The Ashenvale

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The Ashenvale is an expanse of intense arcane energy in central Ahlus.

## Description

Appearing as an undulating wall of fog, smoke and mist stretching fifteen hundred feet high, the Ashenvale is a blot on the grassland, forests and rolling hills that surrounding it. Like the tides of the Cobalt Sea, the definite boundaries of the grasping fog shift and twist with time, blighting and desecrating the land as they pass by. Despite this, the Ashenvale does seem confined to an outer border, beyond which foliage grows as normal.

Within, the terrain is highly variable, most routinely slick battlefields of perpetually thick and boggy mud continuously drowned in rain and mist, but other stretches appear almost idyllic - fields of hearty grains, grazing livestock and vibrant flowers. Regardless, the unpredictable effects of the wild magic pervasive throughout have yielded a number of curiosities - bodies that do not rot or decay, creatures outwardly normal but possessing bizarre internal physiologies, challenges faced by casting all but the simplest of spells, as well as roaming fields of further strange intensity. Of particular note are bands of arcane energy capable of empowering mundane items into magical ones, or visa versa, the duration of these effects highly variable - ranging between a few seconds, and several hours. The Ashenvale is also prone to unusual weather patterns, ranging from mundane storms accentuated in their strength and scope, to others far more horrific - such as "rainclouds" filled with flameskulls dropping smoking teeth wherever they pass.

### Influence on the Echoes

It is widely considered by scholars that both the Feywild and the Shadowfell exist as variations of the Material Plane, and are thus often referred to in texts and tomes as the Echoes. An antiquated tower in the Material Plane might be a radiant bastion at the heart of a city in the Feywild, whereas in the Shadowfell it may exist as a series of pilled rubble, haunted by a incorporeal manifestation of its own ruination. There seems to be some credence to the idea that the creation of a new settlement in the Material Plane carries over to the two Echoes, creating features on both, and as such the blight of the Ashenvale's potential carry over has subsequently fascinated the studious since.

Despite this, the Ashenvale seems to have no equivalent within the Land of the Fey (although is not without its own blights in the form of the Mar-o'-the-Maw), whereas the Shadowfell's version is not found in the same rough geographical location, having seemingly developed the ability to roam back and forth across the continent, akin to that of a hungering pack of beasts.

## History

In the final days of the Siege of Iron, the tide continued to shift against the Atral forces. While Atral forces outnumbered their foe, the majority of those deployed by the Astedians had not need for food, drink, sleep and rest - the constructs of Kevmorn Milltall unyielding in the face of continuous war. A trio of colossal constructs of such design were unleashed in the coordinated Astedian push, and so the Iron Resolve of the Golden Realm shattered.

Channeling never before seen magics the Archmage Ealwant Besculus unleashed such arcane power that it shattered the soil, stone and sky alike, delivering unto the lands a festering wound that is yet to be healed. Cordoned off by the Astedian Empire, it has since remained largely unventured, for few that enter return in like. Several centuries later, Ealwant Besculus would venture into the Ashenvale once more in 23WD, seeking to dispel it once and for all, though ultimately he would not return. In the decade after, the Ashenvale expanded gradually for the best part of a decade before stopping, now stretching for over one hundred and twenty miles from west to east. Since such time however, there have been reports by provisional patrols of areas of "depreciation", in which the fog of the Ashenvale is diminished to the point of non-existence within a small region - although these so-called *bald spots* shift and move, drifting as clouds would through the sky overhead.