ID: This is a drawn map of a fantasy world. It centers on the Kingdom called Skyland. To the left of the kingdom is a mountain range called The Nooks. To the right of the kingdom, there's a forest called the Nation of Five Hills. Skyland itself is mostly made up of farmland and cities or towns with a few small forests. The towns are connected with roads. To the north of the land is the Misty Ocean and to the south is the Surging Abyss (also ocean). The entire map is crossed through with rivers flowing from the hills or mountains into the oceans. Yellow stars which represent portals are focussed in the cities with some more spread over the map.
So first of all, this map is incredibly biased (on purpose). You need to keep that in mind as I explain more about this world. Also the whole TwoWorlds name is kind of a misleading placeholder name (on purpose). So I can be like: but wait there’s more! at the end of the adventure.
So this is a map of Skyland, one of the two worlds I’m planning for this setting. These worlds, Skyland and Underground, are two planes of existences which are connected to each other by portals. On the Skyland side of things, they kinda look like a well, that is hooked into the ground, like a grappling hook with a square well made of light in the cross of it. On the Underground side of things, they’re huge pillars reaching into the sky seemingly infinitely with four doorways made of light.
This whole pillars reaching into the sky thing is where these worlds got their names from. Because from the Underground it seems like you go “up” into Skyland and from Skyland you go “down” into Underground. To make it extremely clear: Underground doesn’t look like a cave, it has a normal sky and weather. People have tried climbing up the pillars, and they just keep going and going. There’s no ceiling and no way to reach Skyland that way. On the Skyland side of things, people have tried digging down and under the portals, but there’s a pillar going down too under the ground.
The portals can transport 4 people or animals at a time, every x amount of time. Currently I think x is an hour. People step in and get out at the four cardinal directions. In places with multiple portals close by, the portals are mostly used in one direction only. In places with only one portal, the direction is usually alternated. Animals who are tied to a person, like a familiar, are able to go with their person simultaneously.
Bags of holding are extensively used to transport items through the portals, and bags of holding have been improved so they cannot be destroyed from the inside by sharp things (mostly because I can’t be bothered by that aspect of the bags complicating things). They can also be more easily crafted by specialists and are commonly on sale nearby portals (sometimes at “fell off a truck” prices). This makes it relatively cheap to transport items, as long as said items fit in a bag of holding.
In contrast, tickets for people going through the portals are prohibitively expensive in most places. Most regular people never get the chance to visit the other world.
Now back to what I said in the beginning. This map is biased. It is focused on the Kingdom of Skyland. This is a Human majority kingdom. The ruling King is Human, the elite are mostly Humans, and so on. This map was made as if a cartographer in Skyland made it. Therefore, other regions of the map are relatively unknown and unnamed and may be missing portals.
Another super secret not known by the map maker, or most people in Skyland, is that the world is looping. Like Pacman. You exit the map west, you enter the map east. You exit the map north, you enter the map south. If you told people in Skyland that, they’d laugh at you. Like people laughed at Galileo when he said the world is round. Ironically, these worlds are indeed flat.
Like a stack of paper, layers upon each other. So how did these portals come into existence? In ancient times, in the Underground, long before it was called that, a great nation was going through a crisis. They were a desert nation. There was a dry season so bad, people were running out of water fast, and crops were dying. The eight strongest mages in the nation came together and collaborated. They linked up and the four on the cardinal directions cast a Circle of teleportation and the four in between the others cast Wish, all desperately hoping to teleport to a place that could help somehow.
A pillar shot up into the sky and seemed to pierce the heavens. Doors of light appeared before the four cardinal direction mages. They looked at each other, before one of them went into the door. She disappeared. The colour of the door changed from a soothing magical purple to a poisonous warning green. An hour went by. The colour changed back to purple. Fifteen more minutes went by. Suddenly, the mage reappeared and the colour changed again to green. She enthused to her colleagues about the green soft grass she saw, and the seemingly endless water. The trees with countless bright green leaves and the plethora of animals. An hour went by and the colour changed again. This time four mages went, and this time they took all available bags of holding with them, and they filled them up with water and their nation was saved.
So where did these mages breach first? That is the portal on the south bank of the Goblet lake, where they started what would later become the capital city of Skyland, named Goldspire (hint: it’s the really big city). Goldspire’s nickname is the City of Pillars. The mages ended up making a bunch more portals all around their nation, as well as some in neighbouring nations, at a price of course. They also recorded what happened as well as the ritual to create more portals and locked those scrolls up tightly and safely, somewhere (probably on Black Island, which is the first island going north from Skyland).
Okay so I’ve mentioned the cardinal directions a few times now and maybe you’re wondering, if the world is a stack of papers, how does it have a magnetic field?!?!?! Because I wondered that myself, I figured they don’t have a magnetic field, but a maginetic field. It’s a magnetic field but magic.
So with the portal spell recorded and possibly recoverable and usable, it’s possible to turn the known universe from two worlds to three worlds or more. I have vague ideas about a tropical world to expand it.
Now, back to the bias inherent in the map. To the east of Skyland lies the Elven Nation of Five Hills. Their nation doesn’t have cities like the humans have cities, but they do have a more concentrated population around the hills and the portals.
The Elves consider the entire wild forest their territory, though they consider the Halflings living in it their own state. The Halflings live mostly in the north part of the wild forest, near the lake. The Halflings have luckily had relatively little contact with Skyland, though they’ve heard plenty of stories. In Skyland, it is considered very unlucky to harm Halflings. This might be a lingering effect of the Elves defensiveness over them.
The Elves patrol their border with the Humans in case of attacks by Skyland’s armies. The Elves also keep an eye out at the edge with the Plains of Blood, but the Orks living there don’t dare step into Elven forest. They have an effective truce with the Dwarves in The Nooks since neither of them desires the other’s territory. They even have a steady trade set up, unknown to any Humans.
The Nooks, and the Dwarves who live there are fairly unknown to the Humans themselves. Yes, there’s some trade between the Humans and the Dwarves, but the Humans do not understand them, and they understand the humans all too well. They don’t forget their history that easily. (Dwarves get a +2 bonus to knowledge(history) and can use the skill without training). There are many a story and rumour about the Dwarves and The Nooks. Rumours like if you travel into The Nooks, you’ll never return.
The Plains of Blood are so named because that is where the Orks mostly live. But it is unclear whether they are named for the Orks slaughtered by Humans or the Humans killed by Orks. Nowadays, they mostly avoid the other races, unless they enter Ork territory. They’re self sufficient anyway, since they focused on sailing and fishing. The only real contact they have is a trade route to the City of Tears, where they can buy materials and tools that they cannot farm.
The City of Tears, with their unique slogan: “Where the skies always cry”, is a city state with a very mixed populations. It’s one of the few places where really any race is welcome, as long as they don’t start shit. They have a democratic council of eleven member with a limit where no single race may have a majority. (People of a mixed race count for both for this law.) The City of Tears have extensive trade through their single portal with the city state on the other side.
The City of Tears does have some trade with Rosecliff, the nearest Skyland kingdom, but this is discouraged by the Skyland King, because quite a few people end up moving to the City of Tears. The City of Tears disdains Skyland and its elite.
Wilderest is the city state on the coast in the Plains of Blood. It’s a mixed city with a large proportion of deserters from Skyland. There’s also a large minority of Half-Orks. It’s a very volatile place with cultures clashing, and racism from many ex-Skylanders towards the Half-Orks. Fights break out often, but overall there’s a tenuous and tense balance. They trade with Skyland, mostly through smugglers only as Skyland disapproves both of deserters and Orks.
I mentioned Black Island as the likely place for the scroll with the history and instructions of the portals. It’ll have some sort of dungeon or fortress, probably underground in a cave or something.
The island north west of it is called the Ilse of Dome. Scholars debate whether the name was meant to be Dome or whether someone at some point misspelled the name while transcribing and it was originally Doom. On this island live two demons (probably demons), so the island has a bad name figuratively, even if people don’t remember why they should avoid it.
The demons are mostly self sufficient (very queer) couple living together, making what they need themselves. If adventurers visit the island and they don’t immediately attack the demons, the demons are willing to trade. They can always use metals so they can make tools and components, whether in bar form, or recyclable weapons or armour. In return, they’re willing to make custom weapons or armour or other items, depending on what the adventurers desire.
The demons are willing to trade, rather than just murder and steal, because they entice people to return with more metals. They value a potential continuing trade more, than one bigger haul. (and really, they can’t be bothered killing people, it’s so much effort to clean all that blood out of the handmade carpets, you know?)
Shenach Refuge is the island north of the City of Tears. There’s a wizard tower there. Every person who sees it, gives a different description of how the tower and island looks afterwards. The only thing everyone agrees on is that it is a wizard tower specifically. Some people also claim to have seen the wizard, but again, the description is always different.
Ships that try to steer straight at it are gently pushed around the island. So are people who try to swim towards it. Nowadays most sailors avoid it by choice. If asked, they say: “When the sea says don’t go there, you don’t go there”. They say following that rule keeps you alive on the sea.
The actual wizard is one of the original portal casters, hermit-ing away in his tower, studying magic and grumping at the world and how people ruined it. The reason why his tower is always specifically described as a wizard tower by those who see it is because he is trans and was tired of people calling it a witch tower so he laid a spell over it to put the words “wizard tower” in their minds.
The wizard is another avenue to learn of the history and portal making since he lived it obviously, but the adventurers would have to be 1: able to get to the island (which even I don’t know how yet), 2: be very convincing, and 3: overthrow a corrupted dictatorship or two first.
You might be confused after point 3 above here, but that’s basically what I consider the main quest for this world. Overthrow Skyland’s King and Underground’s puppet government. Like the wizard has an actual point with his grumping at the world, even though he’s a bit of an asshole for not doing anything about it. So if the world gets fixed and democratised he’ll be a lot more willing to give out the portal spell. Because he has some trust that people won’t ruin another plane of existence.
The wizard could possibly also be a great ally in overthrowing the King too, should an adventurer party be able to reach and convince him. That would also make it more likely for him to give out the spell afterwards, if he got to know the adventurers.
Basically what I will encourage my adventurers to do is to unite the worlds against Skyland, overthrow their military and King with the help of all allies. So there’s going to be quests to gather the Elves, Dwarves, Orks, the different city states, all the places and peoples in the Underground too. Staging points would be the Plains and the Elves’ Hills.
Ships could be used to overtake the military fortresses on the island in Wondering Bay and Southpoint (the south east point of the land). Once Southpoint is taken, the portals there can be used to receive reinforcements to take on Goldspire. With sufficient allies, the Skyland military will be overrun, never expecting their enemies to be so bold as to actually invade them.
At this point, I’m remembering that I used “mages” earlier in this. While the main magic classes are sorcerer and wizard, both are mages. Some people also consider clerics, druids, bards, basically anyone who can cast the simplest cantrip to be mages and some purists consider mages to only be sorcerers and wizards.
Most people are somewhere in the middle on that, but mage(s) as a term is used a lot in this world. One reason for it, besides sheer convenience, is that sorcerers are looked down upon in Skyland, and wizards are looked down upon in Underground.
Therefore, it became normalised for both wizards and sorcerers to claim to be mages regardless of where they were to avoid the discrimination. Good clerics and any dedicated to magic generally also claim to be mages in solidarity. So do bards, especially since lots of songs are about great wizards or sorcerers.
One practise that’s consistent everywhere throughout the worlds (even the undiscovered and undefined ones) is that temples always have a second hand shop combined with an apothecary attached to it. This shop can be small or big, and sell different things based on the god they’re attached to. Most will not accept stolen goods, with obvious exceptions for the thief and evil gods.
Most of them are willing to pay for decent quality and clean goods, but they prefer donations. Donations and especially big ones will give you social favour with the people in town, and even more so with people dedicated to that god. People can also trade their used goods for things in the shop itself, or for the health potions that most clerics sell.
These shops may also sell more new goods besides medicine, depending on the god. Warrior god temples might sell knives or something for example. Or the temple shop of the Elf god might sell Elven poetry. They’re also a good source of scrap metal (to bring to the Ilse of Dome for example), because not everything they get is good enough quality to sell. So the discount bin is a great place to look for cheap scrap or reparable items.
The last thing I have for you is the general outline of how we got from mages make portals to the current situation. As said, the mages made the portals and went places and made more portals. After about a decade, the first of them died and they mostly split apart. One of them hid the scroll on Black Island and locked herself inside of the vault. One build his wizard tower. Most of them died.
In the years, humans spread out, settled towns around the portals, warred with each other, warred with their neighbours, forgot their own history. In the Underground, people lived and traded and created and stayed true to their peace loving roots, but they too forgot a lot of their history.
In Skyland before it was Skyland, lived a rich man. This man got rich of the trade with Underground (read: scamming other people), but he wanted more and more. He hired mercenaries and intimidated his competitors. Then the more stubborn ones died under mysterious circumstances. Before anyone realised, he was the most powerful and richest man in the city and he had his own private army.
He build himself a magnificent and rich looking palace. Its most prominent feature was a huge golden spire for which the capital of Skyland is still named. It also inspired a great deal of lewd jokes amongst the commoners, one of which is still generally known: “What do you do if you can’t satisfy your wife? You get a golden spire.”
This man is considered by Skyland propaganda to be Skyland’s father. This man terrorised the city he took over, but his son wasn’t satisfied with one measly city. He took the army and riches he inherited from his father and took over all human cities within Skyland by force and installed himself as the King of it all, the United Human Kingdom of Skyland. That’s still the kingdom’s super formal official name, but most people just call it Skyland, even if that’s confusing.
But this man, the first King, wasn’t satisfied. He now had control over a great many portals and a great many people with swords and bows and other weapons. And he knew that the people living in the Underground were peace loving. And he saw opportunity.
He sent his most trusted officers and troops ahead, incognito, until he had enough people in place to turn it into an easy victory. He also spun a bunch of propaganda that Undergrounders were crooks and scammers. He claimed they would steal from honest Skylanders. He claimed more and more wicked things to demonise the Undergrounders. And it worked.
The King took over Underground and the people of Skyland celebrated in the streets. Many Undergrounders were send to prison mines and work camps, to mine and create luxury goods for rich Skylanders. It became fashionable for the Elite to hire Undergrounders as staff. They are paid, but they’re not treated well.
Basically just assume a whole load of atrocities happened and are happening and you’re right.
