Tal'Dorei


 * For the kingdom, and later republic, see Republic of Tal'Dorei.

Tal'Dorei is the name used by humans to refer to the entire continent on Exandria in which the Republic of Tal'Dorei rests, though this is purely a human conflation. The Elvish name for the continent is Gwessar, meaning "Fields of Joy".

Before and During The Founding
Before the gods arrived in the world, a Primordial titan seed was planted in the area that, under its influence, would later become the Rifenmist Jungle.

During the war between the Prime Deities and the Betrayer Gods, the Prime Deities imprisoned Tharizdun beneath Gatshadow Mountain.

Soon afterward, after the founding of Vasselheim, the mortal races ventured out to discover new lands. A noble race called the Kuul'tevir, created in the image of the first dragons and led by a "god-empress," built cities on par with those of the elves, and the seat of their empire that dominated the southern part of Gwessar was Vos'sykriss.

Separately, arriving through a portal from the Far Realm, aboleths and other aberrations conquered the Underdark beneath the Bladeshimmer Coast and drove their slaves to build their capital: Salar, the Unseeable City. They slowly began expanding toward the surface, and their psychic energies gradually produced the azuremite of the Crystalfen Caverns. The underground city of Yug'Voril was established during this era.

Age of Arcanum
After the Founding gave way to the Age of Arcanum, some among the mortal races continued migrating to the continent that would later be called Tal'Dorei; some rock gnomes traveled over in this era. The first tieflings, having been created in Issylra during the Age of Arcanum, fled from religious zealots and sailed to the continent.

Acek Orattim, priest of Tharizdun, made his base in Gatshadow Mountain, under which Tharizdun had been imprisoned. Through Acek, Tharizdun's power twisted and elevated the mountain, riddled it with a maze of tunnels, and corrupted the surrounding region.

During the Age of Arcanum, the Kuul'tevir debased themselves with eons of violent, selfish pursuits. The serpentfolk empire's seers had visions of the the Calamity's vast destruction, and the serpents sought a way to survive it; they built a magical field of perfect stasis beneath Vos'sykriss and chose their most powerful to slumber until the danger had passed, then emerge and rebuild their empire.

Possibly contemporary with the Kuul'tevir—and in apparently overlapping territory, in the Rifenmist Jungle—was an ancient civilization called Qoniira. Their culture rose and fell years before the Calamity (or when the Calamity hit) and was ancient even to other ancient civilizations of Exandria.

Possibly Before or After the Calamity Began
During one celestial solstice about 900 or 1000 years before the Campaign of Vox Machina—possibly before or after the Calamity began—huge elemental rifts burst open across Exandria, causing terrible earthquakes, fires, and a flood of elemental monsters against which the peoples of the world struggled to defend. Though they eventually beat back the elementals, they were terrified of what would happen on the next solstice. The druidic Ashari, until then a single nomadic society on Gwessar, made a covenant to split into four tribes to seal the rifts and watch over the major remaining portals, where they settled. Two of these rifts were on the continent: the Air Ashari settled at Zephrah, and the Earth Ashari settled at Terrah.

The Calamity
One of the first casualties of the Calamity was Lolth. Her suddenly leaderless drow followers fled from the surface world to rebuild their empire underground; in Gwessar they found themselves surrounded by aberrations, the eventual seat of their power would be Ruhn-Shak, and their leaders began hearing the whispers of Tharizdun.

During the Calamity, the cities of the Kuul'tevir were reduced to rubble, and those who perished in Vos'sykriss began to haunt the city as ghosts. The dwarven kingdom of Uthtor was likewise destroyed. A wandering colony of elves fleeing the Calamity formed the beginning of what would become the Orroyen tribes of the Rifenmist Peninsula.

In the northeastern reaches of the continent, Ioun baited Tharizdun to her central temple, resulting in her near-destruction. Pelor's subsequent vengeful battle with Tharizdun was so violent, it created the valley where the Parchwood Timberlands stand and raised the Alabaster Sierras. Badly defeated and wounded, Tharizdun retreated to Acek Orattim's realm, but Pelor chased and banished Tharizdun there, beneath Gatshadow.

Whether it was in that battle or another, the land bridge connecting Gwessar and Wildemount was shattered, creating the Shearing Channel.

In the far south of Gwessar, in one of the final battles of the Calamity, Bane and his goblinkin armies waged the last of their many battles with Melora and her Free Children. After a tremendous battle that permanently reduced the area to sterile ash, Bane was defeated and banished, the gigantic suit of pitted iron armor he wore fell to the ground, and the surviving goblinkin were scattered. This area would become known as the Beynsfal Plateaus.

The final battle of the Calamity, in far-off Wildemount, sent shockwaves through Exandria and unintentionally collapsed much of the underground cavern network of Tal'Dorei, bringing about the fall of the aboleth civilization there.

Post-Divergence
In the immediate aftermath of the Calamity, halflings began farming in the Dividing Plains and the foothills of the Cliffkeep Mountains, and within that mountain range Kraghammer was soon founded by the survivors of Uthtor and led by Clan Jaggenstrike.

Ley energies shifted by the Calamity, and energies left over from the Calamity, caused the accelerated growth and magical flux that gave birth to the Verdant Expanse in an area untouched by the Betrayer Gods. Within a generation, wood elves returned from the Feywild united under the sorceress Yenlara, their first leader after the Divergence, and founded the city of Syngorn in the Verdant Expanse.

Several centuries after the founding of Kraghammer, humans sailed from Issylra to the western coast of the continent; their first settlement was the port city of O'noa. They spread until they controlled all the western shores, and founded the city of Emon.

During these centuries of human expansion, hill giants wrecked the gnomish city of Wittebak; Kraghammer welcomed the refugees.

Scattered War
Not quite 500 years after the Divergence, Warren Drassig rose to power in Emon, established the Kingdom of Drassig, severed diplomatic ties with Syngorn, and made new alliances with Kraghammer. Yenlara's grandson, Syngorn's diplomat to Emon, tried to resolve things diplomatically, but was tortured and killed, kicking off the 32-year Scattered War. The elves of Syngorn established the hidden Emerald Outpost to keep watch on the growing Kingdom of Drassig. Within the next nine years, the port city of O'noa was devastated in one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

When Warren Drassig was ambushed and killed at the village of Torthil, his son Neminar succeeded him and made a pact with Bane to fuel his war effort. A human rebel named Zan Tal'Dorei later drew Neminar into the Verdant Expanse and killed him there, at which point Neminar's brother Trist Drassig took command of the kingdom.

Zan scored a series of victories against Trist, forcing his forces into a valley at the base of the Cliffkeep Mountains, but as Trist had made yet another pact—this one with the Demon Prince Graz'zt who had once made the nearby Grey Valley a bastion of his influence—a flood of fiends poured into the battlefield. Against all odds, Zan Tal'Dorei's forces prevailed, ending the Drassig bloodline, the infernal pact the Drassigs had made, and the Scattered War. The blood of the demons thereafter blackened the grass and flowers that grow there, and the area became known as the Umbra Hills. The leaders of the Verdant Expanse convened a council, crowned Zan Tal'Dorei as Sovereign in a power-sharing arrangement, and named the realm Tal'Dorei in her honor.

Icelost Years
Less than two years into Zan's reign, Errevon the Rimelord, taking advantage of another celestial solstice, opened a rift from the Frostfell, the elemental plane of ice, to what will later be called the Frostweald. With an army of frost giants and sentient blizzards, Errevon conquered most of the continent in a few years.

The Council of Tal'Dorei convinced Syngorn and Kraghammer to join in an alliance against Errevon, and together their forces battled Errevon back through the rift, which the Ashari druids sealed shut. The victory was later celebrated annually as the Winter's Crest festival.

Peacetime in Northern Tal'Dorei
Before 612 PD, a gold rush in the Ironseat Ridge made Kymal into a boom town.

Not long afterward, Whitestone was founded by an expedition led by the de Rolo family from Wildemount.

Within a century, Kymal's gold deposits began to run dry, and the mining industry died within a decade.

Rise of the Iron Authority
In 722 PD, the Iron Authority conquered the Beynsfal Plateau (presumably, of the Beynsfal Plateaus, this is the precise one where Bane fell). Within a decade, the Iron Authority united all the hobgoblin kingdoms of Tal'Dorei under Tz'Jarr, the Iron Emperor.

Roots of the Chroma Conclave and Vox Machina
Around 761 PD, the ancient green dragon Raishan destroyed a temple of Melora and was cursed with an ever-worsening sickness. Around three decades later, Raishan and the ancient red dragon Thordak the Cinder King met and formed an alliance. Around this time, at the southern edges of the Council of Tal'Dorei's influence, Thordak began to raid caravans and autonomous villages, which sent requests to Emon for aid and protection. Sovereign Odellan Tal'Dorei rejected the idea of sending a regiment as too costly without confirmation of the threat. Over the next two years, Thordak proceeded to burn the fields of the Mornset Countryside and enslave the Outerfolk of the region.

By 794 or 795 PD, Thordak laid waste to everything around the Gladepools, including Port Udall and Byroden. Thordak thrashed Emon's forces from Fort Daxio. Allura Vysoren's adventuring party, with the help of the Arcana Pansophical, eventually managed to seal Thordak in the Elemental Plane of Fire. In the years that followed, Raishan contacted Thordak across the planes, and plotted to return him to Exandria.

In 802 PD, the Shadewatch was formed in Jorenn Village in response to the demonic corruption that still stalked the nearby lands, centuries after the Battle of the Umbra Hills.

Around 805 PD, the Briarwoods slaughtered the de Rolo family and seized control of Whitestone. Percival de Rolo escaped Whitestone with the help of his sister Cassandra, who was assumed dead after being shot with arrows during her escape attempt.

The Campaign of Vox Machina and Contemporary Events
An adventuring party that would later call itself Vox Machina met in 809 PD in the small port city of Stilben. They played a major part in resolving a series of crises affecting northern Tal'Dorei over the next three years:
 * Defeated a white dragon who had flash-frozen much of Westruun during a Winter's Crest festival
 * Removed a disguised member of the Chroma Conclave, the blue dragon Brimscythe, from the military leadership of Emon
 * Freed the family of Sovereign Uriel Tal'Dorei III from demonic possession
 * Killed K'Varn, a beholder empowered by one of the Horns of Orcus, thereby freeing the duergar of the Emberhold and the mind flayers of Yug'Voril from his influence and stopping their combined incursions on Kraghammer
 * Liberated Whitestone from the Briarwoods and their allies, restoring the de Rolo family to power
 * Liberated Westruun from domination by the ancient black dragon Umbrasyl and the Herd of Storms
 * Liberated Emon from domination by Thordak

In the meantime, in 810 PD, a half-orc professor of archaeology and spirit-speaker named Jorlund Vohr led an expedition to Visa Isle, where Vos'sykriss once stood, and unwittingly ended the spell that kept the ancient serpentfolk in stasis.

The Fire Ashari sent firetamers and other druids to help heal the land corrupted by Thordak, and though their project was never expected to be complete, they mostly got the elemental bleeding under control in the next three decades.

Exandria Unlimited
In late 842 PD, a new crisis developed around the parts of the Emon area that had never fully healed from Thordak's elemental corruption. A powerful being of elemental fire overwhelmed several firetamers, a rune tracing back to the Qoniira caused the sudden appearance of an ashen mesa in the Scar of the Cinder King, and an adventuring party was sent to the ruins of Qoniira to help discover a solution.

Notable Locations

 * Byroden: The birthplace of Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia and hometown of Opal.
 * The Emberhold: A duergar stronghold within the Underdark.
 * Fort Daxio: Key Republic of Tal'Dorei military stronghold located on the western side of the Cliffkeep Mountains, north of Emon and west of Kraghammer.
 * Jovatthon: An invisible flying city-state of cloud giants and the site of the Council of Seven Scepters.
 * Jotunborg: A fortress city of the frost giants, located somewhere in the Neverfields.
 * Qoniira: An ancient, magic-honoring civilization left in ruins, connected to a crisis in Emon in 842 PD.
 * Skyanchor Citadel: The greatest fortress of the stone giants, hidden somewhere deep in the Alabaster Sierras.
 * Salar: Capital of an aboleth empire crushed at the end of the Calamity, but whose survivors have gradually rebuilt in the centuries that followed.
 * Stilben: Small port city on the Lucidian Coast where Vox Machina met.
 * Tz'Arrm: Capital of the Iron Authority, a hobgoblin realm on the southernmost tip of the continent.
 * Vos'sykriss: Capital of an ancient serpentfolk empire, left in ruins by the Calamity but re-emerging starting in 810 PD.
 * Vulkanon: A fire giant city-state and the heart of their civilization. It is located in the magma tunnels below the Cliffkeep Mountains
 * Yug'Voril: An illithid city in the Underdark and the home of Clarota.

Emon

 * &rarr; Main article: Emon.

Capital of the Republic of Tal'Dorei; home of Vox Machina, Shaun Gilmore, and Allura Vysoren; site of Greyskull Keep (former home of Vox Machina) and the original Gilmore's Glorious Goods.

Kymal

 * &rarr; Main article: Kymal.

Hometown of Kaylie; accommodated some refugees from the Chroma Conclave's assault on Westruun.

Westruun

 * &rarr; Main article: Westruun.

Site of the Cobalt Reserve, a collection of some of the oldest known records of civilization; home to the under-development second Gilmore's Glorious Goods shop (before the Chroma Conclave attacked).

Whitestone

 * &rarr; Main article: Whitestone.

Sovereign city-state far to the northeast; home of the de Rolo family; usurped by the Briarwoods and subsequently freed by Vox Machina. Currently their base of operations.

Kraghammer

 * &rarr; Main article: Kraghammer.

Underground dwarven citadel; primary source of mithral; home of arcanists of House Thunderbrand.

Syngorn

 * &rarr; Main article: Syngorn.

Elf city; home of Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia's father and half-sister; defensively faded into the Feywild after the Chroma Conclave attacked Tal'Dorei.

Lyrengorn

 * &rarr; Main article: Lyrengorn.

Independent and neutral city-state of wild/wood elves in the far north. It is located on the southern edge of the Neverfields, the icy wastelands on the northernmost edges of the continent.

Terrah

 * &rarr; Main article: Terrah.

The home of the Earth Ashari, located in a bowl-like valley in the center of the Cliffkeep Mountains north of Kraghammer.

Zephrah

 * &rarr; Main article: Zephrah.

The home of the Air Ashari at the portal between the Elemental Plane of Air and Exandria in the Material Plane. Zephrah is located at the very top of the Summit Peaks mountain range that falls away to a cliff on either side.