Godscarred Wastes
"Where divine fury carved scars that reality cannot heal"
The barren, sun-baked expanse where the fury of the ancient war between the gods left its most visible mark upon the world. Here, cracked earth stretches beneath skies that shimmer with heat haze, and molten rivers of divine blood, thick as clotted blood, gurgle and hiss through the land like arteries of liquid fire, warping the landscape and birthing colossal Beastborn. Chasms of obsidian glass yawn like solidified wounds left from the violent birth of a god-scarred world, canyons of petrified bone and the skeletal arches of long-dead gods rise from the dust, and whispers of long-dead deities still echo through the canyons. This blighted realm—homeland of the nomadic Ashborn and hunting ground of the Silver Hunter—stands as an eternal reminder of what cosmic conflict can unleash upon creation itself.
Landscape of Divine Fury
The Godscarred Wastes bear wounds that time cannot heal. Here, the very ground was transformed when the gods waged their brutal war among themselves and their divine blood spilled upon the mortal realm, seeping into earth, river and sky. Vast territories once fertile and green now stretch as hellscapes of devastation, where reality itself lies broken. It is a desert of jagged peaks, twisted canyons and skeletal rock formations that resemble the petrified remains of colossal beings; of sparse, thorny scrub, twisted and petrified vegetation, and sulfurous vents whose cloying stench mingles with the metallic tang of ancient bloodshed. By day the heat is extreme; even at night the air shimmers with heat rising from the blighted earth, and a stifling humidity clings to fur and skin.
Canyons of obsidian glass cut through the terrain like wounds in the earth that never healed. In some canyons the walls run slick with a black substance that pulses with an oily iridescence—solidified divine blood, a scar upon a scar, where the essence of the Wastes runs concentrated and amplified. The sky perpetually shimmers with heat haze.
The Wastes are never truly quiet: the wind is a raw, rasping voice that scours the canyons and howls through the skeletal arches, and the Beastborn punctuate the desolation with roars of territorial rage. Yet the land is known to prey upon the mind, whispering delusions to the solitary wanderer—the lingering madness of dead gods. It was in an unnatural silence, pressing down upon the Wastes like a hand, that the Silent God's first whisper was heard. Its western fringes bleed into a stranger wilderness where the raw magic of the Wastes mingles with the encroaching influence of the Verdant Veil, and remote villages such as Blackwater Falls—north of Solara's ruined bones—cling to its threshold, while the forests beyond Rivenglade border it on their far side.
Zones of Devastation
Distinct regions within the Wastes where different aspects of divine destruction have shaped the landscape into unique hellscapes
The Glass Canyons
Chasms of obsidian glass that yawn like solidified wounds left from the violent birth of a god-scarred world. In some, the walls run slick with solidified divine blood, black and oily and iridescent, a scar upon a scar where the essence of the Wastes runs concentrated and amplified.
Bone Fields
Plains and canyons littered with the petrified remains of titans and gods from the ancient war—skeletal rock formations resembling the petrified remains of colossal beings, canyons walled in petrified bone, and the skeletal arches of long-dead gods through which the wind howls. These colossal skeletons create a landscape of bone spires and ribcage canyons. Whispers of long-dead deities still echo through them.
Molten Rivers
Rivers of molten divine blood—thick as clotted blood, gurgling and hissing, their whispers echoing the death throes of forgotten deities—that flow with divine essence rather than natural lava, warping the land around them and birthing colossal Beastborn.
Corruption Phenomena
Supernatural manifestations born from the lingering trauma of divine conflict and the corruption of spilled god-blood
Divine Blood Crystallization
Throughout the Wastes, pools and veins of solidified divine ichor—black, oily, iridescent, pulsing faintly on canyon walls—create zones of intense magical corruption in which the Beastborn grow bolder, their aggression fed by the blighted energy. It was in one such canyon, a scar upon a scar, that the Silver Hunter Kaelen R'Veyne first felt his own Bloodmarked nature erupt; and the Wastes are known to drive solitary mortals to madness with the whispered delusions of dead gods.
Survivors of the Wastes
Those who have adapted to life in the harshest environment in Arcadia, from nomadic survivors to creatures born of divine corruption
Ashborn Tribes
The nomadic tribes of the Wastes—weathered as the desert scrub they scavenge—who eke out a precarious existence in a land abandoned by the gods and overrun by their monstrous offspring. Unlike the settled kingdoms clinging to fertile lands and their illusions of civilization, the Ashborn understand the world for what it is: they are scavengers, relic hunters, survivors, their lives dictated by the migrations of Beastborn herds and the fickle mercies of the elements. They worship the remnants of fallen deities with a pragmatic fervor, seeking power and protection not in grand temples but in shards of divine armor, petrified tears of goddesses, and splinters of god-weapons scattered across the ancient battlefields—and they fear the Bloodmarked. Their settlements are scattered along the borders of the Wastes, and among their number were born the Silver Hunter Kaelen R'Veyne and the scholar Tanneus G'Raja, who found purpose not in plunder but in bearing witness. Whose land the Wastes were before the gods bled upon it, and how the Ashborn first came to be, is a question the Lost Histories will one day answer.
Corruption-Touched Beastborn
Creatures of nightmare and primal rage born where the divine ichor fell and the land warped—each a twisted echo of a god's wrath, sorrow, or forgotten desire. The Wastes breed them colossal: Ridgeback Stalkers, phantom predators of shadow and muscle with chitinous hides and razor spines; Razorwing Harpies whose screeches can shatter stone; Gorefang Behemoths; Stonehide Titans whose approach is felt as a tremor in the earth; Skywraiths circling overhead; and Wasteland Crawlers, whose leathery hides make armor as unforgiving as the land itself. Even the lesser creatures of the Wastes are warped and tainted, their flesh reeking of sulfur and divine corruption.
Relic Hunters
Brave or desperate individuals—Ashborn and outsiders alike—who venture into the most dangerous zones to recover divine artifacts from the ancient battlefields, from god-stones and shard-blades to fragments prized more for power than for truth. Even the High Inquisitor Mordain Ashcroft of the Hollow Spire once walked the relic hunter's path.
Beastborn Hunters
A rarer breed than the relic hunters: those who turn their backs on divine fragments to hunt the Beastborn themselves, learning the whisper-language of the Wastes—the wind's sigh across petrified bone, the tremor heralding a Stonehide Titan, the scent of a Gorefang on the thermal drafts. Around the fires of the settlements bordering the Wastes they whisper of the greatest of them, the Silver Hunter, a wraith in dark leather and gleaming silver who brought cold, swift death to the creatures of nightmare—and whose own story, told in The Silence, began when an unnatural hush fell over the Wastes.