Geography

The continent of Ardora is the large, sprawling landmass that player characters in Moonrise call home.

Much of the continent is home to the Myriad Nations, an empire which consists of countless small nations which, whilst they have autonomy and occasionally fight amongst one another, all ultimately answer to the diktat of the Emperor of Iruspin, the Lead Nation. Nobody is certain of the exact number of the Nations, but it is likely in the hundreds.

It is the intention of the writers to define only a limited number of the Myriad Nations. GMs are free to define additional nations, and players may define others as the origin of their characters.

Falgarias, the nation around which the game is based, lies towards the heart of the Ardoran mainland.

To the North, one eventually comes to the lands of Iruspin, the Lead Nation. Continuing North and West eventually brings one to the Zel Theocracy on the North-Western border of the lands of the Myriad Nations. It is said that beyond this lie other peoples, though little is known about them in Falgarias. The lands get colder in this direction, and it is said that by sailing to the North one eventually hits a wall of ice.

To the West, one may find the Great Lakes of Avalis, and heading South and West from here takes one to the more arid Southern edge of the continent, where desert makes travel and settlement all the more difficult.

Directly to the South of Falgarias one may follow the Elmia River which supplies the city with water all the way down to the coast, near which one can find the remains of one of the Ennarian colonies. By sailing South from this coast one can reach the island nation of Rimalta, an independent country not part of the Myriad Nations, where the Ornadi are more common than Humans and with whom the Myriad Nations have traded in the past.

To the East lie more of the Myriad Nations, the far coast being home to the proud but isolated nation of Sakesta, inhabited mostly by Rakfel. It is said that beyond this coast one can sail to another land which is not part of the Myriad Nations, though more details are again few and far between back in Falgarias.

In general, the further away from the Lead Nation one gets the larger the lands of the nations get, on average. This is a consequence of smaller nations in these regions generally having been absorbed and conquered by their neighbours before they could get message to the Lead Nation to petition for aid. All across the continent one can find ruins of settlements and nations that were lost in this manner, including a fair few more recent ruins of Micro-Nations generally with just a single small city which formed within the last couple of decades in response to Ennarian technology providing those who could afford it with a ready lifeline to the Lead Nation to calm any potential invasion in a timely manner, allowing them to more easily settle between other nations. In almost all cases it has taken mere months since the Moonrise Event with that lifeline being removed for those nations to reclaim the land at their borders.

Other peoples exist on the continent, for example to the North beyond the lands of the Zel Theocracy there supposedly live other nations not part of the Myriad Nations, and similarly the islands to the South are home to the country of Rimalta.

Beyond Ardora lie other lands and continents, though little is know of who or what may be found there. Whilst it was functioning Ennarian technology depicted the world as a sphere, more than half of which is ocean. On the other side of the world is the continent of Soldera, home of the Ennarian Empire.