Welcome to Blue Harbor

the setting for my homebrew world

2026-01-01

CONTENTS

1. INTRO
2. GENESIS
3. WORLD HISTORY
4. WORLD GEOGRAPHY
5. LOCAL GEOGRAPHY
6. DUNGEON BREACHES
7. DEATH
8. SKY FAUNA
9. SELECT DENIZENS
10. FRONTS

INTRO

I first ran Blue Harbor, “an idyllic seaside town where not everything is as it seems,” as a setting in 2019 for a series of oneshots. It was my first time ever running a game. I wanted a cute little seaside town where weird stuff keeps happening. My touchstones were Eerie Indiana, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Goosebumps, etc. The explanation for this was that the town unknowingly sits on top of a huge access point to the Underdark, where weird monsters live.

Today, Blue Harbor is the setting for my first entirely homebrew campaign. And it is now merely the anchor point in a much larger world.

It is chock full of fantasy trope and lame cliche, because tropes and cliches exist for a reason and are fun to engage with if you yourself are playing a cliche, tropey fantasy roleplaying game.

What follows is a first draft setting document in broad strokes and outlines.

GENESIS

IN THE BEGINNING: Banankoki used to be a pangea . Io the mother of all dragons and Aman the father of all giants created the first dragons and giants to live there and then took a cosmic nap for a thousand years or so.

They came back to find the giants and dragons warring ceaselessly with each other. So they split the earth into Banan in the east for the giants and Koki in the west for the dragons. A divine timeout. Then they took another cosmic nap for another thousand years or so.

Rather than heal any wounds, isolation bred suspicion and hatred, and only intensified hostilities.

The giants with their great technology called down the moon to crush Koki, creating the immense Koki Gulf, the large island of Kormoru and its archipelago of smaller islands.

The dragons with their great magicks tore Banan asunder into northern Panru and southern Banwel.

Having nearly wiped each other out, and chastened by global destruction, the giants and the dragons retreated and today are so rarely seen that they have become creatures of myth and legend.

See: Confessing My Worst DM Secrets Part II

WORLD HISTORY

The Draco-Jotun wars were the First Age.

The Second Age was the Age of Empire, as the Ancient Ones spanned the globe. This is the reason the Common Language and the Common Calendar are universally understood. This is the time the Old Gods, The Twelve, rose to power.

The Second Age ended violently with the collapse of the Ancient Empire and the disappearance of the Ancient Ones The New Gods appeared and overthrew and imprisoned the Old Gods bottom side.

The Third or Modern Age is the diverse age of man. Old roads, crumbling statues, and strange relics remain from the Age of Empires.

WORLD GEOGRAPHY

The world of Banankoki is flat. Or kind of cake shaped? At its core is a primordial ocean, a soup of creation, the Underdeep, the Quiddity. The Underdeep is the domain of the Wardens, predating the gods, predating Io and Aman themselves. When the New Gods banished the Old Gods to Bottom Side, they appointed the Wardens as their keepers, and charged them with forbidding them to ever again cross the center back to Top Side.

The land masses huddle at the center of the Top Side surrounded by ocean that cascades off the edges and flows back into the earth’s core, from where it spouts back out creating the oceans of both Top Side and Bottom Side.

LOCAL GEOGRAPHY

Blue Harbor is situated on the west coast of northern Banwel. It has a shielded harbor, and a large bay, and the Blue River flows through it. (See: Confessing My Worst DM Secrets Part III.) Its five main roads run out from the center like spokes from a hub. Concentric rings of roads mark where the town wall has been in previous generations. The five main roads terminate at the wall at the five main gates. Outside the wall is farmland.

Blue Harbor’s rival town, Beartown, is nestled in the mountains to the east. It is a hot spring oasis, and a haven for lizardfolk, dragonborn, and other reptilian folk.

The annual Blue Harbor Beartown ice hockey game is a highlight of the year.

DUNGEON BREACHES

Dungeons are natural phenomena. They push up from the Underdeep and occasionally breach the surface, allowing creatures of the underground easy access to the above ground. The structures are made of breachstone, a black glassy stone, and for some reason make poor attempts to create structures that appeal to humans: staircases that go nowhere, door and windows that open onto nothing, tables and chairs grown out of living stone, eerie dens and kitchens and libraries.

Much of the novice Adventurers Guild member’s first assignments will consist of breach cleanup.

DEATH

When you die Top Side, you magically appear Bottom Side in your new Death Body. Mostly the same, but also changed in some fundamental way. Natives of Bottom Side likewise appear Top Side. You only get one Death Body though. After that, it’s all over.

SKY FAUNA

Much of the ocean life of Banankoki has adapted to life in the air. Immense jellyfish and koi can almost always be seen drifting through the sky. The upper strata are the domain of skywhales.

Under the right conditions, the iridescent and bioluminescent jellies can light up the night sky in a dazzling display of lights.

SELECT DENIZENS

• ELFS: The elfen diaspora came from across the sea sometime in the latter second / early third age. Elves don’t die of old age or natural causes. Upon reaching maturity they regenerate every couple hundred years. It is common for elves of a certain age to reach a certain melancholy. Some go adventuring with shorter lived people to try to feel feelings of youth and vigor. Some set sail for the elfen homelands. Orcs are just muscle elves.

• DWARFS: Dwarfs appeared from under the mountains some time during the second age. All dwarfs grow beards, usually long thick ones. Dwarfs have two genders: miner and blacksmith.

• KOBOLDS: Kobolds are funny little creatures. Naturally doglike in appearance, and eagerly helpful in temperament. They are corrupted by the proximity of dragons and slowly become more reptilian and more obsessed with serving the dragon.

• PORCS: Analogous to kobolds and dragons, porcs a servitor race to giants. They are portly porcine pink-skinned humanoids slightly smaller than a human, with small tusks, broad flat noses, and round bellies. Usually meek and docile. In the presence of giants, they turn blue and become ravenous and grow to a prodigious size and shed their fat and grow raw muscle and become quick to anger and prone to violence.

• GOBLINS: Ubiquitous and ever present. Genetically unstable, mutagenically adapted to nearly every environment. Reluctantly incorporated into the cityscape since there’s no getting rid of them anyway. All gas, no brakes. All mischief, no wisdom.

FRONTS

So what’s going on in the world?

• Knowledge of the Old Gods has been systemically suppressed for millennial. Nonetheless, some cults have appeared bearing the triple cross of the Twelve.

• Rumors of reptilian kobolds in the west and blue porcs in the east suggest somebody(s) is making progress toward the resurrection of the dragons and the giants.

• The Wardens tire of the silly games of the gods, and begin to assert their own rightful dominion of the world.

• The New Gods walk the earth, vain, lazy, and idle. Meanwhile the Old Gods plan their ascent.

• The Gilded Gastropod, King of the Desert, has combined and gathered up the mollusk tribes and has laid siege to the town of Blue Harbor in retaliation for a perceived offense, and for control of its harbor and trade.