Terian

Terian is a small island setting for general fantasy games. It was originally created for D&D as a collaborative effort sponsored by TSR while TSR had an official presence on AOL. It was part of a World Building workshop.

Unfortunately, a lot of the data was lost when TSR left AOL. If anyone out there has more of the material on it, please email me.

Geography

Terian is an island, roughly a parallelogram in shape, with a Y shaped mountain range splitting it down the middle. It is about the size of the British Isles combined, with a rocky shoreline and frequent cliffs. The island is divided into four countries.

The western region has a large river that is almost completely surrounded by heavy forest. This splits the western region into two distinct countries. The land is rough, and farming is poor. The coastlines are rugged throughout the island, making landing ships of any size very difficult.

The eastern country has rolling hills and rivers with cliffs for shore lines or rocky beaches, and has the largest amount of arable land. Because of this, they are receiving the brunt of the "barbarian" invasion from overseas. The northeastern country has lots of lakes and rock hill country, nestled the in the top of Y of mountains. This area has little arable land but lakes for fishing, a little hazardous with monsters, but livable. Third is the northwestern country north of river and forest, with rolling hills with a sandy soil good for potatoes and carrots but not much else; it is plagued by internal struggle. The southwestern nation has rolling hills again, but filled with bogs and swamps and moors, a desolate tundra with little arable land but with coal and iron deposits much in demand, a mining country.

The climate is fairly cold, and the land is harsh on its inhabitants. A island with very rough terrain, the biggest conflict between kingdom is the few areas where food can be grown

Mountain dwarves dwell in the mountains in the center of the island, and some gnomes also dwell there. There are also tribes of elves, as well as

The countries have a semi-feudal structure in some regions to defend against barbarians; mages are few, but essential to grow or defend themselves well. The dwarves are secretive, and humans want to learn their secrets - possibly more advanced technology. The dwarves were the ones knowing about the wildspace port, and had not lost contact wiht space. The feudal humans had lost a lot of tech, having recently gone thru some sort of dark-ages with the barbarian presence a continual threat.

Culture

The people of Terian are probably just (re)learning how to make and use iron/steel weapons and tools. It is a tough place and time to live.

Some of the inhabitants believe Terian to be a testing ground for them to promote their religion. hey believe that they must prove themselves worthy of being delivered, and the gods have made the region deliberately harsh. Because of this, the believers of this idea frequently start religious wars. Whether this is truth or not is not known.

There is also a strong druidic influence, particularly in the forested region near the western river.

Most of the religion in the area is centered on various aspects of elemental gods. The barbarians follow beast-totems and animalistic gods. The druids worship all elemental gods as a unified power, personified in a mother-earth figure. The druids remain hidden in the forests; leaving priests as the visible religious figures in Terian.

The nation who sees the gods as more of protectors would have their priests in high esteem, while the culture that believes that it is being punished for previous sins fears the priests. The culture who believes in the testing ground would probably believe the priests are keepers of secrets

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