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Until the Empress formulates and posts a proper introduction to the land of Zartenoth, I'd like to offer a bit of general information for anyone who may want to roleplay in the setting with us on the boards.

For starters, Zartenoth is a large, temperate island, dominated largely by dense forests, with a sizable mountain range more or less dividing the northern and southern parts.
There is a Planar Nexus device situated centrally within the mountains that allows the island to act as a gateway of sorts to most any world imaginable, and also allows it to co-exist in multiple places at once (physically, that is).

In that way, its much like a miniature version of Sigil, though its not the actual hub of the universe (where the Great Wheel is concerned, at least) as the City of Doors is. Those familiar with the World Serpent Inn could make some corrolations as well.

Anyway, due to that, characters from nearly any conceivable genre can be played within the setting. Despite the fact that some fairly advanced technology can be found in Zartenoth, it still has a primarily pseudo-medieval "theme" overall. This influence comes from the fact that there simply isn't an extremely large population of people present, and of those that are here, that's what they associate with the most.

Most of the advanced technology that is present and/or hidden beneath the medieval facade is brought from off-world by certain individuals. Nothing of the sort is truly produced here, at least not on a large scale.

In terms of d20 Modern/Future (something I'm hoping many people can relate to), the most advanced technology stops somewhere between Progress Level 6 and 7.
Instances of even higher PL are rare, but do exist, as like I mentioned above, travelers from any world and genre can come here. (There are some measures present to avoid having visitors take technology that doesn't belong in their homeworld back with them, though no measure is perfect, of course.)

There is only one real bastion of civilization at the moment (that being the capitol city), with two others laying in ruins in the wake of recent events. Some smaller settlements have cropped up upon the odd bits of usable shoreline at other parts of the island, with the only real town of merit otherwise being a rather unscrupulous port of call that lay on the far side of the island from the capitol.

Everything surrounding the settled areas is untamed forest, filled with all manner of creatures fair and foul, most of which were introduced to the island by way of either stumbling or being brought through the Planar portals. If any one race could be said to rule the forests, it would be the fey, and even the Queen of the Isle makes it a point to keep on generally good terms with the faeries' powerful leaders.

Anywho, that should serve as enough of a generalization. We're working on redeveloping full write-ups of the world setting, which will be on the website in future.

While it doesn't matter overly much here in the board roleplay area, we use FUZION based game rules (a multi-genre capable system, of Cyberpunk, Mekton, DBZ, Castle Falkenstein fame). I mention it as, unlike with class and level-based systems like D&D/d20 in general, even "farmer joe" can be a threat to a seasoned veteran with the right tools (read: weapons) in his hands and a bit of luck on his side. In other words, without ludicrous (IMHO) concepts such as levels at play, one human can die nearly as easily as any other when he gets shot or has his arm lobbed off.

I'm in the middle of making some easy conversions for utilizing D&D spells and some other nice tidbits, but unsure if I'll finish that at this point, considering the upcoming Edition change.

More on that later. Like I said, game rules don't matter as much in here as during tabletop play, but I thought it would help to mention it all the same.