As the centuries wore on, the Mahzkani Empire grew larger and more decadent, its people began to seek pleasure over purpose, and soon even their gods were abandoned. The Island capital of Mahz became a nest of eunuchs and pitiful aristocracy; and the line of Emperors, once thought wisest and noblest of all beings, grew weak. Law became bribery, argument became assassination, and the profane became the divine.

Countless wars saw the legions spread thin, their ranks bolstered by debtors, criminals, mercenaries and slaves. The provinces became restless, their governors turning their gaze inward, away from Mahz and the imperial unity it represented.

In the north, Halgrad remained prosperous, but it could no longer be considered imperial. After years of underpaying their tithes, the Marocians broke from the Empire, claiming both the fertile heartland of their home on the Grey Sea, and the less prosperous holdfasts of Ghyrsholme.

For a time, the city of Halgrad became the jewel of the Marocian crown, as prosperous as it had ever been, and unshackled from Imperial regulation. But as a nation Marocia was still young, and as paranoid as it was proud. Civil war erupted suddenly between the Marocian and Ghyrish territories, Halgrad fell within a night, set upon from the inside by Ghyrish raiders and mercenaries hired by by the nobility. Their prosperity secured, Ghyrsholme seceded from Marocia, never to reconcile.

Briefly, Halgrad stood as a capital once more, this time ruled over by a council of the eldest Ghyrish nobles. But where Marocia had broken from the Mahzkani through open rebellion, the lords of Ghyrsholme took their freedom through conspiracy and bloody gold, a trend that continued throughout their rule. For a time, Ghyrish courtly life became a dark dance of assassination, bribery and theft, and all of it steeped in old blood magic. The palace devolved into a nest of silken masks, hired blades, and quiet horrors.

Gold still flowed through the Guildsport, but not as it once had. Crime was rampant, and corruption was everywhere. A hundred apothecaries bloomed like cancerous tumours across the city, each with claims more outlandish than the last, courting a noble class desperate to get ahead of their peers. Arcane runoff spilled into the fens beyond the walls, warping the land with each passing year. The bogs grew dark and misty, webs began to spread across the reeds like fallen curtains, and in time, the spiders grew. First they were no larger than a fingernail, but soon grew larger than a hand, then a hound, and some yet grew larger still. Citizens began to call it Funnelweb Fen, and no longer dared to stray into its depths. Yet even then, Halgrad still stood; tarnished, but unbroken. An city eternal.

One night, in the winter of +3642, Halgrad tore itself apart. There was no warning but the trembling of the earth and a scream of riven stone. There was fire, on the ground, in the air, and high in the skies above, where the clouds tore with green lightning. Bells sounded, Halgrad was invaded.

With a chill, the veil thinned, and through the breach came horrors from beyond this plane of existence. Spectres and phantasms manifested in their thousands, while vampires and lycanthropes, long hidden among the populace, lost all control of their curses, falling into frenzy; and in the graveyards, the dead began to rise, clawing their way out of coffin and crypt to join the carnage.

From the sewers, once a marvel of Mahzkani engineering, came another horror long thought purged from this land, the Drekh. Driven from their fens generations ago, these twisted creatures had sequestered themselves in the warrens beneath the city, and now rose with a vengeance.

The city became a slaughterhouse.

The city guard rallied, but they lacked the salt and silver to face the undead effectively, and the foe was everywhere. Even the Drekh, though diminutive in size, attacked in overwhelming numbers. The sounds of battle echoed from Saren Hill to the Guildsport.

Even the dawn brought no reprieve. A black sun boiled over the horizon, and through the shattered veil rose the Ubracari, gates to the Pit itself; from them came the demons. Legions of Valamis led the charge, clad in hellforged steel and screaming mail; and in their wake came their more bestial kindred, Barghests, Harbingers, and Abominations of half a hundred breeds, all drawn by the violence and melancholy that had all but swallowed the city, falling upon the undead as eagerly as the living, and soon reality began to tear itself apart. Buildings crumbled, spires toppled, and great piers collapsed into the sea, which now roiled with unnatural fury, sinking ships as they lay in port. Some tried to escape, but the Tear would not let them, great leviathans lingered at the bay’s mouth, drawn by the chaos, dragging those who broke free down into the freezing black depths.

Halgrad was no more. Of the city, only the palace remains, its walls unbroken and unblemished, its gates sealed, silent.

And so it was for six hundred years that Halgrad has stood alone, abandoned, and at the same time more occupied than it had ever been. The veil remains sundered to this day, the crumbling streets are stalked by demons, restless spirits, and those few unfortunate mortals that could not escape the Tear, driven mad by the horrors that live in their shadows. Mercifully, the demons and spirits could not venture far beyond the city walls, where the veil remained strong; the Tear was contained, and for centuries, none dared to breach the walls of Halgrad, leaving the city to its dark denizens.

But then something changed. Strange lights began to dance in the highest towers of the palace, and seers the world over speak of lost treasures, hidden knowledge, and a palace of pale stone, with its gates open and unbarred. Though the details of each vision differ, the message is clear, the city is waiting.

Now they come, cutthroats and crypt-delvers, landless nobles, questing knights, wizards, warlords, slayers, treasure hunters and pillagers of every stripe, drawn by the promise of gold, glory, and relics long thought lost. From Marocia’s war-torn coast to the boiling waters of the Blackiron Strait, from the golden halls of Vohldramar to the primordial dark of the Stoneways, bands of warriors now converge upon Halgrad’s gates. No love is lost between them, and no prizes will be shared, no peace accord reached.