The Origin of the Tundra Nomads

Part I: The Great Exodus (Y2 - Y5)

The origin of the Tundra Nomads begins in the chaotic, early days of the "Bay of Rebirth" (c. Y2-Y4). The Human and High Elf founders of Seacliff began to hoard resources, planning an aristocratic city. This was opposed by a "Chaotic Good" faction of Humans and Half-Elves, led by a charismatic Ranger named Faelar.

Faelar, seeing that the Bay's other city-states were just as corrupt, made a fateful decision: he would lead his several hundred followers south into the unknown, to find a new home.

It was seen as a death sentence. The 450-mile journey south was into an untamed, unmapped wilderness. They had no maps. They were traveling blind.

This "Great Exodus" was their founding trial. The trek, which took over a year, was a brutal filter. The journey was agonizingly slow. Faelar and his scouts would push ahead for days, searching for a viable trail through the mountains, while the main body of families camped, waiting.

To ensure the large group wouldn't be permanently lost if a scouting party was separated, Faelar's chief cartographer (a meticulous Half-Elf) made over a dozen copies of his new, in-progress map, distributing one to each "squad leader."

Part II: The Naming of the Lake (Y4)

During their migration, the main group discovered a massive, 70-mile-wide, mist-shrouded lake in a high, shallow valley. While they camped there, the cartographer, mapping its jagged, undefined edges, was struck by its shape. On all his new maps, he gave it the name that would stick forever: Dragon's Eye Lake.

This is also where tragedy struck. One of the squad leaders, scouting the treacherous, icy cliffs along the lake's shore, died from exposure and fell into the water. His body, and his waterproof map case, were lost to the depths.

Faelar's main group, after mourning their dead, pressed on. Those who survived—the toughest, the most faithful, the most resilient—were forged into a new, unified people. In Year 5, they crossed the final, frozen mountain pass and descended onto the vast, empty tundra. It was theirs.

(They became a hardy, nomadic culture, following the great herds of Mammoths and Giant Elk across the frozen plains, eventually becoming the "Tundra Nomads" of the present day.)

The Origin of the Bay of Rebirth and Eyelyss

Part III: The Great Hoax (Y80-Y100)

This new "economic boom" from the Anishinabe trade route (c. Y50) created a wealthy, bored, and restless population in the six city-states. This was the tinder. The spark was a "message in a bottle."

Decades after the Tundra Nomads had passed, a con man in Rusthaven was scavenging along the banks of a river that flowed out of the southern mountains and into the Bay. He spotted something bobbing in the current: a strange, waterproof satchel.

Inside, he found a perfectly preserved, strange map. It was the lost map of Faelar's squad leader. It had fallen into Dragon's Eye Lake, been pulled into a subterranean river, and floated 100 miles north to be deposited at his feet.

The con man, of course, knew none of this. He just saw a real map to a real place he'd never heard of: "Dragon's Eye Lake." The map clearly showed a single, ominous mountain on its shore.

He saw an opportunity. He returned to the taverns of Port Krell and Seacliff, selling copies of this real map, but with an invented story. He claimed it led to a "lost Aasimar treasury" hidden in the mountain. Having never seen the place, he gave this mythical, treasure-filled valley a grand, fantastical-sounding name he invented from whole cloth: "Eyelyss," the valley "he had never laid eyes on."

It was a "gold rush." Hundreds of adventurers bought the map and began the 110-mile trek south, seeking the "lost treasure of Eyelyss."

Part IV: The "Colony of Failures" (Y100-Y182)

The "gold rush" adventurers didn't find a treasury. They found the 30-foot-tall statues of the Celestial Knights.

Past the statues, the bravest entered the "Sacred Mountain," seeking the "hoard." They found the Dungeon of Fire.

The Dungeon tested their "mind, heart, and soul." And they failed. They were found unworthy. But the Dungeon, not being truly "evil," let them leave.

These "worthy failures," now broken and humbled, could not bring themselves to make the 110-mile "walk of shame" back to their old, mundane lives in Port Krell or Seacliff. They were a people obsessed, defined by the trial they could not pass.

They settled, as a "colony" of the Bay of Rebirth, at the very foot of the statues, just outside the maze's entrance. They sardonically adopted the only name they had for it: Eyelyss.

The name stuck, a perfect, bitter, and accidentally profound joke. It was the town founded by a "blind" con man's map, and it was now populated by people "blind" to everything but the invisible Tower of Light they could never reach. This is the stagnant, faith-based town that Alwyn's Hope (founded in Y172) now provides a pragmatic, industrial alternative to.