Darkmoon Vale History

Habitation by civilized races near Darkmoon Vale stretches back several millennia. Within the vale itself, however, civilization has never remained for long. Modern Andoran’s claim to the land, dating back almost 800 years and concerned almost exclusively with logging, marks civilization’s longest control of the area.

Dwarven Colonization

Long before the human occupation of the area, Darkmoon Vale acted as a backwater border region for a succession of dwarven empires and kingdoms.

The Rise and Fall of Tar Taargadth

After Earthfall, darkness engulfed Golarion for a thousand years. In that time, while humans and other surface-dwelling races struggled to survive, those who lived underground boiled up from below. Goblins and orcs swarmed the surface, terrorizing the humans and firmly establishing footholds that exist to this day. Pushing these races up from below were their eternal rivals, the dwarves. Intent on the Quest for Sky, an ancient dwarven prophecy that drove dwarves ever onward toward the surface, the stoutfolk relentlessly pushed upward. Well-equipped for fighting orcs and surviving in the darkness, dwarves taught their new human friends how to live without the sun. A sudden rise in fecundity among the stoutfolk led to a centuries-long population explosion. Dwarves spread across the surface, establishing fortresses and communities called Sky Citadels (known today as dwarf plugs) in every mountain range on every continent. Regardless of location, all dwarves considered themselves brethren and all paid homage to the dwarven king (who sometimes used the title of “emperor”). Every dwarf considered himself a subject of the grand and expansive dwarven empire known as Tar Taargadth. This impressive empire lasted for nearly seven millennia, before infighting and succession wars ripped it apart from within, fracturing it into dozens of smaller kingdoms and city-states.

In the mountains north of modern-day Darkmoon Vale, in the range known as the Five Kings Mountains, five brothers battled for dominance. Rich veins of gold, silver, mithral, and adamantine, to say nothing of abundant iron and copper ores, fueled the brothers’ conflict and dragged them into war after costly war. Their descendants carried on the wars for more than seven centuries. Finally, in 2332, the human nation of Druma intervened and worked with the five kings ruling at the time to create a lasting peace with the Kerse Accord. In celebration of the end of war, the kingdoms carved among the mountains large images of the five forward-thinking and peace-loving kings. The smallest of these five graven images stands in Kingtower Pass, marking the northern border of both Darkmoon Vale and Andoran.

The Rise of Tar Khadurrm

Founded by Khadon the Mighty, the Kingdom of Tar Khadurrm laid claim to the still-prosperous iron mines of Mount Gustus and Mount Onik, the mithral veins of Mount Kla and Mount Gargan, and the now-depleted vein of adamantine within Mount Arogak. Khadon came to the Five Kings Mountains to establish a new dwarven kingdom in the area and fought for decades to clear the area of orcs, goblinoids, and kobolds. In 3279 he declared his mission a success.

To anchor his claim in the south, Khadon sent 1,500 dwarven spelunkers, miners, and soldiers to Droskar’s Crag, where they founded mighty Jernashall in 3312. In 3450, after making peaceful contact with nearby human kingdoms, Khadon sent his son, Sidrik the Handsome, to the area as a diplomat. Young Sidrik reported that the humans wished to have a surface city in which to trade. In response, Khadon authorized Sidrik to build such a city, which he started on (with human input and aid) the following year. King Khadon made his final journey that year to officially declare the founding of Raseri Kanton. Old age claimed King Khadon on his way home, passing the crown to reluctant Sidrik.

King Sidrik the Handsome moved the kingdom’s capital to Jernashall in 3493, where it remained until the city’s destruction in 3980. As early as 3925, dwarven volcanologists living in Jernashall warned of an impending eruption of Droskar’s Crag, predicting a destructive blast within the century. Jernashall’s engineers scoffed and insisted their designs could withstand any eruption that didn’t level the mountain. Indeed, Jernashall survived Torag’s Crag’s first powerful eruption almost intact, but the massive earthquake compromised its protective infrastructure. When a second eruption followed the next day, lava flooded into the halls of Jernashall.

The Fall of Tar Khadurrm

With the annihilation of its proud capital, the Kingdom of Tar Khadurrm began a downward spiral of self-destruction and unrepentant decadence. For the next four centuries, the dwarves of Tar Khadurrm refused themselves no vice, and they sank into sloth and apathy – two very non-dwarven traits.

The last great Tar Khadurrm king, King Talhrik the Busy, spent much of his reign desperately and futilely attempting to regain the kingdom’s lost glory and didn’t marry until late in life. His young wife bore him only one legitimate son, named Garbold, who took the throne upon Talhrik’s death in 4277. Garbold’s ascension did not occur without controversy, though, as older cousins made claims to the throne. At last, in order to establish a peaceful transfer of the crown, Garbold’s cousin Ordrik – high priest of the dark god of toil, Droskar – coronated Garbold in front of their enraged family.

Ordrik never strayed far from Garbold’s side, even as Garbold sank deeper into addiction, and under Ordrik’s advisement the king ceded more and more control of the empire to the priests of Droskar. At last, in 4369, Ordrik made his move, removing the king from the throne (and Garbold’s head from his neck) and beginning the bloody Forge War. For 13 terrible years the dwarves battled for the fate of their nation. Finally, in 4382, Ordrik killed the last of the royalist generals and established the mighty dwarven empire as a theocracy, with himself as its head. Ordrik renamed Torag’s Crag to Droskar’s Crag, the appellation it still bears to this day. In the following years, the dwarves of Tar Khadurrm took to work as if their very souls depended on it. Which, in fact, they did.

Ordrik died shortly after securing control of the empire, and under his favorite apprentice the empire thrived for several decades. Droskar – through his priests – demanded ever-greater toil and construction from the dwarves, and eventually even the stoic and powerful dwarves buckled under the pressure to create. At first, this racial fatigue expressed itself only with mediocrity. Slowly, though, this mediocrity gave way to poor and faulty workmanship, which quickly led to utter collapse. In 4466, the last great dwarven nation, which had maintained civilization in the Five Kings Mountains for centuries, crumbled.

Many dwarves saw the end approaching and abandoned their homes to join larger, better-defended dwarf plugs in Avistan and beyond. This mass evacuation did not come without a cost, though, as Droskar loyalists battled their kin to prevent them from leaving. Several fast-moving battles (as fast-moving as dwarves can manage, at least) plagued those seeking to flee the region, but in the end the priests could not maintain their hold on their fellows and lost the nation (and in many cases, their lives).

Human Settlement

Humans in the areas of modern-day Andoran and Isger for centuries knew Darkmoon Vale as the plains of Tar Khadurrm, a monster-filled area south of that mighty dwarven kingdom with little of interest to offer. Merchants from Isger crossed Isger Pass, circled around Droskar’s Crag (then known as Torag’s Crag), and made their way to the fabulously wealthy trade city of Raseri Kanton. Then came the Rending, and more than just the landscape changed.

The Rending

On Desnus 18, 3980, Droskar’s Crag (known as Torag’s Crag then) violently erupted, setting off a chain of events that altered the surrounding landscape. The Rending, as historians later dubbed this event, cataclysmically altered the Darkmoon Vale region and directly affected modern-day Druma, Isger, and much of northern and western Andoran.

The eruption of Droskar’s Crag caused several geologic events to occur almost simultaneously.

The Rending began when Droskar’s Crag sloughed off more than 1,000 feet of elevation in a massive eruption that darkened the sky above southern Avistan for nearly a year. More than a cubic mile of mud, lava, and stone slid down the volcano’s northern face, creating the wide, flat flow between Silver Ridge and Slagiron Ridge and coating Isger Pass with a 3-foot-deep layer of molten stone. Lahars sped down the southern and western faces of the mountain, spilling superheated mud across vast swaths of forested land on the lower flanks, knocking down dozens of square miles of trees. Magma within the mountain, no longer capped by nearly a quarter-mile of stone and glaciers, exploded into the sky, raining down cat-sized lava bombs as far away as Oregent in the south and Macrid in the north.

Droskar’s Crag explosive decompression triggered a massive earthquake – felt as far away as Varisia – which in turn caused severe cracks in the surrounding land. Fissures within the mountain itself cracked mighty Jernashall. The next day, a second eruption flooded the city with lava, sealing it for all time and slaughtering every dwarf who remained within. Subterranean cracks also allowed lava to flow into the wide but shallow underground reservoir that once existed beneath Darkmoon Vale, converting much of the reservoir into superheated steam. This steam cracked the surface and vented in geysers, causing the landscape to suddenly and sharply drop by 10 to 50 feet, forming the lowlands of the vale. The southeastern face of Droskar’s Crag also collapsed, creating the crags and sending most of Raseri Kanton tumbling 400 feet to the base of the newly formed cliffs.

The River Foam formed a shallow lake that buried the lower vale in a foot of water for several days before aftershocks formed an escape for it through Wolfrun Hills. Southeastern Andoran, then part of Imperial Cheliax, suffered from the earthquake and the volcano’s violent fallout, but neither of these tragedies matched the flooding caused by the River Foam. When that river dried up for a few days, the Andossan River lost a great deal of its own flow. As soon as the River Foam broke free of the vale, however, a wall of water, silt, and debris crashed into the Andossan River, which flooded all of Andoran from the confluence of River Foam to the Inner Sea. Whole districts of mighty Almas were ripped from their foundations and shoved into the ocean as a result.

The Falcon Arrives

In order to understand the cataclysm that rocked them, the people of Almas sent an expedition led by famed mountaineer Garshweiss Frengistan up the Andossan River in Rova of 3980. When Frengistan returned six months later, he reported on three important facts: the area just south of the Five Kings Mountains was heavily damaged by the eruption of Droskar’s Crag, many of the foul creatures living in the area seem to have perished in the cataclysm, and a vast forest of darkwood (some of which was knocked down by the volcano) waited for the woodsman’s axe.

It wasn’t until 4113, though, when Karas “the Falcon” Novotnian led an expedition of Chelish soldiers and several of his adventurous friends into the area that Cheliax could finally claim ownership over the vale. Novotnian and his group found a broken landscape still recovering from disaster. Much of the wide valley’s floor blistered up with mudpots and geysers, steam constantly vented from atop Droskar’s Crag, and the ground beneath them shook almost hourly. Despite the destruction, though, the darkwood forest reported by Frengistan stood tall.

Novotnian and his men wasted no time in constructing a temporary fort atop a low cliff formed from the eruption (this temporary fort eventually became Adamas). From there, Novotnian worked for several years to pacify the region, with the falcon on his family banner spreading its wings across the entire vale south of the River Foam. In 4117, the emperor of Cheliax recognized his efforts by awarding him the title of Baron of Darkmoon, a title his family held for nearly six centuries.

Goblinblood Wars

Roughly a decade ago, goblinoids oozed up out of the ground all across Avistan. In a series of wars, stretching from Varisia in the northwest to Taldane in the southeast, the goblinoids spread across the surface world. At first, the human kingdoms could barely weather the onslaught. Over the course of a little less than a year, though, they turned the tide and drove the hordes back beneath the surface. Valers count their blessings that the goblinoids never made it across the passes into Darkmoon Vale.

Eagle Knights from Almas marched through the vale to the Isger Pass, where they erected earthworks (which still stand) and wooden walls (which do not) across most of the pass. As a result, the Eagle Knights noticed for the first time the harsh conditions under which most Valers lived. In an effort to improve the lives of their fellow Andorens, the Eagle Knights expanded the tiny outpost of Adamas to become a full-fledged fortress. Officially, the Eagle Knights claimed the garrisoning of the Diamond Regiment was meant only as a first line of defense in case of renewed goblinoid attacks. In reality, most people recognize it for what it actually is: a means of controlling the Lumber Consortium and attempt to improve the lives of Valers.