“The workings of mother nature puts even the most arrogant of architects in their place… At least until the aberrants came.” - Old Folk saying.

After nearly two weeks of relatively uneventful journey – they met with a few beast attacks, but nothing that troubled their hired guards in particular – the caravan finally reached a point where the Borean mountain range was in sight. The chain of mountains, the largest in Alcidea and some claimed to be the largest in the world as a whole, was mostly known to be the northern border of the Kingdom Down Under.

It was not that way in the distant past.

Legends had it that roughly a little over a millennium in the past, the so-called Kingdom Down Under – or Göttmøræghthœthangmär in the dwarven tongue – was located directly below the mountain range. A bastion of dwarven culture and civilization, with grandeur that was unmatched by any other nation in existence at the time.

But in the end, all came to naught due to one man’s hubris.

While many retellings of the fable existed, some more stylized or exaggerated than others, all of them agreed on one singular point. The downfall of the Kingdom Down Under at the time was directly caused by Ulfred Stonehammer, last of his name, the last and most reviled King Down Under. The king was known as a brilliant mage, but it was that very brilliance that ended in the kingdom’s downfall.

Perhaps due to overconfidence built on his many successes over the centuries, old king Ulfred – well in his fifth century at the time – wished to leave an achievement so great that his name would forever be carved in the world’s history. In his hubris, he decided to create a grand ritual, one intended to capture, imprison, and enslave a deity.

All so he could have said deity eternally provide for the ever-burning forges that were the main source of the kingdom’s prosperity at the time.

As one might be able to guess, he was instead immortalized in the worst way possible.

The ritual not only failed, it also enraged Igunacio, the Deity of Fire, and caused the only known instance in history – or at least, in recorded history – of a Deity directly displaying their wrath in the mortal realm. The kingdom’s capital burned, the king with it. Tens of thousands of his subjects were killed in the same fire, while hundreds of thousands more were displaced and forced to flee their home.

Even to the present day, the ruins of the old Kingdom Down Under remained a fiery hellhole, one mostly inhabited by various monsters of the Fire, Ash, and Magma affinity, all of which prevented the former inhabitants’ descendants from ever reclaiming their old homes.

That incident was also the last straw that broke the camel’s back for many. Even during Ulfred’s reign there had been many dwarves who chafed under their kind’s isolationist policies, those who felt that it was unwise to keep to themselves to such an extent. To those dwarves, the king’s folly and the price it took out of them was the final nail in the coffin, and they made up their minds to have things their way.

As a result, while the majority of the refugees eventually settled down in the wastelands south of the Borean mountain range and dug a new home in the underground of the region for themselves, some of the dwarves parted ways and headed west. These separatists later founded the kingdom they called Knallzog, which led to the era that dwarven historians referred to as “three nations, three cultures”, which persisted to the present day.

The dwarves Aideen knew of in Ur-Teros were ones who had separated from Alcidean dwarves even further in their past, an age so old that no written records existed. What bits of their lore survived to the present day hinted that they were the losing faction after a battle for supremacy, which lent credence as to why they escaped all the way to another continent.

While they continued their journey towards the mountain range, the old dwarf who was part of the expedition regaled Aideen and Celia with stories about how every century or so, an expedition of brave dwarves would attempt to reclaim their ancestral home. There had yet been any decisive successes, yet the dwarves kept trying regardless.

It was a sort of feeling Aideen felt she could sympathize with. The desire to reclaim one’s old home from hostile forces was definitely something she and her family members had felt back during the time when they campaigned to retake Vitalica from enemy hands. Her words of understanding seemed to have pleased the old dwarf, who in turn talked even more openly.

He told her about how just months ago another expedition had just set foot to the underground caverns beneath the mountain range, led by one of the greatest archmage ever recorded in dwarven history. The mage was a Void affinity mage, to boot, the rarest affinity amongst mages, because so many Void affinity children died during their magical awakening.

For a while, the old dwarf extolled more of the accomplishments that archmage Colm Rockwell had achieved in his four centuries, which included the felling of many great beasts, some of which had threatened the underground cities of the dwarves. The mage was clearly an idolized hero amongst the dwarves, so it was no surprise that he wished to challenge the ruins of the old kingdom to gain further accolades to his name.

They were just discussing most gossip about the archmage when their conversation was abruptly interrupted by an unforeseen occurrence.

In the distance, a great orb suddenly enveloped the entirety of the largest mountain in the mountain range. The orb appeared to be of the darkest black, and had not only enveloped the mountain, but also the ground beneath, as well as parts of the mountains to the sides. For a moment, everybody stared at the phenomenon, as they bore witness to one of the rarest sights in history.

That of a Void magic working on a grand scale.

The telltale way the orb just seemed to envelop everything was something Aideen was familiar with. She had seen void mages before, if far weaker ones, create working of that exact shade and hue. As such, she was reasonably certain that the massive orb she saw in the distance was of the same nature as those she had seen in the past.

After a brief moment in which the void seemed to linger, it vanished with a hideously loud popping noise as the air around the region imploded into the vacuum it left behind. Of the mountain it enveloped, there was no sign left. Instead, the ground, as well as the mountains to the sides of the phenomenon were all gouged so cleanly it looked like a Deity had just scooped a portion of existence away.

All that was left was a deep circular crater on the ground, one that rapidly filled with water trickling down from the remaining mountains to its sides.