Penumbra

Penumbra is the tentative name of the world of Anagram D&D's future, used by the cultists of the "moon god", but later catching on with most of the populace (as the world at large did not have a name). Not to be confused with The Twilight, an alternate future where Rael, Aluxial, and Omna destroyed the world.

Penumbra came into existence when the "New World Outlaws" used the Vegnatol at Godshead, creating a rift into the past. Their arrival and subsequent meddling with the past effectively destroyed The Twilight.

Gods
Penumbra was once a world run by a council of many powerful beings utilizing the divine power of worship to become beings of godlike power. Though there were once many, Oa, formerly the Godess of life and nature, remained the living diety after the "Ondal Crisis".

Let the only one capable of keeping the balance of the world in check, Oa became a single entity ruling over all things. Many years later, as new mortals rose to the occasion, she would appoint others to individual stations. To prevent another catastrophe like the Ondal Crisis from happening again, the new divine hierchy was left anonymous, merely given a symbol in which to direct worship to. The result was a weaker hierchy, but a stable one that would ensure their longevity.
 * Goddess of Life (symbolized as "the sun")
 * God of Death (symbolized as "the moon")
 * God of Storms (symbolized as "the lightning")
 * God of Time (symbolized as "the hourglass")
 * Goddess of Arcana (symbolized as "the hand")

Nations
The world of Penumbra remained hotly contested even after the Ondal Crisis. The Empire of Shao, having seen the coronation of a new Empress shortly before these events was the first to make a move, gaining much of the mainland for themselves. However, perhaps out of respect or fear of the heroes that once came from the people's republic of Sayal (formerly the city of Sayaburg), Shao left much of the land to the Sayalites and remained peaceful allies throughout most of recorded history. Other less noteworthy kingdoms would emerge upon the mainland, but few could rival the might of Shao.

The sole exception to this rule came from Merrinia, an independent nation in the sky. Merrinia distanced itself from other kingdoms while simultaneously becoming an invaulable asset to most, supplying the world with technology far beyond the means of others. Most of the world's great arcanists and scientific minds came from this nation, whose history is shrouded in mystery. Some claim Merrinia simply appeared overnight, while others claim it had always been. As time went on, Merrinia's incredibly loyal populace all claimed themselves native to their motherland. The nation's history was frequently rewritten, and for centuries historians living on the outside remained baffled as to how it came to be.

Apart from the mainland, other smaller continents hosted their own share of kingdoms. While a majority of the world's populace consisted of humans and other humanoids intermingling with little regard for their racial differences, there are many nations comprised almost entirely of an individual race. Perhaps the most notorious of all were the large expanses of land occupied by the goblin nation of Oghren, formerly an unnamed horde that came into power upon gaining a foothold in the ancestral lands of native humans some time before the Ondal Crisis.

The elven kind, who claimed their lineage of a seperate branch from humanity, were the most inclined to choose a life of isolation from others. Though many found themselves in human settlements and were generally accepted as most others, there was a prominent movement by elfinkind to remain distant. Those that supported this movement would migrate to the isle of Everstar, where they would remain a small but powerful (and above all stable) nation of their own.

Further north, in the frigid icelands left mostly unexplored, were the Duergar, cities expanding into the underground serving as both a habitat for Duergar kind, and as a hub for the black market, with reach spanning across the entire world.

Organizations


Within Penumbra there exist many schools and guilds centered around the application and use of magic. The most prominent of all is the Arcane Institute in Sayaberg, capitol of Sayal. Run by headmistress Winter Nines, the institute existed in a much smaller capacity for decades before the Ondal Crisis, and before the groundbreaking discovery of the "sorcerer gene". With this knowledge, and the brilliant teaching practices of Headmistress Nines, the Institute quickly received funding from many outsiders and became the most college for the arcane arts. The Institute now regularly sends its graduates directly into the field, applying their learned spellcasting to real world scenarios in a matter of years, as opposed to the lifetimes it once took for those without the Institute's incredible advancements.