Thorngrove

In this world, the land is affected by the actions that take place on it. At first, this was just thorn bushes growing around the scenes of heinous crimes, or bad local weather. Over time, an empire grew to span the landscape, incomprehensibly vast. The empire would oppress its citizens, subjecting them, extorting them, and executing them for money or anti imperial sentiment. Eventually, the land responded. It became more and more difficult to grow food, but the main effects came in one blow. Mighty floods washed away crops, and inundated the landscape. Snows came so thickly they buried cities. Winds so strong they whipped the land bare until it was nought but bare stone. The halls of the mightiest civilisation to ever exist fell into ruin, and many crumbled to dust.   Thousands of years after this collapse, handfuls of adventurers roam the landscape, weaving their way through ruins the likes of which can never be built again, scratching out a living foraging on the mostly barren landscape, fighting to survive.