Setting

Just over a century ago, a cataclysmic event shook the world of Golarion. The god of humanity died.

His name was Aroden, and he not only lifted humanity out of the ashes and terror of the Age of Darkness (an age that followed the meteoric cataclysm known as Earthfall), but founded the greatest city in the world— Absalom. He eventually left the world to join the divine host after setting humanity on course for a great destiny. Prophecies said that when humanity was ready to ascend back to the pinnacle it once held in the ancient times, Aroden would return to the world to usher in a new Age of Glory.

But instead of returning at the appointed time, Aroden, the god of humanity, died.

His death marked the beginning of a new age. The previous ages had names to inspire and bolster the spirit—the Age of Destiny, the Age of Enthronement. But this new age is not a time of plenty. It is the Age of Lost Omens, for if a god cannot fulfill his own prophecy, what chance have any others of coming true?

Aroden’s death scarred Golarion with storms and madness. To the north, the world split open and the festering armies of the Abyss spilled out through a tear in reality known today as the Worldwound. To the south, the idyllic gulf of Abendego was consumed by a perpetual hurricane whose winds and waves drowned nations. And in the heartland of the Inner Sea region, where Aroden had been prophesied to return, civil war erupted and thousands died before the diabolic House of Thrune seized power.

The Age of Lost Omens has now entered its second century, and in the 11 decades since Aroden’s death, the world has become a darker place. A place where ancient, sinful wizards known as runelords threaten to waken from 10,000 years of slumber. A place where nations are ruled by criminals or devil worshipers or worse. A place where once-great empires now wallow in self-indulgent paranoia or bloody, endless revolutions. A place where nothing is foretold, and anything can happen. A place in need of heroes like never before—the Inner Sea of Golarion.

The Inner Sea Region

The Inner Sea region is the trading and cultural hub of two mighty continents — Avistan and Garund. At the heart of the Inner Sea’s warm waters stands Absalom, the City at the Center of the World. Founded by the living god Aroden, this ancient island city-state has survived nearly five millennia to thrive as a haven of merchants and scoundrels. In the west, the Inner Sea passes through the narrow Arch of Aroden, a tenaciously contested strait named for the monolithic, ruined stone bridge connecting the two continents at their closest point. To the east, the Inner Sea opens into the vast Obari Ocean.

The two continents that frame the Inner Sea are very different from one another. Avistan, to the north, is the seat of once-mighty empires like Cheliax and Taldor, and site of the ruins of Lost Thassilon in the frontier realm of Varisia. South lie the secrets of Garund, a sprawling continent of arid deserts and fecund jungles, where the mighty pharaohs of Osirion emerged from the Age of Darkness to chart a new destiny for humanity.

Most civilization centers on the Inner Sea, with barbarism and savagery taking hold where the sea’s refining influence wanes. Exceptions exist, of course, and the scattered lights of civilization stand out in the dark wildernesses and savage frontiers far to the north in Avistan and well to the south in Garund. Likewise, dark, wild areas exist within otherwise civilized lands close to the Inner Sea. Mercenaries and would-be heroes seek fortune and glory throughout the Inner Sea region, uncovering lost treasures, pacifying terrible dangers, and finding ignoble deaths in every unclaimed wilderness, kingdom, and empire of Avistan and Garund.

North of Avistan stretches the Crown of the World, a frozen landmass that links the continent with Tian-Xia. Where the two meet, hardy barbarism tends to dominate. Even in northern kingdoms that strive for advancements in civilization, such as the Lands of the Linnorm Kings and Realm of the Mammoth Lords, the use and knowledge of arcane magic remains relatively unknown and certainly mistrusted. Even Mendev, a relatively advanced nation filled with pious (and not-so-pious) crusaders, tends to shy away from arcane magic.

Magic becomes more common in the southern nations of Avistan, particularly the devil-binding empire of Cheliax and its former colonies and vassal states. The ruling caste of shadow-haunted Nidal is suffused with forbidden magical forces, while the elves of Kyonin practice alien rites that date back millennia. On Avistan’s rocky northwestern shore, the Varisian frontier boasts the mostly intact ruins and lost magics of ancient Thassilon—a 10,000-year-gone empire ruled by sadistic wizard-kings known as runelords.

Use of magic and the appearance of the fantastic and bizarre are much more commonplace on the southern continent of Garund. In the deserts of Osirion stand countless monuments to nearly forgotten pharaohs, godlike beings who raised their people from barbarism to imperial heights.

Along the eastern coast lie the remnants of Nex and Geb, two kingdoms created to serve rival wizard-kings in the distant past. Today, Geb relies on animated corpses to harvest food for its living inhabitants, while the courts of Nex boast the most advanced and least understood schools of arcane learning on the planet.

Between these former enemies stretches a magic-dead tract of desert known as the Mana Wastes, within which exists a city-state reliant on technology and advanced engineering in a world dependent on the supernatural.

Deep in the heart of Garund, across the Shattered Range mountains, ancient ruins of unknown origin rise out of wild, uncivilized jungles. Scattered throughout the mountains surrounding the vast jungles of the Mwangi Expanse lie the ruins of once-miraculous flying cities of the Shory, long since crashed into the rocky slopes where they now rest.

Each of these fantastic locales makes a fitting backdrop for thrilling adventures. The world of Golarion and its myriad secrets stand ready for you and your players to explore.

Common Knowledge

From the barbaric tribes of the Realm of the Mammoth Lords to the undead slave castes of Geb, the pioneers and natives of Varisia to the revolutionaries and reactionaries of Galt, the lands of the Inner Sea teem with variety and diversity.

Time

Although many calendars exist among the peoples of the Inner Sea, the one in widest use employs Absalom Reckoning (ar) for all of its dates. This reckoning system is based on the founding of Absalom (which occurred on 1 Abadius, 1 ar), and because of Absalom’s expansive influence, the city’s calendar has achieved great popularity throughout the region. In Absalom Reckoning, the day of the month is always given first, followed by the name or number of the month, with the year coming last.

Golarion spins on its axis roughly once every 24 hours. A week consists of 7 days, with 52 weeks per year. A year has 12 months, each of which corresponds to a popular deity and (roughly) to a single cycle of Golarion’s sole moon. In order to most accurately reflect reality, many calendars across Golarion add in leap days. In the Absalom Reckoning, the leap day is tacked on to the end of Calistril and occurs on every year divisible by 8. Thus, the current year (4711) is not a leap year, but 4704 was and 4712 will be.

Coinage

The spread of trade throughout the Inner Sea Region has seen the standardization of exchange rates for coinage as well, and as such, the buying power of a gold coin remains relatively standardized. Names for coins can vary from region to region, and while ultimately the name a tradesman uses for his coins matters little in light of their value or quantity, in some circles a fierce sort of national pride exists in the claiming of such names. Sample names for coins from five areas of the Inner Sea region are provided below, but by and large, all coins are normally just referred to as “pieces.”

Coin Names

COIN BREVOY CHELIAX ANDORAN KATAPESH ABSALOM

Copper (cp) Bit Pinch Cap Grain Penny

Silver (sp) Link Shield Wolf Penny Weight

Gold (gp) Crown Sail Sail Scarab Measure

Platinum (pp) Dragon Crown Falcon Genie Sphinx

Society

Governments, laws, customs, traditions, and cultures vary wildly from nation to nation in the Inner Sea region. Yet there are many relatively constant constructs as regards society in the Inner Sea region, as outlined below.

Humanocentric: While numerous races and creatures exist in the Inner Sea region, humans largely dominate the realm. The use of the term “humanity” includes near-human, civilized races such as elves and gnomes under the overall category. Savage peoples, such as orcs, goblins, and gnolls, however, generally fall outside of what the Inner Sea region qualifies as “society.”

City and Rural Life: The vast majority of humanity in the Inner Sea region dwells in urban centers—cities, towns, and villages. A certain element of stereotyping and profiling exists between city dwellers and country dwellers, and conflicts between the two are not unheard of. Yet in truth, both lifestyles are inexorably dependent on each other.

Rural populations often dwell in dangerously close proximity to monster-haunted wildernesses and need protection from their urban neighbors, while urban populations rely on their rural kin for necessities like food and other resources. This dichotomy plays out often between the faiths of Erastil and Abadar—two religions about essentially the same thing but with drastically, obstinately different methods of presenting themselves.

Magic: The common citizens of the Inner Sea region, be they farmers or traders or city guards, know about magic. It’s likely they’ve seen magic spells in action, and have even been the beneficiary of healing magic or other minor effects at some point in their lives. Yet magic is not so universal a part of life for most of the Inner Sea’s citizens that they’ve come to rely on it.

It’s seen most often as an extravagance or a reward used by the wealthy, or in a worst-case scenario as yet another tool a despot or monster might use to oppress honest folk. Magic is thus a source of wonder and awe and of fear, but since it’s not a fundamental part of most folks’ everyday lives, it’s also often misunderstood.

Technology

The world of Golarion has passed through countless eras of strange discovery, of technology both high and low, from primitive to futuristic. With the dawning and closing of each age, the tool-working peoples of this magic-infused place have again and again pushed back the mists of ignorance and savagery with shimmering wonders great and small.

As each successive disaster, uprising, and cataclysm washes over the world, the secrets of earlier ages are lost and new discoveries are made. As the peoples of the Inner Sea enter the second century of the Age of Lost Omens, the world stands once again upon a great precipice—new magics, mechanical practices, arcane theories, and alchemical procedures become more common and more accessible to clever minds with each passing day.

Yet in a world where wizards can conjure fire out of nothing, clerics can raise the dead, bards can shatter buildings with songs, and alchemists can transform themselves into monsters, what chance has technology to compete? The widespread use of magic in the world has stunted the advance of technology more than any other factor, relegating those who seek to find new ways of doing things to the role of crackpot and eccentric more often than not.

Technological advances in the Inner Sea, as a result, tend to be limited to areas where magic isn’t as common (such as the volatile Mana Wastes), stem from eras and nations that for various reasons learned to fear magic, or hail from areas where strange advanced intrusions from unknown technological realms have made their presence known.

Weather and Climate

A wide range of climate bands exist in the Inner Sea region, from blisteringly hot in the deserts of Garund to freezing cold and snowy at the border with the Crown of the World. In general, weather patterns in Avistan and Garund flow from west to east, sweeping cold rains across Varisia, Nidal, northwestern Cheliax, and the Mwangi Expanse.

The rain shadow created by the Mindspin Mountains is partially offset by the rain-birthing waters of Lake Encarthan. South of the Menador and Five Kings Mountains, the chill of the north gives way to the warm waters of the Inner Sea, allowing for extended growing seasons and larger populations.

The deserts of northern Garund speak to the relatively arid conditions north of the Barrier Wall. South of those imposing mountains, though, heavy rains create the rainforests and jungles of the Mwangi Expanse. Off the western shore of Garund churns the century-old hurricane, the Eye of Abendego, which contributes to the production of driving rains across western and central Garund. These endless rains, in fact, flooded a section of the coast, creating the storm-soaked devastation of the Sodden Lands. East of the Shattered Range, the dominant weather flow brings warm rains from the Obari Ocean, allowing for the lush grasslands over most of eastern Garund. Only the destructive influence of life-stripping magic prevents Nex from growing abundant crops like Geb.

While most of the Inner Sea region experiences weather typical for its climate, several aberrant weather conditions manifest in various areas around the Inner Sea. Some of these bizarre phenomena are relatively localized, and draw only curious locals or passing experts. Other unusual weather events affect wide swaths of territory and are known (and often feared) even thousands of miles away.