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The Old World

Cursed Province

Sylvania, the Cursed Province

Sylvania is a cursed province of the Empire steeped in dark magic, where the sun hangs pale, the dead will not rest, and the Vampire Counts hold ghastly court.

Astrography

Altdorf, Capital of the EmpireAthel Loren, the Enchanted ForestAverheimBarak VarrBechafen, City of the MarshesCouronne, City of the GrailErengradHag Graef, the Dark CragHexoatl, City of the SunItzaKarak Azul, the Hold of IronKarak Eight PeaksKarak KadrinKaraz-a-Karak, the EverpeakKislev, the City of the Ice QueenLothernLustria, the Jungle ContinentMarienburgMiddenheim, the City of the White WolfMousillonNaggarondNaggaroth, the Land of ChillNehekhara, the Land of the DeadNuln, City of Iron and PowderParravon, City of the PeaksPraag, the Scarred CitySkavenblightSylvania, the Cursed ProvinceTalabheimTor Elyr, City of the LagoonsUlthuan, Isle of the High ElvesWolfenburgWurtbad, City of StirlandYvresse, the Misty IsleZhufbar, the Torrent GateZlatlan, the Fallen Temple-City

Sylvania is a benighted and accursed province on the eastern marches of the Empire of Man, a land where the sun hangs pale and wan, the mists never wholly lift, and the dead refuse to keep to their graves. Its brooding forests, crumbling castles, and superstitious villages have festered under dark magic for so long that the very earth seems soaked in dread.

For centuries Sylvania has been the domain of the vampires, chief among them the dread Vampire Counts of the von Carstein line, undead aristocrats who rule the living as cattle from their mist-shrouded fastnesses. Under their reign the province became a nightmare kingdom where the peasantry live in terror of the night and the graveyards outnumber the living by legions.

The province's curse runs deeper than any single dynasty, for its soil is steeped in the necromancy first unleashed by Nagash, the great architect of undeath. That legacy is bound up with the Book of Nagash, whose stolen dark arts taught the vampires to raise the dead, and Sylvania has been a wellspring of such horrors ever since. Beneath a sky the colour of a fresh bruise, its haunted forests hide barrow-mounds and forgotten crypts without number, and its villages huddle behind garlic, iron, and desperate prayer against the things that walk the night, for here the boundary between the living and the dead has worn so thin that a careless traveller may cross it without ever knowing.

Time and again the Empire has sought to cleanse the province with fire and faith, and time and again the darkness has returned, for Sylvania breeds undeath as swamps breed fever. It remains a wound in the side of mankind, a shadowed borderland from which vast armies of skeletons and ghouls have marched to drown the lands of the living in death.