Hands of the Iron Queen
Queen Eisa of Scurdaeg has her hands full these days. Nicknamed the Iron Queen for her relentlessly lawful yet entirely fair and even-handed approach to governance, Eisa and her Royal Council are juggling several problems facing the prosperous city-state in the Frozen North region of the world of Akuroth.
First, the Snow Elves of the icy northern realm of Heleg'Nor, under leadership of recently crowned King Hessendar, are emerging after several millennia in an attempt to expand their territory and reclaim lost elven strongholds abandoned after millennia of war with Scurdaeg's imperial ancestor, the Drenheim Empire--from whose rulers Eisa and her forbears were descended--testing the tenuous peace treaty established between the two sovereignties' previous rulers.
Meanwhile, a barbarian warlord named Brynjar from the Western Seas has risen to power and begun a campaign of conquest and unification among the myriad barbarian tribes in a bid to resurrect the ancient Drenheim Empire, defeated 500 years ago after overreaching its power in a bid at world domination. This fledgling New Drenheim has already crossed swords with the elves of Heleg'Nor and is challenging Scurdaeg's status as the heirs of the Drenheim Empire.
With the three political powers of the north on the verge of open war, the gods of winter in the meantime are marshaling their own forces for a separate, more mysterious conflict revolving around a fractured ancient prophecy involving the twin deities of Hleid and Iborighu indicating a shift in power in the North.
As such, your band of adventurers--and many others--are being called on by the Iron Queen to step up for a number of missions that the harried Royal Army, Navy and Knights of the Iron Glacier are too busy to handle on their own. From investigating plots of conspiracy to uncovering long-lost secrets from the ruins of mysterious past civilizations, the fate of the North is in your hands.
