Editing Exandria (section)

==Lore and Pantheon==
While Exandria does have its own flair, it doesn't massively set itself apart by carving a niche the way settings like [[Dragonlance]] or [[Eberron]] do, and in many ways it's just a typical kitchen sink setting. It mostly acts as a 'fresher' alternative to high fantasy settings like the Forgotten Realms. To the chagrin of some, it is also noteworthy for its progressive undertones (there are a few LGBT NPCs mentioned in the ''Explorer's Guide'' and the setting tends to shy away from generalizing races as evil - though some races and societies still are described in very unflattering terms).

Exandria's pantheon is the [[Dawn War]] pantheon from the [[Nentir Vale]], with the notable addition of [[Sarenrae]] from [[Golarion]]. In the ''Explorer's Guide'', due to obvious legal issues, Sarenrae has been replaced with an expy called [[Raei]]. This is because Exandria was originally a homebrew setting for [[Pathfinder]] but was ported to D&D 5e when ''Critical Role'' became a show, and one of Mercer's players (Ashley Johnson) played a cleric of Sarenrae. Many gods are also often referred to by secondary epithets unique to the Exandria setting (i.e. [[Corellon]] is called the Archeart), which were seemingly established for the ''Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting book'' to avoid legal issues before Exandria became an official setting.

The good gods are called the Prime Deities, while the evil ones are called the Betrayer Gods, and they are sealed away from the Prime Material Plane by the Divine Gate. A number of quasi-deities also exist such as an archfey trickster-demigod called The Traveler [[The Traveler|(no, not that one)]] and a leviathan called Uk'otoa that was once [[Zehir]]'s pet. The setting utilizes the [[Great Wheel]] cosmology with basically every major plane getting some sort of mention or relevance, while featuring some scientific concepts such as quantum theory and parallel universes via the discipline of dunamancy.

There are three major periods in Exandria's history: the Founding and the Primordial War, the Age of Arcanum and the Calamity, and the Post-Divergence era. The history of Exandria is also quite similar to the Dawn War lore - the Founding involves the gods creating the world, the mortal races, and the Metallic Dragons before coming into conflict with the Primordials, though in this case the Primordials are ancient elemental titans with little in the way of detailed lore. This age ends in the defeat of the Primordials and banishing of the Betrayer Gods. The Age of Arcanum includes the rise of mages and their quest for immortality; characters like Vecna and the Raven Queen first rose to power during this time. Eventually, the evil Betrayer Gods were re-summoned into the world, with basically all the forces of evil gathering in Xhorhas (essentially Mordor) and the Betrayer Gods launching an attack on the holy city of Vasselheim. This culminated in the Calamity, an epic battle between good and evil that killed two-thirds of the world's population, completely rearranged the geography and flow of magic in Exandria, and caused untold suffering. At the end of the Calamity the Prime Deities created the Divine Gate and sealed themselves and the Betrayer Gods behind it, an event known as the Divergence.

835 years have passed since then; the gods can only intervene in a limited capacity and the aftermath of the Calamity has resulted in essentially no shortage of monsters, ancient artifacts, or adventure hooks to find. '''The Vestiges of Divergence''' are legendary weapons that were used during the Calamity and are similar to 3.5e's Weapons of Legacy; they begin in a dormant state, but can be powered up to their Awakened and then Exalted state via pivotal moments of character growth. There's also an 'evil' equivalent, the '''Arms of the Betrayers''', who are evil sentient weapons that require unique and difficult methods to destroy.

Exandria was popularized through a live-play series. As such, the adventuring parties from the show (Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein) are treated as canonical, although they are very rarely mentioned in the source books outside of passing mentions and easter eggs.