Setting overview

Explanation on the setting

There are a few things that I must cover:

The suns and the moons 

Theology

Astrology

The multiverse

The three continents

The Old Ones

Dragons

Orcs

Mutations

First of all there are two major effects at work in this setting:  Science and Magic.  Where at all possible everything has a scientific explanation, where it does not there is Magic.  Normal settings have a power level of spells that cap at ninth level spells, this world caps at twelfth.  Not that anyone has been strong enough to cast that type of spell in many thousand years, but it exists and the world has been affected by the few times that these spells were used.  There are mountains that have been sheared off, deserts of glass and effects that have changed millions of square kilometers of terrain, forever.  There is also technology that has done the same thing.

But everything is based in science, magic is based in science, the parts that can be explained that is.

The Suns and the Moons.  

There are three.  At the center of the Solar System there is a single star.  A large blue star.  It produces a lot of light, but it is all on the upper end of the spectrum, in the blue and ultra violet wavelengths.  It is sentient.  It has two sisters, a binary group of stars a red and a green star, they orbit the central star at a distance of one AU and they orbit themselves as well.  It does not matter how hot they are or any thing like that.  The two stars are also sentient.  

The planet where the setting is based is ten AU from the main star and it receives most of its light from that star, but it also receives light from the other two.  On the planet the atmosphere scatters light, blue and green light, so the Blue sun is invisible from the planet at all times.  The green sun appears to be yellow, and the red sun is still red.  But the sky is blue almost all the time. 

Time: the two suns rotate around each other once every nine days completely.  The two stars rotate around the central star once a year, the planet rotates around the blue star once every twenty five years, sidereally.  However, from the planet, it appears differently.  From the planet there are twenty-four orbits of the two stars around the main star in a year.  There is an axial tilt to the planet.  So each season on the planet lasts for six years, if a year was the time it takes for the two stars to rotate around the main star.  Six years of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.  The variation in light levels from the two suns adds to the effect.  More light more heat, less light less heat, but the variations are not as great as the tilt provides.  In some climes this does result in snow in a summer year, like when the two suns go behind the main star or the main star is eclipsed by the two.  

The three suns are greater gods in the setting.

The three moons are greater gods.

The three are worlds in on themselves, one is overcast nearly all the time, one is a water world with a lot of clouds, and the last is a forest covered world with clouds.  The green world is the closest, the blue moon is the middle one and the white one is the furthest moon.

The green moon is the place at the Faerie folk and their ilk are from.  The moon is locked into position, meaning one face is always toward the planet and the other is always away.  The weather patterns are a little chaotic but it works.  The land is very chaotic in every sense of the word.  The blue world is a water world filled with tiny islands across its surface.  The vast majority of this world is water and it is filled with the elder races, Illithid, Aboleth and the such.  The last moon is a planet of extremes, mountains and volcanoes everywhere, the cloud cover is almost complete.  It is a land of battling demons and devils along with all the rest, devas and everything, not a place that anyone would want to travel to.  Because of their different albedos, than the moon of Earth, these moons reflect more light at night than our own moon, so night can be filled with more to see.

There may be other planets out there, but if there are, the Old Ones are not saying.

Theology

There are six Greater Gods, different cultures give them different names and weave different stories around them, accentuating different aspects of their domains, but all six are consistent with:  which domains they control, their celestial body, and their alignment character.

The Blue star is the hidden goddess and she is neutral

The Green star is the god of law

The Red star is the god of chaos

The Green moon is the god of evil

The Blue moon is the god of neutral

The White moon is the god of good

The greater gods all have three domains as well as Light or Darkness

The priests of these gods chose one domain as the aspect that they follow and they get a bonus domain spell for one of the other domains of their god, just one.

The lesser gods are many and they are different in every culture and there is no shared gods from other cultures with different names.  Each of these gods has two domains and they are a mixture of the greater gods.  One domain from one and one from another.  The alignment is closely linked to one or both of the parent gods, but there is some variance.  

Demigods are not rare.  They are the result of local heroes that are imbued with  glory and they are local.  When they receive a degree of veneration and have moved outside the local area they become a lesser god, but they follow the rules of the other lesser gods then.  Demigods have only one domain.

Astrology.  It is real.  It has impact.  It works.  It is dependent on the star that the person is born under (Constellation) and the stars that the three suns are in, the three moons too, and their phase.  And then you need to then make a chart for the location at the present time as well and then compare them.  There are texts that say the old ones have superior knowledge and could forecast perfect predictions.  If there were other celestial objects that affect a prediction, they are lost with them.

The Multiverse.  There is no multiverse.  In other D&D games there are outer planes and inner planes and the other stuff like that.  There is none of that here.  However, there was a spell cast at the end of the Old Ones time that may be important to this idea.  The spell opened up new places for the people to go when a disaster that they could not defeat set upon them.  The spell ripped open a realm in the space and there were worlds, new worlds opened up to them which they could exploit.  The new worlds contained a mix of everything in the world and were capped in power, only magic of e ninth order functioned within these pocket dimensions.  

The beings that occur on alternate planes exist within this world or on its moons.  There are pure sentient elements existing in pure elements.  A pure lake might have a water elemental, a space of pure air, a pure chunk of granite with no aberrations, a flame in a flow of magma.  Deep under the ground, or high in mountains there are demons living and hunting.  Some are summoned from their prison like moon, and when they are a jailer might come looking for them.  

There are three continents and one pact.  There was the continent of Humans kinds, the continent of Elven kinds, and the continent of Dragon kind.  The pact was that none would violate the other lands.  The continent of humans was a rough and tough place, there was constant warfare and then finally one nation rose to dominate the rest and they flourished and grew to believe that the pact was a mistake, or they forgot the pact because it was a pact from beyond memory.  They mounted expeditions and went out and discovered new lands.  The new lands had much in the way of riches and they began to exploit them.  One such continent was Caranus, which is that land of Dragons.  At first the intrusion was not noticed.  The humans grew powerful in that land.  When they did take notice a great and horrible war was raged between the mightiest of those races.  When it was over the Old ones abandoned the continent and promised to repair the pact as best they could.  The damage was done however and even the Elvenkind continent had been invaded and the elves had come to this continent as refugees.  The humans that had arrived afterwards were from the Elven continent, and none were allowed from the Human continent again, until recently.  The Old Ones place a great curtain around the entire continent that turned all humans away from exploring the lands far away across the oceans.  

The Old Ones.  They refer to the ancient culture of e great old ones in the South of the continent of the Dragons.  Those ruins date past beyond three hundred centuries ago.   It was about that time that they rose as a power and conquered much of the land, since it was devoid of other empires, or indeed people, this was an easy thing.  When that was completed in less than a century they devoted themselves to exploitation and magical research.  The brought the sciences of astrology and magic to its peak in only a few centuries.  When they did they discovered two things, the first that Dragons were of three general types, pre-sentient, sentient, and godlike.  They thought nothing of the former types, but the later was more powerful than they were.  The second thing was that their astrological predictions all ended in a short generation from then.  The connection between the two facts was realized.  Having the power to lay waste to a million kilometers of land with a single spell and discovering that there were beings that still thought of you as a insect to be squashed was troubling.  The masters of magic then began a hurried attempt to make peace and evacuate.  The truth about the multiverse was discovered and that the entire population could be scattered through these portals in only a few years.  They began to do so and soon the continent was devoid of people again.  Those that chose to take their chances died.  

A couple of thousand years ago a group of mysterious solitary individuals began moving through the land the used great magics and set up observation posts.  They did nothing to interfere except when they said laws were being broken and one of them arrived on scene and set everything to rights.  Mostly no one knows when they are around.

Dragons.  In other worlds they are hatched from eggs and grow to be the apex predator in a few years.  After a few centuries they reach maximum size and they die, usually of violence.  They are lesser cousins of dragons.  Dragon eggs are seeded in the wind and they fall in rain or snow.  They hatch and they fight all the other little dragons near them, the kill them and eat them and they grow.  At each stage they eat and fight.  That is all they do.  When they eat a dragon, they grow in power and when they eat something else they just sustain themselves.  Mortals see clouds of fire fly duels, they see fire birds fight.  They see the cat lizards and the wolf lizards and the bear lizards fight.  The see the dragon hawks fight, the kites fight and the Wyvren fight.  Then the dragons get sentience and things change.  They develop language, it is inborn, and they begin to learn others.  They begin to cast spells.  They differentiate into various subspecies and various alignments and cultures.  They are intensely territorial and will not suffer other dragons inside of their territory, but they also do not view different size orders and prey, they recognize that to the young dragon, a cat or wolf lizard is not big enough to sustain them and will wait until they grow to bear lizards or Wyvrens.  An old dragon sees a young dragon as too small, and a great Wyrm sees an old dragon as too small.  Elder Wyrm cease to eat at all and by then they are often mistaken for clouds, their seed fills the air and from them the cycle begins again.

Dragon young are voracious and deadly, mature dragons wield spells, they all wield spells, they use the charisma trait like Sorcerers, but they can cast even divine spells.  They cast spells as a Sorceror equal to their hit dice - 8, though they more spells than normal casters, they get their charisma modifier in additional spell slots.  They can cast any spell but prefer spells that mimic their colour type.  When they hit 30 hit dice or more they begin to grant spells to followers as a god grants them.  Dragons get bigger than their lesser cousins.  Dragons are a force of nature, full stop.  Their legendary Lair effects grow the longer they reside in one spot.

Ages of Dragons  hit dice

Wrymling               9d8 medium +9

Juvenile                11d8 medium +22

Young Dragon.  14d10 large +42

Adult.                    17d10 large  +68

Mature.                20d10 large. +100

Old.                       23d12 huge. +138

Venerable.          26d12 huge. + 182

Ancient.              29d12 huge + 232

Wyrm.                  32d20 gargantuan +288

Great Wyrm.     40d20 gargantuan +400

Grand Wyrm.    45d20 gargantuan+ 450

Orb of Dragonkind is an artifact from the First Ones when they thought to challenge the greatest Dragons on the continent.  It was locked away deep in the tropical Fortresses that they lived on the north tip.  The powers of the mighty orb were such that the creation of the device, caused the dragons to take them as a serious threat. The resulting brief war ended with the Old Ones evacuating the continent.  Amongst the reported powers was the ability to hijack the mind of a dragon and assert mental control.  Merely handling the orb requires a Wish spell to hold it just once.

The Dragon Slayer is a weapon of great power.  Every Dragon that sees the sword, reacts to it negatively, and will seek to destroy them.  They do not become reckless, they use their will to arrange for many difficulties and obstacles to overcome the owner before they confront and destroy the owner and ten typically cast the weapon into the deepest part of the ocean.  The wielder of the weapon chooses the form of the weapon.  Most often it was used as a lance and was supposed to mounted on a dominated Dragon.  The effect of the weapon was to cause immense damage to the attacked dragon by syphoning the energy from soldier and mount.  To do this they would need to control the dragon with the Orb of Dragonkind.  

Orcs.  Orcs are not native to the world.  They crashed here ten thousand years ago.  Somehow, a spacefaring civilization of orcs came here accidentally and their ship crashed in Caranus.  Escape pods landed all over the planet, but the bulk of the ship landed here, mostly crashed.  The technology sustaining the engines failed just a few hundred meters off the ground.  And it failed to work ever after, except one last time.  Proto-Orcs use the human template for character creation.  There is none of the proto-Orcs left.  They are not all the Chaotic Evil monsters of the other realms.  Most orcs are, but some in isolated pockets still hold to their ancient civilization, the ideals if not the technology.  The orcs spread wide and far on all the continents and remain intact on two of the continents of the world.  Not so on Caranus.  The ship remained the center of their culture for a thousand years, a vast empire radiated out from it.  The technology remained viable for the most part for centuries, augmented by the arts they discovered on this planet, magic and divine power.  A schism occurred after centuries and the two sides battled for possession of the ship as either the center of science or as the icon of devotion.  The result was that the drives of the ship were reinitialized with magic and an overload occurred ending the schism entirely.  The explosion destroyed the Orcish technological empire and created the Mountains of Glass and the Burning Plains.  

Mutations.

The end of the Orcish technocracy brought change to the continent.  Almost every species was affected in some way.  Luckily the explosion occurred just after the first of the Caretakers arrived in the continent.  They sent the radioactive dust against the wind away from the greatest population on the continent, the Great River.  Still a third of the continent was affected and the people there all changed.  The refugees from these regions brought with them lizard men, salaad, Kuo-Toa, ogres, gnolls, goblins, kobolds, Treants, and hundreds of others.  It is thought that within the wilds there is yet more.  Dragons in the presentient stages were locked in that state and began to breed true.