The King of the Wasteland

There was a time when the vast and majestic lands of Silthar prospered and bloomed.

The great continent of Arranok was green, boisterous and full of life, peopled with folks of the most varying kind. Some aboriginal, some from afar, and all of them dwelt in the wealth and fertility of the land and the beauty and majesty of the cities.

Carefully ruled and protected were these folks by the wise and noble Great Ones, who had their lordly abode up high in the north, where the winds were harsher and the land was coarse.

In ancient times the Great Ones and their servitors had built their vast and astounding castle on the top of the staggering mountains they called home – a construction of measures unimaginable to anyone who has not participated in building it or has ever dwelt in it, and even to those who have it is hardly comprehensible.

Those were the joyful days when all of Silthar was free and safe, trade was performed all over the continent by sea and by land.

It was a land full of beauty, wonder and magic.

Each and every resident of Silthar could not only choose where to go and stay or if he wanted to stray freely, but also the form he bore. For aeons, every man could decide over their outer appearance, alter it to meet their own ideals and likings in any way physically possible.

To this day, only very few people still share this gift, and there are wondrous places like the glad and boisterous town of living Karadaith, where the residents could still alter their form of appearance once – but back in the days of old it was possible and natural all over the land.

Protected by the power and generosity of the noble Great Ones, the men and women of Silthar need not fear no evil.

No wars were waged, no natural disaster would plague the land for thousands of years, and natures hearts would suffice the blooming cities with energy and life.

But there came the day when a great evil would sweep the land.

From the high north it had come, far, far beyond the – so deemed – impregnable castle of the Great Ones. With Storm and Ice it came down, and it brought Death all over the land.

The Apocalypse had broken loose and hell with all its demons followed with it. The nature of the evil was hardly comprehensible, and for lots and lots of years many fell to its inevitable lethal fatality.

Some others fled, leaving the land to the west by sea to be never seen again, and to the east by land, towards the Lost Desert where they would find only ultimate death as well.

Only few are said to have survived the soaring deserts to the east and whispered campfire legends tell of even fewer still roaming the infinite torrid waste, searching and caring for those poor souls who get lost in the dunes.

For half a millenium death plagued the fruitful and splendous lands of Silthar, the whole wide north and much more was deserted, died off and wasted and thus the Great Cold Distance was formed, which crept southward from the now abandoned majestic castle of the Great Ones, devouring the flourishing lands with its icy breath of doom from its unholy maw.

It was after these five centuries that the Great Ones, who had left their homes and went to live with the folks of Silthar to protect and fight among them, it was then that they saw they had to find an ultimate solution or all of Silthar would fall prey to the evercreeping cold and the death it brings, as so many had fallen before.

Over the course of a hundred years, with the help of magic and mere muscles strength, the noble Great Ones created an enormous moat, all along the continent of Arranok, a moat that reached from the Endless Ocean in the west over to the very brink of the Lost Desert in the far east. A gorge so wide and vast, not even such thing as the cold death from the north should overcome it.