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 sort of bird, so by all means, if I'm doing a poor job at condensing and simplifying things, please let me know.

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.

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.

Of the Avishraan species and skillsets, the only one that's absolutely restricted to NPCs at this point are Chosen wielding Span magic. Because this involves being able to see through time, teleport, and various other terrifying abilities, and is canonically extremely rare, it's not really suited for player use. Playing a Doomtouched is allowed, but may involve some discussion as to what you intend to do with the character.

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.

(This is the longest part, for which I apologize.)

The native format of the roleplaying in Avishraa is freeform and dominated by the narrative. There are no dice, no cards, no stats, no XP or levels; a few general rules but no developed ruleset by which play has to be conducted. Mostly the game is informal, and, importantly, it runs on trust. When acting in the DM role, I must trust that a player is genuinely trying to play in the spirit of the setting, to achieve a story alongside other players, and to develop their characters - for good or ill - as people, rather than collections of skills and powers. On the player's part, they should be able to trust that I will gently warn players when doing something unreasonable, that I will treat honest mistakes leniently, and that I will be willing to work with them if they want to do something unusual - especially if the results are interesting, awesome, or amusing.

(I am also considering porting Avishraa to a more structured RPG system, so long as it's one that tends toward fluff/lore over crunch/mechanics - possibly something like Fate or a variant of Powered by the Apocalypse or even Freeform Universal. But it's definitely a project for the longer term.)

You can think of this setting as R-rated. Generally speaking, sexual themes and violence may certainly occur, but detailed descriptions of sex or gore should not (I'm likely to be a bit softer about violence than sex - an American bias, perhaps). Forms of body horror may occur, but again, generally the idea is to be unnerving or disturbing in the idea rather than squicky in the details.

The use of swearing by characters in their speech or thoughts is permitted, though not to the point that it takes up a significant percentage of the words; you shouldn't make a habit of using swearing in the narration, but I won't object to an occasional usage so long as it's impactful and/or inventive.

Because none of Avishraa's inhabitants are members of our species, much less of our cultural background, the ways they would realistically behave do not come naturally to us as human players, and trying to memorize them all and use them in roleplay would likely prove unacceptably tedious. So while I certainly encourage you to look into the species and culture of your chosen character and incorporate a certain amount of the background detail, I will be trying to err on the side of leniency.

(This is especially true in regards to things like body language. A takma smile looks nothing like a human smile, but since they mean the same thing, there's no point in having you describe what it looks like unless you want to; otherwise, just say that the character smiles.)

Above all, be advised that the Avishraa setting is what might be called grimneutral, though whether on the grimbright or grimdark side of this line depends on where you are and what you're doing. In other words, the world is not an entirely crapsack place, but it has many flaws and many dangers, and many of those are not only not able to be vanquished by some band of noble heroes killing the BBEG, but would require the mass action of an entire society to address - or in extreme cases, are built into the nature of reality itself. Significantly changing the world is going to be a very tall order, and exceedingly unlikely.

In Avishraa, the biggest enemies of all are the circumstances, and what your characters will be doing most often is dealing with them - by desperate struggle, or escape, or just trying to find a safe space.