The Abyss of Khora
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Location: Eastern edge of the Heartlands, west of the Eastern Badlands.
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Environment: Malefic Wasteland
Geography
A sprawling scar on the face of Auria, the Abyss of Khora stretches across the eastern boundary of the Heartlands, from the Adryssian Empire in the north down to the Abyssal Sea in the south.
Consumed with Malefic power, the Abyss is a dangerous, but fertile land, consumed with corruption and poison. Gardens of poisonous flowers grow beneath the baleful glare of the sun, casting pallid rays through sickly clouds. Dense fogs in unnatural colors- green, purple, or murky black-brown- cover the ground.
The plants that grow here are covered in thorns and are eternally wilting, casting decaying petals to the ground. Abberant fiends stalk the land, while the land itself twists into macabre and arcane shapes, frequently said to resemble living creatures, but twisted and deformed.
The Abyss is not well explored in modern history, and so knowledge of its appearance is based on ancient records.
The hinterlands around the Abyss are closer to ordinary, and are a relatively fertile land of forest and grasslands. Fall lasts unusually long in these parts, as does twilight, and where trees fall decay takes far longer than it ought to. These lands are the stage for constant battles between abyssal monsters and dragari monster hunters, who intercept the fiends before they can reach the eastern badlands.
Civilization
By all accounts, the Abyss is entirely empty of sentient species. Those ancient tribes which united with the Abyss's abberations were hunted to extinction by the Dragar, and even those decadent peoples never dared stray into the Abyss itself. Indeed, none who now live have even ventured close enough to see the borders of the Abyss.
History
Since the dawn of recorded history, the Abyss has stood as a blighted land, festering with a deeply rooted malefic taint. In the ancient records, the great dragon Khora, emperor of the Eastern Kingdoms, ventured to the Abyss at the culmination of a great battle against the Vileblood Tribes, seeking to put an end to its threat once and for all.
Khora disappeared, and since that time the Abyss came to be known by their name, unwittingly. Such a thing would surely have gravely insulted the ancient, majestic seraph dragon, but few even amongst the Dragar still know the details of that ancient legend.
Regardless, the Abyss has always spewed forth abberant monsters- twisted fiends, deformed in spirit and body, with a ravenous hunger to infect and consume. In the ancient days, the tribes who lived near the Abyss found a manner of co-operation with its malefic power.
Consuming the abyssal flowers that grew in the hinterlands near the Abyss, they grew powerful, the abyssal fiends coming to their beck and call, yet at the same time they grew hedonistic and cruel. As excess upon excess piled up, they took to practices of slavery, profane magic, and human sacrifice in the name of satiating the Abyss.
Unwilling to let their erstwhile neighbors improprieties go unpunished, the Dragar of Sathyras began a campaign of extermination against the vileblood tribes, as they had chosen to call them. For decades, Dragar and dragon fought against vileblood and abberation, until the last of the Vilebloods were put to the sword, though word of some escaping south to the Abyssal Sea exists.
By the end of this conflict, the remaining true dragons had dwindled to nearly nothing, either felled by dark magic or disappearing without explanation. Since those times, the Dragar of Sathyras have stood guardian over the Abyss, hunters felling any bestial fiend which strays across the hinterlands, and burning any trace of abyssal corruption that threatens to spread.