Darklands, Formerly Sanctum

Sanctum was a collection of grand settlements that banded together to form a united front and to conquer the North-West. This alliance was not to last however as the grand mages of each settlement sought to gain control of the ley line heavy land for themselves, which lead to the Great Mage Wars.
The Great Mage Wars
With the elves gone, the nine magocracies vied for control of the ley lines. They sought to warp the lines so that their incredible power might serve whatever diabolical interest the victorious mages served. Just as one magocracy tried to assert full authority over the lines, another rival would interfere. The contests rapidly be-came less subtle and more acrimonious. Any attempt at secrecy vanished over 400 years ago with the summoning of the Isonade, the creature that legend held responsible for the sinking of Ankeshel, an island off the coast. It attacked the coastline and it was only due to the combined efforts of the mages of Allain, that halted the devastation and restored the beast to slumber.
Summoning the Isonade sparked open war and a terrible eldritch arms race. No longer were the giant slaves of Balinor the most powerful battlefield terrors. Acid rains that stripped flesh from bone and dissolved stone killed all the inhabitants of the city of Cuculla. Tiefling sorcerers from the Drakwald infiltrated Cassilon and summoned powerful fiends in the streets. The Fellmire was created by the mysterious conjuration of a lake-sized vampiric fog that sucked the life from all in its path.
The constant tug of arcane turmoil stressed the region’s ley lines to the breaking point. The mages of Allain manipulated their holdings to seize ultimate control of this resource by deviating the lines in warped, unnatural curves toward power sinks they created to permanently anchor the lines. But this seizure of power had unintended consequences. A treacherous member of the normally impartial Fulgurate Society took advantage of the twisted ley lines to tear a hole in the fabric of reality and bring forth a devastating godlike monstrosity from a realm beyond the stars.
The colossal beast destroyed two rival territories before competing mages could use the stretched and twisted nature of the ley lines to summon another horror to stop it. This eldritch arms race continued for decades, with increasingly alien monstrosities making their way into Veratus, laying city after city to waste, and withering all around them with each step. Only the combined might of surviving archmages saved Veratus from consumption by the Great Old Ones. Unable to dismiss the creatures, the wizards instead sought to halt time around them.
Known as the Great Slumber, this effort condemned the creatures to a somnambulistic gait along twisting paths that still carve terrible new summoning glyphs upon the parched lands of the destroyed magocracies. By the time the last Old One was slowed to a few steps each year, however, only Allain survived. A desolate waste covered the lands west of the Spine, and they stand little changed from that great time of ruin.

Type

Territory