“ A modern kingdom still strictly adheres to ancient traditions due to their long forgotten deity getting annoyed at the moral decay, appearing as an AI Singularity and forcefully correcting everything it sees as morally wrong. As such, even though the weapons and technology have improved, the culture hasn't.”
“ Go Beyonde
Wiz 1
For one full round, a gate to another dimension is opened. That Dimension is called Beyonde. It is a place of eldritch horrors but if you are careful, movement there for every 10 feet there you cover 1 mile here. It is very dangerous and creatures will attack). near instantaneously upon your arrival. in practice, you can roughly cover about 300 miles(after this point you will be subjected to overwhelming attack.Brave(Foolish?) peeps attempt to send armies through, that is very iffy. you can only get to approx. D^ miles of where you want to come out(requiring another casting of the spell.
Basically you have teleportation available to L 1 Wizard's , this would shake kingdoms to the core, if an enemy army could appear at any moment,D6 miles from a target. Warfare becomes very fluid and much smaller forces are scattered about the countryside.”
“ A Deity of some sort has unleashed a plague of bookworms or something like that in the area. Almost all spellbooks are destroyed, along with bardic and historical books.”