Not just to share the characters and the stories with a wider audience, but also to get worldbuilding tips from likeminded people, and more ideas on how I can be creative. Let’s see if I can get your attention with this opener…
Welcome to the world of the Two Collided, also known as Castoria.
This planet was of a bizzare shape maintained by a cosmic reaction; as it was not one sphere of rock hurtling through the void, it was two. They were their own distinct landmasses, however their extremely close proximity along with some magical intervention allowed the oceans of the two planets to link, creating a stream known as the River of Deaths.
The two planets that now make up Castoria are Pherica, the world of Skin, and Geodeus, the world of Hide.
Recently, humankind and its’ relative races had fallen on hard times. Elvenkind’s individualism was used against them by a creeping curse that required collective action. Dwarvenkind’s life below the rocks was shattered by an earthquake the likes never seen before, further disasters growing only more intense. Humanity’s livable territory was all but wiped out by a huge internal war. The Tieflings have been afflicted by a dire famine, all the lands they own turning to barren dust. The list is endless, with one great calamity after another striking each race- None on Pherica seemed to be safe.
It was though the planet itself was determined to kill everyone who lived there.
As a result, many nations of Pherica launched exodus ships along the River of Deaths. These settlers had two purposes… Firstly, to scour the lands of Geodeus to see if there is a root cause of Pherica’s affliction, and secondly, in the event that Pherica really is doomed, to ensure that the races will live on.
Many ships were lost along the violent tides, astral winds, and extreme magics of the River of Deaths, but some have reached shores on Geodeus to establish settlements, where their adventures would unfurl…
Of the initial adventures, one of them was of particular note. In the chaos of the exodus, Chromatic Dragons attacked, and they destroyed a ship that wasn’t meant to carry refugees, but to transport something never meant to see the world again. A Deck of Many Things. Obtaining the deck, an actor who only the surviving gods know undid the cosmic reaction that held Geodeus and Pherica apart, sending them crashing into each other. Through the intervention of the god of Metallic Dragons, Castoria avoided total extinction… But with almost all of Pherica having aggregated around the River of Deaths, then the impact all but wiped out Phericans entirely.
Now, the survivors of Geodeus need to weather the storm and rebuild. Whether they come from the old and mighty nations that were founded by the first of their kind, or the newer and more far-sighted offspring nations- all will be tested, in the World of Two Collided.
[Current common Races]
Official DnD
-Dragonborn (Metallic, Chromatic, Gem)
-Aarakocra (Birdfolk, normally eagle-coded)
-Tabaxi (Catfolk)
-Leonin (Lionfolk)
-Minotaur
-Giff (Hippofolk)
-Kobold
-Owlin (Birdfolk, normally owl-coded)
-Centaur
-Kenku (Corvidfolk)
-Harengon (Rabbitfolk)
-Tortle (Turtlefolk)
-Yuan ti (Serpentfolk)
-Lizardfolk
-Warforged (Constructs with their own intelligence and will)
Homebrewed
-Kitsune
-Wolfkind
-Gnoll
-Avali
-Felkin
Fun fact, in my original plans for campaigns on this world, then the campaigns as a whole were meant to be about saving humanity and the other refugees by ultimately preventing Pherica’s impact and destruction, and a general lesson on compassion. However, I gave the players one chance to get one card from the Deck of Many Things, the wizard promptly obtained The Fates and undid the cosmic reaction that was keeping Geodeus and Pherica held apart, not realizing what they were doing until Impact, resulting in The Derailment Of All Time.
The deck was there specifically because it was too powerful to destroy. It’s a primordial artefact that represents essentially the control mechanisms for Limbo itself; the plane of pure elemental chaos which all creation was born from. The idea was that seeing as just looking at one of the cards in the Deck will activate it, then the idea was that it might be possible to remove the existential threat of the Deck by taking each individual card, locking every card in a foot thick lead-lined chest, and spreading those chests out across the world’s most secure facilities, seeing as actually DESTROYING the deck would either fail or have an effect similar to detonating a hundred nuclear bombs. Of course, they had no way of knowing that the deck’s transport ship was going to end up getting sucked into a whirlpool as part of some draconic drama.
It was in fact a freak co-incidence, this was actually an internal conflict between the Chromatics. A young green dragon turned out to be a prodigal thief, so he stole an artefact from Tiamat’s workshop (she’s on the Material Plane here, she jailbroke herself), and as a result ended up with Tiamat’s entire army pursuing him, so he decided to use the artefact to generate absolute havoc on the seas so that he could try and slip away in the chaos- unwittingly grabbing the ship that was secretly transporting a card from the Deck.
While Bahamut and Tiamat are the only deities in the entire setting that aren’t completely original (as this is one of the many fractured timelines spawned from the First World, and also because they’re by far my favourite DnD deities if not characters overall), I can assure you that Bahamut is indeed the hottest, strongest, shiniest old guy on all of Castoria. Much unlike canon, he is also inclined to fuck, although he won’t let you inherit Aasimar powers unless you prove you’re worthy of them. He was also here first, along with Tiamat, although she was stuck in hell ten thousand years ago.
As for that “unnamed actor?” Well, that would be the party’s Level Three Wizard, who got ganked by almost half the gods simultaneously before one of them (The Kitsune Goddess called Quickness, known for being… very much a trickster, chaotic, and bipolar- incidentally one of the only deities to be hated by her own race) decided it would be Really Funny to random-teleport the Wizard before the rest of the gods could finish arguing over who was going to kill them and how.