Cain Anuun

Cain Anuun is the setting for Phillip (sic) Kennedy Johnson's The Last God / Fellspyre Chronicles. It has 5e / d20 roolz in The Last God: Tales From the Book of Ages but here we'll mostly deal with the lore as a whole.

Theme: The heroes beat the BBEG, and they rule with justice. All is well. ALL IS WELL!

Gods

First came Ang Luthia, Author Of All Things. For her children she imposed one rule - Thermodynamics. If a god is to create life, that god must sacrifice his/her life.

The second-order gods take the honorific prefix "Mol". Mol Anwe was the founder of magic and music. Mol Uvanya was the goddess of nature which, here (as opposed to Tollers), is antithesis to magic. Then there's Mol Kalakto god of the forge and the Abyssal Realm, and Mol Rangma born of fire. Mol Choresh was "god of knowledge and of riddles". Yes, they're gendered. Deal with it.

As typical of origin-myths, then ensued a titanomachy. Ang Luthia and Mol Uhltep - God Of The Void - did the M.A.D. thing, at the Black Stair. As typical of edgelord post-Nietzsche fiction those gods descendate of Ang Luthia are mostly dead now too.

But there's one god left who lives! That'd be (gulp) Mol Uhltep.

Races

The fey came first, birthed when Mol Anwe sacrificed herself toward their creation.

The Aelva race being not fey descend from Mol Uvanya. Tribal and nomadic. They follow Feist's moredhel "we hate other elf tribes almost as much as we hate you" pattern around not being Mary Sue.

Then there's the djorruk, golems from Mol Kalakto - he didn't sacrifice himself at first, but as he lay dying he ended up passing on his Divine spark to them.

The dragons are all fire breathers and come from Mol Rangma.

Dwarrow sprang out of Mol Kalakto's corpse; they're Wagner dwarves.

Other races, like ursulon and - er - humans, are not children of Mol Anybody; like djorruk (at first) they're creations, mostly of Mol Rangma. Mol Rangma figured that all these races would work best in a predator / prey relationship... and humans count alongside deer and hare (unsure if actual rabbits exist here). Mol Rangma's monsters can however access some Divine gifts. Even others': notably bards who can tap into Mol Anwe's legacy of music.

The humans here are Nordic-themed, because they came out of the Riverlands to the north. As often in Gritty fantasy, when Man met Aelva went much like when Spaniard met Carib-and-Arawak so, humies are the dominants.

The World

Fairly basic Beleriand, except there's - literally - nothing past the eastern mountains here the Dragonspyre aka Karkarok.

Also, more like Beleriand after that First Age - this landmass is split, by a great gash surrounded by badlands. The locals consider the Riverlands (and Hinterlands) north of that rift to be a separate continent. (Like "Europe" and "Asia".) That's where humans came from in the first place; the Aelva are native to the warmer lands south of that.

As every Jerusalem has its Gehenna, Cain Anuun has a garbage pit of its own. Ang Luthia was not an omniscient; she tinkered, and she cast her mistakes away. The ledge over the tophet of this world would be the Black Stair in those eastern border mountains. One difference: no all-consuming fire. Sometimes they come back.