Ios
In the final days of the Claiming, the realm of Ios, ancestral homeland to elves of Immoren, once again closed its borders completely to outsiders. With no news coming out of the kingdom, many Iosans dwelling outside the boundaries of their homeland returned to seeking word of their families and loved ones. None who have entered Ios have returned.
That something catastrophic has occurred is generally agreed. The Iosans, after all, are no strangers to disaster, having survived more than their share of it throughout their history. Yet this calamity seems different than those that have come before, and no one has yet been able to penetrate the mysterious depths of the forest realm to ascertain what has become of the people who once dwelt within.
The forests of Ios have always been foreboding. The majority of the region is dominated by tall, pale aspens that form an impenetrable canopy. Underbrush is all but unheard of, and the silent glades of Ios are blanketed by moss and other bryophytes. Wet meadows break up the trees, as do high plateaus where wildflowers bloom in a riot of colors rarely seen by outsiders. Mist cloaks the forest throughout the year, and there are those who say that this haze has a mind of its own—that it whispers secrets in the ears of travelers and turns them around in their tracks until they have lost all sense of direction. Some even claim the mist is made up of the souls of those elves who are born without them.
Anyone who has ventured near Ios, including diplomats and trading parties from Llael, Cygnar, and even Rhul, have found the gates of its border fortresses closed, their walls apparently untenanted. Any expedition that has gone around these defenses has either found itself turned around in the forest, walked out despite believing it was marching in, or disappeared without a trace. Those who have managed to return tell outlandish and frightful tales that might have been dismissed as outright fabrications were the horrors of the Claiming not still fresh in the minds of the populace: stories of elves, black-eyed and soulless, who watched them silently from the trees and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Yet these are the least of the horrifying tales spun by the few who have set foot in Ios since the Claiming. Others tell stories of barely glimpsed shadows that were like Iosans, yet different—twisted and terrible, their hunger a palpable thing that radiated outward like heat from a furnace. No one in the outside world can say what has become of the once-proud people who called this forest realm their home, but all of western Immoren wonders—and fears.
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