Darkon
Once a vast, brooding kingdom of forbidden knowledge and deathless rule, the Domain of Dread known as Darkon now teeters on the brink of oblivion. The lich-king Azalin Rex, long its Darklord and architect, vanished years ago in an arcane calamity whose nature remains unknown. In the vacuum of his absence, the domain has begun to unravel, its dissolution both cosmic and insidiously mundane.
Darkon is a realm in denial, a rotting kingdom held upright by ritual and fear, its people trapped between fading geography and fading memory. The Mists come closer each night, but the populace dances as if nothing is wrong, locked in a twilight pageant of crumbling knowledge, nameless dread, and inexorable erasure.
Whether Azalin is truly gone, or simply waiting in some deeper pocket of the domain, Darkon remains his monument—and perhaps his tomb.
Geography
Darkon sprawls between two mist-shrouded seas, stretching across dense forests, black mountains, and once-prosperous lowlands. In its prime, the domain bore the heavy stamp of Azalin's necromantic order: vast libraries, collegia arcana, and cities built around funerary monuments to forgotten wizard-kings. Now, the land fades, quite literally, from the map.
Every night, the Mists creep in, swallowing entire towns and wild regions. Roads vanish between one day and the next. Travelers wake to find familiar paths replaced by fog-filled voids or half-real ruins. The pace of this decay is uneven, arbitrary, and—most disturbingly—ignored.
Above it all, the strange, golden star called the King’s Tear hangs unmoving in the sky, casting a sickly radiance that stains moonlight and causes hallucinations, prophetic dreams, or madness in those who stare at it too long. Scholars argue whether it is a star, a portal, or Azalin’s imprisoned soul—none agree, and none can touch it.
Despite looming destruction, life continues in Darkon—deluded, stubborn, or anesthetized by denial.
- Karg, the former capital, remains a center of grim culture and learning, though its university has become obsessed with memory disorders and collective amnesia.
- The mountain city of Il Aluk, once the jewel of Darkon, is now the cursed Necropolis—a city of the dead ruled by incorporeal wraiths and inhabited only by those who no longer breathe.
- Nartok, on the eastern border, swells with desperate refugees and charlatans offering “Mistproofing” charms.
- In the countryside, rural superstition masks fear. Villagers perform ancient rites to “keep the fog away,” lighting pyres and muttering prayers to no gods anyone recalls.
The realm’s aristocracy clings to outdated protocols, throwing masquerade balls and holding court in manors now surrounded by untraveled wilderness or phantom farmland. They act as though Azalin still rules—perhaps he does, in ways no one perceives.
The Mists’ inward crawl brings more than spatial collapse. It fractures memory. Those who live in or visit Darkon often find:
- Personal history rewritten—a baker who remembers being a prince, a noble whose family never existed.
- Townspeople “remembering” places that were swallowed decades ago as if they were still thriving.
- Doppelgangers and memory-eaters who prey on the uncertain.
This psychic erosion may be Darkon’s most insidious curse. Some speculate it is Azalin’s final defense: a trap that warps memory, ensuring no one can truly leave or fully escape.
History
Without Azalin’s iron grip, factions rise to claim scraps of authority:
- The Kargat Remnants, Azalin’s secret police, now fractured into competing cells with their own necromantic agendas.
- The Dustmen, a sect of nihilistic scholars from Sigil, have taken root in Necropolis, preaching the worship of true death.
- The Mistwardens, mysterious rangers who patrol the domain’s edges, claim to “anchor” parts of reality—but offer no proof.
- False prophets and apocalyptic cults multiply, each declaring themselves heirs to Azalin, or heralds of the Mist.
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