What Is Toril?

Welcome to the Forgotten Realms · Reading 2 of 8

When people talk about the Forgotten Realms, they are usually talking about Faerûn.

But Faerûn isn’t the world.

It’s only one part of it.

The world itself is called Toril.¹

And it is much larger than the stories most adventurers know.

A World Beyond Faerûn

Toril is a vast world with many different lands, peoples, civilizations, and histories.¹

Faerûn is its great central continent and the setting for many of the stories associated with the Forgotten Realms.² Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter, Icewind Dale, Chult, Thay, and countless other familiar places can all be found there.

But travel far enough and the world begins to change.

Far to the east, beyond the Hordelands, lie the lands of Kara-Tur, home to realms including Shou Lung, Kozakura, and Wa. To many people in Faerûn, Kara-Tur seems so distant that stories about it can sound like tales from another world.³

Far to the south lies Zakhara, known as the Land of Fate, a distant region associated with vast deserts, magnificent cities, seafaring trade, genies, and magical traditions unfamiliar to many Faerûnians.⁴

And beyond the Trackless Sea to the west lie still more distant lands, including the continent known as Maztica.⁵

Faerûn may dominate many of the stories we know.

But Toril has never been limited to Faerûn.

An Ancient World

Toril is also very old.

Civilizations have risen, expanded, fought wars, discovered extraordinary forms of magic, and disappeared long before the kingdoms familiar to modern adventurers existed.

Their remains are everywhere.

Ruined fortresses lie beneath forests.

Forgotten cities disappear beneath deserts.

Ancient roads lead toward kingdoms that no longer exist.

And sometimes a modern settlement stands directly above the remains of something far older.

This gives Toril one of its defining characteristics:

history is part of the landscape.⁶

The past isn’t safely contained in books.

It can be buried beneath your feet.

One World in a Much Larger Reality

Toril doesn’t exist alone.

The cosmology of Dungeons & Dragons extends beyond a single world to other worlds and planes of existence. The Material Plane contains many worlds, while other planes represent fundamentally different realms of existence.⁷

Magic can sometimes bridge those distances.

Portals can connect places separated by enormous distances or even lead beyond the world itself. Powerful magic and extraordinary circumstances can carry travelers into realities very different from the lands they know.⁷

For most inhabitants of Toril, however, these cosmic possibilities are distant concerns.

Their lives are shaped by their village, city, kingdom, gods, neighbors, and whatever dangers happen to live beyond the nearest road.

The universe may be enormous.

But adventures usually begin somewhere much smaller.

Where Our Journey Begins

And that brings us back to one particular continent.

A place where ancient empires once commanded extraordinary magic.

Where gods have influenced mortal history.

Where enormous cities stand beside dangerous wilderness.

Where forgotten ruins wait beneath mountains, forests, deserts, and streets.

And where countless adventurers have begun their stories.

Faerûn.