Laconsai, Or, I Made A Whole Country Out of Spaghetti Westerns

See that? That's Laconsai.

Past and Present:

The three genealogies of elves, as you may have gathered, are the Lis (or high elves, of Ondolis), the Sil (or wood elves, of Silosil) and the Sai (or drow, of Laconsai). After the Planeswar, the people left on the island of Lacon were primarily humans and drow, who crawled out of a series of pre-war bunkers. The drow used their natural magical abilities to pacify and assimilate the human tribes, setting themselves up as the ruling class of a country of primarily humans - the empire of Lacon-Sai, or Laconsai later on. Once in full control of the island, the drow looked at the richness of their dominion, looked at the seas that kept them so far from the rest of the world, and decided it wasn't worth the risk. They shut their borders for hundreds of years.

The empire of Laconsai existed primarily in the Western, desert half of the island, though there was a large contingent of segregated drow-only cities on the northern tip. These desert towns were either mining towns (Laconsai is full of gold, iron, and saltpeter) or supply outposts for the mining towns, and were relatively common but relied on the larger empire to remain hospitable. 

The mines were staffed exclusively by humans, of course. To say that Laconsai was a slave empire would be an oversimplification, but not entirely inaccurate. More than once the drow simply cut off supplies to towns that failed to meet quota, but actual violence between the two groups was uncommon - the drow were much more likely to simply let the desert take care of it. Towns would usually have a drow mayor (who was more of a liason with the larger empire than a real mayor) and sheriff (known simply as The Law). Drow worshipped a kind of burrowing spider common in the deep desert, feeling a connection between it and the way they had survived the greatest cataclysm the plane had ever seen. Their development of a repeating four-shot pistol (traditionally dual-wielded to give eight shots - eight being a holy number) was crucial in their conquering of the island - this (and their deep black skin) is why they are sometimes called powder elves, even today.

Eventually, humans got sick drow rule, as you can imagine. There was no true civil war, only a series of devastating bombings and skirmishes that crippled the unsuspecting government. Panicking, the drow cloistered themselves, cutting off supplies to the entire empire, isolating themselves. But after hundreds of years of doing no work and sitting comfortably on the business end of a vast resource network, they were unable to even feed themselves. On both sides of the line, thousands starved. The isolated drow fled into the desert, hoping not to be shot upon finding a human settlement, and human rebels picked the ruined cities clean. The country now is without governance, with each desert town having its own, individual pale imitation of the legal system that came before. Some places, like the mining towns, have survived, but go ten miles in any direction and you're bound to see a ghost town somewhere on the horizon. It's the wild west. 

The Outlaw

Because each settlement is individually governed, corruption and monopoly and banditry is more than common, it's everyday. No true lawgiving force exists in Laconsai anymore - except for The Outlaw.

"Outlaw" is a rough translation of an elven word, not the word outlaw as we know it. A better translation would be "outside-of-law" or "above-law". Technically speaking, The Outlaw is an order*of paladins. They are all pledged to uphold Justice and Fairness, as decided by each "individual" Outlaw. Individual is in scare quotes because, when one the job, all of the individuals the comprise The Outlaw are considered to be one person -THE Outlaw, an absolute arbiter whose judgment is Just. After their work is done, they might go and drink at the saloon and use their real name, but while they are working, while wearing the traditional wool cloak and bandana mask, they have no name. They are The Outlaw. They come into town, they identify the town's issues - be it bandits, or corruption, or greed, and they take care of it by whatever means they feel necessary. People fight back against them, of course - they often topple unfair power balances, and those who benefit rarely let these things go willingly, but everyone respects The Outlaw. They are revered as folk heroes - farmers whose cattle were stolen by bandits pray to The Outlaw to come and take them back.

*A note on paladins: divine energy is a pool of power, not unlike arcane energy - it does not actually require that you go through a deity to use it. However, just as arcane power is tapped into with the use of special words and movements, divine energy is tapped into with Conviction (in the case of paladins) or Faith (in the case of clerics). Therefore, there are few organized orders of paladins - most paladins are individuals who dedicated themselves fully to something, most often an abstract concept like valor or justice (in the case of The Outlaw), but sometimes something as solid as family or even country. Some paladins also worship gods, true, but the gods left so long ago and so little was left behind that paladins who do worship gods know very little about them - probably not even their name.

East Lacon
Lacon was a country relatively unscathed by the Planeswar, which means that it became a haven for powerful creatures from the old world - dragons and fey kings and beholders alike all fled into this far-flung corner of the world in the days before the war. Certain other powers saw an opportunity in this - angels and wizards alike joined forces to seal them away, either for the greater good or simply to have power over some great beast as was their wont. The great magical wall they built still functions centuries later, keeping even the most powerful beasts in and even the most curious mortals out. Inside the barrier, it's something of a war zone. You simply can't have that many powerful, smart, magical entities in one place without conflict breaking out. The ones that are still alive are almost mad with paranoia, and the ones that died often left behind significant treasure hoards. The terrain is an odd mix of grottoes and jungle - use monsters to play up the fact that there's a lot of vertical space here, and lots of places to hide.

If your players are starting to think they're King Shit of Fuck Mountain, throw them into East Lacon, have them dodge a battle between a dragon and a beholder on their way to breakfast every morning. Crack open the monster manual, run something crazy powerful that you won't otherwise get to use on your fifth-level party. Go nuts - it's not often D&D has consequence-free kaiju battles.

I don't really have a whole lot of specifics about East Lacon, mainly because I think it's an in-and-out kind of place. You've been sent on a quest: social encounter with the angel/powerful wizard guarding the gate, skill checks to wander through the terrain, a chase sequence with some powerful beastie, have them dodge stray eye beams when it encounters an even more powerful beastie, social encounter with a goblinoid tribe that worships one of the big bads, encounter with the big bad, grab the Plot Device +1, get out again. There's no real need to know specifics about terrain until they become relevant enough to make a skill check out of it.