#organization: the glassblades

[exandrianxnightsxdm]

The Adventure Begins || Thread 001 || Quest 001

welcome to Wildemount.

The year is 836 P.D., or post Divergence, this continent is divided both by jagged terrain and political powers. The Menagerie Coast, a collection of city states united under the Clovis Concord, monopolizes the southwestern shores and ports of Wildemount, thriving on open trade and cultural freedom. Beyond the Cyrios Mountains lies the massive region known as Wynandir, bisected by the Ashkeeper Peaks. Eastern Wynandir houses the expansive wastes and turbulent badlands of Xhorhas, overrun with all manner of beasts and terrors; relics from the final battles of the Calamity; a ruinous, scarred landscape. Western Wynandir calls itself home to the powerful, religiously conservative and militant state of the Dwendalian Empire.

This story, however, begins in the north eastern reaches of Wildemount, in the lawless lands known as the Greying Wildlands. Separated from the Dwendalian Empire by the jagged Dunrock Mountains and the Quannah Breach, this landscape of dense, desiccated forests, rolling mountains, and icy tundra finds itself relatively unclaimed by human hands. A curse is said to taint the land, making survival a constant challenge for those that find themselves outside of the established blips of society.

The southern section of the Greying Wildlands is known as the Savaliarwood, renamed but three centuries ago from it’s prior designation of the “Veluthil Forest”. The once beautiful thicket has, in the time since the fall of Molaesmyr, became corrupted; the trees resemble less of a thicket and more of gnarled, cursed wood and the creatures that dwell within have begun to evolve into unrecognizable monstrosities.

The northwestern area of the Greying Wildlands is known as the Crystalsands Tundra. Once a beautiful expanse that connected into the Veluthil Forest to the south, this land is rumored to have been ravaged during The Calamity. A battle so intense that the region was dashed into rock and sand in which winter quickly reclaimed it as a new, icy desert. Tall dunes glitter like piles of diamonds in the daylight, shifting with high winds and the movements of creatures that burrow and hunt beneath the sands. Between the giant hawks and owls that fly over from the Flotket Alps, the nomadic goblinoids that stalk the frost dunes in search of food, and the creatures that lurk beneath the surface of the shifting sands in their ice-marked tunnels, most adventurers prefer to find magically means of moving from place to place or choose their travel paths with extreme caution. 

To the east of the Savaliarwood lays the Rime Plains - fields of rolling tundra with bursts of boreal forest that seems to stretch on and on, covering the entirety of the southeastern section of the Greying Wildlands. The Rime Plains are mostly open, untamed wilderness where survival depends on one’s ability to endure the elements and navigate the wilds skillfully. More than the natural wilds lurks around each turn, though, as nomadic bands of Orcs known as the Jez-Araz react violently to anyone and anything they come across as they navigate the Plains.

Our story, however, begins much smaller. Nestled among the northwestern part of the low cliff boundary of the Crystalsands Tundra, along the cold shore of the Frigid Depths is the village of Palebank. The denizens of Palebank often take to ice fishing, trapping, or hunting, returning in small caravanas to Uthodurn within the Flotket Alps to sell their wares and restock their supplies. Territorial monsters wander close to the village, so rotating squads of Glassblades - the protective force that keeps an eye on Palebank Village for the capital city of Uthodurn - are assigned to protect the people.

Within the wooden palisades that protect the outer edge of the village there are over a hundred shacks and cabins - some living quarters, some shops - with no true layout to the town. On the outer edge, toward the northern cliff that overlooks the docks rests the town graveyard, and beside that -- The Shattered Rose Inn. It is here, along the snowy coat of the Frigid Depths, that a handful of wandering destinies begin to intersect.  The Inn has a quaint appearance, it’s ramshackle building houses a two-story inn and pub that is known for its ostentatious storytelling barmaid and cheap housing for drunkards and adventurers alike.

The sun hangs low in the sky on the evening of Conthsen in the month of Misuthar as a group gathers -- not at the Inn that you had been instructed to arrive at, but at the graveyard beside it. Snow gently falls from the sky and wind bites your cheeks as you stand on the outer edge of the graveyard, listening to folks giving their last goodbyes as the body of a local dwarf named Urgon Wenth is lowered into a freshly dug grave.