The World of Greyhawk

The world of Greyhawk encompasses the Flanaess, the easternmost portion of the vast continent of Oerik, on the sphere of Oerth. Scholars from the Flanaess are certain that Oerik is the greatest of Oerth's four continents, and that four great oceans surround these lands, as do four layers of the heavens and four depths of the underworld. Yet, even in this benighted age, almost nothing is known of the lands beyond the Flanaess, and little is understood of the regions above and below. Such knowledge is of small importance, claim the high and the mighty, for clearly the lands around Greyhawk form the center of all enlightenment and civilization. Some folks question this assumption, and they yearn to explore their world and its challenges.


                                                                                                                  (Map used from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer without Permission)

Oerth is but one world among many, separated either by the gulfs of space, the invisible ether, or the fragile veils of reality. The craft and persistence of magic defines the nature of Oerth. Throughout recorded history, magical conflict and restoration have shaped this world. Some of these magic-driven events touch upon the history of other worlds, and portals sometimes open between Oerth and alien spheres. Few other worlds boast the magical profundity of Oerth, and many strange beings are found there, drawn by the lure of the supernatural. The majority of such entities make their homes far from the sunlit skies of Oerth's surface, preferring to live secretly in lightless caverns below, where they may thrive and plot unseen.

If the paths of the underworld are hidden from view, the wise may still turn their attention to the heavens. All know that the sun travels once around Oerth every 364 days, visiting the Twelve Lairs of the Zodiac in an appointed round that never varies. The pale Great Moon, called Luna, waxes and wanes in fixed cycles of 28 days each, upon which the months are based. The aquamarine Lesser Moon, Celene, follows a path that reveals her full beauty but four times each year, thus showing the time for civilized festivals. Both Mistress and Handmaiden, as the greater and lesser moons of Oerth are also known, are held to be worlds in their own right, though few claim to have met any visitors from those lofty realms (or, for that matter, to have visited those alien worlds personally).
                                                                                                              (Excerpted from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer without permission)

Before Time Lecture

In the beginning, before Chaos, before Order, before Good, before Evil, before even Time itself, there was was only Infinity.

This was the period in which the Great Old Ones strode across the Cosmos as you or I might stride across a meadow. There is no length to this period (hence it is not even called an Age) since as I said, there was no Time. Everything existed simultaneously perhaps, concurrently if you will.

Something changed. My research has not revealed what. But something happened. Time and Order and Chaos and Good and Evil and so much more suddenly existed.

The beings that came into existence at this moment of Change are known to modern scholars as the elder gods. These were fell beings of Power and Might, like Tharizdun, Mok'slyk the Serpent, the Lady of Pain, Asmodeus, Jazirian and countless others whose names have been lost for millenia. Some of these elder gods exercised their wills and created servitor races. These servitor races are what the most learned of scholars call the creator races. Most historians agree that the creator races were the sarrukhan (also known as the sarrukh; known as sauroids, the creators of the serpentfolk and scalykind), the batrachii (also known as the batrach or aboleth, known as amphibioids, the creators of the bullywugs, doppelgangers, kopru, kuo-toa, locothah, sivs, tako, and other shapeshifting, amphibious, or piscine races), the aearee (known as avians, the creators of the aaracokra, kenku, and other birdlike humanoids), the fey beings known as the veyhru (also known as sylvans, the creators of korreds, sprites, pixies and elves).

A few of the servitor races that still survive in some lesser form today or are at least known from fragments of legends include the various forms of dragonkind, the illithids, the beholders, the vhassa (known also as the elder giants), and the xrill (which some scholars believe to be the progenitors of devils, demons and certain celestial races).

These creator races existed before the known Gods. Indeed in their original forms were the equal in power in many ways of those divine entities worshipped across the multiverse that we call gods. But unlike the Great Old Ones, the elder gods were subject (at least in some minor way) to Time itself and all of their servitors as well. Time changes everything and even though it took millions of years, a length not even the greatest minds of the present Age can truly comprehend, all but a few of the elder gods passed away. As their creators vanished, many of the creator races did also, or if they did not, they began to devolve, losing much of their power as their link to their divine patron and creator faded and then vanished.

At this point, perhaps even as some scholars whom I shall not name have proposed, the gods as we know them today came to be. And of course, like their predecessors, they too exercised divine power and created beings to worship and empower them: dwarves, halflings, and of course, man.

---taken from the notes of Professor Kamerun Olivaandre
   for a paper he was preparing for presentation at the Royal University

   found some weeks after his disappearance in CY 597