New Albion

New Albion is a bizarre continent in the middle of the Girded Sea. It is populated by a mix of indigenous locals and feral visitors - not to mention enormous creatures of legend and an array of magical oddities.

A land of magic
When the Cartels and other explorers reached New Albion, they found what they at first assumed to be a technologically inept society. They rapidly questioned this judgement once they found out the powerful and strange uses that the locals have found for magic in their inhospitable country.

To understand why New Albion is the way it is, it's worth exploring its early mythology and how this shapes the local culture.

Visitors from beyond
Old Albion was somewhat fortunate in that its isolation from the mainland kept it safe from the Blight's worst effects, giving its people time to construct their own rather special form of portal.

The Oak pressed many halflings into the task of building a great portal to escape the Blight. Rather than clearing a passage as the Houses and Cartels had intended, or opening a small doorway like the Vestfalians, the Oak attuned a vast circle of Albion land with a corresponding circular area of land in the other hemisphere.

The Draioth wanted to power their creation with the combined magic of both races. In truth, the elves feared that putting their full strength into the portal might weaken them. So it came to be that many halfling criminals and illicit magic users were within the reach of the portal when it activated. Elves and halflings all gathered within a cordon of standing stones, worked their magic, and found themselves transported in an instant.

The land they found themselves in was shockingly different from their home. They were standing atop a single vast, nameless circle of mountain; on all side of them stretched red, arid plains. There was barely a shrub in sight. The mighty Draioth wondered how they would ever recover their druidic powers in the absence of forests.

The halfling arrivals proved resilient, quickly adapting their wild magic to the new terrain. Even so, neither race would have survived were it not for the intervention of the local inhabitants - humans, who had a culture unique to the place and unique among their kind.

The Children of the Morning
Often called "Morning" for short, these humans were brilliantly gifted with magic - impressive, even by elven standards. Their homeland was a vibrant hotbed of arcane activity - to the extent where technological solutions to many natural problems would break down. So the Morning eschewed all but the most simple tools and material affectations, instead harnessing their magical affinity to perform incredible feats. This included clearing and maintaining hunting grounds, encouraging rainfall in the southern and more temperate part of New Albion, and communing with the local creatures and flora to almost literally grow settlements and protect structures. The Oak thought they'd been incredible druids - but they were amazed by what they saw.

Red Elves
Draioth advice and ideas proved very useful to the Morning. The druids were able to gradually piece their ancient knowledge together with local spirits and resources, encriching both cultures. Draioth slowly began adapting, in typical elven fashion, to the arid conditions, tanning and even reddening in skin and hair colour to better match the hues of the desert. The old diplomatic history of the Draioth proved useful when the Cartels started looking for trade and conquest - still fiercely isolationist, the new Red Elves cautioned the Morning against entering into any deals too suddenly.

Janjarri
Britton halflings enthusiastically took up their new identity as the Janjarri - the little tricksters - in local culture. Their wild magic blossomed in their new home. They had thrown off the shackles of paternalistic elven 'protection' and acted as intermediaries to ensure that the Morning would not be similarly exploited. Unfortunately, the Janjarri turned slightly feral - adopting chaotic, sometimes vicious practices that were more reminiscent of the old goblinoid races than those of humans or elves. It was as though in rejecting the supposed civilising influence of the Draioth, the Janjarri found an excuse to indulge their trickster natures. The Cartels have another name for these brutal little halflings: Larrikins.

Janjarri can use either a Halfling or Feyling template, depending on how far they've "gone bush".

Populations and cities
Janjarri tend to stick to rivers, billabongs or coastal areas - something of the Britton remains in them, leading them to seek out water and cliffs. They can be found in fishing villages near The Catch, and have a bustling if ramshackle city called Croc near the southernmost point of New Albion.

The Draioth or Red Elves have holy sites in the towns of Wailing and Dancing, which flank the Nameless (the old portal site, now considered tapu). They often venture out of the desert on their giant marsupial mounts, still every inch as impressive as the elves of old, to trade in the Cartel settlement of Cheri in the far north, or the western city of Gimpy.

The Morning have grown and used marsupial familiars to tunnel out an incredible series of warrens and caverns called the Table: this large area is a massive, naturally-grown citadel where the bulk of the Morning population now resides. Hunting bands venture south to Blue Edge, a magically-assisted wetland area, to the central plains and great hunting grounds. Trade caravans trickle to and from Sunset and Red Edge, and a road of sorts is being grown that stretches due north all the way to Cheri.