The world that the adventurers call home is vast indeed. The planet is orbited by two moons: Ardrea, blue and white in hue, and Frathas, her duller, redder sister. To the civilization of which the adventurers are a part, there exist four known continents, seperated by large oceans. It is the continent of Avarth that our heroes call home, specifically a southern peninsula named for its largest city and former sprawling empire, Rhye.
Avarth lies predominantly within the world's temperate zone, with its southern extremes edging towards the tropical zones and it's northern boundaries well within the world's frigid arctic circle. Much of the continent is covered in boreal forests and swamps, with elevations ranging from below sea level in certain mysterious depressions to very high, permanently snow covered mountains.
The Rhye Peninsula itself is bisected by one such mountain range, known as the Ironspine Mountains, running from north to south. The mountains are covered in dense forest at lower elevations, and as the foothills give way to the plains, the forest gradually gives way to scrub and grass lands, much of which is either cultivated or has been cultivated in the past.
The Empire of Rhye once encompassed the peninsula as well as a huge swath of Avarth and a large chain of islands to the south and east, but due to economic, political and other factors collapsed just over a century ago. Its reign lasted nearly one thousand years. The result has been the rise of a smattering of small, independent city-states and principalities surrounded by wild, unsettled no-man's-land beyond the influence of these remaining pockets of civilization.
The former Empire was startlingly cosmopolitan, affording generally equal treatment amongst the many species that called it home. Humans, dwarves, halflings, dragonborn, elves, eladrin and more lived and worked alongside each other in relative prosperity, and numerous other sapient races were frequent visitors or residents as well. While the remnant pockets of civilization remain largely as diverse, it is clear that certain areas are certainly becoming more stratified, especially in the mountainous regions claimed predominantly by dwarves.