Stealing Eldraine Concepts for my Homebrew D&D Setting

Throne of Eldraine, the latest Magic: the Gathering set, is in some ways ironic. By drawing upon Arthurian legend and fairy tales, it is essentially pulling from the very foundational stories that the fantasy genre is build upon. What makes that ironic is that the genre has evolved so much over time, and particularly with the massive creativity they have at Wizards of the Coast, coming up with worlds like Ravnica or Zendikar, that this "back to basics" look at fantasy feels oddly novel.

I mean, there's literally a piece of equipment called "shining armor" that synergizes with Knight creatures.

Anyway, my D&D homebrew world tends to buck fantasy conventions where I can. The initial concepts I had for the setting were ideas about the pros and cons of imperialism and nationalism, ancient futuristic technology, and cosmic horror, none of which really play into the "knights serving righteous kings" style of fantasy.

That being said, there is a region in my world that is, basically, your classic fantasy setting. The human kingdom of Wolfengard is the heart of the continent-spanning Lupinian Empire (yes, there's a bit of a wolf theme with them.) There is one major way in which this rather conventionally western-European medieval kingdom is distinct from other settings, which is the fully legal practice of necromancy. Blame it on my love of Black in Magic. (One could also list the existence of trains and other industrial-era technology as being a rather big change from classic fantasy, but these innovations are meant to have been happening very rapidly over the last twenty years.)

Magic loves doing its five-color cycles, and I'll confess I'm a sucker for them. In Eldraine, there are five castles that each have an order of knights affiliated with them. My understanding is that, despite each representing a different color, they are not in conflict with one another, and are instead faced with challenges from the fey creatures in the wilds of Eldraine.

Wolfengard is a land of knights and courts. It has a king and dukes and all that stuff. So I decided to pull a few ideas from Eldraine.

For example, Castle Vantress, the blue castle, seems to be an order of knights who are also kind of wizards, and their castle is patrolled by constructs, some of whom look like giant locks with a big keyhole. That imagery is super cool to me, and so I created a region in Wolfengard ruled over by a city called Lochlain (which I realize sounds a ton like the Black castle, Locthwain) with, you guessed it, a knightly order of wizards who rule it.

Wolfengard borders a region primarily populated by Wood Elves to the west called Alenach, where there's a ton of Fey. Thus, I created another region in that area called The Brooklands, which is basically a land of quaint, beautiful little villages that the child protagonists of a fairy tale would live in. These are woods filled with fairies and lots of greens and purples, with glowing lights at night. While its major city isn't quite as directly taken from Eldraine, I did want it to feel like a magical place that one could imagine common people would be excited to go to. Faeroyal is basically a big castle in the middle of the forest and the only city in the empire where Half Elves are the majority population. (Given that in my setting there's plenty of racial mixing, I'd say half elves are those with over 25% human and over 25% elvish ancestry. The emperor is considered human despite having an elvish grandparent, and his children are a quarter djinni.)

Anyway, Magic has always been a huge influence on my fantasy tastes, and even though Eldraine is filled with direct references to classic stories (not unlike Innistrad, actually, though a lot lighter in tone) I do feel like it's given me some fun ideas.

I'm now imagining that a new campaign in this setting could actually do the "start small and work your way out" style they recommend in the DMG, perhaps starting the Brooklands.