The primary idea for the geography of the Unformed Lands this world came from Jack Chalker's Flux and Anchor series of books. The social, political and technology is not from the Flux and Anchor books, but from a wide variety of science fiction, fantasy and historical sources. The politics will draw more from eastern Europe and the open steppes of Russia than from England and western Europe.
The Unformed Lands is a high magic society with most people actually being low to no power, with portions of the world (mirs) being no magic. It is also a world of magical dangers and extremely powerful creatures rather than lots of low level opponents. There are few clearly evil opponents, but there are lots of powerful people who act without regard to others. I don't particularly like worlds where the characters can save the world against a clearly defined evil. The Unformed Lands has no obvious world threatening dangers that can be defeated in a single series of blows. There are powerful artifacts that threaten society occasionally, but most of the threats are much more mundane. The major threats to human-centric civilization are the monsters such as Orcs that threaten to over run civilization. This has more in common with late Roman Empire and the barbarian hordes than it does to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series.
The Unformed Lands Time Line Tables
Human & Allies
Monsters
The Unformed Lands City, Town and Village
I have changed the way I catagalog my sources from an earlier version. Now all the science fiction and fantasy books that have given me inspiration for any gaming world are listed on a single set of pages. I found that the worlds I want to build use the same books, even though the setting is very different. It also means that people that want to get inside my head to figure out plots have a lot more material to read.
Real world research for The Unformed Lands, RPG sources and The Unformed Lands specific SF&F is still listed as before.
References:
Mercedes Lackey - this Sceptered Isle and other urban fantasies.