Then, looking off into the dark past the road, she watched an animal drag away one of the dead Cradsoun soldiers. It was a spindly creature with a long, undulating body and dozens of pairs of stick-thin legs, mandibles half as large as the rest of its body wrapped like great arms around the corpse. It froze when Indirk saw it, caught her gaze and stared back at her with compound eyes that gleamed in the moonlight. Then torchlight shone on its face and it hurriedly backed into the dark with the body. It drew the body down into the mud, disappearing into the muck like a fish into water.
-"Maniaque" Chapter 23: Across the Warring Lands
Vast salt marshes fed by the Cradsea and the Starlost Expanse, the Warring Lands connect Nor Sator to the Aegis Mountains along the length of the continent's eastern coast. The ground is too unstable for permanent roads or heavy stone construction. The Aldos peoples that once inhabited this land anchored expansive, flat constructs of reeds and wood to the occasional stony hillock that rises above the mud, but such settlements were long ago destroyed in
the Thousand Year War and their ruins have rotted away. This inability to establish permanent fortifications or routes through the Warring Lands has contributed to the war's unending nature. It is impossible to hold the Warring Lands for very long. Ever since the beginning of the war, the disruption of supply lines has been a primary tactic of both sides, inevitably forcing the withdrawal of any troops that would otherwise try to maintain hold of the land long enough to push into enemy territory.
Pre-War Aldos Settlements
The Aldos peoples of the Starmire are the ancestors of many modern-day inhabitants of Cradsoun and Gray Watch, as well as the original source of most of the Aldalneld Writhe's mortal appendages. Prior to the beginning of the Thousand Year War, that is, for most of history prior to the beginning of Revan's Calender nearly 1100 years ago, Aldos cultures were mostly of peaceful scavengers who had mastered the gathering of the Starmire's resources and traded among their own people. The Aldos disliked large settlements and instead formed loose confederations of like-minded groups with vaguely defined territories. Some of these groups were nomadic in nature, particularly those nearest the Cradsea, who would engage with trade with foreign ships. Those along the Starlost Expanse did not share this naval tradition; in this age, the Aldalneld Writhe was still feared to such an extent that the eastern seas were not thought safe to sail for any reason.
Around the year 300 on the Unwritten Calendar, the Aldos peoples along the Cradsea begin to gradually gather into the permanent settlement that would eventually grow into the nation of Cradsoun. Most of these moved further north out of the Starmire, where Cradsoun can be found today.
Between the years 125 and 113 UC, several seasons of unusually large hurricanes swept across the Starmire. These move south and east out of the Norlost Expanse. During several of these years, the Starmire was completely flooded, and many of the easternmost Aldos confederations were washed into the Starlost Expanse. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that Writhewives began to haunt the Starlost Coast in the following decades.
Aldos Settlements during the Thousand-Year War
The Aldos had a long history of favoring one another for trade and barter, so they took well to expeditionary groups traveling south from Cradsoun in search of inland trading partners. By collaborating with many different Aldos confederations, Cradsound was able to extend a trade network far enough to eventually reach into the Rhyqir Valley behind the Aegis Mountains. This triggered the conflict that would eventually become the Thousand Year War, the first centuries of which were called the Starmire War and featured the collapse of free Aldos civilization throughout the Starmire. The Aldos were pressed into service by Cradsoun, their settlements and trade-routes serving as important resources in the first decades of the war. However, the temporary nature of those things left the Aldos unable to maintain their way of life against both large-scale military campaigns and more targeted strikes. Before long, there were no Aldos settlements left in the Starmire. All its inhabitants had traveled as refugees to other places, mostly Cradsoun and Gray Watch, or they had been forced into the sea. Thereafter, the Starmire became known as the Warring Lands.
The Long, Lonely History of the Warring Lands
The mire maintains little evidence of the carnage that takes places within it. Wooden forts are built and machines of war move through the mire, destroyed in battle, rotted away by time, and washed into the sea by hurricanes. Not even bones remain; the bodies of the dead are dragged into the muck by immense Mireworms, the population of which has increased significantly with the thousand-year-feast of dead soldiers. These worms are the only true masters of the Warring Lands. The lines of battle change day to day such that no map will ever be accurate, the mire itself shifting to consume the roads and erases the trails left by armies wading through the much. Gray Watch's caravanners and the rangers of the Laines move through as quickly as they can, leaving as quick as they came. Unless one sees the army or witnesses a battle, one might not even realize there is a war there at all, as all signs are erased within days.
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