DandD { The Realm of Nox

After almost 12 years, I'm finally getting off my butt and starting to coalesce my ideas and thoughts into a campaign world that I will run the Nerdpod through. The is called 'Nox' (latin for night) and it is a dark and not so nice place. Here is a bit of fluff I've created for my players to give them a taste:

[From the journal of Inquisitor Ravenscliff, dated Autumnal Equinox,
2953 P1S/10 P2S, titled 'Chapter One: The First Sundering and the
Early Times]
---begin journal entry---
The world has grown dark, and not just from the lack of sunlight
caused by the funeral pyres. There is simply not much light left, or
hope that I can see. The world is...broken. I write these pages in
hopes that if there is a future, something of this time can be
remember, a lesson of the things that were, and why not to repeat
them.

First a brief history of how we've come to be here. The origins of
the world were thought to be once understood, but that knowledge is
lost. Lost in the First Sundering of the World. All we do know is of
the 'Great Empire of Man' that existed. There knowledge, from what
artifacts we have was great. Their mastery of the natural world and
arcane lore almost complete, greater even than the elves. From what
historians and theologians have pieced together, it was this mastery
that bred an arrogance, an arrogance that undid the world. In their
quest for ever more power they opened a portal to, elsewhere, and
unleashed an evil upon the world never before seen. Those that were
not corrupted, were destroyed. Those that were not destroyed went
feral, and almost all knowledge was lost. Only pieces and fragments
from that time remain. Kept in remote and secret locations. The
knowledge itself became worshiped as scripture. The keepers of the
secrets no longer able to understand what they keep. Cults of
Enlightenment formed and gathered followers, waging war on each other.
All except one, the Hermetics of Thelmorn, kept the knowledge and
over the centuries learned from it, piecing together and expanding
what they had, these monks formed the core of what would become the
Imperial Thatamurgists School.
Over time the evil, only referred to as the 'Dark Ones' were driven
back by a coalition of the Hermetics working with the Naturalists (a
Cult of Enlightenment focused on understanding through the Natural
World). Strength of arms was provided by the most powerful of the
Clans of Man, the Dokdar, who would later be the uniters and founders
of the Second Empire of Man. The Dokdar were the most advanced of the
feral tribes that were mankind following the Sundering. They were
forceful, but not cruel. Their rage tempered by the Enlightenment of
Hermetics and Naturalists with whom they had trade and contact. Sadly
much information from the Great Battle was lost in the 2nd Sundering
when the towers of the Thatamurgists were lost. From what fragments
we could recover and correlation with the disparate oral histories,
the battle was somewhat anti-climactic, the portal had actually sealed
itself shortly after events that was the First Sundering. The 'Dark
Ones' had decreased in power, and many had vanished. Only those that
were able to corrupt followers remained, and even then their heretical
ways resulted in the diminishment of their numbers. The coalition,
formed 500 years after the First Sundering were able to, rather easily
destroy what remained of the evil ones. In doing so they destroyed
the structure that was thought to be the portal. Using the heads of
the defeated 'Dark Ones' as icons of their victory the Dokdar, with
their charismatic leader Solimere, set forth on a crusade of
unification that would last for 100 years and result in the founding
of the Second Empire of Man.

---end chapter---