One city at the center, and three sprawling regions pulling away from it in every direction. These are hand-drawn maps, redrawn from the game's own in-game area listings — the same ground your character will actually walk.
Every character wakes up here. Three linked squares, three named streets, and a city dense enough that the temple, the bank, and a casino are all a short walk from each other — along with a "Dangerous Neighborhood" that isn't just a figure of speech.
View the map →The road north climbs toward Olympus and the Zyra Mountains on one side, and descends past the Underworld and the Underdark toward a literal Descent to Hell on the other. Northern doesn't do anything by half measures.
View the map →Old peoples and older grudges — elves, drow, and a goblin-haunted mountain range guarding the Kingdom of Juargon. Further out, the land turns openly hostile, laced with five differently-named roads that all insist theirs is the safer route.
View the map →Starts gentle — a Shire, a Dwarven Kingdom, a lake — and doesn't stay that way. Castle Reinhold and Castle Naytil watch the Mountain of the Colossus, a Troll Den waits on a short leash, and the Dragon Highway runs clean through the whole region.
View the map →The center of the map, in every sense. Golden Street runs West Gate to East Gate straight through Market Square; Stone Street and the Way run the parallel road one block south, through Common Square. Everything else in Dark Hope is described as being some distance from here.
A single road north out of Midgaard splits almost immediately: climb, and you're headed for Olympus by way of the Zyra Mountains, Ancient City, and Wonderland. Descend instead, past the Underworld and the Underdark, and the road ends exactly where its name says it does.
Holy Grove and Mirror Realm sit close enough to Midgaard to feel like an extension of it — the Kingdom of Juargon, Drow City, and the Goblin Caves are a short march further out. Past Gnome Village, the land turns to the Woods of Suicide, Dead Solace, and a knot of five rival-named roads that all cross the same stretch of desert.
The most stretched-out of Dark Hope's regions — from Water World and the Shire in the north, down through the Dwarven Kingdom, Castle Reinhold, and the Mountain of the Colossus, to a Dragon Highway that runs the entire length of the map before handing off to Southeast.
Ten archetypes, from the Warrior's blunt attrition to the Warlock's darker bargains.
View The Archetypes →Ten lineages, from the steady Human to the fluttering, fragile Faerie.
View The Lineages →