The Rise of the Dread King

Metaphysical / Paranormal event

Farbarrow, the ancestral home of the Halflings was a place of peace and plenty. The folk of the lands lived in their holes without any care in the world except whether Yondalla would bless their harvests.   Then, sometime around 4500 AtD, everything changed. What had been a land of quiet lives well-lived became a place of nightmare, death and destruction, and it all happened without warning.

On the night that Halflings refer to as "the Night of Reaping" the villages of Farbarrow were rocked by a series of groundquakes, or so the stories say.   Huge cracks rent the farming fields and woodlands, hot steam and purple, eldritch light issuing forth. Clawed hands, rotting flesh dropping from the bones, gripped the edges of the cracks, and an army of dead things slowly arose from the earth.   What followed was a night of death and destruction. The brave few who stood their ground to defend their homes were struck down by the dead things, and their homes were uprooted and collapsed by huge chunks of jagged earth that shot up from below.   The Halflings did the only thing they could to survive - they fled. Some tales say that Yondalla herself appeared to lead them to the relative safety of the lands to the south.   Behind them they left a place now known as the Dread Land. Broken steaming badlands of jagged rock lie under a pall of dark smoke where once green fields bathed under blue skies.   In the centre of that place the new lord of the land, called The Dread King raised up towers of polished obsidian from where he could survey his new domain.   To this day none know from whence he came, or the reasons for his dominion, though many have offered conjecture and guesswork. The Dread King sits in his towers, seemingly happy to stay there, not looking to expand his rule, but not allowing any to enter the Dread Lands either. Not that any visit that dark place, which remains a stain of darkness in the lands.   For the Halflings, Farbarrow remains a place of dark memory and nightmare. Many of the elders wonder why the terrible events occurred, and fear what The Dread King might achieve should he one day decide to begin expanding his dark empire.