Ios
In the final days of the Claiming, the realm of Ios, ancestral
homeland to elves of Immoren, once again closed its borders
completely to outsiders. With no news coming out of the
kingdom, many Iosans dwelling outside the boundaries of
their homeland returned to seeking word of their families
and loved ones. None who have entered Ios have returned.
That something catastrophic has occurred is generally
agreed. The Iosans, after all, are no strangers to disaster,
having survived more than their share of it throughout their
history. Yet this calamity seems different than those that have
come before, and no one has yet been able to penetrate the
mysterious depths of the forest realm to ascertain what has
become of the people who once dwelt within.
The forests of Ios have always been foreboding. The majority of the region is dominated by tall, pale aspens that form an impenetrable canopy. Underbrush is all but unheard of, and the silent glades of Ios are blanketed by moss and other bryophytes. Wet meadows break up the trees, as do high plateaus where wildflowers bloom in a riot of colors rarely seen by outsiders. Mist cloaks the forest throughout the year, and there are those who say that this haze has a mind of its own—that it whispers secrets in the ears of travelers and turns them around in their tracks until they have lost all sense of direction. Some even claim the mist is made up of the souls of those elves who are born without them.
Anyone who has ventured near Ios, including diplomats and trading parties from Llael, Cygnar, and even Rhul, have found the gates of its border fortresses closed, their walls apparently untenanted. Any expedition that has gone around these defenses has either found itself turned around in the forest, walked out despite believing it was marching in, or disappeared without a trace. Those who have managed to return tell outlandish and frightful tales that might have been dismissed as outright fabrications were the horrors of the Claiming not still fresh in the minds of the populace: stories of elves, black-eyed and soulless, who watched them silently from the trees and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Yet these are the least of the horrifying tales spun by the few who have set foot in Ios since the Claiming. Others tell stories of barely glimpsed shadows that were like Iosans, yet different—twisted and terrible, their hunger a palpable thing that radiated outward like heat from a furnace. No one in the outside world can say what has become of the once-proud people who called this forest realm their home, but all of western Immoren wonders—and fears.
The death of the gods changed more than the elven people. Everything in Ios—its forests and streams, its mountains and lakes, and even its cities and fortresses—absorbed some part of the energy released by the deaths of the last two members of the Divine Court, and the result is a land that is haunted in ways both literal and figurative.
Venturing into the forests of Ios from the outside world has always meant stepping into a land of pristine beauty and almost uncanny silence, but today, that silence has grown, and the beauty has become somehow unsettling. The forests have constantly been cloaked with mist no matter the season, but ever since the deaths of Scyrah and Nyssor, that mist has taken on an unnerving mind of its own. Travelers within this fog imagine tormented faces and grasping claws, hear whispered voices carried on the still air, and find themselves turned around in their tracks, walking back out of the forest even as they believed they were venturing deeper into it. That this mist seems to conspire to protect Ios from outside interlopers may be mere coincidence, or it may mean that the eldritch who now rule the eerie nation have found some way to harness the fog for their own inscrutable ends.
Despite all these changes, life in Ios continues much as it did before the Sundering, even if many of those who dwell within the forest nation’s borders are no longer numbered among the living. The soulless, once a minority among the elven nation’s population, now outnumber the eldritch by a considerable margin, yet the latter hold all of the nation’s political power. The hallytyr and fallytyr still exist as strange shadows of their former selves, with eldritch rulers now making laws for their obedient, soulless subjects to follow.
The forests of Ios have always been foreboding. The majority of the region is dominated by tall, pale aspens that form an impenetrable canopy. Underbrush is all but unheard of, and the silent glades of Ios are blanketed by moss and other bryophytes. Wet meadows break up the trees, as do high plateaus where wildflowers bloom in a riot of colors rarely seen by outsiders. Mist cloaks the forest throughout the year, and there are those who say that this haze has a mind of its own—that it whispers secrets in the ears of travelers and turns them around in their tracks until they have lost all sense of direction. Some even claim the mist is made up of the souls of those elves who are born without them.
Anyone who has ventured near Ios, including diplomats and trading parties from Llael, Cygnar, and even Rhul, have found the gates of its border fortresses closed, their walls apparently untenanted. Any expedition that has gone around these defenses has either found itself turned around in the forest, walked out despite believing it was marching in, or disappeared without a trace. Those who have managed to return tell outlandish and frightful tales that might have been dismissed as outright fabrications were the horrors of the Claiming not still fresh in the minds of the populace: stories of elves, black-eyed and soulless, who watched them silently from the trees and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Yet these are the least of the horrifying tales spun by the few who have set foot in Ios since the Claiming. Others tell stories of barely glimpsed shadows that were like Iosans, yet different—twisted and terrible, their hunger a palpable thing that radiated outward like heat from a furnace. No one in the outside world can say what has become of the once-proud people who called this forest realm their home, but all of western Immoren wonders—and fears.
The death of the gods changed more than the elven people. Everything in Ios—its forests and streams, its mountains and lakes, and even its cities and fortresses—absorbed some part of the energy released by the deaths of the last two members of the Divine Court, and the result is a land that is haunted in ways both literal and figurative.
Venturing into the forests of Ios from the outside world has always meant stepping into a land of pristine beauty and almost uncanny silence, but today, that silence has grown, and the beauty has become somehow unsettling. The forests have constantly been cloaked with mist no matter the season, but ever since the deaths of Scyrah and Nyssor, that mist has taken on an unnerving mind of its own. Travelers within this fog imagine tormented faces and grasping claws, hear whispered voices carried on the still air, and find themselves turned around in their tracks, walking back out of the forest even as they believed they were venturing deeper into it. That this mist seems to conspire to protect Ios from outside interlopers may be mere coincidence, or it may mean that the eldritch who now rule the eerie nation have found some way to harness the fog for their own inscrutable ends.
Despite all these changes, life in Ios continues much as it did before the Sundering, even if many of those who dwell within the forest nation’s borders are no longer numbered among the living. The soulless, once a minority among the elven nation’s population, now outnumber the eldritch by a considerable margin, yet the latter hold all of the nation’s political power. The hallytyr and fallytyr still exist as strange shadows of their former selves, with eldritch rulers now making laws for their obedient, soulless subjects to follow.
Localized Phenomena
Soulless For decades now, more and more Iosans have been born without souls. Such infants are marked by the silence with which they enter the world, the alien stare of their black eyes, and the eeriness of their emotionless manner. The Iosans have always seemed aloof compared to the other peoples of the Iron Kingdoms, but the soulless are so detached from emotion that they fill even Iosans with a sense of disquiet while also reminding them of the mysterious sickness that has been gnawing away at their people.
Despite being seen as a physical sign of the Iosans’ abandonment by their gods, some soulless have been raised as emotionless killers by the Retribution of Scyrah, a rogue organization that blamed Human spellcasters for the death of the elven deities. Even though many years have passed since anyone last saw a member of the Retribution inside the borders of Ios, those who have ventured into the eerily quiet forests of that realm have seen the soulless. They stand watch near the gates of Ios now, their numbers too great to simply be the result of the Retribution’s actions. Where they have come from and what this means for the people of Ios—and for the rest of western Immoren—remains to be seen.
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