Shattered Empires

The area known as the Blessed Lands by the Coryani, Chonichu (the Land of Our Ancestors’ Arrival) by the Khitani and the Cursed Lands by many others, was once the seat of power of four powerful empires and considered the birthplace to no less than four of the world’s major religions and their offshoots. It is bounded to the south by the ancient Corlathian Mountains, to the northeast by the immense deciduous forest known as the Vastwood, to the northwest by the Aqtau Mountains and the Fervidus Hills, to the west by the Sea of Lanterns and to the southeast by the citystates of Almeric.

In the days of antiquity when the ssethric and later elorii ruled the area, the Blessed Lands was a lush and fertile area, dominated by a thick forest whose canopy was like a sea that crashed against the mountain range to the south and spilled around the enormous Mount Dagha that competed with the peaks of the Corlathians Mountains.

That thriving ecosystem is no more; it was destroyed during the God’s War when elorii and humanity clashed and a blasphemous eloran ritual known as Kurenthé, the Curse of the Soul, was unleashed, withering the ancient flora, leeching most of the life from the soil, and leaving only a cracked and blackened earth. Centuries of constant attention by Saluwean priestesses managed to revitalize the land to a small degree, but even after millennia it remains a broken land where the few settlements of Andyar villagers huddle around isolated oases and small rivers that flood every spring with the melt off from the Corlathian Mountains.

With the near-total deforestation of the region, the topography, long hidden by the thick forest, is revealed: the entire area is a bowl with two tiers or terraces, the lowest of which is at sea level where it merges with the Sea of Lanterns. The largest tier enjoys a higher elevation, exceeded only by the plateau on top of Mount Dagha, which rises one thousand three hundred and twenty feet above sea level.

BackLinks