Editing Exandria (section)

==Geography==
Exandria is a planet with two moons and a 328-day year of eleven months. It contains five (at most) continents. As usual with noob world-designers, the continents are too small for the diversity of climate they claim. Currently Wildemount appears to be the largest continent at 2200 miles across, making it just a bit smaller than Australia. Unironically, go back to [[reddit]]; their worldbuilding forum would have helped these guys.

The level of technology is mostly medieval, with the exception of some steampunk societies like the gnome city of Hupperdook. Firearms were also recently invented, but have not seen widespread use.

===Tal'Dorei===
Tal'Dorei (or Gwessar, as the elves call it) is your basic high fantasy Big Island with no clear real-world basis. Size-wise, it was Madagascar in the original. Its scale has since got "corrected". To roughly 1500 miles long and 1000 miles wide. So slightly larger than... Greenland. "Continent" is stretching the definition, but then - we've gotten used to that from [[Dragonlance]]'s undersized sandboxes.

It's mostly frozen mountains in the north, your standard plains and forests in the middle, and jungles in the south. Since this is impossible given the size of the place, fans have proposed that the north is elevated relative to the south. Or maybe it's MAGIC.

Politically the surface-area is governed largely by the Republic (formerly kingdom) of Tal'Dorei, though various other societies exist - the dwarf city of Kraghammer (which sits atop an entrance to the Underdark), the forested elf realm of Syngorn (which can shift into the Feywild in times of crisis), the druidic tribes of the Ashari (who guard portals to the Elemental Planes), the city-state of Whitestone (an aristocratic and technologically developed society), the militaristic hobgoblin federation of the Iron Authority, and even invisible flying cities of cloud giants. There are also organizations such as the Clasp (your token organized crime) and the Golden Grin (a very decentralized, [[Harpers]]-type secret society with an emphasis on freedom of expression and making people smile).

The ''Campaign Setting'' takes place just as Tal'dorei is recovering from the ravages of the Chroma Conclave, an unlikely alliance of ancient chromatic dragons that attempted to conquer the place before Vox Machina defeated them.

===Wildemount===
Wildemount is more fleshed out than Tal'Dorei, having the benefit of an official book, and features a greater emphasis on political intrigue. It has a more clearly European flair - the Dwendalian Empire being Germanic/Eastern European and the Menagerie Coast being more Spanish/Mediterranean culturally. The ''Explorer's Guide'' setting takes place in 835 PD (Post-Divergence, 20 years after the Tal'Dorei setting) and revolves around a war between two main factions:

The '''Dwendalian Empire''' is an authoritarian expansionist empire ruled by a paranoid king and enforced by a council of mages called the Cerberus Assembly, which in turn control the 'Volstrucker' or secret police who were more often than not kidnapped and/or brainwashed as children. The Empire has outlawed the worship of all but six gods and harshly levies taxes against the citizenry, but has a high approval rating due to their image as peacekeepers and protectors of the commonfolk.

The '''Kryn Dynasty''' (not to be confused with [[Krynn]]) is an all-inclusive society of monsterfolk led by drow who rejected Lolth and built cities of perpetual twilight on the surface; they worship a being of light called the Luxon and practice reincarnation with the help of artifacts called Beacons that are said to be fragments of the Luxon's body. The Kryn basically live in Exandria's Mordor, a ruined wasteland known as Xhorhas where many battles of the Calamity once took place (with the capital, Rosohna, built on the ruins of the evil city of Ghor Dranas).

The two nations are at war over the Luxon beacons, since the Cerberus Assembly have taken two of them in order to study them for their magical properties of Dunamancy. The Kryn are portrayed arguably in a more sympathetic light but are just as prone to propaganda and war crimes as the Empire.

Many other factions exist such as the neutral city-states of the Clovis Concord along the Menagerie Coast, the pirate nation of the Revelry, the librarian-monks of the Cobalt Soul, the crime syndicate of the Myriad, the tribes of Shadycreek Run, the elf-dwarf diarchy of Uthodurn, the blood hunters of the Claret Orders, and the dragonborn society of the Scars of Scale and Tooth (the remnants of the destroyed nation of Draconia, a caste system where tailed 'draconblood' dragonborn enslaved tailless 'ravenite' dragonborn). There's even a cult of Lolth known as the Children of Malice, who see the Kryn Dynasty as traitors and seek to destroy it by any means necessary. Wildemount is by far the largest continent in Exandria and contains many different flavors; for example, the Swavain Islands are suitable for your typical pirate adventures or hidden temples full of yuan-ti, or there's the northern islands of Eiselcross which contain the crash site of a former floating city of mages (Aeor) that is now permanently magically frozen in time and populated by their monstrous creations.

The ''Explorer's Guide to Wildemount'' features a character creation guide called the Heroic Chronicle and four mini-adventures for low level players.

===Issylra===
The oldest continent, Issylra contains the region of Othanzia which itself contains Vasselheim, the holy city that has survived since the early days of Exandria. It, along with Marquet, has never been mapped in detail. It is supposedly the equivalent of Asia and Russia though Vasselheim is very clearly Nordic-based.

===Marquet===
Your southern continent, with jungles, deserts and more, oh my. It used to be considered an 'Arabian Nights'-esque continent minus the unsavory elements, since one of the parties from the live show visited the very-Middle-Eastern city of Ank'harel. The third live campaign is set in Marquet and seems geared to prove that the continent isn't just Disney's Aladdin by showing more of the continent outside the Rumedan Desert. 

We've seen the city of Jrusar, your typical fantasy city built into five rock spires with your living furniture, walls trying to eat people and an Ogre fry-cook named Pretty, which hangs over a large jungle that are sparsely travelled. Another region is the Hellcatch Valley, a Mad Max-inspired badlands setting where "crawler gangs" travel across the steps on mechanical, legged-and-wheeled death machines while trying to avoid the weird fauna and the giant fucking holes in the ground. The city of Bassorus is in the middle of it and wouldn't look out of place in [[Fallout]]; a scrapyard mixed with the worst [[Star Wars|hive of scum and villainy]] that explicitly is described as being a place where nothing ever goes right. 

It's worth noting that Marquet does have a lot of the features of a standard Middle-eastern setting, being known for its spices and culinary arts, for large deserts and roving nomadic tribes, but as the setting evolves, it seems to be a take on many classically "exotic locales" without any specific culture attached to it. This makes Marquet the "Exotic Fantasy" counterpart to Tal'Dorei's "High Fantasy" and Wildemount's "Gritty Fantasy".

===The Shattered Teeth===
Probably the most mysterious continent, its true shape is a vague guess at best and the players on Critical Role have never traveled to it. It's actually an archipelago that serves as an analogue for East and South Asia, and is hidden behind a fog bank called the Fool's Curtain. It is dominated by two nations: The Ossended Host is based on isolationist Japan and its society is based around the worship of dreams and nightmares, while the Wanderman Assembly is a capitalist society based on the British East India Trading Company.

Also, it used to be a single continent, but it was destroyed by the Archdevil [[Asmodeus]] at the beginning of the Calamity. He wanted to, and I quote, ''"shatter the teeth of Exandria"''. [[Warriors of Chaos|Metal]].