Campaign World setting

The campaign world is a low fantasy setting.

Meaning while magic and fantasy creatures exist, they are often given credit where they are not and are explained away when they are there.  Magic Users tend to be the only ones who have an idea what is really going on in the world, but even then then, they are lost in various theories and personal bias.

Areas of note.

The mountains.  The North Eastern side of the continent is dominated by a hilly rugged landscape with several mountains generally getting in the way of any real growth or development.  The Coast is a collection of cliffs that abut a rough sea, and while no good ports exist, a few fishing villages cling between the rocks and the waves.  This is a region of rough land with rough people who carve out a living within it.  While roads and trails exist, they take long winding routes and it is often quicker for individual travelers to go by foot up and over the passes and crevices.  In the saddle of the mountains small villages exist and they support each other with each tending to specialize in a specific product, but each having to scratch out their own sustenance.  Most towns have an outlying community of farmers and game hunters who support the town proper.  Local Mayors are the defacto rulers, though there is a aristocracy of Barons and Dukes over the area ruled by a single king.  To compare to the real world, think of Scotland only without any of the pleasant parts.
 

The valley.  To the Western side of the continent is filled with wide pasture land fed by natural rivers that flow from the melt of the mountains to the East and plentiful rainfall.  This land is fertile and well groomed.  It is ruled by a single people who work diligently.  They have a large standing army to protect them from the clannish barbarians that live in the mountains, the things in the forest, and the filth from the swamps. 

Then endless forests.  North of the valley and West of the Mountains is the never ending forest.  No one claims rulership over the forest, though both the kings of the valley and the mountains have some outposts that creep into it.  No one has mapped how far north it goes. It has overgrown some kingdom long forgotten and it is claimed that elves and madmen are the only ones who live there.

The Swamps.  To the south of the mountains are the swamps.  The swamps are divided into two regions.  The northern swamp and the southern or inner swamp.  The northern swamp is unpleasant and generally a place where the unwanted from both the mountains and the valley end up.  There is a self appointed king there, who weaker and more unorganized than the others lusts for their lands.  To the south is the land of constant disease, where only the criminal or worse dare live.