Introduction to the Substack

What is Penumaria all about anyway, let me tell you about Penumaria.

David Foxfire

Feb 01, 2022

Trigger Warning

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Before Everything else, three items:

It is recommended that you do not use Google Mail to subscribe to this Substack! While there is no length and size limits to Substack articles, it is well known that Google Mail tends to truncate long messages. And I’ll state it ahead of time: Don’t even harbor the thought that I would keep these articles within that limit. Therefore, you should use another E-Mail service for “Tales of Penumaria.” I would recommend Outlook, an E-Mail server from your Internet Provider that you use with Thunderbird, or any of the web page services that offer E-Mail as well as web space.

Second, what you are about to see in this SubStack will not by any means or stripe be considered Cannon by Wizards of the Coast. You’re about to see a radically altered variant of the origins of the D&D Universe and it’s highly doubtful that they would canonize it. This version of ‘The Realms’ is to be considered an ‘transformative work’ in regard to United States Copyright law. Because of this, what is in this SubStack is not to be used for commercial purposes. Or at least at this time. I might get a deal.

Also, be sure to note the Trigger Warning link on the top of every article here. I didn’t want to put it there, but we live in the Current Year.

Now…on with the show…

Introduction to Tales of Penumaria

Everyone has asked this question at least once.

Granted, there were many options on the how.

Whatever you believe that a deity created this world in six days, or everything mindlessly assembled themselves over billions of billions of years, or some being more intelligent than any mere mortal can comprehend dropped the science by the megaton to create this grand masterpiece that is all of the reality we live in. Everyone has a theory on how the world is created, how the cosmos was made, how we, human beings, came to be. The how it happened can be debated, but one question remains global in its un-answerability:

The why of it all.

Why are we here? What is the reasoning behind our existence, if at all? What is the purpose of our being? Are we a divine creation, fearful and wonderful, or some Frankenstein’s Monster bent on destroying everything we touch and proving Q right? The capacity of good and evil exists in all of us, that line crosses every heart in us, why is that? Why are we born? Why do we die? And why do we want to spend so much of the intervening time walking around gazing on a smart phone like it could give us the secrets of the universe.

In other words, what is The Answer? The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?

It’s not something you want to ask a computer to solve, let me tell you.

Everybody at one time or another has asked this question.

And angels are not different.

Especially one particular angel who, if his life didn’t take him into another direction, would’ve made the Bible so much different from what we know.

This is the tale of The Realms, the vast and assorted worlds that share a common multiverse and is the basis of many a tale we know, from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter to Final Fantasy to the genre you came here to talk about, Tabletop Roleplaying Games like Dungeons & Dragons. It is also about a gateway world between our world and The Realms, created in a collaboration between that angel and his once and still Father, built to keep the two realities separate, and yet have its own nature.

This world is Penumaria, and this Substack will tell of many tales and adventures within it.

About the Author

My name’s David Foxfire (legal name David Gonterman.) I’ve been on the internet for about three decades now, in various forms and styles. I’ve been a cartoonist and writer with…limited success. Some might even know of me as a recovering lolcow. Fortunately, in spite of what some social media sites insist, you don’t have to be perfect—or completely conforming to what is considered ‘proper thinking and speaking’ for that matter—to have a voice online. (I am not, nor do I intend to be, political on any scope. I am just an oddball, who thinks for himself and is a non-conformist by nature. Oh, and being on ‘the spectrum’ helps.)

I came across Dungeons & Dragons during the latter stages of its Fourth Edition, and when Fifth Edition started its playtest stages, I jumped to 5E and never looked back, eventually becoming a Dungeon Master, and in time, customizing the existing campaigns and eventually creating new campaigns alongside this new setting.

What really got me going with Penumaria is an epiphany while I was woldbuilding. I took a step back from the One Note Book I was working on with all of my notes based on my imagination and creativity, all the dungeons and cities and characters and personalities that came out of my fingertips and pencils…and I wondered…is this how God did it. (I’m referring to the Biblical God; I used to be a Pentecostal Christian before I fell out from the church. I didn’t turn away from any faith, mind you; just the religion. I had too many bad experiences with religious people. And let’s be honest: Who do you think wanted Jesus Christ on that cross?) Oh, definitely, the material and capabilities used were different, and God didn’t need Microsoft Office. But the spirit of creation, the notework and brainstorming and experimentation. I felt it was…if not identical, at least parallel. I saw myself actually getting inside the head of the Creator and finding out what He was thinking when he was working on His Creation, and it blew my mind away. Dungeons & Dragons was—and in some cases still—regarded as Satanic. And yet I learned more about God, and brought me closer to Him, than I would have through a year of Sundays warming a pew.

And on the heels of that, a question came to my mind: What would a D&D world created by God would look like?

That caused me to create Penumaria.

I live in the Metro East region of St. Louis, Mo, blessed with an extended family and an apartment I can call my own. (I consider myself blessed, not privileged. Stop crying.) I homebuilt my computers and listen to Power Metal while I create. While I keep away from most social media like the plague, I do have some venues where you can contact me. They will be listed in the Credits and Licenses document which, like the Trigger Warning, will be linked in each article here.

About the Setting

As you may expect, there might be a small amount of Abrahamic Judeo-Christian themes here, and that would lose some of you here. It is not my intention to proselytize. In fact, you’ll no sooner catch me talking trash about evangelists. I have no intention to have Penumaria be heavily religious, and your beliefs can and may differ. All I ask is a mind open for ideas that are outside the proverbial box. The parts with the Biblical God would be minor but they would be vital.

That, and there’s the part about the angel I mentioned. There’s a reason why I said that Wizards of the Coast would never consider this cannon, although they’re invited to contact me to discuss matters before they send any cease-and-desist orders. You’ll find out why the instant I mention this angel’s name:

The angel is Lathander.

You got it. The Forgotten Realms deity of the sun.

In the Penumaria Story, before he was Lathander the Morninglord, he was Lathander, Angel of Light. Angel of the God I previously mentioned. You might say he couldn’t get a better example on how to be a deity than Jehovah, or better yet, his Son. As an Angel of God, Lathander was among the top ranking archangels in God’s presence. In fact, Lathander was the Number Two Angel in rank. Only Lucifer was higher than him.

And we all know what happened to Lucifer.

You should get a clue as to the ramifications of what would’ve happened. Imagine a being who would’ve been a deity himself being God’s right-hand angel. The canonized Bible would be different.

But…

Lathander, a being of Honor, Respect, and Integrity, found himself very hesitant in accepting the mantle of Top Angel. He has no desire to get into the same pitfalls that caused his once superior’s fall. And the reason why Lucifer rebelled weighed heavily on his mind: To Luficer, God created a Monster. A Frankenstein Monster. A being that would be capable of destroying everything the Father has made and could even succeed where Lucifer failed and even bring down the Almighty himself.

That so called ‘monster’ would be us. Humans. Man created in His own image.

And when He set up Humanity, He intentionally gave us free will and the capacity of choosing their destiny. This means that we humans would be capable of doing some great and wonderful things or commit retched acts so horrible that even the Devil would cry offense over. We could reach the stars, create devices that talk to each other around the planet, create cures for plagues, and launch people to the stars. But we also waged war, create bombs that would level whole cities in one blow, design plagues, hate each other for something as insignificant as a person’s skin color, and many other things that would make people believe that we’re some eldritch abomination destined to unravel the fabric of reality. Never mind Mary Shelly, we’re talking Lovecraftian levels of horror.

This is not a bug. God, with premeditated forethought and intention, made this a feature!!

And that proved too much for the one third of all Angelic beings.

So Why? Why did He do it? Why did He create Man the way He did? Why did He made the heavens and the earth the way He did?

Lathander wanted the answer to this question. He wanted to know Why? If God couldn’t provide him with a satisfactory answer, Lathander would just lay it all down and walk away. Maybe even leave God’s presence over it. His sense of Integrity would not allow him to accept the role without an answer.

God wanted to tell him the why, He really did. He even saluted the angel, respecting his concerns and his questioning; as much as he detested open rebellion, he hated blind obedience even more. And yet, it pained and grieved the Almighty to realize this, but giving Lathander the answer he wanted and needed…

There are very few things that God can’t do. This is a deity who could break D&D. He runs an entire dimension all by himself. He owns every domain and some yet to be discovered. He is worshipped by three major religions. He is Chuck Norris levels of powerful, far more so than being omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. I can imagine such a being in four words:

God can enter Sigil.

Ask anyone who played a Planescape campaign how easy that feat should be.

And yet…God couldn’t answer Lathander’s question. The Answer over the why of creation is, even today, so complex, so multi-faceted, so intricate, so complicated, that not even the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob can put into words. It would be like you trying to explain how computers work to your dog.

This is the question computers the size of planets try to answer, and the only one who didn’t fry themself in the process could only come up with ‘Forty-Two.’

God couldn’t tell Lathander why He did it, so He decided to show him. And by showing him, He intended to show the angel how he did it. God didn’t just say things into existence fully formed. Faith don’t work that way. No, God created like a scientist would. He compressed gases into spheres until they ignited into stars. He got his hands dirty and moved this rock or split this atom or spin this vortex around. He discovered the basics of science long before there was ever any academia, discovered the whole Periodic Table of Elements, with all the elements that nobody yet knows exist, found out how thermodynamics work, and figured out all the rules of Physics. He experimented, made prototypes, dabbled into what-ifs and learned from failures, and so much more. And He kept copious notes and made research papers throughout the whole process.

Even atheists would admire seeing His work.

He gathered all of his notework, all of his reports and findings, and bound together in a single book. This book holds everything you need to create a universe of your own. With detailed step-by-step instructions.

God gave Lathander this book and allowed not just him, but other angelic beings like him who desperately needed to know if He wanted to keep them at His side, and opened up an alternate dimension to grant them the change to find the answer themselves. “Create your own worlds, create your own universe. I assure you that you’ll find your answers. But I must warn you. The answer might change you in ways you would not imagine. You might not be mere Angels anymore when you do. I only wish that, when the time comes, you’ll accept what you have learned, and the responsibility that answer brings.” Yeshu knew that the revelation will forever change them, just like the Tree of Knowledge irrevocably changed humans.

So with the book, Lathander led these angels to this dimension, and they started creating worlds after worlds after worlds. At first a whole Galaxy, but then it moved to an entire Multiverse. They called it ‘The Realms,’ a vast multiverse of worlds of every possible kind, each one could become a setting for a fanciful story or game, and some of them by now became just that. If you’ve played a video game, the world it was in exists in the Realms. Whatever you seen a movie, whatever it is science fiction or high fantasy, the setting can be found in The Realms. The world of Game of Thrones? It’s there. Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit? There too. There’s a world where Hogwarts exists? Of course. A universe with star-spanning space craft? That too. A universe of star wizards and swords made of light, with space stations the size of small moons that can destroy planets with a single shot? It’s there as well. These worlds and so many more. We even have the worlds you would know of if you played role playing games:

Toril, Oerth, Eberron, Krynn, Golarion, Nerath, Theros, Exandria, Ravinca, Ravenloft, and all the others. They are part of The Realms as well.

And when they look down at the worlds they created, and witnessed the sentient beings they made staring back at them with questioning and wondering eyes…the epiphany God warned them about hit them.

The epiphany would have destroyed Luficer utterly.

But it was also the spark of the angels, especially Lathander’s, evolution. They have realized the answer, and that realization made them rise beyond what they thought were their own limitations and transcended their natures.

Every one of them appreciated the irony, Lathander most of all. Lucifer rebelled against God wishing to become a god himself, and he lost it all when he fell. Lathander did this little project not wishing or intending to become Lathander the Morninglord himself. He only wanted to know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. But when they found the answer he was looking for…he became a god anyway.

Like I said, this would probably never be authorized by Wizards of the Coast, and I do not blame them. My only wish is that they’d just accept it being ‘a transformative work,’ and not sue me. But it is the linchpin over what happens next.

Some might wonder what Yeshu, the name these former angels gave the God of what they now call Gaia—’Yeshu’ is a word in Celestial meaning ‘Anonymous,’ which is what God requrested—thinks of all this, finding a group of His angels becoming deities in their own right. Was He jealous of them? Was He afraid that they might turn on Him? Does He feel any sort of animosity toward them? God is known for his jealousy, after all. People say that he likes to ‘roll solo’ for a reasion.

But to the surprise to many people including Himself, the only emotion God has toward the group who created The Realms is…pride. He can be jealous, but He’s certainly not heartless. He saw these angels grow up, leave the nest, and made something out of themselves. And He was their Father. What parent wouldn’t feel a sense of accomplishment and happiness out of seeing their children leave the nest and turn out good? It was an emotion God never expected to feel in His life, and He rejoiced in it.

And of course, in spite of what he would’ve appeared as during the Old Testament, he wasn’t abusive either. He knew that destroying The Realms they created would just be flat out wrong. And they did promise that they will make sure that The Realms will not interfere with God’s Creation in any way. They even formed an official pact: They stay in The Realms; God stays in Gaia.

This pact included the possibility—which became the reality—of a realm placed in-between the two. Interdimensional barriers are not the most stable thing in all of creation, even at their best. It would be too easy for something or someone to go from one to the other. Yeshu knew He needed something physical and stable to keep the two multiverses separate. An entirely new realm in a pocket dimension betwixt and between would do nicely.

So God touched back with these former angels and shared with them a collaborative effort. That effort would be this realm between Gaia and The Realms, made of equal parts of both, but having a presence in neither. Placed explicitly so that one would have to go through this world to get to the other side. Watched over by celestials sent from both sides, including some of God’s Angels. (This included Lathander’s son, one Amaunator, who was sent back to God to serve in his father’s place.) This pocket world has become its own setting, a patchwork quilt setting with a piece from every Dungeons & Dragons setting from both TSR and Wizards of the Coast. From Mystara to Dragonlance to the Forgotten Realms to Ravinca to Strixhaven.

This is the world that will be known as Penumaria.

This is the world I wish to share with you.

What will be in this Substack

The main idea behind Tales of Penumaria is to have a setting for me to experiment in: To design characters, locales, dungeons, environments, adventures, and even campaigns, in a setting not restricted by any canonized storylines, hangups with publishers, or even sociopolitical melodramas of the current year. Some of what would end up here will be written with the intention to port it into a publication meant for a commercial purpose.

As mentioned earlier, Penumaria is a patchwork quilt setting, with a piece of every campaign setting throughout the history of Dungeons & Dragons, including those Wizards of the Coast does not recognize anymore, combined into one. You’ll find bits from the old school time of Grayhawk, Dragonlance, and Mystara, to the usual suspects like the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and Eberron, and even some new ones like Ravinca, Theros, and wherever Strixhaven hails from. Some pieces are merely transplanted and used as a homage to the source material, others will be remixed into a new variant, a couple would find themselves combined together, and of course there will be some completely original works, but all of them will be put into the proverbial melting pot until the setting achieves its own flavor, vibe, and style. The result is a setting where anything can happen, and since this setting is intended to be played ‘Old School Renaissance’ style, they often do.

Do I intend to make campaigns out of this setting? That’s the reason why this Substack exists.

Do I intend to publish this setting? Hmm, perhaps, perhaps.

Will I even make a campaign in this setting with Christian themes? Pilgrim’s Progress with Fifth Edition rules. Superbook: The RPG? Lead me not into temptation, people. I can find it all by myself. I’ve already thought up a Bible-friendly campaign that involves the Rod of Seven Parts. I simply had to have that rod travel through the entire Old Testament until it fell in Jesus’s hands.

All of these and even more are in the works here, especially when I set up the paid level. The paid level will have the most campaign creation and will collect all the playable modules there. But I’ll start off with the free level, with some general worldbuilding and a number of fiction stories set in the world. Some will be short one-shots, some had to be broken in parts, and some would even be serialized. Along the way there will be related worldbuilding, including maps, kingdoms, villages, dungeons, characters, personalities, and what not. In time I’ll include a OneNote Book that will have everything collected in one easy to reference and search place.

Things might be a little slow right off the bat, but once I get into a rhythm, you’ll be seeing a lot of stuff here.

Oh, I just need to give you a head’s up here. Even though I did mention some Christian themes, not everything in Penumaria would be something you’d find in a Christian Book Store. I’m still in the early brainstorming stages to most of the setting, and it’s best that you throw everything—including those that would get you thrown out of Chruch—into the mix to see what works. No restrictions, no filter, and no bleeping out the cuss words. While I’ll work to keep things PG-rated, there would be some spicy and even some steamy scenes; I’ll try to give you a heads up when they’re coming. There might also be some parts where real-world social dramas get touched, and I just decided to just plow through it and leave it where it lies. This is all part of the brainstorming process, where I’m just interested in putting everything in my head down on digital paper before everything else. Later on I’ll see what works and what doesn’t.

I have that Trigger Warning above the banners on top for a reason, you know.

There’ll be some additional set up posts before things really get going. I need to show the ground rules on how Tales of Penumaria will run. I’ll also set up a Guilded server so that we can even meet and chat and even haggle about things. I look forward to hearing from you.

Here’s hoping that this Subreddit proves to be one of the more interesting things out there…or at least one of the more interesting things you know of.