The Punished Plains

The Punished Plains occupy the north west expanses of the continent of Myruthea, stretching to Peld and Klaractazum in the north and south and to the ocean on the northern and western coasts.   Once, these plains were fertile with a benign, mild climate and a decent level of rainfall. It was here that the first civilisations on Magicians' End arose amongst the Painted Peoples and it was here that they built the first cities in the age of the Old Kingdoms. Pavol-Rag-Rag is the oldest known, its origin believed to date to over 12,000 years before the Planar Conformation making it close to 18,000 years old. Now, only a flattened pattern of ancient streets and houses remains.     In the time before the Sundering when Magicians' End was simply called Trinity Moon, other and greater cities arose in this region, their names known now only to the Book of Ages. But with the ending of the Thousand Year Alliance, it was not just the Kingdom of Snowborne and the Trinity Moon Triple Enfolding on the continent of Tinturbean who suffered from the climate bomb and the sudden supernatural glaciation that it brought. The punished plains, too were buried under a thick layer of ice which scoured the hills and ground the land flat.   In the aftermath of the Long Thaw, as life returned to normal elsewhere, the punished plains found that a permanent alteration in the weather patterns of this part of Myruthea left them as the dry and cold desert they remain to this day. Their punishment was not over. The North Western Myruthean Soil Fertility Project was a well meaning attempt to restore agricultural land in the region, late in the age of the Four Aerial Courts. Unfortunately the arcane geomancy spells failed badly and left the land in worse condition than it had been before.   The punished plains are now popularly known as the oldest of the Three Stigmata of Myruthea and the first scar to mar the face of the continent. The important centres of civilisation have thought of the area as remote and primitive for many a long age, but there is a nomadic culture of a kind.   Small tribes make the famous Northern Plain Cakes from wild grain, hunt the shy Garmal and harvest Mistleflower to sell in the markets of Peld and Klaractazum.     Occasionally the scattered tribes unite and rise against the cities. So it was that Kinrip Wulgg led his people against Bontater the Fat, the cruel mage who ruled Klaractazum in the later years of the Time of Terrors.