The horrific chain of events generally
subsumed under the title Shroudfall
forever destroyed the political – and greatly altered the physical – geography
of the New Kingdoms. Great empires were shattered and the lands devastated by
the tremendous chaotic forces that propagated through the network of the
Elvengates. The New Kingdoms, as a prosperous and mostly civilised region was
home to eight of the twenty-three Gates, and suffered heavily as a result
(although the disaster was not as terrible as it might have been, due to the
timely closure of the Gates in Menel, Khaoris and Sabahris). Nonetheless, the
Chaos Storm destroyed the remaining five Gates and wrought vast havoc on
adjacent regions.
The worst hit in the initial burst was the
imperial capital, Kolsec. The Gate lay in the grounds of the Palace, and its
total destruction unleashed an explosion of sorcerous energy that levelled much
of the city before rolling out across the surrounding plains. Over a million
citizens of the Empire perished in the first hours of the catastrophe,
including the Imperial Family, all the senior members of the bureaucracy and
many great nobles. Unfortunately for the Empire, the northern city of Zaroshen
was also home to a Gate, and this Gate was blown apart scant minutes after the
Imperial City was destroyed. Zaroshen suffered as badly as the capital and the
Chaos energies released there soon mingled and reacted with the larger Storm moving
up from the south. The resulting conflagration enveloped the heartland of the
Empire, with hurricane-force winds and sudden outbreaks of volcanism causing
the flat, densely populated plains to buckle, ripple and in some places
dissolve entirely, melting into the pure stuff of Chaos.
The next Gate to blow was that outside the
capital of Lhanai, Barinas: although the Gate was among the smallest of those
in the New Kingdoms, and situated well away from the city, its downfall was
among the most spectacular. Instead of directing its energies primarily
outwards, as happened with most other Gates, the Lhanai Gate imploded, creating
a vortex that caused the land for miles around to collapse into a vast rift,
carrying the city of Barinas with it. Although the vortex eventually burned
itself out, it had created a pit of tremendous depth, a ragged scar that drove
down into the Utter Deeps and from which emerge – even now, a thousand years
later – toxic fogs, huge gouts of acidic ash and molten rock, and, it is said,
dark-hearted spirit creatures in the service of the fell Lords of the Utter
Deep.
Two other Gates were destroyed in the Chaos
Storm: that which served Lerinia in the cavern city of Nerumayr and the Gate in
the Dwarf-fastness of Bastion. Nerumayr and the mountain in which it sheltered
were obliterated, setting off a chain of seismic disturbances that rippled
across Lerinia. Of particular import was the partial collapse of the Enterac
Mountains. A vast region of peaks subsided and crumbled, leaving behind a large
badlands, destroying the millennia-old civilisation of the Hobgoblins of Khajj, such that they survive now as vicious scavengers amid the ruin of their
old glories, preyed upon by the Chaos-maddened Giants they formerly called
allies.
In Bastion, fenced-off by Dwarven wards,
the Gate was destroyed but the physical energies were contained. However, the
wards, although they preserved the fortress, could not prevent the spiritual
rot released by the Chaos Storm. Within six months, travellers began to report
a ‘strange upwelling of suspicion and increasing cases of madness’ among the
folk of Bastion. One year later, a group of traders who went to Bastion emerged
from the fortress bloodied and terrified, speaking of maddened Dwarves that
drank the blood of living men and women, Dwarves whose faces melted and
reformed as if made of wax. All travel to Bastion ceased, and two years later
the first incursions of the Chaos Dwarves and Blood Dwarves began, dread raiders
sweeping the lands around Bastion in search of blood and death. Eventually an
army of Dwarven warriors, Vostroskan mercenaries and alchemical engineers from
Giuras was able to contain the incursions and besiege Bastion (building a great
set of fortifications around the fortress, manned by the most doughty warriors
and ensorcelled with wizardly and priestly power).
Thus it was that in the space of three
short and horrific years three of the greatest powers in the New Kingdom had
fallen: the Kolsec Empire had been the mightiest nation, and Lhanai, its
striving rival, whilst the Dwarves of Bastion had been a great stabilising
influence in the east. Worse, however, was to come as the full physical
consequences of Shroudfall became apparent. Although much of the region had
survived the immediate impact of the Chaos Storms, some areas now found
themselves consigned to a lingering and in some cases, horrid death. Least
damaging was the slow sinking of the lands at the mouth of the Rhasad River.
During the decades immediately following Shroudfall most folk were too busy
managing the multiple hazards of atrocious weather, famine and failed harvests
and incessant attacks by barbarians, nomads and humanoids to notice the
incursions of the ocean in the Rhasad’s wide and swampy delta. However, it soon
became apparent that the ocean was conquering the land there, and over the
following two centuries, the delta and much of the fertile plain that
surrounded it were gradually submerged, until the land finally settled, leaving
a shallow and rather treacherous gulf where once had been the heartland of
Lhanai. The mighty port city of Olkos (once located on an island in the delta
ninety miles from the open sea) was now an isolated outpost, with fifteen miles
of ocean between it and the nearest shore, plagued by pirates and cut off from
its sources of food.
Almost as insidious was the advance of the
Bhrune Desert in the northwest: as the changes to the weather and the courses
of several important rivers took effect, marginal land became useless and the
great wine-growing regions of the northern Kolsec Empire became useless for all
but the most tenuous forms of pastoralism. Eventually, the desert reached the
northern mouth of the Demongate before the advance slowed. Even now, however,
farmers in the northwest dread the coming of the dust-bearing winds that sweep
down through the Demongate and over the mountains, bringing a hacking cough and
the death of harvests buried beneath dust and sand.
The climate changed across the whole region,
although this change occurred in the manner of an intensification of existing patterns. For example, the ‘stormy
south’ became even more so: always cool and windy, it is now prone to vast
southerly storms that belabour the coasts with hail, snow and gales that drive
boats to ruin on the rocky shores. The drier west and north is mostly
unchanged, save for the fact that winters – particularly in the high plains –
are now much colder and marked by blizzards, and framed by dismal autumnal fogs
that last for days on end.
The east coast – long the wettest and
warmest region of the New Kingdoms (barring the desert north) – is even wetter,
particularly in late winter and spring. It has also become hotter in summer but
considerably colder in winter, with snow now frequent in the highlands. The
results of this have been mixed: crop yields have increased, but massive and
destructive floods have become a regular occurrence, whilst new and virulent
diseases have arrived, attacking plant, beast and humanoid alike.
Yet the most remarkable consequence of
Shroudfall was the sudden emergence of new races. Most of these were hybrids of
human and beast (and more rarely, human and plant), but others represented
divergent strains from long-established races. In addition, the number and
prevalence of the elemental hybrids increased. This was most common near the
areas where Shroudfall had been most directly destructive: central Lhanai, the
old Kolsec heartlands and the northern wastelands. There was often strife and
persecution of these new humanoids, but eventually – although some severe
prejudice still remains – the new ‘Shroudborn’ became part of everyday reality
for the old folk.
The final change was one of politics: the
collapse of the great powers, and the barbarian invasions that followed left a
huge vacuum in the New Kingdoms. Only a few of the former nations survived.
Foremost among these were the Realms of the Magelords, the Elven lands in the
great forests of Menerhanta and the Kingdom of Rakhanay. Yet even Rakhanay
disappeared briefly from the maps during the great Arunaic Ascendancy, when
religious fanatics from the west swept into the New Kingdoms and dominated the
north and west for nearly a century before their theocratic rule collapsed
under the weight of its many internal contradictions.
Now, a millennium after Shroudfall, a
tenuous stability reigns. With the restoration of trade and the abatement of
the barbarian invasions, new nations have formed and older ones regained their
strength. But it is a fragile peace, guaranteed mainly by comparative amity
between the nations and the current lack of external enemies. None can tell
when some dark new threat will arise to shake the palaces of the great and spread
woe and wrath once more.
