In 2008, modern Earth saw the sudden arrival of elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and other creatures of myth as magic returned and long-lost faerie and shadow echoes of the world became revealed. Over the next two decades, exploitation, treaties, wars, and fragile coexistence came to bind the three realities together into an uneasy peace.
The Modern World (“Blue Earth”): The realm of humanity, technology, nations, corporations, and a densely networked society dominated by capitalism, media, and money.
The Feywild (“Green Earth”): The realm of fey courts, elves, goblins, sentient dreams, and a vast awakened wilderness of talking animals and sentient trees. Time moves slower here; a feywild day may be weeks or years in the modern world.
The Shadowfell (“Grey Earth”): The realm of dwarves, orcs, ghosts, strange minerals, ruins of cities that never were, eldritch horrors, and deeply buried memories. Time moves faster here; a shadowfell day may be hours or minutes in the modern world.
One Planet, Three Echoes
The new age begins with the Incursion of 2008, later known as the Extrahuman Refugee Crisis. Thousands of magical beings and monstrous creatures from another planet suddenly appear as if from thin air on modern Earth. Mass hysteria quickly follows, with most new arrivals killed by frightened humans. Those few who survive are forced into guarded Resettlement Zones. In the days to come, another change is revealed: Magic now really works on Earth.
Existing political factions weaponize the issue, contrasting progressives’ “they are refugees, they deserve protection” versus nationalists’ “borders first, humanity first, safety first” public messaging. Governments, militaries, and corporations exploit the newcomers and the possibilities offered by magic.
2008: First Incursion
Non-human peoples appear across Earth: Elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and many more. Satellite anomalies, geomagnetic distortions, and impossible forests appear. The United Nations declares a Global Extraordinary Humanitarian Emergency. First evidence of two parallel Earth echoes emerges:
* A verdant, unstable Feywild Echo, also called Green Earth, the Wild, Otherworld, or Fairyland. Some religious leaders call it the biblical Eden.
* A bleak, resource-rich Shadowfell Echo, also called Grey Earth, the Fell, the Netherworld, or the Gloom. Catholics recognize it as Purgatory.
In contrast, the mundane world of modern humanity becomes known as Blue Earth, the Mortal Realm, or the Prime Material Plane. Hindus and Buddhists claim these echoes are proof of Lokas, layers of cosmic spheres.
Unknown to most humans, some refugees chose not to remain on Blue Earth.
2009: Divergence
Elven elders identify the Feywild Echo as “home-adjacent.” Orc warbands and goblin clans slip into the Shadowfell Echo through unstable crossings. Dwarves divide sharply between surface dwarves who remain on Earth and deep delvers that descend into Shadowfell strata.
Human governments assume these populations are “lost.” They are wrong.
2010: Awakenings
Across Blue Earth, refugee camps harden into cities. Labor extraction begins. Attempts to license or regulate spellcasting fail to slow the public’s use of magic. Leaders decry the rise of “new gods.”
In the Feywild, elves establish Greenholds grown from living land. Time distortion is noticed: Seasons pass faster.
In the Shadowfell, ancestral ghosts and totem spirits are displaced by newcomers. Goblins salvage ruins of failed human echoes. Orcs claim dead cities and fortress-bones.
Dwarves identify non-terrestrial mineral seams.
The first planar supply trickles appear.
2011: The First Returns
Planar crossings increase. Fey-touched envoys reappear on Earth with living artifacts impossible medicines and seeds that should not exist. Shadowfell smugglers introduce cold-iron analogs, shadow-crystal energy storage, and weapons immune to conventional tracking.
Markets notice before governments do.
2012: Hidden Conflicts
Several nation states attempt to seize planar crossings. First classified military expeditions vanish. Hobgoblin legions trained in Shadowfell tactics rout human forces in proxy conflicts. Feywild enclaves actively *collapse crossings* to prevent exploitation.
The echoes are not passive.
2013: Market Forces
Shadowfell materials disrupt global supply chains. Dwarven prospecting guilds operate beyond Blue Earth law. Goblin free cities in the Shadowfell become logistical hubs. Elven Feywild exports are rare, ritualized, and politically conditional.
Blue Earth becomes economically dependent on places it cannot govern.
2013: The Accord of Worlds
Multilateral treaty recognizes the Blue, Green, and Grey Earth echoes. Feywild and Shadowfell territories granted extraterritorial status. Humans are forbidden from mass settlement without native consent.
The fiction of a single world ends.
2014: Human Backlash
Nationalist movements condemn “offworld elites.” Pogroms against Earth-bound elves and goblins spike. Feywild gates close further. Shadowfell warbands begin escorting refugees out of Earth cities.
Blue Earth starts bleeding people to its own reflections.
2015: The Prospecting Rush
Shadowfell becomes a contested resource frontier. Dwarves and orcs clash over underworld routes. Entire human mercenary companies defect. Feywild ecosystems begin collapsing where abused.
The echoes fight back, both geologically and spiritually.
2015: The Fracture Riots
Earth cities erupt over access to planar goods. Protest slogans demand “Echo Citizenship.” Feywild emissaries accuse humans of colonial extraction. Shadowfell nations declare Blue Earth politically irrelevant.
No shared reality remains.
2016: The Schism Declaration
Several echo-aligned states recognize non-human sovereignty. UN vote on multispecies governance fails. Feywild councils withdraw permanently from UN processes. Shadowfell compacts recognize only strength and contract.
Earth loses moral authority it didn’t know it depended on.
2017: Echo Cold War
Espionage replaces diplomacy. Feywild agents manipulates climate outcomes indirectly. The Shadowfell disrupts satellite systems via unknown physics. Earth powers develop planar denial weapons.
War exists, just not where humans can see it.
2018: The Threshold Generation
First generation born with dual-world ancestry and partial planar attunement. They slip between realms with ease. Old species politics begin to fail.
Everyone fears what they can’t classify.
2019: Cold War Heats Up
Feywild ecological collapse threatens Earth weather. Shadowfell extraction destabilizes tectonic zones. Orc confederations seize transit chokepoints. Dwarven guilds become kingmakers.
The echoes were never infinite.
2020: The Veil Tears
Large-scale planar bleed events occur. Shadowpox becomes a global pandemic. Feywild forests root into Earth cities. Shadowfell ruins surface overnight. Borders cease to matter.
The worlds begin to merge unevenly.
2021: Convergence Wars
No declarations, continuous conflict across realities. Mixed-species coalitions form out of necessity. Extremists attempt total planar collapse.
The goal shifts from victory to survival.
2022: The Last Accord
Representatives from Blue, Green, and Grey Earths convene. Agreement limits extraction, travel, and weaponization. Enforcement is collective in some places, nonexistent in others.
Peace exists because no one can afford war.
2022: A New Magical Normal
Earth is no longer singular. Power flows between human cities, Feywild Greenholds, and Shadowfell Freeholds. Elf, dwarf, and orc emissaries given special positions at the United Nations; goblins refuse recognition. History books mark this as the end of the “Single-World Assumptions.”
Humanity did not lose its world. It discovered it had never lived in only one.
2023: Cartography Wars
Competing atlases of planar overlap circulate. Earth governments publish “stability-first” maps. Feywild councils issue seasonal, living charts. Shadowfell guilds sell profit-weighted depth maps.
Conflicting maps cause real violence as trade routes collapse. Chokepoints spark skirmishes, “safe corridors” vanish overnight. Several massacres are traced not to armies but to outdated maps.
Control of knowledge overtakes control of territory.
2024: The First Tri-Planar City
A mixed-species coalition transforms Valletta, the national capital of the island of Malta, into the first deliberately tri-planar city: Earth foundations, Feywild canopy districts, Shadowfell substructure. The city is built at a naturally recurring overlap node and stabilized by dwarven anchor-forges, elven seasonal binding rites, and a mix of human and orcish territorial enforcement. Refugees and mages come from all three realms and nickname the city “New Atlantis.” Hardliners denounce it as heresy or surrender, others call it proof that coexistence is no longer theoretical.
Mixed-species societies are now normal, even if uneasy.
2025: The Compact of Limits
Representatives from Earth states, Feywild councils, Shadowfell freeholds, and mixed cities convene and sign the Compact of Limits. Core provisions include hard caps on planar extraction, fixed transit quotas, protected no-access zones, and joint enforcement against collapse-level manipulation.
Civilization did not collapse when the worlds merged; it nearly collapsed when they refused to stop.
2026: Dawn of the New Age
Restrictions from the Compact of Limits breed new enterprises in smuggling. Transit permits are bought, split, recombined, and resold. Consciousness moved without bodies via possession is used to bypass quotas. Feywild smugglers move goods only during specific emotional or seasonal alignments. Abandoned overlap regions become lawless extraction pits. Criminal syndicates spread false cartography to eliminate rivals.
Collossal monsters, demons, and the undead become a rising threat in all three worlds.
Titans awaken where bleed zones persist too long. Air and sea travel become impossible during elemental upheavals. Ghost forebears return to reclaim former lands and bloodlines.
WHAT HAPPENED?
This campaign as a “sequel” to my 2008 Adeus D&D campaign…
Auryeon, the Horned Father and King over the Court of Lost Regrets, was summoned to the world of Adeus and asked by a group of adventurers to strip the planet of magic in order to prevent a curse that was transmuting people and creatures into monsters. When the adventurers did not know was that all magical beings, and magic itself, would be transferred to a new world: A distant planet called Earth.
A third of those teleported from Adeus appeared on Mortal Earth and mostly perished in the violent social chaos that followed. Another third appeared on Bright Earth, the version of the planet that exists in the Feywild. The remaining third appeared on Shadow Earth, the planet’s echo in the Shadowfell. Both Green and Grey Earth had been mysteriously cut off from Mortal Earth for roughly 6,000 years.
MORE IDEAS
An elven empire once dominated Northern Africa for 10,000 years until a shift in Earth’s orbit reduced monsoon rains, causing their lush homeland to dry up. None of the elves survived, and their wooden structures have long since rotted away without a trace. The region is today known as the Sahara Desert.
A faction of expansionist elves plan to start colonies across Earth’s northern hemisphere boreal forest that stretches from Alaska, through Canada, across Northern Europe and Scandinavia, and into Russia’s Siberian expanse. Elven plans will take decades or centuries to organize, as it’s easier to wait for the current generation of humans to die off in less than 100 years and introduce helpful ideas to those maturing into human power.
Inspirations
TV, Film, Podcasts, Comics, Books
Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber (book series)
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (book and TV series)
Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and American Gods (books and TV series)
Clive Barker’s Imajica (book)
Steve Shell and Cam Collins’ Old Gods of Appalachia (podcast)
Eskew Productions’ The Silt Verses (podcast)
Max Landis’ Bright (TV movie)
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (comics, movies)
DC Comics’ Hellblazer/Constantine (comics, movies, TV series)
Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie’s The Wicked + The Divine (comics)
Role-Playing Games
Wizard of the Coast’s Urban Arcana for d20 Modern
David “Zeb” Cook’s Planescape setting for Dungeons & Dragons
FASA’s original Shadowrun
White Wolf Publishing’s original Mage: The Ascension
Kevin Siembieda’s Rifts
David Pulver’s GURPS Technomancer