Alright, here's my lore! If anyone hasn't posted yet. A character concept is on the way, but I found this easier to do. Always open to ideas PMed or posted in the OOC.

[center][b]The Haunted Hills[/b][/center]

 The Haunted Hills is not officially recognized as a nation by the Azukharian High Council, but unofficially it is a region of tainted decay, darkness and generally hell on earth for the Azukharians as a whole. Many have journeyed into the Hills' hellish wastes, and fewer have returned to tell the tale. Usually, the experience is so traumatic that the survivors are usually in a physically and mentally unfit state to give a full recount of their misadventures. Besides its dark nature, there is no general consensus between Azukharian scholars and the Holy Order of Idris about its origins. But there have been some eyewitness accounts from lost explorers and military patrols.

 "Patrolling the border of the Haunted Hills ain't a walk in the park, I tell you. The sky turns blood red once you get a week's march away from it, and it darkens into permanent night once you're within eyeshot. The border between Azukhar and this hellish land is this huge, misshapen wall of black rock with this eerie drawbridge with what were probably watchtowers flanking it. A mound of something just barely peeks out from behind the rock. Sometimes, I don't know if my imagination is playing tricks on my mind because I see these faint blue torches flickering about for a few seconds. Maybe a will o' the wisp, I don't know. Who knows in the Haunted Hills?

 The wall stretches out into the murky distance until you can see no more or if you're too creeped out to let your eyes venture further. When we set camp as close as possible to where the boys felt it was safe, it wasn't. In one night there were twenty cases of food poisoning from blackened rations, and four cases of demonic possession of which three our exorcist cast out. The fourth demon made his body run into the mist. I never saw him again. And of course, nightmares affected everyone. My report to you, mister ethics man, is that the Haunted Hills is absolutely MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY UNSAFE FOR MILITARY PATROL."

 - Captain Rorrick Elborne of the 117th Cohort of the Othean Royal Army, in an oral report to a representative of the Royal Ethics Committee

 The Holy Order of Idris has its own explanation for the Haunted Hills, taken from their holy book [i]The Thousand Tomes[/i].

 "Five hundred years later, when the Great Paladin Alor Hennith hath already ascendeth to the Divine Gates, and the Great Emperor Jalen the Last was in his twenty-fourth year of reign, the vile necromancer Lord Ghoul, servant of the Unspoken One, resurrected himself from his vanquished state from his war with Alor, through his Darkest Arts in the plains of Arythya, with one fault: he hath no eye in his left socket, it was said that that eye saw the most evil in himself. Then he surveyed the land, and found it horrendously pleasing in his horrid eyes, and crafted for himself a fortress that he might stay himself from the holy judgement of Idris. The good people of Arythya perished in one dark flame, and the Old Kingdom began to decay into ruin. The people cried out for Alor Hennith, the Valiant One, to descend the Stairs of Heaven and vanquish this new threat, but alas, Alor stayed his judgement. Then, Ghoul crafted a great cauldron, more than a thousand Angels in width, and mixed all his evilness, his vileness, his madness, into that cauldron. To complete his concoction, he found his Eye, and thrust it into the cauldron. And at that very moment, Azukhar broke asunder, yielding to Ghoul's evil, and all the people perished, and the Old Kingdom was no more.

 And hence, from the Cauldron's Dark Moment, from Arythrya's once flat realm burst five hills, for the five Hated Deeds that every man hath committed, and if the said man does not yield to Idris, he will fall into the Great Abyss of the Unspoken One. And hark, here are the Hills, in kind and in number:

 The Hill of Want, for those that wrongfully covet gold and immorality from others curry favor not with Idris,

 The Hill of Death, for those that send innocents to death do unto themselves,

 The Hill of Pride, for those that hold themselves above all others are condemned to be thrown to below all others,

 The Hill of Sloth, for those that do not earn their lot will toil for it in the Abyss,

 The Hill of Blasphemy, for those that preacheth against Idris are the worst in His eyes."

 - Tome 506: 48-76

 Meanwhile, scholars and sages dismiss Lord Ghoul and the Cauldron, but they agree that what formed the Haunted Hills probably was the epicenter of the cataclysm that ended the Old Kingdom, and that there was a country called Arythya, the precise history of the Emperor's reigns, and the Five Hills are geographically correct. Some people propose that the Hills were the location of the Old Kingdom's capital. But no one has come to definite facts... yet.