The sun rises over the Flanaess like a bruised eye, casting long, jagged shadows across the ruins of the Great Kingdom. In this ancient land, the air itself tastes of history and iron, a world where the bones of fallen empires serve as the foundations for the desperate strongholds of the present. From the mist-shrouded peaks of the Griff Mountains to the salt-cracked shores of the Azure Sea, a sense of weary majesty prevails. This is a realm where the brilliance of high magic is always tempered by the creeping chill of the unknown, and where the echoes of a thousand wars still hum in the wind.
To the north, the Iuz the Old—a demigod of concentrated malice—sits upon a throne of skulls, his gaze fixed on the soft underbelly of the southern realms. His territory is a festering wound on the map, a place where the barrier between the Material Plane and the Abyss has worn thin. Legions of orcs and twisted fiends march under banners of bone, their rhythmic drumming sounding like a slow, deliberate heartbeat of doom. The borderlands are a gauntlet of watchful eyes and sharpened steel, where the light of civilization flickers against an encroaching, unnatural night.
Contrastingly, the Free City of Greyhawk stands as a shimmering jewel of ambition and avarice, a sprawling metropolis built atop the deepest secrets of the Earth. Beneath its cobblestone streets lies the legendary Castle Greyhawk, a labyrinthine megadungeon that lures the brave and the foolish alike with promises of celestial artifacts and forgotten lore. In the city’s High Quarter, mages in silken robes debate the nature of the multiverse, while in the shadowed Thieves' Quarter, the fate of kingdoms is decided with a whispered word and a poisoned needle.
Beyond the city walls, the landscape is a tapestry of untamed wildness and eerie enchantments. The Vast Swamp exhales noxious vapors that conceal prehistoric horrors, while the Adri Forest hides elven enclaves that have not seen a human face in three centuries. There are places in the Flanaess where time flows backward, and groves where the trees bleed silver sap. Mystery is the local currency; every standing stone and crumbling watchtower holds a riddle left behind by the Baklunish or Suloise migrations, waiting for a soul bold enough to claim it.
The heavens above Greyhawk are governed by the dancing moons, Celene and Luna, whose shifting phases dictate the ebb and flow of magical tides. When the moons align, the "Great Dark" falls, and the barriers between worlds dissolve, allowing spirits of the ethereal plane to wander the mortal heaths. Astrologers and seers watch the skies with trepidation, for the stars themselves are said to be the watchful eyes of the Old Ones—gods who were ancient before the first mountain was raised and whose motives remain inscrutable to the minds of men.
As the twin moons reach their zenith, the Flanaess holds its breath. A new age of heroes is rising, born from the ashes of the Greyhawk Wars and tempered in the fires of necessity. Whether they seek the lost treasures of the Vecna or simply a warm hearth in a cold land, their paths will inevitably cross the ley lines of destiny. In the World of Greyhawk, the line between myth and reality is a razor’s edge, and every step taken is a gamble against the shadows of a grand and terrible past.
