What is it?

I was going to write something about what the purpose of this blog is.  Then I decided that it would be better to just do it.  So, here goes.

Prodigy is a tabletop game that I am working on, complete with both rules and setting.  It is the definition of a special snowflake setting - it is so special that it has its own rules.  Hopefully those rules are good enough to be used by other people in their games and the goodness of both rules and setting will inspire people to pay actual money for it when it is ready.  Here goes.  Overview!

There is a sea, called the Sea of Shadows, that is roughly the size of the Mediterranean.  There is an ocean to the left that doesn't have a name because no one travels by ocean.  There are sea monsters that eat ships and dangerous currents, so no one really explores out of sight of the mainland.  To the north of the Sea of Shadows is a relatively large swathe of land that was formerly called the Southern Kingdoms.  They were overrun 50 years ago, or thereabouts, by an invading army from further north - the Tarluskani Empire.  More on them later.
To the west is the outlet to the sea blocked, in part, by several large islands.  On one of those islands is Korg, the pirate capital.  Think Tortuga, from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
South of the Sea of Shadows is a heavily forested region called Arein, dominated by two large cities Arein (predictably) and Balleth (less so).  To the southwest of Arein is a large mountain range riddled with tunnels bored by the Archivists in their massive city the Catacombs.  More on them later, too.
East of the Sea of Shadows is the Wildlands, a giant plain like the savannahs of northern Africa.  It is filled with all manner of strange creatures and protected by the militant Equipmeni.  More on them later, as well.

About 250 years ago (more like 280, but who is counting?) the giant magocratic Azintheen Empire's civil war ended with a magical holocaust that boiled the land and soured the seas.  Most of the empire was obliterated, with remnants scattering far and wide.  One small group of refugees crossed the Wildlands, now made toxic and filled with abominations by the apocalypse, and settled in the lands north of the Sea of Shadows, founding the Southern Kingdoms.  They feuded amongst themselves for a while, explored a little (some sailors got lost exploring the Sea of Shadows and ended up on the south side of it, and they founded Arein), feuded amongst themselves, explored Sahargeen, the giant forest to the north of the Southern Kingdoms and ran into the many inhabitants therein (most notably the Bairnedred, still more on them at a later date), fought some wars and settled in to repopulate and start afresh.