Dead Gods...

[Literal Chaos]

Right, so I've had this idea running around in my head for a while now.  It originally began as a half-serious dialogue between my then-girlfriend and I about the potential for a particularly sexy campaign of D&D, provided we made some very open minded geek-friends.  As I usually do when I talk about such things, I began to contemplate their mythology and religion and whatnot, and the ideas exploded from there.

The end result can only be defined as a post-apocalyptic high-fantasy setting that in no way resembles the D&D franchise it sprouted from.

In short, this place used to be a paradise where the gods kept a close eye on the humans they liked most and their descendants, a great and somewhat unnaturally designed island with (what used to be) varied and diverse terrain.  At some point the paradise ended, and the gods grew to become mistrustful of one another for reasons thus-far unknown to humanity, forming their followers' societies insular and paranoid societies that eventually went to war with one-another.  The end result of the conflict that ensued was that one of the gods died, and this in turn just made everything go wrong.

Two millenia later, the world as the humans know it is dying...  Magic died almost as soon as the Goddess did, and any life-force that was left behind has been trying to follow it ever since.  Food won't grow, livestock refuse to reproduce, and what beasts and humans do thrive seem tainted somehow... unnatural, mad and in some cases, mutated. 

Still, there is some hope in this time of overwhelming darkness.  In the Burning Wastes, a single city clusters around what used to be a grand lake, digging around in the caves beneath it for mushrooms when the rulers decide the fish need to reproduce for a season.  In the east, across the mountains, at least four small nation-states have risen to defend any village that will grow them food or mine them gold.  And in the west, in the tainted forests across the Great Lake, a strange new breed of magic begins to take shape, replacing the once ever-present mana with raw life-force...

Dozens of potential stories here, any one of which would satisfy me to one degree or another.  I've been looking at this place from the top down for far too long and all I need is a little help getting down to ground-level.  Won't you join me?