all ruled by the human race, with populations of many humanoids races and creatures ubiquitous in fantasy fiction works such as dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs. Technologically, the world of the Forgotten Realms is not nearly as advanced as that of Earth; it resembles the pre-industrial Earth in the 13th or 14th century. However, the presence of magic provides an additional element of power to the societies. There are several nation states and many independent cities, with loose alliances being formed for defense or conquest. Trade is performed by ship or horse-drawn vehicle, and manufacturing is based upon cottage industry. Geography The Forgotten Realms is part of the fictional world of Abeir-Toril (usually just called Toril), an Earth-like planet with many real-world influences and consists of several large continents. It was first detailed in the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, published in 1987 by TSR. The other continents of Toril include Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, and other yet unspecified landmasses. Kara-Tur, roughly corresponding to ancient East Asia, was later the focus of its own source book Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms, published in 1988. There is also a vast subterranean world called the Underdark beneath the surface. In early editions of the setting, The Realms shared a unified cosmology with various other campaign settings called the Great Wheel. In this way each of the Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings were linked together to form one interwoven world connected by various planes of existence. With the release of the 2001 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the setting was given its own distinct and separate cosmological arrangement, with unique planes not explicitly connected to those of the other settings. Religion Religion plays a large part in the Forgotten Realms, with deities and their followers being an integral part of the world. Deities interact directly in mortal affairs, answer prayers, and have their own personal agendas. All deities must have worshipers to survive, and all mortals must worship a patron deity to secure a good afterlife. A huge number of diverse deities exist within several polytheistic pantheons; a large number of supplements have documented many of them, some in more detail than others. Greenwood created a pantheon of gods for his home Dungeons & Dragons game, in his Forgotten Realms world, which were introduced in his article "Down-to-earth divinity" from Dragon #54 (October 1981). When the Forgotten Realms was published as a setting in 1987, the pantheon