Kislev is the capital of the bleak northern land that bears its name, a fortress-city hunched against the endless winter upon the banks of the frozen river Urskoy. Its onion-domed temples and grim stone bastions rise from the windswept steppe, and its people are as hard as the permafrost beneath their boots, for they dwell in the shadow of the world's darkest border.
The city is the throne of the Kislev realm and the seat of its ruler, the fearsome Ice Queen, a sorceress-monarch whose command of the chill ice-magic wards the city and freezes its enemies where they stand. From here the Tzarina musters the winged lancers and horse-archers who patrol the vast steppe, the first and often only line of defence between the civilised south and the horrors of the north.
For Kislev endures where few realms could, staring across the bleak marches toward the Chaos Wastes themselves. The marauding tribes of the north descend upon it in howling hordes, and beastmen and worse things stalk the frozen forests all around. Time and again the city has been besieged, starved, and burned, yet time and again it has held, its ice-walls raised anew and its cannon roaring defiance across the snow. Kislev is a bulwark bought in blood and frost, the shield behind which the softer lands of the south sleep, all unknowing of the price.
The atlas continues
