The world: Eldurae

The year is 843 A.I., the Age of Illumination.

Eldurae is a world divided not by borders or oceans, but by ideology. By what should be feared. What should be worshipped. And who decides the difference.

Magic exists, but it is not trusted. The gods answer, but not always in the way you expect. Across the land, the powerful tighten their grip while the cracks beneath them deepen.

The map is a hex grid at 1 hex = 60 miles. Travel pace by mode, terrain, and road quality is documented at Travel rules.

(An earlier, ungridded version of the same map is preserved at assets/Elduraemap.webp for visual comparison.)

Time and structure

The Illuminated Calendar is used by all major factions.

• Current year: 843 A.I. (Age of Illumination)
• Months: 12 months of 30 days each (360-day year)
• Weeks: 7-day weeks
• Time is stable, mostly. Except where it isn’t.

Nick uses this calendar for in-game date-tracking; per-session recaps should record in_game_date in this format when known.

The six great powers

Six dominant forces shape the continent. Every war, trade route, or whispered prayer answers to one of them. Each has its own article; click through for the full entries.

1. Aurelia, the Shining Bastion. A divine empire of marble towers and golden law. Magic is outlawed. Purity is enforced. Arcane power is caged beneath the streets.
2. Arcanthys, the Floating Metropolis. A city suspended in the sky, where reality bends and ambition defines truth. Magic is engineered, not learned. Power is currency.
3. Velkris, the Veiled Gate. A city built on silence, secrets, and coin. Controls the only river route into the interior. Speech is optional, contracts are not.
4. Umbrafall, the City Beneath the Dead Sun. Once-fertile farmland cursed by eternal night. Glowing poison grows where crops once did. Crime thrives, faith is fractured. No clean public government, but real power structures: the Shade Mistress, the Broker, the Nightwatch, the Rat King, the Black Cartels, and other criminal/export powers.
5. Vhal’Zarim, the Bastion of the Platinum Flame. A holy fortress raised from dragon-scorched ash. Bahamut is worshipped through fire, trials, and devotion.
6. Sablemar, the Dustbound Bazaar. A lawless desert sprawl. Forbidden relics, outlawed magic, dangerous truths. No rulers, only customers.

The dwarven city of Khaldun Forgehold, deep in the Emberpeak Mountains, is also a regional power.

Magic, faith, and knowledge

• Magic exists, but its stability and origin are debated. Some revere it. Others fear it. Many try to control it.
• Divine power flows from a shared pantheon of gods, but each city worships in its own way, often shaping faith to suit law or conquest.
• History is written by the victors, and rewritten often. Truth may lie buried under ruins, behind masks, or within your blood.

Whispers of history

Things a character might have heard around fires, in temples, or whispered over drinks.

• The Scorching of the Sky (201 A.I.) Silver fire fell from the heavens. Magic flickered. Some say it was a divine purge. Others blame the gods for failing to stop it.
• The War of Fractured Heavens (582-589 A.I.) Aurelia tried to destroy Arcanthys. The skies cracked. Magic bent. Neither side won, but both pretend they did. Aurelia’s Nullstone Constructs and Arcanthys’ Grand Conflux fought to a stalemate; both cities have held an uneasy peace since.
• The Treaty of Duskwatch (607 A.I.) When war over river trade neared collapse, Velkris stepped in. Now they tax every ship, every whisper, moving inland.
• The Fall of Karvos (631 A.I.) A city too eager to serve Aurelia burned for it. Dragons descended in fury. Bahamut arrived in fire. What remained became Vhal’Zarim.
• The Silent Pilgrimage (710 A.I.) Ten thousand people walked north in silence. No one knows why. They never came back. The place they vanished still hums at night.
• The Eclipse of Luminara (793 A.I.) A ritual meant to birth a second sun cursed the land instead. The fields rotted, the light died, and Umbrafall was born.

Where the campaign begins

The party arrived in Gloamhearth, a crooked village at the edge of a fading forest. The air is tense. The people are quiet. The roads here do not always lead where they should.

Note (s2 evidence): the in-transcript recap of session 1 calls the meeting place Glowmath and the venue the Hollow Hall Tavern. Glowmath is the transcription artefact; the canonical name is Gloamhearth. The party then moved on to Wyrmbough Grove (also recorded as “Wyrmbown Grove” in transcripts), an elven settlement.

Aurelian forces

Although Aurelia is geographically distant, Aurelian troops appear in the field as antagonists from at least session 15 onward (occupying Eldwythe and hunting the party). Aurelia lies to the south of the party’s current operating area; the s16 sail from the Eldwythe sewer outflow heads south toward the White Lantern Shrine on Aurelia’s outer approaches.

Travel and geography

Distance and travel pace in Eldurae are governed by the hex grid on the world map. The full per-mode pace table (foot, mount, wagon, water) is at Travel rules. Quick reference: 1 hex = 60 miles; on foot, a road-day covers ~0.5 hex; off-road harsh terrain (mountains, swamp, cursed land, volcanic badlands) drops to ~0.25 hex per day. A skiff covers ~0.5 hex/day; a large sailing ship ~1 hex/day; a fast military ship up to ~1.5 hex/day.