Caligran

Caligran is the eastern of the two great continents of Teneris, stretching across the world like a sword firmly stuck in the east. The Great Western Sea and the vortex of the Eye of Aquaron separate it from Canarque in the west; imperial accounts hold that the gods willed this separation.¹

The deserts

Most of Caligran is covered by uninhabitable deserts and barren lands that appeared after The Desolation. These deserts are not the result of natural events; they are said to stand as a testament to the cost of defying The Dark One, and to the reward of still drawing breath.¹

In the First Age, before the catastrophe, the whole continent was filled with life and many civilisations. The Desolation, which began in the deserts of the south and swept across the entire continent, left more than half of Caligran under a vile desert.²³

The Lands of Exile

Humans lived in the north of Caligran long before the Desolation and the Exodus that followed it. The human race of the northern regions in the First Age was perhaps the youngest and most primitive in all of Teneris.⁴

Only after the Desolation were the wise, graceful and ancient races forced to seek refuge in the north, and scholars now call these surviving lands the Lands of Exile.¹

• The Empire stands at their heart, and humans remain the greatest power there.
• Fraza lies north of the Empire beyond the mountain passes, a realm of monsters, relentless winter and hardy folk.
• The Da’fat Federation lies south of the Calinor-dal, the river etched into the land by magic. Every elven people that survived the Desolation lives there, and it struggles constantly to hold back the desert that crawls north.
• The Free Folk govern their own city-states along the coast of the Great Western Sea, a few days' sail from the Farr Islands.
• The east is a land of vast forests, and beyond them lies the barren steppe called the Yellow Sea, where it is said humans born on horseback live and terrifying horned creatures roam.¹

The elven druids raised the Living Wall against the hungry desert, a great effort and sacrifice that saved the future of the whole continent.⁵

Beneath the surface

Beneath Caligran lie the deep tunnels of the dwarves, the labyrinthine cities of the dark elves and many other mysteries. The ancient dwarf fortresses on the mountaintops north-east of the Empire are only the peaks of tunnel systems that spread underground like tree roots, reaching much further below the ground than above it.¹

Life on the continent

Soldiers, mercenaries, nobles, priests, merchants and villagers are not the only inhabitants of Caligran; adventurers also live and die there. The land is full of ancient stories that bring both challenges and opportunities, and although the life is dangerous and uncomfortable, adventuring can be highly lucrative for the skilled and daring, whose seized treasures are highly valued in the market.¹

The wilderness between the cities is rough and dangerous. The Empire works to keep its roads safe, especially the trade routes, and paves as many roads as it can between major cities, but anyone who leaves these limited routes faces grave danger.¹

Nearly all the folk of Caligran have adopted the Clora Fastis, the formal calendar of the Empire.⁶

In history

In the Third Age, when the dark-winged beings called the Heralds gathered their forces, the Chain Wardens of the Order of Chain travelled across the lands of Caligran rallying a massive army, the Grand Alliance, the largest union in the history of Teneris.⁸