The New World

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Astrata, capitol Antarth sits on the bank of the mighty
River Nephos as it flows into the inland Sea of Stars.
The stretch of river Astrata stands on is nearly six miles wide 

New edition and a year at uni have overhauled my setting.

Ichall is no longer the dominant power in the world, thousands of years ago the great magitech-cum-Macedonian sword and sorcery thalassocracy crumbled into the sea. It's colonies and client states revolted to form the Six Cities of the Endless Bay and the Curiate of Mir, which would go on to become the continent spanning Empire of Mirath. Ichall then suffered a minor magical apocalypse caused by some nasty business with a tidal wave and a band of Ettins. Currently Ichall's existence is a matter of debate.

The Bay States quickly fell into an easy rhythm that they have maintained to this day - trading with one another and the broader world, accumulating gods and fighting wars, either ineffectual gentlemanly affairs between the city states or vicious winner-takes-all mercenary wars that end badly for everyone except the man who hired the toughest thugs. Notable developments for the Bay include the establishment of Dater, a colony accidentally built in the path of a transient elf-city, and the city of Carcer going independent, forming the militaristic Carcerene Republic. Mir grew and propsered inland, separate from the Bay States becoming fascistic renaissance era pusedo-Rome with militaristic police-state - the thinking man's Sauron with legions of monstrous auxiliaries AND a handy grasp of the finer points of sanitation and architecture. Mirath - oppressing you straight up from the dark ages.

Accordingly Mirath fell when in much the same fashion Rome did, unwinnable wars, decadence, external threats and military revolts, but because Mirath's army contained a hell of a lot of hungry orcs and gnolls the sacking of the capitol had a lot less looting and a lot more eating.

Isolde Dryden, typical post-unification
Prynic knight.

Left in Mirath's wake are the following:

The Three Successor Kingdoms - Martial, slightly Frankish, very Prussian Vrancia, cultured and diplomatic vaguely Austrian Antarth and Pryn, the island nation where the orphaned Empress Corinna Phixia fled following the Mir's Fall bringing with her dozens of refugee noble houses and the fearsome Nothic Legion, essentially making it Britain but the Roman and Norman invasions where one and the same thing. Most of my games action is set in Pryn, under the general principle that it should start somewhere cliched and recognisable (wyrd-Britain where people have names like Edric, Garth and Anna) and then shit gets freaky the further you get from home.

The Barbarians - Kingdoms and countries that were either never conquered by Mir or where never completely Mirathized, maintaining their own culture and customs throughout. Of these we have the Coralisians of the northern prairie who managed to conquer Vrancia and Anarth for a time creating what some called the Second Mirathian Empire but most now simply refer to as the Boethian Dominion, refering to the ruling
Coralisian Dynasty, the Boethians. They are the Scythians and the Cumans but more Japanese.
To the South is Lhysnia. a fiercely independent little country, very mountainous and heavily forested and not at all Transylvania-cum-Scotland. More about them next time.

Zingria, most southerly of the Archonaes
like most of the Mire's cities is built on one
of the few patches of dry ground, or rather
"less waterlogged".

The Archonaes are the loose confederation of city-states that rise up out of the vast and expansive Turquoise Mire - bored and fatalistic Franco-Louisianan Mirathian nobles drifting around stately Egyptian looking cities made of turquoise stone, battling ennui, the Prynic and their native subject people's who are rugged and clever swamp-Gauls who are slowly retaking their country by becoming the nouveau riche. They have an eel god.

Typical Aemonican drengr -
a young untested warrior

Finally there is the North, properly called Thyglia, a vast island divided up between several different tribes and kingdoms. Vothgard was a Mirathian pirate port and after the Fall host to an influx of Mirish refugees, Artios is ancient and mysterious and a heart of northern culture. Aemonicans are fatalistic berserkers. The Ormish and the Lothine are nomands, they herd reindeer and breed wardogs and all of them have a bloody history as sea-raiders. They're vikings. They're all just fucking vikings okay?

Beyond that are the kingdoms of the south and east that never lived under the Mirathians or the Ichallesians - Tokar and Yorgor - vaguely Scandinavian India, Mu - a vast Empire of charioteering Mongols ruled by the Kas, Oklar, Cematia, Ror'Bekyr - story-telling desert nomads, Ror'Vhasat, revolutionary dragon-worshipping Phonecian-Arabs, Ror'Firat - continent spanning Afro-Chinese Empire, theocratic Bai ruled by the Three Eyed Hierophant, Ottene - the City of the Brazen Gates and Mer'Jormar - choral diabolists. These are the nations of men.