Aldermoor

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the wild hunt descended upon Aldermoor and the grim stone cities, and the years of the rise of the Raven King’s black army, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars—Miravica, Radnika, Vallajara, Carcossa, Mythas Tharyn

with its impossible mazes of forests and its mystical, twilit groves,

Fortocia with its chivalry, Galdarhammer that bordered on the dwarfish lands of the North. 

The Dragon’s Marsh with its sunken treasures hidden underneath the muck, the Kongerike whose slaves toil inside volcanic mines. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Valkanja, reigning supreme atop the mountain peaks.” 

Pastiche of the opening monologue of “The Phoenix on the Sword” by Robert E. Howard (1932)

Aldermoor is the name for the heroic fantasy setting taking place in the world of Magnus. 

Aldermoor is a world of gothic horror and pagan mystery, the gods are quiet and contemplative, preferring offerings and the construction of totems to grand cathedrals or organized clergy. It is a word of dark forests, long-forgotten secrets revealed in the stars and stones, and beasts born from ancient curses and forgotten kingdoms. 

Magic is raw and powerful; reclusive magicians and enigmatic priests channel the power of Dragonstone - shards of creation that are invisible to ordinary folk, and can induce madness if consumed too regularly.

Devout folk perform rituals of the gods under the full moon, hoping to earn but a smidgen of their favour.

Aldermoor is a cramped valley bordered on all sides by monster-infested wilderness. Peasants till the black earth to discover something there is rotten, deeply and irreversibly. Questing knights in plate and mail fight back the horrors lurking in the evillest parts of the world.

The fate of Aldermoor always has and always will hang in the balance of the Wild Hunt, a cataclysmic event that happens about every millennium which causes all faerie beings to embody destruction, potentially toppling whole civilizations. And it is long overdue. 

Aldermoor is the realm of those caught in-between: the rejects, the refugees, the half-breeds, the fringe-folk, and those who live on the precipice of the mundane and the maddening.