The Lands of Sunrise

The peoples of the continent speak many languages, and many tongues, but one phrase is near ubiquitous: the name of their homelands. Here, there are only two distinctions; the lands of Sunrise, bulwark of civilization, and the lands of Sunset, filled with the grim, neverending forest known as the  Boundless Blight .

Few on the continent can claim to be as old as the land itself. Many of the various races of men fled here from their own distant lands after catastrophe struck them; the tusked men of the  Naziki  from the northwest, the pointed men of the  Cyleis  and  Elideis  from the east, and the stout men of the  Karkovoi  from the west. For all intents, this is the world; ringed only by malice and ruin, and not much better within the walls. For thousands of years, petty kings and queens waged bloody wars for mere inches of territory, bringing vast swathes of the land to heel. However, in the past few hundred years, their sense of urgency has grown. The great forests and ill-omened seas have eclipsed their passage out from their eastern holdfast, and though their kingdoms remain mighty, something sinister stalks them from beyond wooded thickets and high mountains. Today, all the old kingdoms and chiefdoms have been united by the  Alvyrnian Empire ; the greatest empire the Lands of Sunrise has ever seen. And yet their rule is tenuous. They must unite as one, truly, all men and women, or face an extinction they cannot imagine.

But it is not in these grand chapters that our story takes place. Our story takes place on the ground, in the hearts of individuals, who know nothing of grand designs of struggle and power, and who must make their own instead.