A Defining Choice

In the world of Corta not even the longest lived elf, or immortal lich, can remember a time before the portals. There is evidence that long ago Corta had its own civilizations untouched by out-world influence, but those times aren't even kept alive by stories, memorialized only by ruins worth too little to excavate. Many believe that not a single descendant of these civilizations exists, and that all who live on Corta are descended from peoples from other worlds. Since every nation and country seems to have their own legendary origins, this theory seems sound.

Today Corta is a world of contrasts and friction, where some lands have been stable for generations, and others receive influxes of strangers, monsters, or artifacts on a daily basis. Some countries are wealthy and elite, others are poor and , but the one constant is variation. Every country is cosmopolitan, but just because they have a variety of races doesn't mean there is equality between them, and newcomers to Corta are perhaps the most universally looked down upon minority, regardless of their race.

Enemies tend to dislike each other of course, and are never in short supply. Peoples in unstable lands envy the stability of others, monsters come through portals as if from hell itself, and entire refugee populations find themselves fighting for resources in their new world that are simply in too short a supply to share with those who came before.

On Corta people make life-and- decisions every day. Sometimes their arrival itself was because of a gamble, other times a government must be overthrown for the greater good, wealth must be stolen, or it falls to someone to decide who gets to eat—and who starves. Some choices are so monumental that they change the path of a person's life forever. These are the tales of those Defining Choices.