< Scavenger Lands | Hundred Kingdoms | Wyld Reaches >
In the First Age, the glorious city of Madadhine was a center of culture, learning and civilization beyond any other city in the Laris and Velen Districts. Some say it filled the void left in the East by august Sperimin, whose Council never let it grow beyond a very large College, and it's certainly true that many of those who studied in Sperimin went to Madadhine to play and later to live. The city was famed for its crystal spires and beautiful gardens, and the numerous wonders of the First Age such as the wonderous artifacts known to Savants as "Dream Parlours". Prior to the Usurpation, the city itself was ruled over by the Lunar White Lily and her Solar Consort, a Night Caste who took little interest in the city itself except as a mass of people to lose himself amidst when not engaged in some mission for the Solar Deliberative or his ancient Circle. The pair's beautiful children could be found in all levels of Madadhine society, and over the centuries, much of the citizenry held a spattering of Solar and Lunar blood with vivid golden hair and silvery eyes being not at all uncommon. By some luck, the city mostly escaped the Usurpation intact, both White Lily and her husband having been in Meru. Most of the population didn't even know what had happened, except rumors that they found hard to believe right up until the Dragon-Blooded arrived and began rounding up Golden Children (and those with perhaps a tint too much gold in their hair).
None of the great Daimyo's of the Shogunate chose Madadhine as the center of their power, and the city fell into something of a decline, particularly considering the eradicating of so much of it's population during the purges that marked the Terrestrial takeover. A triumvirate of Air Aspected Sorcerers claimed the Silver Tower that had once been claimed by the cities queen, and tried their best to stay out of the site of the warring Daimyos that raged across the East, and as a result the city managed to survive reasonably intact though much of it's elegant First Age technology had failed. Sometimes in disastrous ways, such as when one of the cities four major "Dream Parlors" (or, as they were called them, Woven Dream Vaults) suffered a cascading failure and created a barely contained vortex of Wyld Energy that eradicated several blocks of the city before the cities rulers and their servants were able to get everything back into shape. Records, located in Lookshy, put this event as about 100 years prior to the Great Contagion and note that many saw the city as a particularly weak spot in case of deep penetration by the Fae.
This statement would, in time, be proven quite prophetic. While the Great Contagion managed to hit the city as hard as anywhere else, the Madadhine had always been a strong people and perhaps some of the will of their Exalted rulers still ran in their bloodlines, for the survivors managed to hold together some semblance of order and had even begun the process of dealing with the dead when the Fair Folk pushed past the borders of Creation and fell upon their cities like Jackals. The city itself fell in literally minutes, the Fair Folk attacking the wards that kept the broken Vortex at bay and ensuring the other Dream Parlors joined it in ripping the city apart and forming a zone of wyld contamination some thousand miles wide at the moment of breakthrough. The massive wave of energies overwhelmed the forces of Deheleshen fighting a holding action some 700 miles away, almost evaporating the meager defenses of the Wyld in one stroke. Even the Lunars, suddenly facing enemies able to pour in from in front and behind, were rapidly becoming overwhelmed and the Unshaped simply poured out of the Wyld and ripped wide the holes even further. Entire sections of Creation collapsed, including most everything East of Sperimin, before the Empress managed to activate the Sword of Creation.
The Wyld Zone that had sprung up when the Fair Folk took Madadhine retreated to a large extent when assaulted by the Empress, but it did not fade entirely. Countless hordes of Fae took refuge in the Wyld in and around Madadhine, escaping destruction, and in time establishing Freeholds to use as bases to ride out into Creation once again. This time for sport, rather than in hopes of destroying everything. For the first hundred years or so after the Great Contagion, the interior of the Hundred Kingdoms was largely abandoned, simply too dangerous to settle but over time the Wyld receded more and more until eventually men began to move into the tainted lands and settle what territory they found there. Kingdoms arose, particularly in the area around the Broken Foot Mountains, which seemed particularly stable and resistant to the Wyld's Influence.
Only last year, the people of the Hundred Kingdoms - of Creation itself - discovered why the area around that range of Mountains was stable when a circle of Anathema stole into a forgotten place of power and activated something that had laid dormant since the Dawn of Time. All throughout the Wyld Reaches, people turned and looked as a Golden Tiger flared in the distance and the earth shook. One mountain surmounted the others, and with a glint of the sun, revealed itself to not be a mountain at all but something... worse.
Everyone knew, upon seeing Khalas tha - the Destroyer of Nations - that something terrible had come to Creation. Looking at that horrible crystalline mountain as it floated serenely into the Wyld was like looking at Death; your death, and the death of everyone you know or would ever meet. One woman in the City-State of Radiant is said to have smothered her children and slit her own wrists in response, and rumors say (though who would know?) that the Pale Daughter of Iron and Bone smiled upon stepping onto her balcony and seeing this ancient evil return to the World. Most simply forced themselves away, and went back to their lives with a nagging feeling that they couldn't quite place.
Hours later, the giant thing still dimly visible from Amanton as a glittering crystalline jewel in the sky, only a few were still watching when the bursts of light and orbs of color illuminated the darkening sky. There was just enough time for people to scream and point, for others to hear and come out to look for themselves and marvel at the seemingly very distant spectacle. No one had time to scream or panic when a pillar of white dominated the sky. None could even fully turn their head before the sphere of white light reached them. Most had only seconds to fear the end, but instead, felt only a blast of hot air. Somewhat uncomfortable, but more like stepping into an overly hot bath than anything dangerous. The shockwave itself reached Lookshy before it fully dissipated, though it took several days before the General Assembly had put together enough information to guess what had occurred. And, make no mistake, it is only a guess.
The crystalline mountain limped its way back toward its perch, but even before it disappeared from view once more, people had already began to spread the news that the Wyld Zone at the center of the Hundred Kingdoms was simply gone. Or, if not gone, hopelessly shattered and only a few years from vanishing entirely. While what was left was somewhat charred earth, it was earth, and geomancers could find no hint of the Wyld there. Many were still contemplating what to make of this when a Circle of Anathema "conquered" Budan Mar.
The mortal savants that examined the former Wyld Zone discovered more than its entry into creation. The soil, while blackened, was very rich and filled with positively absurd amounts of nutrients and these savants predicted that in time this region would become one of the most fertile regions of the East. Similarly, explorers into some of the foothills and ravines have spotted iron ore just laying on the surface and there are almost certainly more deposits underground. While most of the water in the portion of the Sandy River that passed through the Wyld Zone was vaporized by the crystalline mountains power, the river bed was left intact and a number of Hyades emerged from the disturbed elemental essence to correct the imbalance in the River's flow.
Nor are these raging river elemental's alone. The Courts of Wood seem to have experienced the most growth into this new area, as elementals of Wood spring up all along the banks of the various rivers and in a wide ring all along the former edge of Creation. As the process of life spreading into the region continues, the number and power of Wood Elementals will only grow -- and the process isn't exactly orderly causing more than a little disarray. While not as heavily affected as the Court of Wood, the other Courts find themselves pulled into endeavors as well. The sheer fact of the matter is, a vast amount of elemental essence was simply released into the midst of Creation's dragon lines and it will take a long time for the imbalances to sort themselves out. Most elementals haven't experienced anything like this in over 700 years, and that event was quite different.
The chaos has attracted more than a few of Creation's powers. The Azure Dragon, Lord Nubinos, was the first of the Lesser Elemental Dragon's to arrive on the scene in hopes of fashioning a report for his superiors in the Bureau of Seasons. He took a bit of a break from that effort to assist his fellow Water Elementals by helping to organize some of the Hyades, Sobeksis, and Tidals he found managing the river and even paid a quick visit to the Court of Three Gorges before remembering why he seldom did such to begin with. He was still there when Green Laughing Bear, the Wind Master and arguably one of the Azure Dragon's superiors, came to visit and people as far away as Budan heard the thunder and lightning of the two Dragon's argument. Some worry that the war between Air and Water might once again come to the Scavenger Lands but at least for now that seems unlikely due to the arrival of the last two Dragons.
Drawn to the region by the huge influx of Wood Elemental Essence, and his own memories of Khalas tha, Joyous Youth Juritsu settled down and began the work of constructing a new Court to assist with the reclamation of the area. This, naturally, attracted the attention of the Dragon's rival and the East's Celestial Censor, the Verdant Dragon Sainharu who flew over the region for three days before landing atop a spire in fallen Maladahn and using his Heavenly Mandate Shout to proclaim the Land of Black Ash an elemental disaster area under his direct supervision until such time as the crisis had passed. In a display of more effort than the Dragon has shown in the past 500 years, he then sat down to dealing with the other problem in the land.
The return of an entire region of Creation was something the Celestial Bureacracy had not had to deal with since the Usurpation. In fact, they'd slowly lost territory over the past 700 years (and lost it quite quickly in the years prior to that). More than a few of the Celestial Gods knew exactly what had happened and were of somewhat mixed feelings on the subject. On one hand, they regained a lot of territory. On the other hand, someone awoke Khalas Tha and kicked in the teeth of the Raksha with it. When they found out that Skyla has no plans to repair the Spires they were even more puzzled and generally worried. As a whole, the Bureau's are of mixed opinion on this, but the general God on the Street considers this nothing but a good thing. The petitions for a job, any job, in this newly opened territory began almost immediately. The more ambitious God's have instead petitioned to be appointed God of this new Solar Empire that the Circle of Khalas Tha are building in the Hundred Kingdoms, but to date, Wun Ja has made no such appointment.
The matter of reclaiming "the Land of Black Ashes" itself is a cross-bureau matter (that hasn't been undertaken in thousands of years), headed loosely by the Bureau of Heaven in general and the Division of Wyld-Shaping in particular. The leader of that division, Bound Sapphire, is enjoying watching the Bureau's head Taru-han demonstrate her complete lack of experience in actually running anything important -- but as she reads more reports from the newly assigned gods and the more-than-useless Eastern Censor, she's forced to admit that she barely has a better idea herself. Only assigned to the Division as a punitive measure, most of the paperwork and memory crystals she has involve working with Solar Exalted using Charms and Reality Engines. Not the primordial horror that is Khalas Tha. Thankfully, unlike Taru-han, Bound Sapphire has the advice and assistance of her former superior and mentor, Lytek, to assist her in this endeavor.
Most of the new gods assigned to the Land of Black Ashes are friends of important god's in the various Bureau's, or the occasional lucky unemployed god from Yu Shan's slums that was picked by Taru-han to appease the mob. They have the advantage and disadvantage of active supervision and superiors that actually read their reports, and the extreme disadvantage of being totally outside the working arrangements that the Terrestrial Gods have made between themselves since the Contagion. Nor was the Divison of Wyld-Shaping very well prepared for the widespread geomantic disruption caused by Khalas Tha -- and it's onslaught of Elementals, many born from Elemental Essence that's been trapped outside of Creation for hundreds of years.
Stryck Wiki