This is the story of the Great Journey of Ionia.
Ionia was created long, long ago during the Great Disaster which changed the world forever. The oceans swallowed many shores, the lands shifted, the ground erupted. Drastic changes occurred around the globe in only a span of a few years. It was like nothing the world had seen before and like nothing it would see again until the very end. The continents took on strange new shapes, and some were drowned altogether, never to be seen again. Fires from the center of the earth rose to the surface and flowed out from the mountains. Glaciers melted and froze again in new places. Climates changed, landscapes transformed. It was a completely different world. All that remained the same was the sky.
Ionia was a small outcrop of land which had survived the Great Disaster. It was still flourishing with life. It retained small pieces of the former world within its small boundaries. Mountains, forests, and deserts were all contained within Ionia. It was cut off from the outer world, which was believed to be nothing more than a vast, barren wasteland. The sea surrounded Ionia on three of its borders: the north, the south, and the east. The west was attached to a great continent of dying lands of rock and ash. However, Ionia was cut off from this land and no one ever journeyed there. A great shelf of rock ran along the western borders. Behind this shelf was the River of Fire which was uncrossable. The fire flowed from the great volcanoes and ever remained hot and flowing. On the other side of this river was a row of extremely tall mountains, which rose higher than even the tallest mountains which were in the world before the Great Disaster. They were extremely high, black and bare, with no sign of tree, grass, or creature. A line of tall giants which constantly glared down on the lands below.
The people who had survived colonized this country. They had created a new history for themselves. The ancient empires of many thousands of years from which they had come from were forgotten. Their memory had been washed away with the same waters which destroyed the lands. There were no stories, myths or legends of before the Great Disaster. Even the origin of the people after the Disaster and their coming together in the aftermath was forgotten. The people were lost. They needed to make a new world for themselves. Outside of this world, nothing else existed. They believed themselves to be the only survivors. There was nothing outside of Ionia. No one could live in the dead lands beyond. The sea was too large to be crossed, and all that was there was more sea, stretching on forever.
Ionia had its share of wars. Cities were built and cities fell. Empires rose and disappeared. But for the most part, the people of Ionia were able to live peacefully. They lived in harmony with their environment. Even though the Great Disaster occurred very long ago, and no stories from before that time were remembered, the people knew that the ancient people before the Disaster did not respect their environment. The people of Ionia had seen the worst. They knew the importance of the nature around them, and most importantly, they knew how quickly it could be taken away. This is a lesson they never forgot, even though they could hardly remember anything of their origins in the land.
This story takes place a millennium after the great disaster. A time when Ionia lived in peace. The Twelve Cities of Ionia had not warred with each other for almost a hundred years, since the great wars of Brannock. The Twelve cities were all very different in they're own respects. The four cities of Brannock were close together and had strong ties with each other. The other cities were scattered throughout the country. Two of these cities were hidden, although the knowledge of their existence was very well known. One of these cities was believed to be somewhere in the Ti jungle. The location of the other was speculative. Kindelo was the one city which had less to do with the others. It was located in the far south separated by the rest of the country by the Ubez desert, which was hardly ever crossed. They were sundered from the other peoples of Ionia, but were still peaceful when they did interact.
