Today’s lore post is focused on the Dwarven kingdom of Dvendar Tharr, and it’s connected to At the Heart of Ruin’s release thematically, which has seen players venturing deep into the Mountains of Fire. A place which, long before the Calamity struck, was a bastion of brilliance, ingenuity, and innovation. Perhaps most importantly, Dvandar Tharr is not a place so easily shown in one expansion, as much as we would like to. It is an entire region with a rich history of ascendance and, subsequently, peril. Moreover, it is easily among the most difficult places to traverse due to its terrain and insane natural conditions.

In present-day Xeryn, Dvendar Tharr’s heart is fiery and perilous beyond imagining. Perhaps nowhere on the continent was the Calamity felt more violently than here, with two dormant volcanoes erupting simultaneously. Everything was decimated in a conflagration of fire, ash, and earthly upheaval the likes of which was thought impossible. The land in, around, and between Dvendar Tharr was utterly and irrevocably changed. The hopes and dreams of the Inventor Kings – the ascendant Dwarven rulers and technological pioneers of the Third Age – were dashed by a thaumaturgical and natural disaster of epic scale. The kingdom’s infrastructure – mighty and ambitious beyond those of others – was brought low; its people were killed in the millions. The region was plunged into the chaos that still reigns supreme today, a thousand years after the event.

In fact, in the wake of the Calamity, lava lakes and rivers came to be that, in many cases, do not cool down at all inside the boundaries of the Mountains of Fire. When they do, it is often only hundreds of miles distant from the Molten Tongue, for example, near Avernum or on the border of Arenas Negras. It is also the Molten Tongue and its surroundings that give a taste to the inhabitants of the wider Riven Realms what the kingdom of Dvendar Tharr is like.

The still active volcanoes of the Mountains of Fire, the epicenter of distraction, are Baruk Zhar and Baruk Urudzhan, twin mountains at the heart of old Dvendar Tharr. Standing over the region as impossibly tall heralds of destruction, they were responsible for burying countless surface settlements, but also collapsing subterranean paths and cities, leaving almost nothing inhabitable. Near the two volcanoes, life cannot exist for long. The heat, the ash, and the lava will kill anything, and no soul in an age has managed to get anywhere near this center of ruin, where the ancient, mighty Dwarven mountain holds were utterly devastated. Most sages speculate that these great centers of Dvendar Tharr are lost forever.

South of the central volcanoes, the lands become even more volatile. Lava flows from Baruk Zhar and Baruk Urudzhan coalesce into a cyclopean lake of molten material, called the Iron Sea. It has only been observed from afar (from Dragonback and from the spine of the Mountain of Kor), because to approach it would result in certain death. The heat only would be fatal, but worse are unseen, silent killers like poisonous fumes and some sort of invisible force that burns days and weeks after contact. The lava flows to the west, into the Steaming Reach, where the impossibly hot ichor falls into the ocean, creating the Molten Sea, the bane of any sailors who bring their boats near the continent’s western reaches.

The Iron Sea and the Steaming Reach are all reminders to the people of the Fourth Age that Xeryn still defies exploration after the Calamity – not even with the most powerful magic and deepest knowledge can one hope to see its most perilous ends.

So the next time you find yourself looking around Tahrar Barak, near the Molten Tongue, or in Varnurud, keep this in mind – they may just help you survive these perilous realms. Do what you need to do: stay knowledgeable, stay resourceful, and conquer the wasteland!

– The Lost Pilgrims Team

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