25 Years Ago...

This chapter is, thankfully, much shorter than the previous one. This covers the physical geography of the Flanaess, describing the physical features that make up the land. There are lots of forests, mountain ranges, some deserts, plenty of rivers, and even some swamps here and there. This will be a pretty quick overview, so let's get to it. I was going to do single-sentence overviews of each forest, but I didn't realize there were four pages of them. That's a lot. 33 of them, in fact. So we're not doing that. The most important forests and jungles in the Flanaess would include the Vesve between Furyondy and Iuz, the Burneal in the north that forms the southern border of Blackmoor, and the Adri, which used to be a lot bigger but has been subject to logging for a long, long time in the Great Kingdom. And of course, there is the Amedio Jungle which houses one of the all-time classic modules, C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan . Greyhawk's mountains are legendary, from ...

Alright, I'm hoping to finish this chapter in this entry. But there are still 35 pages to go, so it might not happen. We shall see. Next on the list is the Shield Lands, or rather the Restored Holy Realm of the Faithful of the Shield Lands. They really go extravagant on these country names, don't they? And the ruling titles aren't much better; this commonwealth of local lords is ruled by Her Most Honorable Ladyship, Countess Katarina of Walworth, Knight Commander of the Shield Lands, a LG female human P15 of Heironeous. It's a pretty small country of about 27,000 right next to the Empire of Iuz and the Bandit Kingdoms. Furyondy is on their southwest, but still. Fortunately, they have several allies, including Furyondy, of course, Veluna, Verbobonc, Dyvers, Greyhawk, the Duchy and County of Urnst, Highfolk, and the entire Church of Heironeous. Well, that's handy. The big problem with the Shield Lands is that it's almost a country in name only; they lost most of t...

Well, I forgot to post this yesterday, so I'll add it today. This is the latest Map-a-Week from WOTC, the Catacombs . It could be used for pretty much any post-apocalyptic setting. It could, in fact, be used for a D&D game set in a normal D&D setting. But it's not quite fitting my idea for Tasiri, so I'm going to leave it out. Still, it's here for posterity.

Moving on, we have the Lendore Isles next. Or rather, the 'Radiant and Transformed Domain of Sehanine of the Lendore Isles', which is ruled by the Most Radiant Bow of Sehanine, Orb of the Heavens, High Priest Anfaren Silverbrow, a CG male elf C20 of Sehanine. Lendore is an extreme theocracy; the church runs EVERYTHING here. And this is almost entirely elves, with a population of about 41,000. Obviously, the elf pantheon takes center stage here. Formerly known as the Spindrifts, it used to be the setting for Len Lakofka's Lendore Isles adventures ( Secret of Bone Hill , The Assassin's Knot , and Deep Dwarven Delve ). Reading through the history part of the entry, it's clear that those modules are still canon, but the elves just completely took over and kicked out most of the humans off the islands after the Greyhawk Wars and turned Lendore into an elven holy place. Well, that sucks. There are human rebels resisting the elven takeover, but they are most definitely a t...

  Okay, let's continue on with this massive chapter. The Faerie Kingdom of Celene is next on the list, ruled by Her Fey Majesty, Queen Yolande, Perfect Flower of Celine, Lady Rhalta of All Elvenkind, a CG female elf W13/F2. Celene is a hereditary feudal monarchy run entirely by elves. The capital is Enstad, which is the only major town. There's a total population of 140,000, 4/5 of which are elves and most of them are grey elves). The primary alignment in Celene is CG, and the primary religion is of course the elven pantheon led by Corellon Larethian. Celene is allied with the Duchy of Ulek and the Knights of Luna, and are opposed by the Pomarj and Iuz. However, Celene keeps to itself, not doing much in the way of diplomacy. The Free Lands of Dyvers is ruled by Her Excellency Larissa Hunter, Magister of Dyvers, a NG female human F12. Dyvers is a 'democratic meritocracy', with a population of 128,000. Mostly human (most of whom are Oeridian), the common (and official) al...

Okay, let's dive into this massive chapter. I doubt I'll get it all done tonight. This is the Gazetteer part of the Gazetteer . We get a brief explanation of smaller and insignificant political bodies such as independent castles or strongholds, most of which are isolated and out of range for bigger armies to take care of. The Gazetteer chapter also won't be covering any underground or underwater realms to save space. We then get a rundown of how each country's gazetteer entry is laid out. The proper name of the kingdom or polity, the current ruler as of 591 CY, the type of government, the capital city and major towns, provinces within the country, natural resources, coinage, population (broken down not only by race, but sometimes also by human sub-race), languages, the general alignment of the populace, major religions, allies and enemies, an overview covering climate, plants and animals, transportation and military, the country's history, and finally any current co...

Okay, so now we're going to dive into the expanded Greyhawk Gazetteer designed for the Living Greyhawk campaign. There are quite a few similarities with the earlier Gazetteer  product that I reviewed back in September. However, this is greatly expanded from that product. Unfortunately, I don't have the map that came with it, just like I didn't have the map that came with the earlier product. I'm going to have to print off my own copy, I suppose. Pain in the butt, but it is what it is. So, since this product is a chunky 192 pages, I'm going to take a few days to go over the whole thing. The first three chapters are quite short, so I'll cover them in this post. We begin with the first chapter, entitled Greyhawk's World. This is an overview of the world of Oerth, specifically the Flanaess where the Living Greyhawk campaign takes place. The Flanaess has a standardized calendar and a standard seven-day week. However, unlike our own calendar, their rest and worshi...