Thanks for the input!

Cons:

- None so to speak at this point, maybe aside of the typos that I think that I have spotted below.

In fact Dwarven metabolism is dependent on alcohol, which does not mentally effect them.

Shouldn't this be "affect"?

rooted in seeing themselves as apart of the forest and not as distinct entities

"as a part" instead of "as apart"?

I'd be surprised if that was all typos I made. :(

- Your map has actual roads!

I put those so I could exclude them from the Refuge. The elves might follow foot paths and deer trails, but build roads? Nope.

- The fact that all magic stems from divine source and is very rare really resonates with me. Even as someone fairly new to RPGs I managed to already get bored of Weave of Magic, Winds of Magic, Magic Field of Magic etc that seems to just exists and act as a safety net for situations where something would not make much sense.

It definitly isn't a safe thing to use in this world. Part the reason I'm looking at using the ruleset that I am is that it already has rules that make magic harmful to the caster. It costs health to cast, and casting too much of it too quickly can corupt a person's mind.

- Races are close to their popular trope, but each comes with enough distinct traits to make them feel different. I especially love the Elf description. Orks have relatable and very 'human' reason to produce half-breeds instead of being barbarians on the rape spree.

I figured everyone would read the list of races in the world and pick up those tropes, so I let most of it stand. But I want to hack out anything that would stop someone from feeling empathy with them. They should all be compromised in some way, but I haven't managed to make that happen yet.

- Names are meaningful. Personally I would take "The Reformed God Slayer Kingdom" than some "Gaholaugh" or whatever fantasy authors would want to roll from random syllable table ;). Even the non-English ones are actually pronounceable.

That's part of my Dwarffortress background coming through. I'm a lot more rooted in that than in actual fantasy fiction. The non-english names came about because I was listening to the Brexit ballot results and reflecting on how place names often don't make any sense unless you know the backstory to them.

I'm not sure if I'll leave those names in or swap them out. I'd love to have a Dwarffortress-esque utility where english words map to syllables in all the languagues of the world and I could feed it "The Vale of the Giggling Creek" and it would spit out a word(s) in Elvish or Dwarven or what-have-you, but I don't see myself making that happen.

So, onwards to politics.

I'm gonna roll half of this into one quote.

First of all, state names. There's nothing wrong with a state being known by the common name: Montenegro, for example, has its name directly translated in many languages, with the proper name being "Crna Gora", meaning "Black Mountain" (where "Montenegro" comes from Latin for it). However, having a state known by its proper name - let's say, "Crna Gora" - could be a sign of many things, respect and/or fear from other states and cultures being not the least of them. So, if "Elvenheim" or "P'phakhtanyar" are the proper names for their respective states, there would be nothing wrong with having them known as such both to the political elite and the general population, even with some of the names being difficult to pronounce - in which case, a common name might appear, like with München and it's English-language equivalent "Munich", which for a non-German is much easier to pronounce.

...

As a linguist, I always insist on having the name of the state come from the language its people bear. It doesn't make sense to have it the other way, unless common names are used. With the state of C'ae, I do have a question: what does the apostrophe stand for? Language evolves into simplicity, so using side symbols, especially in (what I assume to be) transliteration, would have to be under a strong enough justification. History knows both coming and going of symbols for various sounds even within a single writing system, as evident with the reforms of the Russian language (some subtle, some overt and officially-dictated), where "Ё" /jo/ became a part of the language after people've already been using "IО"/"ЙО" for the same sound and the infamous "Ѣ" /je/ went away under the 1917/1918 Soviet decrees. What justification does the goblin language and/or the transliteration of it into the common tongue that's used for relaying the world's information have for the apostrophe in the name? Besides, how does one pronounce the state name?

I am terrible with (natural) languages, and writing doesn't really come easily to me. Creating constructed languages feels way out of my depth, so I didn't really put much thought into it. I got Quatrarius to give me some jumping off points to learn about linguistics once, but I didn't really manage to internalize what I read.

I would pronounce C'ae as "Sea", but I don't have a linguistic reason to think that. I don't even know what it means right now, which is part of the reason I'm tempted to with just go with names in English.

The subject of the capital of Dal and the seeming apathy of the inhabiting nation seem off to me. You'd never expect your capital city to be blown up, but... what do you do when it's gone and you still have the state to run? You move the capital. If you need officials, you elect them or let them take reign, which sounds like a good possibility in a fantasy world. Things will settle; but if the people remain passive, the state will inevitably fall - either due to entropy or external factors. In other words, I don't believe there could be such a thing as a "fallen kingdom": it's either history or in reform.

I'm starting the campaign about a month after the capital exploded. I'm assuming that with only conventional means to communicate, the chaos hasn't settled into an internal response yet. Particularly given that marshlands would hamper movement. The remaining lords are also discovering that the nation didn't have much military capabilities after relying on a now defunct deity's protection. It'd easy for outside actors that haven't lost their leadership to take advantage advantage of that, which is why Copeth is moving towards invading, and the Goblins are streaming in to claim land.

It's in the process of becoming a failed state, but isn't quite there yet. It might be better to describe it in terms of regional governments that still exist and are trying to reform into a national government.

I'll be more harsh than Devac in my review, in part because I've made several worlds of my own. Don't let this discourage you, however: my goal is to point out where things could be made better.

Thanks, I was hoping that somebody would poke what I thought I'd figured out full of holes, because otherwise it'll be my players who have to do it.

First of all, I think it might serve you well to add a list of non-playable races for DMs. This will not only allow for better master tools but also expand the world beyond what's player-necessary - that is, make it feel more alive and verisimilar.

I quite like the idea that what I've outlined is all that exists in terms of analogs to humanity. Monsters exist in the world, but in levels that are so low that they'd be in danger of going extinct. That is, if they weren't the result of enviornmental magic corrupting people and animals.

Your dwarves are, basically, alcoholics dozens of generations in - and it isn't an unfortunate conclusion so much as a fact. That they've incorporated alcohol into their metabolism serves to say as much - this is how addiction works; to say nothing of the deep withdrawal effects. All of which I presume because no species begins with such a necessity.

That being said, human beings experience similar, though perhaps not as drastic, effects from lacking essential nutrients, like vitamins. I'd like you to explore whether living as an alcohol-less dwarf is truly impossible as well as portray the chemical as a nurtient of sorts for the race.

Hmmmm. You are right, that's basically what I've written them as, but it isn't what I wanted. I was trying to keep the "dwarves love booze" template somewhat intact without having to deal with drunken roleplaying by half the party.

The change I'm now pondering:

Dwarves still aren't negatively affected by Dwarven Alcohol, due to their metabolism. Which I'm totally going to use as the reason why Gnomes are barren.

Dwarves didn't start out dependent on (dwarven) alcohol to stay alive. They were normal in this regard at one point. A wasting disease has, however, has slowly spread through the population. They can't cure it, but they can hold it at bay indefinitly with medication. Children under the age of 10 can't take the medication without fatally altering the developmental process. By which time the wasting disease is fairly advanced.

So:

- Without regular treatment, Dwarves quickly fall back into the clutches of their illness.

- This disease is why dwarves are stunted now. They weren't in the past.

- The medication is colloquially known as "Dwarven Alcohol" by humans, orcs, and goblins because to them it is a hard drug.

- Dwarves (and Gnomes and Elves) now feel the affects of regular alcohol, but not the side affects of Dwarven Alcohol.

Orcs are awfully selfless with "the desire to give their children longer lives than their own", especially proud as they are. They should've disappeared from the face of the world years ago if they're so careless about the purity of their blood. Every species generally strives towards status quo, biologically, which is why we don't see many crocodile x hippo hybrids. How can a species remain proud yet so willing to share the blood with another? An answer to that question should prove really interesting.

Orcs are on the way out. They are the oldest race in the world, and at one point they populated all of it. Now they've been pushed back to the far north. They would have starved to death by this point if they hadn't found mineral wealth and managed to make their existance important to the Reformed Kingdom. Once that runs out...

How can a species remain proud yet so willing to share the blood with another? An answer to that question should prove really interesting.

Culture. They are proud of their culture. They see the Humans, Dwarves, and Elves as weak for being willing to accept a top down government (Dwarves don't have it but wish to restore it). Not for having different blood, but for having different ideals and traditions. Having children with humans doesn't mean they are doing so in situations where the children will be raised in another culture. They are ensuring that even when the last Orc dies, their ways have a chance to continue.

Which isn't to say that there aren't xenophobs and purists. Or that Orcs and Humans have a normal success rate at bearing a child.

How come goblins, with their extremely short lifespan and utilitarian political mind, have become known for their artistry of ideas? Seems to me that to obtain such mastery would require a breadth of experience or some form of mind transfer (so that the later ones could continue to improve upon the legacy). Besides, the goblin backstory nudges us carefully into the territory of...

The goblins actually have the highest capacity of intelligence in this setting, so it seemed necessary for them to have a way from them to cope with the bad hand they got dealt. When I gave them such short lives, I decided not to prevent them from reaching adulthood. So I robbed them of childhood. They mature within two years, and then only have thirteen to figure out what it all means. Their continued existance given that implies that they must have a deep artistic and philosophical rooting.

Individuals don't have breadth of experience, but the whole maintains one via an oral tradition.

Sounds really odd that among the things the first mage would do would be to create a sentient species. Unless they were somehow magically instructed to perform peacefully and/or not to attack the master species, they could easily become a danger not just to the mage drunk with power, but for the whole world (because I assume that their lifespan is offset by much higher rate of reproduction). Not to say that it would be impossible to do so - it's your kind of magic, after all, and you decide what it can do - just odd that the small people came to be so damn quickly and with seemingly so few precautions.

If my job has shown me anything, it is that safeguards only come into place after events that show why they were necessary. I assume that pretty much any mortal put on par with the gods would botch everything he touched until it bit him hard enough to learn caution.

I love the real reason behind magic's existence in your world. Can you elaborate on exactly what makes magic exist (how does the entity's presence allow for reality reconfiguration)?

The entity below the forest is asleep, but also omnipotent for all intents in this reality ( there are some that it is in where it is mortal). It is dreaming about the world above, and glimmers of that vision are seeping into reality. It can sense the effect this has on the world above, so its mind is reacting to that input and interjecting it into the dream.

What doesn't make sense to me is how can one become magically potent. You write that it's achieved through divine action, but it turns out that deities are merely condensed... "magic", however that works. This means that to allow for usage of magic, there must be deities to grant access to it, but for there to be deities, there must be high magic usage in an area... which implies that there has been such usage before the first human mage (the race which I presume to be among the earlier ones). Does this mean that other races had mages before humans? Who granted access to magic to those, then?

The chain of events that brought mages into the world:

1. An eldrich horror that exists in all realities created Lanthis while it slept.

2. Its dreaming mind started to project magic onto the world.

3. Where those projections become strong enough, they form an inteligence. To the eldrich horror, these are characters in its dream. To the races living above it, they are gods.

4. These gods can spark magic in mortals, like lighting a small candle with a bigger one. The eldrich horror starts to see the mortal as a character in the dream.

Does this mean that other races had mages before humans? Who granted access to magic to those, then?

If there was a first magic user, it was the eldrich horror.

I'll respond to your Politics section later, I'm running out of time right now. I'm ad libbing lots of this, as I realize the gaps. Thanks for all the prompting.

I've got you!

The predominate races in the world are: Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Half Orcs,

Other races in the world include: Gnomes, Orcs, Goblins

Humans

By far the most populous race in Lanthis, human societies hold considerable power in the world. Capable of interbreeding with Orcs and Dwarves, and a favorite plaything of divine powers, humanity has proven quite malleable.

Dwarves

The average Dwarf can expect to live up to 500 years, and as such they place a large emphasis on managing their populations. Dwarves typically go centuries between child rearing, and they have used this free time to master their trades.

Other races portray Dwarves as alcoholics, which is an understandable but unfortunate conclusion. In fact Dwarven metabolism is dependent on alcohol, which does not mentally effect them. When cut off from alcohol for a prolonged time, most individuals prefer to take their own lives before the full affects of its absence are felt.

Elves

The forebearers to the Elven race were Dwarves who became corrupted by the forest. Although possessed of longer lifespans than their Dwarven siblings, few outlive them in practice. Lack of regard for their lives (rooted in seeing themselves as apart of the forest and not as distinct entities) combined with living unprotected from the wild greatly shortens their time. Most Elves eschew technology in favor of a life more in tune with the forest.

Dwarves look upon them with pity, and avoid violence against them if possible.

Orcs

The oldest of all races on Lanthis, orcs are proud and relatively unchanged from their earliest days. While hardier than other races, Orcs enter their twilight years after three decades. Intermarriage with humans, rooted in the desire to give their children longer lives than their own, has slowly reduced the population of full blooded Orcs almost to the point of obscurity.

Half-Orcs

Half orcs retain most of the hardieness of their Orcish linage while benefiting from normal human life spans. As a result, their existence is comparable to that of extraordinarily hale humans.

Gnomes

Originating from both Dwarven and Human blood, Gnomish life spans over three centuries. Sadly, Gnomes are born barren, and many feel lonely and isolated from the world. Highly intelligent and personable, most Gnomes choose to reside in Dwarven settlements rather than allowing the constant loss of human companions to take its toll.

Unlike Dwarves, Gnomes are not dependent on alcohol, although like Dwarves they are not mentally effected by it.

Goblins

Goblins are the youngest of all races on Lanthis, having been created by the first human to obtain complete magical command. With lives that rarely reach into the middle teens, few goblins are able to make their mark on the world before moving on. Goblin society is exceedingly utilitarian as a result.

Because of their unnatural origins, few Goblins believe that an after life awaits their race. Their cultural traditions of poetry and philosophy are widely regarded as the most sophisticated in the world.