The Gondwild is a vast realm in the southern reaches of the world of Alfar. Although it is a world on the Material Plane, Alfar mingles influences from the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the plane of Arborea. Alfar's sunny equatorial belt hosts large, prosperous nations of all humanoid races, and populous cities burgeoning with new technologies. Its productive temperate latitudes mix wild woodlands with swathes of farmland and occasional cities devoted to trade. The Gondwild sits beyond the southern edge of the farmlands, a rugged landscape mixing ice-capped mountains, coastal rain forests, sinuous fjords, and rain-shadow deserts, all transitioning southward into a polar wilderness of ice and rock claimed only by white dragons.
For almost a millennium, the world of Alfar had been ruled by a circle of thirteen fey queens and kings, known as the Witchlords. One of the central pillars of their power was their control over every dragon, chromatic and metallic alike, throughout the world.
On a single night forty-eight years ago, for reasons still unknown to their erstwhile subjects, the Witchlords vanished from Alfar. Most people now assume that they withdrew to the Feywild and the Shadowfell for any number of inscrutable reasons. Could they be planning fresh conquests in new worlds? Had they grown bored of the Material realm? Are they merely dancing and feasting for a night and a day in their own strange lands, to return as suddenly as they departed?
No one knows for sure, and some mortals of Alfar still hesitate to make their feelings about the vanished rulers known. Not all of the Witchlords were cruel, but one and all they were capricious and unpredictable. Some Alfar nations still preserve the old structures of power, afraid to change lest the Witchlords return to their thrones in displeasure. Some nations have been taken over by the dragons left behind by the vanished Witchlords. Other nations have begun to test their might in a world suddenly released from their fey grip.
The Gondwild is far from the old centers of power, and has long been a haven for those who might wish to escape the fickle rule of the Witchlords. It has also attracted adventurers for generations. Great rewards and great perils coexist throughout the Gondwild. Ancient ruins predating the fey queens and kings dot the mountains and fjords. Yet even here the ripples of the vanished rulers can be felt. For one thing, dragons are no longer under their control—and some dragons find themselves hungry.
You have arrived at the relatively new settlement of Goldentree. It is built amidst ancient elven ruins, rumored to be a fragment of the lost city of Cararbor, which was thrown down from the sky in a prior age. On a hill in the center of town grows a mighty beech tree, half alive, half riven by lightning. The leaves on the alive half never fall, staying a deep golden color year round, even in the snowy depths of winter. The houses of those who live in Goldentree are built around or amid the shattered remains of the old elven city, but no one dares to dwell on the hill of the golden tree itself.
You have come to Goldentree following rumors that plenty of work awaits adventurers in the neighborhood. You aren't, however, the only adventurers who've followed these rumors into the town.
