The most Wyrd-less of these is the Hyperborea, a utopia cold and glittering in the centre of the great disc. Here is found little magic and no Wyrd, but peace and luxury. For that it is strictly off-limits to players save retiring adventurers.
The most Wyrd-ful of these are the Far-Realms, the distant and smoky fringes of the world. These lands are clouded by Wyrd, unexplored by civilization and no doubt full of races and places weird. It is the jabberwocky of explorers and even charting a sliver of it would be the magnum opus of any adventurer out there.
But the swath of where the players currently are– and will no doubt explore for quite some time– is the Border-Realms. It is the vast ring of the world between utopia and terra incognita, splintered between the Wyrd and civilization, between endless hyphen-happy monarchies and nations, pragmatic heroes and crawling beasts. The Wyrd and civilised land constantly contest, undulating and straining against each other.
On top of this, countless centuries of political struggle and splintering succession have made the politics petty and capricious, shavings of territory the subject of blood feuds between families who can only dimly trace themselves back to a shared dynast. The fatality of the place's nature only encourages this, sometimes dozens of brothers and sisters fighting over their progenitor's demesne for years.
Despite this vicious political environment, the people are as varied and wondrous as they could be. A swath of races– from the brambled summer-folk to the tattooed and pallid eladrin, and countless others not organisable by metric or genus– contain even a more varied swath of professions, talents, desires, abilities, and dispositions.
Between (and sometimes within) the borders of these lands extend swaths of the Wyrd like blooms of fungus and bacteria. Exploration abounds amongst these, and although it is done in the interest of driving the Wyrd from the land, it often has the opposite effect. The freebooters and ruffians hired to do the dirty work cannot resist to bring back corpses of defeated beasts, hoards of gold, and spells or rituals discovered within the Wyrd, all "infected"with the Wyrd's influence.
Metagame Analysis ephemera and all
This campaign will be equally about exploring typical D&D dungeons and cities as it will be mapping and charting the Wyrd and her countless lost, undiscovered, and forgotten "places and races Weird". It'll be all about the blank hexes beyond the charted ones. And for that I'm very excited: I'm hoping the players pick up on the liberal "exploration" hooks I litter everywhere. (Hint hint).
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