"Ida's Guide to Worlds Beyond Our Own" is a captivating and whimsical journey through a fantastical universe, offering readers a unique blend of reimagined races, enchanting ancestries, and thrilling adventures. Written by the witty and insightful Ida Holly, the book not only introduces creative variants for existing Dungeons and Dragons races but also delves into the mysteries of occult-themed campaigns and magical realms. With detailed explorations of redwood forests, haunted alleys, and mythical creatures, this guide serves as a treasure trove for both seasoned adventurers and newcomers, promising endless possibilities and enchanting narratives. Whether you seek to expand your role-playing horizons or embark on thrilling quests, Ida's Guide invites you to step into a world where imagination knows no bounds.

Ida’s Guide To Worlds Beyond Our Own

Explore the Occult Forests of Dunwel Fen.

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Tankren, Fate’s Frontier

Tankren is a medium-sized town that is well on its way to becoming a small city, shrouded in Gloomy sheets of fog. Part of the town is built in a semi-circle surrounding a large murky lagoon. With the remainder stretching outward in a single long street leading away from the water and flanked on either side by tall buildings that rise up two floors, encircled in balconies.
Tankren is unlike any other town. built around a riverboat casino that occasionally travels up and down the river that marks Dunwel Fen’s northern border. And like this casino, the culture of Tankren has been completely driven by the idea of fate. The town is more than just inspired by gambling, it is defined by it. For generations, its people have lived lives decided by random chance, trading not in coins but in casino chips, and determining their fates at the spin of a wheel and the toss of a die.

two areas of tankren paint a clear status between those with and those without. Shoreside to the east, low and close to the lagoon, constantly flooding with the seasons. And Redcliff, lifted high up and built of beautiful townhouses and parks safe from all but the worst of weather.

In Tankren the Grand Roulette is a wheel that when spun changes the fates and fortunes of the spinner, new houses, Fabulous wealth, and powerful enchantments, right alongside destitution, prison sentences, and Horrible curses. All are chosen at random, and all are left up to fate. All people of the town might be required to spin the wheel at some time or another. And it just so happens that when the characters arrive in tankren the Festival of Fate is about to begin. An event held every ten years where everyone who lives in tankren must spin the wheel.

The people of the town are preparing to possibly lose everything or completely change the trajectory of their lives. Moving from one of the 3 areas of the town, gaining or losing property, position, or title. Many are spending every coin they have facing the possibility of losing them all in the coming days.

The Festival of Fates

The Ruins of Felshire

The city of Felshire was once the throne of the Queen of Elves. Her reign lasted thousands of years but ended when the curse befell her people turning them into monsters. Now a hollow empty husk full of the shadows of the past the Kingdom is made up of houses and structures of white ironwood all built upon the enormous Elder Elms. It is said to be  among the first civilizations in this world; it is beyond ancient and now empty. A sad place that serves as a cenotaph to those fallen in the disaster that befell this place 30 years ago.

A castle for ghosts, a great place to find a medium.

The two-floor inn stands on a lonely crossroads, The only building for miles. It looks to have once been a vibrant, popular place, but now it is completely empty and just a step away from run down.
It has two floors and an open stable on the side covered by the second floor overhang.

Inside it is much nicer with Bright red drapes hanging over an open vaulted ceiling. Soft record music plays from a Gramophone and a soft hum comes off of three large industrial machines performing some kind of brewing.
At the bar A single patron, A Fallen Elf, sits at the counter behind which an elderly human man cleans a glass. Both regard the characters as they enter but otherwise pay no mind.

Crowcover Inn was once famous as its Patron was a well known adventurer. He had the tavern built many decades ago out in the most Isolated part of the world he could find so that people would have to “Earn it”. It has since become a local spot to escape the Phantom Rain and a popular middle place for hunters to meet up but it mostly stands otherwise empty.

Crowcover Inn

Valley of Three Matrons

An extremely vast hilly valley with chest-high waves of grass and enormous boulders as far as the eye can see. The Matron’s Gove is at the heart of Dunwel Fen and is generally peaceful if not empty as it provides little in the way of cover should you fall prey to a Phantom Rain While embarking on the miles long journey required to cross it. It takes its name from the large statue of the three matrons, Founders of the Luvo Coven who act as the guardians and defacto rulers of the entire forest.


The statue depicts three women each holding two magical foci. wand, staff, amulet, book, orb, and totem. While clearly, it is a place of significance it has been visited for some time.

The Vastweld

Just south of the matron’s Gove is the Vastweld a magical region of Dunwel Fen where the land itself has grown to 100 times its size. Huge towering blades of grass, shaded pod frons, cat tails that sway in the wind and rise like towers over head. Even insects here are big enough to endanger the travelers passing through, which may as well have shrunk down to an inch or so tall.

The Stone Banshee

Considered a historical myth, this statue, being consumed by a tree, is the only thing close to evidence of the events of the Bramblefen disaster. It is said the elven woman the statue depicts reaching upward, was a unmatched warrior so zealous in her crusade against the humans that her fellow elves cast her out for being too ruthless.

Thousands of years ago when dunwel was the heart of the world, in the age of beasts, there lived an elven woman. So powerful and ruthless in their war against the humans was she that after the battle was won her eyes turned on her own leaders. Her treacherous turn meant execution.


But her power was too strong for death. She had already conquered it and mere execution would not be enough to stop her. So her body was interred in stone and six of the Felshire’s most powerful mages laid their staves as its base, locking the statue in time so that her soul might never find its way back to the world of the living to exact its wrath for thousands of years of imprisonment.

Riverbend Estate

A large mansion on a vast property built right against the fast moving waters of one of Dunwel Fen’s Many rivers. It has been abandoned for decades, the previous lord was executed for toying with “Dark Magic ''. And no one has so much as ventured there to trim the hedges since. But when the lights in the tower started the locals became nervous. Shades have begun haunting all along the river and the woods around the estate.

The clean white riverboat with a stark red paddle wheel on the back. It dominates the semicircular Lagoon port visible all the wat from the front of town down the main street where it sits perfectly framed. It’s two black smokestacks below out clouds of white clouds of steam and its decks are lively on all levels with gamblers.

Inside are three floors of gambling halls featuring mechanical marvels like slot machines, and electric lights, not seen anywhere else in Dunwel fen. Each floor is dedicated to the level at stake, with the lowest where you first board, being games as little as one Chip to ante in. If the players show an aptitude for gambling or winning, They will be invited to the next higher deck, the highest of which is where thousands of gold, Magical Items, and even Land deeds can be won.

Infante’s Dice

Faberwall’s Tower

In the redwoods of southeastern Dunwel is a tower that doesn't belong there. An imperial tower from off of the wizards college in the capital city nearly 500 miles away! Teleported into the middle of the forest by some incomprehensible means The tower stands at a massive 350 feet with no obvious entrance on the ground level.

Castle Kradsten

At the absolute edge of the woods, built atop a steep hill that is as close to the border of Dunwel Fen without actually living it is the castle of the Duke of Dunwel Fen. The regional lord who is absolutely never seen in the lands themselves.

The castle is brilliant and more modern than anything in the rest of Dunwel by far. But still in the marble halls in the capital it is said to rule over dunwel is like ruling over a King Infante’s Tomato garden. An insult at best.

A Hilly region laden with hundreds and hundreds of stone statues. Little is known about these statues other than their incalculable age. They do not depict any race or ancestry of Crudilex and their clothing and garb is strange. What is known is they number in the thousands and vary in size completely filling the hill under a blanket of moss and overgrowth.

The Garden of Statues

Old Man of the Lake

Deep in the southern woods where the leaves turn red and the wood turns white there is a lake 500 feet deep with a ent of petrified wood who bobs and drifts in the drink. Once the waters around this endlessly drifting Tree Ent were sacred healing elixirs to the elves, in ages past the Old Man taught was their friend but in thousands of years their history was forgotten. To this day this large bore-shaped Ent floats lazily in the waters- his mere presence purifying them.

The old man of the Lake is ancient and has spent the better part of 5000 years drifting in his lake almost completely undisturbed. He is happy to stay out of all conflicts in the world at large and cares for very little. Convincing him to do anything, even so much as talking is a challenge.


The only thing the old man of the Lake is really interested in is resting, Bobbing endlessly in the waters of his lake.

The Haunted Shallows

 Filled with dense unforgiving mist that obscures vision and casts beams of light through the sun strangled  canopy above.

The shallows is in fact an immensely haunted region filled with countless incredibly weak ghosts who have manifested as mist. Unable to possess any but the most weakened beings they have amalgamated together to make escaping the shallows difficult. A crew of a massive golem machine called an Automata have been trapped in this predicament for nearly a week now and are growing quite desperate to escape.


Home to the dangerous Hordes of Whitescaled Forgon cannibals. The Raindrinkers. The western area of Dunwel is easily the most dangerous as it is crisscrossed with deep, underwater caverns and sheer drop-off cliffs. All covered in mats of slimy slippery moss and ferns making travel here a nightmare for anyone who cannot swim as the Crocodile-like Forgon do

The Forgon have driven themselves mad by drinking the Phantom Rain and have taken to eating eachother in bizarre monstrous rituals. But they are all to happy to have new meat to sample and regularly hunt humanoids to consume.

Raindrinker’s Bog

The Noctrite Crater

The moon over crudilex is a rich arcane resource, but it's broken and shattered by the devastation brought on by a mysterious eldritch force. However meteorites of a material called Noctrite fall on occasion and when they do it becomes a race to find them. In dunwel they are nearly always discovered by the coven crows giving them the advantage. One such event is predicted to occur during Drakul’s game.

The Bramblefen

Taking up the entire south-western corner of the lands of Dunwel Fen is the Bramblefen. A vast cursed land and scar of an ancient war between the Elves and Humans of crudilex in the distant past. This twisted ruin is an impossibly cyclopean growth of massive strangling thorny vines that fill the skies and cast in shadow the ruins of an ancient human city it strangles below. A curse from the ages past still to this day prevents humans from even being able to set foot into the shadow of the Bramblerose vines.

A massive rose rises into the sky and dominated the landscape. Its twisting vines and building tall thorns crowd the sky above in a reaching web for using and lowering throughout the strangled skeleton of a long forgotten city ruin. At the heart of which stands a cathedral out of which the Stem of the massive- titanic- perhaps even Devine creature grows. The Bramblefen Rose.

The Children of The Forest

The Bramblefen is a very dangerous and hostile region full of magically mutated beasts and plants. Because of this very few dare enter or truely even get within miles of it. This makes it the perfect place for beings like the Unblooded eladrin to hide. Called the Children of the Forest these fey beings are hunted eternally by their magical siblings who personify predator and prey respectively and nature’s relationship with violence. Because of this link each of the Unblooded Granny protects has an opponent whose only goal in life is to find them and kill them.

But as of yet Nanny’s Powers have been protecting and shielding the Unblooded in their treehouse village from their Siblings, the Blooded. And as long as she remains alive they will be safe, so they are zealous and loyal to her holistically.

Arcwall, Village of Witches

The secret village of the Luvo Witches Coven. Hidden in a tiny protected mirror dimension called “The Occlusion”. The path into and out of the village is controlled by the hag, A harpy named Auntie Arush.


Arcwall is named after The village's crescent moon  shape. Built upon a giant wall which once made up a circle of a massive Well. The stones gradually climb upward like a staircase forming the main road. On both sides of the curved wall huts and walkways are crisscrossed in seemingly impossible arrays stacked atop each other in the most peculiar ways. All throughout which domestic monsters and broom mounted witches fly all around about their daily tasks.

The Circle of the Coven Druid

Here we have a sneak peek at a brand new Druid subclass! The circle of the Coven Druid, Witches whose arcane curiosity and study is not held back by the standards that society attempts to place upon them. No creature, beast or monster is evil. It is part of nature! Just as no magic is evil. To call something evil simply because you refuse to study and learn about or from it is a failing that the Covens can not abide! Learn, Share, and grow your as witches with the Circle of the Coven Druid!