The Withered Land
It used to be a garden, you know. A paradise crafted by us under guidance from the Divine. Now...all that remains is ash and rust...and the shadow of abominable life.
What lies beyond the World's End Wall is a matter few would want to talk about. It is a land of whispered horrors and the echos of long-lost crimes. A land that no sane being would willingly enter. A land where life is impossible. At least if reason and logic are to be believed.
Once there was a Garden...
"...grown by the hands of the Gods and worked by the hands of their children. And it was paradise on earth, wherein want was not and loss a far off dream." - from the Book Of Creation When the Gods divided the world following the first war, they gave each of the Children a piece to call their own. Dwarves received the inner earth, Seafolk the oceans and lakes, and Orcs the grassland. But the Elves, ever bound to follow their creators in the pursuit of perfection, were to live in paradise. How this looked is vague at best, with every Elven lineage having its own tale to tell. However, they all agree on its radiance and brilliance, creating a far-off mist of awed whispers and fantastical shades. For over a thousand years, Elvenkind prospered. Until the day that their ancient enemy returned. The greatest realm that Elvenkind ever saw fell after centuries of ceaseless war, and the Atenarri were sundered for the first time, thrown across the lands like leaves upon a storm. The Garden burned, and with it, the rest of the lands to the west of the World's End Wall.Paradise Lost
Today, over 4000 years after the Tarakan reemerged, there is nothing but death to be found west of the mountains. What became known as the Suur Turmandu, the Withered Heath, is an ocean of burning ash. A place where the earth is wrecked by ceaseless spasms that send molten rock hundreds of metres into the air. Stone and fire are all that rain from clouds coloured in a putrid mix of green and black. Forests made of molten glass offer shade in a land where even the sun seems twisted, its single odious eye scorching the earth with its rays. Even the air is lethal there, thick as soup and choked with stenches so vile that a single whiff may cause a grown orc to faint. But nature's wrath is not just confined to heat and air. Storms of rust and ash race across the land, their confines hiding blades of wind able to cut meat off the bone. And if the sun sits just right, its rays may act like a single blade of light that will incinerate anything in a wide arc. By far, the worst is not nature, however, but the life that, despite all of the land's hostility, has managed to establish itself in hell. The Tarakan, hordes of monstrous abominations born out of the Fallen God's decaying corpse, call this utter desolation their home. It is from here that they launch their ceaseless assaults upon the civilised world, their hordes gathering deep within the wastes before marching upon Timur's Gate, the only pass that connects Dvergar with the seething ruin of a once luscious world.
They thrive out there. It doesn't matter how many of them we kill, they always come back with more. Few want to think about it, but I believe that there are more of them than of all other races combined.
Alternative Name(s)
Suur Turmandu
Type
Wasteland
Inhabiting Species
by Mike Luard
While the Adjori Devor do their best in keeping the ever-changing madness of the Withered Land away from Dvergar's peaceful lands, there is only so much a great mountain chain can do. Every year, at the end of autumn, great storms of dust and ash may spill over the World's End Wall. Much more dangerous are the terrible Iron Storms that may accompany especially violent eruptions of the Withered Land and can cause untold devastation if circumstances permit it.
God's Grave
Deep within the Suur Turmandu lies the God's Grave, the place where the Fallen came down out of Heaven after his lethal battle with the other Kaeni. A place of utter nothingness, it is said. A place where reality itself has broken and nothing, not even the Gods, can exist.
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This is very interesting, I'm beginning to see very close associations between all your worlds, and sometimes even hints towards them, as if they are all part of a single world, where regions are immensely isolated from each other, this idea of God's grave does seem to show some contrast with The Divide, and the idea of Mana you mentioned is a clear sign from your other world