The age of the Shroud falls upon us. We live the now, and we know not where we go. We do, however, possess an inkling of our past. In her glorious and infinite wisdom, the Goddess Freya, blessed be her name, endowed the land with life some 15,000 years before this day. The civilization we enjoy on the Island was not always as it is. 500 years before this day, it much resembled the chaos and barbarism that one sees on the continent. Orc hordes and undead plagued the lands, but a civilizing force rose to meet this scourge and drive it from the Island.

King Andolyn Lain, the first King of Mythrendale, provided the organizing force around which the great knights of the Island could rally. 30 years of painful campaigning drove these evil forces from our lands. After careful consideration, King Lain formed a council of advisers which led to the creation of several Duchies. Each duke was responsible for a levy of arms and goods to keep the Kingdom in peace and plenty. Although the campaign had evicted the evil on the island, the source of the evil remained safely tucked away in the bowels of the savage continent.

The Council of Dukes realized that the only way to combat this terror was to push into the heart of the evil to fight it where it lives. Duke Jalal Otteh, renown for the use of his bronze flail in battle, set forth to establish this forward outpost on the continent. The first task appointed to him by the King was the creation of a temple dedicated to Freya. In the pre-dawn hours before the landing, as the fleet stood at anchor off the coast, Duke Otteh, heard a Valkyrie's voice whisper, “name the town Cherub's Abbey – in honor of the angels that will bless it by Freya's will.” The evening upon which he landed unopposed, he marked the land upon which Freya's Temple stands today, and he proclaimed the town to be Cherub's Abbey.

Over the next several hundred years, the Abbey developed into the prime trading post between the Island and the Continent. The Duke and subsequent heirs to the Duchy took the title of Duke of Flail in honor of Jalal Otteh's favored weapon. The Dukes of Flail and their respective heirs created and then maintained a forward capitol city: City Seva in the heart of the Cloudshadow Mountains. Seva Keep stood guard as the only passable way into the valley, but it also served as the transit point for the City's only source of outside supply.

Hundreds of expeditions have set forth from Cherub's Abbey over the years in an attempt to map the far reaches of the continent in detail. Most returned not, but those that have provided the picture of the world that we have today. This picture does not tell us much detail beyond the lands surrounding Cherub's Abbey and the Duchy of Flail. The people of Mythrendale continue to wage war against the forces of darkness, and they persist until the Crusade for Civilization destroys the savagery on the Continent.