Since it's become evident that onboarding prospective roleplayers into the setting would be made much easier by a guide explaining what the Avishraa setting is in player-friendly terms, what follows is my attempt to do so. I'm a wordy bird, so by all means, if I'm doing a poor job at condensing and simplifying things, please let me know.

This page is meant to inform without overwhelming. There are other details that would be useful to potential players, though, and I've moved these to their own articles; if you'd like to play and want to know more, or are just interested, please check the links directly under the headings of the sections below.

Avishraa is a fantasy setting of a highish, darkish flavor. Medieval-level technology coexists with psionics and several forms of magic, some of which are inborn or granted by cosmic beings while others can be learned by anyone with the time and resources to do so.

This last kind is becoming increasingly widespread and parts of the world stand on the brink of what is, essentially, the magitech equivalent of an industrial revolution. The world is in ferment for other reasons, as well - the discovery of new continents, the newfound ability to reach other worlds, rising tensions between species, political realignments, and mages responding to eons of mistrust and hate with plans to remake the world.

Avishraa is, in short, on the edge of titanic change. And like most such changes, it threatens to crush those in its path.

For more details, see Character creation.

There are three known native intelligent species, all of them more or less dragonlike and all with some ability to sense the emotional states of others:

• The takmar are the most advanced in terms of technology and social organization, but are less adaptable to cold and dryness;
• Their close relatives, the xtauh, are smaller, less advanced, and more individualistic, but are collectively more numerous, can live in more environments, and have more experience with enchanting;
• The orghysh are bipedal beings, more distantly related to the other two; they are communal and fairly strong, but have a low population and stone-age technology.

The Chosen - those that have inherited magical ability - are not so much a species as a set of people with an inherited condition. They are overwhelmingly takmar, except for a very small number of xtauh descended from an unprecedented pairing of a Chosen takma and a xtauh.

The Doomtouched can be of any intelligent species. They have a narrower set of magical ability than the Chosen, granted by a terrible power, whose siblings are also involved in the history of Avishraa, whether as gods, demons, or from behind the scenes.

And with the advent of linking books, encountering mortal beings from other worlds - though it has not happened yet - is only a matter of time.

For more details, see Setting.

avishraa is in fact a large moon of a gas giant, smaller and with lighter gravity than Earth. In some ways it is remarkably Earthlike - in its variety of landforms, lifeforms, and climates - while, in others, it is radically different, like its lengthy day-night cycles. The three known native intelligent species all exist on the continent of sekhaa, which until very recently none of them had traveled very far beyond, though even by itself it is quite spacious.

But in the last few cycles, vessels have finally crossed the oceans to the west and south, finding new lands - and linking books have opened up the paths to other worlds, possibly even other realities, entirely.

Ages ago, most of takmakind was under the dominance of the Sixfold Empire. Throughout the Cloud Era that followed the Empire's fall, civilization has been fractured into countless small polities, city-states and mini-empires, with few domains achieving dominance for more than a few generations at a time. Among the xtauh, the cities of the north have been cast into a wide-ranging economic collapse in the aftermath of the Gate Wars, only recently recovering and beginning to notice the plight of their southern brethren at the hands of the takmar.

Now, at last, new and dynamic powers are rising, buoyed by advancements in technology and enchanting and access to new nodes of resources. It remains unclear whether the new era to come is one of glory or ruin.

For more details, see Tone and mechanics.

Avishraa isn't an entirely horrible place, but it is big and dangerous. It's not a terribly heroic setting; that's not to say that you might not try to band together with other players to save the world, but you're not going to level up and acquire godlike powers to help you do so. Your character is just a person, and while that may involve some powers not available on Earth, in the end there's only so much one person can do. The most important character development will be what occurs in their head.

Though I may try to port it to some more organized RPG system at some point, Avishraa's default format is freeform; determining the outcome of events is based on narrative and good faith rather than rules and stats. In terms of content, it's approximately R-rated; themes of sex, violence, and swearing are permitted, but there's a limit on how explicit the detail is.

That said, so long as no one's pushing too hard against the boundaries, I'll try to be restrained in policing it. This is particularly true when it comes to lore-accuracy; Avishraa was and is also a worldbuilding project and in that capacity will contain an absurd amount of detail on certain topics, but I can't expect players to follow all of it if they don't want to. (Besides which, there are still large empty spaces in the world, and if the players want to help fill them, hey, I could use the assistance.)