Arboria

Geography

Arboria, also known as "The Northern Realms", lies just south of the frigid Frost Wastes, encircled by the Valpine, Messial, and Iglophian mountain ranges and edged by cold seas. A temperate belt of ancient Feywood runs along the Valpine Mountains and nears the Nord Sea in Sturmgard, where at its oldest heart stands the Elven-revered Elderwood. One blighted exception marks the map: the Grimwood, a peninsula grove warped by dark magic around Drakmire Keep.

Mountains set both climate and roads: the Valpines feed pine valleys and rich lakeshores, the Messials run south-to-north to Mount Everreach, their few passes to Azhkar long contested, and the northern Iglophians are snowbound yet studded with rare geothermal oases, the largest being the spring-warmed Hvergelmir valley.

Within these bounds, three belts emerge: Heimerland in the north, all cliffed coasts, deep evergreens, and long winters. Eastmarsh in the east, a cold and murky bog-and-river plain that grades from the Syiv tundra to the Krestok taiga. And the Heartlands along the south, a wide stretch of verdant flatlands, pockmarked with farms and stone keeps. On the west fringe sit the "Li-Ve-Ly Kingdoms", Lithayne, Veyrun, Lynora. Packing chivalry, highlands grit, and maritime commerce respectively.

Seaward, the Nord Sea divides south from north, and its outlet opens into the Jagged Sea, rock-strewn around Heimerland's isles and haunted by stray icebergs.

History

The story of Arboria opens with sails on the horizon. A small Elven fleet came from beyond the sea and, over generations, unfolded into the Feynarin, a quiet, resolute civilization shaped by druidism and the vow to live in concord with the land. They rooted themselves amid the Feywood, tended groves and stone circles, and kept sovereignty against all intrusion, speaking softly but holding their bounds.

That long peace ended with the rise of the Kleriel Imperium. The Feynarin were subdued, and over the long years also integrated, until the North was drawn into the great struggle later named the War of Ascension. At its end, the contenders unleashed The Cataclysm: the world shuddered, cities failed, and the old wellsprings of magic thinned to a hush.

Before the land could mend, the sky dimmed. Ash and chill drove a volcanic winter across the latitudes, and the peoples of the far north, the Humans, began to move southward en masse. These Great Migrations pressed south into Arboria’s forests and riverlands, where desperate Human hosts met wary Feynarin remnants. What followed were the Migration Wars: brief truces, broken pledges, border fights under a starving sun, until exhaustion and necessity forced new compacts and new lines on the map.

From that crucible emerged the Arboria of today: a region of Human realms, each taking its own stance on magic and neighbors. In the west, the Reich of Sturmgard rose where the mage Arish brokered sanctuary for the Jermane, permitting them to dwell under the boughs of the Feywood by it's Elven guardians, so long as steel and spell alike served its defense. Farther east, The Mason lead the Slaya and founded the first Kingdom of Ardechia, hammering a realm upon a vow of craft and invention and a total rejection of magic, his wars driving out the Feynarin holds there, save for a few hidden havens of refuge. Between and around these powers, other polities took shape, some mountain-bound, some a city-state, some drawn to the ocean, while others suffer the cold.

A millennium has passed since the first snows of that Ice Age. The Cataclysm’s scars remain, remnants of the Feywood still remembers, and Arboria endures. No longer an Elven sanctuary, but a mosaic of Human banners whose fortunes rise and fall.