The World of Nor'Ova is a symbol of El Anon's enduring grace - a world that should have died long ago, yet thrives with life, beauty, and mystery.
St. Ardatha
The world of Nor'Ova is a vast and ancient place. Slightly larger than Earth - roughly 10% so - it is a world of great oceans, massive continents, towering mountain ranges, and seemingly endless plains. It is home to many races and peoples, and it is, without question, a world of magic.
What sets Nor'Ova apart from other worlds is not merely its size or its magic, but its history. This is a world that has survived things it should not have survived. Catastrophes that reshaped continents. Gods that shattered themselves. An age of darkness that nearly consumed everything. A world spanning Great Magic War that left all to ruin. And yet Nor'Ova endures - battered, scarred, and still very much alive.
The Heavens
Nor'Ova orbits two suns rather than one. One sun is a typical sun very similar to the one Earth revolves around. The second is a much smaller dwarf star, it's light seen by Nor'Ovans as a pale blue. The dwarf star, known as the Morning Star, rises an hour before the Sun and sets an hour before the Sun. The presence of a second sun means that true darkness is rare in most parts of the world, and that winter is shorter and less severe than it would otherwise be - though distance from the equator and local geography still play their roles. A Nor'Ovan day lasts 30 hours, longer than an Earth day, giving its people more waking hours under those twin lights.
The world's large moon is notable for its precise and regular orbit. So reliable is its cycle that the cultures of Nor'Ova built their entire calendar around it. Every month begins on the new moon and lasts exactly 40 days, with no variation. The Chacepheran calendar in widespread use today is a direct result of this astronomical dependability.
The World
Nor'Ova is home to several continents, each with their own peoples, climates, and histories. The most documented and most commonly played-in continent is Chalcephera was once regarded as the cradle of civilization. It is a land of great nations, ancient mountains, and contested plains. It is here that most campaigns in Legends of Nor'Ova take place, though nothing prevents your GM from setting adventures anywhere on the world map.
Beyond Chalcephera lies Vega to the south. Vega double the size of Chalcephera but half as populated, connected to it by the Miden Isthmus.
On the other side of the world lies the massive continent of Talusia. It is said that the birth place of dragons lies somewhere in Talusia, as well as things that should not exist buried deep within ancient ruins. Talusia is a massively wide continent, more than double the width of Chalcephera, with almost half of Talusia covered in permanent polar ice.
The Caperian sub-continent (Capere) is connected to Talusia's southern edges, blocked off by the massive Caperian Mountains. Capere is largely on the equator and starved of life giving rain, covering almost all of the subcontinent with the massive Pyre desert.
The continent of Aleutia lies south of Talusia and south-west of Capere. More than half of Aleutia is flooded, with an unknown amount rumored to be lost to the Andron Ocean. What remains above the waters is covered in dense jungles and dotted with ancient ruins.
Between Talusia and Chalcephera, in the northern O'Lennon Ocean is a chain of densly forested islands known as the Eleusian Isles. They are the home of the elven kingdom, Eleusia - though not much is known of them to outsiders as the elves of Eleusa are extremely xenophobic and isolationists.
Magic
Magic is not a rare or mysterious phenomenon on Nor'Ova. It is woven into the fabric of the world itself. Every living being carries a runic soul, a fragment of divine energy that flows from Zodo, the splintered god whose breaking made the world's magic possible. This means that every character in Legends of Nor'Ova has an innate connection to the runic elements, however dormant that connection may be at the start of their story.
The presence of magic shapes everything on Nor'Ova - its politics, its religions, its economies, and its conflicts. Runic crafters, magic wielders, and elemental phenomena are facts of daily life rather than wonders. What varies is how different cultures and nations relate to that fact.
A Note on Lore
The lore of Nor'Ova is vast and not entirely documented. This is by design. Much of what is known about the world's history exists in fragments: scholarly accounts of dubious reliability, in-world journals, religious texts, and the oral traditions of its many peoples. Where the record is clear, it is presented as such. Where it is uncertain or contested, that too is noted. Part of what makes Nor'Ova a compelling setting is that not everything is known, and what is known is not always agreed upon.
Here you will find information about the places of Nor'Ova - its continents, its nations, its peoples, and the cultures and languages that give each corner of the world its own character.