The Broken Lands

The  dying sun hangs low and heavy in the shimmering violet sky, its  once-brilliant golden light dimmed to a sullen amber. Shadows stretch  across the ragged landscape, casting the steep spire mountains and deep,  sheer-walled canyons into premature dusk. This is the Broken Lands - a  realm where the earth itself has cracked and splintered ages ago,  leaving a web of crevasses and soaring stone peaks.

Yet life perseveres here in the remnants of fertile  soil along cracked canyon floors and mountain slopes. The hardiest of  trees and shrubs cling to the land, fed by springs and streams that  still flow through the broken earth. Small farms and villages spot the  land wherever enough flat space allows, the people scraping by on  stubborn crops choked with weeds.

The few cities of the Broken Lands rise up on the  bones of the land itself - carved into cliffsides or built atop massive  stone mesas. These isolated city-states war and trade with one another,  vying for precious resources and power. As the sun declines and the  world ages around them, they cling to their holdings with fervent and  often violent purpose.

As the last amber rays of sunlight fade, the canyon  walls and spire mountains are set ablaze in brilliant hues of  vermillion, carmine, and gold. But beauty is not all that lurks in the  growing shadows. Creatures old as the land itself, twisted and  malevolent, stalk the secret places of the broken earth. Still, hope  lingers here for some - hope for forgotten knowledge and magic that  could heal the Broken Lands and restore the dying sun once more.

Your journey begins on the edges of the first  lengthening shadows, your path winding through a landscape both wondrous  and bleak, violent and beautiful. In the Broken Lands, dangers and  wonders go hand in hand, shadow and light are eternally at war, and only  the bold will survive to see the next dawn. Your trials start with the  coming of the night - prepare yourself.