Aevora is a large continent that has been completely isolated from the rest of the world by an impenetrable storm for several thousand years.

Millennia ago, Aevora was a hub of trade and travel, until the storm came. Scholars and historians have spent centuries researching the storm, and there are as many theories about its origin as there are researchers, but none have come to a consensus on how or why it appeared. The Storm forms a completely impenetrable ring around the continent; no ship that has tried to sail through has ever returned, and since its appearance, no ship from outside has ever made its way to Aevora's shores.

At the same time as it became geographically isolated, an event known as The Closing of the Doors occurred, where all planar and magical travel to and from the continent was no longer possible.

History tells that as it happened chaos erupted, nations waged war, and entire empires fell as neighbour tuurned on neighbour certain that eachother had casued this calamity. Time wore on and from the ruins of the old workd new nations emerged, as decades turned to centuries and centuries to millennia even the old stories of a world beyond the storm became myth and legend. A new status quo for those who lived on Aevora was created.

For over three thousand years the storm has raged without interruption, never slowing never moving. Until now.

Now the party will find themselves drawn together by fate or chance, design and bonds as whispers begin to circle amongst scholars and sailors, the storm is changing, inexorably moving towards land, tightening its grip on the continent.

Type and Tone

This campaign is ideally going to be a more classic sword and sorcery type game. I have several larger overarching plots brewing, but wont start making anything more concrete until getting players preferences and characters as the intent is for the world to be the canvas for the parties story.

This is not an 'sandbox' game nor is it written out like a traditional adventure path would be. There are various nations, factions and individual NPC's all working to thier own timelines with thier own goals and sotrylines happening in the background to the Party. The intent is for players to always have the power to decide where tehy go and what they do and as thier paths intersect with others in the world the 'Story' is told. I have created the world with some broad strokes but intend to switch from this top down style to a more spiral like planning method once the game starts. There are big gaps in the world and its story, by design, that we as a group will fill in as we play together.

Tonally the aim is to also land somewhere in the middle, not a fully beer and pretzles game nor a grim dark every moment is laced with intrigue and the potential for world ending consequences feel. Tone should shift depending on where we are in the game there should be moments of pure silliness and also more times when a more serious approach is suitable. Ultimatley this is a game and whatever facilitates the most amount of fun in the long term is the goal

Playstyle and Pillars

I like to believe I am a generalist when it comes to the pillars of play (Exploration, social interaction, and combat). For me, TTRPG’s works best when all of them are incorporated. I hope to approach it so that what happens in the session makes narrative sense, sometimes that may mean that individual sessions lean more heavily into one aspect than another, for example demons are not going to fall out of portals in the sky because the session has been more focused on a political conspiracy and we haven't had a combat for a while (unless that conspiracy is a demon worshiping cult at the heart of the government and you have just exposed it)

This can also have an effect on timescale, sometimes several months in-game could pass in a single session, or vice versa, an afternoon in game might take several sessions to unfold.

You may notice that roleplay on its own is not included in the pillars and that's because I believe roleplay should be present at all times, once initiative is rolled does not mean that roleplay has to stop, fancy flourishes, trash talk and adding a bit of flavor to your actions are encouraged rather than it switching pure mechanical tactics once combat starts. I do want players to embody their characters as much as possible.

With that being said, if you are a player that totally dislikes one aspect of the game, be it combat, puzzles, politics, etc this game might not be for you. Everyone has preferences, I struggle with creating puzzles and may have to resort to outside help when creating them or outright permitted theft, so it's not about preferring one but if the thought of doing anything other than hitting things with your sword fills you with apathy it's probably not a good fit and if you would rather tune out while the combat is happening the same applies.

The World

I don't want to delve too deep into the world as lots of the in depth stuff will be based around your characters, I prefer to work with players to create things like noble houses, religions, family histories etc that have a big effect on the world. There are generalist versions of all of these for my own benefit and to make sure no one feels like they have to come up with entire pantheons just to play a cleric, but I don't want to delve too deep into them here.

Painting with broad strokes: After the calamity that was the arrival of the Storm and the Closing of the Doors, the lands and people of Aevora spent decades in chaos, once prosperous and peaceful nations turned fearful and paranoid, cults prophesying doom and destruction appeared, sowing discord and fear. Historians have not managed to adequately timeline the immediate years after the Storm, but they do all agree that the most destructive and bloody conflict was between the ancient Dwarven Kingdoms and the Giants. It was a war that dragged every nation, powerful or insignificant, into battle. As quickly as it seemingly started, it ended. The Dwarves, though technically victorious, were diminished to such a degree that they could no longer control their sprawling kingdoms, and the few remaining Giants retreated into what is now known as the Frostlands and, with few exceptions, remained there.

From this destruction, large swathes of land stood unclaimed, once powerful nations had all but disappeared, and slowly over the centuries, new nations took their place, redrawing old borders and fostering new ideas of governance.

The temperate west became Caedrith, referred to as Aevora's breadbasket, its fertile land gave rise to a system of chivalry and farming that makes it one of the safest yet traditional nations today. On the opposite side of the continent, the far more rugged and dangerous climate gave rise to Thalsivir, a conglomeration of warring tribes that eventually led to a singularly militaristic nation. Its cities prosper overtop the ruined Dwaven settlements of old, trading precious minerals and stalwart mercenaries for everything else. In the north one of the few remaining nations from before the war continued, diminished and not without its troubles, Tashan managed to remain, its harsh surroundings being of not great strategic merit, it managed to remain as isolated from the fighting as it was possible. In the centuries since, Tashan has kept itself highly insular but is also the hub of learning on Aevora and many a foreign noble family has paid for its children to be educated in its ancient universities.

More recently, there has been the creation of Midran, a contrived nation, designed to keep the peace between Caedrith and Thalsivir after conflicts between the two threatened to plunge the continent into another bloody war. Now it acts as the crossroads and trade center of all of Aevora.

Beyond the nations themselves are many organisations, guilds, and religious bodies, though perhaps most notable of all are the Library. Ostensibly a guild of adventurers and scholars with the singular goal of acquiring knowledge with the hope of understanding The Storm, they have grown into the largest and wealthiest autonomous group on the continent.

This is really just a starting point to give you some idea of where to begin thinking about characters, obviously it is not enough to flesh out full back stories, but I think it's best to work them out together.

Much fuller information on where we start and pertinent information to how characters fit into the start of the campaign will be provided to those who join. This campaign is designed to be as collaborative as I can make it; much of the world-building will happen as we go, dictated by the players and their characters as much as my ideas of plot.

Rules, Tweaks, and Boundaries

Pathfinder is a new system to me and while I have some experience GM'ing in other systems I do not want to bite of more than I can chew by introducing a myriad of variant and hombrewed rules and sub-systems into pathfinder (It's already pretty massive to an outsider) so we will be running it fairly vanilla to start with. If over time certain things feel like a drag or we want to experiment we can explore options.

We will be having a session Zero and incorporating the now popular idea of lines and veils to make everyone as comfortable as possible at the (virtual) table.

Applying

If after reading this and Aevora and you wish to apply please send me a quick discord message. I would appreciate if you could include some info covering the following.

About You:

A little bit of info about you as a player, age and timezone would be helpful. You experience with TTRPG's (new players are welcome, just let me know) How you like to play TTRPG or PF2E specifically, areas you really enjoy, areas you don't love, you don't have to rate them but if wanted to put aspects of the game in a tier list thats great. Anything else you think might be relevant

Character:

I'm not asking for full character backstories or anything but a general idea, or two on some characters you are looking forward to playing. Thier personality, breif background, mechanics (caster, martial if you have specific classes or backgrounds in mind) anything that has piqued your interest in this Legend Keeper would be great. Any questions you would like answering to help with ideas are welcomed

Please no novel length backstories, we will work on full backstories together so that the character is fully intergrated in the world, please be prepared to work with me when creating your character, just so I can start building around the characters right from the get go.

My Discord : vonlipwig_