Setting Idea for Shadow of the Demon Lord

The skies are a leaden gray as the ancient factories belch forth never ending streams of 

smoke and gas. The natural world was conquered ages ago, plowed under with the promises 

of progress and plenty.

The People were pleased.

Over time, the changes wrought to the world were in turn wrought upon the People, changing 

them, some would say disfiguring them to better endure the now wretched air and poisoned waters.

The People were unsure.

Not all changed as some of the People maintained their original form, which forced them to flee to the few untouched areas of the world or die from the poisoned fruits of industry.

The People were divided.

The Orc prospered, living short but 'interesting' lives in the heart of the industrialized sprawl, finding beauty in the sickly unnatural hues of the daytime sky, and the lifeless grey metal leviathans of skyscrapers reaching towards the sky, ancient factories serving a long forgotten purpose, and the rat's nest of clockwork railways stitching them all together.

The last of the Fey, the Goblins also thrived. While iron was anathema to them, the poison air and the oily waters had no effect, making them valuable allies of the People.

The Clockwork, by and large toil on as they  have through the ages, fewer being created with each passing year as the knowledge to create them is slowly being forgotten.

While the people built towards the sky, perhaps in a vain attempt to pierce the eternal shroud of smog that they themselves created, the Dwarves continued to build down, uncovering ancient dooms that would silence entire cities.

Those of the People who were not changed, the Humans, eked out an existence in whatever small swathes of wilderness that they could find, dreaming of tearing down the industrial nightmare that their ancestors had created.

As the ages have marched on, the craft required to build, let alone to maintain this byzantine infrastructure has decayed. Ancient factories go silent, the food-stuffs and goods they produced becoming less and less common. Wilderness has begun to take hold where once industry held sway.

The People were doomed.

Voices in the dark, whole cities swallowed up seemingly overnight and hordes of Humans organizing for the first time in ages under the banner of 'The Green Man' march to tear down the factories and return the world to the clutches of Fey magic and the capricious 'mercy' of the wild.

The world stand to either be slowly choked to death by the poisons unleashed through the ages, or erased by those seeking to undo all that the People have built.