The Dusklands
A protectorate of ArnesseHouse Richter
The Dusklands is a realm of craggy peaks, volcanic plains, misty bogs, and lonely moors. Its people once stood at the height of power in Arnesse, until the mountains that made them laid them low.
The Land and Its People
The Dusklands is a place of overcast skies and hard ground, with distant wolves on the moors and old treasure buried in crypts and abandoned mines.
This page describes the protectorate as it stood in 763, when the Annwyn appeared. The last section follows what became of its people there.
Dusklanders are logical, stoic, and warlike, and they are driven to make things. Their craftsmen turn the ore of the mountains into fine instruments of war. Since the Shardmount erupted, most of them have also had to struggle for food and clean water.
Life is hard even for the wealthy, since coin does little where basic resources are short. Hunger and disease are common. The nobles keep control with an iron hand, and a realm that was once among the most orderly in Arnesse has become one of the most dangerous.
The Shardmount
A border dispute with House Bannon over the town of Hollowmere had grown into open war, and more than four thousand soldiers had died at the Battle of Vale, when the Shardmount erupted in 743.
Those nearest the mountain were incinerated. Ash blotted out the sun for months, killed the crops, and tainted the soil. A decade of famine and disease followed, and whole vassal houses collapsed. Some refugees found homes in other protectorates. The Woodfolk of the Thornwood killed hundreds who crossed their borders, while the Bannons and Corveaux sent coin, food, and water.
Hawken Richter took the seat of power in the middle of that darkness. In 751 he sent ten thousand Iron Guard to defend King Giles I against his son, but two thirds of them fell ill before the Battle of Lanton. The son won that day and became King Giles II. House Richter has kept its forges burning ever since, and many in the Dusklands believe that war is the only way back to greatness.
The Aurorym faith has spread faster here than anywhere else in Arnesse, because it gave hope to people who had lost everything. The nobles dislike the rebellious tone of the faith, and every attempt to stamp it out has made it stronger.
The High Houses
House Richter of the Noctuary
The Richters have ruled for as long as anyone can remember, from a castle in the shadow of the Ironhead, a mountain said to be made entirely of metal. The forge-fires of the Ashfall burn below the keep day and night. In recent years the family has rarely been seen outside its walls.
House Richter of Ember
Gustav Richter, cousin and advisor to the Lord Paragon, holds the fortified keep of Embercrown among the shops and warehouses of a busy trading town.
House Hardinger of the Hammerfall
The Hardingers run the mines of the Forgebound Mountains along the eastern border, the main source of the ore behind Richter military strength.
House Beil of the Black Keep
House Beil holds the blighted west. With few resources of its own, it hosts and trains the largest number of soldiers and Iron Guard in the protectorate.
House Varga of the Deephold
House Varga farms what arable land survived in the southern Nightvale. It developed deep farming, which turns abandoned mines and caves into growing fields.
Customs and Dress
The Ember Faire
This harvest celebration is the one holiday unique to the Dusklands. Revelers arrive masked, in dour colors with a hint of flame, and each brings a failed crop for the rot pit. An Amber Queen lights the pit at nightfall. Women then leap the second fire, a rite once believed to frighten away the spirits that blight the crop.
Attire
Dusklands fashion is practical. Clothing gets dirty, so people favor black, grey, brown, and deep red. Embroidery takes time, so it is rarely prominent, and the wealthy show their status through the quality of the fabric. High necklines protect against dirt and soot. Dresses remain the most common clothing for women, although women here wear pants more often than anywhere else in Arnesse except the Three Seas.
In the Annwyn
Lord Wilhelm Hardinger led the Richter part of the First Royal Expedition in 763 and built the motte and bailey of Ironhaven beside a mining operation. Ironhaven shut its gates to all but Dusklanders during the worst of the witch plagues. The Godslayers, a movement against supernatural and divine powers, began among its garrison.
After King Giles II died in 766, Hawken Richter claimed the throne through his mother's line, with the Godslayers in his ranks. The Blackhammers, fighting under the Hardinger banners, broke at the bridge of Carran in the spring of 767. That summer the mines fell in, General Vasha Hardinger and Lord Wilhelm died, and Ironhaven was overrun. The last Richter soldiers marched to Mystvale under Erich Richter to fight beside King Leander.
The Chronicle follows this war from Event VII.