👀 I don't know anything about your fantasy world! Can you give me an overview? What is your favorite bit?
Oh mannnnn can I! ( I’m sorry if this gets long)
I will endeavor to be both brief and comprehensive, so we’ll see which one wins out in the end.
Welcome to the world of Asterta!
Asterta is a relatively young world born from the dying body of an elder being traveling through the endless cosmos. As the matter of this entity became the form of the planet itself, flesh turning to earth and rock and water as shattered bones and molten blood became the lifeblood of an emerging world, its life force seeded the planet, and its soul diverged into two beings. Those beings were Solra: a goddess of light and stars, of purity and creation; and her brother Noctuln: a god of darkness, the vast emptiness of space and entropy.
Solra and Noctuln helped shape the world and helped populate it with all of the early forms of the races found within any dnd setting. Solra and Noctuln also set about creating other ascendant beings, new gods with which to aid in the stewardship of mortal lives now teeming across the planet.
As the Pantheon grew so did tensions between Noctuln and his sister, and in the 5th age of Asterta a war broke out between the gods. Armies of angels and demons were crafted to fight, and mortal beings split and warred along with them. During this time, influenced by more devious Generals, Noctuln fell to madness and devastation reigned the world over. Eventually the war came to an end and the twin gods, with Noctuln now returned to sanity, fashioned a separation for themselves and the mortal world. The ascendant beings left to the outer planes and Solra and Noctuln to their own planes of light and darkness, with the Veil in place to protect the world.
From the 6th age to the 9th age ( about 200,000 years) the mortal races developed and formed civilizations. Eventually came a race known as the Eldritch, preeminent in their use of the arcane. They could use magic as naturally as breathing and crafted a civilization that spanned the globe, as lord and master to all other sentient races. ( Some mass effect influence for ya!) Eventually the Eldritch sought to chain a great old one, and one of their own, in order to avoid a true apocalypse on Asterta, took upon himself the extermination of the entire Eldritch race. This entity, Horon, succeeded in destroying the civilization, tearing down its greatest monuments and eradicated its history, before ensuring all knowledge of them passed from the world. In so doing he drove himself mad, his multiple personalities becoming seven minor deities on the Continent of Caloran.
The 9th age is known as the forgotten age, for the simple and vast amount of knowledge lost, and the civilizations that fell in the wake of the Eldritch. But life persisted and so did culture and civilization. Empires rose again. Technology and magic progressed, and the tenth age was marked by the creation of black powder and the worldwide phenomenon of alchemy as the everymans source of magic.
Most campaigns I have run take place within the 10th age, across the world. The world is made up of the supercontinent of Caloran, The Estrian continent, the world spanning chain of subcontinent’s and islands known as the Nyrean Archipelago, as well as polar and sub polar regions ( as yet unnamed).
Estrian Continent:
Nyrean Archipelago:
Over the course of several campaigns I’ve had the chance to fill out these locations with some really fun and interesting cultures, peoples and places, create beasts and encounters and characters both ridiculous and serious, explore many many tropes and create what feels to me at least like a living breathing world full of possibility.
I think one of the favorite things I’ve done to date, is explore a future version of the Estrian Empire and the world as a whole. My players failed in their attempt to stop a devilish incursion of their world, and had an artifact used against them to plunge them into the future where their worst nightmares had become reality. I got to explore a cyber fantasy landscape of magic, high octane chases, as well as the consequences of failure and unexpected boons. It led to a series of incredibly memorable moments, and my players were great sports about the unexpected turn the campaign took.
Another favorite bit of worldbuilding is that recently I’ve had a chance to craft a dwarven society of desert nomads, having long been cast out the depths of Estras, and now surviving in the black volcanic deserts of Nichten’dur. They have sand sailers and ride giant centipede like creatures. They are almost universally darkskinned and their beards as a race serve as a way to filter sand and dust assay from their noses and mouths so they can breathe even during harsh sandstorms.They have unusually thick and long eyelashes for the same purpose of keeping sand and dust from their eyes. Though largely nomadic the thirteen families of dwarves, in a 25 year rotation, settle in a garrison outside a place known as Thanoptis. Thanoptis is a massive cavern entrance to the Depths unending ( Asterta’s version of the Underdark) and many threats to the surface world have attempted to rise through it. The families take turns guarding the entrance at Thanoptis, though recently more and more families believe the practice to be an antiquated and unnecessary tradition.
That ended up long... uh but I hope it was a somewhat good overview? Thanks so much for the ask!