The Redsky 5e Conversion Book is launching on Kickstarter May 18th!
Check out what's included in the book here!
Here is the full reveal of the world map of Dema. Ken and Tyler came up with these very brief explanations for what is at each label to demonstrate the scope of this universe. Each marker could be the setting of entire campaigns.
We'll update this post regularly as more articles elaborate on what is yours to explore when our Kickstarter launches in a few months.
The sun in Dema stays fixed in the southeast corner of the world. It brightens and dims at regular intervals. Dema is split into The Daylands and The Nightlands, based on how much light a region receives in one 25-hour day.
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The Daylands
The Athenaeum
Etherea - A city of a million souls carved into the icy Mountains of the Moon. The Archivists who live here worship the Eldertech that is uncovered by their warrior missionaries. It would be the last settlement of the Athenaeum to resist foreign aggression in the Redsky Era.
Aegis - A bastion of stone that has weathered the outside world. Every neighborhood is a citadel, and every town square a practice field for the martial art of Pwanoszt. The most stalwart of the city states, the Archivists here use their military prowess to further the path of Zenyecrot.
Luminos - Tucked away into the far northeast corner of the world, the Archivists in this city tinker and innovate on all of the Eldertech they can possess. Considered one of the great seats of learning in Dema, the value of their work spreads across the other regions.
Pilgrim’s Pass - The only entrance into the Valley of Etherea, this treacherous mountain pass is subject to frequent avalanches at the best of times. In warfare, it is often the site of ambushes by Etherean guerrilla fighters.
Snow’s Edge - The border of The Light Plains and the Athenaeum. The people reside around a series of redoubts and forts protecting the border where snow meets grassland. Its terrain has felt the bootsteps of many armies through a history of blood and conquest.
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The Light Plains
Scintilla – The thriving capital of the Solar Hegemony, this industrious city is the seat of the emperor. Its forges and smithies are famed for being the arsenal of light, with waterfalls irrigating a massive stretch of fertile farmland. It is also the site of one of the nodes of the Solar Network, a linchpin of the Church of Sola.
Abresia – Abresia is the bread-basket and fortification specialists of the Hegemony. It was the most infamous domain of the old nobility that was overthrown by Emperor Remus. By far the largest ratio of enslaved sentients to free citizens reside here, feeding the engine of conquest and expansion.
Deonar – A bustling port city and the refit and repair station for the three Imperial fleets. The maritime tradition of Deonar has led its culture to be both a powerful ally or foe at various points in human history.
Asphodel – This is a small archipelago in the eastern mouth of the Moon River. Asphodel is the site of the infamous political prisoner camps that the Hegemony maintains, both with internal dissidents, heretics, and nonhuman war prisoners kept in destitute conditions as their labor supports the war machine.
Mundi – A bustling metropolis without compare at the center of the world. Mundi is the convergence of the six major regions of Dema, and a hub for adventurers, merchants, warriors, and the other movers and shakers of society. Its government had a strong independent streak until being subsumed by the Solar Hegemony in the Uprising Era. It would eventually be the seat of the Hominid Dominion.
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The Gilded States
The Auric – With golden shores and cloud-capped towers, the slave trading hatinate of the rich reigns supreme over all of the Featherfolk power and money can influence. Famous for its mercenary companies, exotic exports, and fierce rivalry with their trading partners in Hollowfalls and the Solar Hegemony. It was most infamously ruled by His Vastness, Sultan Filo’ Ya.
Hollowfalls - The epicenter of learning for The Gilded States. This city is carved into the side of a series of cliffs. It is the closest major urban settlement to the sun. Its scholars are famous around the world for the level of education they can impart to their students.
Sunbleak – Sunbleak is surrounded by a vast expanse of heat-scorched desert. Its territory is home to the tombs of forgotten kings from nations long swept beneath the sands. From the anarchic hub of Sunbleak City, parties of adventurers strike out into the valleys looking for Eldertech, or to unearth the next treasure hoard.
Panacea – Panacea is a settlement carved from the unforgiving jungle in the interior of the Midlands continent. It is home to a bustling range of traders, explorers, religious exiles, and medical researchers. Panacea is the premier location for risky excursions to synthesize potions and tonics, as well as spread Air-based cults of belief among the countless thousands who make their pilgrimage to its territory.
The Red Desert – Prepare for an unforgiving apocalyptic wasteland infested with flying monsters known as strigoi. Only featherlight land ships known as shiselis can sail through the treacherous mountain crags and ruined cities coated in toxic crimson dust.
The Tutor Islands – A small archipelago off the coast of Hollowfalls, this is the location students of the elite mindmasters of the Featherfolk travel to in order to pass their final initiation into the highest reaches of Usundi government and society. One must craft their own boat to sail to the Islands, a highly meaningful coming-of-age rite for Featherfolk.
The Silverleaf Wilds – Turn back! Here is a land that is dangerous beyond rational. The very trees of the Wilds are hostile to sentient life. While ruins hide untold riches and power, the terrain swallows up the screams of almost any who pursue their dreams.
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The Nightlands
The Hive Halls
Tohol – This is the seat of the reforged Sporespawn hive mind. The commands to rebuild the hive halls radiate out from this central bio-sculpted habitation. The Everborn would defend it to the last drone until the coming of the golems and the Redsky.
Ikhish – Ikhish is home to a democratic mind-melding consensus of Qet known as the Freespawn. They are innovators in biotechnology and Eldertech research. They are on the frontline of the war against the golem swarm, equally occupied with survival, liberating drones from Unrul or the Tohol hive mind, and spreading above-ground colonies should Ikhish itself fall.
Unrul – Unrul is an isolationist, authoritarian Hive Hall. Ruled by The Allspawn, its dystopian society of hundreds of thousands of drones is oppressed beneath draconian policies. Stricken in the Exodus Era by a malady known as the Silent Plague, it would be strained to the point of breaking by the pressures of the encroaching golem swarm.
The Thalkast – The Thalkast is the collective name for the countless miles of tunnels, warrens, caverns, fissures, underground lakes and rivers, and Sporespawn ruins layered on top of one another. Long abandoned settlements are fought over for recolonization between the three hive halls.
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The Moon Realms
The Dawnraiders – Territory in this area belongs to one of the strongest tribes ever to ride across The Moon Realms. With a subservient network of human villages to support their warriors, these Nightriders organized in a great horde to invade the Light Plains. Masters of heavy cavalry, they were the first to fall under the iron expansion of the Solar Hegemony.
Yaras - A tribe of Nightriders resides in Yaras, a stone city on the coast of The Moon Realms. They have a strong defensive tradition and a rich culture defined by moderation in diligence. An elite core of warriors known as the Ten Hundred operate in both far flung expeditions and peacekeeping in the winding streets of their home city alike.
The Freesteeds - The original tribe of Nightriders. The territory on the map belongs to these plains nomads that migrate alongside their herds across the darkest corner of the Moon Realms. They are expert mounted archers with a strong sense of individuality.
Tallon - This city is built at the bottom of a heated crater in the far northwest of Dema. Its hardy inhabitants, the Cairnkeeper Tribe, hunt for their food in the frozen taiga of the Tenaybre. The Cairnkeepers center their leadership in a coming-of-age ceremony known as the Frostrite. It is a brutal survivalist process out in the ice forests that only the most adaptive and cunning can overcome.
The Forest of Ilda - A glowing bioluminescent sprawl of entangled trees. Littered with the ruins of past civilizations, with bridges of light connecting temples, the race to see what will kill an adventurer first is between the specially adapted range of predators or the whispering voices of specters.
Laestrygion - A landmass off the coast of the Moon Realms. It was originally inhabited by an under-tribe of Nightriders that was deported during the rule of the Hegemony. Laestrygion is later the new homeland of Clan Kahr after the Midnight Isles sink, and the last line of defense for Mundi against the Deep Ones.
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The Midnight Isles
Clan Kahr - With their high Chieftain seated on the Coral Throne on Kahr Island, Clan Kahr has based their culture around hunting titanic sea monsters known as Deep Ones. This Wild Hunt is the basis of their coming of age ceremonies and the primary source of food in a region known for constant low level warfare between clans.
Clan Hiremai – This area is home to a large population of hearty Wakewalkers concentrated on Hiremai Island. Clan Hiremai is prosperous and known for trading idols of the Terminarch, the slumbering being who dreams beneath their island.
Clan Jana’haki – Cannibalistic outcasts, oathbreakers, and deviants form this most cutthroat of Wakewalker clans. Based out of Fellharbor or amid the massive Dreadfleet, the sight of their sails is an omen of doom.
The Fellcoast – Treacherous, craggy shores lead to mist-covered forests sheltering all manner of exiles and secrets. Home to Fellharbor. It would later be the site of Freespawn Ark colonies and runaway Hegemony slaves.
The Maelstrom – This is the seething mass of lightning storms and choppy seas that The Wild Hunt of Clan Kahr takes place in. The farther south one rows into the Maelstrom, the larger the Deep Ones one is likely to encounter. The sound of explosions and the death pangs of leviathans echo across the waves into eternity.
The World Tree - A fabled location said to be the origin of life in the world. Home to a biome unlike any other in Dema, with creatures from past cycles allowed to roam. It is the only point accessible from the surface of Dema to enter the World Between the Walls.
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There are dozens of additional unmarked locations on this map. While there are plans to fill in what is there internally, we cannot wait to see what kinds of environments and sub-factions you all create in your own campaigns.
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