The Forgotten Kingdom

Here is a brief telling of the history of the country sized desert known as "The Wasteland" in the Ironblood Empire, contained within my upcoming Aeons of Tellus book series.

The Wasteland: a dusty and desolate place compared to the rest of the lands of the Ironblood Empire - but how did such a massive desert come to be? How is it that all of the surrounding lands are lush greenery, but then suddenly there is a nearly visible line between the desert of The Wasteland and the rest of the Empire? No knows why. No one remembers what The Wasteland used to be, not even those who descended from the once mighty country: the Elves and the Orcs that now populate themselves wherever they seem to find a home.

Ages ago, The Wasteland was no simple place of sand dunes and heat. No, rather, it was once the mighty country of Zaterna. Zaterna contained the most important pioneers of their times, once said to be where the first of the Mancers learned the wonders of magic and its use. With time they learned there was nearly infinite in number of types of magic and they all stemmed on different forms of concentration combined with different acts of mental imaging coupled with specific emotional outputs. It was declared that everyone has the potential to perform magic, but for many it is incredibly difficult to uphold such a focus and be able to control one's emotions with such precision.

After some time, the Warlocks and Witches (Mancers who have mastered multiple types of magic and thus cannot be labeled a Mancer of a singular type) from Zaterna had discovered the potency of what was called The Old Language. The Old Language was an alphabet of runes of an ancient language, some saying belonged to the predecessors of even the Four themselves. The runes would come together to form powerful words that could not be uttered outloud, words that can only be written. These words tap into magic but not a kind of magic performed directly by any one person. Instead the words themselves are actually usable and able to be activated using the inherent magic linked to them and specic ways of activation from the environment itself. The Warlocks and Witches of the time had stated that The Old Language was actually an ancient form of enchantment, as the studies eventually pinned down how it worked. Like how many imbued their weaponry with magic, The Old Language worked much the same way but with written words rather than swords. Most of the runes of this ancient language and their exact meanings were lost, but there were some words from The Old Language that were kept throughout the ages, primarily the runes that formed words tied to elemental Mancies such as fire, water, air, and so on.

It wasn't long after the discovery of The Old Language that a plot was turned against Zaterna. At the time (a time before the Ironblood Unification) there was a Sovereign to each country. The bordering countries to Zaterna - Kalinfor, Hyldin, and Faust covertly banned together and formed what was called The Three Handed Alliance (the island country of Drakein did not agree to the terms of the secret alliance and thus bowed out). The Three Handed Alliance plotted ways to dismantle or destroy the country of Zaterna as the country helped foster the creation of warriors skilled with extremely powerful abilities in the performance of magic; warriors such as Grolok the Drowner, an Orc who used Auqamancy to completely flood Syntian, an Elven city in southern Zaterna. Grolok was of many Mancers, Witches, and Warlocks that helped spark fear in The Three Handed Alliance's Sovereigns. The Sovereigns of each country agreed that if they did not act, Zaterna would surely grow too powerful to match and that the country would inevitably wage war to conquer the entirety of The Three Handed Alliance's collective homelands.

Preemptively, The Three Handed Alliance decided to strike and to strike without enraging the general population of the lands for starting war with a thus far peaceful and prosperous country. It was in this act they would perform the biggest rune-laid spell performed in the history of all of Tellus and the most heinous part of all - no one would ever know it happened. Zaterna would forever be forgotten afterwards. The Three Handed Alliance hired Kreon the Mystic, a man who was intricately familiar with The Old Language and the workings of the language's runes. Kreon was paid handsomely: given a fairly large portion of land from each country of The Three Handed Alliance. In turn, over the course of a decade, Kreon stealthy drew a country-wide rune across Zaterna, a rune based on a word from The Old Language that meant something close to "forgotten sands". It was a word strongly bonded with Neuormancy and the lost art of Altermancy (a Mancy once heavily utilized in the beginning stages of the discovery of magic, but had fallen into disuse as the Zaterna had made strict laws against its practice).

One fateful day Kreon the Mystic completed the rune that he had so painstakingly been working at. And it was on that day that Zaterna's doom was swift. The Neuromancy blanketed over the entirety of all who knew of Zaterna. Its lands, its once magnificent buildings, and the vast population of people that lived in its borders were all turned to sand in an instant. One bright flash and Zaterna was erased off the map and from memory. No one but Kreon the Mystic himself knew or remembered of Zaterna, not even The Three Handed Alliance remembered, the conspirators who had so ordered its destroying. Zaterna was made into a vast and unforgiving desert. The eventual name for the vast desert was actually coined by Kreon himself. Originally he had called it "The Wasteland of Ashes", a refrence to himself on how the sands had once been Zaterna and its people. People would eventually adopt the name, but shorten it over time and simply call the forgotten kingdom "The Wasteland".

Since the day it was turned to sand, many lived and died wondering if The Wasteland had once been something else, something more in ages long ago. Kreon himself had kept the secret of the country that he had erased to himself, all the way to the grave - no one would believe him either way or so he figured. Kreon's family line eventually lost the lands given to him for his service to The Three Handed Alliance. The children and the children's children of the Sovereigns who had given him his reward had gone to war with his decendents and took his reward back. Zaterna was forever gone and no one in Tellus would utter its name again - instead it would forever be The Wasteland.

Author's Note

There may or may not be grammatical errors that I'm working on fixing/cleaning up as of now. Message me if there are any that make no sense or are confusing enough to throw you off (basically things other than the odd misspelling, improper punctuation, etc.) Hope you enjoy reading!