World of Link by Linksalot

The Three Realms of Ash, Dust, and Crown
A fantasy campaign setting guide for adventures across Overworld, Underrealm, and Middleplain.

Setting Overview
This world is divided into three connected realms, each with its own cultures, dangers, and legends:

Overworld — the surface realm of kingdoms, roads, forests, courts, and war camps
Underrealm — the dark mirrored world beneath, full of ancient woods, hidden rulers, monsters, and secrets
Middleplain — the sprawling in-between of caverns, tunnels, dungeons, and passageways linking everything together
Though many believe these three realms make up all existence, old stories speak of stranger places beyond them — distant powers, lost worlds, and beings not born under any known sky.

This is a setting of:

outlaw survival
royal cruelty
hidden powers
ancient laws
realm-crossing journeys
found family
rebellion against destiny
The tone blends fantasy adventure, dark folklore, political danger, and strange wonder.

The Three Realms
Overworld
Overworld is the surface realm and the one most travelers know best. It is a land of kingdoms, roads, ruins, courts, villages, and battlefields. It contains both beauty and danger, from fairy lands and royal cities to hostile wilderness and war camps.

Many of the world’s strictest laws and oldest traditions were formed here. Noble houses maintain power through bloodlines, fear, and carefully guarded customs. For common folk, the Overworld can be a place of trade and adventure. For the wrong kind of person, it can also be a place of exile, bounty hunters, and death sentences.

Overworld is where rumors spread fastest. It is the realm where songs are sung, wanted posters travel, and legends become public.

Underrealm
Underrealm lies beneath and opposite Overworld — a shadowed, older realm of subterranean forests, hidden strongholds, strange rulers, and powerful creatures. It is not merely underground. It feels like a reversal of the surface world: darker, rougher, more primal, and more ancient.

Its great regions include places such as Darkforest and Grimforest, each carrying its own reputation. Some parts of Underrealm are ruled. Others are endured. Others are whispered about only in warning.

Underrealm is a place of iron, roots, old magic, and survival. It is home to kings no surface court would recognize and dangers no surface knight is trained to face.

Middleplain
Middleplain is the vast in-between realm: a near-endless web of tunnels, dungeons, caverns, buried roads, and forgotten passages connecting the other two worlds. It is where secrets travel. It is where monsters hide, smugglers vanish, and lost things remain lost.

Those who know Middleplain well can move between realms without the knowledge of kings—those who do not usually disappear.

Middleplain is not a kingdom. It has no single ruler, no universal law, and no true center. It belongs to whoever survives it.

Major Powers and Cultures
Elfdonia
Elfdonia is one of the most feared and rigid kingdoms in the Overworld. To outsiders, it appears elegant, ancient, and noble. Inside its borders, it is governed by severe customs, bloodline obsession, and violent control.

Its royal traditions are harsh and unnatural. Power is guarded through family hierarchy, obedience, and the punishment of those who break sacred expectations. Certain bodily traits, unusual inheritances, and forbidden callings are treated not as curiosities, but as threats to the order of the crown.

Elfdonia is known for:

strict royal law
severe punishment for defiance
fear of forbidden traits and powers
control over inheritance and succession
hostility toward those who reject their assigned role
In taverns and courts alike, Elfdonia is spoken of carefully. Even far from its borders, its influence is felt.

Darkforest
Darkforest is one of Underrealm’s most important domains. It is a place of shadowed authority, old strength, and dangerous respect. Unlike the polished cruelty of surface courts, Darkforest rules through presence, survival, and force.

Darkforest is associated with:

harsh but ancient kingship
subterranean wilderness
old power structures
strange loyalties
The politics of Underrealm
To many in Overworld, Darkforest sounds like a nightmare. To many in Underrealm, it is simply power.

Grimforest
Grimforest is a more secretive and less understood region of Underrealm. Stories describe it as a place where the lost remain hidden, where fugitives vanish from the surface world, and where only those with purpose should go.

It has a reputation for concealment, danger, and mystery. People speak of it quietly, and not always accurately.

Pixiland
Pixiland is one of the brighter names in the world’s lore — a realm of fey bloodlines, wonder, beauty, and dangerous charm. It is associated with old magic, noble houses, and a kind of brilliance that can feel welcoming or otherworldly depending on who enters it.

Pixiland represents the more dazzling side of the setting: adventure, enchantment, courtly spectacle, and wild magic.

The Norse War Camps
Beyond crowns and courts are the warrior cultures of the camps — places where reputation is earned through endurance, battle, and fearlessness. These camps stand apart from more refined kingdoms and often respect strength over birth.

In these places, the right kind of outlaw may become a hero.

Famous Figures of the Three Realms
These names are known across taverns, courts, campfires, and whispered rumors. Some are celebrated. Some are feared. Some are treated as living proof that the world is changing.

Link, the Runaway Prince
Across Overworld, people tell stories of a young elven royal who fled the cruelty of Elfdonia and vanished before the crown could reclaim him. Some say he is a traitor. Some call him a symbol of freedom. Others believe he carries a secret so dangerous that a kingdom would spill royal blood to possess it.

Among common folk, Link is becoming a legendary figure: the prince who chose exile over obedience.

Alex, the Young King of Darkforest
In Underrealm, the name Alex carries the weight of authority. A startlingly young ruler by the standards of kings, Alex is known as a sharp-tongued and formidable power in Darkforest. Surface stories exaggerate him into something half-mythic: too young to rule, too dangerous to ignore.

In truth or rumor, Alex represents a new generation of power rising from below.

Dandy, the Dust Wanderer
No one agrees on what Dandy truly is. Some call him a druid. Some say he is a spirit. Some insist he fell from a world beyond the three realms. Whatever the truth, the Dust Wanderer appears in stories wherever the strange edges of the world begin to show.

Children laugh at the stories. Scholars argue over them. Travelers keep an eye on the horizon when his name comes up.

Emily of Pixiland
Emily is known in stories as a fey princess with one foot in courtly destiny and the other in adventure. In songs, she appears as a bright and daring noble who stepped beyond the safety of enchanted halls to seek the wider world.

To many, she represents the glamour of old magic made brave rather than distant.

Scar, the Wolf Knife
Scar is the kind of figure people mention quietly. Depending on the tale, he is a bodyguard, assassin, shapeshifter, tracker, mercenary, or curse in human form. It is said that when a hunt cannot fail, Scar is already on the trail.

He belongs to the dangerous class of famous people whose reputation arrives before they do.

Rose of the War Camps
In battle songs and whispered retellings, Rose has become a name associated with ferocity, survival, and defiance. In some places, she is described as a warrior cast out by one world and embraced by another. In others, she is spoken of like a storm wearing armor.

Her legend grows strongest where courage matters more than pedigree.

Ax, the Hidden Smith
Ax is less publicly understood than the others, which only feeds the rumors. Some say he is dead. Some say he is in hiding. Some say he vanished into a forest no royal hunter can cross. Others insist he is forging something that will one day change the balance of the realms.

Whether treated as a fugitive, a craftsman, or a prophecy, Ax has already entered legend.

This setting is a three-realm fantasy world shaped by cruel kingdoms, hidden regions, outlaw legends, and dangerous wonder. Overworld, Underrealm, and Middleplain are bound together by old power, forbidden secrets, and famous young figures whose actions are already changing history.

A campaign here is about crossing realms, surviving dangerous systems, and deciding whether the party will protect the world’s legends, challenge them, or become legends themselves.

I will host this game sometimes. It will expand throughout, but you're free to go about this on your own in comments!