Loreshia
Loreshia
Type Ancient realm Established 508 I·3 Fell 731, during the Fiend Flood Region The Hub (present day)
Loreshia was an ancient, nature-worshiping realm that occupied what is now known to be the lands of The Hub and the Amasyan Valley. Loreshia existed as a sovereign power from its founding in 508 until its apocalyptic collapse during the great Fiend Flood of 731.
History
The Realm of Nature
In its brief but glowing prime, Loreshia was renowned for its profound connection to the natural world. Its capital stood in the fertile expanses of the land, surrounded by immense natural beauty. Bardic tradition calls it the “roof of the broken” and places its rise in the hopeful Second Age, after the gods had entered the world and the Dark Age had ended. Beyond nature, knowledge was highly valued—figures such as Mordan the Recorder, who later founded the College of Lore, and the Emporium Recollectors trace their origins back to Loreshian society.
The Loreshians adhered to a unique religion, dedicating themselves to an unusual and diverse pantheon of deities now remembered only as The Lost Pantheon. Modern archaeological expeditions, notably those led by Dr. Corian Ballard diving into the submerged temple ruins in Swadia’s Lament, have only recently begun to translate Loreshian inscriptions to uncover the truth of their lost gods.
The Fiend Flood and Fall
The doom of Loreshia came in 731, when it was wiped off the map by the Fiend Flood. Demonic cults and the nine rulers of Mictlān unleashed monstrous hordes upon the mortal realm.
In The Fall of Loreshia, the invasion endured for decades as fiends burned, murdered, and forced their schemes upon mortals. The tale attributes a distinct part of Loreshia’s destruction to each Archfiend:
- Temeria raised fear dragons that burned the land and spread terror. Other accounts say she sought to drown Loreshia and was fiercely opposed by the dragon deity Fazen.
- Kroni ruined villages through slaughter and terrible fiend-plagues.
- Maricha destroyed Loreshia’s few libraries of Old World knowledge and created the bugbears.
- Rangda created new monsters through dark magic and loosed them across the land.
- Chronozon spread madness under which Loreshians began to lose their human likeness.
- Lucifer blinded those powerful enough to aid Loreshia and created the hobgoblins.
- Tamamo turned Loreshia against itself and created the goblins.
- Mara tempted Loreshia’s high priests to betray the gods and refuse divine aid.
- Asmodeus coordinated the invasion so that every disaster brought the kingdom closer to its end.
This tradition is also the reason goblinoid peoples are counted among the twisted kindreds born during the first Fiend Flood.
The same tale remembers Asandrea, daughter of Bryngwen, as the one priestess who resisted the Archfiends’ corruption. She rallied warriors and common people, commanded nature itself, and became the last hope of Loreshia’s resistance. The Archfiends killed her because they feared her power, but the people’s grief called the gods bodily into the world. The gods imprisoned the fiends anew, while Asandrea’s sacrifice gave the survivors the will to continue.
Loreshia was utterly shattered by demon-cults and the great demon-flood, leaving scorched and flooded ruins. The destruction and loss of life profoundly affected surviving musicians and storytellers, leading to the creation of the College of Spirits.
Bards say that many centuries passed before Loreshia’s scattered people rose again, but that neither the kingdom nor Asandrea’s sacrifice was forgotten.
Information below was supplied by the Mask Of Asandrea and is not public knowledge
When fiends first erupted into the capital and burned its temples, the kingdom’s administration collapsed with extraordinary speed. Ordinary demons slaughtered people in vast numbers, but the nine rulers of Mictlān were more concerned with establishing influence that could outlast the invasion and spread far beyond Loreshia.
Early in the Flood, the Archfiends empowered a small circle of mortal servants known as the Apostles of Opposition. The Archfiends supplied power and purpose; the Apostles supplied mortal connections, local knowledge, and the cunning needed to advance their patrons’ plans from within the world. Their work accelerated Loreshia’s destruction and threatened to reproduce its collapse in neighboring realms.
By then, the priestess Asandrea believed her kingdom, people, and culture were already lost. Convinced that the rest of the world would fall in much the same way, she risked becoming Mara’s apparent Apostle. With the sentient Mask of Asandrea, she killed seven Apostles active during that first generation and disrupted the fiends’ plans long enough for the gods to intervene. The Apostles known in later centuries were successors to those historical officeholders, not Asandrea’s victims.
Centuries later, in 903, the wandering alchemist Kaios settled in the ruins of the lost Loreshian capital, drawing upon ancient engineering to build his tower and lay the foundations for the city of Kios and the Kingdom of Swadia, before that too fell to water during the The Great Dam Incident.
Present Day
Loreshia no longer exists as a sovereign realm. Its capital lies beneath and around the ruins of Kios, while the surviving landscape forms part of The Hub and the Amasyan Valley. Archaeological expeditions continue to recover fragments of Loreshian religion, scholarship, and engineering.
Geography and Climate
Loreshia occupied the lands between the sea and the forest in the region now called The Hub, including the fertile Amasyan Valley.
Demography
Population
Loreshia’s population was devastated and dispersed during the Fiend Flood.
Religion
The Loreshians worshiped the Lost Pantheon, a diverse group of deities closely associated with the natural world.