Ulthuan is the island-continent of the high elves, a great ring of land encircling an inner sea in the midst of the Great Ocean. It is beautiful past bearing — white towers, dragon-haunted peaks, meadows where winter never quite arrives — and nearly all of it is held together by magic. At its heart, on the Isle of the Dead, spins the Great Vortex, woven five millennia ago by the archmage Caledor Dragontamer to drain away the raw Chaos flooding the world through the broken polar gates. The Vortex turns still, its makers frozen in time at its centre; should it ever fail, Ulthuan drowns and the world follows soon after.
Ten ancient kingdoms share the ring — martial Caledor, scholarly Saphery, and grim Nagarythe among them — ruled jointly by a Phoenix King chosen from the princes and the Everqueen of Avelorn. Yet the nation has never fully healed from the Sundering, the civil war in which the traitor prince Malekith tore the elven people in two; his dark elves raid their lost homeland from cold Naggaroth still.
Even so, Ulthuan keeps its old watch on the world. Its fleets patrol every ocean, and when the Great War Against Chaos nearly broke the Empire, it was Teclis of Ulthuan who taught men to master the Winds of Magic.