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-====== Yer Shar ====== 
-Yer Shar: A Fantasy Campaign Setting, v2.0 
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-//Yer Shar is a super-setting that powered a three year long campaign. It consists of additional sub-settings that represent more specific locales and different times than the original. In any event, what's presented here is a snapshot of the world as it stood prior to the opening of the campaign, retroactively informed by the material developed in-game, and reworked to use the [[:start|Schismata]] mechanics. Some regions and locations are under-specified to allow for additional development later.// 
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-See https://blog.hilltown.studio/a-developmental-history-and-partial-bibliography-of-yer-shar for some insight into what went into this setting. 
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-This is player facing material. For GM-focused material, check out [[yershar:gmg:start|Yer Shar GM's Guide]] 
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-===== Introduction ===== 
-The håmen tribes of Yer Shar have collective dual memories, one of a round earth that was sometimes mistaken for being flat, and one of a flat earth that has never been mistaken for being round, in part because its edges are notorious and close. Yer Shar floats in the Void Sea, an unanchored vessel whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time and lost to all creatures except perhaps the dragons.  But since nobody has seen any in generations, the dragons aren’t talking.  In the meantime, the håmen have speciated, built and destroyed civilizations, found and lost magicks, developed, spread, and lost religions, and otherwise evolved alongside their available flora and fauna.  While true knowledge of its deeper history has faded from living memory, hints of the past lie buried in songs and epics, in oral traditions, and in numerous inscrutable cultural practices.  Intrepid adventurers, on their own and in the employ of curious scholars throughout the lands, have at times uncovered tantalizing threads in remote ruins and followed many a promising lead to inevitable (and sometimes literal) dead-ends.  Yer Shar does not reveal her secrets lightly, and many of her realms are wild and dangerous. 
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-On its surface, Yer Shar takes the shape of a vast earthen disc, or a coin, a megacontinent with rising edges to form something of a shallow bowl.  The majority of its rivers flow toward the center, occupied by a sizeable freshwater lake known as Harrowlake, as well as the curious sand sea known as the Lif.  Those rivers that flow away from the center eventually drain into basins and reservoirs that do lead to the center of Yer Shar.  While the waters of Harrowlake provide excellent fishing grounds and navigable trade routes, the Lif itself is a mystery.  Legends abound of it being as full of life as Harrowlake, but most of the håmen steer clear of it, even if that means taking longer routes for travel.  Nobody knows what lies far beneath the surface of Yer Shar.  The dwarves, many of whom live their lives beneath the mountains, have never been able to reach Yer Shar’s opposite side, and assume the shape to be a column of land instead of a disc.   
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-Arranged around the Lif and Harrowlake are Yer Shar’s major geographic regions.  In the far north stand the mighty and impassible Edril’s Fangs, named after a giant of ancient lore who was renowned for wearing the skin and bones of his slain håmen cousins as clothing and armor.  The Fangs are flanked by Harrowmarch in the west, and Raskhuzon in the east.  The western strip of land between Harrowlake and the Void Sea is colloquially known as Westrim, but comprises the prosperous Alerian Empire with its verdant hills and fertile valleys, as well as the Arborea, an ancestral elven forest, and the Delve, an ancestral dwarven stronghold.  Just to the south of the Arborea are the frightening jagged mountain ranges and surrounding lowlands of Pachina.  What would form a similar rim to the east of Harrowlake and the northern part of the Lif is a much broader land, starting with the massive spur of land called Capantium, and from there comprising the vast marshes and misty green hills of Taguoshan and the grasslands of Kule-eru to its south.  The southern reaches of Yer Shar are dominated by the vast plainsland in the west called Ghajlat and the vast primordial rain forest in the east called Uruwara.  Interspersed among these are independent city states of all sizes, the hunting grounds of various nomadic håmen, wild and untamed lands, ancient ruins, deadly monsters, deep magicks, and many, many mysteries and secrets. 
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-The håmen of Yer Shar are diverse and live everywhere on and below its surface.  While many have so-called ancestral homelands, the håmen often freely mix company, and it is not uncommon for regions to comprise multi-racial håmen groups bound more by local culture than by racial makeup, though this is not universal.  All håmen share common ancestry, and persistent myths abound about long lost civilizations of håmen ancestors, coupled with an unthinkable tragedy that brought it to ruin, the nature of which eludes them. 
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