Western Aneloria

in The Approach

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The following is an excerpt from a collection of essays by Ecurian of Thesal. While possessed of a certain arrogance, they provide valuable insight to lands that we have forgotten in our struggles.

  It is unfortunate that we are reduced to so little… the civilized regions number few and are reckoned easily from memory. Gone are the days of kingdoms and dominions spanning the breadth of our lands. Nowadays, we have been reduced to points of light amidst a dark tapestry where just enough civilization shines through as if between weak threads in ragged tapestry of former grandeur.   I sit today in Greater Thesol, in the still strong heart of the western lands. Home of our beloved dominion, the Kingdom of Thesol which has a lineage that dates back to the Duskwar. Our neighbors are the forest Sylvanni kingdom of Merida, the sorcerer-barons of Cretia, and our foul dark-worshipping neighbors to the west, the Agrians. To the north and east, the Kingdom of Ilaern, with their Shaelovanni nobility, lies astride our neighboring regions.   Above us lay the Remnant Thrones, the Approach and the Periphery of Man which are the last vestiges of the civilized world before treading into the unknown of the Wildlands and northern territories. The kingdom of Ilaern spreads from the Approach, to the Remnant Thronesl, into the Periphery and eastward to the Great Lakes region which forms our own eastern borders. On the southwestern edge of the Approach, the Sylvanni realm of Caemaranth is nestled in tight amidst the mountain forests. Its closest neighbor to the west, the Kingdom of Auredain is considered the last northern point of light, the heir to a dozen fallen kingdoms and a legacy of war against the hordes which battered their ancestors into their current shape and threaten it still. However, there is one point even more distant, the independent keep-town of Redcliff that has held against the hordes. How well it has done so is left to one’s imagination as the stories that filter south speak of a lawless capital of danger and banditry. Rumors of Duergar Vaults still closed from the rampages of centuries past are bandied about but this scholar has heard nor seen anything concrete.   To the west and north are the Northern Holds, where human and Jotun raiders have pierced the darkness of the coastline and begun to tame the wilderness again. It is said that even the fierce Jotunnar are hard-pressed against the beastmen that infest those dark mountains and forests.   To our far west, the Successor States, those dominions that seek the mantle of Mantheria while braving the dangers of the Strife-Lands which lay north of them and near to our western borders. Set between us and them lie the horrific Strife-Lands where the Taking struck with full fury and its adherents remain there still.   Nearer still lays the cold, lifeless ground of the Bonemiles. The Taking and its Foul Folk hordes were not enough for here in the heart of civilization did a dark land of the undying rise up to consume those who had dwelt there in peace before. The last known resistance was in the Duergar Vault-Kingdom of Kirak Garn and there has been no word from those halls in decades.   Below us, to the south, lie the River-Kings and the Hearth Kingdoms, the untouched gems of the mortal races. Although beset by the wildness loose in the world, they were not endlessly besieged or assailed by the Takers. The majority of their strife came from within amidst a darkness of their own making. These hallowed relics of a bygone age are not as grand nor as steadfast they once were but they continue to flourish in their own ways. Unfortunately, such ways sway between isolationist and interventionist in those of us who are making our own way in the world.   To the south and west are the few remaining kingdoms struggling from the onslaught of refugees and hardship brought on by the Taking. In sorrow, we call them the Begging Lands but they were once strong and proud as like us. Now, the century and more of fleeing refugees and the drain on food and resources has dwindled them to miserable hold-outs; suspicious of outsiders, cruel to their neighbors and indifferent to the needs of all mankind.   And finally, the Great Ocean, across which lies the island of Lyatia. Once a subject of Mantheria, the Lyatians have brought maritime commerce and trade back to western Aneloria and their ships carve the waves in search of new markets. It is said that they have even searched to the west for Thera and been to the eastern coast of Aneloria.   To the south and east, the Throat of Gold and the Traitor Cities, so named as they refused to come to our aid during the Taking. Across that briny border to Aneloria’s south, the narrow expanse of saltwater known as the Gold Throat, the continent of Shalmere appears on the southern horizon. Little is known of that dry land and that which is known marks it as a place of terrible legends and great foreboding. There the ancient Empire of Dust has grown dark and become a facsimile of itself as rumors of Wartorn religions and mystics hold sway over the once-great populations of Man.