Chronicles of the World of DaoTyr

Rehland a perilous land of shadow and promise

REHLAND is a campaign setting in the world of URUNON. URUNON arose from the ashes of DAOTYR. DAOTYR was destroyed just over two thousand years ago with the death of TIAMAT, the queen of dragons. The campaign setting of URUNON exists with a series of “what if” questions: what would a DUNGEONS & DRAGONS campaign look like if set in Iron Age Europe? What if in that setting, magic, elves, dwarves and all the other fantasy tropes existed there as well? What would history look like? The first Campaign took place is IOS, a vision of Greece ruled by Althea the Gorgon Queen. Her ascension to the throne 100 years ago (from game time) is the baseline for the Greco calendar, and called 1 Althea (-100 YBP – years before present), and corresponds to the real worlds -600 BC. The current game year is 102 Althea, or -498 BC.

Time line for DAOTYR, URUNON & REHLAND

-20,000 YBP; Founding of Tem Selaam in old Dao Tyr; the first kingdoms of the Raelfaen in the time of Dragongods dreaming the Bonasas, the first magic.

-16,570 YBP; War of the Titans; March of the Celestials; the destruction of the first Raelfaen universities.

-13,750 YBP; Coming of the Elemental Lords; Founding of Khepathia; the marriage of Unonbate (Bahamut) and Thon Mitanthea (Tiamat); The Elemental Wars

-13,743 YBP; the Tearing of the Metallic and the Chromatic dragons.

-10,467 YBP; the Coming of Dolgatha Doom and the Elven Diaspora; the War of a Thousand Jewels

-9,457 YBP; the Estranging of the Dragongods; the Construction of the Astral Tower

The Astral Tower of the old world

-6,425 YBP; Lord Brogan and the first men come to Dao Tyr; the alliance with Springfield and the Oaxala Raelfaen.

-5,753 YBP; the Founding of the white city of Puriol

-5,750 YBP; The Blight Wars

-3,256 YBP; The Splintering of the Faywild and the Shadowfel by Volukai and the Caxtonaught; the Gherivon

-3,205 YBP; The Forging of the Swords of Doom and the Swords of Glory; the Founding of Gavin Wel, the city of the Raven Queen in Ethilistyr

-2,320 YBP; The Death of Tiamat; The Rending; the four still-living heads of Tiamat broke free from her spirit to swallow the many moons of DAOTYR. The world was plunged into a centuries-long world war that changed the shape of the continents, to become URUNON; the time of one moon – the body of TIAMAT, swinging around the heavens on the other side of the sky from the one sun.

-1,850 YBP; End the Age of Fire; Enter the Age of Ice

-1,508 YBP; The Founding of Memphis and the empire of Egyptos

-1,456 YBP; Egyptos colonizes Rehland; Founding of Aideldon

The Dogs of Seth, Jackelwere, hunt the hinterlands of Rehland in large numbers.

-1,375 YBP; the first smithing of the arcane metal, Nediam

-1,051 YBP; The Oni lord, RoMaDo, ends the one hundred years of siege on the Egyptian colony and kills all remaining colonists; The time of the Ogremage; Nediam is outlawed, called Nediam Nori;

-957 YBP; The Coming of the children of Isis;

The Gods of Rehland are a mix of the gods of Egyptos and the native, druidic dieties of nature.

The blasted shards, the ashes of DAOTYR make the geological backbone of what modern humans call both England and The Tigris-Euphrates river valley in Persia. England is Rehland and was also once the site of the great city of Ethilistyr, Gaven Wel, now called Aideldon, one day to be called London.

While the rest of the human world is in the midst of the Iron Age, the people of Rehland, or more specifically, the wealthy, almost-urban center of Aideldon, are enjoying an almost medieval lifestyle – stone is beginning to replace wood as the main building material for fortresses and settlements, and metallurgical technologies of impressive quality are coming out of the city’s smitheries. This is all because of one substance that has its origins in DAOTYR – the Nediam Nori. Most call it Nediam; meaning world bone – the word Nori has a more nefarious definition: cursed.

Court of Queen Eyssa II on the Aquian Throne.

The story of Icari Es, Nediam Knight and Lord of the Avariel

“It is true, three thousand years ago, my father betrayed our kind, the winged elves of Avariel. He did so without outright malice – he felt in his heart, it was the right thing to do. A decision that shaped the history of my people, and perhaps the whole cosmos.

As you may or may not know, the Avariel are from the elemental plane of air. We are not actually true elves, more akin to a fey-touched Aasimar.

For generations, my people violently struggled against the astral, alien race known as the Githyanki. We were few in numbers and the Gith were aided in servitude to the horrible monsters, the illithid. The Avariel went nearly extinct several times from the relentless war with the Gith.

“The Avariel Queen Othali, with the secret song of Enora, kept our people alive for many millennia before my father’s betrayal. As scar on my heart that has spread from one side of the multiverse to the other.” -Icari Es

My father beseeched the mysterious dragon queen, Tiamat, who appeared to my father in a ritual-vision as a freedom fighter, to aid us in the fight against the Gith. Tiamat said the best way to destroy the Gith was to sever the supply lines to the Gith from the Illithid. For this, my father gave Tiamat the secret of Enora, the true name of the Avariel. After the Gith were free from the Illithid, Tiamat enslaved the Avariel.

“Tiamat, as she appeared as liberator to my father. My father’s name was Daedeli.” – Icari Es.

Tiamat aligned herself with the Devil-Queen Zariel, and together they made a new race of fiends: the Abishai, from an infernal combination of Gith, Dragon and Fiend blood. For a thousand years, my people were enslaved by a force of Abishai.

“Under the tyranny of Zariel, the Abishai were the force by which the Avariel were enslaved for a thousand years.” – Icari Es

When I came of age, just before the Rending, two thousand years ago, I assisted in leading an army of us to this world, called UrUnon now, then called Dao Tyr, in open rebellion to defeat the chromatic heart of dragons, the queen herself. It was myself and an elite force of Avariel who learned of Tiamat’s presence in the world and gave that information to Oromo, the god-king of the Gold Dragons. This act sparked the Rending and changed the world.

In the Rending, I was destroyed, encased in an arcane stasis, a crystal tomb and kept alive miraculously by being fed for two thousand years through fey veins of fungus. Edmyr, lord of the Nediam Knights found me twenty years ago and woke me to new purpose in the service of Queen Eyssa. My charge is to help the good people of Rehland realize their highest potential freedom from the encroaching tyranny of the dark fay of Syrwood. In the last few decades of the hundred years war between Aideldon and the Eladrin, I’ve used my sworn agency as a Knight of Nediam to obtain data and execute counter intelligence, striking into the heart of the fel-wood.

I am alone in this world, the last of my kind and perhaps the only being alive who remembers the living terror of dragons well, gone now as they are from Urunon.” ICARI ES

The mystic lord of the Nediam Knights has been missing for over two years, since the peace between the Eladrin and Aideldon.

Edmyr Th’hed was over one hundred years old when he went missing after his revelation to the Court of Eyssa about the murder of Isis. The first of the Nediam Knights, Edmyr was a father figure to them all. Bruce Drackosen was particularly bent on finding his master. After Rillafane was married to Eyssa and a treaty was established, Bruce left Aideldon to find Edmyr. In his possession he had Edmyr’s journal, a mysterious book that contains clues to what is apparently, an enormours plot that not only involves Emdyr and the knights, but potentially all of humanity itself.

The Hall of the Nediam Knights inside the Bailey of the Aquian Throne

Aideldon town square beside the Smithy

Aideldon has a population that fluctuates seasonally between 8,000 in the summer when the fields are being tended and 15,000 people in the winter when the snows come.

Aideldon has a army that fluctuates between 500 and 2000 conscripts. Service is mandatory for all young, strong adults of no less than two years. Soldiers are specialized as bowmen, heavy infantry, swordsmen, and pikemen.

There is a standing force of 200 armored cavalry.

Bedogolin is the lord-assist to Queen Eyssa. No one has ever seen him draw the sword he always wears. A zealous and dogmatically conservative, religious man, it was Bedogolin who negotiated the peace with the Eladrin of Syrwood.

Ulma is Queen Eyssa’s everpresent handmaiden and most-trusted friend. She often acts as the queen’s spokesperson on political matters of the day.

Lord Argass is the general in charge of Aideldon’s military at the Golden Garrison. Argass takes orders directly from the Knights of Nediam.

REHLAND

FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY

It is said that everyone whose eyes are blessed enough to know the visage of the mystic, good queen Eyssa II has no choice but to love her.

The Egyptian Colonization

Aideldon, the capital of the Rehland, was founded nearly fifteen hundred years ago by the enslaving Egyptos (called Abyssinia in contemporary Rehlish) culture over the native population of a few thousand, stone-age humans. The dominant civilization at that time was the Eladrin, Nedium Elda Raelfaenii, the people of the liquid stone.  Decimated by the invading force of dinosaur-mounted, demon-worshipping Egyptians, the fay kingdoms were scattered and arcanely masked from one another for centuries in what is known as the Fay Diaspora of Rehland. Today, there are three distinctly different fay kingdoms: The Eladrin of Syrwood, the Wood Elves of Amnessa, and the Shadar Kai of Ninomar. The Egyptians came for the Nedium. 24 ingots of metal infused with the original, draconic magic of the world – a completely lost, and absolutely powerful arcane technology called the Bonasas. From those original ingots, some have be lost, some have been remade, but all call to one another across space and time. Egyptian culture is still evidenced in Aideldon by three pyramids and the lasting presence of the patron mother of the city, Isis, queen of life, who betrayed the occult Egyptians to free the human population from their rule. The Oni lord Romado, once an ally of the free people, in turn betrayed Isis and took the city for himself after the Egyptians, sending Isis and her people into exile.

Despite the truce with the Eladrin, the Shadar Kai still relentlessly attack the city of Aideldon, on their undead steeds, the legacy of their infernal queen Zariel.

The Time of the Ogremage

In that time, the time of Ogremage, a period of one hundred years, Isis founded and united the five counties of Wellwyr, Tigdale, Ydledyr, Pyrsmith and Oromyr. She then had two children with the Eladrin Lord Alobal Lorfiril, a son Dian and a daughter Brigan. Armed with Nedium weapons, and united under one banner, they retook Aideldon from the Ogremage and founded a new kingdom on the virtues of honor, faith and family. After nearly eight hundred years of rule, over 30 generations of men, the family ruled with undying grace and were loved and Rehland prospered. Then the Faydark crept into the hearts of the Eladrin, possessing their wine and madness followed. There was no assuaging their wrath and their evil. Isis and her children were betrayed, and it was told that Isis fled with her children to behind the moon, where they remain, granting divine magic to druids and priests of men.

No human has ever been permitted to pass into Sheni Laht, the heart of the Eladrin Syrwood

The Murder of Isis

In truth, on the winter moon one hundred years ago at the dawn of the war, Isis was killed by her own brother, a demon named Fraz-Urb’luu with an Eladrin Nedium blade. Up until then, Fraz-Urb’luu had been an immortal knight in the court of his sister the queen, having had always hidden the true nature of his terrible heart. The murdered body of Isis was found by her son, Dian. Fraz-Urb’luu, appearing on the scene there following, convinced the enraged prince that she was murdered by her own husband, who himself had disappeared and not been seen since, even unto this day. Madness followed; Dian and Brigan went into the Syrwood to avenge their mother and have not been seen since. A terrible and bloody, century long war between the Eladrin and the humans erupted. All of it, based on a lie.

The hell queen Zariel appeared to the Shadar Kai as a vision of victory as she proceeded to cut immortality directly from the heart of Aideldonian royalty.

The Curse of Zariel

Soon after the flight and disappearance of the Aideldonian rulers, The Fallen Angel Zariel, queen of Avernus, cloaked herself as a Shadar Kai queen and stole the immortality of the family of Isis, cut it, as it is said with her own stolen Nedium blade, the Queen Slayer. There have been four queens, now human and mortal, in the time since (as it is called) the retreat of Isis.

The need for military prowess and to defend themselves from the human war left the Eladrin open to the forever twisting seductions of the Faydark.

The Revelation of Edmyr

It was four years ago that the truth of the murder of Isis was revealed to the court of the current queen on the Aquian throne, Queen Eyssa II, the great-granddaughter of Brigan. It was the account by the mystic-swordsman and lord of the Nedium Knights: Edmyr The’ed. Until then, Edmyr had lead his five knights on countless, heroic campaigns into the Syrwood to combat the ever-wrathful Eladrin, who had become a society of war, having taken to mounted combat on fell beasts from the Faydark. Strafing, offensive runs from Shadar Kai and Eladrin had become common, weekly occurrences, made to harass and wear down Aideldon, the walled city of men. Edmyr claimed that the vision of this truth came to him from the moon, a power remade from the Bonasas, and a word lost to the minds of men, signifying a power to come, or to return to Urunon – that word is Dragon. Upon this final revealing of the truth of the murder of Isis, the queen made peace with the Eladrin by marrying the lord Rillafane Rillathil, an Eladrin king, who has now come to live in the garden in the middle of Aideldon.  The truce in tenuous and incomplete. Edmyr himself has gone missing, for nearly two years now, the order of the Knights of Nedium have been without their lord. Goblins and Shadar Kai continue to besiege the beleaguered city and the future is far from certain, but will no doubt be writ in the blood of the righteous and the noble.

The wood elves of Amnessa have always stood with the men of Aideldon against the combined forces of the eladrin and the Shadar Kai.