North

Perhaps more-so than any other land in Ithia, the place known by historians and adventurers simply as "the North" is a place disconnected from the world at large, permitted to grow in relative isolation. Protected in the north by the Boreal Seas and along its coasts by the dangerous waters of fjord and bight, while its interior is given over to the primeval forests most often known simply as the Untamed. Even the land bridge that theoretically connects it to the settled kingdoms in the Cradle of Light is one of the most inhospitable places in Ithia: a home to terrible linnorm and skulking beasts.

While modern efforts are slowly chipping away at the edges of that isolation, it remains true that the long centuries of time since the end of the Old War have seen the North's history feed mainly upon itself. Because of this, it is chiefly a land of mysteries unknown to outsiders and of dangers that all but the hardiest of souls--or the greatest of fools--will avoid.

Nations
Though it has gone through many changes in the past, the North of the present day consists of six major nations: So it seems peaceful and well-ordered on maps, with all the lands cut neatly by borders that any woodsman will tell you in a heartbeat are a lie. No nation in the North truly controls all of the lands the cartographers ascribe to them, and all who live there know that harsh weather, wild lands, and wilder beasts are the true order of the day. Scattered tribes lurk in the mountains or hidden in lost valleys in the Untamed, while bandit camps that answer to no government are secured in cliff-side redoubts and monsters of tremendous size and terrible fury can be found walking the endless tundra beneath stars that do not dim for months at a time.
 * The Angaran Forge:  The great dwarven kingdom, it stretches across barren tundra and the foreboding Anvilhead Mountains, forming the northern-most border of the north and abutting the Boreal Seas.  They are also famed for their aloofness, preferring to hold themselves apart from the other nations of the North and long remembering grudges.
 * Eldhërwye the Untamed:  Wild forests that dominate much of the continent, it is an untrammeled wood of the darkest and most primeval variety.  Once the seat of the powerful Glaudris Circledom, it is now home to little more than small cabals of wild elves and the scattered, leaderless fey remnant.
 * Risxit:  As much a collection of coastal city-states as a cohesive nation, it is ruled loosely by a pirate lord traditionally known as the Heir of Gostard, though who that is at the moment is anyone's guess.
 * Lilan: A halfling nation allied closely to Illia.  Comprised of small, isolated townships knitted together by a surprisingly robust postal system.  It is ruled currently by Postmistress Idala Greenthumb, who is enamored with all things concerning the First Kin and seeks most fervently the lost knowledge of how they tended to the land.
 * Illia: Close allies with Lilan, Illia shares its border also with the dour folk of the Angaran Forge and is host to a mixed culture of dwarves, humans, and halflings.  With perhaps the only truly hospitable portage in the North, along the northern edge of the Biting Bay, it is in a prime location to import goods from the rest of the world.  Its thriving ports mean that Illia's neighbors also see fit to pour their own works of art and craft into the mix in hopes of finding wider markets.
 * Nevean:  Isolated from the rest of the lands in the North by reaching fingers of the Anvilhead Mountains, Nevean is a small backwater overseen by Highlord Conmin Halyas.  Seen by outsiders as a land of, too little intellect and too many taxes, there nevertheless seems to be something strange about the nation...for of all the lands in the North, only the Angaran Forge has existed longer and none have been as stable or as insular as the so-called 'peasants of the North.'

The North, for all its history, remains a killing place, a land of dying for the unprepared and of hardship for all who live there. But it is also a land of riches and of promise, for the very bleakness that pervades it also protects the secrets that have lain untouched since the days when Gods walked Ithia.

History
Long and fraught, the history of the North is much of a kind with the land, being at times harsh and at others, beautiful. It is divided into many ages and eras, and, of course, not all events affected all lands equally. Indeed, though it is part of the North, the Angaran Forge is absent for much of the land's history, for the dwarves who dwell beneath the Anvilheads are a reclusive lot and more interested in the accounting of lineage than the doings of their neighbors. While intrigue and battle work their deviltry across the surface, they remain secure beneath their stone, pouring over the scrolls of ancestry and arguing the merits of various strata of lignite. Indeed, the modern nations in general are a, well, modern creation, with much of history affecting lands and people whose identity are lost to history now. But what is known is that it began shortly after the end of the Old War, with...

The Fey
Heir to the Wind and Rain. The Star-Clad Queen. Green-Hand the Beloved.

Lalani, the Immortal of the Fey.

As the Get of the First-Born fought the Immortals, there was one who stood aside, unwilling to know battle or to draw the blood of another living thing, and she was Lalani, who had been born when the first light of the stars fell upon the first flower's petals. She had stepped forth from the dew, weaving her hair from the wind and her body from all things green and growing. About her had sprung life from life, as the leaves of trees were given voice and the falling pine cones taught to dance. Hers was a love of merriment and celebration, and it is said that Lalani taught all who she found the magic of song. Drum and flute and lyre were all gifts of her wisdom and whenever she came upon any injured in battle--mortal and Immortal alike--her touch would ease their suffering, healing the wounded and easing the dying to their final rest.

When all was done and the Old War ended, the Divinities looked down upon Lalani and wondered. She was guilty of no crime save perhaps an excess of joy and they felt unease at the thought of banishing her. Yet to allow one with the power of an Immortal to walk the world was a danger, for even if she meant only well, hers was a power that could still be abused, if not by Lalani herself, then by another, seeking to use or corrupt her. So they decided that, instead, they would permit her a choice: she could accept banishment, but it would be a comfortable exile, in a place of eternal light and music, or else she could remain upon Ithia, but with time her power and her vitality would fade, being dispersed into the land.

Without a moment's hesitation, Lalani accepted the promise of dissolution, if it meant even one more day of teaching the mortal races the way of joy.

The Glaudris Circledom
For many years following the making of her choice, Lalani wandered the world. She played in the court of Mireny Tellearion and atop the mountains of Kangan where one day the dwarves of Atia would settle; she played as her ship was lashed by storms in the waters off Itory and she played beneath the light of two full moons atop a dune in the Shining Deserts. But eventually and always she returned to the forests of the North, where she had been born. And always, her Fey awaited her, but also with increasing numbers of others--elves who did not wish to join the tribe of Tellearion, humans dispossessed and frightened, and members of all other races--and she granted them all sanctuary. In the first years, many were veterans of the Old War, with spirits scarred and hearts torn by the terrible devastation that had been wrought.

In time, Lalani's wanderings grew fewer and shorter, and she came to settle in the forests of her birth. Around her, many makers of music and artists of all kinds gathered to learn, and soon they had...not a nation, but a place where law was kept and lives could be lived in peace. In time, it came to be known as the land of glaudryl, which meant 'serenity' in a tongue that none now speak or remember. And in the centuries that passed, that became the Glaudris Circledom, the Kingdom That Was Not.

Though Lalani herself never truly ruled Glaudris, hers was the voice that ended disputes and reminded all of the principles that had brought the residents and their ancestors together. Some strength was needed--the knightly Order of the Star-Clad was born, and the Circle of the Green Hand as well--but so long as Lalani existed, the Circledom was secure.

And exist Lalani did, though as the centuries passed, she began to wane just as the Divinities had promised.

Nothing could last forever, and while the rest of Ithia was still in the height of their Age of Wealth and Plenty, the North showed the first signs of the hardship that would rule them for much of their history as the thousand-year reign of Lalani drew to a close.

The Hand of the Great Frost
Lalani's passing came as a surprise to no one in all of Glaudris, for she had been as the setting sun and the waning moon for many years, and had spun out her own dirge as she sat upon the Throne of Mighty Oaks in her crystal capital of Elder Where. She sat upon that throne and spoke her final words of love and celebration to the gathered throngs, who wept for her passing even as her body merged with the throne and created the mighty Glaudrin Oak that sits at the heart of the Untamed and whose leaves, it is said, can be heard to sing when pressed against a person's ear.

But the Circledom's prosperity had attracted envious eyes from those who lurk beyond its borders, and it did not take long for word of Lalani's death to reach them. Though they faced many incursions--from Felthot the Wild, Prince of the Werewolves and from the Troll-King Nehevege and from many others--but all these dangers paled against the fury of the Lord of the Frozen Sky, Volnarl, Son of Garharth and Great Chieftan of the Frost Giants. They came out of their hidden valleys and mountain redoubts from deep within the Anvilheads, where they had lurked since the end of the Old War, riding their war-mammoths as terrible blizzards heralded their coming.

Smashing into the Circledom's unprotected northern border, they tore through the unprepared mourners and ravaged the cities and the glades of Lalani's paradise. The Order of the Star-Clad lead the resistance against them, but their numbers were few and peace had dulled the blades of their swords. It took the might of all of the Circledom combined to halt the giants and many lives were lost, both mortal and fey, but in the end a mighty host gathered to the banner of the satyr-hero Chartle the Horned stopped them.

In the aftermath, the remaining leaders gathered and set about trying to decide how to save what they could of Lalani's posterity. It was impossible to rule a united Circledom any longer, they admitted, and so created the Princedoms of Glaudris, with scattered mortal city-states and fey clans held together by the Windborne, a surviving sect of the Order of the Star-Clad who dedicated themselves to securing the Untamed against future incursions.

Among the Princedoms created at this time was Nevesse, under the rule of Prince Darro Hylias. Already an isolated province during the days of the Circledom, the House of Hylias had enjoyed Lalani's confidence and been widely acknowledged as the Immortal's confidants. Many said that it was the hands of Hylias that had kept the Throne of Mighty Oaks secure and saw their taking of Nevesse as a form of self-imposed exile, after allowing Glaudris to fall. Whatever their reason, the move to the edge of the world would prove prescient, for Nevesse would weather many of the coming troubles untouched by outside influence. All their coming miseries would be local ones.

The Century of the Hag Princes
Though the Princedoms succeeded for a time, and some measure of peace was restored, not all enemies were foolish enough to face the swords of Glaudris openly. Among these was the Great Hag, known in the aftermath of her reign of terror as Gudra the Mother. Though her sisters were normally a reclusive lot, she was mighty enough to gather them together and hatch a plan to claim all of the North as theirs. With guile and with their black power, the hags stole into the minds of prince after prince, slowly tweaking their wills until half the princes of Glaudris had fallen into their thrall.

With this control, these men cast away any friends or families they once had, wives disowned and children cast off or slain. These men were then stolen away to the wilderness, where the hags mated with them, returning to their civilization with their visages cloaked and their bellies full of child, masquerading as their new wives. Spread out over more than a decade, no one understood what was happening until it was too late and the black magic had seeped too deeply into the minds of their rulers. Within a generation, hag-born children were seated upon half the thrones of Glaudris and even more had fallen to the intrigue of Gudra. While daughters were new hags--and thus were taken back to the wilderness to be raised to their birthright--the boys were creatures of unearthly beauty, twisted by their mothers into cruel yet ignorant puppets through which rule was exercised.

Wars ripped across the land as the few untainted princedoms were brought low and then as the hags began to squabble amongst themselves.

Gudra was wise, however, and began to use these squabbles to conquer her neighbors, one after another, with dreams of a hag-enslaved Empire of Glaudris dancing behind her eyes. Yet it would prove to be that very success that was her undoing, for as her power grew, it gave those who chafed beneath her rule a target to strike at.

The War of Oaken Bows
While the Princedoms were being ravaged, many of the organizations that ostensibly served the North were likewise seeing their ranks decimated, either by the plots of the hags or else by getting caught up in the local squabbles of their homes. Maeli Ha was a wild elf--as the elven followers of Lalani had become known, as much for their free spirits as for the fey blood that had mixed into many of their lineages--and one of the Circle of the Green Hand, as had been her parents before her and her ancestors as far back as records went. It was she that finally mobilized her kin and confronted the leaders of the Order of the Star-Clad and of the Windborne and other groups, such as the druids of the Cabal of Oak and Heath, gathering them all beneath the bows of the Glaudrin Oak.

Maeli made all those assembled see that the hags were the true threat, and that Gudra the Mother was playing her hand too openly to be ignored any longer. She had seized control of more than a third of the Princedoms directly, with her own grandchildren and great-grandchildren on the thrones, and even those hags that hated her bowed before her power now. Gudra was a mere step away from her envisaged Empire of Glaudris and the North would never be free of her power if that came to pass.

Even then the leaders were uncertain, standing beneath the branches of their spiritual mother, something fell from the furthest height, falling like a leaf upon the wind. It came to rest in Maeli's outstretched and astonished hand: a bow of unsurpassed quality. All gathered saw the omen and realized the problem had grown so great that even the spirit of Lalani--the great pacifist who wanted nothing but peace--was moved to council war. United in purpose, the leaders of the North struck and they struck with a fury none could have foreseen.

Seven armies marched, armed with bow and blade, upon Gudra's capital city, the seat of the Princedom of Tyce. All those who sought flight were granted it, but any who stood against the assembled army were never offered the chance at quarter. Thousands fell on either side, and in the end, Maeli and the Grand Starmaster alone faced Gudra and a legion of her progeny in the throne room of Tyce. It was a terrible battle, and Maeli took wounds too terrible for even magic to heal, but Gudra at last fell, feathered, it is said, with over a hundred arrows.

Though they would finally find freedom, the scars of the Hag Princes remain ingrained deep into the psyche of the North. To this day, villagers will tell their children that Gudra will come in the night to steal them away if they are not careful and misfortune is known as a "Prince's own luck." Perhaps most worrying is that children born with even the most mild deformities--harelips, club feet, lisps, or just being particularly ugly--are regarded as 'hag-touched' and outright shunned by most of their fellow Northerners. Outside the walls of cities, it is not uncommon or such children to be smothered shortly after birth or left out in the wilderness to be cared for by their 'true mothers,' though it is no less of a death sentence for the innocents involved.

Age of Crystal
Following the fall of the Hag Princes, there came an era of relative stability, if not necessarily peace. The Princedoms were gone--all that had once been Glaudris was gone--but the people remained and they rebuilt, though without anything that could really be called a central government or even a unifying culture. It was for this fragile balance that the age was named, for it was as brittle as crystal and just as easily broken when the end came.

But first came a few quiet centuries, when the land was tended and the cities allowed to grow. Dead soldiers were buried and new generations were raised beneath the shadow of the Anvilhead Mountains and the dangers that lurked there. Tentative contact was made with the dwarves of the Angaran Forge, but they were uninterested in what they saw as paupers on their doorstep and the mountain cities were closed to all but the rarest of merchant traffic.

During this time, more than a few men tried to create new nations--Arkos Arkadii with his Covenant of the Ruled failed in spectacular fashion while Nyef the Three-Day Queen was deposed before word of her ascension even managed to reach her neighbors--but no power was ever able to consolidate more than a few villages beneath a town council or strong mayor. Still, the people were able to sleep at night and be (fairly) sure they would wake up the following morning. For the North, that was enough.

The Shattered Night
But the enemies of Glaudris had not died with the nation of that name, and they were waiting for the time to be right. It came on that rarest of nights in Ithia--a double-eclipse--when the night was as purely dark as it is possible to be and even the stars seemed dim. Ganthyng the Mad, Son of Felthot the Wild, and Prince of the Werewolves called his pack to a great hunt, having decided that all of the Untamed was theirs and no thinking thing should dwell in it that did not have the Moon-Curse in their veins.

When the sun set, they struck, and when it rose again, dozens of cities lay burned and a new legion of cursed lycanthropes had risen, answering the call of the moon and the whim of Ganthyng. It was the Windborne that would answer this threat, for though the Circle of the Green Hand was the hunters of beast and the Order of the Star-Clad were the expungers of sin, none could rival their connection to the natural world and the animals that dwelt within it. It was in this way that the Windborne become known as the Riders of the Red Wind, for they were bloody and absolute in their crusade against the werewolves, who could live unbeknownst amongst their victims.

Bloody purges that saw trusted neighbors dragged out into the street and put to death by silver-touched swords forever stained the reputation of the Windborne, but it is true that, when the next full moon hung in the sky, there was not a single sign of Ganthyng's fury.

The Plague of Black Stone
While the iron hand of the Windborne was cleansing the surface world, trouble was stirring in the Angaran Forge. Long eager to master the arts of alchemy, the dwarves of the College of Eight had accidentally opened the floodgates to a power they could not control, which their records call locandra or 'the living sickness,' but which the surface world knows best as the Plague of Black Stone. A magical disease that infects its victims and causes the blood to slowly harden in their veins, until their limbs grow stiff and black, it proved almost impossible to cure by either magic or medicine and horrendously virulent, spreading by touch or proximity to the infected.

The dwarven response was harsh and immediate, collapsing the homes of victims with their families still inside and then spreading burning coals and thatch over the ruins. It was a time of terror beneath the mountains, and though most accepted the need for such measures, some grew fearful and, in their fear, fled their ancestral home. Of these, some few carried the Black Stone within their bodies and out into the other nations of the North. Within a year, the disease was burning through the settlements of the continent, some of the cities losing as much as 90% of their population.

It took the work of priests and apothecaries working together to finally locate a cure to the sickness, and even then it was not a sure thing, but it raised the rate of survival high enough to eventually lead to the sickness burning out before it could flee the insular borders of the Northern city-states. However, once the disease's true origins were finally discovered, it became a source of great animosity between the people of the North and the dwarves of Angara. It would form a lasting rift that would not find itself healing until only the last few centuries.

The Wars of Excoriation
The years following the plague were hard, but the lands slowly began to recover and, though many villages were abandoned by the survivors, they served as an influx of population to other settlements and, in time, regional powers began to form. Proto-nations such as Ixilite, Duyl, and Vomarri began to congeal out of the chaos of the North, with the support of the great organizations that had featured so prominently in the land's history. Finally, the rulers of these small nations appealed to those very organizations to provide a strong, central authority for the people to rally around.

It became known as the Council of Seven Armies, after the seven forces united by Maeli Ha: But very quickly, troubles began to arise. In attempting to unite the North, the Council was doing something that had not been truly done since the days of Lalani: unite mortal and fey beneath a single rule. Soon, the various fey began to chafe under the rules and restrictions mortals demanded and sought to make their grievances known, both through the satyrs and the through the dryads who served the Temple. This, in turn, caused many of the human and halfling groups to grow angry, for their lands seemed always less fruitful and more dangerous than the ancestral lands of the fey, which had been protected and cared for through the dangers far better than the mortal lands had been.
 * The woodsmen and rangers of the Circle of the Green Hand
 * The paladins of the Order of the Star-Clad
 * The druids of the Cabal of Oak and Hearth
 * The knights of the Windborne, now known also the Riders of the Red Tide
 * The arcanists of the Hall of Ivy
 * The theologians and clergy of the Temple of Iyanith
 * The satyrs of Moddin Clove

Anger grew, and soon the Circle--a traditional provenance of the wild elves--found itself siding more and more with the fey against their own kind, and it seemed that conflict was inevitable.

Crises was only averted by the coming of Tarli Half-Fey, a young man who bore the blood of both the forest and the city in his veins and sought peace for both sides. He preached peace, understanding, and cooperation, saying always that if his parents could put aside their differences and find love, then should not all men--regardless of origin--be able to? Truly, his words would have calmed all hearts and found Tarli in a place of great power had his secret not come to light thanks to a group of intrepid adventurers that posterity recalls only as the Tarnished Company.

Though Tarli claimed fey blood, it was, in fact, the blood of hags that gave him his charm. It will never be known if Tarli was a hag puppet or if he had cast off the shackles of his blood and was sincere in his desire to unify the land; the scars of the Century of the Hag Princes were too deep to allow him a chance to prove himself. Tarli was torn apart by an enraged mob and every word he had spoken was treated as a lie designed to ruin all who heard them.

So it was that the bloody war of mortal and fey wracked the North and the leaves of the Glaudrin Oak were said to have turned red and fallen in a display not seen then or since upon the immortal and eternally green tree. No one is sure just how long the war lasted--estimates place it anywhere from a mere two years up to nearly a century--but the price was high on both sides and when it finally ended, it was clear that mortals and fey would never reconcile; the one world had become two and would remain so for as long as the sun shone and moons glowed. Needless to say, the Council of Seven Armies was shattered--Modding Clove had been burned, the Hall of Ivy toppled stone from stone, and the Star-Clad tower burned for seven nights--and the kingdoms of the North were reduced again to cities.

Not a single mortal habitation remained within the borders of the Untamed, save for the clanholds of those wild elf tribes that had allied themselves with the fey and so received the grudging acceptance of their allies. However long the war lasted, the bloody peace it bought would reign for generations, the lines of battle becoming no-man's land and finally becoming borders that closely resemble the modern nations.

The Coastal Renaissance
Following the wars between the Fey and the mortal races, centuries of culture ennui followed, a steady growth, but slow and with little true direction. Many of the cities that modern cartographers would recognize were established in this age, as trading outposts or hunting lodges in the frigid hinterlands that men and halflings were allowed to settle. Despite this growth, it was still an era of villages and city-states, with no centralized government more complex than mayors.

All of that changed with the arrival of the Grey Ships.

Much is made in history of the Middle Kingdoms and of Kondaria specifically, and this was the age when the Starlight War was at its height, tearing across the lands at the heart of Ithia. When the Veil sprung forth and sealed these lands away, it did not happen in a vacuum, for still the Kondarian merchant fleets sailed, and refugees still fled their home--either in hopes of return or else seeking out a new life elsewhere--and many of these dispossessed found their way to the shores of the North.

First in trickles, and then in floods as other nations either rebuffed the refugees or else promised only lives of misery and enslavement, the ships of the Middle Kingdoms found their way to the North, the wood growing grey with use and unskilled care. Many tore their bellies open on jagged reefs and still more made landfall in a land unkind to settlers, where the disenfranchised would starve through their first long winter or fall prey to the beasts of the land. It is said that for every 10 souls that landed in the North at this time, only 3 survived.

But most of those survivors found a place, in the cities and camps of the Northmen, and they brought some of the Middle Kingdom's culture of enlightenment with them, slowly creating a new culture from the melding of the two: a worldlier society that still kept the hard Northern edge while reaching out to other lands.

Part of this growth was the establishment of true nation-states, which had not been seen in any meaningful form since the fall of the Princedoms of Glaudris. This era saw the rise of Ixile and Khovardis, known also as Kondaria Lost; there grew the halfling nation of Life Anew, the coastal Confederacy of Rassitar, and the growth of Nevesse, which was called in this age the Kingdom of Nevear and was ruled by the High Captains of the Halass Dynasty.

The Standing Stones of Eldhërwye
It should surprise no scholar of history that the growth of the power of the mortal kingdoms was viewed with a mixture of unease and suspicion by the Fey of the Untamed. Though centuries had passed, the eldest of the Fey still remembered the terrible tales of the War of Excoriation, when the land was harrowed in blood, and even the youngest pixies had grown up hearing tales of the terrible Northmen. Fearing this growing power, many of the most powerful of the Fey gathered--Gannuk Eld-Father of the treants, Princess Shyda Hahue of the nereids, Yomak Hartle the Chiefest Satyr, and others--and beneath the bows of the sacred Glaudrin Oak, they debated how to deal with the growing mortal menace.

Some such as Yomak preached the necessity of a second war, which would run every last human into the sea and forever secure their shores. Gannuk lead the faction that counseled caution, saying that it was better to wait and see than to try and punish the mortals for crimes that were not yet theirs.

But a powerful faction gathered around the High Flower, the leader of the dryads and a devout worshiper of Iyanith. She gathered the so-called Fair Kin--dryads and nereids and nymphs and others of their kind--and they said that the best solution would be to prepare to defend themselves, but to give the mortals the benefit of the doubt. Where before the borders had been loosely defined, with a wide hinterland between them, High Flower said that they should define a point beyond which the mortals were not to be allowed to trespass: a true border, whose crossing would constitute an act of war.

Debate was furious and lasted months, but eventually, it was decided that High Flower's idea would be accepted, in what became known as the Fair Compromise. Emissaries were sent out to the various leaders of the growing nations declaring that great standing stones had been erected in the woods, marked with sigils in the Fey tongue and in a dozen common languages, saying that none were permitted to pass beyond without the leave of the Fey and that to do so would invite war between the people of the trespassers and the Fey.

The land within the stones would honor the distant memory of Lalani and henceafter be named for her ancient capital city: Elder Where, written in the Fey script as Eldhërwye.

The Sahuagin Wars
Despite the continuing tensions between the growing nations of the North and the Fey, it still seemed as if the history of strife that had plagued the land was finally coming to a close; nations were growing, people were finding a measure of security, and a small but growing international trade had sprung up. And then the ships began to sink, first in the waterways around the North, and then in the very harbors that were vital to any attempt to grow the nations beyond regional powers. Hulls shattered, decks set alight, and crews slaughtered, the hallmarks of terrible violence were uncovered in those wrecks that were able to be delved.

Like fruit starved of sustenance, the growing countries began to wither on the vine, wealth pouring out of them and into the dark waters of the northern ocean. In a single season of trade, the shining jewels of the north were reduced to poverty, tons of trade goods and raw coin lost to the new misery that had chosen them as their prey.

Then, in the Night of the Charnal Tide, the city of Second Port, the capital of Khovardis was sacked and the identity of their tormentors was learned: the barbarous fishmen known as the Sahuagin. The entire warehouse district was burned to the ground and thousands of civilians were dragged into the water, to be feasted upon by shark and sahuagin alike. It was a deathblow to the city and the country and it signaled the beginning of a war that was fought solely on the fishmen's terms.

With the sea as an unassailable fortress, unified by a being that, to this day, surface dwellers know only as the Scaled Blight, and able to pick targets at their leisure, there was no way for the Northmen to fight back. Thriving harbors became waterside fortresses and trade stopped entirely, with no merchant willing to risk their livelihood to bring supplies to nations of cloistered paupers.

The status quo might have existed indefinitely, for the unified sahuagin were a force that no land-power in the North could contest even without their water-born advantages, but the fishmen had made a fatal mistake: their raids struck at a dwarven trading vessel out of a port in the Biting Bay. Aboard this ship was Thrani Hellhammer, the daughter of the powerful Hellhammer lineage within the rarefied nobility of the Angaran Forge. As has never been seen since the days of the Old War, a dwarven army marched from their hidden caves deep within the Anvilhead Mountains, and at their head were the mightiest of the College of Eight's alchemists.

Using their power, it is said that the dwarves blighted the coastline, making it poisonous to life and driving the sahuagin back. Then, in boats clad in iron, they fought the fishmen at the surface of the deep seas and slew their sharks and their kraken and their serpents. Finally, bearing power gifted to them by their priests and their alchemists, the mightiest warriors of Angara, led by the furious Hellhammer matriarch, Lodni of the White Forge, descended into the watery depths and crushed the coral palaces of the sahuagin. Lodni is legended to have broken the spine of the Scaled Blight itself over her knee and then nailed its still-writhing body to the black altar that honored Mrul'ethet, the Immortal of the Deeps.

And then, as the tide of that black era pulled away, the dwarves returned stolidly to their mountains to honor their dead and ignore their neighbors once again. In the entire campaign--which lasted less than a month--the Angarans sent not a single delegation to the other Northern nations.

Gostard, the King of Pirates
So, of course, when peace and plenty seemed within the grasp of the North, it had again been snatched away and the lands were sent back into tumult. It is said by historians that this tragedy is what truly forged the natives and the refugees into a single people, for the shared misery was great and the shattered dreams were a bitter draught to swallow. Indeed, it seemed as if all vitality had bled out of the North and the remaining nations--Ixile, Life Anew, and Rassitar--were slowly collapsing in on themselves. Only Nevear, who had never indulged much in the growing trade of the Coastal Renaissance, emerged relatively unscathed, though 'normal' for them was still a harsh existence.

So when a trio of ships sailed into the nominal capital of Rassitar--the Confederate City--no one was prepared for the flamboyant character who leapt from the deck and declared everyone present his subjects. And that was how the North first met Gostard: a guard in choke-hold in one arm, a glittering mithril cutlass in the other hand, and a grin across his bizarrely bearded face. An adventurer for the last twenty years, Gostard had gained renown, respect, and personal power in all that time, but wished to settle down and had decided that the northern continent would make a fine retirement villa.

He ousted the Quorum of the Confederacy, informing them that they would each be given a ship for their troubles, and installed himself as the leader (which, in official documentation, he wrote as The King, I think). Claiming that 'Rassitar' was too difficult to pronounce while drunk, he unilaterally renamed the nation Risxit (because he said it was quite humorous watching people trying to pronounce it) and began handing out ships to people chosen seemingly at random.

It was a dawn of a new era of piracy on the seas of Ithia and a new vitality in the North, for, whatever else you might say about Gostard, he had a way of motivating people with his energy. Many of those given ships--including a tailor who made Gostard a pair of boots he declared his favorite, a pair of young milkmaids who were eloping together, the young owner of an especially overweight cat, and an elven woodcutter who professed to violent seasickness--would go on to become great captains in their own right, sparking the rumors of Gostard's clairvoyance. Indeed, such were the rumors that some called him an avatar of Nairen the Sea God (though others pointed out that the chaotic Gostard was a far cry from the law-abiding deity).

Though he was already pushing 40 years old when he sailed into Confederate City--soon renamed to Port Liberty, despite Gostard's petulant attempts to have it called Gostardia--it is said that he ruled with manic energy for another 80 years, only finally dying on his 120th birthday when the ship upon which his celebrations were being held was sunk in a storm. Others say he never truly died, instead sailing the vessel into the sunset to ply the waters forever.

While frenetic in person, Gostard's long, unchallenged reign gave the people a chance to rebuild and find their vitality again. His lawless nature infected Risxit and would remain its defining feature to this day, but even Ixile and Life Anew would gain from Risxit's peace.

And such was Gostard's renown that, to this day, the pirate lord with enough strength to control the country is known as Gostard's Heir and he features in much of the local slang. Someone with 'Gostard's eye' is said to be good at judging another's character while 'Gostard's own luck' means that one appears to have bad luck, but is always able to turn their potential defeats into even greater victories. In less polite company, saying that someone has 'balls like Gostard' means a fearlessness on the far side of suicidal.

The Nevearan Great-Night
While the other nations of the North were still weening themselves from Gostard's reign and enjoying the resurgence of drive he had imparted, the land of Nevear was about to face its greatest challenge. Always secretive and distrustful of outsiders, Nevear and its High Captains nevertheless maintained coolly cordial relations with its fellow Northern nations, so when their couriers suddenly ceased bringing the letters and the pittance of trade they allowed themselves, people were curious, if not overly concerned.

It was only when Ixile sent a small delegation to ascertain if anything was wrong that the truth came to light: Nevear was in the middle of a civil war.

Whereas other countries would have made a great hue and cry about the matter, enlisting foreign aide to try and crush the rival factions, the war in Nevear was more like a silent struggle, with partisans knifed in the street and grim, tiny battles within the manors of powerful nobles. Truth be told, no one outside of Nevear truly knows what happened during the year or so of conflict, but rumors abound: the hags had returned and controlled the High Captain; twins born to a noble house had squabbled over inheritance and it had spiraled out of control; undead had risen from the soil and it was a war of the living against the dead. They even told ludicrous rumors that the High Captain of Nevear had tried to use a powerful artifact from lost ages to launch a war against the entire world and even the Divinities themselves.

Whatever the truth behind the struggle might have been, when the knives were finally sheathed, the whole of the Halass Dynasty lay dead, from the most distant cousin to the High Captain himself. In its place rose the leaders of the opposition forces, the House of Haylas, who shared a common ancestor back in the mists of time. When they again sent out envoys, the tone had grown even more brusque and their overtures to trade even less robust.

Age of Silence
Following the death of Gostard and the Great-Night, several centuries of relative peace gripped the North. It was a time of sustained growth, though the Northmen remembered well the miseries of their ancestors. This created a cultural sense that no action should be taken rashly and, thus, the growth was slow. International trade was built up with an eye towards decades rather than years, and the child of a merchant family might be born, grow, work, retire, and die without their family daring to open a single new trade lane or purchasing a single new ship.

Hobbled by that fear, the North found itself always behind the other lands of Ithia, and this, in turn, hurt its ability to trade. Soon, it was seen as nothing but a source of raw materials: they produced lumber but no woodwork; they sold hides and pelts but no leather or clothing. The only exception was the dwarves of the Angaran Forge, and they were both reclusive and uninterested in helping their neighbors.

Still, for all the difficulties that presented themselves, the dangers that assailed the North were always local and handled with relative ease. The governments of Ixile and Life Anew--which slowly became the modern nations of Illia and Lilan--were able to gain the trust of their citizens by keeping on top of the problems that plagued them, as well as forging a strong alliance between the two states. Risxit retained the boisterous energy of Gostard, though they would eventually become a land plagued by crime, petty squabbling, and greed: a perfect haven for adventurers.

Even the Fey of the Untamed grew less worried about their neighbors and, though they still maintain the sanctity of their borders and the law of the standing stones, individuals are allowed into the Untamed, provided they do no harm to the land or the Fey who dwell there.

The Modern North
So it is that the present day finds the North.

It is a land that has known tremendous hardship and terrible misery, but also a land of people who stand strong despite all those terrible things. The weather is harsh and the beasts are mighty, but so are the Northmen who call the place home. Aching beauty can be found in the depths of the Untamed and the height of the Anvilhead Mountains can rob one of breath with their majesty; the shores are craggy and unforgiving, but are merely sentinels over a land that hides tremendous riches.

The North will never be peaceful and the people there can never rest, lest the land take their lives from them. But if one faces it with strength, they will find that all the dangers of the North will serve only to temper them and make them stronger.