The Stormhaven campaign begins on Saturday, August 9. Each day this week, I’ll be posting a short “tidbit” of information about life in Stormhaven, or the campaign, to help get everybody “in the mood.”

Our Stormhaven campaign will use D&D 4e rules, and a such, will also use the standard D&D cosmology. Here’s some insight into how Havenites see the world around and beyond them, combining standard D&D concepts with material from the Stormhaven setting book.

Stormhaven teems with excellent sailors, and along with excellent sailors come excellent cartographers/geographers, astronomers/astrologers, and other such specialists. Most Havenites have no first-hand experience with any land other than their own—the chief exceptions, of course, being those sailors who have put into port on the few remaining port cities scattered around the eastern crescent of the Moonshale Sea. Havenites do know that they are living on a roughly spherical world, and they have calculated approximately how big around it must be. All of this was primarily the work of mathematicians and astronomers/astrologers, in consultation with observant navigators and cosmographers whose carefully annotated star charts made the calculations possible. Yet Havenites know very little of the lands except those that border the Moonshale Sea. The lands to the immediate north and east were once dominated by the vast human empire of Nerath, but that is long since gone. Lore buried deep in dusty tomes speak of Arkhosia, an empire dominated by the dragonborn, and of Bael Turath, a huge kingdom (yet farther east than the reaches of Nerath) whose human overlords bound themselves to devils and thus spawned the tiefling race—but there are so few dragonborn or tieflings in Stormhaven that many modern Havenites doubt these rumors are true.

Even though they live on a ball, Havenites still have a sense of global “up” and “down,” and although they see the stars, their minds range somewhat beyond the stars. In Havenite thinking, above the stars lies the Astral Sea, where (most of) the gods live in their mystical “domains.” Below the word gapes the Elemental Chaos, and at its bottom, the Abyss. “Beside” the world, so to speak, stand its two echoes, the ominous, but not inherently evil, Shadowfell (through which all creatures’ spirits must pass after death, before moving on to their final fate) and the enchanted Feywild, where practically everything is magical. In dark stories and urgent whispers, Havenites might also speak—but very infrequently—of the Far Realm, source of the most aberant creatures imaginable. It’s rumored to lie outside both the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos, but Havenites try not to think about it too much; the mere mention of the Far Realm can drive the weak-minded insane, or so local lore insists.

Many different gods are known and revered in Stormhaven, but the dominant faith is the worship of the Triumvirate: Bahamut, Corellon, and Moradin. Sophisticated Havenites consider Bahamut, Corellon, and Moradin to really be three “aspects” of a single god, but for practical purposes, most Triumvirants (as worshipers call themselves) see the Triumvirate as a divine partnership between three gods. Most Triumvirants, whether theologically sophisticated or not, feel themselves more closely tied to one of the three gods (or aspects) than the other two. Triumvirants who celebrate stability and appreciate skilled craftsmanship and engineering tend to emphasize Moradin (as do many dwarves, out of racial pride); those who celebrate beauty and appreciate the creative process as much as the created product tend to emphasize Corellon (as do many elves and eladrin, out of racial pride); and those who celebrate justice perceive a moral cause-and-effect order in the cosmos tend to emphasize Bahamut (as do many dragonborn, out of racial pride, as well as humans). Triumvirants tolerate the veneration (but not outright worship) of Melora, the sea goddess, alongside of (but not instead of!) the Triumvirate, but they oppose paying respects to any other god.

The most powerful rival to the Church of the Triumvirate in modern Stormhaven is the Order of the Storm, founded by descendants of Palanas Rockhammer. The Order, whose clergy are called Stormroarers, advance the belief that the sea itself is a deity, that there is no other god, that the material world is the entire world (there is no Astral Sea or Elemental Chaos, and certainly no Far Realm, and the Shadowfell and Feywild are merely odd ways of perceiving the natural world), and that worshiping false gods risks the wrath of the sea. The high priest, Stormroarer Kromodus Stormhaven, often employs very aggressive conversion techniques.

With the background from these countdown posts as well as other setting information that the players already have, we’re almost ready to begin our adventure! Later today (Friday, August 8th), each player will receive additional tidbits specific to his or her character. For interested bystanders, I’ll post those later, after the session has passed.