Post Sundering, Post Sundering
SEA, SKY, FAITH, EMPIRE
"Walk quietly. Listen well. The signal is older than you and deeper than you."
Chapter I - Welcome to Aeon
Imagine a world roughly the size of our own. In its warm middle waters lies the Mar de Oro, the Golden Sea: a long island chain of colonies, forts, pirate harbors, trade routes, and old secrets. A warm sea between greater continents, close enough to tempt every power, far enough to let secrets fester, and placed so well that the next war of the world may begin there. That is the stage.
The people of Aeon pray to the All-Father, fear the curse of the moons, bury their dead with candles and song, and ride airships lifted by a substance they call Éterlumin. They believe their miracles are divine, their rites are sacred, and their engines are clever pieces of craft. They are not fools for believing so. They are simply early.
Every wonder in Aeon - chapel, laboratory, battlefield, or the lift chamber of an airship - belongs to one underlying order. Fortera and Éterlumin are not separate mysteries. They are two faces of the same deep reality, half-grasped by priests, engineers, scholars, and prodigies who have not yet realized they are standing around the same fire.
Four Winds
The Mar de Oro is a Golden Sea of broad horizons, stormy waters, and archipelagos that now matter far more than their size should permit. Harbor fees still matter. Sailors still lie about how bad the storm was. And three nations may suddenly be willing to kill for a chart mark in the margin.
Airships rise on Éterlumin, their lift chambers glowing with a light that engineers measure and priests argue about. The early age of flight has begun, and with it a new kind of power - one that crowns, companies, and renegades all mean to claim.
The Faith of the Codex holds the old continent together and tears it apart. Synods accuse, inquisitors ask questions in tones that mean the answer is already trouble, and reformers whisper that the All-Father's wonder may have a physics after all.
Valdegracia, Albionis, Stroomdijk, Luminore, Eisenmark, Volkharov, and the Republic of Éirighdún - old crowns, chartered companies, and colonial ventures pressing their weight into the present. In 7202, the world is moving faster.
Chapter IV
"Every flag is a promise and a threat simultaneously."
The world your character inhabits did not begin with Mar de Oro. The harbors, the colonial outposts, the counting houses and missions and naval yards scattered across the Golden Sea, these are extensions of something older, vaster, and in many ways more consequential than any treasure fleet or treaty port. They are extensions of the continental powers: the crowns, republics, churchly bodies, and national formations that gave your character their first language, their deepest loyalties, and the unexamined assumptions that govern how they move through the world even when they are ten thousand miles from home.
The Mother-Crown. The Eldest Authority. The House That Held the Center.
Valdegracia is the oldest continental power, where crown, church, and noble houses have grown so thoroughly entangled that legitimacy itself has become a family argument carried on in cathedral corridors and cedar-scented archives.
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The Old Kingdom. The Naval Crown. The Power That Built an Empire Before Anyone Agreed to Let It.
Albionis is a maritime kingdom of ancient habit and naval genius, built on commercial calculation, quiet intelligence, and the settled confidence of a crown that believes civilization has a shape and Albionis lies near its center.
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The Chartered Kingdom. The Empire of Ledgers. The State That Understood What Sovereignty Really Costs.
Stroomdijk is a parliamentary monarchy reborn from commercial revolt, whose real power lives in the Wisselbank, the great chartered companies, and a Directorate so deliberately unreadable that no foreign ambassador can predict its next move.
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The Civic Republic. The Solarian Conscience. The Nation That Decided Reason and Faith Were the Same Argument.
Luminore is a Solarian republic that believes faith and reason are the same argument, organized around the continent's oldest university, a protected press, and a civic tradition that treats every question as legitimate if it is examined with rigor.
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The Disciplined State. The Velasian Tradition. The Kingdom That Believed in Order as a Form of Devotion.
Eisenmark is the disciplined state of the Velasian school, where order is treated as a form of devotion and military, engineering, and theological method share a deep reverence for exactness.
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The Interior Empire. The Enduring State. The Nation That Has Survived What Others Cannot Imagine.
Volkharov is an interior empire defined by vyderzhka, the cultivated art of outlasting what breaks other nations, bound to the Oraclean Communion and expanding slowly overland across distances that would exhaust any other power.
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The Island Republic. The Convenient Friend. The Nation That Has Always Had Strong Opinions About Conflicts It Never Joins.
Éirighdún is a neutral island republic of clans, harbors, and Éterlumin deposits, whose neutrality survives because every major power owes it money and prefers commerce to conquest.
Read moreChapter V - Archipelagos of the Mar de Oro
"The sea does not care who claims it."
Every major continental power has a presence in Mar de Oro. This section is a plain orientation: who is here, what they hold, and what kind of presence they maintain. The full section covers each power in full.
Oldest colonial presence
Valdegracia is the oldest and largest colonial presence in the archipelago. Its viceroys, missions, and garrison commanders have been here since the first decade after the New World's discovery. Its establishments are the most architecturally permanent and the most thoroughly administered. Valdegracia considers Mar de Oro, in some fundamental sense, its.
Albionis - Crown colony
New Avalon is Albionis's colonial establishment, tightly administered under a crown-appointed governor and backed by a Royal Navy presence in adjacent waters. The Bureau of Correspondent Affairs maintains an unofficial presence that is widely understood.
Luminore - Republican colony
Nouvelle Lumière is Luminore's colonial establishment, closely tied to the metropolitan republic by cultural and commercial bonds. Formal, rationalist, and attentive to record.
Stroomdijk - Company holding
Nieuw Waterland is Stroomdijk's colonial holding, operated by the great trading companies under company charter. It exists to generate returns and is governed accordingly.
Autonomous Valdegracian territory
The Newest Thing. The Three Founders. The Colony That Decided What It Was Before Anyone Told It.
The Duchy of Heller is the autonomous Valdegracian colonial territory, governed by Dux Hernanus Costesius de Heller and Dux Franciscus Perezzi. Its flag carries two gold dragons and the silver dragon of the presumed-dead Generalis Costilas. The Duchy owes Valdegracia military allegiance in time of war. In all other matters, it governs itself.
Free port under Valdegracian dominion
Canula Prime is a free port under Valdegracian dominion, its governor directly answerable to the crown. Ships of every flag dock there, goods of every provenance pass through it, and the customs officers have learned to ask fewer questions than the regulations technically require.
Factor houses, no colonial territory
Éirighdún holds no colonial territory. Its factor houses are present in almost every harbor of consequence. The Éirighdúnari factor house in Boca Serena is the closest thing the archipelago has to neutral ground.
No colonial establishment
Volkharov has no colonial establishment. When it appears in Mar de Oro, it does so purposefully: survey vessels, religious missions, diplomats whose mandates are not fully explained. It is watching.
No colonial establishment
Eisenmark has no colonial establishment. Its people appear as individuals, engineers, scholars, mercenary officers, ships' physicians, sought after for their competence and uninvested in the political dynamics that exhaust the colonial powers.
Chapter XV - Ships of Sea and Sky
Wood, canvas, and Éterlumin. What began as a sailor's dream and an engineer's argument now flies under someone's flag - and casts a shadow across whole harbors when she passes overhead.
Grand Justicar-class ship of the line
Deck above deck, her broadside opens like a fortress wall coming alive. A ship of the line is a battle made airborne, wood and canvas raised by Éterlumin, heavy enough to cast a harbor into silence and terrible enough to make whole squadrons turn aside.
Albionis Ghost Squadron
The Banshee-class battlecruiser commands the high wind and darkens the cloud. Built for command, control, and heavy strike, she turns reports from other Albion ships into swift and lethal action. Fast, coordinated, and deadly, she is not the scout before the storm. She is the first thunder of it.
Duchy of Heller Sky Frigate
A nimble command frigate with the bite of a heavy frigate, the Aurora Ventus extends the Duchy's reach across the archipelago. Her signal systems relay orders and battlefield instructions between allied vessels, while her speed and guns let her close, strike, and withdraw before heavier ships can answer.
Duchy of Heller Fast Frigate
Swift as the wind and relentless as the tide. The Veloz-class frigate is built for speed, endurance, and precision. First to arrive, last to leave. Pride of the Duchy. Edge of the spear.
Albionis Workhorse Frigate
The workhorse of the Albionis fleet: a true all-around frigate built for endurance, not a light hull. She carries five heavy cannons in the bow and eleven medium pieces along her broadside, making her as comfortable holding the line as she is cutting through a Valdegracian reinforcement at close range.
Albionis Frontal Assault Frigate
Built for one purpose: the frontal assault. The Wright-class carries eight heavy cannons in the bow and four medium pieces to rake a target head-on. She closes through the smoke, delivers a concentrated bow-battery strike, and turns only after the enemy has felt the full weight of her forward fire.
Chapter XIV
Flintlock, Sail, and the Early Age of Flight
Combat in 7202 is not clean. It is smoke, shouting, damp powder, bad footing, ringing ears, splintered wood, frightened horses, burned hands, officers trying to be heard, and men discovering that courage feels different when the first volley has already passed them.
A flintlock can kill at a distance, but it does not make violence safe. It fires once, then demands time, hands, powder, space, and nerve. Steel remains close because battles still become close. Ships remain terrifying because wood does not merely break under cannon fire; it bursts into knives. Airships add another danger: height, pressure, lift, and Éterlumin systems that can turn a wound into a falling catastrophe.
Equipment matters because it is how people prepare for this reality. A uniform tells others who owns your violence. A boarding harness tells them where you expect to fight. A cuirass says you expect impact. A pressure key says someone trusted you near the part of the ship that keeps the sky beneath your feet.
Uniforms & Field Kit
The armies and air-services of the great powers, rendered as their own troopers would recognise them, from parade colours to boarding harness.
Principalia of Valdegracia
Sun of the Principalia, blade of the empire
Deep-navy coats braided in gold, shakos crowned with the sun. The line infantry of Valdegracia march to muskets and to hymn, the imperial standard on their breast and the sabre at their hip.
Albionis
Red coats, white belts, cold iron
The regulars of the Crown of Albionis: red coats, disciplined volleys, and a bayonet at every third pace. Their colours carry lions and cross, and they hold ground where other armies have already broken.
Albionis
Unseen. Unheard. Unconfirmed.
Black operations of the Bureau of Correspondent Affairs. Tricorn low, face covered, cape shedding rain. Sabotage, extraction, and quiet steel where no red coat is ever admitted to have walked.
Character Gear
What a character carries tells you who they mean to become. Charts, powder, letters of marque - the daily instruments of an early modern world learning to fly.
Sea-chart, sextant, compass, spyglass, dividers
Charts of the working passages, a sextant and spyglass for sun and shore sights, a magnetic compass to check against the sun-rose, dividers and parallel rule for laying off a course, and a sealed commission proving the bearer's right to plot it. Enough to fix a position, run a bearing, and argue the pilotage with a harbourmaster.
Wrench, valve, gauge, journal, Fortera-tuned crystal
Spanners and a pipe wrench for the lift-chamber fittings, a bleed valve and pressure gauge for reading the trim of the cells, heavy gloves for hot brass, and a journal of settings that keep a given hull in the air. The Fortera-tuned crystal in its cage is the reference the whole rig is trued against, watched more carefully than any dial on the panel.
Sabre, flintlock pistol, powder flask, sealed orders
A curved cavalry sabre and scabbard rest above an engraved flintlock pistol, an anchor-stamped powder flask, and a leather wallet sealed with the crown - the letters of marque and sailing orders that authorise a captain's next campaign.
More from the Handbook
Every chapter has its own page. Filter by theme, then open a chapter to read it in full.
Walk quietly.
Read chapterIt is a tale of divine creativity, the struggle for understanding, and the eternal quest for harmony.
Read chapterBefore history there is scripture, and before scripture there is memory trying to survive its own inadequacy.
Read chapterEvery flag is a promise and a threat simultaneously.
Read chapterThe sea does not care who claims it.
Read chapterFaith is not an optional backdrop in Aeon.
Read chapterIt is neither wind, nor flame, nor the pull of the earth, yet it may alter the motion, heat, or other properties of matter.
Read chapterThose who shape Fortera deliberately are called many things: priests, scholars, witches, singers, blessed, dangerous, touched, gifted, or cursed depending on who is watching.
Read chapterThe curse of the moons is among the most feared conditions in Aeon.
Read chapterBefore you play, you build a person.
Read chapterA homeland is not merely the place where you were born.
Read chapterThere is a question that follows you through every port in Mar de Oro, asked in a dozen languages by customs officials, tavern keepers, ship captains, and suspicious strangers with their hands near th...
Read chapterA motivation is an idea.
Read chapterCombat in 7202 is not clean.
Read chapterA ship is never only transportation in this setting.
Read chapterEmpires move on paper as much as on powder.
Read chapterTravel in Aeon should feel like movement through reality, not a blank space between scenes.
Read chapterStrong Mar de Oro campaigns begin with a shared shape.
Read chapterFor a first session, begin with a concrete pressure.
Read chapterTales of Mar de Oro carries no dice, no stat blocks, and no resolution mechanic of its own.
Read chapterEvery essential term of Aeon on one page, Fortera, Éterlumin, the Sundering, the Mar de Oro, and the powers that shape the world.
Spoiler-rich material for the referee: faction secrets, Éterlumin truths, NPCs, campaign paths, and the full San Telmo set-piece. Players should stay out.
Frequently asked
Tales of Mar de Oro is a Golden-Age-of-Sail campaign setting where flintlock navies, airship fleets, and a luminous substance called Éterlumin collide across a colonial archipelago. It ships as a Player's Handbook, a GM Guide, and a growing web codex.
Mar de Oro is system-neutral. The GM Guide's Appendix provides crunch packs and a universal conversion ladder for D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, and Blades in the Dark, so you can run it under whichever engine your table already knows.
Yes. Tales of Mar de Oro is free. The setting, the Player's Handbook, the One-Page Primer, the Character Creation Kit, the Quickstart, the GM Guide, the campaign, and every tool and download on the site are free — no paywall, no account required.
It is written for tables who want naval warfare, sky combat, colonial politics, and a distinctive metaphysics of light and moon-pressure. If you like historical age-of-sail texture with a strange, dangerous power source layered under it, this setting is for you.
Fortera is the underlying field of the setting: the single force that priests read as divine presence, engineers read as a workable medium, and scholars read as a phase of matter. Rites, airship lift, signal engines, prodigies, and moon-pressure are all local expressions of the same Fortera field. Éterlumin is Fortera made partly visible and material.
Éterlumin is the setting's Fortera-bound luminous medium. It lifts airships, powers signals, and blesses harbors, but it ruptures when mishandled and reacts violently to moon-nights. Its own dossier chapter covers hazard states, assay tables, and the political economy around it.
Yes. Mar de Oro is a fantasy world with a science-fiction spine. Fortera behaves as a consistent field with rules, thresholds, and conservation limits; Éterlumin has assay pressures, phase tolerances, and hazard states; moon-nights follow a tidal model that drives a full interactive almanac. Miracles, engines, and curses are different readings of the same underlying physics, and the codex publishes the numbers.
Ships sail. Governors bargain. Synods accuse. Relay towers fail. Deposits are stripped. Smugglers profit. Missionaries preach. Engineers test what they do not understand. A letter carried across the wrong water may alter the fate of nations.
In that living world, your characters matter because they choose, risk, suffer, adapt, and earn the right to be taken seriously.
Community
Mar de Oro is free to read, play, explore and create with, and it always will be.
Create your own characters, adventures, locations and game material. Share them, change them and bring your own corner of the Golden Sea to life. Just give Mar de Oro a friendly credit and do not present your work as official or endorsed.
Have a question, want to show us something you created, propose a collaboration or discuss a commercial project? Contact us at talesofmardeoro@gmail.com. We would be happy to hear from you.
The regional map is adapted from an existing map and carries its own attribution, shown directly beside it. All other Mar de Oro setting material is original.
