Community

I humbly submit this probe into the wizards community to receive feedback on the following notion:

A campaign world, available free of charge, in easy-to-download pdfs and D&DI rules supplements; this campaign is, of course, the Shattered Lands setting I was pitching in the Pitch a Campaign World thread.

It is far from complete, but aims to make use of the 4th edition rules to the full.

EDIT: Of course, in my haste I forgot to mention the best parts! Free adventures and free campaign resources will be the norm. However, I would like to extend the opportunity for the community to include their input to the setting resources (which does not mean that I will not review and blindly add any community suggestion, hoho). In addition, community artwork and the like could be added to the manuals. Lastly, I would like (I'm not sure how feasible this one is) to allow community wide play sessions to affect the world in the manner of a living setting.

Gleemax Blog has begun and a placeholder for the Shattered Lands website is in place right now (though its squatting on a domain from a college that I graduated from two years ago... but hey! I'll find some real storage space soon!)

Shattered Lands Website

Thanks for some positive feedback! I haven't made any of the material available online yet, mostly just trying to work around the web logistics. The only stuff that's up at Gleemax is the Mission Statement and general world overtones.

That having been said, I can easily post some of the pre-release (very VERY early) notes that I've been working on along with my co-creator.

Well, here's the early sketches:

Multiverse Model
Re-named the Feywild Jandana; similar in every aspect, except less… faerie. EDIT: Clarification on my notes. Jandana means "far away" in its sanskrit root. This Jandana is more exotic than celtic Faerie, and harder to reach.

Re-named the Shadowfell to Duat; similar, but eerier and less goth. EDIT: Another one. The Duat is bearing more and more resemblance to a pastiche of the Egyptian and Greek Underworlds.

The Elemental Chaos is connected to the Medjhaz through Duat.
The Astral Plane is connected to Medjhaz through Jandana.

Astral ←→ Jandana ←→Medjhaz (Tamal)←→Duat←→Elemental Chaos

Timeline
Time of the Serpents: The civilizations of the dragons and the dragon-kin were born in this period. Draconic myth holds that the dragons burned away the darkness covering the world and revealed it to the light. While the dwarves alone knew metallurgy, the dragon-kin were still fearsome foes. It was only the dwarven mastery of steel that kept their strongholds from being overwhelmed.

Gigantine Era; coeval with the Eddic Era. The following Giant civilizations flourished during this time:

Flint Giants, Fire Giants, Wood Giants, Cyclops, The Aegir, The Nybilim

The Aegir built a vast empire in the south-east of Talam. The history of the gigantine period is comprised mostly of the battles between the giants and their enemies (whether it be other giants, as in the case of the Cyclops and the Nybilim, or whether it be the dark things that still inhabited the world at that time).

The Eddic Era, the legendary time in dwarven history, occurred at roughly the same time as the historic gigantine era. A hold of dwarves in the north traded the secret of smelting with the giants in exchange for protection from the dragons and their kin who were wildly prolific during this period. Many tales of dwarf and giant against dragon originated during this time. The end of the Eddic Period (nearly two full centuries before the end of the gigantine era) was signaled by the loot and destruction of the Vault of the Grey Dwarves by an army of men and dragon-kin.

Regarding the Giants and the Dwarves
Of all the giants, the Flint and the Nybilim were closest with this diminutive people. The Cyclomachy was fought using magical tools that the dwarves had crafted. They adopted many dwarven words and called this race by the word they called themselves - the wys, or the People. In this way the dwarves spread far to the south to inhabit the realms of the Nybil-kings.

What about the men, the elves, the dragon-kin? Where are they?
The elves of this period were divided in loyalties to many chiefs, each of whom bore a Cloak of Whispering Leaves; these chiefs were often druids as well as time tested battle-leaders. Nothing like an organized religion existed in the elvish tribes. Rather, each tribe had one or more priests who had inherited their shaman-like position from their predecessors. It was not until the founding of the Stone Circle that the elves had anything resembling a religious consensus. The core of elvish religious observance was, of course, the Mysteries which were only accessible to priests and a select chosen few. They were close to the Wood Giants of the coast, as the two races inhabited the same areas.

The Dragon-kin and their masters ruled over an empire of men in the far south; the rest of the men lived as isolated tribes throughout Talam.

Ok, so how about halflings? The tieflings?
The haflings in this period were native inhabitants of the Cyclopean isles. They were pressed into service during the gigantine expansion, and many of them served beneath the Cyclopean kingdom of Ker-yis. They were eventually freed by the eladrin and resumed their rootless wanderlust, now having learned of the greater world abroad.

The tieflings are descended from the tribes of men that were called by the Dark Ones during the first years of the Confluence.

The Wasting
The Thousand Streams were blocked up, ending the gigantine era, nearly a century after the kingdom of the Graewys was destroyed. The effect of the altering river course condemned the lands in which the Aegir had built their empire to a slow desolation. The draconic empire of Abzu and the realm of the Nybilim were also affected by the stoppage of the river, and many devastating wars arose from the lack of resources during the wasting years.
Some gigantine sources (often deemed apocryphal by the remaining giant elders and priests) blame the death of the Aegir’s empire on Bale One-Eye, the long estranged and near-mythical figure granted with the honor of having both founded the gigantine era (and the world, in the giant myth-cycles) and brought it to a horrible end. Strangely, Bale supposedly survived this treachery, retreating into Jandana.

TOTAL TIME:
Time of the Serpents: 2 millennia
Gigantine Era: 6 centuries
Eddic Era: ~4-5 centuries
Thus placing the Invasion Era at 2.6-2.8 millennia. Invasions last 400 years(ish) dating us at approx 3.2mil

The Invasion Era
The period following the Wasting was a catastrophic one in which the policy of Cyclomachy (Cyclops-war) disintegrated under mounting pressure. The Nybilim were confronted with food shortages on an epic scale as well as with war against their brothers the Aegir AND the draconic empire of Abzu. The Aegir for their part were struggling against a mad tyrant (semi-mythical Bale One-Eye) undermining their chances of survival and against the Nybilim and Abzu themselves. This left the Cyclops unchecked to wreak havoc on the other gigantine races, shattering their defenses.

In the years after Bale’s disappearance, new troubles arrived to plague the world. Both were a result of the vast Confluence that occurred, breaking down the barriers between the middle world and the other realms. The first was the crawling Lords of the Duat, a group of 13 Dark Ones that had not been killed but rather imprisoned deep in the bowels of the Underworld. They called many men to them, slithering up near the surface realm. These men were given great power in exchange for their service, which the Dark Ones needed to bring them to the middle realm. Though the tiefling armies were never successful, they often pursued their own horrible goals. The second was the abrupt and un-forseen invasion of the Eladrin who began migrating from Jandana in great numbers. Their continuous influx from the other-realm characterized the invasion period as these colonists struggled to carve a place for themselves out of the power vacuum from so many devastated empires. The Three Domes were built during the Invasion Era by the Eladrin to secure the land and project their power.

The invasions lasted approximately four hundred years, with periods of greater or lesser migration interwoven throughout this time. The greatest and most lasting achievement of the Eladrin was the enserfment of the Wood Giants. Both parties benefit from this arrangement, and it has continued down into present day.

The ethereal conjunction that allowed unrestricted access to the realm of Jandana to those with the secrets to getting there ended and caused the Invasion era to come to an end; no new reinforcements arrived from the Jandanese Eladrin lands, and their kingdom was forced to fend for itself.

Renewed Cyclomachy under the Western Eladrin
The islands of the Cyclops threatened the westernmost duchies of the eladrin, thus renewing the process of the Cyclomachy. However, unlike the giants the eladrin were not content to bide their time waiting and containing the Cyclopian threat. The eladrin invaded the Cyclopian isles and even caused the ancient city of Ker-yis to be sunk beneath the waves.

Elf Culture

Western Elves
Most of the western elf-tribes originated somewhere in the east where they lived during the Gigantine era. Throughout the Gigantine period these lands were fertile and well fed by rivers and streams. However, after Bale blocked the Thousand Streams, the elven lands began to suffer from the same fate as the fertile Aegir valleys. The elves, fearful for their lives, soon began mass migrations through the dying Aegerian empire, passing through its borders and bringing further instability to the once great Gigantine nations. While some elves were captured by draconic raiders and brought to serve as slave in Abuz, most of the Abuzian elves were actually enslaved centuries before and are thus not included in this category.