History

World Weep Opening History

The Mana Wastes were always a difficult place to live and the situation was not improved by the Alchemist's assault. Nex invoked powerful magic that deflected a violent assault, causing it to strike Alkenstar directly. It is not the first time the people of the Mana Wastes suffered the consequences of Nexian magic. If past is prologue, it will not be the last.

Age of Collapse History — Era of Chaos

Alkenstar was destroyed in an instant, leaving nothing but a smoking crater in its wake. Generations of people were eradicated in the blink of an eye. Almost all the knowledge of the mechanical arts, like gunslinging, were lost with them. The enormity of such a loss was felt keenly, not just in the Wastes itself but in the whole of Golarion. Towns like Martel that relied on the economic and trading power of Alkenstar were left without the axis that their whole community turned upon, and the mighty Gunworks fell to a schism between those who would have hunkered down to somehow wait out the horrors to come and those who wanted to turn their weapons outwards to tame the ever-wilder Mana Wastes around them.

The reality-shaking violence of the attack and the magic-warping properties of Mathesis' technology made the Mana Wastes' magical instability exponentially worse. The land was ravaged by mana storms, making an already inhospitable landscape even more perilous. Permanent settlements throughout the desert became untenable as the desert's creatures became hungrier and more aggressive and the mana storms became more frequent, dangerous, and unpredictable. The survivors were forced to flee their homes and either retreat to the relative safety of Cloudreaver Keep or adopt a nomadic lifestyle, living on the move to keep one step ahead of predators and the ever-looming storms. Fleshwarps became a staple of everyday life in the wastes, the transformed either finding acceptance among their original communities or forming new communities with other Fleshwarps who embraced the change and never needed to fear the storms again.

Over time, though, things began to change. Though the Alchemist's attack had thrown the Wastes into centuries of turmoil, the retreat of Nex and Geb in the Age of Collapse gave the land time to recover. By the time the last of Alkenstar's water purifying technology broke down forever, the Ustradi River had been cleansed of much of its magical pollution, and the violence of the mana storms began to die down. Scarce resources, dangerous creatures, and the lingering effects of Mathesis' weapon—including the Waste's seemingly-permanent ability to birth Fleshwarps—still made it difficult for anybody to rebuild the old settlements that had been lost, but life for the nomadic people of the Wastes became significantly easier, and the more permanent haven of Cloudreaver Market built atop the now-fallen Cloudreaver Keep found itself no longer desperate for survival. While many parts of the Spellscar Desert remained magically unstable, other parts of the Wastes calmed enough that there was no longer any need to track bronzetime and surgetime.

Meanwhile, farther to the east, many of the Fleshwarps in the desert gathered together to create Grittybank, positioned at the confluence of the Gritty River and its largest tributary. Grittybank is a relatively insular community, not by its own choice, but by the choices of others. Many nomadic groups count Fleshwarps among their numbers and have been happy to trade with the Fleshwarps of Grittybank, but many of those who live around the former Cloudreaver Keep—whose more secure position at the very edge of the Wastes kept them largely safe from centuries of mana storms—still carry bias, some implicit and some explicit, against Fleshwarps. This has historically limited Grittybank's trade opportunities, but the town's willingness to take in orphans and refugees, both Fleshwarps and not, have made it something of a haven for the dispossessed in the heart of an otherwise perilous land.

Age of Renewal History

Since the fall of the Alchemist, conditions in the Mana Wastes have only improved. The reopening of international trade routes has lead to a boom in Cloudreaver Market's population and profitability. The slumbering giants of Nex and Geb beginning to stir is an ominous sign for the region's future, but for now, trade from both nations has been extremely lucrative for the Market. A new interest in lost relics of Alkenstar recovered from the desert has turbocharged the town's economy and lead them to expand past the limits of the former Cloudreaver Keep. The Old Market still stands on the keep's grounds, as it has for a thousand years, but the town's economic center has moved to a new Main Street constructed beyond the keep's crumbling walls.

Smaller villages have sprung up in the Mana Wastes, primarily along the Ustradi River, but Cloudreaver Market remains the economic lynchpin of the region, due to both its established mining interests and the presence of the Relic Seekers' Union, a treasure hunters' organization that offers its members reliable provisions and guaranteed claims in exchange for a cut of their profits. However, the reappearance of Alkenstar has changed the dynamic significantly. The shardstorms, consistently worse in the Mana Wastes than the rest of the world, have caused difficulties for miners who find themselves trapped behind fields of singing crystals that hurt their eyes to look at and farmers who have had their crops destroyed beneath a crust of fallen shards. And the reappearance of Alkenstar, with its wealth of relics protected by dangerously resonant crystals, has vexed the Relic Seekers who found themselves cut off from the greatest haul of their lives. The town's salvation arrived in the form of two fetchling brothers: Adrian and Arlo, witnesses to the first shardstorm and grandchildren of Adrianna, the woman who lead the Second Heroes' March to victory. The brothers introduced themselves as relative subject matter experts on the shardstorms, and proposed a plan to save Cloudreaver Keep and maybe even the world: opening the Second Harbor of Hearts and remaking the town as Moonlit Junction, the premier destination for Shardbound adventurers. This decision has proven controversial among the residents of the former Cloudreaver Market, but the town's leaders all agree it was the only choice they had.

Over in Grittybank, the town voted to support the creation of a College of Magic. Positioned near the Spellscar Desert, they are ideally suited to experiment and push the bounds of what is known about Primal, Occult, and Arcane spellcasting. The town and its people are generally uninterested in the Divine, as they believe the gods abandoned them in the Era of Chaos, although people who are exceptions exist. Their scholars have been some of the first people to begin studying the shardstorms in detail.

Elsewhere in the desert, groups of nomads returned to Gitna—once a refuge for the Iruxi, and a site of pilgrimage and remembrance for the last 1000 years—and began to rebuild. Desperate times during the Age of Collapse lead diverse groups of nomads to begin sharing culture and resources in an attempt to survive, and while some isolationist holdouts remain, many nomads from a diverse range of ancestries ended up forming a shared culture deeply rooted in Iruxi traditions. Gitna is now a home and a safe haven for many of the Mana Waste's nomads, and in recent years it has begun to replace Cloudreaver Keep—or Moonlit Junction—as the nomads' preferred neutral gathering point and trading post.

Government

No single government controls any significant portion of the Mana Wastes. The old Alkenstar was nominally part of Nex, but there's been nobody to enforce that claim for over a thousand years—though there is fear that the recently-established Nexian outpost of Nextown signals that is about to change. Moonlit Junction is controlled by a Town Council, five people who vote on important decisions and ensure that the local Sheriff has what he needs to keep the town in order. Truth be told, the Council is struggling with the population boom, though, and their decisions are increasingly controlled by local mining interests.

Grittybank practices direct democracy, with all significant decisions made by a town-wide vote. Local ministers and functionaries are elected for set periods to administer the ordinary business of running a community. This has resulted in a very stable community, but also one that is very resistant to change. Most votes fail as it is very difficult to get the fifty-percent-plus-one required to enact new policy. Gitna, on the other hand, is governed primarily by a council of elders representing both the village itself and the diverse groups of nomads that regularly gather there.

Points of Interest

• Moonlit Junction is a mining town adjacent to the ruins of Cloudreaver Keep. It is the economic powerhouse of the Mana Wastes, exporting lead and silver and even a few agricultural products. Until recently, it was called Cloudreaver Market.
• Grittybank is a Fleshwarp community aptly named for its position on the banks of the Gritty river. It is primarily a farming community, though rumors of its powerful mages are starting to circulate through Garund.
• Gitna is a historic Iruxi city recently rebuilt by groups of nomads who wished to return to the place their people once called home. Though the ravages of the Age of Collapse forced nomads of many different origins to band together, Gitna retains a strongly Iruxi cultural identity.
• Nextown is a military outpost built over top the ruined town of Martel, populated primarily by Nexian soldiers and their families. Though the Nexians are naturally looked upon with skepticism by their neighbors, the new generation born in Nextown has begun to identify culturally with the Mana Wastes and many seek to rebel against the society they were born into.
• Samsara Oasis was once a town of calikangs working to restore balance to the natural magic of the Mana Wastes. After the Age of Collapse, they were usurped by a gang of mages fleeing the Mana Storms who claimed the calikang's land, magic, and knowledge for themselves. However, the later generations of mages came to regret the actions of their predecessors and dedicated themselves to continuing the calikangs' mission.
• Pranee's Forge is a Kholo settlement built inside the walls of what used to be Alkenstar's Gunworks. The Kholo there have built a society around salvage and invention, using materials left in the Gunworks and scavenged from the Wastes to create their own firearms and clockwork. They're known as the Waste's premier artillerists, and nomads often hire them to deal with particularly overgrown or dangerous mutants and monsters that threaten the desert's ecosystem.
• The Spellscar Desert has pockets of the most unstable magic remaining, with strange creatures and strange magic happening on a regular basis.
• Tunnels connect the Mana Wastes to the Darklands of Garund, allowing occasional creatures such as Surki to come up to the surface.

Organizations Within

• The Sand and Stone Mining Company is a powerful political force within Moonlit Junction.
• The Maragi People are a nomadic group of hunters, gatherers, and traders that wander along the banks of the Ustradi. They maintain generally amicable relations with the nomads of Gitna, but have a distinct cultural identity.
• A bandit group known as the Fatal Mirage now hunts across the whole of the Mana Wastes. They often pose as nomads, traders, or travelers in order to get close to their victims. Their presence is a source of great distrust for travelers across the Wastes.

Major Conflicts

Until recently, there were no major conflicts in the Wastes, simply because its people were too spread out and too concerned with survival to wage war with each other. Regional issues with bandits and wild creatures are common, though, as are minor disputes between nomadic groups.

Events in the Age of Renewal

• Grittybank founded the College of Magic. In addition to training new spellcasters in the Primal, Occult, and Arcane arts, they are experimenting with the unstable regions in the Spellscar Desert.
• The Cradle of Quartz, an abandoned Brighite temple stricken from her church's records, went missing for 10 years. It disappeared from the desert one day and reappeared on another. No one knows where it went or why.
• A rare mana storm over Lake Ustradi turned the entire Ustradi river into blood. It destroyed crops and lead to widespread famine for a season. Villages with inadequate supplies did not survive. This event reinforced the importance of planning for every eventuality, no matter how unexpected.

Other notable changes from the past Golarion

The magic in most of the Mana Wastes is much more stable than it was in ages past. The Western Ravage is no longer subject to either dead or chaotic magic. Even much of the Spellscar Desert has stabilized. Grittybank is a new community and Moonlit Junction is a nearly unrecognizable evolution of Cloudreaver Keep. The people have changed almost entirely from the days of old. Most notably, Alkenstar is entirely gone. Well... until very, very recently.

Languages

The common language of the Grand Duchy of Alkenstar was historically Taldane, and the people of the Mana Wastes who came to reside in Moonlit Junction still largely speak that language. Taldane will be sufficient to communicate with NPCs in Moonlit Junction and your fellow Shardbound. However, Taldane is less commonly spoken in adjacent regions such as Geb, Nex, and the Mwangi Expanse, and there may be situations where NPCs don't speak Taldane. If your adventures bring you elsewhere in Garund, it may be wise to make sure someone in your party can speak a language common to the region, such as Mwangi polyglot in the Expanse or Kelish or Osiriani in Nex and Geb.