Pendaan

In the beginning, it was the end. No one expected the world to end.   Oh, there was conflict of course, and magical threats. New gods had risen from the cold ashes of the old, and nations were in conflict. And it wasn't unprecedented for a place to cease existing; the black spot that had once been the city of Draven still marred our maps five centuries after it fell into Shadow.   Still, no one expected the world would be torn into pieces as abruptly as one might tear up a map. One day you could walk from Fenbrook to Korrendel or Trento to Ostia or Purk to Stolberg. The next, to walk those roads was to fall off the end of the world into the merciless chaos of the Void. We weren't ready.   Our new world was so very, very small. The northwest corner was anchored by Evermore. They were perhaps the best prepared. An Imperial city completely contained within the Empire of Dumar, they were used to self-sufficiency. To the south, the Dumarian city of Fenbrook. Second-smallest of the Dumarian cities, inexpertly ruled by the Dumarian heir as training for the throne of the empire. To the southeast, the Free City of Trento, one of the smaller cities of an area that thrived on the international trade that was no longer possible. And in the northeast, the great city of Purk lay right on the border between what existed and what did not. The "city on the edge of the world" had to be abandoned, as the Void surged and receded, tearing apart buildings and endlessly disgorging monsters and madness.   Geographically, the world made little sense. Before the world ended, a river flowed out of the hills between Fenbrook and Trento, before joining with a second tributary passing north of Trento, forming the Rynan River which formed one of Evermore's borders. Now, the river simply... continued somehow to be. Water flowed in from the nothingness, and continued to flow out past the city. We didn't—we don't—know where it comes from, or where it goes, if anywhere. Some believe it still connects us to other fragments of the shattered world. It's certainly true that things wash downstream out of the Void, but many of them seem to be strange and foreign, not simply from what we remember of the hills. And it's certainly true that things wash down the river and out of our world, but whether anyone finds them, no one can say. The river shaman say the water flows from the elemental realms, and is their attempt to sustain us. Perhaps it is true.