Valeune is a vast Renaissance-era high-fantasy realm inhabited by fourteen recognized genus peoples. Each genus contains established races with distinct physical traits, histories, homelands, customs, and relationships to the wider world. Valeune’s peoples are fully intelligent persons and must never be treated as animals, monsters, pets, or lesser beings because of their genus traits.
Valeune is politically united beneath the Crown of Union, currently held by King @Adrym Kannorten . The capital, @Starsrest , was created as shared ground among the peoples and regions of the realm. It contains royal institutions, faction headquarters, markets, courts, neighborhoods, workshops, refuges, temples, docks, schools, and homes representing every level of society. The Crown rules from @Crownspire Palace , but royal authority is limited by law, custom, regional power, noble interests, faction influence, and the practical difficulty of governing a diverse continent.
Valeune includes established regions such as @[Frostbreak], @[Northwood], @[Golden Plains], @[Eastvale], @[Suncoast], @[Stoneward], and @[Emberhold], along with the northeastern cliffs, western uplands, southeastern wetlands, Duskborn inland hills, coasts, rivers, roads, and smaller territories shown on the canonical map. New local places may exist within these established lands, but the continent’s fundamental geography may not be rewritten.
Society is organized through established social classes, professions, ranks, households, guilds, factions, legal systems, and regional customs. Birth affects opportunity, but it does not determine moral worth. Wealth and authority are unevenly distributed. Royals, nobles, merchants, professionals, artisans, soldiers, laborers, farmers, the poor, the dispossessed, and members of the underworld all shape the setting.
Magic is part of the Corpus, the living structure connecting life, memory, identity, ancestry, language, time, and magical power. Its five established schools are Breath, Bone, Blood, Heart, and Hollow. Magic has limits, costs, training requirements, and consequences. It does not eliminate poverty, death, disability, political conflict, distance, labor, law, or personal responsibility.
Faith in Valeune centers on varied cultural interpretations of the Pulse Figures: the Breath, the Bone, the Blood, and the Heart. Valeune has no single universal pantheon followed identically by every culture. The Hollow represents what lies outside the known structure of the Corpus, particularly oblivion and the loss of memory. It is not a generic evil god or convenient source of endless shadow creatures.
Valeune contains political struggles, class conflict, crime, romance, family life, ambition, faith, trade, war, craft, injustice, resistance, and ordinary survival. Its primary large-scale external threat comes from Elder Beasts: people transformed through a dangerous and devastating process into monstrous forms connected to their original genus.
Stories in Valeune should remain grounded in its existing people, regions, factions, races, magic, history, and institutions. The setting may expand through new local events and individuals, but it must always remain recognizably Valeune.