An ominous expanse of blighted, lifeless land as far as the eye can see. The cracked, parched ground is stained sickly shades of gray and black, with noxious crimson fumes drifting over the scarred earth.
Twisted, skeletal trees claw up from the devastation, their branches devoid of any leaves or vegetation.
The air hangs stale and oppressive, seeming to sap warmth and vitality from all it touches. An unnatural, ethereal silence smothers the realm except for the occasional melancholic moans carried on the hot, ash-choked wind.
Strange will-o-wisp lights drift aimlessly, the only sign of motion in this hushed deadscape.
The Voidmoor’s Origins
Centuries ago, this region was a lush, verdant forest at the confluence of elemental leylines from fire, water, earth and air domains. Each leyline’s magical energy flowed in a precise harmonic balance for ages.
But an ancient, unimaginable calamity disrupted the equilibrium violently.
Some legends speak of a primal elemental war, where clashing archmages unleashed apocalyptic forces against one another. Others tell of a dark ritual performed by a deranged cult that backfired catastrophically.
What is known is that the confluence of wild elemental chaos released a reality-warping wave of destructive anti-magic.
The maelstrom ravaged the landscape, decaying and scouring the elements down to a lifeless husk. The waves of negation energy continue rippling outward even now, slowly poisoning and lifeless expanding the Voidmoor’s boundaries over time. Nothing elemental or magical can exist within it.
It is a rotting wound in reality starving for equilibrium.
Landmarks
The Abyssal Current
This sluggish, inky black river was once a major waterway connecting the lush forests of the water and earth realms before the cataclysm created the Voidmoor.
When the negating anti-magic forces first erupted, the conflicting elemental energies sought to extinguish one another. The explosive volatility liquefied the earth and magically-imbued waters, forming a viscous, polluted flow at the Voidmoor’s core.
The Abyssal Current is all that remains of the formerly pristine river, a brackish, stagnant vein of corrupted magic slowly oozing its way through the deadlands. Its waters are tainted by decaying elemental energies, causing it to corrode anything it touches.
Where It Leads: The Abyssal Current’s murky path meanders erratically through the heart of the Voidmoor before branching into three sickly tributaries:
The Ashen Branch flows northeast, its foul waters ultimately joining the jadestone mines of the earth realm badlands.
The Miasmic Fork snakes southeast, spilling out in stagnant pools near the fire realm’s sulfurous volcanic wastelands.
Finally, the Virid Mouth winds west through a treacherous marsh, reaching the outer edges of the water realm’s drowned archipelagos.
The three tributaries allow limited access between realms for those desperate or reckless enough to brave the poisoned Abyssal Current and risk contracting the rapidly degenerating effects of anti-magic exposure.