alidar’s Series 3 project features two warring realms of elves, cursed forests, druids, rangers, and living skyships.
The Queen’s Gift: As with previous releases, this campaign book’s opening chapter is a novelette running 18 pages (out of 132). It is the third episode of the Star Phoenix adventures, a skyship exploring the Great Caldera. The story is told in the style of the Voyage of the Princess Ark originally published in Dragon Magazine in the 1990s. The Queen’s Gift features a mysterious living skyship.
History: The Gazetteer’s main body goes on to unveil the history of the elves, covering events in their ancestral moon, Alorea, and in the Confederacy of Alfdaín on Calidar itself, a former colony of Alorea. The history tells of a bitter rivalry between the old elven empire and the younger, independent nation.
Geography: This chapter focuses on Alfdaín, describing the lay of the land, the people, the economy, and the region’s climates. More than 12 full-page maps are featured, including a monumental 9-page atlas based on Thorfinn Tait’s topographical artwork, and an overview of Undersea, the world of the sea elves, along with a map of the marine floor.
Riddle of the Woods: A sinister event, care of the old empire’s nefarious machinations, corrupted some of the forests covering Alfdaín. The evil plot lies behind this magical plague, threatening to overtake the whole of the confederacy. Each tainted region’s effects receive a detailed description.
The Law and the Sword: Alfdaín features an alliance of three sovereign realms. Who holds the power in each dominion, how they interact with each other, what armed forces they possess, how the traditional clans work, and what laws are in effect come through in these pages.
Behind the Curtains: Discover the guilds, brotherhoods, and secret societies in Alorea and Alfdaín. They are the tools behind Alorean schemes and Alfdaín’s survival. Whether player characters will tangle with them is less a question of when but rather how, and on whose behalf.
Elves of Calidar: The looks of five elven races, their motivations, styles, and game-related abilities receive meticulous treatments. The Sherandol are forest elves. These staunch defenders of freedom favor traditional clans. They dominate in much of Alfdaín. Their allies, the Elëan, favor mountains, relying on their wings to travel quickly. The Meruín dwell on the coasts and below the sea. Their troubles come from a mysterious menace in the marine depths against which they dispatched the paladins of the Rising Tide. The Tolarin are dark-skinned shadow dwellers, strong in magic. The Sòldor, as pale as their Tolarin allies are dark, bear a martial demeanor. They build great cities and, on Alorea, form an arrogant and merciless ruling class.
City of Mythuín: The capital city of Alfdaín is featured here, with district-by-district descriptions, as well as significant work on the sewers and other areas below ground. Time/location-sensitive random encounters, mini-adventures, and four pages of maps provide all details needed to grasp the city’s layout and its hidden dynamics.
Alorea: The old, off-world empire receives its own chapter. Its rulers command all on this moon. A magnificent two-page map shows the moon’s climate zones, biomes, topography, roads, major cities, and their inhabitants’ attitudes toward the Alorean dictatorship.
A Cast of Many: All the key personalities of Alfdaín and a few outer-world figures are described here, along with rules-agnostic game stats. This who’s-who catalog weaves a tangled web of clan intrigues, realm politics, and the schemes of secret societies.
Beasties in the Wilds: One does not have a worthy campaign setting without a few more fun monsters to amuse, annoy, or scare players with. On the menu: the abyssal dread and its ixthyan minions dead set on giving nightmares to the Knights of the Rising Tide, plus a smattering of colorful critters such as the forest elderkin, the lurker below, the seamera, and the sturmgänger.
All Hands on Deck: The final section gives an overview of the various skyships involved in this setting, along with their game stats. Five more pages of deck plans describe an elven flying vessel featured in the opening chapter, The Queen’s Gift, including profile and cutaway side views.
- from the publisher's blurb