Tenebrion - The Accursed Lands

Intro

Lands of ancient legend, the Tainted lands of Tenebrion, known simply as The Accursed Lands, bear a history as ancient it may have been myth, as majestic as it is terrifying and tragic. Here the the Arü, the first mortal peoples, awoke. And here the oldest scars still score the world. These lands are vast, and so are the perils that endure from ages long past: ancient curses, pestilence, the undead, and the mutated and corrupted, have claimed what was once holy, divine even, a paradise under the guardianship of ancient gods, the Light Ones. In their last hours the Light Ones spent themselves to shield what they had made, yet with their passing, splendor collapsed into ruin.

Description

Tenebrion comprises three ancient continents set in a rough triangle about a solitary heart, the remnant of Eiraval, the Isle of Radiance. Narrow straits thread between the mainlands, while the outer seas are strewn with chains of reefs, peninsulas, and isle-specks like a shattered crown.

To the first explorers out of Kleriel, the coasts looked untouched, with clean beaches, quiet headlands, long horizons without smoke. But a closer sounding told another tale...

Each arm of Tenebrion bears its own wound, its own curse, its own punishment.

Rellast

Northernmost of Tenebrion, the undead lands of Rellast, also called the Gloomlands, is a vast ruin. Basalt and ash underfoot, fields gone colorless, even the grasses and trees cling to existence in undeath. A choking mist lies over everything, only knife-peaks and a few forsaken towers of ancient fortresses pierce the shroud. The dead do not rest here. Barrow-winds carry whispers, wraiths hunt by sound, and thralls, souls pressed into service, shuffle in spell-iron chains.

Over this pall rule the Vampires, their leaders known as Sable Lords, long mad and ever hungry, waging endless wars to clutch a dominion already dead. Their savage hordes grind one another to dust across black moors and broken vales, yet worse things slip the leash when the moon runs thin. Every victory is paid for with more blight. In the past, blood rites and black sorceries drained what life remained, from fields and forests, from beast to their own people, their own kin, until even the soil grew cold, and they themselves turned in to monsters. In the end the Sable Lords brought their lands to utter damnation, with no limit to their depravity, condemning realm, people, and kin alike to ruin without mercy or end.

Amorra

Southernmost lies Amorra, the Bloodbriar, an ancient rainforest that seems to go on forever. Buttress-roots rise like walls, lianas hang like cables, and the canopy makes its own twilight. Here the very green drinks magic: wards gutter, boons falter, and enchantments thin. Torches hiss, compasses wander, prayers fall on deaf ears. What magic you poses, what faith you carry, it feels stolen by the leaves. The forest is a maze of slick stone and drowned paths. Rains come without warning, rivers change their banks in a night. Predators stalk close, both the quick and the many, and even veterans learn to fight by feel more than sight, knee-deep in sucking mud while roots trip the unwary.

Worse is the plague that haunts these marches, the Weeping. It begins as a heat behind the eyes, then bleeding follows, then from the nose, gums, lids, even the nail-beds, its copper reek a beacon for the jungle’s worst scourge: the Blood Wasps. One sting burns, a swarm unmakes. They drink a man hollow and make nest of what is left. When the air thickens and the pitch rises, companies vanish between one heartbeat and the next.

Beneath all this, the ruins endure. Step-terraces drowned in ivy, altars with channels cut for flow, black basins that never quite clean. The Amorran Arü tried to buy back radiance, first with oaths, then with captives, then with their own blood. Great Restoration Rites offered in numberless thousands to reclaim glory lost. Their last kings raised ziggurats of red stone and filled them to the steps, only the jungle took their cities anyway. Now only shattered lintels and drowned causeways remain, while the Bloodbriar keeps the count in silence. Most steer well clear. Those who do not leave offerings at the edge, and tie bells to their gear so their friends will hear when the swarms begin.

Sarnion

To the east lies Sarnion, now the Shattered Isles, a broken collection of rock and reef that was once a single continent. Causeways run drowned between isle and isle, colonnades lie on their sides in green courts. The sea keeps jealous watch where streets once crossed the sun.

When Arûvhalen fell and the King of Kings sank into breathless sleep, the High Lords of the Arü swore that no price was too high to bring him back. As their rites darkened and their quarrels sharpened, the common folk fled eastward across the Whispering Ocean. In wrath, and as warning, the lords turned their seat into a weapon. They split faults, called storms, and tried to drown Sarnion, to slay the "betrayers" before they could vanish. Several fleets had already slipped the horizon toward Kleriel while behind them the world broke. This would become known as The Exodus.

In the deeps left behind, a new people rose: the Narü, those who near drowned but were saved by a deep power, now water-breathers who built coral-glass halls among toppled arches and sang their laws to the currents. They claim the straits and the vaults below, and light the night with cold lamps under the waves. Sarnion lives, the deep remembers. Every low tide bares a stair, every swell answers a bell, and every chart carries more reefs than names.

Eiraval

Between the three great continents stands Eiraval, the Isle of Radiance, sailors simply call it the Navel. Here the world-tree Arûvhalen once shouldered the heavens. In the War of Wrath it was felled, Tenebrion's greatest scar: a scorched stump ringed by vitrified plains, ash-cliffs, and roots sunk like petrified leviathans into the deep.

What remains is a hollowed colossus. Caverns run where sap once climbed, root-tunnels braid down in miles-long spirals, ambered seeps catch the light like trapped dawn. In this warm dark a new kingdom has taken hold, giant termites that modern explorers have named Tenebrites. They hive within the underbough, plastering galleries with resin, and farming pale fungi on old rot. Few venture far into the depths, fewer return with more than a handful of honey-amber and a story they refuse to finish.

Beside the stump lies Khalazgorix the Black, he who lead the burning, his ancient corpse too vast to move, his ash-black scales seemingly proof against mortal tools, curses, even decay. He is dead, yet the Tenebrites avoid his resting ground, and sailors report an eerie weight in the air as they pass, as though his ancient wrath still lingers.

The Colonies

Only in the last two centuries or so has the new world looked west again and rediscovered the old. Explorers, treasure-hunters, and merchants rushed across the Whispering Ocean in a bright fever, then learned, too often and too soon, how Tenebrion earns its modern name, "The Accursed Lands". Enthusiasm met glassed sands, bad water, and worse things. Many firsts became last breaths.

Yet the tide did not turn back. Little by little, colonies took root along the margins of the cursed wilderness, rocky roadsteads, palisaded harbors, salvage towns built on pilings and prayer. Once a foothold was secured, some outposts did more than survive, a few even thrived, trading relic-salvage, rare timbers, amber-resin, and inks brewed from jungle spores.

Most of these settlements are crown-backed or chartered. The Vallerian Empire and the Reich of Sturmgard sponsor or outright own the largest holdings, while private ventures press the gaps: the wealthy merchant Princedom of Lynora and the enlightened technocrat city-state of Luxaire are the most notable patrons of independent colonial companies.

By necessity, the great majority of colonies stand upon the Isles of Sarnion. Easy to supply, easier to fortify, and perilous in ways men can at least measure. On the mainlands, history is harsher: every true settlement attempt has been wiped out sooner or later. What remains there are landing-outposts only, seasonal depots, strand-camps, and waystations that lift their piers at dusk, post double watches, and pray the lamps hold. For now, the colonies cling to the broken ring like barnacles on a leviathan’s rib, the rest of Tenebrion waits...