Lore24 - The Sovereignty - The Wildlands

Even though the Church of Phaeton claims it as truth, the world of Aedes does not end at the Echor Mountains. The great stone wall that surrounds the lands claimed by the angel is immense, and scholars disagree about its nature, but the world continues beyond them.

West of the Echors, wild and strange lands are to be found. It is from these lands that the barbarian tribes now inhabiting the Borgondian Mark and the Barren Lands to the north hail. Their ancestors, like all humankind, fled the Lost Lands in the Exodus and gathered in Aurora. But from there, they struck out across the lands of what today is the Sovereignty, over the Echor Mountains, and beyond. In these western hinterlands, legends told by the Borgondians claim that great beasts stalk the land, immense natural forces shape the land and humans live in humility of the wonders of the environment.

The barbarians were changed by these factors. Where in the Sovereignty, mysticism is frowned upon, and deference to authority is king, the Wildlands breed folk steeped in superstition and fiercely independent. In the legends of the Borgondians, the great beasts of the Wildlands are the founders of their tribes and their clanchiefs claim direct descent from creatures like Brother Bear, Dire Wolf and Mountain Lion. But great and terrible lizards also dwell in these wild, western lands, as do woolly and enormous elephants.

The Borgondian seers tell of great and pure mystical power coursing through these lands, which they suggest is the life-giving energy of these beasts and the clans they allegedly fathered. There is truth to these stories, as the seers have a known record of reading signs and omens, and have magical healing powers on the same level as acolytes of the Church.

The stories are a few decades old, however. Three generations ago, the tribes that now live in the shadow of the Sovereignty fled the Wildlands as dark and terrible forces made conflict with the ancestral beasts, and the mystical power of the land was corrupted. None know the cause of this darkening. The Borgondian seers claim immorality and the loss of the ancestral ways is to blame. Scholars of the Sovereignty claim ecological factors. Whatever the case, the Wildlands remain just that: wild, unexplored, and their former sons and daughters now seek refuge in the light of crowns and Golden Throne.