Seven Things About Penumaria

Something to put right up front in any Guides

David Foxfire

Feb 15, 2022

Trigger Warning

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As with any new campaign setting, there is a need to summarize what the setting is all about. Ever since Keith Baker created the Eberron setting, he always started his campaign guides with a list of facts about his setting. I’m no different with Penumaria. Removing most of the campaigns, themes, and of course, the Abrahamic content that will (eventually) settle into this D&D campaign setting, there are seven key items to keep in mind when exploring Penumaria:

1: It runs on Fifth Edition D&D

Even though you will be hearing my homebrewed variant of Fifth Edition, Swifttail OSR D&D Fifth Edition, a lot here; I cannot say this enough. You can use the standard version of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition as published by Wizards of the Coast in this setting. Swifttail is backwards compatible with Wizards of the Coast’s official D&D 5th Ed. All sourcebooks and most Unearthed Arcana articles are legal, and you can use most tools that are based on Fifth Edition during gameplay. If it can be done by the official rules, it can be done here. The biggest change would be that the game is played Old School Renaissance style, the ‘Anything Goes’ philosophy of game playing that harkens back to when Dungeons & Dragons were young. This is the way the game is played in Stranger Things and Rick & Morty. If you’re coming here looking for Organized Play, keep looking.

As this Substack progresses, eventually there may be a free Swifttail SRD. Until then, the previous article has a downloadable Primer.

Even with the fork of Fifth Edition, I’ll be using, to keep the Wizards of the Coast rulebooks on hand, with the expansions. I will be referring to them. A lot.

Player’s Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master’s Guide
Volo’s Guide to Monsters
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
Tasha’s Caldron of Everything
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse

2: If it existed in D&D, it exists in Penumaria

Even the ones Wizards of the Coast doesn’t consider canon anymore. Or as Lathander would say, “Don’t you think it’s a little bit hubris to decide for yourselves what does or doesn’t exist in The Realms? Even if you are writing the rulebooks?”

Penumaria could be described as a Melting Pot setting, with pieces from every possible setting in the history of Dungeons & Dragons thrown together to create a flavor and style that’s uniquely Penumaria’s. The mix starts with the usual suspects like the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Grayhawk, Dragonlance, and even Ravenloft. But you’ll have other settings that you might not expect, such as Exandria or Golarion. Also, you’ll get into some newer settings from Wizard’s other franchises: Ravinca, Theros, and the upcoming Arcavois. Maybe Kamigawa. The original Kamigawa, Neon Dynasty crap. All of them combine in curious and unique ways in Penumaria.

For one such example, let’s talk about the Barony of Chronicle. People who have played Curse of Strahd will find the place very familiar. It used to be a copy-paste of Barovia until a more unique history for the barony was written. Chronicla wears its heritage on its sleeve as it heals from its dark time as a Domain of Dread, the evil presence receding and its denizens doing what they can to move on.

3: Magic Flows Freely Here

Of course, you’re going to have magic when you take inspiration from so many settings. In Penumaria, Magic is ever-present and accessible to anyone with the capability or the drive. It all deals with a flow of esoteric energy known as ‘Mana’ moving not unlike rivers and streams through what is known as ‘The Weave.’ While the name is taken from two Wizards of the Coast’s flagships, its nature is closer to The Froce from Star Wars. As Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, “[Mana] is energy…created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds [the realm] together.” (Embellishments mine.) The details, of course, involve a simplified cosmology Penumaria exists in. And although it lacks the Outer Planes that Wizards put in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

While The Weave takes care of Arcane and Nature-based spellcasters (Warlocks get their own explanation and quite possibly their own article,) there is the need to address Divine-based spellcasters like Clerics and Paladins. This is because what is a deity in Penumaria is not what you expect a deity to be. You’ll find out at a later point.

With this strong and healthy flow of Mana, it is a valuable resource, and all who practice magic, whether it be spellcasting or harnessing it in magic items or creating wonders with them, it is their responsibility to preserve the flow and ensure that it remains there for future generations.

4: A world of adventure

Come on, we have a Patchwork Quilt campaign setting where everything mingles and combines. Of course we’ll have an assortment of kinds of adventure. There are always the basic kinds of Fantasy, such as Heroic, Epic, and Mythic fantasies, but there are other kinds as well. I’ve mentioned earlier that those who use magic have a responsibility not to misuse it. You can bet that there are those spellcasters who won’t do that, driven by greed and lust and the need to dominate and subjugate, providing ample reasons for Sword-and-Sorcery-type adventures. Just because part of the setting used to be a Domain of Dread but isn’t one anymore doesn’t mean that there aren’t other such places of horror and Dark Fantasy. And when you have civilizations in any setting, you’re going to have Intrigues and Mystery. Something I want to try out here in Penumaria is something I was disappointed to find out Murder in Baldur’s Gate wasn’t: A Detective Procedural adventure that puts CSI-style forensics and investigations into a D&D campaign. I consider it a missed opportunity, which is something I hope to rectify.

Martial Arts themes? Sure. Futuristic machines? Most definitely. Something from the Modern Day here on Earth? A recreation of Pilgrim’s Travels? Please don’t lead me into temptation, I can find that on my own.

Another theme for an adventure is something that came up from some friends of mine, who were into model trains. While I couldn’t get my own model train set, I can put trains into the D&D multiverse. And not the Lightning Rail of Eberron, we’re talking steam-powered engines and steel rails like the turn of the 20th Century. I also toyed with the idea of the construction of airships and other forms of technology like radio and the telegraph. I’d be very curious to see where Penumaria takes it. And if it provides an example for others to follow.

5: Celestials run Penumaria in the stead of the Gods.

One of the main reasons why I created Penumaria is to create a Bible-inspired, if not entirely Biblical, Campaign Setting. At the core, I had one question: “If the God of the Bible ever dabbled in D&D, and He’s well within His right to do so, what kind of a world He’d make for the campaigns?” Sure, I might be far off, but I think He’d appreciate the attempt. And let’s be honest: How many of us wondered how would Yahweh power up Clerics and Paladins.

You might be wondering, why, David. Why would you do this? The reason came from a 30-plus year wound in my soul: The Satanic Panic. I turned away from Christianity and eventually away from the Church, because of what they did to D&D, a game that would later on turn around and bring me back to God. (Nothing gives you a higher appreciation for the Creator than participating in the act of Creation yourself.) D&D is my ‘Pearl of Great Price’ and I’d wager my soul on it if I have to.

And besides what some televangelist might call blasphemy, someone else would call the highest of praise. That’s what I consider what I’m doing here. Some pray, some sing a hymn, others spout out blabbering utter nonsense because some flame’s on their head, and me? I invite Jesus Christ to crash my campaigns like the wedding guest I forgot to invite, put into a situation outside the Bible and find out what He’d do, and my oh my does He surprise me at times.

So addressing the problem of getting D&D ‘God-friendly’—or is it getting God ‘D&D friendly?’—has been in my mind for decades. Keep in mind that I want to keep it somewhere close to Biblically Sound, and that means that God prefers Monotheism. How to get this square in a universe that is predominantly Polythestic? The most obvious one is to keep The Realms and Gaia—what our world is going to be called—separate. Neither side interferes with the other in any way. The deities of The Realms leave Yeshu alone, and He has Gaia all to Himself. (Oh, and ‘Yeshu’ is what those in The Realms call the God of Gaia. All twenty of them. In just Faerun.)

But then Yeshu wanted to put a world between Gaia and the Realms to provide a bulwark against someone just crossing over from one to the other. That wish was the idea behind Penumaria. At first, Yeshu set up Penumaria as a neutral meeting ground between Himself and the Angels-turned-deities who created The Realms. It eventually expanded into a whole planet, and from there, a setting all its own. And that’s when God ran into the problem I discussed: How can he set up a Divinity in a world of The Realms that He designed that would still square with Him. Especially when He does not intend to rule over Penumaria directly.

His answer was simple: Surrogacy. He appoints angelic beings to rule in His name, each with a portion of the vast responsibilities He shoulders in Gaia. While they can have worshippers and even grant Powers to followers, they are forbidden to form any religion. They will also walk the world among the people, usually reduced to a level Christ Himself was at when he lived during the Gospels. (Unless they’re in their designated homes, where their powers go up to near infinity.)

They are the Celestials, and you’ll know more about them in future articles.

6: A Reincarnation Mechanic

Every setting needs to have people in there, and Penumaria is no different. While some ‘Ascended Angels’ offered their people to Penumaria—such as Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, et all—Yeshu called humans as the ones He’d source. He called it because he, at the time, needed to use Penumaria as a form of Purgatory. Not a Catholic Purgatory, but a place where souls of the dead temporarily go while God withholds his judgment on them. This happens to God more often than you’d expect.

He didn’t design Penumaria to be hellish, but it is not paradise either. Penumaria will become whatever the people there want it to be. Some might even remain there, and by all means, if they’re in their own paradise, who is God to deny them?

The way a soul goes through Penumaria also has a mechanic nobody expected from Yeshu: Reincarnation. When God judges a soul with neither ‘Well Done’ or ‘Depart from Me,’ he can now use a ‘Not yet,’ and delay His judgment, sending the soul to Penumaria in a form of a ‘Ghostlight.’ The Ghostlight enters a womb of a human and inhabits a just-conceived baby. That baby is born, grows up, goes through their lives, and eventually dies.

They do not immediately return to God’s presence. Instead, they go to Penumaria’s Shadowfell (what D&D traditionally says that every soul goes when they die) to be judged through the Weighing of the Heart ritual. This isn’t to judge if a soul is righteous or sinful—that’s for someone who’s more qualified—but to see if the soul is ready to be judged by that more qualified someone. The soul is weighed against a feather. If the feather is heavier, that means that whatever’s keeping that soul from their afterlife has been dealt with, and they can freely leave Penumaria and return to God’s presence, and usually a ‘Well Done’ verdict. If the soul is heavier, they are taken to a place called ‘The Carousel’ where they wait for their turn to enter another womb, this goes on until the soul finally passes, whether it takes one life or a thousand.

There are ways to get out of this cycle, which will be discussed later.

7: Penumaria is not even 1% fleshed out.

But even with all this already set in Penumaria—all the stuff in the articles I have in a buffer for this Substack—it is a mere sliver a single percent of all there is in this realm betwixt and between. And that’s the best part about Penumaria: I will not be able to fill in every space, and I’m not going to. I’ll be saving room for you.

As I keep worldbuilding Penumaria with this Substack, and even then, I’ll be leaving a lot of spaces blank intentionally. That’s right, you won’t be seeing every corner, meeting every person, and experiencing every dungeon and danger and festival and kingdom in Penumaria.

Because I’m inviting you to fill it. You will not be doing my work, because Penumaria will not just be my setting. It can be for anyone who needs a blank space for their own campaigns, which will not fit in any setting of D&D, especially the flagship settings like Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Strixhaven.

Penumaria isn’t just a laboratory setting for me, it’s a sandbox for other Campaign Creators, Storytellers, and Players to play in and make a parts of the setting that’s their own. Perhaps you have a favorite homebrew adventure you need a place for. Of you have your own kingdom that needs a place to put it in. Maybe a whole continent of stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else. You’re more than welcome in placing it here, and if it’s good enough, I’ll even make it cannon and give you the rights to your contributions. (I won’t be able to pay anyone at this time, but if I reach my goal of making a campaign setting book that gets some sales…)

It’s one of the reasons why I set up a Guilded server so that we can get together and haggle out ideas. Let’s brainstorm together and come up with some cool things to put in this setting. And maybe even play a game or two in the setting.

And since Guilded is mentioned…

While it would be easy to just let all the community building within Substack, with their comments section and polls, I found something better and easier for me. By now, you’ve heard of Discord. I can count on one hand and still have fingers left the number of social media sites I actually use and Discord is the index finger. You will not see me on most social media sites, especially Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and the like. This is because of all the toxicity, melodramas, and the cancel culture that plague those sites. I don’t even use alternative social media for…quite the same reasons.

I thought about using Discord to have my community in so that you can get in touch with me and with like-minded individuals, but I found an alternative that fills in that needs and then some.

Guilded is Discord on Steroids. Not only can you do group chats, private messages, and voice channels, but Guilded also has channels for message boards, channels for documents, channels for pictures, you can create subgroups in your server, and more features are being added almost daily. Keep in mind that since Guilded’s programming is based on Discord, it has some of Discord’s hang-ups when it comes to security and privacy. It shouldn’t be anything a little online etiquette won’t prevent. And I do suggest that you activate two-factor authentication, just to be safe.

By the time you’re seeing this, I already have a Guilded server set up at https://www.guilded.gg/r/zzrEw12XVR?i=0mqw38X4 , which all are invited to join. There’s one caveat, which you’ll find when you get into the server. It might run counter to my beliefs, but you’ll understand once you see it.

Coming Soon

The next article is the one where I begin getting into the setting proper. It will be a listing of several big-idea, top-down, high-concept parts of Penumaria, including a timeline as to Penumaria’s origin, a listing of the Celestials, and an introduction of the continent I’ll be focusing on, Refugina.

Here’s where the fun begins.