Editor's Note: While I have saved on my harddrive(s) a few complete documents on a relatively niche kingdom of Tenebrian inheritors, I have decided to get my feet wet with a whole new post instead of recycling a now two year old unposted doc.  Irem has been mentioned numerous times previously, but I do believe I've never really dove into what, exactly is out there.  Sadly I was never able to entice my players into checking it out.


The Wastes of Irem:

Far to the north and west, jutting into the Sea of Dreams lies the subcontinental peninsula of Irem. Known to Men as the Demon Wastes, it is often forgotten and little explored, little more than legends escape it.

The greatest experts of Irem are the elves of the City of Seven Towers, who rebuilt their home after the Banality on the very edges of the Waste.  They alone remember those days, but the eldest of them speak little of it.  From the walls of the city one can dimly see, through the perpetual dust storms the shattered towers and ruins of their former home.

The elves, calling themselves after their city, the Illyacli (ed: Great, now I need to research my own writing!), are tall and fair and quite friendly to humans. It is said that when Versilimatu fled Nornsa after murdering the Orcish tax collector, it was here he fled, and here he learned the arts of war and magic, here he gathered his companions, and from here he launched the campaign that conquered the first Empire of Man, now known as the Nornsan Empire.  To this day the elves of the City of Seven Towers teach war and strategy, and even magic, to Humans who wish to learn it, and merchants from the nearby human kingdoms, to include many of the Northrun Clans, are common.  Oddly, however, they do not favor the elves of other tribes, even rejecting the entreaties of the Siti, and feeling the death, three hundred years ago, of the Queen of the Elves, to be an event of no great meaning.  Young Siti, fleeing the stagnation and oppression of their elders occasionally find shelter here, though the price is steep, as Illyacli ruthlessly insist their charges learn human languages and customs before sending them on their way.

The friendly and open attitude of the Elves disappears however, when it comes to the Wastes. They see themselves as guardians, keeping whatever exists in the Wastes at bay... and keeping the foolish from entering, to unleash some fresh new horror. The Wasteward walls of the city are no longer smooth white stone, pristine and perfect, but blasted and scarred by horrors unspoken.

But there border of hte Wastes is wide, and no one city can watch or patrol them all. The city of Seven Towers guards the easiest route in or out of the Wastes, but the intrepid and foolish may climb steep cliffs and brave treacherous mountain passes or dark cave routes into the wastes, with only a few patrols of ancient elves seeking to stop them, ruthlessly if necessary.

In truth, many such fools return after only a few days, sand blasted and starved but otherwise unharmed. The wastes are massive, and the regions closest to Nornsa are the most calm and pacified. There are ruins, of course, not all of them elvish, but they are relatively safe, and quite picked clean.  The ancient disaster that created the Wastes, and all of its many horrors was weakest near the border, and the greatest threats lie deeper within.

Even before the disaster, Irem was a desert, with only few oasis and the usual array of hardy desert plants and creatures.  To the modern eye, the Iremi Desert might have resembled the golden sands of Hesh, and prayers to the Sun were most effacious here. Now He has turned his face away from this blasted heath, the warmth and light gone from this place. Ancient maps are near to useless here, the very landscape altered by the ancient blast, warped and twisted by forces even the Gods could barely contain. Irem was golden sands once, now it is ochre and brown, looking of rust and dried blood, streaked and scored with broken vitrious glass, the ancient waterways now hard cracked mud that has never seen water. All the sand that once made up the land seems to exist forever in the sky, blotting out the sun and tearing at the flesh of those who dare tread where the Gods do not go.  Do not pray for succor in this land, for the Gods never answer.

Those most familiar with this place can tell you of the distinct types of horrors that may be found here.

First, and least common, are the Demons that have fled here from their own realm. Here on all the Mortal Plane, their ancient treaty with the Gods holds no force, and here they may remain eternally, free from their tyrannical and blood thirsty masters. It may seem odd to us that the Demons that call this land home find it a virtual paradise compared to their own realm.  Many of the demons of this land are of the lowest orders, nearly beasts, savage and unthinking... and hungry.  Here are the bloodwolves, the Nightmares, the Glankii and more. But occasionally one might find a minor princeling, a demon of rank, and they are rarely content to live the life of their savage kin, setting themselves up in 'style' among the ruins.  They too are hungry and treacherous, but they may be dealt with, if not summoned or bargined with, as they hunger for the softer comforts of conversation and intellectual stimulation as much as they hunger for souls and flesh.

Two types of creatures of Irem haunt the wastes, though each are nearly unique,  broad catagories may be stated. THe first are the Automata, creations of brass and crystal, often in impossible configureations.  They are clearly of unliving matter, yet spells designed for such creations may, or may not work. The warped nature of their creation is such that some may even have souls, and count as living, but impossibly alien, beings.  The most normal, understandable, are the remnants of Irem itself, their ancient servitors and war-machines that wander too and fro. These things, at least, may be understood, may have forms and traits that do not hurt the eye or mind, and respond to spells... or even stimuli... in predictable, if not always safe, ways.  Others have a far darker origin, lost to the Cataclysm, and are creations that no mortal mind, nor God, nor Demon, could claim.  Many of these latter... things... appear almost as wounds upon the world itself, while others crudely mimic the flesh in mechanistic ways.  Many carry the tormented forms of an ancient and lost tribe of elves within their construction, a twisted and screaming face here, blade arms that end in distinctive swords, an external shell that resembles nothing so much as a suit of armor.

The second sort of Iremi 'creature' are the living things, as variable and warped as the automata.  A few breeds of persist, species that have no origin in the world, while others are monsters as unique as they are horrifying.  Among them are the Warp Hawks, descended it is said from the Sun Hawks bred by Iremi falconers in ages past.  Once these birds were magnificent, paeans to the Sun that the Iremi once venerated. Now they are foul things, with feathers hard as the bronze it was merely resembled, dripping with oily toxins.  A more unique horror, or so it is hoped, is the Ge-Voun, named by the Elves that patrol the border passes.  The Ge-Voun is a creature of bone, described by many as a giant serpent of animate spikes, as a pile of fish bones of terrible size.  It swims through the dust seas or slithers atop the cracked mud and stone and whispers to the minds of those it hunts, driving them mad before it drinks their blood through its many spines.

Beyond the Iremi creations lie the ancient war beasts of the Elves, from ancient spells that never end, to ghosts of the slain, to their own automata, so like and yet so unlike those of their enemies.  It is said that in the farthest wastes there are small bands of degenerate beings, once Elves but twisted and warped into something much worse, that patrol the ancient sands in their ancient tattered finery, but those may only be legends.  Whether such beings, if they exist, are some new and terrible race of fallen elves, or powerful undead none alive can say.

The last threat, aside from the mythical God Slayer, are the mad monks of the wastes, found only in the interior. They are said to guard and worship the Lesser Sea of Chaos that lies there, driven mad by its unreality. They build their monasteries upon the jagged rocks that line the Sea from mud bricks and the warped and twisted skulls of their venerated ancestors, always leaving one face open to the Sea so they may meditate upon its ever changing mysteries.  While normally hostile to all outsiders, even those from competing monasteries, their behavior is as unpredictable as anything touched by that foul wound in reality, and they may trade and parlay with outsiders at their whim.  What they will never do, it is said, is allow even a single drop of Amorphia to be removed from the Sea.

So why would anyone enter the Wastes?

Treasure.  For all its barren hostility, the Wastes are littered with priceless treasures the likes of which simply cannot be found elsewhere. Gods died in this land, their weapons and treasures left upon the very ground.  Two of the greatest civilizations of the mythic age died upon this land, leaving countless artifacts that are of interest to scholars, wizards and warlords.  While Irem may be lost for all time in the Lesser Sea, her fortresses and satrapy cities lay buried in the wastes, as do the once mobile warcamps of the Tuathan(Danu? Research!!! Bah.)  Elves. The Iremi were known to be the finest Alchemists of all time, and the Renbluve Guild of Alchemists pays good coin for tools and artifacts of that craft.  Amorphia itself is a treasure nearly beyond price for those with the will and means to gather it and transport it. And while, in their final days, the Iremi were a blasphemous race, turning their face away from the Gods, those who worship the Sun find Iremi holy implements, made from Orichalcum dedicated to their God, to be precious to their God and their Faith, willing to pay many times their weight in gold.

Some would enter this land for enlightenment. The Monks of the Wastes may be madmen, but they are also enlightened in ways unknown to the rest of the world.  A single book of lore reputed to be from their own lips can make a scholar's fortune, even if it proves one day to be a lie.  A surviving book from a library of Irem is worth the price of a small kingdom.  For those of a darker bent, no where else in Reality may one deal with a Demon so readily, without the constraints of Demonic Law or the hostility of a binding.

Lastly there is the God Slayer itself.  Said to be larger than the very Mountains, with the blood of the divine staining its claws, this, the greatest and 'last' creation of Irem is a mystery and a prize beyond price.  Ambitious men have sought it as a war machine to be tamed, holy men have sought to slay it for the glory of the gods, and wise men seek to understand it and its creation.  Some believe if it is slain and its carcass thrown into the Lesser Sea of Chaos, that the wound upon the world might be healed, and the Wastes eventually reclaimed, though how might such a mighty task be accomplished none can say.

Those who know the most of the God Slayer say it is responsible for the endless dust storms, that it is too large to be described, as no man or even God can see all of it.  To fight it is folly, but within?  Well... divine or profane its power is formidable, and that power surely courses through organs and mechanisms within... organs and mechanisms that can be destroyed or stolen.  Of course, no one who has sought the God Slayer has ever returned from the wastes. Not even those who surely should have failed to find it.