Xhorhas

Description

Xhorhas was once a densely forested region, though at the beginning of the Calamity, it also had plains. The climactic final battles of divine warfare in that period left Xhorhas a burnt and cracked wasteland surrounded by blackened marshes and jagged cliffs.

Xhorhas is smaller than the Dwendalian Empire and, centuries after the Calamity, has few natural resources. It is a scarred landscape overrun with beasts and terrors left over from the Calamity.

The northern lands of Xhorhas are ruled by the Kryn Dynasty. Its capital Rosohna was built in the ruins of Ghor Dranas, a former city of the Betrayer Gods during the Calamity, and its settlements are connected by dirt roads.

The southern portions of Xhorhas consist of marshes, dense forests, and grasslands. Some areas, even if they have vegetation, seem drained or blighted, with even the ground itself being gray (such as that of the Barren Valley).

History

A number of the large-scale battles at the end of the Age of Arcanum took place on Wildemount, culminating in the Calamity's final battle between the Betrayer Gods and the Prime Deities at Ghor Dranas. Much of Xhorhas remains a barren badlands from the intensity of that battle, lying cracked and destroyed.

In the north, the drow slowly rebuilt on the ruins of Ghor Dranas, constructing a new city they named Rosohna. The power and reach of the Kryn Dynasty they established there continued to grow over hundreds of years, though hampered by the destruction and devastation of the surrounding landscape.

Geography

Xhorhas is bounded to the west by an almost unbroken mountain chain consisting of the Ashkeeper Peaks, the Brokenveil Bluffs, and the southern Dunrock Mountains. The eastern boundary of Xhorhas, separating it from Blightshore, is the Penumbra Range. To the north of Xhorhas is the Emerald Gulch Sea, and to the south is Whitedawn Lagoon and the Lucidian Ocean.

Kryn Dynasty lands

The Kryn Dynasty, as of 836 PD, controlled all of Xhorhas north of the Seepfeed River and also held the grasslands around the Many Hosts of Igrathad.

The Barbed Fields and surrounding area

Bounded almost entirely by the Penumbra Range and the large Vermaloc Wildwood, the Barbed Fields were ground zero for the final battles of the Calamity. The area is now a desolate wasteland, home to dangerous creatures and errant magic. The notable exception to this desolation is the Arbor Exemplar, a lone, gigantic tree planted by the Wildmother at the end of the Calamity.

The Barbed Fields are ringed by roads connecting a few settlements:

• Rosohna / Ghor Dranas: The capital city of the Kryn Dynasty, built on the ruins of Ghor Dranas.
• Bazzoxan: A large village at the base of the jagged mountain cliffs at the northernmost point of the Penumbra Range. Surrounds a temple to the Betrayer Gods that, in the time of the Calamity, was the seat of the Demon Princes of the Abyss.
• Wandering Oak's Grove: At the intersection of the Emerald Loop and the Hallowed Path leading out of the Barbed Fields to the west is a small forest seeded by a treant who later entrusted it to two dryads of Melora. Within the Grove is a caravan stop.

Western Dynasty lands

West of the Barbed Fields and the Vermaloc Wildwood are more badlands. From the Wandering Oak's Grove one can take the Emerald Loop, a road leading north to the Emerald Gulch Sea, or the Hallowed Path leading west. Both lead to settlements on the Ifolon River:

• Asarius is a mid-sized city serving as a military and cultural hub for the waste folk of northwestern Xhorhas.
• Jigow is a fishing town on the coast of the Emerald Gulch, mostly populated by orcs and goblins with a competitive culture.

West of the Ifolon River is the Honorwalk Road, which also connects the two settlements.

As one travels west toward the Brokenveil Bluffs, the wastes give way to wetlands. The Brokenveil Marsh is encompassed in the valleys of the craggy hills of the Brokenveil Bluffs. The roaming town of Urzin slowly moves through the Marsh atop the massive, mossy shells of about 40 horizonback tortoises, accompanied by hundreds of tents and mobile huts.

South of Asarius and the Hallowed Path is a lake feeding the Ifolon River and then a grassland where the Kryn Dynasty has stitched together a loose confederation of peoples:

• The Sorrowseep Waters: A lake mysterious for its cleanliness and for its vegetation-obscured depths.
• The Many Hosts of Igrathad: A loosely united network of seven villages of different races located south of the Sorrowseep Waters.

Lands not controlled by the Kryn Dynasty

Near where the Vermaloc Wildwood meets the Penumbra Range are at least two settlements not controlled by the Kryn:

• The Braan: A stronghold of the stone giants not far from the Kryn's Deepriver Mining Camp.
• Dumaran: A hobgoblin stronghold in the south, turned into the headquarters of the Children of Malice.

Both the Dolorav tribe and Koshtask clan claim the lands between Igrathad's grassland and the southern reaches of the Vermaloc, including:

• The banks of the Seepfeed River, which, true to its name, feeds the Sorrowseep Waters from its source in the Penumbra Range.
• The Iothia Moorland which consists of hilly grasslands, muddy fields, swamps, and lakes in the west-central portion of Xhorhas.

South of the Igrathad grasslands is the Lotusden Greenwood, a vast, leafy forest surrounded by somewhat swampy land. Within the forest is a small village of halflings and dragonborn called Charis.

The Iothia Moorland, the grasslands of Igrathad, and the Lotusden Greenwood all border the large, brackish, occasionally inhospitably warm Fevergulf Lake, which smells of sulfur and contains dangerous creatures.

Also south of Igrathad, and west of the Lotusden Greenwood, the Dreemoth Ravine cuts deeply through the southern tip of the Ashkeeper Peaks for almost 80 miles, ending just north of the Whitedawn Lagoon.

• Draconia: Draconia was once a floating archipelago of cities in the southwest of Xhorhas. southeast of the Ashkeeper Peaks. It was a dragonborn kingdom and the home of Tiberius Stormwind.
• Xarzith Kitril: The new dragonborn city constructed by the ravenites in the southern end of the Dreemoth Ravine after the fall of Draconia.

Racial makeup

Humanoids
The most populous races are:

• Elves, most of whom are drow (dark elves) in the Kryn Dynasty
• Goblinkin: bugbears, goblins, and hobgoblins
• Kobolds
• Lizardfolk
• Orcs
• Tieflings

Though countless dragonborn fled from the fall of Draconia into Xhorhas, they are still less common than the above races as of about 836 PD. Few in Xhorhas encounter gnomes, and most of those are deep gnomes.

Races that are rare in Xhorhas:

• Aasimar
• Dwarves, most of whom are duergar
• Firbolgs
• Genasi
• Halflings
• Humans, of whom most are nomads

The relative populations of other humanoid types are less precisely described, but don't seem particularly rare:

• Gnolls
• Minotaurs
• Humanoids of mixed ancestry, including half-elves and half-orcs

Giants, including hill giants, ogres, and stone giants

Fiends wander the wastes of Xhorhas. This list does not include the variety of demons concentrated in the Betrayers' Rise.

• Hezrou
• Nergaliid - toad-like devils
• Quasit
• Shadow demon
• Udaaks - large, dangerous, vaguely ape-like
• Vrock

Fauna

• Giant spiders - the legs of the spiders are marginally edible although they contain a toxin harmful to some
• Gloomstalkers - inhabit the Barbed Fields and hidden lairs across Xhorhas
• Horizonback tortoises - gigantic tortoises used as war machines
• Mastodons
• Moorbounders - giant cat-like creatures bred and used as mounts in Asarius, but which also roam the wastes in wild packs
• Purple worms - used as excavators and mounts by the Kryn.
• Rocs - giant birds
• Sorrowsworns - inhabit the Barbed Fields