The Wilderness Left Alone | Events of the Ages

 In the times of the War of the Dragon, as the knights of the Northern Kingdoms ventured into unknown territories to end the scourge of the mechanical beasts that plagued their borders, they began to discover oddities. Signs of living civilization - carved markings, old campsites and lost tools - where surely none could survive in these malevolent lands. But as their progress continued further and further, the mounting evidence became too great to ignore. The place where first contact was finally made would become known as Wilderness.

The settlement was a small one, similar to the border towns of the Northern Kingdoms, but populated by loose structures of wood and scrap metal held together by coarse rope. The knights were prepared for a wary response, or even a confrontation, but as the inhabitants caught sight of them it was the joy with which they were welcomed that surprised them. Here were beings outfitted in the same metallic carapaces as the monsters they were familiar with, yet had the humanoid forms of men and women like them. In the days that followed, delegations of scholars journeyed to Wilderness under knightly escort, where they met with the villagers to learn about them and their home. Although they did not share a common tongue, a gathering of linguists and historians back within the border determined that the samples taken of the language indicated a shared, ancestral root which far pre-dated the founding of the early kingdoms. The translations that followed were imperfect and overly literal, but were a welcome improvement over the interpretive gesturing and crude pictograms that had previously been the only method available to the researchers. As expected, the locals were familiar with the beasts in this land, and chose to remain mobile as a people rather than ever establishing permanent structures, so that they could avoid the paths of the roaming swarms of beasts and the largest, leviathan-class monstrosities. As this topic continued, it was noted that there were unexpected differences in the terminology used: the people of Wilderness referred to the different beasts with terms like ‘harbinger’ or ‘avatar’, and claimed that the terms used by the visitors were inaccurate for capturing their purposes and role. Scholars would later claim that this was an early sign of the events to follow.