rarely in Elandis before the Shattering. It entered the world through the Dragon Queen's rift and has been woven into the fabric of reality ever since — present in the air, the land, and the people. The [[The Pantheon|Seven Divines]] preside over the divine sphere, each governing one of the seven elemental and cosmic forces: sun, moon, earth, fire, air, water, and the arcane. The arcane itself, sometimes called the Weave, threads through all things and is the foundation on which mortal spellcasting rests. The [[World Gates]] offer a different kind of power entirely: portals that traverse the roots of the [[World Tree]] to pass between planes of existence, answering only to the blood of the [[Silmara Family]]. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 02 - Midnight Fangs]] On the road to [[Darmouth]], the caravan performer [[Lilliana Featherfoot]] entertained the party with the "Legend of Elandis" — a folk-song tracing the arrival of magic, the iron-and-steam world that preceded it, and the Dragon Queen who remade everything. It was the party's first encounter with the world's own origin story, delivered as entertainment and half-remembered by its singer. #### [[Session 44 - The Elven Archmage]] The party stepped through an elven portal and left Elandis entirely — crossing from the material world into the Faewild for the first time. It was the moment the world's borders became, for them, something crossable rather than final. #### [[Session 46 - The Shining City]] At the Confluence of the Seven, [[Ayana Syndrosa]] revealed the truth of [[Ryo]]'s heritage: he is the last heir of the [[Silmara Family|Silmara]] royal bloodline, and the key to the elves' potential return to Elandis. The fate of an entire people's relationship with the material world rests, in part, on him. ## Trivia - The name "Elandis" carries no etymology the living world remembers. No record explains where the name comes from, and no scholar of the current age has thought to pursue the question — the world has always been called Elandis, and that has always seemed sufficient. - The world shares its name with the folk-song that tells its own origin myth: the "Legend of Elandis" is both the story of the world's making and, to those who do not know its history, simply a catchy caravan song.