Editing The Esoteric Order of Eldritch and Superlative Sorceries (section)

== The Game World & Conventions ==

*The PCs live in and about the small city of Strangetree, which straddles the Dirtwater river and flows through a valley.  Counter-intuitively in view of its name, the Dirtwater is remarkably clean.
*The world has undergone several major calamities within the past few centuries.  While civilization has been largely maintained, the human population has undergone drastic decreases and has not yet replenished itself.  Therefore, human communities tend to be somewhat scattered and disconnected from one another, and there are plentiful ruins about for those with more greed than caution.
*Actually killing other humans is considered to be in extremely poor taste, and is strongly discouraged.
*That said, cheating and swindling other humans is almost a pastime, and so the cunning must be ever on their guard.  This is a world of venal and grasping people, even if the backstabbing is generally metaphorical.  
*Humanity is furthermore cynical, debauched, and as slothful as their fortunes will admit in large part.
*Also due to the limited density of human populations, many strange monsters and weird creatures roam the wilds.  They can be highly dangerous, and wayfarers are encouraged to travel armed.  Or, better yet, to simply stay at home.
*There are no deities as such.  While there are many extradimensional beings of astonishing power, they are generally disinterested in humanity, and humanity is too cynical to "worship" anything.
*Verbosity and flowery language are signatures of the setting.  If you don't drop at least a few words that would leave the typical high school student agape, you aren't getting into the swing of things.
*The real powers in the world are magicians, who fortunately do not generally show great interest in temporal affairs.  Wizard-kings are rare, in that a wizard strong enough to declare himself king did not get that way by mucking about with politics, and probably has little interest in the day-to-day business of ruling.  It looks suspiciously like work, and also like being constantly bothered by underlings.  The call of sorcerous research and arcane artifice is much stronger!
*Magicians are, in fact, generally fairly rare.  The PCs are exceptional, and their organization represents a remarkable density of magicians in a given place.  
*The nearby city of Tizr is a hub for the region, and there are seasonal conclaves there for all the recognized magicians in the regional confederation.  This totals perhaps fifty persons, wherein the PCs would represent a not-entirely-insignificant power-bloc if they cast their votes in unison.