This is a setup for a new D&D Campaign I’m starting soon…

Seven centuries ago, the world was struck by a great Cataclysm.  The history you have been taught does not go into details; but the broad strokes paint a world gone mad, overrun with horrible demons and voracious undead that made war on the mortal races.  Led by creatures only known as Harbingers, these armies laid waste to the world.

Only a few brave adventurers and powerful magic weavers managed to secret groups of mortals away into vast cities; sealed away from the death and destruction being wrought outside.  These enclaves thrived without the worry of outside interference.  They were designed to be places free of strife; where mortal kind would not want for anything and therefore would not attempt to leave.

Also taken inside these arks from destruction were animals, seeds and other things they would all need when it was finally safe once again to go outside to reclaim the world.  If that was ever possible.  Those that could be stored in stasis would be and some of the others were raised generation after generation.

In the beginning, or so the history books say, there was enough power for everyone to have anything they wanted.  In the beginning, magical energy flowed through every being in the enclave of Einn Boer.  In the beginning, as we are told, every person could summon everything with the wave of their hand. Over time the magic faded to the way it is today, but the rest of the powers remain.

Images for stores to advertise their wares leap out at passersby to attract their attention, fountains flow with clean water for drinking and washing at every corner, the air is always clean and there is endless food.  The food may not taste exactly like what it simulates anymore, but anyone can summon it any time they wish.  It tastes better when raw ingredients are summoned and prepared, and many people and businesses maintain at least their own herb garden.

At one time, apparently gold was more than just a marker for how much things were worth for reference when trading.  The older history books mention mining gold, fashioning it into coins and using them to buy things.  In the modern-day things like real, not summoned food, herbs, a musical performance, a poetry reading, inventing a new card game, a new carving pattern or any number of other diversions are trade goods.  Everyone is looking for a new distraction; especially the longer-lived races.

Where does it all come from?  Where does it all go?  That is a question that more and more the younger generations are wondering.  In the small forest, as trees are harvested more simply appear randomly in a few days.  When things are tossed into the sewers, they simply vanish overnight.  A few folk have tried to go investigate what happens there; some never returned and others reported nothing at all.  When people die, they are buried but there are rumors that their bodies vanish rather than slowly decomposing over time.  Someone must know the answer, but if they exist, they aren’t telling.

Einn Boer is governed by an elected Monarch and a Council of Nine; each race having a representative.  The current Queen, a human named Lady Taryn Vaknair Torben, is the third generation of the Torben family to be elected.  She is seen as a fair, just and honest leader by nearly everyone and won re-election by a wide margin in the last election.  Recently a new political figure has risen in popularity by attempting to draw correlations between rumors of instability with the Torben family’s so-called ‘inherited monarchy’.

Cthrag Graksen is a red scaled Dragonborn who advocates for investigating how Einn Boer functions, even going as far as to hint that he would like to attempt to open The Great Gate and see the state of the world outside.  His veiled attacks on the Torben family have spread some dissent through the ranks and now the election that is slated to take place the day after the Septecentennial Celebration is uncertain for the first time in three generations.

Order is maintained by the Síðr Vorðr, The Long Guard.  They are independent from the city’s government and their main mission is to keep anyone from opening The Great Gate.  Secondary to that, they are a military order that trains in the arts of combat against the day that The Great Gate is opened.  Rumors have been circulating that the head of Síðr Vorðr is the one who holds the key to the Gate itself and that he is immortal.  Of course nobody really believes those rumors.  Not really.  Or if they do, they’re wise enough to let on.

Worship of the Gods once was much more than the occasional visit to a shrine or a temple.  Although the gods are represented equally, the gradual increase of the population of Einn Boer has led to once vaunted temples giving way to smaller meeting halls that more often than not double as community meeting places and are no longer dedicated sacred spaces.

Although they are purported to once having had other names, now The Father of the Gods is now called Skaberen.  Onde and Gode are his sons and in Skaberen’s absence they now balance one another, Onde being pure evil and Gode pure good.  The many others who once held sway and if the histories are to be believed, once played great games with mortal kind are Tido; the goddess of time, Kaaos; the god of chaos, Ruma; the goddess of magic, Ild;, the god of fire, Luftin; the god of wind, Jorda; the goddess of earth, Illimin, the goddess of light.  Once the different races had their own gods as well, but these have long since been forgotten.