A Forest Grew There

 

SAINT ÉLA

One thousand years ago, the peninsula of Hitherland was a wild place populated only by savage Gnolls and their slightly more civilised Orcish allies. When Humans arrived, coming from the mainland to the West, they found a country untamed and full of life. They established a small town on the southern tip, at the mouth of the river Lapis and made war against the Gnolls and the Orcs. It was Éla who did it - with her companions - she drove the Orcs from the shores of Hitherland and slew the Gnoll God. When she returned, all her friends dead, she was deemed a saint and was cloistered in the church built in her name. They said she had become immortal, drawing upon the power of the slaughtered God of the Gnolls. The town at the mouth of the river Lapis was named Inverness; they worshipped the Saint Éla there for centuries.

As time passed the cult of Saint Éla lost power and her church lost power in the city. Commerce with the mainland came to rule and the wealthy merchants whose trade was in the vast resources of the peninsula were the rulers. When Dwarves came from below the earth to the North, from beneath the mountain Haim and established at its base the thriving metropolis Hamim, dealing in all the metals and gems that are the domain of the Dwarves, they only reinforced the grip the merchant class had on Inverness.

PLAGUE

The faithful dwindled. Seventy years ago trees came like a plague from North of Hitherland. Trees came up from the ground everywhere; farms disappeared, towns disappeared, Hamim disappeared in the vast forest that arose so quickly that the trees could be heard to grow in the day. In Inverness rumors spread that Saint Éla was punishing the city for the abandonment of her worship. Her cult grew strong, but even then the streets of the city were overwhelmed and the people died or vanished as monstrous beasts followed the forest into their homes. At last, in the third year of the plague and as the city was almost overwhelmed, when even Éla’s church was threatened, she interceded. Though hidden behind cloth partitions, Éla was brought to the border of the last safe part of the city by her priests. She raised two walls - Alice’s Walls - between the neighborhood of Inlet and the now overrun rest of the city. Behind the walls, civilization continues. Out in the wild death stalks through the forest.

BEHIND THE WALLS

Now Inlet, a once prosperous business district inhabited by those who worked the docks, is home to the desperate remains of the city. Refugees squat anywhere they can find space behind Alice’s walls - in warehouses and customs buildings. The few left in Inlet with wealth trade in goods plundered from the dead city with those ships from the mainland still willing to make the trip. Most that had the chance to have left. What remains are the poor and the faithful: those who cannot buy passage on a ship, and those who cannot abandon their Saint-God.