Intermission: Kingdom of Dirt

The overlord of the North pressed his hands on the rails of his castle. Behind him the patio door shone, he squeezes his eyes, his gray tired eyelids seeing the gray lands of his kingdom. The horrid condition of his kingdom put a weak smile on his lips.

What happened to the once green filled kingdom?

What happened to the acres of yellow fields blooming with mazes?

What happened to the white turnip fields that would grow crops and yield food for everyone?

Everything vanished in the blink of the eye. He could remember the first drop of blue snowflakes in the stained windows of his room. The blue dots of snow that seemed normal at first became what soon to the demise of his kingdom, a snow called the Etherwind.

The Etherwind came during the first of his days. The kingdom of his didn’t fight humans, was neutral and didn’t attend to the fighting. But when his father saw the Etherwind and made contact with it. His father became afflicted with a strange disease born of this snow.

The Etherwind changed and mutated his father. At first, his head turned thick, his eardrums became thin, his skin was covered in scales and then his feet became hooves. It was a strange mutation that was caused by the disease. At the last stages of the disease, the victim of the disease would be festered. Maggots will grow out of their festered wounds and together with the disease. The victim would die.

He has lost his fiancée to the disease. Among the noble lords of the northern continent of old, he was the only one that survived the disease and came about as the new overlord of the kingdom.

Yet despite being the new overlord, he found no joy in it. The kingdom he rules is a pile of dirt. A land that barely yields crops and with the amount of Etherwind that has been raining upon them during summer. Most of the farmers and the fruit cultivators could now sow food. Cattle were easily killed and mutated into monsters that would grow eight-foot tall, bulging with muscles and thick claws.

He has sent teams of adventurers and researchers in the far north, beyond the old and found no answers. The adventurers merely went back mutated and their only advice was to keep out of the Etherwind. He learned that the ice caps in the north were making such winds and they are ancient, indestructible and protected from any sort of magic.

Knowing this, he had no choice but to build shelters that caused a wealth of gold and gems. In desperation, he turned to the bankers from the distant land of Galzea who held love for Gold. In return, the shelters were built but it put his kingdom into debt.

The Bank warned him that ever his debts are not paid. They would fund the southern old continent kingdoms in order to get what they want.

He held no choice in the matter. Thus he turned to the dwarves and warned them about the Etherwind. Following that, he turned to the eldest of the elves and made them acknowledge his rule and his warning at the same time. He was accepted by the elves and dwarves easily for it was his divine right. But the Orcs and the other races such as the lizard-kind and the dwellers of the seas took a lot of convincing.

He managed to convince them somehow by inviting their rules at the time of the Etherwind. Although he didn’t want to, he sacrificed some of his people and showed their festered bodies to scare the rulers to comply. They complied and acknowledge his rule while declaring that the gray skins, the rulers of the north will continue the assault to the southern continent with a much fiercer stance.

This pleased the non-humans and made him favorable. However, he was only thinking of the fertile lands of the land. His people will die if the Etherwind continues. He could not allow such thing to happen thus he can only conquer.

His race of gray skins has always been neutral. Feared as war mages, his people were strong soldiers that guarded the far north against the others. But now that the time of decadence has come to his kingdom, he can only break the thousand years of neutrality in order to survive.

He’s a ruler that serves the people. And as a good ruler, it is his noblesse oblige to make sure that his people will survive the calamity brought upon the mysterious ice caps.

That is why no matter how bloody it is. No matter how much blood of his soldiers he is willing to spend and how many deceits he has to do.

Overlord Lotler of the Northern Continent Gray skins will make sure that his people will survive the storm. He has promised his father and his fiancée that he will save them from the disease of festering.

He could see his kingdom of Dirt in his castle's rails. He has seen it change from a beautiful place and into a gray land like their skins.

Some of the old believed that it is their future but he refuses such fate. He imagined the people, the children, and the young ones and he could not stomach letting them die. He could never see himself doing that.

He knows that doing nothing would kill them. Thus he can only hope for the southern continent of old where he heard of the fertile lands that could be tilled and could support the life of his people. He dreamed of arriving at that place and ruling it.

Not for himself, but for the people he rules. The Kingdom of his has no future anymore. Not unless the ice caps producing Etherwind tht festers skins are removed. He could never dream of his homeland flourishing back. Even the greatest magic and the greatest artifacts could not harm those things. Not once they were able to destroy the ice caps

That is why he can only move forward.

No matter how painful it is.