The World Codex of Thaedoria

Hearthmere — the heartland

A green, lamplit land of hedgerows, slow rivers, and inns whose hearths never quite go cold — the gentlest corner of Thaedoria, though nowhere here is truly safe.

• The Cosy Hearth Inn — a warm, low-beamed common room of woodsmoke and barley stew, where a traveller's night begins. It opens onto Brookhollow Green.
• Brookhollow Green — the gentle heart of the village: a mossy well, an herb stall, and a weathered notice board thick with bounties, ringed by low cottages.
• The Mill Road — a rutted lane between wild hedgerows running down to the old mill, where the air is colder than it should be.
• The Old Mill — a derelict watermill, its wheel long still, now denned with something that has made a home among gnawed bones.
• The Hearthmere Lock-Up — a single cold holding cell of straw and iron, with a loose bar in the corner that whispers of a riskier way out.

Aldermoor — the frontier marches

Wind-bitten border country of shuttered market towns and long, unlit roads, where the watch is thin and the night keeps its own counsel.

• Town Square — a dark, wind-blown square, its fountain choked with dead leaves and its lamps burned low, where the shadows feel deliberate.
• The Watch House — a cramped, lamplit post of duty desk and half-empty weapon rack, undermanned and overworked.
• The Gallows Road — the lampless road south, named for what waits at its end; past the last lamp it gives up any pretence of safety.
• The Gibbet Crossroads — a four-way crossing beneath an old iron gibbet and a burned-out wagon, worked by cutthroats who wait in the dark.

Greyhaven — the old city

A salt-grey old city of leaning timber and crumbling gates, half-sunk into its own past, where every cobble has heard a secret.

• Oldtown Square — the worn heart of the district: a dry fountain where those who'd rather not be overheard meet, and a bounty-thick notice board.
• The Rusty Tankard — a low, smoky tavern where Oldtown's secrets are bought and sold by the cup, if you know who to ask and what it costs.
• Market Row — a crooked, threadbare marketplace of half-empty stalls and shuttered shopfronts, poor and watchful, that remembers being more.
• The Old Gate — a crumbling, soot-black district gate left unbarred, with a worn stair breathing cold air up from the crypt below.
• The Sunken Crypt — a flooded crypt where burial niches gape open from within, and Oldtown's dead no longer rest.

The Town Watch

The uniformed guard and lawful authority of the towns — slow to anger, unforgiving once roused. Cross one and you cross all of them. They keep the peace in safe places, answer crimes when a witness raises the alarm, and jail those they subdue. Beyond the Watch, the world is full of lighter affiliations — inn regulars, villagers, Oldtown's quiet networks — that colour who trusts you and who doesn't.

The folk you meet

• Bram — the barrel-chested innkeeper of the Cosy Hearth: warm, nosy, an old friend to every guest, with a worn oak cudgel under the bar.
• Hessa the Herbwife — a brisk, weathered herb-seller on Brookhollow Green who misses no rumour and worries about the wrongness at the old mill.
• Mara — a sharp-eyed inn regular in a travel-worn cloak who listens to every table; there is more to that cloak than cider.
• Kira the Sellsword — a dry, watchful free blade between contracts, who can be won over to walk your road for a while.
• Grik — a soft-spoken, magpie-eyed goblin trader of oddments, who pays fairly for the small bright things others overlook.
• Sergeant Vell — a grizzled watch sergeant holding the Aldermoor watch-house with too few hands, quick to warn of the cutthroats south.
• Tomas the Fence — a soft-spoken Greyhaven informant with a gambler's smile, who trades rumours for coin and knows the whereabouts of most things.

The elemental arts

Magic in Thaedoria is elemental, and each of its four schools is a different temperament — Pyromancy's raw destructive flame, Hydromancy's patient control of water, Aeromancy's quick and capricious wind, and Geomancy's implacable stone. In practice they run from a flung ember or a thread of lightning to roaring conflagrations, blooming winters, and the ground itself heaving up to answer the caster. The Player's Guide covers how the schools play.