In a fertile land, the cradle of civilization, the great nations prospered. Insulated by a great mountain range, they stood apart from the world, save that they and they alone knew the ways to roam by sea. Their mighty wonders and works were the envy of the world entire, their wealth a source of greed and wrath.

Then came the hordes.

A thousand thousand strong they were, and their god was War. On they rode, forward marched, to the single pass that lay open to the heart of empire. No force could stand against the hordes.

No force did.

The great nations knew that to fight was to fall. So they abandoned their great works and wonders; their towers, their temples, their cities... and waited. The hordes poured through the pass, filled with greed and with wrath. Across the year, they stormed the bastions of civilization.

And behind them, the pass was closed.

Civilization had leaked out and fortified the sole access to what was once their lands. Now those who once lived in grace and peace thrive beyond the mountains, in the wide and open lands, and the barbarian hordes lie trapped behind the fortress known as Basalt; cut off by mountain and by sea, wracked with internal hostilities.

But the clans beyond Basalt, though they have seized rich lands and mighty cities, know not the wonders that civilization built; and though they would plunder the treasures of empire, that which lay trapped and dormant under the vigilance of civilized people now wakes.