Shifting Wastes
The Shifting Wastes is a vast, desolate land of crags and valleys, ancient ruins and wandering nomads. The people who once came from the land now known as the Shifting Wastes refer to the area as the Fallen Kingdoms.
A few thousand years ago the Shifting Wastes were once a thriving series of kingdoms known collectively as Hasterion by the surface and cave dwellers who called it home, where magic was highly valued and those who wielded it were sought after. However as time went on a terrible war broke out between the one of the southern Kingdoms and the nearby Kingdom of Morciva which soon saw both continents at collective war and tore apart the land. After two centuries of conflict between the Nievanarian Alliance and the Bardovan Crucible, brutality reached a climactic crescendo with an act of madness on the part of the warring Kingdoms, resulting in mutual destruction known as the Scathing that shunted the kingdoms of Hasterion (known as the Hasteriad) forward in time, displacing the entire realm, and instantly killing a great many of the peoples who had called it home, while simultaneously turning the realm of Saluvia into the accursed Dark Lands.
In the centuries since those who attempt to travel to the realm were torn apart by the radical aging effects of the border to the Wastes. Although there are Faeries who are capable of stabilizing the border long enough to allow others to travel to and from the realm they do so at their own whim and provide an untrustworthy means of travel, for without them if one managed to stabilize the border they might still die on the other side when the ages they did not feel inside the Shifting Wastes finally caught up to them. So that a person who travels in for a day might find a year or more has passed outside and suddenly ages by that much upon their return. So it is that travelers to and from the lands are often immortal or unaging in some fashion. It is from these sources that many legends have come from the Wastes of wanderers bringing with them treasures from the Kingdoms of Hasterion, buried centuries even in the deep wastes but unattainable in the current time.
Border of the Shifting Wastes[edit]
The strange time-warping magicks from the Dark Lands created a mysterious effect around the Shifting Wastes that defied the laws of time and space, an effect known as the Maelstrom. The border of the Shifting wastes is a wild and unpredictable thing, never remaining still for long it can move inwards and unveil some time strewn ruins or expand out to engulf curious observers and does so at any speed, often rushing like a wave or twitching like lightning or even rolling like a slow storm. Inside the Wastes many time fluctuations occur, sometimes thrusting a region or even a room forward or backward in time in random pockets.
To the majority of the inhabitants, outside the border beyond the Maelstrom is only the end of time, and those who attempt to cross the border are assumed to be instantly killed. To these average citizens the outside world is a legend from the past now destroyed with the rest of the world and only the Shifting Wastes were spared this destruction by the protective magicks of the Royal Mages.
Inside the Maelstrom[edit]
Determined people can cross into the Shifting Wastes by passing through the Maelstrom where they are greeted by a post-apocalyptic scene of devastation and ruin. Almost everyone has died but those who still cling to life refer to the countryside as the Torn Lands. Beasts multiply as creatures pass into the lands from the various times attached to the lands, only the most powerful of them surviving to haunt and hunt in the passages of time. A common last sight is the manifesting of a disembodied set of eyes and limbs from what could be any terror as time shifted to reveal the wake of danger. Magic still ravages the lands, possibly part of the reason any life within the Wastes continues at all. Magic use is suppressed, terribly exhausting, and requires great power to produce even the easiest magic.
People of the Wastes[edit]
Nievan Rhadsare - one of the tribal barbarians who are essentially time nomads. They were born after the schism, are used to the time distortion, and make their home-camp in a particular time to which they can return. They are aware of the fluctuations coming and can return to a more stable bit of their own time without suffering the aging that visitors might endure.
