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.