What Melkor posted about dead lands above was a drastic understatement (and I intended to post this before I read his post.)
The Wild Coast, Dyvvers, and the eastern part of Gnarley Forest are dead.
The County of Urnst, is dead.
By dead, I mean DEAD.
The trees are skeletal, every leaf fallen, all the bark stripped, most of their branches still swaying in a wind that is far, far too cold for summer.
There is underbrush, the leaves turned ashen grey, then stems rotted and dead, somehow still standing.
There is grass, as grey as a leaden sky in winter.
There is no noise of insects.
There is not the sound of any bird to be heard.
No small animals scuttle through the gray leafed underbrush.
The sound of brooks, streams, and rivers can still be heard.
One looking at them, would see however, that the water has turned murky, sickly, and a deathly odor comes up from the water.
The ruins of towns and cities jut up from the grey landscape, like broken teeth out of rotting gums.
The Shadow has come to these lands, and entered into the very bedrock below, and all the region is dead, the soil as sterile as Terra's moon.
Except where the Shade have held the land the longest.
In the area of the Shadow Throne itself.
There, it seems grass, foliage, and trees are coming back to life.
Back to unholy unlife.
Leaves of gray, brittle and burned looking, are growing from stripped, skeletal limbs.
Fronds of gray are raising themselves out of the pallid ground.
Within the skeletal trees and grey underbrush, small things move, but they are not furry animals.
They are Shade animals, and to them all that lives is prey, to be torn and rended and devoured, even as the Shade animals prey on each other.
There, the rivers radiate cold, and they are black will the poison of Shade, and in them tiny things of Shade swim, the ghostly manifestations of fish.
The deadly poison of Shade has gotten into the Nyr Dyv, for it lies just north of the Shadow Throne.
The whole Nyr Dyv has turned a sickly grey, fouled and dirty, and millions of dead fish are washing up on all it's shores.
Those drinking from the Nyr Dyv fall sick, and many die. Others recover after a long illness.
The poison in the Nyv Dyv is steadily worsening.
The poison has gotten down into Wolly Bay.
The entire northern part of Wolly Bay is sickly grey, and again millions of dead fish are washing ashore, some as far south as the Pomarj.
The waters just north of the Pomarj are yet clear, but the poison is spreading, moving southward, ever southward, towards the open Azure Sea.
The war goes on, reaping it's toll of victims.
In the west, the combined elven, dwarven, gnomish, and gith spelljamming fleets are victorious against the scro, illithid and neogi, and those three fleets are forced to withdraw from their defensive positions over the Hellfurnaces.
The orcs and other humanoids of the western mountains are victorious against the Baklunish and their allies assailing them, and maintain their grip on those mountains.
Amedio Rainforest, as is already noted above, is burning, and with that burning hundreds of special kinds of life are burning away too, forever lost to the world.
The formian ant army marches back to the Hellfurnaces, well sated from it's diet of the people of the Yeomanry, which has been retaken in bitterness by the Kevellond League.
And all the while, Ket is laughing. Laughing, because they so delayed the Baklunish, and in so doing brought so much harm to the Kevellond League, their ancient foe.
In the southeast, the undead horror of Acererak is unstoppable.
Idee is whelmed, it's people massacred and devoured by hoards of ghouls and ghasts, their life essence devoured by wraiths and wights, spectres and liches.
Churches crumble and blast apart, as ghosts, heculva and coffer corpses throw unholy magic against them.
The doughty dwarves of the Iron Hills drown in the darkness of their own caves, as that darkness takes form and shape, and lashing out with red-tinged hunger and malice sucks them all in, never to be seen again.
Only in Irongate do the defenders manage to hold.
Only in Irongate.
It seems that Irongate has an inexhaustible supply of warriors, for when one falls, two more take his place.
Even after countless thousands are dead, Irongate has more warriors than it started out with.
Acererak discovers why. There is a permanent magical Gate linking Irongate to the Kevellond League and the Kingdom of Ulek (as per the official supplements), and through that Gate reinforcements keep coming through, keeping the city alive.
Keeping Acererak from total victory.
In the north, the elves of Delrune throw back the new assault from the Dark Union, for Gamboge Forest has long prepared for assault, and the wood and wild elves within it aren't pushovers of any sort.
Thousands of Union soldiers go down beneath their shafts.
Undead are destroyed by the shining symbols of the Seldarine, and the crystalline cities of southern Delrune repulse the attackers from their walls.
In the east, an unresolved and escalating battle is raging between the Fleet of the Lendores and the large Union force sent to destroy it.
Barbarian ships have come in droves to the aid of the Lendore Fleet, along with large numbers of tritons, merfolk, sea elves, and even locathah.
However, to the aid of the Union has come the might of the Sahuagin Empire, and the Union has sent major reinforcements to aid her mages.
Barrages of magic light up the skies, while below the ships the water runs red with the blood of those slain below.
). We have been prepared for mountain attack for as long as we excisted in these parts. We need no conquest we need to keep what we have in these dangerous times.
