Rosewood Highlands

The campaign is based in a forested region known as the Rosewood Highlands. This vast woodland is is in the southern foothills of the Endless Mountains (also known as the Barrier Mountains).

The Rosewood Highlands remained largely unsettled for generations, haunted by goblins and firbolgs, fey and other monstrosities. As the civilized lands to the north and south of the Endless Mountains sought shorter connections for trade (before the Famine War), the Highlands were explored and became somewhat settled. As humanity delved deeper into the primeval woodland, the fey retreated to their own realms, hiding among the darkest places. However, the fey had been in constant war against the goblins and the other monstrous denizens of the Highlands, keeping the curse of the Darkness from spreading throughout the civilized lands. When the fey retreated, the Darkness began rising, pushing its progeny forward to wreak havoc on the world. Only the firbolg remained stalwart in their stand against the tide of the goblin hordes.

Geography
This heavily forested region is located just south of the Barrier Mountains (also called the Endless Mountains), east of the Kingdom of Hamlin, north of the Twin Cities of Ostaven and Westhaven, resting in the shadow of the great peak of Eversnow Mountain.


The region is largely hardwoods, dominated by its namesake, the Rosewood, a hardwood cherry tree whose spring blossoms look similar to roses. In addition to oak, cherry, maple, hemlock and various pines, small groves of kyak trees can also be found in the Highlands.

The forest is sparsely populated, compared to the civilized lands to the south, east and west. This is a frontier area, with isolated homesteads and fortified border villages, logging camps and trappers and hunters and those seeking adventure being the majority of the population. There are kingdoms, though the Emperor of the Kingdom of Hamlin scoffs at using such a lofty title for the warband leaders of the petty holds that dot the Highlands. Still, petty or not in the eyes of the great nations which surround them, the kingdoms of the Highlands can field some of the fiercest warriors in all the Midlands. This is no surprise, since life in the Rosewood Highlands is a constant struggle against the elements and predators which reveal nature’s hostility toward the encroachment of humanity, against the wild fay creatures that haunt the deepest parts of the forest, the wicked undead who are seen from time to time in the darkest of night, and the depredations of the goblins and their ilk who hide in their deep warrens.

The World

The World of the Tyranny of Dragonlance adventures is a homebrewed mashup of original ideas and lots of published materials. Because this is intended to be a sandbox world, items completely unrelated to the "adventure paths" or whatever you want to call them will be peppered throughout the region. As things get rolling, I'll have a regional map put together, which will be located in the southeastern part of the northern continent on the world of Daen Ral.

I will do some serious re-writing of...well...everything to make it fit into the world as I see it. Dragonlance is a post-apocalyptic world. The Forgotten Realms is a stable(ish) world. Daen Ral is an apocalyptic world...

Comp from Morguefile

The World of Daen Ral
Daen Ral is a world torn by chaos. The moon looms large in the sky, tracking a similar course across the sky as the sun, moving just a little faster so that for about a week every year, the moon seems to track parallel to the sun, and for about a week every year the moon doesn't appear in the sky with the sun at all (as it tracks across the sky throughout thenight). The midday of the week when the moon and the sun parallel each other as precisely as they can is the first day of the new year, simply called First Day. The day of they year when the moon is alone in the sky all night is called Darknight.

Fragments of, tradition says, a second moon twinkle and flicker in the night sky, scattered across the sky like so much spilled grain. Periodically bits of this second moon slam into the surface of Daen Ral. These pieces of Moonstone are highly valued for their magical properties.

The pull of the Moon causes great shifts in the world – tides are altered, volcanoes erupt violently, winds rage, the earth shakes. Thus, the primary magical forces of the world of Daen Ral are elemental in nature.

Every year, part way through the moon’s cycle, the moon eclipses the sun for part of a day. Once every hundred and eleven years, this eclipse lasts a week as the moon's orbit is nearly synchronized with the sun in both duration and position in the sky, for the Week of Long Nights. The middle of the Week of Long Nights is called Longnight a twenty-four hour period of darkness (the moon fully eclipsing the sun the entire day).  The celebration of  First Day during the Week of Long Nights is generally a somber celebration About once every thousand years, the sun and moon are in a strange synchronous orbit in which the sun shadows the moon for nearly six months and the full eclipse lasts an entire week – The Eternal Night. The last time this happened the astronomers called it Shadowfall, the prophets called it the Millennial Fall of the Sun, the Rise of the Umbra, the Shadowkeeper’s Year, and the people simply called it the curse of the gods. Many predicted the end of the world.

The Shadowfall is approaching again…

In the mix of all of this, the Church of One has arisen, the Church preaching a single God, Creator of all who redeems through light and holiness and righteousness. This is the God of the Hamlish Empire – and others, but the Hamlish Empire is spreading the faith through military might as well as evangelistic goodwill and miraculous deeds of the saints. The old faiths are weak, but their adherents are faithful. The gods of the old faiths seem ambivalent and capricious on the best of days and uncaring and spiteful on the worst days – even in the face of this threatening new faith. Yet the faithful hold fast to their ways. Shadowfall approaches and the Church of the One is calling it the doom of the Darkness, that when The Eternal Night passes and Light shines again, it is a demonstration of the power of the One God whose light outshines the darkness. These prophets, these Lightbringers, are on every street corner of every city and they ride from village to village to spread the Gospel of the Light.

The faithful grumble, frown and look down as the Lightbringers shout and spit their message of the Hope of Light and then make a sign of warding off evil when the evangelists ride off.

Chaos reigns in the world of Daen Ral.

Edited 01/22/16 for clarity and to correct errors.