Neverron: Never Eberron, or teenage-me having Ideas

Today I have no plan for a blog entry, no sleep, and no time. So I’m just going to share an idea and a world I’ve developed — and (surprisingly for me) it’s not the Auri or their culture. It’s a setting I’ve probably mentioned before; it was intended for d&d, but it mostly ended up being used for Risus games and the infamous Elvish Flirting Law Incident. Because I started developing it in middle school and the gaming club met at lunch, that’s why. And then the past of that world showed up in my high school gaming group, set in the world during its version of a Cold War or world war. 

The setting is called Neverron, because when I wrote it, I intended it to be Never Eberron, a world where the premise of Eberron was taken in other directions. However, I wrote it without any real knowledge of Eberron other than the basic “more magitech and politics, less high fantasy” concept, so it’s pretty different. 

So. Neverron is a world of magitech and politics, with a lot of both problems and solutions. The world as it stands now has just come out of a war between the two largest, most xenophobic empires: the elvish Empire of the Emerald Dusk (ruled by the tyrannical dictator Carmen Blazing-Gold, of the gold elves) and the human kingdom of Requia (ruled by Queen Cantata d’Rebelle). The war provoked a huge technological revolution as part of an arms race, because it was almost a world war for a long time before cooling down to more of a Cold War and space race. This means that the quality of life for most people has markedly improved lately. 

There are a handful of minor empires or kingdoms, though the Empire of the Emerald Dusk and Requia are the major empires. The other nations include a mostly-human-or-elvish kingdom primarily composed of refugees from those empires, Cantora, which is the most diverse and inclusive racially, but is ruled by an elvish archmage (Mystara Dying-Avariel, Archmage of the Northwest) with absolute power; a nomadic nation of herders mostly made up of orcs and goblinoids, Tyrus, where interlinked family groups and alliances determine power (most powerful: the Arathi family, who currently holds the most influence); and the mysterious Undercrown, a primarily dwarvish-gnomish republic (current president is Garnet Gemest e Minrel) that mostly mines ore and trades with other nations. There’s a couple other minor kingdoms too, but they don’t matter. Those are the politically and economically powerful countries. 

The technology level of the world is mostly industrial revolution level, although it’s beginning to hit the space age and, in the next few years, Archmage Dying-Avariel, Queen d’Rebelle, Ruler-for-Life Blazing-Gold, the Arathi family, and President Garnet plan on launching a space station as proof of what can be accomplished through international cooperation and good will. Naturally, given that the war has only been over for a few years (and it nearly destroyed Cantora as fallout), the ‘good will’ part is just a platitude. The Requian delegate to the project, Lady Aria d’Rebelle (the queen’s younger sister), has been quoted on record as saying that the project, if it goes well, might not fail horribly (It’s going to succeed, because I actually drew up plans for the station, but there’s always sabotage).

However, on a day to day basis, technology tends to be at about a post-industrial level, although it’s advancing quickly. Most people across the industrial nations (everywhere except for Tyrus, which trades for industrial goods but domestically does not produce them) are literate and buy mass produced goods, although there’s still a heavy agricultural economy, especially on the coast in Cantora. The major export of Tyrus is textiles, which are produced by every member of a family, with skills and techniques kept secret from other families. There’s a saying in the Emerald Dusk that “an inch of Tyric carpet is worth a thousand gleaming swords.” 

There’s honestly a lot of prejudice on this world because when I wrote adventures it was for a group of characters acting as Cantoran spies (that’s who they thought they were, at least) right before the war, or for the characters who were supposed to stop the sabotage of the space station. The war was as much about nationalism as it was about economic competition (the official reason), and that’s why I call the major empires xenophobic; because their nationalism became a desire to destroy every other nation and prove superiority. Even after the war, that’s still the attitude under the surface of civility. 

I’ll write more on this at a later time, but that’s a start.