The World of High Fantasy

THE LAND OF AURETH

One continent. Four kingdoms. A thousand years of glory, war, and dark magic — and gods who only sleep.

▼ Read the Chronicles

They call it Aureth — the gilded land — a name older than any crown that has ever ruled it. In the age of the forgotten gods it was said Aureth would one day shine, that glory would return to its people and its ruins alike. That age has not come. But the world is stirring. The long medieval dark is thawing into something new: an age of powder and print, of steel and spellcraft learned side by side. Knowledge is spreading. Machines are turning. And in every kingdom, the bold are looking outward again — toward the frontier, the ruin, the war, and the crown.

This is a world where glory and adventure rule the land. Where a delver from Hero's Hall can carve a legend out of a frozen tomb, and a scholar of the Great Spire can bind lightning to a lever. The gods are gone from the temples — but not from memory. And some say they are only waiting to be remembered.

Cartography

The Four Kingdoms of Aureth

A single great continent, quartered by frost, spire, storm, and wild. Hover a region to light it.

AETHELGARD ❄ THE FROZEN NORTH STORMLAND ⚔ WAR IN THE EAST BONIS ⚙ SPIRE OF THE SOUTH THE UNCHARTED 🌲 WILDS OF THE WEST AURETH N S E W
Aethelgard · North Stormland · East Bonis · South The Uncharted · West
The Powers of the Realm

Know the Kingdoms

❄ North

Aethelgard

"We do not bend. We melt the ice ourselves."

A vast, ancient reach of frost and iron. Blizzards last for months, the permafrost swallows villages whole, and great beasts — trolls, dragons, and worse — roam unchecked. The land is scarred by the World Wound, a titanic chasm splitting mountain from forest, and warmed only by the smoke of Mt. Ignis. Its people are hardened, not cruel: shaped into something closer to iron than flesh. Beyond the northern rim lie the true frozen wastes, where the cold never breaks.

Seats: Pandor City, the crown of the north · Ironhaven, the fortress-city below the Greyspine Mts. and home of Hero's Hall · the dreaded Castle Drakmar.
⚙ South

Bonis

Where the machine and the spell keep one another honest.

The bright mind of Aureth. In Bonis, magic and technology are studied together — gears turned by bound lightning, glass that remembers, engines that think. The learned rule here, and knowledge is the truest coin. If the new age has a birthplace, it is beneath the shadow of the Great Spire.

Seat: The Great Spire — part academy, part cathedral of invention.
⚔ East

Stormland

The largest realm — and the hungriest.

The east holds the most land, the biggest armies, and the oldest grudges. Stormland is a patchwork of rival lords in a near-constant contest for territory and glory. It is said that if its houses ever stopped fighting each other and banded together, they could rule all of Aureth. They never have. Politics is a blade here, and warfare is a way of life.

Seats: A dozen warring banners — no single throne holds for long.
🌲 West

The Uncharted

The map ends here. The adventure begins.

Forests without borders, marshes that swallow roads, wastelands and deserts no cartographer has ever tamed. The Uncharted is where the wild races dwell and where the deepest dungeons wait. Everything valuable in the west is guarded by something dangerous — which is exactly why the bold keep going in.

Seats: None mapped — only ruins, lairs, and the trouble between them.
🗺 Atlas of the North: Pandor City · Ironhaven · Castle Drakmar · Macar · Astrax · As-Ascar · the Greyspine, Dragon's Crest & Serpent's Spine ranges · the Eldritch & Shadowfell Forests · the Dead Sands Desert · the Scorched Expanse · and the World Wound. Chart them yourself in the World Explorer.
The Living World

Peoples of Aureth

Five civilized kindreds raise cities and cultures across the continent — and countless monsters and villains contest every mile between them.

👤

Humans

Ambitious and everywhere — the driving force of the new age.

🏹

Elves

Keepers of old knowledge, long-lived and long-memoried.

⛏

Dwarves

Masters of stone, steel, and the machines of Bonis.

✨

Faerie Folk

Wild, wondrous, and never quite bound by mortal rules.

🦎

Lizardmen

Ancient culture-bearers of the marshes and hot frontiers.

⚡

Magic & Machine

Magic in Aureth is not a birthright — it belongs to the knowledgeable few who study it, and it is dangerous in careless hands. In this dawning age, the greatest minds have begun to braid spellcraft together with invention: enchantment and engineering, sigil and gear.

A knight of Stormland might carry a blade quenched in bound fire. A Spire-wright of Bonis might power a whole workshop from a single caged storm. The line between wizard and engineer grows thinner every year.

🖤

The Sleeping Gods

Aureth once had faiths — temples, rites, names spoken with reverence. No longer. The old religions have faded, and the gods with them, until only a lingering memory remains: a half-remembered prayer, a ruined shrine, a feeling in the dark.

But faded is not gone. The forgotten gods still stir at the edges of the world, in the deep places and the frozen ruins. And there are those who believe the gilding of Aureth's name was a promise — that one day, the gods will return.

“Glory does not wait in Aureth. It is taken — from the ice, the ruin, and the dark.” — Inscription above the gates of Ironhaven

Your Legend Begins

Delve Into Aureth

High Fantasy is the dungeon-crawl card game set in this world. Play the free open beta now, explore the cards, and join the mailing list for the Kickstarter — every signup enters our $200 cash draw.

▶ Play the Open Beta 🃏 Explore the Card Vault