Welcome to the World of Coprona and the Valley of Caspak.

This is a homebrew setting using the DND 3.5e rules. It will be a tale of mystery, adventure, and magic.

The Common Mans Oral History of Caspak

The gentle melodic strumming of the Harper’s guitar was enough to hush the gaggle of little lowland tribe children in the courtyard. The kids knew that they would be given twice the lines to do before they were allowed to go if they did not hush immediately.  The Holders children and fosterlings sat in the front rows. This Midhold was rather progressive and so allowed even the children of the Drudges to sit in on the classes though they were seated with space between them and the higher class kids.
The Harper's voice was well trained and carried over the whole audience equally so as to make the seating arrangement matter little to the learning, “Today children we will go over the history of the Valley.”  A small flock of groans lifted into the air and fluttered away. The Harper just smiled and began to pick the notes of the teaching ballads…

-- The teaching ballads say that Caspak Valley was once part of a much larger empire on the world of Coprona. The name of the ancients is one of the lost facts. One among many many lost things because the Ancients were supposed to be able to wield fantastic technology and magic.  Able to shape the world almost like Ec-Socco himself.. and it was also told that this was the blasphemy that drew the sleepy attention of Ec-Com the Plane of Chaos. It hardly tolerated the God Ec-Socco as its opposite aspect… it would not tolerate mankind being like him.
So the tales say that Ec-Com began whispering in the ears of Ec-Socco’s descendant gods and goddesses. Causing them to fracture and infight… sewing chaos into a near perfect system.  It caused insanity in Chas who let loose death upon the land unchained to cut swaths through the Ancients. They fought back with their mighty magics but the onslaught of death was followed quickly by armies of monsters whipped up by Chas and the disasters sent by Met-Ter who had also succumbed to the whispering wellspring of Ec-Com.  The other gods saw their fellows go crazy and quickly stuffed wax in their ears. Some tried to help Man and others just hid from angry Ec-com and their insane siblings.  Pov managed get through to Chas after a few days… days that would be known as the Week of Tears. Chas had often been his lover and it was as a lover that he managed to draw her back to sanity and drive Ec-com almost completely from her mind.
Chas also became pregnant during that mating with Pov and knowing this poured as much of her power as she could into the child known by man as Quara. Pov too gave of his strength to the young goddess and set her to the task of saving mankind while He, Chas and Met-Ter became locked in an eternal struggle.  He would keep the other two gods from setting anything worse upon the world but Quara would have to protect man from all that had already been let loose.
Quara born pregnant with her parents power went immediately to the survivors hiding in the previously uninhabited valley. In a compact with their mages mediated by her Aunt Sauth, who held herself neutral and claimed to care only for making sure none of the insanity seeded by Ec-Com left or visited Coprona again. This compact required that the mages of man give up most of their power to Quara who would raise the barrier, through the Obelisks upon the mountain tops which were gifts from Sauth, and hold back the rest of the world to shelter man until they were able to go forth again safely.  Her children would be shadows of the original gods but they would serve the people of the valley and help keep them for that long awaited day.
And that ended the Week of Tears. Ninety Seven percent of humanity had been killed in only 7 days… all that remained was a small battered contingent of men and women in Caspak valley under the shield of Quara’s body. And so man slept the 8th day while the new minor gods spread out and took control of all the things of the Valley.

Years later man had rebuilt a city in the middle of the valley but man still remembered what they had lost and wanted desperately to take the fight out of the barrier and reclaim their land from the ravages of insane Met-ter and insane Chas.  To drive back the jungles, the monsters and the beasts; to still the air and cleanse the rains, rivers and soils again… and most of all to reclaim their magic. Magic whose lack ate at the former mages souls and made them ache in their bones. They aged now, they had to labor with their hands again…. they were reduced and pride addled their minds.  Fighting broke out in the city. So many people packed too close together out of fear of the world…. the first civil war was a savage affair and once again humanity was decimated and its works reduced to rubble but this time it was their own doing and they knew it.
The winners, if they can be called that, were devote men and listened finally to the insistent words of Plov-tine the shadow of the great god. He laid out the proscriptions and new laws to prevent conflict. He named the remaining human leaders to be Lord Holders or Craftmasters and set them the task of settling the land far and wide, of building their crafts within the proscriptions.  The people began to recover but still the old mages who yet lived craved their power back and were driven mad by that need… so unable to stir up another civil war they tried instead to take power through a Coup. The gods were ready for this however and the city was evacuated and the mages cornered. The Gods pled with Elder Sauth in the sky to help them… they could not eradicate the mages but she could and they convinced the Sky Goddess to send down a firestone upon the Mages. This was the Purging which is also called the 2nd civil war though it was but one short battle. It was however the last time man tried to build and fill a city that size. The people were divided but not hostile. Some felt they should move into the mountains and the stone protection, Some felt the Lowlands were the best place to make a home and others were drawn to the sweet sea and rivers.  The Tribes were formed as the people abandoned the ruins of Caspak City and moved into the lands. The Lord Holders starting the first Great Holds on prime lands and then parceling out the surrounding lands formed the midholds and the small holds. The peopled filled the lands and the crafts grew among the holds guided by the gods and the first master craftsmen.
It has been several hundred years since then.  The exact number was lost along the way because of occasional plagues, floods or fires. --

The harpers ballads ended and he dismissed the children amiably. Looking out of the columns at the distant mountains the faint shimmer of the Barrier in the air could be seen even so many leagues away.  He frowned though because it had only been a couple weeks since the last raid on the Mountain holds by Orcs from the other side. Quara couldn’t be wavering… but somehow the enemy was finally finding gaps in her defense of the valley.  Two months before that a gigantic Boar had come down and ravaged a Lowland Hold and a year before that several Water Tribe fishing boats had been destroyed by a Sea Monster.  Man had managed to repel each of the threats so far…but they were getting more frequent. “Oh Quara our Savior…forgive the people for slipping from the path of the Proscriptions. Hold fast the Barrier despite our heresy.. I pray that we learn our lesson before it is too late…”