My idea goes like this. The world of Aslan was once a beautiful world of lush forests teaming with elves, towering mountains alive with the hammering of dwarves, sparkling riverside cities of halflings. Then disaster struck. Of course no one knew at the time that the coming of the humans would mean the end of their relatively peaceful lives.
The humans carved a nice little space out for themselves and all was good, but a few were not fine with good. They saw opportunity. An opportunity to carve out little kingdoms for themselves.
So what if the land they want already has people on it. So then the wars began. Centuries of constant war. Human versus Human, Elf versus Dwarf, Halfling versus not being exterminated by all sides. The H.E.D. Wars led to new race coming into being. Dragons took on humanoid shapes and eventually lost the ability to turn back. Mechanical men were created to fight for the High Elves (eladrin) but quickly gained sentience and decided to fight for their own kind against all comers. Tieflings with their hubris made their deals with extra-planar beings and were scared for all to see. The more vicious of the elves became as shadows and then took on the name Drow, the Old High Elvish word for lacking light. Gnomes sprang from the Halflings and the where just a quickly made extinct. Elvish prisoners were twisted by Dark Magik and became the ferocious Orcs and the Halfling prisoners became the rabid Goblin hordes.
So the wars go on for more than 100,000 years. Races die out, come back, die out, and come back. New Gods replace the old and in turn are themselves replaced. Magik becomes magic and becomes weak as it spreads to become many things, divine, primal, arcane, and shadow. Some develope new and strange psionic abilites. Then as swiftly as the wars began they ended. No one not even the long lived races remember how the end of the wars came about. Now its some 20,000 years after the wars ended. Halflings are a vagabond race, with no cities of their own. Dwarves keep to themselves and try to have little contact with anyone as possible. The great Elvish forests have been lost to legend. Tieflings are tinkers, gypses, or mercineries. The Dragonborn Desert covers a third of the known world, and the Badlands cover the other two thirds. Humans mostly live in the six great kingdoms, and Elves are banded together in small clans run by Warlords.
Part One of ?
Extreme Racism: 100,000 years of war based on the lines of racial division. Humans probably seen as the worst of the worst for starting all the conflicts.
Post Apocolypse: Most of the world is a badlands or a desert.
Mutations common: A lot of your races are made from other races.
You might also want to focus on developing one region in your setting. The region that shows off what it's about best. There's some thing really cool there you want people to see so develop that first.
Okay so the the world is divided into two regions The Dragonborn Dessert and The Badlands.
But those regions are divided into sub-regions. The Dragonborn Dessert is divided into five sub-regions each run by one of The Five Families. The Salams (fire) in the east and The Thrax (poison) to the west on the border of The Badlands. The Hycl (acid) in the middle of the dessert. And The Skaoi(cold) in the south-east and finally The Thunaer (lightning) in the south-west. The Five Families are divided by their breath weapons. Though rumors of The Fallen Family still persit few believe The Plutarcs (necrotic) exist or have ever existed.
The Badlands are divided into three sub-regions. The Frozen Sea in the north. The Lava Pillars in the east and The Mortician Wastes in the west. Each of the three sub-regions contain two of the six human "kingdoms", one deep in the region, one on the border of it and a neighboringregion. Ponos(wis) deep in the wastes, and Syn (dex) on the border of the dessert. Mulciber (str) high atop the tallst peak of Mount Gobannus in midst of The Lava Pillars. Loptr (cha) is on the border of Lava Pillars and The Frozen Sea. Njoerd (con) far out onto The Frozen Sea. And finally Selkis (int) on the border of the wastes and The Frozen Sea.
Dwarves live in and have constant skirmishes with the orcs and humans that live in the mountainous areas of The Lava Pillars.
Elves are live in the only area that still closely resembles the forests of their legends, The Black Woods, an area in The Mortician Wastes. The Black Woods King, Dispater, lives in their only "city" of Proserpina. Whats left of the eladrin are so inbreed with the common elves that a pure breed only comes about once every 100 births and are mostly used by the king as scouts and assassins. The drow are all dead.
Free halflings usually stay close to their former elven masters.
Tieflings live in traveling caravans as gypsies or in the human kingdoms as mercenaries though a few have a position of power in the Tower of Nyx a darklock "school" a few miles outside of Ponos.
Warforged live where they choose and are tolerated by most.
To be continued....
Let us continue...
Most half-elves tend to live in secluded villages or in the human areas posingas elves, because the one thing both humans and elves agree on is their disdain for this "mongrel" race.
Orcs and most half-orcs live in tribal communities that are able to sustain themselves by raiding villages and caravans. The rest of the half-orcs live in or around Mulciber as freed-man or gladiators fighting in The Arena.
Goblins live mostly in the Mortician Wastes and are a constant nuisance to the people the inhabit the sub region.
All other races may exist but the player that wants to play them must come up with a back-ground for its existence.
Now lets get into the regional religions.
Dragonborn all worship Bahamut but each family has it's own ancestral spirit that they revere.
Each human city has its own patron deity but humans also acknowledge the existence of The Unholy Trinity, a group of three evil gods.
Ponos- Morticia (u)- Goddess of death, the moons, and poetry and music.
Syn- Artume (cg)- Goddess of archery, crossroads, and magic.
Mulciber- Sethlans (Ln)- God of the fire, forge, and craftsmanship.
Loptr- Turan (g)- Goddess of beauty, love, vitility, and the sun.
Njoerd- Maris (cn)- God of strength of arms, battle, and death in combat. Assisted by his twin ice wolves/sons, Formido (dread/terror) and Timor (fear/horror).
Selkis- Turms (g)-God of communication, healing, and thievery.
The Unholy Trinity are Lucian (Le)- God of envy, pride, and greed. Lilith (e)- Goddess of lust, and wrath. And lastly Brachen (e)- God of gluttony, and sloth.
Elves worship Suadela The Moon Mother(u)-Goddess of the moon, lust, archery, and music; and Aplu The Golden One (u)- God of the sun, battle, swordmanship, magic, and healing. They are believed to be the great twins who created the elven race.
Dwarves have sadly lost their faith and as such no longer worship anyone.
Warforged have no belief in religion for the most part, although some worship a few human gods.
Tieflings worship their ancestors instead of gods.
to be continued....
I get the feeling you don't read the responses...
I knew that after your first reply. Its too basic, too generic. Yes there are dragonborn and a desert. Now what? There is nothing to do, the races are as they are; religious or godless but what happens.
I get the feeling you don't read the responses...
I'm reading them...
Points of Interest...
The Tower Of Nyx- A 150' tall, 150' in circumfrince tower made of a special material known as ronyx (limestone, onyx, and black Dragonborn Dessert sand). It has ten rooms per floor with the exception of the ground floor and the top two floors. There is also a basement and an observitory on the very top.
The Arena- A 2 square mile mammoth coloseum that can hold almost all of the known population of Mulcibar ( nearly a million people).
okay I cant think of anything else right now but will post when I do. Thank you for your imput.
A quick comment one of your names: Morticia is a really bad choice. Anyone who knows the Addams Family in your group is going to have a field day with that. Mortician Waste sounds almost modern and I suspect that you're going to get a lot of crappy undertaker jokes if you use it.
You might also want to drop Dispater as a name as he is a fairly well-known archdevil.
I do like the way you have divided up the groups based on their "favoured" ability. That's a great shorthand way to differentiate them. I might try that myself one day.