We need more good guys, I think. Or more halfway-decent guys, anyway.
Tempest-Tossed
Civilization: Gralia
City name: New Gralia Academy
Race: Mostly humans and gnomes
Theme: SCIENCE! Sometimes it's even reliable science!
Description: The survivors of the Gralia Academy Portal Disaster are a disorganized lot. The university town around Gralia Academy had no major government center, and what they've put together since is ramshackle at best. The Dean does his best, but even an expert governor would have a hard time managing the willful and highly individualistic New Gralians. They've got a strong sense that they need to pull together to get through their new situation, but getting two of them to agree on which direction to pull is a real struggle. They make up for it, though, in sheer unflagging zeal.
Most New Gralians are at least slightly manic, overflowing with energy and enthusiasm for whatever project strikes their fancy, and are quite often brilliant to boot. Of course, there are downsides. They're not your typical mad scientists - most notably, they have a healthy respect for the dangers of their profession, especially after the Portal Disaster - but they've got many of the same traits. They're unfailingly optimistic, enormously motivated, and wildly inventive, but also unruly, prone to monomania, and poorly suited to unskilled labor.
Religion is not terribly popular among New Gralians, but most subscribe to an informal philosophy exalting knowledge and honesty as the highest virtues.
History: The New Gralians are the survivors of the Gralia Academy Portal Disaster, a magical disaster that replaced Gralia Academy and most of the surrounding town with a spherical crater some 40 years before the rest of the world went to hell. It was not entirely destroyed, however, and parts of the Academy and Town eventually found themselves in this hellish new world. (It's not clear if they were in stasis for 40 years or if they traveled into the future or if timelines of the old and new worlds are orthogonal or what, but it's widely considered to be a facinating area of study.) It's not clear which experiment actually caused the disaster, but most people agree it was either one of the teleportation experiments or the guy who was trying to manipulate demonic energies into sealing themselves. None of the researchers in question survived the disaster, though, so they will probably never know. Not having seen the bitter end of the old world has left them more optimistic than most refugees, and they quickly set about making the best of their situation with pluck, vigor, and very poor organization.