Yuànlán

The Resentful Wilds have only been resentful and wild for around two thousand years. Prior to the rise of Meihua, there was little to talk about other than rolling fields and berry-rich forests. Small villages dotted the area, but as the nearest river was a significant trek away, it was much easier for the former forests to be left to remain in their natural state. Occasional adventurers would travel through, noticing little special about the area. The dense old-growth forests were always thicker in the area that would become Yuànlán, but back then, there wasn't much reason to notice.   When the Meihuan Empire began to rise to power, access to new power sources was of great importance to the regime. Their rudimentary understanding of leyline magic painted it as something far less dangerous than it truly was, and while they invested in many suspicious sources of magical power - including those from beyond the mortal plane - it was ley power that would end up contributing to their goal of floating islands.   Soon enough, they figured out a way to follow their local leylines to their nearby power sources. This is how they learnt of the nexus beneath the ancient forests, and why they eventually constructed the floating island of Kaihua as their seat of power above it.   But empires do not last.   When Meihua fell, the rebels targeted the floating isle of Kaihua with prejudice. As the seat of the ruling empress, it needed to be brought down. The attack was swift and brutal; both sides suffered countless losses, and the Empress's own forces turned to more desperate measures to try and drive off those that would dethrone them.   It isn't known which side made the deadly mistake of targeting the complex machinery maintaining the balance of ley power. It isn't known whose explosive magic shuddered through the castle's halls and the forest's network of tunnels, energy ripping through meat and machinery with equal force as the shockwave secured the rebel's victory. The severe consequences, though, were felt.

The land did not begin its vortex of grief immediately. There was time enough for those left alive to take stock of the situation; time, even, for them to construct the Jade Prison from the plentiful materials Meihua had mined for its own excess. Long Meixue was imprisoned, and time moved on. Yulan Sheng rose from the ashes, founded by those who had rebelled against their former masters, and other nations rose alongside them.     Nobody had known of the trapped souls, nor of the avatar's sentience that brewed itself into a fury over the span of a few short years. Unleashed now in devastation, the fabric of the plane could not withstand the sheer fury. It warped enough to allow reality to bend in every incorrect direction, snatching pieces of other worlds and universes, twisting souls into new beings, and threading grief into fury in a million new ways.   Yuànlán has never allowed itself to be calm since. The storm rages, relentless in its grief. It pursues a resolution that even it does not understand. Adventurers often attempt to plunder its depths, knowing of the Jade Prison laden with Meihua's lost artifacts and the immortal Empress herself. Yet none have made it close - or if they have, they have not survived.