Building the Sandbox: The World of Greyhawk

Having established the framework of the D&D cosmology last week, it's time to look at the first campaign setting that I'll be making extensive use of.  The first official Dungeons & Dragons campaign was set in and around Castle Greyhawk, and that's how I'd like to begin the Ultimate Sandbox when I start running it in earnest.

I have to admit that I've never quite grasped what the deal is with the World of Greyhawk, aside from being the core D&D world.  Most of my D&D setting knowledge came from reading the novels, and the Greyhawk novels that I read were even worse than the usual TSR standard.  (I did read a couple of Gord the Rogue books, and I remember liking those, but at the time I had no inkling that they were connected to D&D aside from being written by Gary.)   Every time I've tried to read up on the history of the World of Greyhawk, I've gotten a lot of stuff about the migrations of ancient peoples, and my eyes have glazed over.  This time I guess I need to knuckle down and actually pay attention.

The World of Greyhawk is known as Oerth, and sits at the centre of "Greyspace" as far as the Spelljammer setting is concerned.  And when I say it "sits at the centre" that's not a mistake: the sun and all the other planets in Greyspace revolve around Oerth.  It has two moons, Celene and Luna, which are actually other planets in the system.  Here is the world map of Oerth, as first shown in Dragon Annual #1 from 1996.

The world of Oerth

The region of this world that's most focused on in D&D products is in the far north-east, on the continent of Oerik, and is known as the Flanaess.  Here's the map from the 1983 World of Greyhawk Boxed Set.

The Flanaess

As I understand it, the days are the same length on Oerth as on Earth, and the year is roughly the same length of time as well.  The seasons are very different, though, at least in Oerik: there are only two months each of winter, spring and autumn, while summer lasts for six months.  The days and months are as follows:

The days and months in the Flanaess

A brief history of the Flanaess, at least as I understand it, is as follows:

• The Flanaess was originally populated mostly by tribesmen known as the Flan, who were not particularly warlike.
• A little over a thousand years ago, the Suel people and Oeridian tribes migrated into the Flanaess, fleeing from the Baklunish-Suloise Wars.  These two clashed, and the Flan were caught up in the conflict.
• Suloise mages call down the "Invoked Devastation" on the Baklunish Empire, and in retaliation Baklunish mages call down the "Rain of Colorless Fire".  Suel is destroyed, and becomes the Sea of Dust.  The Baklunish lands are also devastated and the people migrate north.
• After about two hundred years of war, the Oeridians drive the Suel out of central Flanaess. The Kingdom of Aerdy, later known as the Great Kingdom, is established east of the Lake of Unknown Depths (also known as the Nyr Dyv).  The current calendar is established.
• Circa 320 CY (common year), a wizard named Zagig Yragerne is elected mayor of the Free City of Greyhawk, and begins construction of Castle Greyhawk and the dungeons beneath.
• Circa 437 CY, the last heir of the House of Rax is assassinated, and the demon-serving House of Naelax ascends to the throne of the Great Kingdom.
• Circa 560-570 CY: This is roughly where Gary's original Greyhawk campaign takes place, as I understand it.
• 576 CY: This is the year around the release of the first wave of AD&D modules, and where I'll be setting my campaign to begin with.
• 582-584 CY: The Greyhawk Wars.  Any future events are dependent upon the actions of the PCs in my campaign; if they do something that would prevent it, things will happen differently.
• 586 CY: The events of From the Ashes and Return of the Eight.
• 591 CY: The events of Die Vecna Die!, marking the transition from AD&D 2nd edition to D&D 3rd edition.
• 591-598 CY: The events of the Living Greyhawk modules (assuming they actually count as canon).

It's been established in early issues of The Dragon that Oerth is an alternate Earth.  In Gary's other writings there are apparently three other such alternates: Uerth, Yarth and Aerth.  Each of these five would also be split off into myriad timelines, I suppose - particularly Oerth - to incorporate the various D&D campaigns that have taken place on them.  Magic is much stronger on Oerth than on Earth, but on Oerth there is no functioning gunpowder.

I suppose that Earth history and Oerth history ran along similar lines up to a point.  Some time before our recorded history there must have been a cataclysm that reshaped the continents into their Oerth configuration (although I suppose the opposite could be true).  Given the large number of Tolkien references in early issues of The Dragon, I've posited that Middle-Earth could have existed in the far distant past of Oerth.  It's meant to be in our past, and if the worlds share a history it would only make sense for it to be in the past of both.  As for Conan's Hyborian Age, I had thought to incorporate that into the past or present of Oerth, maybe on a different continent, but the world map shown above doesn't really allow for it.  It will have to exist solely in the past of Earth, as Robert E. Howard intended.

As mentioned above, I'll be starting my campaign circa 576 CY, and focusing it around the Castle Greyhawk dungeons.  For that I'm going to need to define the City of Greyhawk (which lies near the centre of the Flanaess map above, south of the Nyr Dyv), the surrounding wilderness, and the Castle Greyhawk dungeons themselves.  There's a lot to unpack with all of those, which I might tackle next week (although it's possible I might sidestep to do a post on how I'm incorporating Portown and the Tower of Zenopus into the World of Greyhawk).