Mystara

• 1. Introduction

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  Mystara is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Unlike other D&D settings, it gave players ascended immortal beings in place of the usual gods. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, it served as the default backdrop for the Basic version of D&D. Most adventures for that edition unfolded on a central continent called the Known World. It mixed human and non-human realms, and its human nations were modeled on real historical cultures. The setting began as two designers' private game world in the mid-1970s. It eventually spread into gazetteers, novels, arcade games, and even a habitable world hidden inside the planet itself. How did a shared campaign built for one gaming table become official Dungeons & Dragons canon? And what happened to it once the company that owned it moved on?

• 2. Two Designers' World

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  Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay built the earliest version of this world for their own game sessions between 1974 and 1976. Their setting was a single large continent of fictionalized nations, each modeled on a real historical culture. Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's practice of building a shared fictional universe, the two men named their creation the Known World. They wanted other players to be able to add to it. Schick later joined TSR Hobbies as a game designer. He rose to director of the Design Department and brought Moldvay in as a designer, around the time the D&D Expert Set was under development. TSR told them they could not use the existing Greyhawk setting, since it was reserved for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Schick and Moldvay got approval to use the Known World as the standard D&D setting instead.

  The Known World first appeared in print in Module X1, The Isle of Dread. It later expanded through a series of Gazetteers, many of which still called it the D&D Game World. The name Mystara did not appear until 1991. Bruce Heard used it in the letters section of his Voyage of the Princess Ark series in Dragon magazine. The setting did not carry an official Mystara logo until its conversion to AD&D 2nd Edition in 1994. Each Gazetteer covered one nation through three parts: cultural and geographic background, notable features, and adventure scenarios. Writing in the British magazine Arcane, Trenton Webb summed up the result as "a traditional Tolkienesque world."

• 3. The Planet Itself

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  Three continents dominate Mystara's outer surface: Brun, Skothar, and Davania, joined by the island continent of Alphatia. Alphatia remained on the map only until the in-game year AC 1010. Officially published adventures barely touched two of those landmasses, concentrating instead on the eastern portion of Brun and the nearby Sea of Dawn. Mystara's mapmakers modeled these continents on Laurasia and Gondwana, the landmasses that covered Earth roughly 135 million years ago. Beyond humans, the setting populated its lands with elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, and dragons, the standard cast of fantasy races. Official material named a handful of core nations for this world, including the Thyatian Empire and the chaotic Alphatian Empire.

• 4. Nations Of The Known World

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  The Known World's nations span a wide range of government types, and some countries are populated entirely by demihumans or humanoids. By convention, the region's borders match the original world map published in module X1, The Isle of Dread. That boundary also includes Norwold, the Isle of Dawn, and, before the Wrath of the Immortals storyline, Alphatia.

  The Thyatian Empire invites comparison to the Byzantine Empire. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos holds the town of Threshold, the default setting for many classic D&D adventures. The Principalities of Glantri are ruled by wizard-princes, and the Ethengar Khanate carries a Mongol-like character. The merchant-run Republic of Darokin was modeled loosely on Italy's medieval trading states. The Emirates of Ylaruam sits alongside the Heldannic Territories. The Heldannic Territories are ruled by an order of religious knights, akin to the Teutonic Order, devoted to the Immortal Vanya. The Atruaghin Clans carry an Amerindian feel, and the nation of Sind draws on the Mughal Empire. The Northern Reaches Kingdoms of Ostland, Vestland, and the Soderfjord Jarldoms draw on Scandinavia at different points in its history. Rockhome belongs to the dwarves, Alfheim to the elves, and the Five Shires to the halflings. The Alphatian Empire closes out the list, ruled by wizards and other spellcasters.

  Far to the northwest, across the Great Waste, lies the land of Hule, ruled by Hosadus, known as the Master. On the Known World's other edges sit the Kingdoms of Wendar and Denagoth, an elven-dominated realm facing a dark, mountainous land bent on its destruction. The Adri Varma separates Sind, Wendar, and the Great Waste from the Black Mountains, marking Glantri's northern edge.

• 5. The Savage Coast

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  The Savage Coast sits in the south-central part of Brun, to the south and west of Hule. It is a frontier coastline roughly 2000 miles long, lying about 2000 miles from the Known World. A sinister enchantment called the Red Curse hangs over this region. It kills inhabitants through mutation unless they wear a fictional metal called cinnabryl against their skin. The curse's specifics include bodily mutilation and a severe breakdown of physical and mental health. It also traps its victims, since leaving the cursed area brings on debilitating effects.

  Gunpowder weapons, called smokepowder locally, mark the Savage Coast as closer to the Age of Discovery than to the Known World's medieval-renaissance tone. That swashbuckling flavor sets the region apart despite the danger still hanging over it.

  The area first reached print in 1985 through module X9, The Savage Coast, for the D&D Expert Set. Dungeon magazine expanded the region in 1987, across issues 6 and 7, with an adventure called Tortles of the Purple Sage. Two Dragon magazine series, The Princess Ark and the Known World Grimoire, filled in further detail. Parts of them were reprinted in the 1993 accessory Champions of Mystara. In 1994, the Savage Coast spun off into its own Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition campaign, boxed as Red Steel and later republished online. An expansion called Savage Baronies followed in 1995. In 1996, TSR revised the setting again for the AD&D Odyssey line. It released three free online products. These included the Savage Coast Campaign Book by Tim Beach and Bruce Heard, a supplement called Savage Coast: Orc's Head, and a Monstrous Compendium Appendix. Two other continents, Davania and Skothar, received far less attention, sketched out mainly by Bruce Heard in Dragon magazine and later expanded by fans.

• 6. Hollow World And Moons

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  Beneath Mystara's outer crust lies an entire second world: a habitable interior called the Hollow World. The idea was inspired by conceptions like the one Jules Verne once novelized. An eternal red sun burns at the planet's center, lighting the Hollow World and serving it as a living cultural museum. That museum preserves societies that vanished from the outer world, drawing on Native American, Aztec, Viking, and ancient Roman cultures. Most people living on the outer world have no idea the Hollow World even exists. The only way between the two is through the poles, holes so subtly curved that travelers barely notice crossing from one world to the other. The crossing itself is a long, hard trek through a cold, unlit, stormy, anti-magic zone. Most travelers are shocked to realize the transition has already happened.

  Two moons circle Mystara. Matera behaves much like Earth's own moon, its phases governing lycanthropy in creatures such as werewolves and werebears. Only the setting's Immortals live there, gathered in a city called Pandius where they can watch over Mystara. The second moon, Patera, is invisible from Mystara's surface and known to its inhabitants as Myoshima, a place with a culture much like medieval Japan.

  Mystara hid more than an inner world; it also buried an entire vanished civilization somewhere in its own deep past.

• 7. Blackmoor's Shadow

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  Both Mystara and the older Greyhawk setting tucked Blackmoor into their own distant past, folding an older campaign into new continuity. Within that timeline, Blackmoor grew from a simple feudal kingdom into a highly advanced civilization, wielding technology that grew steadily more powerful and more destructive. That technology eventually turned on its makers: an apocalyptic explosion ended Blackmoor and changed the climate and geography of the entire planet.

  Not every part of Mystara's story stayed confined to sourcebooks and maps. It also spread into arcade cabinets, paperback shelves, and the fan communities that outlived the line itself.

• 8. Beyond The Tabletop

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  By the mid-1990s, players' attention was drifting toward the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and its own official campaigns. TSR still published some Mystara adventures for AD&D between 1994 and 1996. Official support passed to an Official Fan Site system, and the Vaults of Pandius fansite was chosen to steward the planned third edition of Mystara. Wizards of the Coast discontinued its support by the time that third edition finally reached players in 2000.

  Five video games carried the Mystara name, spread across three different genres. Dungeons & Dragons: Order of the Griffon reached the TurboGrafx-16 in 1992. That same year, Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun arrived on the Sega Genesis. Both were role-playing games. Fantasy Empires, released for PC in 1993, took the strategy genre, and its plot and development team had no connection to the other two games. Two arcade beat 'em ups followed: Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom in 1993 and its sequel, Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, in 1996. Both carried only minimal role-playing elements, and both were developed by Capcom, a Japanese company, making them rare among D&D video games.

  Timothy Brown's Dark Knight of Karameikos, published in October 1995, was one of several standalone Mystara novels. Morris Simon followed in August 1996 with The Black Vessel. A three-book series called First Quest gathered separate novels by J. Robert King, Dixie Lee McKeone, and Elaine Cunningham. Thorarinn Gunnarsson wrote a trilogy called the Dragonlord Chronicles between 1994 and 1996. D. J. Heinrich had written an earlier trilogy, the Penhaligon Trilogy, from 1992 to 1993.

  The 1993 accessory Champions of Mystara went further still. It laid out how adventurers could cross into the Spelljammer setting and travel on to other AD&D worlds entirely.