Cerys

"North within the shivering seas,

a land lies cloaked by shadow and ice.

The sun never sees how the snows never cease

nor the shadows with red hungry eyes."

-Yoshida Takao (Uthorellian Philosopher & Poet)

Cerys, in its creation, was meant as a homeland for the dwarven race. However shortly after the spark many of the Dwarves left and instead settled on Phallangeia alongside the Halflings. Something had driven them away, something that frightened them. Something they called Isvelgr the devouring ice. An unstoppable slowly encroaching wave of frost that drains the heat and life from all things.
About half of the Dwarves stayed behind and fled into tunnels and caves beneath the eastern mountains. They would remain underground for the next 900 years, permanently changing their physiology turning them into the dark skinned duergar.
After the dwarves had left, the surface of Cerys was uninhabited for hundreds of years, until a fleet of elves from Faerran arrived in 467ps. They were driven from their homeland by a mysterious sickness that caused their forest to slowly rot away. So when they reached Cerys and saw that a very similar fate was looming over this continent, many decided not to stay and instead try their luck further west. Those who did stay behind were determined to save this dying land, they had given up once and they would not do so again. Unfortunately even the greatest of elven mages could merely slow the progress of the frost.

To their credit they fought against this seemingly inevitable fate for over 500 years, by this point half of the continent was covered by ice and the initial hope of stopping it had mostly faded. Then, one day, a stranger arrived on Cerys. A stranger that promised he would stop this creeping calamity.

This stranger later became known as The God-king of Cerys. He tethered the red moon Ithu to Caladranis, the royal palace build on an island at the center of lake Estari, and began to draw energy from it. This brought darkness over a large part of the continent but it soon became clear that it somehow stopped the frost from spreading further.
In fact in the time since, the frost has been pushed back ever so slowly.


A side effect of the now permanent darkness covering the center of Cerys, was the re-emergence of the duergar. Centuries of life underground had caused them to evolve, such that they could no longer tolerate long exposure to sunlight. Therefor they were overjoyed once they found the outside world covered by a blanket of shadow.
Over the past 200 years they have slowly rejoined the upper world society, once they had confirmed the regression of the dreaded frost.


From the outside Cerys may look like a terrifying place. Grey skinned elves and dwarves serving an all powerful god like emperor, living their lives in a land of perpetual night only illuminated by a beam of green energy shooting up into the sky from an obsidian cathedral like fortress.
In truth however the people of Cerys are survivors, scared by past tragedy but with a new found hope. Living in a land that may look frighting but is also serenely beautiful and slowly gaining back its warmth.

Still, visitors should keep a close eye on the shadows. There are things lurking within that are as dangerous as they look.

Type

Continent