Mirran Island

“After
what I seen that day; I ain’t gotta go to a cleric to learn about Hell; I seen
it with my own eyes”

-C’Husett
Mun, Salvager and only survivor of Mirran Disaster.

**The Mirran Disaster**

The Island of Mirran, off
the coast of Icxithia was a covert research facility for the Icxithian
Sinnewweavers.  They bred and tested
living weapons and dangerous magic, using the native goblin tribes as fodder
for their experiments. The scientists there explored the limits of their power
over living tissue and unleashed a power they could neither understand nor
control.    Where the parasite known as “The
Mirran Entity” first hailed from is unknown.
What is known is that the Icxithians altered it extensively with their
own blend of magic, alchemy and science, granting it the power to infect a
living host and be transmitted via physical injury, such as bite and claw; much
like the power possessed by several forms of undead and lycanthropes.  The entity would take over its host and
immediately begin breaking down the creatures body; inflicting a form of
advanced decomposition that resulted in berserker like strength and immunity to
all forms of pain and physical debilitation before killing it off
completely.   The Sinnewweavers found
that such creatures could be further augmented by ‘grafts’: additional
biological agents that served as living weapons that could be integrated
surgically into the host body, resulting in enhanced combat capabilities. The
hosts increased physical resiliance almost completely eradicated the
possibility of the graft being ‘rejected’ by the host.

Additional mutations of the
Mirran entity were created resulting in a wide variety of disposable, crazed
creatures to serve them: ranging from aerial harvester beasts that would
collect the raw materials necessary for the experiments to continue (aka the
native goblins that lived upon the island) to arachnid like infantry and even ‘juggernauts’
enormous monstrosities that served as living artillery fixtures.

Ultimately, the Icxithians were
undone by the very aspects of the goblin kind they had sought to utilize.  The same emotional and physical fortitude
that allowed the goblins to survive the horrific experiments also motivated
them to unite in the name of survival under the leadership of a charistmatic
warcheif named Koth Skerikk.   Known as “the
storm” for his intensity and passion both in combat and oration, Koth united
the various tribes under a single banner and against a common enemy.

The goblins led an all out
assault upon the Icxithian enclave: clashing against the twisted constructs
that had been spawned from their kin and clan.
The battle proceeded well for Koth and his tribe until the Sinneweavers
unleashed their final freakish weapon: an enormous swarm of insect like creatures
that had been engineered with the Mirrin infection born into their blood and
bones and laved together to a collective conscious, a hive mind that allowed
the thousands of tiny creatures to function as a single ravenous entity.  A single sting from one of their number
caused those goblins that had already been wounded by the hordes of Mirran to
undergo an accelerated form of the degenerative condition, transforming them
into slathering abominations in only a few moments.

Knowing that his people were
undone and that should the Mirran-swarm escape the island, Koth made his final
sacrifice.   His blood aflame with the
diseased touch of Mirran, he discovered a fissure vent deep below the earth, a
tiny offshoot from the same magma flow of planar fire As Mirran consumed his
mind and assimilated it into the collective, it sensed the danger it was in and
it swarmed after him in pursuit.   Having
lured the enemy in, with his last breath, Koth cried out to his gods and flung
himself into the heart of the fissure, the swarm following.   It is unclear whether the immense heat and
pressure had an unforeseen reaction to the alchemically enhanced (and unstable)
creatures or if Koth’s gods had simply answered his last
desperate prayer, but the entire island was obliterated in a pyroclastic
explosion that was seen for miles around and sending both the Icxithians and
the goblins to the bottom of the sea as ash.

*-Postscript:*
In an effort to maintain their appearance of “respectability” and
their invaluable reputation as men and women of medicine, the Sinnewweavers of
Icxithia have gone to great lengths to promote the story that the “savage
goblins” slaughtered innocent doctors sent to help them overcome a plague of
their own making and destroyed themselves in the process.

*If innocence is the first casualty of war, then surely truth*
lingers not far behind…

*- Drachaen Sul, Capt.*

**The Siege of Mirran Island**

In the next Epoch, a member of the Imperial Ghen Landed Nobility rediscovered the island of Mirran and sought to claim it as his own.  He contracted the Brotherhood of the Cleansing Sepulcher to eradicate the current inhabitants, a druidic grove known as The BywdGaard which meant Chorister of the Garden” who saw all forms of life, no matter how warped or diseased as sacred and fought to the death to protect them.

The Brotherhood brought their ghost-fire salamanders; enslaved souls of the reptilian fire fae to incinerate the forest and boil away the swamps and bogs for eventual conversion to grazing lands.    Those woodlands that were too remote were subjected to terrible storms summoned by mercenaries from the Bo Fung Yue Clan whose lightning bolts started forest fires that incinerated acres of woodlands.

The BywdGaard, led by the Eogwaith: Iobor led the counter-attack.  Armed with his enchanted bow, Nemesis, Iobor led the druidic grove against the encroaching forces: Some great power warped and mutated the creatures that inhabited the earth: enormous earthworms tunneled under enemy encampments and swallowed them whole, draging them down into the muck.  Hive orcs, outcasts from their own tribes who had found a home deep in the woods, descended upon the Brotherhood howling for blood even as their wounds wept filth and ichor.   Deeper within the rotting glades, the drums of the druids continued to pound driving their forces further into bestial madness and berserker fury.

In desperation, the Brotherhood sent forth their Aerie Vanguard; mounted knights upon winged steeds to penetrate deep into the heart of the Bywdgaard Grove.  It was discovered that the fissure vent that Koth had sacrificed himself to in the previous age now spewed forth a bloom of magical energy that granted enormous power to the creatures of the island but at cost of their health, sanity and eventually their lives.   They had become something primal; life both glorious and decayed, forever dying and being reborn in the primordial ooze.

The Brotherhood of the Cleansing Sepulcher; their absolute faith in the power of death brought low by the unrelenting fury of life was forced to flee, the contract becoming the only one the company has failed to fulfill.

As for Iobor, he fell in combat and was consumed by the fetid earth and murky waters that he had devoted his life to: a philosophy that a life in filth was still worth defending over a pristine death.