The empire of Thassilon

The empire of Thassilon was founded in –6530 ar, 1,237 years before Earthfall brought the Age of Legend to an abrupt and apocalyptic end. The nation was founded by a visionary—if controversial—Azlanti wizard named Xin, a man exiled from his homeland for his belief that the so-called “lesser races” of the world could rival the achievements of Azlant. Xin brought with him an army of apprentices, followers, and their families, all loyal subjects who chose exile with their lord rather than remain in Azlant. When they arrived on the shores of what would someday be known as Varisia, Xin knew he had found a place where he could prove his beliefs to the elitist Azlanti. He embraced the cultures of the native peoples—the nomadic and superstitious Varisians, the proud and headstrong Shoanti, the powerful and mystical taiga and stone giants, and the alien and magical elves of Celwynvian. Xin drew from the strengths of multiple cultures to shore up the weaknesses of any one group, and in so doing built the nation of Thassilon into a true empire.

Though his intentions were certainly noble, Xin did not fully account for humanity’s capacity for treachery. It would take Xin decades to establish Thassilon and build it into a burgeoning empire, but only a fraction of that time for his self-appointed subordinates—the socalled runelords of Thassilon—to turn against him and seize the empire as their own. And so history remembers Thassilon not for what Xin had imagined it to be, but as a perversion of all his hopes and dreams.

Eleven thousand years is a long time for a man’s lost soul, trapped within the ruins of his own palace and prevented from escaping to the Boneyard for final judgment, to ruminate on his failures. And when Xin’s ghost rises, those eleven millennia will prove to have been unkind indeed.