Island Realm · Feudal Kingdom · Solaran Heartland
The Isle of Thalassia
A feudal island-realm of chivalry, Solaran faith, and ancient honor — where three proud sub-realms struggle to hold the line against slavers, schism, and creeping corruption beneath the soil.
Ruler
High King Aldric the Just
Faith
Order of the Radiant Sun
Capital
Solara's Keep
Sub-Realms
Stormwatch · Sunfire · Starfall
Key Port
Silverwatch Haven
Patron Demigod
Seraphiel Dawnblade
Kingdom of the Radiant Sun
Thalassia is a feudal island-realm ruled by High King Aldric the Just, where chivalry and disciplined piety shape law and culture. The Order of the Radiant Sun — Radiant clergy and Sun Knight paladins — stands as the crown's armored conscience, training beneath the great Cathedral of Radiance in the capital, Solara's Keep.
Festivals at sunrise, consecrations of arms, and a militant mercy define the island's rhythm. Think of Thalassia as a long leaf pointing north-northwest — the Silver Coast at its southeastern heel, the capital on a central highland headland, storm-carved western cliffs, and a cooler northern littoral of fish-smoke towns and fast galleys.
Beneath this veneer of order, the realm fractures. The church has lost its leaders at sea. Three Solaran factions vie for the miter. The Black Regent's slavers raid undefended coasts. And deep in the chalk valleys, Sporesworn thralls stir where Dragobloom taint still lingers.
Marrowcleft — Silver Coast Stronghold
The Three Sub-Realms
Three great crowns beneath the High King — each with a temperament that fuels politics, alliances, and border spats.
Stormwatch
Pragmatic strategists
Unorthodox gambits, patience, and counter-intelligence. Worship stresses foresight; rashness is taboo. Old rival of the Sunfire hawks.
Sunfire
Hawkish crusaders
Tourneys, forward defense, and carrying the fight abroad. Aggressive Solaran rites; passivity is taboo. Always first to muster for reprisal.
Starfall
Bastion-builders
Walls, warded causeways, beacon chains, and community first. Endangering the folk is the greatest taboo. Silverwatch Haven sits in Starfall's marches.
Principal Regions
Five distinct regions shape Thalassia's geography and adventure potential.
Southeast Arc
The Silver Coast
Sun-struck coves, kelp-dark channels, and tidy terraced towns. Silverwatch Haven crowns this arc as Thalassia's eastern gate. Perfect for customs drama, missing-cargo mysteries, and harbor sieges.
South & Central Lowlands
The Sunfields
Walled orchards, grain baronies, and shrine-roads that supply the armies. Burn if raiders get through — the breadbasket of the realm and its most vulnerable interior.
Central Highlands
The Dawnspine
Karst caves, signaling peaks, and pilgrim stairs ascending to the capital. Secret reliquaries and knight-errant trials live among the limestone ridges.
West Coast
The Stormward Cliffs
Sea arches, fog bells, and night-lantern codes the Black Fleet loves to spoof. Prime territory for heists, tender raids, and envoy parley traps.
North Coast
The Northwind Littoral
Cooler climate, fish-smoke towns, and fast galleys. Quick-launch defense flotillas patrol here, and winter markets host oaths and hostage exchanges.
Key Locations
From gleaming citadels to fortress villages — the places that define Thalassia.
Capital Citadel
Solara's Keep
A shining bastion of crenellated white stone above deepwater anchorage. The royal quarter interlocks with cloisters of the Cathedral of Radiance — tournament greens, reliquary vaults, and beacon towers that flash sun-code to the coasts at dawn.
Sacred Seat
Cathedral of Radiance
Great rose windows catch first light; crypts beneath hold saints and standard-bearers. Radiants and Sun Knights take vows, bless arms, and dispatch relief columns from its halls.
Major Port (Pop. 8,200)
Silverwatch Haven
A tiered harbor city climbing bright limestone cliffs. Three wards — docks, trade, and the noble high quarter — with the Temple of Dawn's Embrace crowning the escarpment. Thalassia's eastern eye and vital link to Fort Valiance.
Fortress Village (Pop. 320–360)
Marrowcleft
A sunlit stronghold carved into a shelf between the Dawnspine cliffs and the Sapphire Sea. Red-roofed homes, Seawatch Keep's blazing beacon, and the Bone Rails docks — Starfall's proud shield on the Silver Coast.
South Cape Fort
Saint's Beacon
Lighthouse-fort and quarantine quay on the southern cape. Last safe water before the storm path.
Inner Market Town
Sunridge
Grain and horse markets in the lowlands. Seasonal jousts feed recruits to the Order of the Radiant Sun.
Western March Harbor
Knightfall
Chain-harbor and drydock beneath storm cliffs — ideal for covert Fog-and-Fire boardings and tar-line traps in low visibility.
North-Central Hospice
Halcyon Priory
Radiant hospice and reliquary roadhead in the hills. Miracles, politics, and buried scandals beneath its serene facades.
Fortress of Strategy
Stormwatch Citadel
War-room cloisters where prayers are tactics and silent fasts precede every stratagem. Stormwatch's seat of power.
Crusader Stronghold
Sunfire Castle & Tourney Fields
Blessing-of-Arms rites at noon, crusader musters, and recruiters with a taste for glory. The hawkish heart of Thalassia's militant faith.
Factions & Forces
The Crown of Aldric
The High King and his vassal lords — oathbound courts, levy rights, and the fragile unity of three proud sub-realms.
Order of the Radiant Sun
Radiant clergy and Sun Knight paladins. Rites at sunrise, weapons blessed for just war, cathedral command. The crown's armored conscience.
Thalassian Marines & Harbor Wards
Ballista posts, chain booms, lantern-code patrols. Silverwatch's guard post sets the baseline for coastal defense across the realm.
The Black Regent's Slaver Host
Brass-inlaid black armor, halberdier wedges screening rifle teams, mounted captains — 'capture not kill' tactics with slave-tender ferries to offshore brigs.
Frostfall Raiders
Norse-twisted clans who know every cove. Thalassian knights run counter-raids when they overreach, but the raiders always return.
The Solaran Faith in Daily Life
Solara's order permeates society: sunrise rites, consecration of arms, weekly Dawn Courts for common justice, and a formal hierarchy that pairs clerics with knightly chapters in every region. The Dawnguard organizes in "Rays," with ranks from Squires to High Dawnguard and a Sunlord or Sunlady atop the militant arm.
The divine patronage of Seraphiel Dawnblade — Thalassia's adored demigod of protection and chivalry — shapes the island's warrior ethos. Dawnbringers dedicate new blades in his name before campaigns. He functions as a living myth that PCs can actually petition for omens.
Trade and communication rely on dawn bell codes and mirrored heliographs stitching harbors together. Pilgrim roads marked with sunstones trace shrine-by-shrine ascents to the Cathedral. Guards rotate from harbor to highland in seven-day cycles.
Temple of Dawn's Embrace — Silverwatch Haven
Core Conflicts
The pressures tearing at Thalassia's unity — each one a campaign arc waiting to ignite.
The Radiant Schism
With the church's top brass drowned, three Solaran factions vie for the miter: Traditionalists (orthodoxy at any cost), Pragmatists (deal with mercenaries and hedge-mages), and Radicals (purge the island of corruption). Courts split rulings; knights pick sides; peasants lose faith — or cling tighter.
Stormwatch vs. Sunfire Cold War
Strategy and subtlety against crusader bravado. Embargoes, tourney 'accidents,' disputed tolls on pilgrim roads. Starfall tries to referee and is called timid for it.
The Brass Chains
The Black Regent's raiders target lightly held parishes. Their employers prize Thalassian artisans and 'light-touched' children. Three towns already sacked, cavalry cutting inland roads, temple ruins repurposed as holding sites.
The Bloom Below
Sporesworn agents and 'calm-then-violent' thralls seed unrest in market towns. Lesser growths fester in sea caves and chalk valleys beyond the patrol lines — Dragobloom taint lingering from a darker age.
Éirleach Entanglements
Allies by necessity, but cultural friction persists. Éirleach druids suspect Solaran zeal has stirred the land's wounds; Thalassian clergy bristle at 'heathen lectures.'
A Living Timeline
Age of Beacon Lords
Petty coastal thanes raise beacon towers to answer Frostfall raids. Solara's first shrines unify warning systems into holy signal chains.
Unification under Aldric
The High King centralizes musters and codifies Solar Law. The Cathedral at Solara's Keep becomes the shared seat of crown and crozier.
The Radiant Reformation
Path of Light schools and Dawn Courts standardize faith, education, and village justice. The Dawnguard formalize the Seven Trials.
Fort Valiance Era
A cleric-paladin flagship is lost en route. Ecclesiastical authority fractures, knights are overstretched, pilgrims and trade ebb, and shadows creep between parishes.
The Present Crisis
Sporesworn whisper through hinterlands where Dragobloom taint lingers. The Black Regent's slaver host strikes undefended coasts, sacking eastern towns and defiling temples as makeshift pens.
Adventure Seeds
Session-ready hooks for your campaign.
1
Hold the Chain
Slaver tenders slip for the outer roads. Drop the harbor chain and stall loading long enough for marines to muster — boarding in fog, silencing a Fog-Singer, igniting tar lines.
2
The Grounded Tender
A slave tender stuck on a reef with a small guard. Free captives, grab the Brine Writ, and vanish on the ebb.
3
Ledger of Knots
Infiltrate a grotto office and swap pages in a conjoined Knot-Ledger to void contracts before the Black Sun auction.
4
Dawnbringer's Oath
Retrieve a stolen Solaran relic before it powers a mass enchantment at sea.
5
Harbor of First Light
Defend Silverwatch Haven at sunrise: evacuate the market tier, set counter-fires, man the ballistae, and duel a mounted captain leading shackles through the mid-street.
6
Riders from the West
Frostfall longships spotted. Run a counter-raid with Sun Knights to recover stolen hostages.
7
Dawnblade's Sign
A miracle omen points to a knight's tomb under the Dawnspine with vows that can rally wavering lords.
8
Auction of the Black Sun
Crash the sale, expose the Envoy's bribe routes, and flip a Reef-Knight who still remembers his privateer oath.
Cartography & Table Use
Style & Palette
Sun-washed limestone, gold-white strongholds, teal shallows, ultramarine deeps. Storm-greys toward the west.
Scale
1 hex = 10 miles. Silverwatch to Solara's Keep spans 2–3 hexes for fast sessions.
Map Symbols
Sunburst over tower = Radiant site. Chain-mark = harbor boom. Lantern trio = signal cliff. Black-and-brass pennant = slaver presence.
Navigation DCs
Shoals DC 14, fog lanes DC 15 (disadvantage without lantern codes), night channel DC 16 (Brine-Sigil Chart can swing a group check).