GEOGRAPHY

I use Mystara, the old 2nd Ed sourcebook world. This is because I like the retro feeling of it, there's a lot of material out there (maps and such) and it's mostly all reverted to public domain. It should be easy to look up.

POLITICS

Politically the world is divided into two Empires, Thyatis and Alphatia, and their satellite states. Naturally this generates a sort of cold war type situation, although there has been some detente in the last ten years or so. Thyatis is comparable to the early Roman Empire under Caesar or Augustus, and is kept well running with little corruption due to the fear of the other power; notably nobles (including the Augustus/Augusta, who takes on the title as his or her name) are appointed rather than hereditary in the Empire proper, although that is not the case in the satellite states. Alphatia is a magocracy and noncasters have next to no civil rights -- surprisingly the average Alphatian peasant is actually slightly better off than the average Thyatian peasant because disease is easier to stave off and even small villages have arcane help in their day to day life. Notably, the only states of any signficance that do not have a plurality-human population are Alfheim, Rockhome and the Five Shires. Smaller states have historically had a string of minor wars with each other, generally with prodding from one or the other empires; in the last generation there has been an uncharacteristically long peace.

HISTORY

Alphatia is ruled by the Eternal Empress and has been for centuries. Succession in Alphatia is very simple -- dead man's shoes in ritualized and supervised duels. The worldwide calendar is based on the coronation of the first Augustus in Thyatis (AC = Ab Conditium, "Since the Founding") -- Alphatian officialdom claims that they allow it because they are not bound by mundane time anyway and if the Thyatians choose to emphasize that they are, it befits them to advertise their weakness. It is now the end of 1010 AC (Note that the world looks like the 1000 AC Mystaran map: rahter than that War of the Immortals, there have been a few years of detente and relative peace). Thyatian succession is murky at the beginning, but becomes very well documented after the abolition of hereditary nobility after one particularly well-liked imperial retainer decided to stop hiding behind a figurehead and declared herself Augusta by grace of the Immortals and right of skill.

The Known Age begins approximately 2000 UC; the only certainity about the time before that is that before then humans and humanoids lived in a relatively small region of the world, and spread out very rapidly after that. Myths say that before the Known Age, the peoples of Mystara lived in prosperity and harmony until a catastrophe struck, but this is generally regarded as the usual "golden age" origin story that takes roots among the peasantry. It is known that a thriving civilization existed in the Broken Lands for some time during the Known Age before disappearing under the wasteland, and this is occasionally conflated with the aforementioned myth by the peasantry.

MAGIC & TECHNOLOGY

Tools and devices that operate by Natural Law and machines that operate by Supernatural Law tend to mess with each other if they are in proximity. Thaumaturgy allows a much broader spectrum of effects than natural philosophy, but they tend to not be permanent, and are difficult to standardise. Mages and clerics both are respected and feared... and relatively rare. There are only a handful of schools of magic outside of Alpathia; monasteries with study halls are more common, and each major religion maintains one or two. Incidentally, Alpathia and some of its satellite states ban the study of divine magic, which is slightly more prevalent than arcane magic -- but still not an everyda occurrence -- in Thyatis and hinterlands. Technology tends to advance more in application than in concept due to more creative minds being driven to thaumaturgy instead; this said, great public works such as bridges and aqueducts exist and are maintained and expanded. Wind and water power have been exploited for millennia and are mature arts; so is metallurgy. Recent mechanical developments in clockwork have allowed somewhat accurate timepieces, semi-automatic springwound crossbows, and time-delayed locks for bank vaults. Alchemy is very tied with the arcane arts proper, with some exceptions -- most tanneries and forges keep on staff alchemists trained to use actual magic as little as possible for cost, reliability and safety reasons, for example. Likewise for herbalism and chemurgy, although practitioners tend to be more closely tied with divine magic. One occasionally sees things like nonmagical aerostats or magma-powered steam turbines, but that sort of thing tends to not be easily reproducible; a real world equivalent would be asking a farmer around 1910 if s/he is aware of the existence of airplanes and if s/he's ever seen one or even a realistic picture of one. Interestingly, most peasants can read and write, if slowly, and things such as the world being round and moving around the sun are common knowledge -- not that many but astronomers or astrologers care. The needs of commerce have forced a common alphabet on the world (the Thyatian one, for similar reasons and with similar reactions to the calendar) although other cultures maintain theirs. An Alphatian Awakened would never dream of using the Earhtbound lettering for anyhing but record keeping, for example.

RACES PRIMER

Orkoids: They exist in tribes built around fungal masses, with a few differences (orks can also reproduce sexually and tend to have smaller patches, hobgoblins hire themselves out as mercs and are surprisingly non-territorial, goblins come in smart and stupid varieties, etc.). The parasite fungus managed to weld well with humans, elves and gnomes giving orks, hobgoblins and goblins respectively. The fungal mass stuff works like in W40K. Snotlings (altered halflings) haven't existed as a race because even when they happen they don't last. Orks are a little bigger than a human on average; Tolkien orks would be classed as feral goblins, think Uruk-hai instead.

Trolls: Everyone thinks they're orkoids but they're technically not, although they have the same origin, but they only reproduce sexually -- the fungus is passed in the womb rather than genetically, and just gives them regeneration. 

Elves: They're shorter than humans, live long (2/300 years), and do NOT have innate magical aptitude necessarily -- but they are culturally disposed to be as efficient as possible life wise, so a lot of them turn to magic because it's a very renewable resource. You do get hippie elves and you do get power hungry elves but it's cultural rather than biological.

Dark Elves: There aren't any! Shadow elves are simply elves who live in the Broken Lands -- it's a culture, not a subspecies. They are pale because they stay out of the sun as much as possible, which makes sense given where they live; this has been going on long enough that albinism is somewhat more common than in other elf cultures, since it's not much of a disadvantage.

Dwarves: They work a lot like in DF -- they're all intrinsically OCD which explains a lot of their weirdness. They actually have a very INefficient metabolism, hence why the alcohol dependency. They do not live that much longer than humans (100 years or so) but tend to be in good physical condition from puberty (which happens about the same time as humans, unlike elves) until their last couple of years of life, during which they age rapidly.

Halflings: More or less like the Tolkien hobbits. They make excellent guerrilleros in their own land, though, so don't mess with them. Great people to hang around and have dinner with, but if they're threatened they basically turn into the Viet Cong. Interestingly, their mythology revolves around the High Heroes, a group of humble "mostly halfling" that rallied other humanoids in the fight against a great evil, succeeding by destroying said evil's source of power. Halflings tend to live slightly longer than humans on average but it's simply because they eat better-quality food and take less risks.

Gnomes: There aren't many: gnomes are thought to be dwarf/halfling interbreeds originally. There are no known gnome cities, although legends claim that their ancestral home is under the oceans. Gnomes live about as long as humans, with a few exceptions.

Humans: Note that due to magic being available the average peasant is a LOT healthier than s/he would be IRL and lives somewhat longer (65 years rather than 45). Also due to that, nobles tend to be seen as superior because they are healthier, stronger, longer lived and so on. This makes republican governments something like the Roman patritiate rather than a western style democracy. Note that despite elves and dwarves claiming seniority as a race, humans are actually the common stock for most of Mystara's intelligent species. Humans make up approximately sixty percent of Mystara's sentients.

Giants: Few and far between; they've gone extinct in a significant part of the world.

Ogres: Actually a type of giant. They're NOT green, incidentally. More successful than their larger cousins due to better fertility and slightly more complex noggins. Half-ogres are occasionally seen, and a surprising number of them are employed by gnomes as bodyguards.

Fae: Think Victorian faeries rather than Tinkerbell. In short they're really pretty and wondrous up until the point when they're fucking scary, which is usually when you realize you can't leave their encampments. They have a natural magic field about them that lets them partially shift their settlements into their own little demiplanes. Their origin myth is interesting -- most believe that they ARE in their afterlife and waiting to be reincarnated in their true homes and bodies.

Dragons: They aren't THAT big naturally -- about the size of an ogre or a particularly large ork. This said, most of them are proficient enough in magic that they just enlarge themselves when they need to. Their mythology claims that they were on Mystara before humans and humanoids, and taught them magic when they arrived. There aren't very many: they do not die of old age (or if they do it's a very slow process) and seldom breed.

Kobolds: They're small lizardfolk, not puppy people. The reason why they're so disposable is that they breed like crazy. They may be the descendent of larger intelligent saurians.

Other sentient species: Other sentient species have come about by magical experimentation during the Known Age, and as such their numbers are low. The best-known examples are centaurs and merfolk. Some make up their own origin myths, but any competent historian of thaumaturgy will point out their birth year with good approximation. 

Interbreeding: Indicentally "Demihuman" as a word is used to talk about centaurs, merfolks and so on -- "humanoid" encompasses most mammalian sentient races (Of course elven and dwarven languages use their own species names with a suffix), although orkoids aren't necessarily included, depending on who is talking. Humans can interbreed with most humanoids, logistics permitting; half-elves and half-orks seem to be the only instances of such a pairing not mostly breeding true to one or the other parent.