Raiaera Questions.

My solo quest, Alix & Esme is set in Raiaera. The shiznit's hitting the fan right now, but I have some details that I need help with before I get to those specific areas in question. I pride myself on canonical accuracy during my quests, so any information is sooooooooo much appreciated.

1. How big is this Raiaera, and how long should it take (on horseback) to travel from one side (Anebrilith) to the other (Mountains of Twilight)? The Almanac says that Alerar is roughly the size of Brazil, and every world map I've seen has Raiaera noticably bigger, but not by much.
2. What EXACTLY happened to Eluriand? Not only am I asking this because of the quest, but because of a possible future endeavor *wink, wink* If the damn thing just up and disappeared then I'm just going to go ahead and make something up, but since I haven't done any brainstorming on it I don't think it would be a wise idea lol.
3. I know the Great Necromancer is dead, but I also know that his forces are still around. Where in Raiaera are they, and where are Alerar's forces as well?
4. Who the hell is running the show in Raiaera right now? I kind of assumed it was more so chaos than anything else, but is there anyone trying to establish an order of some sort at the moment?

The more info the better, guys. And if there's a place I can find all of this info just slap me in the face and point me in the right direction. Help a broham out.

The only thing I remember is that Alerar has begun to move in it's forces and occupy the broken cities of the country, they have effectively taken the initiative whilst it is weak to expand their territory.

If you PM Flames he might pop by and clarify a few things, or perhaps Caden.

*Pops in.*

While I kindasortabasically answered you via AIM, I'll go ahead and post the answers here for others too.

1) Raiaera takes as long to traverse as you want it to. During the Corpse War, it might've taken anywhere from a few weeks to a few years depending on how cautious you were and how much you stopped to fight along the way. Now, it'd probably take you a few weeks unless you had a cheatcode like teleportation or an airship or something.

2) Eluriand got shat on by the gods of misery and misfortune, basically. It was subjected to a full-on siege for the better part of eight months to two years, depending on who you ask. During that time, it was completely and utterly cut off from reinforcement or supply, and I can't really remember anyone ever trying to play Hero of the Day there. People stuck in the city had to contend with the constant threats of necromancy (from curses to zombies to rains of blood and worse), with harpies who had air control (plucking folks off the streets, even inside fortified walls), and with the constant risk of starvation. By War's end, the handful of survivors were basically holed up inside of one of the colleges, making their last stand and getting ready to go out whimpering. Xem'zund's army basically owned the city at that point.

Then Xem'zund got torpedoed by the Dawnbringer crew and his army dropped re-dead on the spot. The survivors had between a few days and a few weeks to either get the hell out of dodge or start clean-up and recovery efforts. I don't think there were any attempts to reinforce/repair the city at that point, but I could be wrong.

In Inkfinger's still-unfinished thread, some wise-ass basically cracked open a door to Haidia Hell through the Antifirmament. If anyone was left in the city at that point, they died pretty hard and ugly to a combination of flaming tornadoes and other Hell weather effects, as well as a pretty heavy infestation of acidic demon bees who start the size of watermelons and only get bigger from there. The thread itself might be incomplete, but the events were referenced at least once or twice in completed threads, so it probably counts as 'canon' depending on who you ask.

Eluriand is currently a Hell-eaten wasteland. The bees and the whirlwinds are still there. I have no idea if the Haidians are trying to set up an invasion from the wreckage or if the doorway was basically turned into a two-way meatgrinder during the course of Inkfinger's thread-to-be. If there were any survivors still left there, they're almost guaranteed to be dead by now. Or worse. Anyone still breathing and mortal and uncorrupted would be ninety-eight pounds of Righteous Badass in a little plastic sandwich bag.

3) Xem'zund is deader than dead. The Dawnbringers killed him in battle and then Caden perma-killed him afterwards, and Xem didn't want to go on anymore by that point anyway. He is gone, finito, kaputsky and so forth. Any undead shambling around at this point would probably be salvaged by some other wannabe evil overlord trying to get a quick start using somebody else's work. It's possible that a few of his old Death Lords (lieutenants, generals, etc) are still kicking around on their own, but even that's a bit unlikely.

4) Last I checked, Raiaera had broken down into a bunch of allied city-states due to the toll the war took on that country. It was a total fricking disaster at every level possible, with the High Elves wiped out by between 50 and 70% depending on who you ask. The environment was devestated in most places, most of the major cities underwent a siege at some point and hardly any of them went through unscathed. Some cities were even wiped completely off the map and replaced outright -- like what happened with Anebrilith, which is now Bein'ost. When I was still fairly active, Raiaera was coming under invasion by opportunists in Alerar while the surviving High Councillors tried to hammer out a framework for some kind of national government.

Looks like canon's changed a smidge since then, but the gist of what I said still applies.

And when the heck is Raiaera going to be updated, anyway? Most of what I said became canon last year or the year before that. D:

Stop whining and finish Dead Sun Rising already :P.

When college and life stop beating and raping me. D:

While Caden does have a point I have to thank the both of you for stepping in to help me out on this. It is much appreciated, and hopefully other members of Althanas can use this thread for their Raiaera based stories.

It does sound awesome. It makes me want to travel there and harvest some deadly deadly honey.

http://sharetv.org/images/guide/206116.jpg
This is no ordinary honey!

Even if I don't travel to Raiaera, I will probably use the acid bees in a thread. I am writing a solo at the moment with acid spiders... I might change them while I still can.

This is the second cool animal posted recently (orphans's giant insect the other), I'm wondering if it would be good to make a beastry thread?

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What EXACTLY happened to Eluriand? Not only am I asking this because of the quest, but because of a possible future endeavor *wink, wink* If the damn thing just up and disappeared then I'm just going to go ahead and make something up, but since I haven't done any brainstorming on it I don't think it would be a wise idea lol.

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I know what happened to it exactly. I'm not sure if any of this will be added to canon. I did a few threads about Eluriand with a shitty alt. I talked to Sighter a few times about what Eluriand is like so that's what I based my descriptions from.

Two people get to Eluriand
Same two people participate in the siege. It's fully described here, up to the point when the walls are breached.
The beginning of this has a description of Eluriand's aftermath.

tl;dr Eluriand actually has three divisions: The outer city, the inner city, and the tower. Think Saruman, but bigger. Any of Eluriand's survivors (Mostly those from the inner city, including the High Bard Council) are shacked up in there. Think Dragon Age: Origins in terms of that tower: It can house a lot of people comfortably. Sighter said something about a portal in there that allowed the elves to escape from the tower but I didn't bother with that, after all I think it's more interesting to think that most of Raiaera's former structure of power resides in the tower, and just sort of ditched everyone else because they were safe. The tower's protected by extremely powerful arcane magics, more than Xem'zund could handle. Nothing can damage the exterior of the tower, but nothing can go out of it either.

The rest of the city, predictably, is in ruins. You know, I always pegged Knife's Edge as a destroyed city since the war broke out there and it was divided in two by the biggest powers in the country, but some people think otherwise. I actually described Eluriand's status though and nobody else did, so I think I have some leeway on this.

Also I wonder if the many NPCs introduced in those threads (that didn't die) are still usable in some way. I created a lot of useful underlings for Xem'zund and their fate is uncertain after the war. I guess this, in part, answers your third question. I believe that Xem'zund had a psychic link with all of his servants, which means that some of them were mentally enslaved to do his bidding, while others joined willingly. He also gave them a lot of necromantic power through this link, so his defeat would easily crumble the rest of his armies that were controlled by his underlings.

I like Caden's idea that these wars have created a bunch of nation-states, in both countries really. My biggest gripe with the FQ is that it was never officially 'ended'. There was a vague promise of closure, only Chapter 1 had FQ-related rewards aside from exp/gp boosts, and with the site's change the entire forum was neatly ticked away into the annals of history, hoping to be forgotten despite its massive canon-changing implications. I made a thread a while ago that dealt with Salvar but there was no conclusion. I don't really like the map I used in that thread, I prefer Sighter's old map (that had the Ahyark mountains vertically dividing the region with Knife's Edge at the bottom surrounded by lakes and the southern mountains that divided Alerar and Salvar were still there, just not named the Ahyark) or a new map altogether that's less confusing to look at. I even have no problem keeping the king, and just having a heavily decentralized vassal system were there's a lot of autonomous governments and their only relation to the king is raising up armies for him, which is very akin to how Medieval societies actually worked.

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Originally Posted by Caden Law

In Inkfinger's still-unfinished thread, some wise-ass basically cracked open a door to Haidia Hell through the Antifirmament. If anyone was left in the city at that point, they died pretty hard and ugly to a combination of flaming tornadoes and other Hell weather effects, as well as a pretty heavy infestation of acidic demon bees who start the size of watermelons and only get bigger from there. The thread itself might be incomplete, but the events were referenced at least once or twice in completed threads, so it probably counts as 'canon' depending on who you ask.

Eluriand is currently a Hell-eaten wasteland. The bees and the whirlwinds are still there. I have no idea if the Haidians are trying to set up an invasion from the wreckage or if the doorway was basically turned into a two-way meatgrinder during the course of Inkfinger's thread-to-be. If there were any survivors still left there, they're almost guaranteed to be dead by now. Or worse. Anyone still breathing and mortal and uncorrupted would be ninety-eight pounds of Righteous Badass in a little plastic sandwich bag.

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This, pretty much, and now that I am done with student teaching I'll actually have a chance to finish the thread. Huzzah!