The small coastal village of Pearl Fort stands on the edge of Cloudvast Sea, weeks away from the large city of Jannisfar.  A village known mostly for its fishing, and its small but productive pearl beds, it attracts a small amount of trade from those who ply their ships along other villages on the coast.  Few from Pearl Fort have been far from the village, being as they have the Farlight Forest with its fey, elves, and trolls to the north, and the vast Vellowgrass Plains to the west, with their communities of smallfolk (halflings and gnomes).  The Nightfang Mountains to the northwest hold the orc hordes on the surface, and the dwarves and even stranger creatures underneath.  The bulk of the fragmented human empire of Mekarium lies to the south in dozens of city-states and tiny countries, the once-united empire broken generations ago by fractious nobles, ambitious generals, and incursions by monsters that could no longer be held at bay by the threat of toothless force.

Now the human kingdoms hold to a patchwork of their former glory, allying themselves for years, before warring and trading alliances again.  Incursions over the centuries from monsters and planar breaches both have diluted human blood in some places - aasimars rule the city-state of Silverlight, tieflings lord over the tiny twin countries of Linneas and Barres, a half-dragon sits on the throne of Flamekeep, a quartet of genasi (one for each major element) form the crown council of Wyvernsgate.  As the human kingdoms lost power, the other races could emerge from their bastions and join the communities that had once been closed to them, forming vibrant pockets of elves and dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-orcs, and others throughout the remnants of the Merkarium.

Each small country and city-state attempts to hold on to what they can, by fair means or foul according to their ruler's nature.  The monsters that had helped break Mekarium were not all slaughtered in its fall, and as some parts of the empire fell and were never reclaimed by the civilized races, they became homes for those who had long been kept at bay.

Pearl Fort is only a few hundred years old, a tiny hamlet settled in the aftermath of the empire's fall, and now the only decent-sized town for many dozens of miles.  Yet the sleepiness of Pearl Fort is about to be disrupted, for in the temples there has been a vision of a long-lost heir to the ancient empire, someone who could be a powerful force for good, or a tool for immense evil...
This message was last updated by the GM at 11:16, Sun 13 Jan 2019.

The small gods of Pearl Fort:

Mogolob - the oyster goddess who watches over the pearl beds.  A vast size for an oyster, she gives a pearl the size of a large apple every ten years to those who worked her beds with care and respect.  Such pearls had been part of your the local noble family's wealth.

Suplash - the god of the well.  A well of sweet water is worth a great deal next to the sea, and Suplash has kept the water abundant and sweet.  He resembles a small wavelet that is sometimes seen in buckets of drawn water.

Faena Whesta - a goddess of the ship's figurehead of the Swansdown.  The Merry Maid was the first ship to have found the oyster bed where Pearl Fort was founded.  The ship is long gone, but the figurehead remains and is afixed to a new ship (the Swansdown being the sixth) when the old one rots out from underneath it.

Toron - god of the first stone.  Toron forms the literal cornerstone of the town, being the first stone laid in the original fort walls (now part of the town hall).

Flisk - goddess of the gatehouse.  Flisk is the cobblestones of the road that stop at the town wall, and is thus the goddess of comings and goings (and gossip).  At least of that one specific area.