Anchôromé is a setting for Dungeons & Dragons written by Jon Hild, themed around Pre-Columbian North and Central America. Part of the Forgotten Realms setting, its existence was first mentioned in the Maztica adventure module "FMQ1: City of Gold".
Anchôromé lies to the north of Maztica, making up part of the greater continental mass whose occupants collectively know it as "The True World". Unlike Maztica, Anchôromé was never invaded by Faerunian settlers, although it was displaced into Abeir for over two hundred years like its neighbor.
This setting includes examples of:
- Beast Man:
- The aarkocra are humanoid eagles.
- Urskans are humanoid bears from the glacial regions of the far north.
- Bee People:
- Quite literally with the Abeil, which are humanoids with distinctly bee-like physical traits and a social structure that roughly mimics the eusocial hive of honeybees. They have a splinter culture called the Bee Tribe; nomadic Abeil who have mostly abandoned the eusocial structure.
- Bacar are humanoid ants, complete with a single reproducing queen, who were originally engineered as a slave race. However, when their purpose was fulfilled, they began mutated greater intelligence, and migrated north from Maztica in pursuit of freedom.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Land of the Insect Men is home to three different races of humanoid insects; the Abeil, the Bacar, and the Kreen.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The alaghi, an obscure D&D race based on the Sasquatch, are a major presence in the eastern forests of Anchôromé, and are even a playable race.
- Draconic Humanoid: Anchôromé is home to a unique subrace of dragonborn, the Tanarvraki, who are based on the feathered (and surprisingly Quetzalcoatl-like) Mirage Dragon, a creature native to the Feywild.
- Fantasy Americana: An unusual variant in that the focus of the "America" portion is on what North America looked like before European settlers came around.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Anchorome falls into that unique D&D subgenre that can best, if crudely, be described as "Ethnic Fantasy", which is essentially the result of taking D&D tropes and using this trope as a base. Anchorome's human cultures, and the Minnenewah, are all based on real Indigenous American cultures from the Pre-Columbian era. Even the Metahel, who are essentially "what if the Viking colony of Newfoundland succeeded, but went native", have similarities to a real coastal American culture called the Coast Salish.
- Hobbits: A local population of halflings, known as the Short Ones, migrated north from the jungles of Far Payit in Maztica. They are devoted vegetarians and also master agriculturalists, with unique plant-controlling magic, to the point of breeding plant monsters as guardians for their communities.
- Insectoid Aliens: The kreen (mantis-people) and the abeil (bee-people) both migrated to Anchôromé from different dimensions. The kreen were brought over against their wills, and are implied to have been kidnapped from Athas, whilst the abeil fled to Anchôromé during its time in Abeir.
- Loads and Loads of Races: Anchôromé's native player-suitable races are humans (in four different cultures), Minnenewah (rather literal Magical Native Americans, divided into countless different tribes similar to real-life Indigenous cultures), alaghi, two kinds of elves, dwarves, halflings, aarakocra, dragonborn, darfellans, urskans, kreen, abeil and bacar.
- Magical Native American: If you want to take it literally, any native human character with a spellcasting class counts. The Azuposi, the Metahel, the Nahopaca, and the Dog People are all based on Central American or lower-North American indigenous cultures. More accurately, the Minnenewah are a race of inherently magical humanoids with distinctly Native American features who were brought to Anchôromé from another plane, and who are likened by the source material to the Spirit Folk of Kara-tur. Downplayed in that none of these races are exoticised or presented as morally infallible; they're just people in a world with real magic who happen to look like Native Americans.
- Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: The Metahel people are essentially Vikings who settled on Toril's "North America" and then integrated into the native environment.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Anchôromé is home to only a single known dragon; Kci Athussos, the Great Snail Dragon.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Subverted; the dwarves of Anchôromé are Desert Dwarves, who have been trapped on the surface in the harsh central deserts of the region for generations and adapted accordingly. Zigzagged in that, having gained access to mountains, some of the population is retreating there and reverting to their ancestral cave-dwelling lifestyle.
- Our Elves Are Different: The glacial northern regions are home to snow elves; bluish-white skinned cold-adapted elf-kin. Centuries ago, some of those elves migrated south to central Anchôromé, becoming a new culture and subrace called the Poscadari.
- Shout-Out: In the author's own words, the nic'Epona of Anchôromé, whilst based on an actual D&D monster of editions past, were deliberately redesigned taking inspiration from My Little Pony.
- Slaying Mantis: The kreen, one of the major races of the Land of the Insect Men. They are divided into thri-kreen (the "common" nomadic kreen of other settings), tohr-kreen (bigger, stronger, settled kreen), zik-chil (enigmatic kreen with biomanipulation abilities), apleurus (xenophobes capable of Elemental Shapeshifting into living sand), samaragtin (aquatic kreen engineered by the zik-chil), and ulyssies (forest/mountain-adapted kreen engineered by the zik-chil).
- Standard Fantasy Setting: Zigzagged. Whilst there are classic D&D tropes in play, such as the presence of powerful magic and open interaction with nonhuman races, the setting takes great pains to step away from the Medieval European Fantasy setting and into one that can truly be defined as "Fantastical North America".
- Unscaled Merfolk: Darfellans are humanoid orcas, resembling hairless humanoids with orca-like black and white patterned skin and webbed digits. They used to rule a great empire on the east coast, but were driven to the cold northern waters after losing a war against the sahuagin.
