The God Wars is a campaign setting for D&D and d20 systems intended to introduce widely disparate characters from the various different campaign settings and placed in a very unique environment before being thrown back out into the multiverse at the whim of the various gods involved.
My ultimate goal is to integrate my own game world, the remnants of my old Infinity RPG, into the d20 system, allowing people to game in the universe(s) of my novels.
The Premise
Amthen is a young nation, a colony of a great empire that is now, unfortunately, little more than ash. While the colonists were across the sea struggling against new enemies, both natural and unnatural, the wizards back home, in a fit of insane hubris, attacked the gods themselves. Bad enough. But worse yet was the fact that they succeeded in killing several.
The backlash destroyed a civilization equivalent to Rome, at the height of its power and influence. Simply razed it to the ground, leaving behind nothing but scorched earth and rubble. Where once stood the most ancient city on Thoell, the venerable and legendary Shirajj, there is nothing now but a great smoking crater. Tales of Shirajj abound, carried on the tongues of those bards fortunate enough to remember much, but the songs bring with them a bitter pang, as the legendary city is not but a fading memory.
No one yet knows how far the damage extends as the strike warped magic in unexpected ways, making divination all but impossible. Even the near ethereal and astral planes in the region aren't easily accessible to all but the strongest magi.
It would seem that nature isn't the only thing that abhors a vacuum. The death of so many deities drew the attention of outworld gods, as well as entities wishing to become gods, inspiring a few of the latter to grab up random human worshipers and cast them through the void to the world of Thoell and the continent of Avaan. Even gods of Good wish to increase their following, and sending worshipers to other worlds is always a great opportunity for expansion, rare as the opportunity might actually be.
This is a quirk in the way gods see things that doesn't quite mesh with human expectations. One might expect the Gods of Good to understand how humans feel about home and hearth, and understand how being thrust onto an alien world might be upsetting. But from a god's perspective, an adventurer goes out and serves the god's interests... taking up arms against evil. Why should it matter so much where s/he does so?
The continent of Avaar is where they're usually dumped. Usually on one of the islands in the small archipelago off the southern coast of Amthen. More than one team of adventurers have found themselves cast up on the beach of an unknown isle, the apparent victims of a shipwreck none of them remember. (As it's not unusual for the gods to act in concert to send a varied group of worshipers through as a group, getting a kind of discount on power usage...)
Thoell currently has an effect similar to the mists of Ravenloft, where most magical means of transport off world or to other planes simply don't work. If a player should happen to have planar travel abilities, i.e. Githzari, the power is inaccessible for the duration.
And, yes, evil Gods have done the same thing, though perhaps not with as much militancy. The evil gods of the humanoid races hold great power at the moment, in the Dread Lands in particular.
Which brings me to another subject. The geopolitical arrangement of Avaar. The young human nation of Amthen holds the southernmost part of the continent, the capital city of Thyle on a plateau between two different rivers emerging from the mountains in the north, marking the boundaries between the nation's three provinces. Olvor, Vorell, and Mythain.
The western boundary of much of Mythain is the edge of the Raging Sea, though a passage to the northwest leads to the Dread Lands and a large bison-shaped landmass extending to the west.
The Dread Lands is dominated by a confederacy of lawful evil monsters, arranged by the great hobgoblin warlord Jahmz TeKirk. The hobgoblin army became the backbone of this confederacy in the ongoing war against the chaotic evil incursions from the Great Black, this world's version of the Underdark. While the lawful evil beings have grown powerful on the surface, powerful enough to force the elves behind their forested veil, influential enough to have a trade agreement with the dwarves of Stone Deep, and cogent enough to have formed a mutual aid and non-aggression pact with Amthen.
Yes. The confederacy of lawful evil monsters has a treaty with the lawful good human kingdom of Amthen. And both sides are likely to abide by it. At least for now. The threat from the creatures of the Great Black is serious enough that the alliance is necessary for all concerned, though no one is particularly thrilled with the arrangement. It's actively opposed by several different factions operating on Avaar.
To the north of Vorell are the Mountains of Mist, sometimes referred to as the Vorellian Range. This marks the rough border of the elven lands, the great forest that protects them from the denizens of the Great Black and the Dread Lands alike. They have also enclosed the majority of gnomes and halflings within this boundary, keeping them safe as well.
Not to say that they don't suffer occasional incursions. It's just that the magic of the forest, built over millennia by elven mages and clerics working together, makes such incursions very risky. All with evil intent are always at a disadvantage, with negatives on to-hit rolls and saving throws, while those devoted to its defenses are granted similar bonuses.
The Dargonn Passage
In the early days of the human kingdom slavers from the Dread Lands used overland routes to reach the dwarven kingdom of Stone Deep. Nowadays the humans have grown too bold, and their alliance with the powers of the Dread Lands makes direct confrontation riskier than ever, so the slavers have bent their efforts to creating a tunnel running from the eastern side of the mountains to the western side, avoiding any contact with either humans or elves.
Unfortunately, the tunnel came too close at times to the Great Black and, well, has since become a means for the denizens of said environs to raid the surface world. Rumors say that some have since abandoned the Black altogether and instead inhabit caves and cavern complexes in the mountains. Old goblin tunnels and fallen dwarf fortresses, mostly.
This is very early in the world-building process, but you can see how much I have already. There's more. While the population of the human kingdom might not yet rival 100,000 people, several factions have arisen that have their own view of how things should work, including a relatively young group composed of people who were snatched from other worlds and deposited on Thoell. In some ways, this shared experience has created an unexpected bond between widely disparate races and individuals. Homesickness is something nearly anything can appreciate. Except maybe the gods.
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