"Three nations claim this blood-soaked ground. Two for what they built, one for what they burned."
Long before it was scarred, this land was a beacon of hope. In the golden age before the War of Broken Oaths, the verdant, geothermal-rich valleys were jointly settled by the industrious proto-Ashen Crest Dynasty and the idealistic Free-Soul Collective. Together, they established the Sun-Ridge Commune, a testament to their alliance. The Ashen Crest engineered sophisticated vent-conduits and terraced farms, while the Free-Soul fostered a vibrant culture where giants and Lítillfólk worked as partners. It was a brief, shining example of what the world could be.
This dream of unity was the very thing the proto-Frost-Fang warlord Skarl the Unbent sought to eradicate. Seeing the Sun-Ridge Commune as the ultimate symbol of the "weakness" he despised, he did not just attack it—he made it an example. After luring the defenders away, his shamans triggered the same catastrophic geomantic ritual that destroyed Haugaeldr, aiming to purge the land itself. The resulting volcanic eruption and lava flows shattered the commune's infrastructure, buried its fields in ash, and poisoned its geothermal veins. The land was left a smoldering, desolate ruin, its beauty and habitability seared away in an act of ideological spite.
For nearly eight centuries, the land was known only as the Scarred Frontier, a cursed and barren buffer zone between the growing nations. The Ashen Crest and Free-Soul, reeling from their dual losses at Haugaeldr and Sun-Ridge, turned inward. The Ashen Crest focused on fortifying their volcanic heartlands, while the Free-Soul embraced their nomadic existence, forever wary of putting down roots that could be burned again.
By 797 AH, Ashen Crest technology had advanced enough to attempt to heal the land. Their engineers believed they could detoxify the vents and restore the soil, effectively reclaiming their stolen legacy. They saw it as the right of the original builders.
The Frost-Fang Clans, however, had a different history. In the centuries of abandonment, their hunters had used the Frontier as a crucial, if harsh, migratory route. To them, the Ashen Crest's return was not reclamation, but invasion. They saw not the ghosts of a fallen commune, but hunters being pushed off their traditional lands by the same industrial power that had always been their enemy.
Thus, the war for the Scarred Frontier is a tragic conflict of layered, incompatible truths:
The Ashen Crest Dynasty fights for Restoration. They seek to rebuild what was brutally destroyed, to finally win the war Skarl began 800 years ago by healing the very land he burned.
The Frost-Fang Clans fight for Possession. They claim the land by right of long use and see the Dynasty's "healing" as a desecration of the wilds and an act of aggression.
The Free-Soul Collective watches with Sorrowful Resentment. The land was their home, too, but they will not fight to claim a graveyard. They see both sides as perpetuating the same cycle of violence that destroyed the dream in the first place.
The Scarred Frontier is more than a battlefield; it is an open wound in history. Every clash of steel is an echo of Skarl's hammer, and every dead soldier falls on ground that once grew hope.