The World

This is a land of constant sunset. To travel into the Desert is to burn beneath a sun forever overhead. To travel into the Ice is to freeze beneath eternal night. Only the nine city-states in the land between the desert and the ice are safe. The jungles in this ring are battered by constant storms and floods, with magical barriers protecting the city-states from being swept away in the massive seas towards the desert. The cities are brighter, under an orange sky, as the magic barriers also keep clouds away. But the jungles are constantly dark and dim, unless one were to scale the massive trees that tower above the sky.

Explanation
This is a tidally locked planet. Only the ‘twilight’ area of the planet is a habitable temperature. Storms are caused by the extreme pressure differences between the hot, sun-facing side of the planet and the cold, dark side. This planet is smaller than Earth.

This is a high fantasy swords & sorcery game. Technology is at a medieval level. Politics in the world are similar to ancient Greece. Cities are large and dense, sustained through magically-aided farmlands within the barrier. Communities exist outside these cities, but they are rarely large and almost always need at least a magic-user to survive. Monstrous communities are more likely to thrive (IE, a town of Giants), due to their added strength. There are a large number of nomadic communities as well. Seas are more difficult to cross here than on Earth, due to the constant storms, but it is possible. If a merchant were to go from Eclipse to Augertown, they would rather take the long trip and risk the monsters and heat of the desert rather than cross by sea. Going through the Ice is even worse than the seas, as the Ice near habitable lands is also constantly storming. This means that on top of an extremely cold endless night, there's a blizzard.