Welcome to the first of our "Lore Behind the Pack" series!

Here we go through to explain the lore and story of our monthly patreon release packs. If you didn't already know, all of our packs have a deep lore assosciated with them, connected to a 5E campaign module with each pack. All our packs have an interconnecting thread between them, being set around the same time within the continent of Tharador: an entirely original world that I have been developing for the last 6 years through Dungeons & Dragons games with my friends. So it is great to be able to now share it with all of you!

This pack takes place on the isle of Duskweave. Long ago in the Age of Creation, the sibling continents of Tharador and Mindoriel, children of Minera, entered a war that lasted millenia. For Tharador's children, the Tharameni had given birth to beings which lived upon the earth for only a numbered time. Mindoriel saw this as an evil, and she scolded her brother, and nephew and nieces for the evil they had wrought. Tharador disagreed, as did his children - for in the finite life of these children which they named the Beremeni (Children of The Trees), came a fiery desire of accomplishment, drive and ambition.

Thus in anger, Mindoriel drove her body with great speed into Tharador's. The continents colliding with an enormous crash, thousands of Beremeni perishing in the impact. Having no children of her own, Mindoriel's spirit stood upon Tharador, the wake of destruction and death fascinating her. From her own soul she gave birth to a darker child than any of Tharador's: Myrothlir - The Body Bearer. Myrothlir would take the dead and hold them as marionettes, the puppet master casting them against Tharador as his own army. For millenia the war raged, until eventually it awoke the anger of their eldest brother Glanion: the radiant sun that awoke in supernova. With a great light, he sliced Mindoriel from her brother. In the wake of her dismemberment, the peninsular of Ilthwaën, home to Myrothlir floated to the sea near Tharador's coast. There it sat for centuries before finally it was recognised and grown to life by Renmaeth, the faun-like child of Tharador that was the keeper of his body and all things green and good.

Thus alone the isle sat for centuries, Renmaeth had sank Myrothlir's ancient fortress beneath a lake, and the evils of the isle were long forgotten. Though it was in the Age of Man that finally feet were stepped on the land once more. The Kingdom of Baldur saw the isle as a worthy place for a penal colony, quickly developing into a mining colony after the discovery of liturium: a green metal that dispelled all forms of magic that would come near it, for in her body Mindoriel held much of this metal to combat the magical abilities of the Beremeni and their creators. Quickly though the evils of the isle began their consumption of the weakest willed people there. Elias Kelathar, a boy of twelve winters when he stepped onto the isle with his mother only. She was put to work in labour camps for the crimes of their father, perishing only months after arriving.

Elias, taken in by the lightkeeper became deeply disturbed. He killed his foster father after a few years, faking his death as an accident. Shortly after he found a warped book washed ashore, its pages blank yet speaking to him in dark tongues that he did not speak himself, yet somehow understood. Ink would slowly reveal itself on the book's pages the more obsessed he became with its speech, and the more he devoted to it. Decades would pass as his obsession with the book grew deeper and deeper, culminating in his eventual rise to Lichdom after he had mastered the creation of a phylactery - powering it with the tortured soul of a pure being. Once this was complete, he turned the thousands of dead miners and prisoners into his vengeful army of the dead, marching them upon the colony and wiping out the isle in barely two days.

Thus he sat content in his lair, pondering the deeper secrets of necrotic magic, toiling with endless time now at his disposal. Baldur often would send armies to reclaim the isle, even enlisting powerful heroes and adventurers - though none returned and only bolstered Kelathar's armies. After half a century, the crown revoked their claim to the isle, declaring it a cursed zone to be avoided at all cost. With that many supernatural creatures moved in. A coven of vampires whom wished no more than to be left alone by humans, and packs of werewolves who wished the same. Unaware of the Lich, each was made to declare fealty to Kelathar on their arrival, so that they would act as his vanguard and elites in future reclamation attempts. A status quo was reached for nearly two centuries, the vampire's using the werewolves as a source of cattle-like food on the isle, much to the werewolve's dismay who received no aid from their lordly lich.

It was not until by chance that Yinsylim, a Paladion of Erdrydion washed ashore the isle after being shipwrecked in a storm. He and the other survivors quickly understood the situation they found themselves in, being aided by the vampire coven on the isle who explained that the only way they could leave the isle was by killing Kelathar. Unable to smite the lich's themselves, they were able to temporarily disable him to buy enough time to leave his sphere of influence; shooting him with Liturium arrows and covering him in Liturium dust. Once ashore on the mainland, Yinsylim used his place within his order to call a meeting of four of Tharador's greatest kingdoms: the two human kingdoms of Belfrie & Formen, and the two elven kingdoms of Leacianus & Nan Thalias. Now aware of the isle's importance by being the sole source of Liturium within Tharador, the kingdoms signed a treaty for their armies to fight and die together for an equal split of the Liturium thereafter.

With an army at his backing, Yinsylim returned to the isle, fighting his way through for days until eventually arriving at the Lich's lair, where after a great battle and dash for survival he was able to slay the lich in two blows. The armies of the dead collapsed, and Yinsylim soon found the phylactery after several hours of searching, destroying it too. Duskweave Isle soonafter became colonised by the four kingdoms, though the shares agreed upon did not suit well with others. The elven kingdom of Leacianus was discovered staging highway robberies of Belfrian and Formeni supply wagons, taking the liturium in the process and feigning it to be bandit attacks. A war erupted, and in the midst of the chaos that engulfed Duskweave, evil crept back in return. The right hand of Kelathar, Morian Fairhair stole away the lich's soul and body, reanimating him in a secondary phylactery the lich had crafted. Now the Lich has returned, plunging Duskweave into darkness once more and slaughtering the new colonists of the isle. Yinsylim, who had travelled there to investigate the lich's stolen body became grimly aware of this. Now he and whatever help he can muster must aim to slay Kelathar once and for all, and ensure all his minions die with him this time.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed that, you can explore more of Tharador, plus see our full maps and more in our monthly campaign packs!

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