So a long time ago, at some point in 2011 I first started seriously thinking about not just homebrew campaigns, but homebrew settings. One of the first things that started driving me in that direction was how broad the spell selection casters had in pathfinder and D&D 3.5. It didn’t make sense to me that wizards could level up and suddenly have a 5th level spell completely unrelated to any of their previous spells, when multiple lower level spells that could be related to that spell existed. There was also no reason other than players’ sense of their character to prevent a player from just cherry picking what they consider the best spells. So I started looking at dividing spells into multiple categories, from which a caster could only access one.
That was what really started the setting creation, as it seemed like a system with more limited access to spells needed an in setting explanation. That relatively quickly led to thinking about building my own rpg where setting and rules meshed far more. More on the rules front in other posts. This then led to my wanting races that were inspired by classic fantasy races but not direct copies. This led to the creation of the fallen angels known as the Tund, the humanoid bug Werd that live in hybrid above/below ground cities and the mage created Trollkin. Eventually humanoid lions, known as Peshtar and the reborn known as Vrak joined these and humans as the core races of the slowly developing setting.
Arcane and divine magic were completely separated in this setting, with the eight paths of dragon magic forming the arcane side, and prayers the divine side. While more than one path can be learned by a mage, it gets more and more difficult to increase the breadth of your arcane knowledge, low level arcane casters generally only know spells from a single path, while more experienced mages generally know one path extensively and have some skill in one or more secondary paths. Now these paths often have some overlap as different paths can provide different solutions to the same problem; still they tend to be very good at one thing, ok at a few others and really not useful in others, one generally doesn’t become a path of living fire mage to focus on healing people.
This in turn informed the technological level of the setting, as this more divided arcane magic made sense in something like the dark ages, where knowledge is hoarded and not widely shared. Spells in the setting aren’t widely known, and it is entirely possible that you could encounter 3 shrouded path mages who have entirely different spell lists from each other. This came from me wanting encounters with mages to never be predictable or boring. It also resulted in players with mage characters taking frantic notes in some combat encounters as they saw NPC mages using crazy things that they wanted to adapt, even if it required using a different path. It also resulted in players shaking their fists when an evil lieutenant used glacial path magic turn into water and flow away while his minions continued to fight the player characters. They were especially enraged when they realized that while they were defeating random minions, said evil lieutenant looted relics from a tomb the players were trying to secure to prevent exactly such actions. Sometimes the best villains appear from the most random encounters.
my current hand drawn map
Mages are rarely trained in academies or schools, with most being trained by a mentor that might have 2 or 3 students at any one time. With many such mentorships lasting a decade or longer, individual human mages may train maybe a dozen mages in their lifetime, with perhaps half a dozen that truly become independent mages in their own right. Mages are perhaps considered something close to a guild, though no one would actually be able to force a guild licencing system onto the many fiercely independent mages.
Remember how I mentioned one of the main races are fallen angels, while that clearly needed an explanation. How would an entire race of fallen angels come about? Enter the Neverborn and one archangel Tundelso. Which probably just raised a whole new question, what are the Neverborn. They are the eldest creations of the gods, immortal and nigh unkillable dragons, each of which is the font of a path of magic. And they decided that they didn’t want to be second tier to anything, so they rebelled. Even the Tund don’t have any real records of that epic conflict, but it is known that Tundelso held his order of angels aside, not wanting to see them slaughtered. Eventually the neverborn were defeated, though as far as is known none of them were slain… Many of their minions did not survive, though neither did many who stayed loyal to the true gods. Both sides were convinced that if Tundelso had sided with them they would have won the war, and with far less casualties. The gods pulled the angelic mantle from the entire order.
With the Neverborn still out in the planes somewhere, the direct evils of the material world were perpetrated by their descendants and minions. Even with the terrifying first and secondborn being thankfully rare, third, forth and fifthborn dragons are dangerous foes. They rarely move openly, working through minions and acolytes, some of whom they gift their corrupting blood.
But the evil gods don’t need their followers to directly intervene for evil to spread throughout the world. Greed and power motivate many sufferings. Occasionally however, the dragons have to gather in strength to set progress back, unleashing a dragonstorm that leaves ruins, broken people groups and thousands of years of progress lost and little else.
The current setting is less than 2000 years after the last dragonstorm and only recently has the majority of the continent of Gal Hadre had kingdoms and principalities that control everything except the Undil Wastes.
Hopefully you enjoyed this post and initial introduction to the setting and are interested in reading more about Gal Hadre in the future. The next couple posts on Gal Hadre will probably be exploring dragon magic in more detail, along with the various major races.
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