The World

The World of Renewal

A vast continent, full of soaring mountains, burning deserts, primordial forests and sprawling cities. Heroes and villains work great magics, craft cunning contrivances, defeat their enemies and advance their causes. The sun, the moon and Charon – a black moon evidenced only when its passage obscures the stars – cross the sky every day.

Like most epic fantasy stories, the main setting of Renewal could, if you squint a little, resemble a medieval Europe (or broadly medieval – inspiration for the various factions ranges from bronze-age to late Renaissance) joined by people out of folklore, with pointed ears or ram’s horns, blue skin or fangs. “Realistic” soldiers, blacksmiths and priests rub shoulders with more fanciful sorcerers, alchemists and summoners.

In recent years, the people of this continent have made contact with other lands across the western sea, home to very different cultures; and rumours hint at further lands to the east or south. And this is not the only world – other mundane worlds exist, with their own nations, peoples and histories; as do supernatural worlds, home to demons, undead and stranger creatures, whose very nature is alien to the world of mortals.

It is a world of gods. In some nations, the gods are coy, revealing themselves only in dreams and visions, while in others the gods walk the earth, confronting their worshippers directly to bestow blessings and dispense punishments. Either way, none can doubt their existence.

It is a world of discovery. Much is known about the world, albeit very different from our own, but much is still to be revealed: new lands to reach and peoples to meet, new magics to unlock, new inventions to devise.

And it is a world of mysteries. In the cities the world may seem almost familiar, but for the presence of magic; but out in the wilderness, trees walk and buildings appear and vanish, stories take form on the earth and strange creatures beguile people’s minds. Not everything can be explained or predicted, or even fully understood.

The Name of the Land

Neither the continent nor the world in which much of Renewal is set have names, in common parlance; until recently, they didn’t need them – they were all that most people knew!

The fae, of old, called the continent The Land, a term that can also be applied to all lands everywhere; fae have a strange way of seeing, and not all of them draw any distinction between different places. People sometimes call the lands to the west the “Western Continent” (in the west, of course, they call their counterparts the “Eastern Continent”). Students of magic sometimes call the world the True Plane – “true” in its archaic sense of “level,” this world being the one where the three spheres of magic (link to be added) are most closely balanced.

In the coming years, names may arise for the lands and worlds and gain general acceptance, especially as the new age takes shape…

A Brief History

Thousands of years ago, all lands were one Land and all worlds were one world, and only the fae walked upon it, truly immortal and godlike in power.

Then at some time mortals joined them – little is known about where they came from or why – and the fae protected and taught them, took them as lovers and friends, enslaved them and bred them for war as pleased them. The nature of the world changed; magic split into three, and The Land broke into many lands.

The houses of the fae went to war with one another, and nearly tore reality apart in their fury. Death came to them where there was no death before, and all but a handful of the houses were reduced to shadows of their old glory. The poles of magic were set in place and the planes of the cosmos were created. The Principalities, empowered and entrusted at the creation to serve as custodians of magic, assumed guardianship of reality.

Mortals inherited the world, bringing forth nations and raising gods to worship. Centuries passed, sometimes in peace and sometimes in turmoil.

From time to time, the fragile peace comes under threat again. In the late 1090s the Nything, the Principality of Destruction, overstepped his duties to hold all magics hostage and had to be destroyed by the combined efforts of the peoples. In early 1100s, the nearby Empire of the Golden Isles invaded and pillaged the Land, forcing the factions to a parley and truce.

A few years later, an army of invaders from another world – known to scholars as the Plane of Illusion – sought to seize the True Plane and had to be repelled, and the way back sealed, in 1108, with a vast and terrible enchantment. Over the coming years, the spirit of all terror and despair forged an alliance of corrupt nature spirits, werewolves and giants and the legions of the undead to plunge the world into darkness, and was finally defeated by a similarly potent symbol of hope.

In the mid-1110s, the diminished fae returned from hiding to take back the world they saw as rightly theirs. A new fae war erupted, and the ancient race fought itself to extinction, leaving a bare handful of survivors. In the last great battle, at the end of 1119, the magic seal separating Illusion from the True Plane was shattered, fragmenting reality and threatening the destruction of the whole cosmos. At the end of 1123, the peoples assembled a powerful magic device to reform the fractured world, ushering in a new age.

It was not the first time the world was remade, and it shall not be the last. But for now, peace is restored, and it is the dawning of a new age.

Cosmology

Renewal is a world of magic – not just a world in which magic exists, but one formed of magic and governed by its rules. It looks much like our world, and seems to function in much the same way, but attempting to unlock its secrets based on ideas like gravity, evolution, germ theory or electromagnetism is doomed to failure. The study of the world and the rules governing it is referred to in the game as cosmology.

The basic principles are well known. Magic is threefold, split into three spheres.

Elemental magic is the most coarse, granting all things substance, fluidity and energy and driving them to change (and destroying them to take on new forms). It is generally held to have four natures – air, earth, fire and water – which can be found in some mix in all things.

Corporeal magic organises elemental stuff, granting it form and complexity. Things strong in this magic assert their own form, resisting change, healing injury and copying themselves, either by reproduction or infection. It is thus strongly associated with life, death and health.

Spiritual magic governs material patterns, giving them will and identity. A thing strong in spiritual magic has a name and a purpose, forms bonds that exert influence over time and distance, and by this means has a destiny, forming a web between all things in existence.

Living things, like the people of the world, have all three spheres, more or less in balance; but supernatural creatures have them in strongly unbalanced amounts, especially demons (which lack any corporeal magic), undead (which lack any elemental magic, but for the inert remains of the substance they had when they died), constructs (which lack any spiritual magic), and spirits (which consist solely of spiritual magic).

All things have patterns, describing the mix of magics within them and how they are organised. Patterns shift and change, and can be recalled or passed on. Those with the right tools can alter them, temporarily or permanently.

More than this, players can unlock for themselves. There is already much knowledge out in the game, and a great deal yet to be discovered, for those driven by the search.