An orientation to the world as reported by Rugby’s Roaming Gazette, 15 surviving issues spanning in-world APRIL 1 4885 to DEC 19 4885 (plus one flagged anomaly dated 4900 — see timeline). This predates every recorded session; treat it as deep, mostly unconnected backstory rather than as the world the recorded campaigns take place in, except where a page explicitly cross-references the two (see “Open cross-references” below).
The world as mapped
The campaign map is canon for the world’s places and realms (where it and older reports disagree, the map wins). Generated from it:
- Powers of the World: who rules each realm, their capitals and provinces, and the ungoverned lands
- Faiths of the World: the churches and cults of every D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder core god
- Peoples of the World: which ancestries live where, down to individual small towns
The two kingdoms and their war
The central storyline across the early issues is the war between Binneth and Squiyles, complicated by a simultaneous orcish invasion from the east and a troll migration out of the Acatlalco mountains.
- Squiyles, ruled by King Stroth, is squeezed on three sides: Gorthak’s united orc horde conquers its eastern cities (Bostur, Kafka), trolls ravage its farmland, and Binneth’s secret-weapon fire-breathing navy guts its fleet in the Howling Gulf. Internal collapse (famine, riots, a failed separatist uprising) finishes the job.
- Binneth, ruled by King Tygard, loses relatively little and emerges from the war as a rising great power, claiming new territory and new trade deals.
- The war’s outcome: Squiyles falls entirely. Changelings — doppelgangers who first seized the country of Cacoal mid-war — take over the majority of its former territory, ruling “with an iron fist.” Rugby’s Roaming Gazette, headquartered in Squiyles’ Conopimalis throughout the war, is forced to relocate its offices to Stogath in the Western Territories, where it remains for the rest of its surviving run.
The orc unification
Gorthak (spelled “Garthok”/“Gorthuk”/“Gorthok” at different points — the Gazette itself flags these as the same figure) rises from a tribal leader to ruler of every orc clan, uniting them into a single horde that conquers Squiylian territory, clashes with Binneth, and outlasts the war itself — the Orc Lands remain an established nation years later, when a new generation of Gazette reporters still dispatches from their territory. His son Zakmed’s capture, and escape, from Binneth custody is one of the war’s recurring subplots.
The Feywild/Day-Zero anomaly
One issue — 2019-05-12, dated APRIL 17 4900 rather than 4885 — describes “The Agency” investigating a multiverse-altering event called “Day Zero,” the apparent end of the Material Plane, and a mass evacuation to the Feywild. The very next issue in publication order reverts to 4885 and resumes the ongoing war coverage as if nothing happened; the Gazette never mentions any of it again. Treated here as a flagged, unexplained oddity — not a confirmed part of the main timeline. See timeline, factions/The Agency, npcs/Dr. E Brown.
Ongoing crises as of the last issue (2023-09-24, in-world DEC 19 4885)
- Troll migration and the new “vaccine.” Trolls have spread from the Acatlalco tunnels through the wider Troll Mountains; alchemists have just announced a compound (transmitted via troll copulation) meant to strip trolls of their regenerative edge.
- The changeling peace-summit scandal. The Changeling Nation’s international peace conference, meant to secure its legitimacy, collapsed when its own delegates were caught impersonating other nations’ diplomats — leaving relations between empires strained and uncertain.
- Godoy’s guard shortage. The city of Godoy (Acatlalco, Western Territories) is short-staffed after an overly strict guard-vetting process, leaning on Captain Cadillac Huggins and Captain Darian Steele — see the next section.
Open cross-references worth knowing about
A handful of pages carry Unresolved notes connecting Gazette content to the recorded campaigns — flagged as naming echoes or dramatic irony, never as confirmed identity, given the vast and unreconciled gap in in-world time:
- Cadillac / Godoy — the Gazette’s hero cop “Captain Cadillac Huggins” is almost certainly the JakeDM campaign’s doppelganger crime boss Cadillac, whom the paper has no idea is either a doppelganger or a crime boss.
- Acatlalco / Godoy — a mountain-range name echoed centuries later as a city’s administrative region.
- places/Isle of Death — a monster-haunted island of the same name and reputation appears in both the Gazette and the JakeDM campaign.
- Turgeth / places/Kingdom of Turgyth — a kingdom and a much-later city share a name root.
- the-gang / npcs/Dr. Boom — a 2019-04-22 reader submission reads like an in-world account of a party of adventurers’ pre-recording exploits, never confirmed as The Gang.
- Lutathal / quests/Win the Magic Carpet Race — a third name variant for the same carpet-race concept.