Few lands inspire less ambition, and more unease, than the white vault of Londorai. Stretching across the upper reaches of the world like a death shroud, this vast, wind-shattered expanse of glacial mass and snow-choked valleys has long served as the edge of every map and the grave of every empire that ever flirted with northern conquest. It is not a kingdom. It is not even a territory. It is a shape in the frost, a thought left unfinished by cartographers too honest to lie and too cowardly to go further.
In the wake of the Cataclysm and the rising of Dread Thanator, the lands of Londorai were among the first to fall silent. Not to war, not to plague, not to flame—but to stillness. Cities once rumored to cling to the coast vanished into the permafrost with no battle, no migration, and no memorial. Records from the Age of Ruin speak of cold so deep it cracked the hulls of ships before the frost reached the waterline, and winds that buried caravan flags in minutes. Even in the days of southern hubris, when the Lion Imperium’s fleets touched every shore from the Orotanian east to the Panzarian west, Londorai was never claimed—only circled.
It is widely held among Imperial geographers that the land is functionally dead. Soil cores taken from the edge of the tundra contain no viable rootstock. Animal migration ends in confusion long before it reaches the interior. The light itself has a quality that resists documentation—somewhere between clouded amber and bruised steel, shifting in ways the sun does not explain.
What rivers exist flow beneath the ice, unseen and untraced, whispering to themselves beneath miles of cold. And yet still they go.
The coastal expeditions are semi-regular. Docks are funded, scouts conscripted, and lion-led vessels set forth with rationed furs and Imperial sun-banners high. Sometimes they return. The tales they tell are predictable—slabs of meaningless ice, occasional mammoth bones, wind-scoured ruins with nothing of use. These reports are cataloged, stamped, and left to rot in the College of the Crown. But there are other missions.
Ones not entered into the public logs.
Ones crewed not by glory-seekers or scouts, but by Quiet Brothers, cipher-keepers, and the gold-eyed mariners from the Imperium’s hidden fleets. These ships do not land on the coast. They aim for the deeper ice, or worse, they land inland—if they land at all.
Their return rate is nearly nonexistent.