Ashland

Ashland, as it exists today, is a small, peaceful village built around a miracle. The name is a relic, a memory of the "land of ash" the Army of the Astral Sea discovered, but the site itself is now one of supernatural life.

After Vashtai returned from his vengeance (the act that created the Blighted Area), he came back to the epicenter of his loss—the spot where his home with Lyrielle had stood. Using his power, he carved a perfect, life-size stone statue of his beloved and placed it on a 3-foot pedestal. It is said he held the new, cold statue, and his profound, Solar-level grief and sadness were infused into the very stone.

About a year later, a new miracle occurred. In a 15-foot radius around the grieving statue, a magical, bountiful garden bloomed. This small plot grew perfect fruits, vegetables, and flowers, seemingly as a supernatural effort by the world itself to "relieve the statue's sadness."

Years after that, new settlers, scouting for a place to live, stumbled upon this marvel: a perfectly cleared plot of land with a beautiful, melancholy statue at its heart, surrounded by a small, impossible garden. This miraculous bounty is how they started, allowing the first settlers to survive.

The current inhabitants of Ashland are farmers who now work the vast, fertile lands around the village, but the statue and its small, sacred garden remain the holy and geographical center of their community.

The Blighted Area is located miles away from Ashland. It is the consequence of that massacre. This is the "horrifying scar" left on the land when Vashtai, the Paladin of Sucar, returned from his patrol, discovered the empty ruins of his home, and unleashed his true, unrestrained, Solar-level "grief-fueled, divine rage."

This is not a naturally corrupted place; it is a wound inflicted on the world by a near-god.

It is a place of profound, supernatural terror. The ground is sterile, and nothing grows. But its true horror is the silence. Even 150 years later, the divine terror of that event is so deeply embedded in the land that no animal or insect will go near it. The Blighted Area is a perfect, unnatural circle of dead earth where even the ants will not crawl, a place that the Army of the Astral Sea patrols simply "gave a wide berth" and marked on their maps as an anomaly to be avoided at all costs.