Hills of Lost Hearts

The story of the Hills of Lost Hearts begins and ends 250 years ago. Two families feud and two star-crossed lovers, compelled to break away from a vendetta started hundreds of years before their time, find solace in each other's arms. Their tryst is short-lived but burned with such intensity so as to rival the sun. They could not part for more than a day without each being wracked by forlorn sobbing and distress.

Upon discovering this fragile, sacred love between son and daughter, the heads of each family kindled the flames of vengeance and swore to chum the waters until blood frothed the very seas. A massacre broke out between the families, each side suffering irreparable loss, both in sheer numbers and in personal anguish as fathers were made to bury sons and wives made to bury husbands.

During the turmoil, the two lovers managed to escape. South away from Biazo, traveling on horseback across the Chering Strait, and then on foot the rest of the way to the then unnamed hillocks North of Marlboro Keep. They rode without rest, eager to distance themselves from the death and iniquity their family members subjected each other to mindlessly and without mercy.

They embrace, wholly within one another physically and spiritually, for the first time as the full moon rose on that fateful night. A cousin from the male's family followed them there and killed them both outright; the man for betraying his lineage, the girl out of sheer principle.

And so it was that on the night of their greatest passion, the lives of two great lovers was snuffed out.

It is said that the earth-mother Gaia mourned the loss of two of Her greatest vessels of love, and moved the earth itself in eulogy, transforming a once insignificant field of hillocks and knolls into an impressive range of rolling hills now known as the Hills of Lost Hearts. The death of the two lovers has caused a curious effect on the Hills.

Here, hearts are vulnerable. Even the stoic are easily infatuated, swayed, influenced and scorned. Love is strong here, indiscriminate of race, of gender, of species. During the full moon when the stars are bright it is particularly dangerous, with the Hills exerting enough influence to cast a spell the likes that could throw two enemies on the verge of mutually assured destruction into the throes of romantic passion.

Beings incapable of love are immolated, and should take extra care on this patch of land between Biazo and Marlboro Keep.