Aerth is the fictional world that serves as the focal point of nearly all of my Dungeons and Dragons-esque Medieval Fantasy RPG campaigns, especially those featuring The Order of The Winghorn Guard.
The World of Aerth and its moon, Luna
Aerth was first created in 1982 for a campaign originally titled 'PEGASUS' and later changed to The Winghorn Guard. The main idea behind the game was straightforward if a little unorthodox, 'Run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign using the Gamemaster advice from a Superhero game'.
Instead of using the Advanced D&D Dungeon' Master's Guide to foster the development of a Fantasy game, I based my outline for the campaign on what I'd learned from years of reading comic books, particularly Marvel's Avengers and DC's Legion of Superheroes. Eventually, when I purchased Villains and Vigilantes [2nd Edition], I used the Gamemaster advice in that game to supplement what I had already set in motion.
The catalyst for the design of the world itself was a desire to integrate elements from the existing games my players were coming from into a single milieu. At the time, my Summer Camp friends wanted me to run an AD&D 1E game for them but they wanted to use the PCs they'd been playing in their School Year campaigns.
I said OK on the condition that the Aerth version of each character was, starting in our first session, a seperate and distinct entity from their School game variant. Essentially, they would play alternate versions of their established PCs who are identical up to the start of The Winghorn Guard can and then diverage. Nothing from their School campaigns would effect their Aerth characters and nothing that happened in our game would effect their other adventures going forward.
The thing of it was, the games these PCs were coming from were very different from each other in terms of setting, style, and even tone. I had to incorporate real world mythology, Dungeons and Dragons lore, and original material into a single, unified cosmos.
And so, Aerth was born.
The Divisions of The Winghorn Guard and where they are on Aerth.
The Rangers and Nautica do not have a single, set location.
Aerth is an Alternate Earth and as such has many similarities to our real world's geography, weather, lifeforms, cultures, history, and especially folklore and mythology. The world does vastly differ from Earth in many ways however. As is plain to see on the maps, the continents and seas are not identical in shape or position. The world's axial tilt is slightly dissimilar, as is the distance from its sun, result in cooler overall temperatures and harsher winter months.
Continents and Oceans
There are eight continents in total: Arcticus (roughly Antarctica), Bulan Ka (roughly Africa), Corindel (Australia), Gehennes (somewhat analogous to South Asia and the Middle East), Ledgorna (Europe and Asia), Loreia (North America), Pacifica (South America), and Polaria (a largely unexplored Greenland/Iceland/North Pole region). These aren't exactly one for one, though they give you a good idea of where many of the peoples and their myths can be found.
There are five oceans, commonly referred to as seas by the Aerth's inhabitants, all of which can be quite dangerous for the unprepared. In addition, the lands are dotted with lakes and rivers of varying sizes, depths, and significance to the locals and sometimes beyond.
While a great deal of exploration has occurred over the centuries, much more of the world remains undiscovered. Numerous mysterious peoples, places, and things remain unknown to vast majority of Aerth's denizens.
Population wise, Aerth is home to easily 600 million intelligent people, though probably much more as no census has ever been taken for the Gnomes and Goblins. I'll go into more detail on the various citizens of the world in an upcoming post but I just want to point out there are more people on this world than 13th Century Earth.
After all, not all of them are even from this world...
Capitals and Important Cities
Another key feature of the setting is that practically all the fairy tales and legends from our Earth are true on Aerth. The truths aren't all known but they all exist. There is a Minotaur in a Labyrinth off the coast of Gretha-Nova, Ghosts haunting the outhouses of Nihon, and a princess somewhere who's able to tell if there's a pea seven mattresses down.
Monsters are, for the most part, only found in their native lands. While there are exceptions, the Wendigo will only be encountered in the Northern Woods of Loreia, El Trasgu pranks shopkeeps in Esperanza and no where else, and of course the Great Sphinx riddles travelers in the desert of Aegyptra.
Legendary and Mythic Sites
This extends to strange and mystical sites as well. Mount Olympus can be climbed, the Bifrost Bridge crossed, and one best avoid rings of mushrooms when passing through the Sylvan Veil.
Mount Oblivion is a towering mesa, possibly a dead volcano, made of obsidian rock that rises out of a lake of lava. The Bridge of Grief in a wall-like structure that extends from the Southwest of Ledgorna to the Northwest of Bulan Ka, its top walkable and lined with peculiar sarcophagi. The Cornerstone of the World is extremely difficult to reach but supposedly the last unfinished piece of Aerth the gods left untouched.
Aerth is magical and strange from its core to the edge of the sky and perhaps beyond.
Terrain Features
As a Gamemaster who enjoys placing the PCs in different environments and seeing them deal with the benefits and difficulties of diverse terrains, it was very important to me that my setting wasn't endless European forest.
One thing I am quite proud of is that not all of the world has been explored as noted above. I really love that even after 40+ years of running campaigns on this planet, my players and their characters haven't been everywhere. Not even close.
In fact, a big factor in my excitement over this upcoming Northern Wing game is that very few PCs have spent any time in the city of Nouveau Lutettia, the nation of Allebeque, let alone the Great North. Welcome to chilly tundra, snowy mountains, icy waters, and the mythology of the North American Indigenous Peoples.
Can't wait.
More to come as the campaign develops...
Until then,
AD
Barking Alien
The World of Aerth and its moon, Luna
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