All other faithes may not be too interesting for us at the moment. The only known exception: you want to play an elf (which is not very convenient for beginners). So, now that we got rid of the elves, let us say, who else roams the banks of precious Arkania. There are the dwarves, orks (called "Blackfurs" in Arkania) and goblins on the humanoid side. Only the dwarves are playable. The rest is part of the big rest which may always be called Enemy. That may be sounding dumb, but unfortunately it is how Arkanians see the world.
All the good people, i.e. including dwarves (and the strange elves, but forget them for a moment), are able to speak the common language, the Garethi, so-called after the biggest city of the world, Gareth. Now, Garethi, is already equalized with German, since the game was invented in Germany. To ease a game world-wide, it would be nice to keep it as it is, so that the region around Gareth, called the Middlerealm - by the way, the biggest state of the known world - is not a good region to start the game. So, english-speaking shall be assumed to start the game in the region around Andergast, the only known area that has good relations to the orks, so that they even have some orkish tongue in their otherwise similar language, but people of Gareth's middlerealm would not understand them.
Andergast is a good choice, because people who played the trilogy on the computer will know its surroundings already and have a map of the whole area around Thorwal and the western Orkland. Thorwal itself is a quite and peaceful region, though most of the continent only knows them as barbarians and pirates. Many inhabitants are farmers and live further down in the country-side sticking to their oat, wheat and barley, distilling the best spirit from it you can get in Arkania, the Premer Fire, which is only real when burning with a red flame. Andergastians know people from Thorwal pretty well and many do understand their language, because Thorwal is a quite exploring kind of people and the river Ingval brings them directly into the heartland of Andergast and even to the capital of the little kingdom.
Andergast itself has access to the Stoneoak Forest as the only known civilization. Stone oaks are very popular among ship builders and magicians. So most Andergastians live by being lumberjacks. But it is also not far from Lowangen which people might also know from Star Trail and this is a fairly big city to deal with. There is only that very small problem to the South West called Nostria. Nostria is a kingdom like Andergast and people from Nostria and Andergast hate each other. Nostria is and will always be the biggest enemy. And they fought loads of wars against each other. But in present time there is armistice and a strange rule that was invoked for the Andergastian town of Joborn. This town changes the owner all three months, one time belonging to Andergast, at the other times belonging to Nostria. With the exception of Andergast and Joborn, the kingdom does not own any city.
Andergast's citizens believe in the Twelve Gods and believe in Tsa, the goddess of life, peace and change, as the most important of them all. Their king is Wendolyn VII and they speak of themselves as independent of the Middlerealm, which often evokes a different point of view on the other side. And into this orkfriendly lumberjack society floating around in rafts your hero was born (most probably, you can also choose various other cultures, once you get started with rule book 2).
So, get yourself a map, and start throwing the dice...
