The Poor Man's Knife

How? How can something like this happen? All my wisdom. My knowledge. My decades studiyng....they are useless. No signs of struggle, no dead, no burnmarks or discarded weapons. Just...buildings, villages, cities....empty and quiet. So so very quiet.
- Paras Jahon Arcinas after his tour of the north -
For almost anything that happens in the wider world around us man knows the answer. Be it the work of a god or simply a natural occurence any wise man, truly wise or not, will have an explanation. Once in awhile however there is an occurence that leaves both cleric and wiseman speechless. Some events are so irregular, so out of the norm, so unnatural that it leaves generations of people in wonder. In a world as old as Vardania there several of those. Gherdas Broken Fleet, the Whispering Hall of Nurn and many more have captured minds across the ages. Not one of them however is as eerie and mysterious as the Desolation of the North, a tale that has left millions in puzzlement...
Strange. No birds. Well atleast they wont annoy me tonight. Might get a good nights sleep then for once.
The north of Vardania was home to several empires from the 6th century DA onwards. These "Northern Hegemonies" ruled vast stretches of land from the river Meis to the Reach on the back of their chariot lead armies. By 790 DA the power in the north was held by the Sikirians. Their territory was vast but thinly settled when compared to the "Heartlands", still it held several large cities from which the northern kings projected their power. Trade flowed from north to south, salt and iron exchanged for finished goods and wine. Every month on the 12th day a great caravn arrived at Chaironea bringing the northen goods. This was a normal sight, as the caravan had reliably come every month for over 200 years, no matter the weather. But on the 12th Apris of 793 DA the people of Chaironea waited in vain.