The islands in the southern ocean had always been mild, neither seeing searing heat nor freezing snow.  The rains fell softly, frequently, and predictably.  The people there lived simple, communal lifestyles, guided by a publically elected mayor, who would oversee the island he was elected to.  Many of these mayors would work alongside their constituents in the farms that all families worked.  Many of these islands centered around various faiths and pantheons, with each island possessing its own small stone chapel, and small shrines built at various landmarks.  The island of Bralm was no different than any other.  Its people might have worked a little harder, led lives a bit simpler, and been a bit more subdued than others, but their hearts were good, and they lived together in harmony.

The day of the Torn Firmament changed all of that.  On an early summer morning, a few fishermen noted dark clouds to the west.  Despite their marine location, most of the island's inhabitants were not very sea-worthy.  The worst storm they could imagine would entail heavy rain, some wind, and a little lightning.  This was not such a storm.  The storm rolled in, much faster than any had anticipated.  Its winds roared through the small huts, not equipped to deal with such violence.  Fast and frequent lightning often smote the villagers, who were trapped out in fields, in the woods, or even cowering in whatever lowlands they could find.  A barrier of water, far too high for most of the small islands, rushed in.  With the wind lashing the sea into massive waves, the already raised water flowed far inland, devastating the small islands.  Those who could fled to the chapel to Bralm, at the highest point on the island.  There, they weathered the storm.

For two and a half days, the storm raged, buffeting the islands, and submerging a few.  Almost all who lived there perished.  The winds subsided eventually, the rains abated, clouds parted, and the sun shone on an utterly ransacked island.  And people emerged from the safety of the chapel, to observe the damage.  The few survivors spread out, salvaging what they could.  That quickly led to their undoing.  The bodies of those who had been slain rose again, negative energy driving the defiled corpses.  Villagers who had never known violence or bloodshed were struck down by foes who felt no pity or remorse.  Over all the islands (those that had survivors), people were slaughtered, and later, rose as well, to hunt down their frightened, hungry, and desperate brethren.

Only one young man, Andorn mal-Korrisson, who helped tend the chapel of Bralm, survived on his island.  He was forced to learn, and in a hurry, how to defend himself, how to hunt for food, and how to outwit and outmaneuver the undead.  Andorn never really became a good hunter, but the fields would still grow even untended, and he still lived a mostly vegetarian diet.  He supplemented it with fish where he could, and he could occasionally catch a rabbit by surprise.  When not getting food, he spent most of his time setting rudimentary traps for undead, and constructing a small ship to get off the island.  Although he had no ship building knowledge, he made due with a few old books in the chapel, which were undamaged by the storm.  After numerous test runs, and even one test trip to a nearby island, Andorn determined the ship was as seaworthy as he could get it.  He jumped from island to island, replenishing water and food supplies as he went.  Eventually, he reached what was apparently the last island, and set out.

Despite how he thought it would be, there was no long grueling voyage across leagues of empty sea.  He found himself making landfall only a few days out at sea.  He landed in a small fishing village, and told them of what had befallen himself and his people.  They accepted his story, but remained distant from him.  He stayed for the night and pressed on.  As the cities grew larger, he was treated with greater hostility, until one person attacked him outright.  It was only through subtle questioning that he became aware that he was a victim of a war.  The people he had talked to were subjects to a king who pooled his mages' powers and sent them against his island homeland.  Telling the people that he was attacking a great enemy, the king himself was actually using the storm to create a massive undead host.

Andorn fled northward, crossing many empty lands to come to a place where the king did not hold sway, and none knew of his island's demise.  Over those times, he focused himself more and more on those teachings of Bralm he remembered.  The deity was not widely worshipped, and any tome that Andorn stumbled across that contained any words of the faith were memorized.  During this time, he focused the rudimentary combat skills he gained fighting the undead, and slowly became skilled.  Using these skills, he did small tasks during his journey, slowly earning a bit of wealth, and he steadily improved.

He is currently still wandering, but is attempting to gain enough knowledge of Bralm to perhaps head his own small chapel.  Should he not accomplish that, he may just seek vengeance against the king that destroyed his way of life.