The Windless Plains of Aqshy are an eyesore to those that remember its past beauty. A tragedy written with blood-soaked dirt and motionless, naked trees. But few even remember the original name of those lands, let alone what they looked like. To the warriors and citizens of the Desrakian Dominion that have scarred the land with cities and stilled the winds, the Windless Plains have always been this way.
But once, during the Age of Myth, they were the Singing Plains. An untamed land where even the winds themselves were proud, aelementors that ran freely and with great power. But it was far from uninhabited; many peoples strove and thrived in its steppes, forging nomadic civilisations out of the harsh hurricanes that inevitably obliterated standing structures. In time these peoples learned to co-exist with the winds, and even hold them in reverence.
The aelementors soon returned this reverence with affection of their own; strange to mortals, but clearly showing favour for them, and even affection. Those who selflessly honoured the aelementors and their people were gifted with wisdom and magics of air, while those that sought to do them harm were met with misfortune, or even attacked by the winds themselves.
Other unifying cultural touchstones were the twin divine forces, the Sky-That-Touches-The-Earth and the Sky-That-Touches-The-Stars. The former represented temporal authority, earthly powers, nature, the earth and the future, letting those truly devoted to it peer beyond the horizon of the present with visions. The latter represented celestial divinity, the laws underpinning reality, the heavens, constellations, and the past. Those studying its higher knowledge could unlock the mysteries of past events, just as one deciphers the stars.
Outsiders often attribute these twin divinities to Sigmar and Dracothion respectively, and aspects of them to other members of the Pantheon. But when they told the people of the Singing Plains such, they were laughed at and told that the forces underpinning the Realms were important, not the gods harnessing them.
The Singing Plains became an oasis in Aqshy’s fiery landscapes; the climate cool, the people content, the aelementors protecting all within the Plains. Wondrous art was created during this time, alongside philosophies that could rival those born in Hysh. The people of the Singing Plains were dynamic and ever evolving with their culture, much like the winds that influenced their lives. This prosperity turned their eyes away from the outside, for they felt that nothing could harm them.
It is perhaps for this reason that the Age of Chaos surprised them so.
The invasion of Khorne into Aqshy ripped the heart out of the Singing Plains. Daemons and mortals pledged to the Blood God stormed into those lands and butchered those they found, forcing the rest to flee. The shock of the invasion was total, but short lived; the wind aelementors threw back the invaders, and in doing so emboldened the tribes to begin to fight back with thousands of cuts and jabs. Though the Singing Plains were still being slowly conquered by the Khornates, the resistance was enough to throw them into disarray.
In the anarchy that followed, out of myth a warlord called Desraki Khrodes rose to the fore with Gorewrought, paid for in blood. He subjugated his fellow Khornates into his Dominion, enforced the rules that would become codified in the Khrodes Dictate, then set them loose upon the Singing Plains once more. This unified force overran any force that stood against it, and once more their enemies began to flee.
Khrodes set his sights foremost on the aelementor protectors. He believed that if they were the strongest weapon the Singing Plains had against his Dominion, and further emboldened the people to resist him. So he set about destroying the wind aelementors to deprive the people of their guardians, and rip the heart out of their culture that bound them together. He slew each and every aelementor, and seeded the foundations for his cities with their desecrated holy sites in mockery of the hurricanes that once made settled living impossible.
Each time an aelementor fell, he subjugated more of the people, destroying and enslaving more of the tribes. When the Vhyrta were destroyed, so fell with them the last resistance of the Singing Plains. Desraki Khrodes finally crowned himself Brasslord of the Windless Plains, and set about crushing what little remained of his enemies and consolidating his power.
He wouldn’t see the full birth of his still-forming empire as he would later die in battle, but by that time his dynasty was firmly planted as rules of the Dominion. His successors would carry on his legacy until the Singing Plains had been irrevocably twisted by his original vision.
The Windless Plains are now a Khorne-haunted land, tainted by Chaos so deeply into the ground that it is said the cities are built on foundations of daemons’ blood. Hellish industry feeds from the land, endlessly devouring resources and people to fuel further conquests beyond the empire. The grasslands have been turned into massive farming complexes, and the once untouched and starkly beautiful mountains have become riven with polluted mines. Both flow freely with the blood of slaves, as if the lands themselves were bleeding. What little is uninhabited is a lifeless wasteland, though the cruelties of the Dominion still push some to try and escape into them.
The original cultures and peoples of the Singing Plains have been almost completely lost to time and destruction, preserved only as mockeries of themselves by the Dominion’s historians who record them as backwards savages. Long gone is their dynamism and diversity; in the Windless Plains, social order is narrow, rigid and brutally enforced, proscribed solely by the Dominion. Its armies and agents work tirelessly to ensure that there is no glory but Khorne’s, no authority save that of the Brasslords.
Only one hope remains in Tcimmera Skybrow, one of the last remaining scions of the Singing Plains returned as an avenging demigod of storm. But even the defeats she has inflicted upon the Desrakian Dominion aren’t enough to liberate these lands. A greater effort will be required, especially now with the Brasslord Desraki Rickad poised to reverse every gain she’s made. Time will tell who will be the victor of this centuries-spanning war for the soul of the Plains…
