Things You Need to Know About Your World #8-10

Things You Need to Know About Your World #8
    Nine hundred years ago representatives from each of the Alderian countries met and created an international currency. These are the gold pieces primarily used in both Aspen and Ash.
    In the time since the conference, some nations have adopted their own currencies and will no longer accept Alderian coin.

Things You Need to Know About Your World #9
    The gods are said to live above the Hub in a floating city known as the Citadel of the Gods. All the gods live there, except for Chaos.
    Angels and demons are purported to live in and run the worlds of the dead. Wherever those are. Angels and demons generally hate each other.
    Gods cannot breed with mortals, but angels and demons can.

(That last was important to note because in our former campaign there were several god-children PCs, all of whom possessed badly-defined, potentially-game-breaking powers. They were lots of fun, but played havoc with the storyline.)

Things You Need to Know About Your World #10
    The color of a dragon, and its abilities, depends on its alignment. Baby dragons are grey.
    Recently there have been rumors of more dragon activity, but this hasn't caused much alarm as dragons mostly keep themselves to themselves, nesting in wild, out of the way places.

Things You Need to Know About Your World #7

The most common race on Midguard is human. They are a prominent part of the population on every continent  but Asgard, ancient home of the elves, who are the second most common people. More than five centuries ago, dwarves would have come next, but then the leading dwarven clan went to war with the queen of the Yuan-ti. Today there are fewer then 10,000 dwarves in all of Midguard.

Things You Need to Know About Your World #2-6

Things You Need to Know About Your World #2
     Lord Kainan is the overseer of the district you are currently in. He is in charge of taxes in the area and settles disputes that the mayors can't, including disputes between mayors. He reports to one of the human representatives on the council.
    Lord Kainan makes his home in Glassforge.

Things You Need to Know About Your World #3
    Directions on Midguard are important and necessary, especially to adventurers such as yourselves.
    There are two primary directions; Rimward, or toward the edge of the world; and Hubward, or toward its center.
    The two secondary directions are Turnwise and Widdershins.

Things You Need to Know About Your World #4
    In Aspen, the closer one gets to the boarders, the more lawless things become. Many of the smaller towns near the boarder have no law enforcement at all. Closer to the capital, however, things are much more regulated. They are not necessarily more civilized or freer from crime.  

Things You Need to Know About Your World #5
    The college for bards in Aspen is called Willowhite, and bards from the college wear a white willow-leaf badge to show their authenticity and guarantee themselves safe passage. They carry the latest in news, gossip, songs, and styles to all the towns in the country. They also often carry messages not urgent enough for the Kine or the coach from town to town.
    It is treason to kill a Willowhite bard (no matter how annoying).

Things You Need to Know About Your World #6
    Law enforcement and prisons in Aspen are the domain of the Silver Circle and their Copper Knights, who are all fiercely loyal to the Silver Circle and the laws of the realm. They prefer to work alone, for the most part, and no attempt to form them into a cohesive military has yet succeeded. They wear copper circlets to distinguish themselves from the common adventurer.

Things You Need to Know About Your World

These are some note-cards I wrote for my last (failed) attempt at starting a new campaign with my Dungeons and Dragons group. The world described is very similar to the one in which Lime lives, so I thought I could share them with you; it might provide you some setting and/or world backstory (otherwise known as history).
    So here they are, in order. One for every day I remember to put one up.

Things You Need to Know About Your World #1
    It's called Midguard. You live on the continent of Alder, near the border between Ash and Aspen. Ash is mountainous and largely uninhabited. It is also Run By Elves. Aspen is ruled by an elected committee of representatives from every race. The number of representatives from a race is proportional to the racial population.

The Aforementioned Sludge

is a city. A nasty city, sprawling out over the valley like some bloated, polluted insect. It is night but the streets are crowded, thousands are out and about. We are too high up to see clearly, but if you look closely you can tell that many are not even close to human. Another odd thing about the city is its configuration. All the homes on the outskirts, and even the buildings, have only a ground floor. As you progress further and further into the city though, you notice that the buildings rise higher and higher, until you reach the queen's palace, in its very heart. It rises in the background, a tower taller than all the rest, carved from a jutting spire of blue crystal.

There is one part of the city that does not follow this general model;

, the closet door is slightly ajar.

A child hides in the closet, covering his ears, the one visible eye tightly closed. The other eye is obscured by his greasy black hair. He is gritting his teeth. He hates this. In his ragged state, the boy contrasts glaringly with the opulence of the room

Notes:

Mother sells him? Father? Pimp? Anyway, Lime gets sold a few times, shipped over an ocean, sold again , shipped over another ocean, sold, taken inland, sold, set to work in some mines in the foothills of the Gods' Circle (I forget what they're called right now, check back later). This entails digging small tunnels branching out from the main shafts, up to forty feet out, in an effort to discover opal dirt. The opals discovered beneath the Circle of the Gods are black, fist-size (on average), and very, very magical {Lime later used one of the opals he stole as ink for his eye tattoo}. He managed to hide one or two of the opals he found and escape {I think he buries them in the strawberry field... or something}, and find his way to the border without being caught. There he is discovered by the owner of a small inn (forget what that was called, too...) as he  was sleeping in the barn. Lime is deloused, scrubbed raw, and fed. Fed real food, probably for the first time in his life. He stays with them for... what, a month? Or something. And from them he learns what life could be like, how being cared for feels. Happy happy joy joy. Then they hear that the angry mine people are looking for him. So he leaves to keep them from getting punished for helping him, gets caught (as was bound to happen), and it turns out that the old Queen of Sri has died, her youngest daughter has taken the throne by force, as is the custom, and she(the youngest daughter) has a fondness for X the bastard/rapist guy.

So, characters:

Lime: the protagonist. He's kinda screwy.

His mother: A whore. We don't see much of her.

X the bastard/rapist guy: a total bag of dicks. Conquered half of Sri, and some outlying islands as well, for the previous queen. Lime's father. Evan's father. Rumored to be the new queen's father, in which case their relationship is even more twisted than we thought. He has a lot of kids. Some of whom he sleeps with. Most are products of rape, of whom X knows nothing, and it is probably better that way.

Scarlet: Lime's childhood friend. They are strikingly similar, and were even more so as children, when they both had true-black hair. Was trained first as a prostitute, then as a courtesan. (Lime's twin sister, though neither knew it.)