The Lacuna
At the center of Hazlan, nestled between blasted hills and warped forests, sprawls the Lacuna—a mysterious fog-shrouded expanse of uneven terrain and low, creeping Mists that never lift. The vapor clings like memory and rises no higher than the knee, yet no wind stirs it, and no sunlight pierces it. The very air feels ancient, weighted with forgotten truths and twisted timelines.
The Lacuna is a region erased from narrative cohesion, where Mists intrude like blood through cracked skin. It is both a secret and a sentience, hiding the unspeakable and testing all who seek it. In a land where magic is tyranny, the Lacuna is the one place where spell and science cannot follow—and that, above all, makes it dangerous.
“Some say the Lacuna is where Hazlik goes to forget. Others say it’s where the land tries to remember itself.”
Geography
Unlike the arcane contamination found elsewhere in Hazlan, the fog of the Lacuna isn’t magical fallout—it is the Mist, identical in composition to the vapor that borders the entire Domain of Dread. Even seasoned wizards cannot identify its origin, nor predict its boundaries, which shift like a living thing. Compasses fail. Magical scrying turns inward. Footsteps vanish. Maps of the Lacuna redraw themselves every time they’re referenced.
Scholars whisper that the Lacuna is a “Mistwell”—a spring or cyst where the Dark Powers breach the land, drinking in memory, will, and story.
Localized Phenomena
The Lacuna changes. Landmarks within it drift or phase in and out of alignment with the rest of Hazlan:
- A marble well that shows the face of your first enemy.
- A mirror-smooth lake that reflects only future versions of yourself.
- Endless stairs leading underground, with no terminus.
- A tombstone with your name, date of birth, and a date of death… next week.
Some even claim that a phantom version of Mount Nyid rises from within the fog at certain times of night, casting spells backward in time.
History
No one truly understands the Lacuna. Some speculate it is:
- A collapsed demi-plane, created by a failed experiment of Hazlik’s.
- A dimensional tumor, feeding on the domain’s repressed horrors.
- The true heart of Hazlan, where Hazlik’s guilt or self-loathing has been entombed by the Dark Powers.
- A burgeoning consciousness, the first sign that Hazlan itself is becoming self-aware.
One desperate theory posits that the Lacuna is not just in Hazlan—it is the original Hazlan, and the rest of the domain is the dream of a dying world.
Tourism
Travelers who enter the Lacuna report strange effects:
- Time loses meaning; minutes feel like days or vice versa.
- Memories bleed, replaced by visions of things that never were.
- Some emerge aged, some younger, and some reversed in personality.
- Those who enter in groups often return alone or fused together, minds scrambled or intertwined.
- A few never return—but are seen weeks later outside the Lacuna, acting like they never left.
The locals say the Lacuna is “where Hazlik hides what he cannot destroy” and where souls go to rot when the body refuses to die.
Despite the danger, many are drawn to the Lacuna:
- Mulan researchers attempt to tap it as a font of raw Mist-magic.
- Rhazalim rebels vanish into it, hoping the Mists will hide them from Hazlik’s spells.
- Prophets, cultists, and madmen seek it as a place of divine communion, where the Dark Powers speak without masks.
But few who enter for long return sane—or wholly human.
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