What Everyone Knows

Humans arrived here about a thousand years ago.  They were welcomed by the Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings who were being hard pressed by fell creatures led by the Twisted Ones piling out of the Wild Lands far to the north.  The humans joined the fight providing new vigor to the defense and driving the fell creatures off.  The humans settled around the Central Sea founding the great cities of Carson, Marnor, Mora, Kivel, Canvil, Koda, and others.  Mora was the greatest of these and eventually conquered them all founding an empire that stretched from the Great Desert in the south, all the lands around the Central Sea, and to the northern Palian Mountains beyond which lay the Wild Lands.  It was a human-centric Empire, but the Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings were key contributors esteemed for their superior technical, arcane, and natural knowledge respectively.

For hundreds of years the Peace of Mora reigned, but the great Empire crumbled under plagues, barbarian invasions, and civil war.  The Empire contracted down to the hinterlands of the great city of Mora.  It was an era of city states and isolated enclaves.

About 20 years ago that began to change.  Devit became the Emperor of the much reduced Moran Empire.  He and his allies managed to reunite the squabbling cities of the Tasprian Peninsula under Devit's rule.  The cities around the Central Sea trembled with fear, began to rebuild their neglected defenses, and expand their war fleets to fend off resurgent Mora.  Just this last year Devit launched his legions north by land striking through the sparsely populated lands of the barbarians, taking the ports of Marnor and Canvil by land, and sending a column to the far northern city of Venga.

Things have begun to go wrong.  North of Marnor in the delta of the River Nor the legions have encountered a monster out of the legends; a dragon some say.  Venga has resisted with vigor apparently led by mago-mechanical constructs apparently powered by Wild Land magic.  Devit called up the 17 and 31 year olds to renew the push, and now all fear that their sons, daughters, grandfathers, and/or grandmothers will the next to be sent to the Northern Front.

Here in the Midlands the Empires legions have been sent away and the local leadership has been left on their own with the admonishment to do whatever you like but pay your ever rising tax assessment, fulfill your ever larger recruitment quotas, and make no trouble with your neighbors.  In some ways it is a good time as the ever hungry maw of the Imperial Army pays in gold for weapons, armor, wool, beer, and food stuffs which are gathered at Burnton and sent down the Troutdeep River to the coast on Dwarven steam barges.  The Midland Ring road is busy with traffic, the Dwarf mines of the Wreck are busy, Halflings are planting more acreage, and the Elves of the Oldfeld are happy to be ignored.  The mad wizard Pye in the Cairn Chase Forest is thrilled that no one is paying much attention to whatever is is he is up to.

In other ways it is a terrible time with many young people having headed north to never return, others returning with wounds that leave them unable to fight, and horrid memories.  In the absence of regular Imperial patrols banditry and fell creatures are rising. Rebels and enemies of the Empire, stirred up by Mora's great rival Koda, are becoming more active.

Well Known Places in the Midlands

Five largest towns
Burnton - largest town, famous for its breweries
Leechfeld - famous for the Triplespire Temple of Athena and the White College of Magic
Staffleford - famous for its mine machinery works and footwear
Tealford - Mining and Coal, Dwarf underground town, The Wreak, just to the south
Duddingly - Weapons works, Elves just to the east in the Oldfeld Wood

The mad wizard Pye has a tower in the center of the Cairn Chase Forest and the forest is full of his horrible minions.  It is dangerous and no one should ever cut one of its trees.  He once removed a plague of rats in Leechfeld by conjuring up mounds of poisoned cheese, which the rats ate, died by the thousands in the streets, which then rotted away over the course of the next year leaving the town worse off due to the subsequent disease and stench.  Pye collected a large payment for fulfilling his contract.

Middlemoor Goal between Duddingly and Tealford is where some of the Empire's most dangerous criminals are sent.  Most famous is Fred, fifty dead in the shed, Paxton, aka Fred the Shed.  He has been there nearly forty years and the story of his serial murder spree is still used to frighten Midland children as in "Best, be home before dark or Fred the Shed will get you and carry you to
his shed!"

This is a mashup of my own home-brew campaign world and Monkey Blood Design's The Midderlands:  https://monkeyblooddesign.co.uk/The-Midderlands/