Your world, its regions, settlements and districts each have a profile and an NPC briefing. Together they're how characters know the world they live in.
Find them in Atlas → World. The list on the left runs from The world at the top, through regions, down to settlements and their districts.
A profile is a set of fields (government, economy, culture, tensions…) where you describe a place in as much detail as you like. The NPC briefing is a short paragraph of what every resident actually knows. Characters read the briefings in every conversation. The profile fields are mostly raw material: the briefing is written from them, and the Location Wizard and the daily digest read some of them directly.
Every message, a character in a building reads, in order:
In a building outside any settlement, steps 2 to 4 are simply skipped: the character still knows the world, any lorebook entries that apply, and the building.
Characters out in the wilderness with your party only know the settlement they're near, or the land around them.
At every level, the briefing works the same way:
Keep briefings to common knowledge. A briefing is read by every character in that area, every message. Secrets belong on characters' profiles or in lorebook entries.
Every profile has a Quick Start box. Describe the place in a line and choose Quick Start to fill in every field (and the briefing, if it's empty). Quick Start replaces what's already in the fields, so review the result before you save. On the free plan, it uses one of your daily AI actions.
Each level's Quick Start builds on the one above it:
World Name: the in-world name of your world, realm or planet. Characters only learn it through the world briefing, so if you rename it, update the briefing too.
The fields are grouped as The shape of it, Who holds power and How it lives:
Peoples & Cultures and Additional Lore also go to the Location Wizard word for word, so they're the place for world rules every generated character must respect: what a species looks like, how people dress, what's taboo.
The daily digest reads Era & Age and World-Scale Conflicts directly.
NPC Briefing: "every NPC in the world knows this much". Probably the most important paragraph in your world.
Choose which species live in your world: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Half-orc and Gnome. At least one must stay on. Medieval Fantasy worlds start with all six; every other genre starts with humans only, and any mix works in any genre.
Settlement templates and quick-option buildings use their own casts and don't follow this setting.
Governance, Culture & People, Economy, Military & Defense, Notable Landmarks, Regional Tensions, History, Additional Notes, plus:
Every other region field reaches characters only through the briefing.
Government, Laws & Customs, Religion, Economy, Architecture, Culture & Mood, Current Tensions, History, Factions, Notes.
The settlement's briefing is read-only until you choose Edit manually.
Placing a settlement template replaces the settlement's profile and briefing with the template's.
Settlement Exterior Image: see Settlements, districts and regions.
Character, Wealth Level, Dominant Trade, Local Power, Dangers, Notes.
The Location Wizard follows a district closely: buildings and people match its character and wealth. A bar in a rich quarter comes out upscale, one in the slums comes out grimy.
Dangers is descriptive only. To have enemies appear in a district, add it to an enemy's Areas. See Creating enemies.
Each area has a type: Village, Town or City; Kingdom, Country, Province or Territory; Quarter, Ward, District or Zone. Or choose Custom… and write your own (letters only, up to 24 characters), like "free city" or "colony sector". The type is woven into what characters say ("you live in Brindle, a free city").