Elyssia
Elyssia is a dark fantasy setting for D&D 5E: a continent where magic is hunted, alchemy has taken its place, and a buried past threatens to return. Delve into its adventures or expand your games with supplements covering blood magic, alchemy, archaeology, and subclasses.
You do not need to know its entire history to begin. First discover what you can experience here, then keep reading as far as your curiosity takes you.
Discover what awaits you ↓Thinking of traveling to Elyssia
- A place whose forgotten history threatens to resurface
- Learn to become an alchemist, grow and gather your ingredients, and create your own potions, oils, bombs...
- If you are a spellcaster, learn how to hide, cast spells without giving yourself away, encapsulate spells in potions, and discover the last refuges of the clandestine mages
- In such a divided land, you are more than an adventurer with a background: you have an origin that has shaped you and ambitions of your own. Will you seek power at any cost, or save those you care about along the way?
- Elyssia is a place of buried secrets slowly coming to light, including corrupted weapons (extra power at a price) and blood spells
- You will discover that your actions come at a price, your prejudices can cost you dearly, and corruption and fear can take hold all too easily
A Divided World
The kingdoms that exist today were built upon ancient civilizations that have not survived into the present. Myths, rumors, and stories that almost no one remembers or wants to remember, except the newly founded Department of Archaeoalchemy. Its mission: uncover buried history. Its real mission: amass even more power.
- Kingdoms built on half-truths and forgotten foundations.
- Alchemy academies, licensed guilds, and research laboratories.
- Inquisitors with royal authority and far too much enthusiasm for their work.
- Magic controlled, eradicated, or put to military use.
- Organized crime that has learned to smile and dress well, mingling with high society in the great cities.
- Prophets in village squares. People laugh at them less and listen more closely every day.
- Clandestine mages in hidden shelters and on secret routes, aided by the Black Market.
- Blood mages operating in the shadows with growing impunity.
- Unknown factions hunting clandestine mages and inquisitors alike.
- Ancient ruins that no one officially asks about, stirring with activity once more.
- People abducted from the Plane of Blood: future runners and fighters in the Blood Arena.
- Former prisoners who speak of secret state prisons and laboratories.
Elyssia is a world bleeding from within. And you are thinking of stepping into the wound.
Sources of Power in Elyssia
A few sources of power. None without a price. Choose carefully, because in Elyssia, consequences rarely keep you waiting.
Elyssia’s Best-Known Factions
Elyssia has no clear balance of power, no settled sense of justice or morality. It has factions, each convinced it is right, and none burdened with too many scruples. Four of them will cross any adventurer’s path from the very first session, whether they like it or not.
What Is Happening in Elyssia
Welcome to the ancient continent of Elyssia, where survival is already an achievement and understanding the past is a sentence. This corner of the world has endured wars, cataclysms, institutional betrayals, and tense family dinners. Today’s kingdoms stand upon histories that almost no one remembers, and those who do are usually buried or mad. Their rule rests on a history unknown to most, or known only to a few. Only recent history has been recorded in writing; the oldest has been forgotten or preserved through oral tradition (the only documented part of its history begins more or less when everything had already gone to hell).
Across the old continent, beliefs and superstitions have left their mark over time. They became religion; religion became politics; and politics became armed fear. Magic was banished to the dusty corners of the world, forcing its users into exile. Its place was taken by alchemy, a respected science because its results are tangible, explosive, and easy to package. In Elyssia, if you cannot make a potion, a bomb, or an aphrodisiac with side effects, you will probably end up as one of its ingredients.
In these lands, sooner or later, everyone learns to become an alchemist if they want to survive. Wizards and sorcerers fight a cold war against inquisitors who enjoy their work far too much, while the mages’ hidden refuges are being attacked by a third, concealed entity: an anonymous, elegant, and lethal force that has begun hunting both sides. The good news? That means more fresh corpses. The bad news? Sometimes, not even the corpses remain. Meanwhile, alchemists build their colleges and research laboratories to gain and preserve more knowledge and power.
The major kingdoms have watched crime disappear from towns and cities, as though thieves and criminals had gone elsewhere. Organized crime has learned to smile politely. The Black Market has grown cautious, with shelters in almost every civilized place (and sometimes uncivilized ones), becoming ever more careful about whom it does business with. Strange and troubling rumors drift up from the south, while eccentric prophets fill village squares, foretelling the awakening of an ancient evil.
Bodies have begun piling up on the beaches of a small city, Arteal, returned by the tide day after day. One by one, the local fishing boats have vanished. Sightings and lights in the night have been reported in the old Red Archipelago; meanwhile, on the mainland, cemeteries are being desecrated and alchemists’ warehouses raided. Few have witnessed these events, but they all agree on one detail: blood mages. The authorities pretend everything is fine, but no one believes them, not even the authorities themselves.
A new faction moves in the shadows, calculating and advancing little by little without drawing attention, its gaze always fixed on places such as the Red Archipelago. At night, small regiments without banners can be seen walking far from the main roads. On the southern coasts, north of the forgotten deserts, groups of godless, unpaid mercenaries begin gathering like rats in an abandoned temple.
War seems to be brewing, and every faction looks out only for its own interests. Who will stop it?
The History of Elyssia — How It Came to This
An Ancient Empire
Local folklore in the small coastal city of Arteal tells old stories of an ancient empire that extended its power from Red Island, now the Red Archipelago, to the shores of the continent of Elyssia. This empire not only mastered arcane secrets but had found its greatest source of power in blood. Its sorcerers, masters of blood magic, far surpassed the neighboring kingdoms in knowledge. Yet the true source of its strength was a dark secret they guarded jealously.
The empire’s expansion did not go unnoticed. Faced with a growing threat along their coasts, several kingdoms of Elyssia formed a fragile coalition. Their goal was clear: stop the invader before it spread any further. Although the empire’s armies were powerful in the arcane arts, its soldiers could not withstand the overwhelming numbers of the kingdoms’ combined military forces. The balance finally tipped in the coalition’s favor.
But the coalition sought more than military victory. They wanted to unravel the secrets behind the fallen empire’s power. They devastated its territories in search of knowledge and tortured its prisoners in a desperate attempt to extract the truth, but it was all in vain. The dark secret behind its strength remained hidden. Amid this devastation, the volcano on Red Island, the seat of its power, erupted violently. In a cataclysm of lava and ash, it erased every trace of what had once been the great empire. The profane rituals discovered along Elyssia’s shores and on the island struck such terror into the victors’ hearts that they decided to destroy every historical record of the dark empire’s existence. Thus began a new era: one in which magic was viewed with suspicion, and blood magic in particular was forbidden on pain of death.
The Rise of Alchemy and the Mage Hunts
The kingdoms of Elyssia, scarred by the trauma of that fateful war, developed different attitudes toward magic. Some banned it outright, while others chose to control it through severe restrictions. In most lands, magic was seen as an evil that had to be bound and controlled, forcing many mages into hiding.
It was in this climate of persecution that alchemy, previously considered a lesser science, began to gain ground. Once mocked for its unpredictable effects, it earned respect when alchemists demonstrated that they could reproduce the same effects as magic without relying on it. This shift changed the balance of power. The mages who had lived in secret were now hunted, considered a threat to the new order taking shape.
The kingdoms swiftly established networks of peacekeepers, mage hunters, inquisitors, and other elite forces trained to track down and eradicate spellcasters who refused to submit. In response, the spellcasters formed secret societies and developed new ways to conceal their power, encapsulating spells in potions or alchemical artifacts. Now they could walk in plain sight and cast spells without arousing suspicion. The game of cat and mouse had begun. The clandestine mages had certain advantages, enough to free several captured companions while finding new ways to evade their hunters.
The Discovery of the Blood Mages
Everything changed when a group of peacekeepers discovered an enclave of blood mages in the northern lands: direct descendants of the ancient empire who had secretly passed down their ancestors’ dark knowledge for generations. The news spread like wildfire across Elyssia, provoking panic and new extreme measures throughout the kingdoms. While most nations intensified their efforts to eliminate any trace of magic they could not control, Thalentis, a kingdom that still respected it, took a different path. In the past, exiled mages had helped eradicate a plague ravaging its lands. Since then, it had been a haven for any persecuted spellcaster. However, fearing an influx of refugees who practiced magic, the kingdom began conducting a magical census and increasingly limiting the number of magic users within its borders. Cornered once again, the clandestine mages began dispersing across Elyssia, seeking new refuges deep in forests, in mountains, or even on other planes of existence.
