Undead Kingdom of Myltery

Introduction

"The dead does not rest in Myltery. They rule over it."

— Unknown

There is a place in the southeast where the world forgets to breathe. A land where roots strangle themselves and the rain tastes like rusted metal. They call it Myltery, though the name no longer refers to a kingdom. Now it means curse. It festers between sea and swamp, bounded by salt to the east and sorrow on all other sides. Once the pride of humankind, it now answers to no living throne. The land has a will of its own, and it does not welcome the warm-blooded.

The old roads end at its border, not by law, but by instinct. Maps blur near its edges, and even birds divert their flight. Children are taught to fear it long before they understand why. Some say the blight at its borders hungers; others claim the very air inside warps shadows before they touch the skin.

Once, Myltery was the jewel of humanity. Now, its name is passed like a secret whispered between funerals. It is not cursed because the undead rule it. The undead rule it because it is cursed.

No tale told of that place ends clean.

And no one who crosses returns whole.

The Fall of Myltery

Once, the banner of Myltery stood as the vanguard of human ambition; high-walled, flame-lit, rich in rivers and soil. It shared crown and blood with Keraian, one empire stretched from forested eastlands to fertile western coasts. From all Its cities Merdia was the most proud, the cradle of the Empire's golden age. Yet glory is a poor shield when the earth itself begins to rot.

The end did not come in silence. It began as rebellion. The Darkwood Uprising, a civil war born of frustration, sought to break the Emperor’s grip. In their desperation, the rebels struck a foul bargain and welcomed the scattered orc tribes around Myltery as allies.

The empire turned inward, pouring soldiers and steel toward Thandor, the center of conflict, to crush the rebellion. And while imperial hosts clashed with rebels, Myltery - stripped of defenders and rich with undefended towns - was left unprotected. Their remaining warbands poured into the land as predators. The high passes broke like rotted teeth. Villages were butchered. And Merdia, the empire’s old jewel, was besieged. For nearly a decade, the empire fought monsters and betrayal. Orcs and men bled into the soil. Cities burned to smoke. Yet as war reached fevered crescendo, something colder began to stir beneath the land.

A second war, older and hungrier, came from battlefields and graveyards.

The siege of Merdia was the final breath. When rust-armored skeletons breached the walls, the defenders chose flame. They set Merdia ablaze - its libraries, gardens, temples and homes - a funeral pyre born not of mourning, but of refusal. If the living could not reclaim the city, they would deny it to the dead.

But the undead did not burn.

They marched through ash and crowned themselves with ruin. And where Merdia once stood, Ashenfall rose: a shadowed memory of brilliance, twisted into a nightmare.

In the end, Myltery did not fall.

It was taken.

What lies in the shadows

After the fall came the blight, and it began without warning.

First, the trees leaned wrong. Not broken. Just wrong. Then the roots twisted into roads, swallowing stone as if it had never existed. One day, a village vanished from the map. The next, its name vanished from memory. Fields blackened from beneath, and the sky above the border turned a mourning, bruised purple. Swamps spread. Poison gathered. Insects and disease thrived.

If you bury a corpse in Myltery, the land rejects it. And it rises, haunted by the denial of rest. And they say that even your footprints, if left long enough, will turn back and follow you.

No settlement lasts long. The land digests architecture with patient, organic violence. Towers collapse in perfect spirals. Cobblestones sprout pale moss and calcified hands. And if the forest doesn’t reclaim what you build, the dead will.

The undead of Myltery are not mindless horrors clawing at doors. They are organized. Bureaucratic. Territorial. Their capital, the grand necropolis of Ebonmarsh, rises like a monument to a reversed dream: black spires that pierce the heavens like nails, and streets where silence is law. Entry is possible, but costly. Trade occurs, though rarely, and always with terms written in unfamiliar ink.

The priests of Novirath, the luminous patron god of the Empire, call it “the Devil’s Mirror”: a kingdom that mocks the living with its discipline, its control. But there is no laughter in the undead halls. Only hunger and secrets.

There are countless hidden truths in the poisoned ruins of the cursed land. Like the Crater of the Fallen Star, once the bed of the most beautiful lake in all Kena’an. Now its waters burn skin and clot the lungs. The surrounding forest, barely alive among the choking marshes, bleeds and cries when cut. And somewhere beneath the still surface, drowned bells toll when someone dies.

The Kingdom Today

Myltery is no longer a kingdom of men, but a realm of silence and shadow, ruled by the hand of Lord Victor the Undying, a figure wreathed in fear and secrecy. Whether vampire or lich, none dare speak his true nature aloud. To name him fully is to invite his gaze. From the necropolis of Ebonmarsh, Victor commands armies of rotting flesh and blood, with unyielding will and ancient, arcane power. His court is a congregation of the forgotten: undead knights in rusted plate, back stubbing vampire courts and whispering shades whose feet never touch the ground.

The land bends beneath his reign. Swamps fester and pulse with necrotic energy. Storm clouds hang low and heavy, never breaking. The acidic lake in the crater churns like a wound that will not heal. And yet, in this empire of death, the living endure.

Barely.

Scattered enclaves cling to survival on the fringes: scrappy villages hidden in the rotting fens or buried in the tangled edges of poisoned woods. They walk a perilous path, skirting the gaze of undead patrols, trading in silence, secrets, and things best left unnamed.

Trade persists, tenuously, with the dwarves to the south, who view Myltery as a dangerous but necessary partner, equal parts horror and fascination. To the north, the elves look away in silence, their ancient eyes filled with sorrow and warning. To the west, the humans of Keraian seethe with grief and bitterness, watching the creeping blight spill across the border, threatening to consume all it touches. Myltery's shadow spreads outward. And at its heart stands Lord Victor: eternal sovereign of a land where death is only the beginning.