[Maplore] IRONHOWL RANGE

[squakhawk 14038]

 

IRONHOWL RANGE

The Land of The Banished Flametide

 

 

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The Range

 

Ironhowl Range sprawls a vast and untamed country of rolling hills and valleys between, a landscape of stone with veins of rivers between. Jutting stone outcrops overlooked the sheer cliffs as they saw the greenery of the temperate landscape below. To the west lay The Skull Sea, the not-so-far Isle of Storms blowing cold and brackish winds eastward. Too bringing frigid winds was from The Rimeglen in the north which brought a creeping pale when wintertime blew southward. To the south, the passes of Goldleaf Gap, and the east, the darkwoods of Ilharcress. Encompassing the wide east of Azuras, Ironhowl Range was a bountiful scape of fertile soil and mild weather. A land ripe for descendants to claim their own.

 

The hills of weathered wildgrass yellowed by the sun rolled down to various trees such as aspens, cottonwoods, and even maples in the autumn. Wildflowers and herbs such as blissfoil, tippen's root, kindlefen, and King's Ivy grew in droves as hardy but plentiful plants. Elk, bison, wolves and longhorn stag claimed the landscape for themselves as they stood nobly along the unconquered lands.

Despite it's bounty, the land was broken often by reminders of the atrocities of the past. Crumbled stone foundations hid beneath prarie grass, thorns and nettles swallowing whole the ruins of what was once hope and prosperity of the many who tried to claim this land for their own at once. The skeletal remains of civilization and colony that lay gnawed at by nature and time haunted the range. Effigies of respite dotted the land, a haunting tale of The Ram which once plagued the lands like a sweeping death. Even through time had blackened patches of earth where The Flametide had once stood still bore their curse - a place nature refused to reclaim, the sun refused to touch, the waters refused to extinguish the hatred of blood and fury.

 

Despite the land brimming with abundance, it was haunted by silence. The scars of it's past etched into every hollow. As quickly as civilizations had risen here, all had been broken in The Ram and his Flametide's shadow. Now only the wild roamed unchallenged - sovereign over the ruins whilst the mourning hills howled winds of his legend.

 

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The Legend of The Ram and The Flametide

 

The Ram of Gwynon was an honorific now near fabled in tale. Near the mountains of Old Marna was there born a man unlike the rest. He who craved a fight in times of peace, struggle in prosperity, adversity in agreement. An uncompromising yet talented fighter, the deeprooted gentry which lead the both numerous and talented levies of Gwynon. 

 

Though The Ram would lead many a battle quashing rebellious vassals and squabbling villagers, longer had he been used as a tool to brutalize the untrained than truly tested. A task which long disturbed him, seeking meaning beyond petty duties lords dismissed him to.

 

Like any upjump with a sword, The Ram desired more than anything land - a kingdom. He wished to be no good king, he wished for no isolated kingdom of prosperity nor fertility. He wished solely to answer to none - a pride which swelled in him each time the knighted noble sons sneered at him in passing. With burning envy and ever scarred pride, the tensions grew - until a convenient situation arose.

 

The Lord of Rhysten had gotten word of other aeldinic duchies and marches in whisper - a land off the coast unexplored, unexploited. A place to establish wealth and fortune without the high lords and courts of Nova Horos inspecting untapped earth. Hearing mixed rumor of the island’s both abandoned nature, and yet colonial powers already established, The Ram was sent with a thousand men across four carracks to establish a foothold upon the foreign land.

 

Arriving to Azuras, The Ram found a land untapped - and with countless colonial powers bickering for their own place upon the land. For many, a deathsentence of foreign disease and blade to die by, if not the starvation. For The Ram, a paradise where he found himself solely responsible for an army in his command.

 

Yet, the winter was exceptionally ruthless that year. With the solstice within Skjolvindr at it’s apex, all throughout ironhowl range did winter reign as The Gwynon foothold was established. Quickly did The Ram find himself in conflict with the settlers of Berillia, Ramasar, and other secretive Aeldinic colonies - and quickly did he find his skill in stirring the hearts of men an invaluable talent. 

 

Despite the victories, despite the iron and steel which howled across the ensnowed land, The Ram’s ruthless and unending campaign of conquest burned away at his supplies. Cursed with the task of feeding and warming those he commanded, the patience of begging quartermasters who beckoned for the fated winter campaign to end and return in spring frustrated him in constant. And eventually, it caught up to the general who was never satisfied with victory. 

 

Entrenched in a siege of a walled settlement, even if wooden palisades, the ice and man-deep snows made any assault too costly to be worth it. With supplies and logistics barely in profit with each subsequent conquest of small colonial camps, it seemed fated that The Ram and his ever dwindling army of Gwynon would dissolve to desertion, starvation, and disease. 

 

In his wartent for days, frustrated by the limitations that he considered lesser responsibilities toward his talent, a voice called out to him as one of his soldiers entered within. Introducing himself as Giles, he offered a solution to The Ram. To be forgotten and die in snows, or to conquer forever - though never satisfied, it was never within his intent to find satisfaction in victory. Only purpose.

 

The Ram was promised that his soldiers would be fed, but forever hungry. That he would fight and conquer, but would never be finished in his campaign. That his trophies would be endless, and he would always crave for more. 

 

He laughed off Giles and his honeyed words - yet days continued to pass as his number dwindled further and further. Giles never seemed to tire, his ego unbroken as he mocked The Ram with his eyes that when seen beneath helm, never looked quite human.

 

The Ram approached Giles and took his offer - and suddenly did his army vanish within the next blizzard gale that howled. When the harsh winter of The Skjolvindr Solstice end, the remaining colonies and powers all shared tell some way or another of a winter scourge, a flaming tide which had come to terrorize the land. Some traumatized survivors and brutalized colonists would go so far as to incorporate in their prayers that he never return. Even further would some build shrines in remembrance of those they lost, a damnation to the flametide which would swallow colonists who only sought a new life with war and terror of the homelands for no other purpose but bloodshed. 

 

These shrines still stand to this day - and though they bear only a small aura of magic and faith, an amalgam of stones and hope of old, one could only hope that if they did hold something back from return, that it stayed in abeyance. 

 

The Ironhowl Range stands today as a collection of fertile grasslands and plateau-hills, a land ripe for civilization. Animals and critters alike now call the land which was once a desolate hellscape their home. Tall spruces and pines dot the hillsides to the northern region of Rimeglen and eastern region of Ilharcress. With flowing rivers, Ironhowl Range was now a nest-egg for civilization.

 

Upon the wind did the howl of battle and clashing of steel still haunt the earth, even centuries later. Despite the peaceful land where many descendants would now call home, there lay a darker stain even beyond the monuments to The Ram’s banishment left behind.

 

 

The Teufelswald

 

In the northeast where the range is bittered by the cold winds of The Rimeglen blowing down south, the hillside forests still bear the scars of The Ram’s great encampment which once called it home. Foul magick and sorcery had twisted the land so, defiling it with demonic spells and rituals that did not disappear with The Ram. Upon occasion would these spells find manifest - rites of the unholy as woodland creatures would be twisted and tainted, forming a befouled amalgamation of demon and beast. All these creatures unique in biology, their twisted and mutated forms often were wrought for one thing only - destruction. To eat, to raze, to conquer, anything they set sight upon. Wrought of pure foulry and evil, these spawn of The Ram would wreak havoc across the forests of the range until their inevitable exhaustion. 

 

The corpses of these creatures would despoil and corrupt the land surrounding their departure - seeding the basis for the next creatures to corrupt and destroy. 

 

Although The Ram had seemingly disappeared millenia ago, the stains of his defilement upon Ironhowl Range still show today. Even though nature and descendant alike have reclaimed it as a birthplace for civilization and society, at it’s frayed edges does his sorcery still creep.