The World of Eldhame

A modern-fantasy D&D 5e setting where magic is regulated, unreliable, and very hard to live with

Eldhame is a complete tabletop roleplaying setting designed for Dungeons & Dragons 5e.

It is a modern-fantasy island nation inspired by contemporary British life, where ancient magic hums beneath council estates, commuter lines, and high streets. Leylines power cities. Spirits linger in shared housing. Necromantic waste plants operate behind fish and chip shops.

Magic exists everywhere, but it is licensed, inspected, taxed, and quietly resented. Miracles require paperwork. Shortcuts are illegal. Systems creak under their own weight.

Eldhame is not about destiny or epic prophecy. It is about people trying to survive inside a magical system that barely works.

A Familiar World, Slightly Wrong

Eldhame looks recognisable at first glance, until it does not.

  • Crystal-lit trams and flickering ward pylons
  • Enchanted bus passes that expire mid-journey
  • Corner shops selling illegal charms under the counter
  • Urban druids growing gardens that talk back
  • Ghost neighbours disputing council tax

Magic is infrastructure. It is treated like plumbing, and it breaks just as often.

The People of Eldhame

  • Knackerfolk

    Small, gaunt fey who thrive in places of refuge and neglect. Knackerfolk cluster around scrapyards, abattoirs, junkyards, and forgotten industrial spaces. They are communal, resilient, and very hard to move on.

  • Urban Elves

    Once bound to the Feywild, now completely cut off. Urban elves are long-lived city dwellers whose magic is fading, learned, or regulated out of existence. Concrete has replaced forests, and they have adapted whether they wanted to or not.

  • Leymarked Humans

    Humans permanently altered by exposure to raw leylines through proximity, accident, or institutional negligence. A single spell is burned into their flesh and nervous system, manifesting instinctively rather than academically. Powerful, unstable, and always monitored.

  • Half-Monsters

    Half-selkies, half-kelpies, and other mixed-blood beings. Registered, tracked, and viewed with suspicion. Their heritage is treated as a liability, and their lives are shaped by oversight as much as folklore.

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A New Class for Eldhame

Powerful charmer witch with enchanted axe and glowing eyes

THE WITCH

Inherited magic for people who could not afford permission

Witches are practitioners of inherited magic. Their power is not granted by gods, taught in academies, or formalised by law. It is passed down through families, communities, and necessity.

Witchcraft survives because it works. Because someone remembers how. Because some problems cannot wait for approval.

In Eldhame, Witches are unlicensed, unofficial, and indispensable. They heal when clinics close. They curse when justice fails. They stand between the living and the dead when infrastructure falters. Their magic is physical, exhausting, and stubborn. It leaves bruises, scars, and long-term consequences.

A Witch does not channel magic safely. They force it through.

Witch Subclasses

  • CHARMER

    Charmers are spirit-speakers and ancestral conduits. Their magic lives in voice, rhythm, gesture, and presence. A Charmer does not summon spirits in the academic sense. They make space for them.

    Through charms, rhymes, breath-work, and deliberate bodily surrender, a Charmer allows ancestral memory to move through flesh once more. This is not domination or command. It is inheritance made physical.

    Charmers fight with borrowed strength, borrowed skill, and borrowed resolve. The dead lend them balance when they would fall, steadiness when they would break, and endurance when the body should give out.

    They stand closer to danger than most Witches, and survive by letting the dead hold them upright.

  • HEDGE

    Hedge Witches bind themselves to stone, soil, and crystal. Their magic is slow, heavy, and structural. Through cairns, standing stones, embedded crystals, and scarred ground, Hedge Witches anchor power into the physical world. They draw strength from places that have endured pressure, weight, and time, just like they have.

    As their power grows, Hedge Witches become less distinct from the terrain around them. Skin hardens. Breath fogs with dust. Footsteps leave marks that do not fade. They reshape the battlefield not through speed, but through inevitability.

    A Hedge Witch does not move the land politely. They remind it who was here first.

  • PEDDLER

    Peddlers survive through improvisation, chemistry, and stubborn pragmatism. Their magic is brewed, stitched, sharpened, and thrown together from whatever is available. Nothing is elegant. Everything is effective.

    Peddlers are not careless. They are efficient. They understand risk, calculate margins, and accept collateral. Their magic is unstable, unpredictable, and devastating in the right hands.

    They are the most visibly illegal of all Witches, and the hardest to prepare for. No two Peddlers fight the same way twice, and none of them leave a scene clean.

    If a Peddler is smiling, something has already gone wrong.

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New Subclasses Across the System

Eldhame expands familiar classes with new subclasses shaped by modern life, work, and resistance. These traditions did not form in ancient towers or sacred groves. They emerged from estates, streets, protest lines, and places the system failed.

  • BARD: College of Grime

    These bards are street poets, protest performers, necropop MCs, and sound-warping wardbreakers. Their magic is built from the city’s rhythm: trains screaming through tunnels, chanting crowds, riot shields beating time, and the hiss of leylines trapped beneath concrete.

  • MONK: Way of the Roadman

    Roadman monks find discipline through movement, rhythm, and sheer presence. Their ki is not silence and incense. It is breath in cold air, trainers on tarmac, and the instinct to keep moving when trouble clocks you.

  • DRUID: Circle of Concrete

    Druids of the Circle of Concrete do not mourn the wild. They tend what survived. They draw power from weeds splitting tarmac, foxes nesting beneath sheds, moss climbing council towers, and pigeons that refuse to leave. To them, the city is not dead land. It is scarred land, still alive and still watching.

  • PALADIN: Oath of Protest

    They swear to causes, communities, and lines that should not be crossed. They stand in front of eviction vans, riot lines, cursed developments, and magical overreach. Their power is fuelled by collective belief, righteous refusal, and the simple act of not stepping aside.

  • And More Besides

    Eldhame includes one new subclass for every class, each grounded in lived experience, social pressure, and survival within a failing system.

What Lurks Below Dunromin College?

Dunromin College is a struggling magical institution on the edge of the city. It educates working-class casters, night students, and those turned away elsewhere. It is underfunded, over-inspected, and one failed report away from permanent closure.

Something is wrong beneath the campus.

Wards flicker without explanation. Entire wings have been quietly sealed off and relabelled as storage. Staff disappear mid-term. Students go missing and are written off as dropouts. The authorities know. They have seen the paperwork. They have approved the risk.

What Lurks Below Dunromin College? is a long-form D&D 5e campaign set in the world of Eldhame. It follows students, staff, and locals as everyday pressures give way to creeping dread and institutional denial.

Players are not chosen heroes. They are people trying to survive the term, protect each other, and decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to keep the truth buried or drag it into the light.

Dunromin College was built on something old. And it is starting to wake up.

Campaign Themes

  • Eldritch horror hidden beneath bureaucracy
  • Academic pressure, debt, and survival
  • Institutions protecting themselves over people
  • Slow escalation from unease to catastrophe
  • Choosing between compliance, escape, or resistance

Coming Soon

The leylines are stirring

Eldhame is currently in development for Dungeons & Dragons 5e.
The full setting guide, new species, Witch class, subclasses, and the campaign Beneath the Term are on the way. More artwork, previews, and playtest material will be released as the project grows.

If you want early access, development updates, and first notice when Eldhame launches, join the mailing list.
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