The land remembers what its people have forgotten - and it has never stopped grieving.
Attributed to a Miden scholar of the Order of Norvus
The Realm of Neurosthenia and the islands known as the Auster Lands, is unlike any of its neighbors for it is not a nation at all. Once the Kingdom of Angeria, it was broken by the Great Magic War and has belonged to no crown since. It lies north of Auphera, west of the Parallax Desert and the Kingdom of Chaladonia, and south of the frozen Northern Wastes, a land still scarred by a war it has never recovered from. No king rules here - only tribes, wandering warlords, and the old ruins that outlast them both.
Size
The Realm of Neurosthenia has never been fully surveyed, and no reliable account of its true borders exists. By rough measure of what has been mapped, it stretches an estimated 1,190 miles north to south and 1,280 miles west to east - though scholars are quick to caution that these figures are only best guesses. Much of the realm's interior remains unmapped, and its true extent may never be known while so few dare to survey it properly.
Climate
Neurosthenia's climate is as unsettled as its history. The Crystal Mountains along its western edge stay snow-capped year-round, giving way to the arid Parallax Desert and Auster Highlands below them. Within the Crystal Mountains stands the tallest known mountain in all Nor'Ova - Precipitation Point, which can be seen long before the rest of the mountains can. The realm's heart holds the dense, ancient Rampike Forest, a place old enough that even its oldest trees seem tired of standing. Along the eastern coast, thick woodland gives way to the humid, biting air of the Miasma Swamp. Offshore, the volcanic islands scattered through the Auster Sea smolder openly, a landscape as broken as the history that shaped it. Strange islands, one with a forest of giant mushrooms, dot the Auster Sea - distorting any real notion of sensible or predictable climate. The Bellows that roar into the sea are said to be calm on some days, but be plagued with roaring tempests on other days - with no warning on which to expect on any set day.
Peoples of the Realm
No single people can claim Neurosthenia as their own. Three tribes are known to roam its plains and rivers - the Nor'Jara, the Aekron, and the Vulox - each following their own customs, tongues, and territories, with little in common beyond a shared refusal to answer to any crown. The faint few settlements - Neura, Nael's Watch, and Phobos - are not connected to one another or to any tribe. Beyond the tribes, scattered ruins and half-forgotten strongholds occasionally draw a warlord or petty despot who claims dominion for a season or two, until the land or a rival tribe reclaims what was taken. Rumor holds that darker things linger too — old wounds from the war that broke this land, best left as the stories they've become rather than places to go looking for. Nothing holds the people together except the village, tribe, or family they might live in. Nothing is shared - religion, culture, or even the same language. A person from Phobos may never understand fully a person from Neura.
A Brief History
Before the Great Magic War, this land was the Kingdom of Angeria. When war finally broke against the Empire of Nor'Ova, Angeria stood fast — and became the principal nation to defy it. That defiance came at a cost no other kingdom paid so dearly: Angeria suffered more than any other nation when the Empire's full weight came down upon it. The Kingdom fell, and in the ages since, no one — no crown, no conqueror, no wandering people looking for a home — has ever laid claim to what remains.
The wound Angeria left behind is not merely physical. It is a scar on the memory of Nor'Ova itself, one deep enough that few will cross the Auster Sea or scale the Crystal Mountains to claim the battered land beyond, whatever riches or ruins might wait there. Those who speak of it at all give it names that say more than any history could: the Cursed Land. The Valley of the Forsaken. Land only for the gods.
Notable Locations
What follows is drawn from traveler's rumor and half-remembered tale more than confirmed record. Few who claim to know these places have ever actually stood in them.
The Tombs of the Four sit alone on the open plain, unmarked by any banner or crest. Who the four were, or what they did to earn a tomb in a land that buries its own dead without ceremony, no one now living can say.
The Forgotten Castle stands in the eastern woods, its walls intact enough to suggest it wasn't taken by force - and its silence complete enough that no one has stayed long enough to find out what did happen there.
The Hall of the Dead and the Necropolis rise from the volcanic islands scattered through the Auster Sea, the latter ringed by fire that never quite goes out. Sailors who pass near enough to see them rarely linger, and fewer still can agree on what they saw.
Knight's Head Prison held something once. The stories disagree on whether it was a person, an army, or something that was never quite either. What's certain is that no key to it has ever been found, and no one has gone looking very hard.
Castle Na'Dir lies on the western shore of the Auster Sea. It is a castle that seems to ever be in shadow. The very few who have seen it swear it is elven made, but when pressed for details it is like they either can't remember, or can't believe, what they have seen enough to speak any more of it.
Deepest and darkest of all the rumors is the tale of a place in the far south, sealed away and half-remembered even by name - some call it Castle Mercleis, others Castle Forsaken. Most who repeat the story admit they're only repeating what they were told by someone else.