Abeir-Toril

Abeir-Toril, commonly known simply as Toril, is the name of the planet on which the Al-Qadim, Forgotten Realms, Maztica, and Kara-Tur campaign settings are set. The name is archaic, meaning "cradle of life." It is orbited by one moon named Selûne and by a cluster of asteroids, known as the Tears of Selûne.

"Abeir" is properly the name of Toril's sister world, which has been cut off from Toril for tens of thousands of years. It was apparently a land of fantastic landscapes and a race of draconic humanoids called dragonborn.1 Some of Abeir's land exchanged places with Toril during the magical catastrophe known as the spellplague in the Year of Blue Fire (1385 DR).2

Toril consists of various continents and islands, including Faerûn, Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, Osse, Anachrone, and Katashaka, a sub-Saharan-like continent south of Maztica,3 where humanity appeared. 4 Yal-Tengri (also known as The Great Ice Sea) is Toril's equivalent of the Arctic Ocean. It is barely known at all. In the ancient time, the major city on its shore was Winterkeep, it is now the trade city of Naupau, in Sossal. Far in the north of the sea is a small island dominated by a cathedral-like spire, inhabited by gnomes of Gond. The Yal-Tengri is free of ice for the six summer months of the year. The Endless Ice Sea is the name of the western Faerûn part of it. Somewhere there is Jhothûn, the long-forgotten capital of a mighty empire of Giants.

See also Faerunian pantheon.

Creative origins:
Toril got its start with Ed Greenwood, a librarian who signed a deal with TSR's Jeff Grubb to buy Ed's campaign setting, a world rich in history and culture. The name "Toril" was suggested by Jeff Grubb, who had used it for his own unrelated campaign world. Abeir- was added as a prefix so that the world's name was placed at the beginning of an alphabetical encyclopedia.

Official material:

• Frostburn

• Stormwrack

• Jhothûn

• The Horde (zip)

References:

1. Cordell, Bruce (2008). "Magic in the Forgotten Realms." "Even the long forgotten world of Abeir burned in the plague of spells, despite having been unreachable and cut off from Faerûn for tens of millennia. Portions of Abeir’s landscape were transposed with areas of Toril in the disaster. Such landscapes included their living populations, and thus places such as Akanûl and Tymanther lie as if new-birthed on Faerûn’s face. Across the Trackless Sea, and entire continent of the lost realm reappeared (called Returned Abeir) subsuming the continent of Maztica."

2. James, Brian (2008). "Spellplague: The Wailing Years." "A portion of Toril's sibling world Abeir violently exchanged places with large sections of Chondath and western Chessenta during the Spellplague. The shattered ruins of cities lie broken at the bottom of ravines or thrust high atop stone spires, a constant draw to adventurers seeking troves of lost gold. The land today is characterized by crazed stone spires, cavernous ravines, and cliffs like petrified waves. Freefloating earthmotes host miniature forests, grasslands, lakes, and ever-replenishing waterfalls that mist the land below in draperies of mist. The wild landscape is perfectly suited to the tempestuous population of genasi that now claim the land as their own. Akanûl is the name of this genasi-ruled realm, and the capital city of Airspur holds the bulk of the nation's population."

3. Tom Costa (2005). Africa in the Realms. “I know several folks (myself included) who transplanted Atlas Games’ excellent Nyambe (with some tweaks), which also built off many of the old 2E articles in Dragon on African gaming, to the large undefined continent southwest of Nimbral and southeast of Maztica”

[*] Brian R. James (2006-05). A Grand History of the Realms (PDF) p.8. “Today, many sages surmise that humanity first appeared in the northern savannas of Katashaka around -34,000 DR”