Grimsby

Grimsby is the southwestern region of the world. It is home to the most influential of the human kingdoms, Castle Wen. It has been used as the setting for early adventures of the Fellowship of the Spoon who were at that time, part of the Frostbeard Guild.

The Founding
Port Grimsby was founded by a vicious pirate warlord known as Stephen Grimsby. He has amassed enough stolen goods that he was able to hire a task force to found a keep to store the remainder of his riches and establish a base. From this, the Grimsby Pirate HQ was born. After settling in, Stephen kept many of the workers around to perform chores and jobs involving necessities. Soon, the pirate ships were used for fishing boats, the bandit became butchers, smiths, brewers, magical experts, and various trade jobs were established. They built buildings of their own to house their business and Grimsby grew from a pirate HQ into a kingdom.

After fighting a bloody war with the Lizardfolk of the forests, the humans eventually found aid from the Tritons. Stephen's pirates had already established a long standing relationship, as for years they traded valuables, land foods, fruits, and magical secrets in exchange for directions and ancient elven armor, weapons, books and jewelry which had sank many years ago. They disagreed on one important topic: they did not agree with the humans being a terror of the seas. When Stephen's pirates asked for aid in the Lizardfolk war, the Tritons agreed as long as Stephen made a pact that he would never terrorize the seas again. The war was won by devastating magic and ambush tactics against the simple Lizardfolk barbarians and they were driven away east toward Thunder Road.

Overtime, many more people began migrating to Grimsby and it abandoned the dishonest ways, growing a reputation for being a safe and well established kingdom. Stephen was always fascinated with elven culture and in his now older age pondered his afterlife judgement. He had much jewelry and symbolism to Sehahine and adopted this as his God of choice. Soon, other humans followed suit and worshipped the moon goddess as well. Stephen's last act as ruler was to order the plans for a grand temple to be built. He did not appoint a successful heir and had fathered no children. The ruling was eventually handed over to the Wen family by peaceful vote. The Wen lineage remains in power to this day.

The Frostbeard Guild
90 years after the founding, the city which we see today as become a peaceful hold for a variety of races, jobs and religions. Freedom was important to the king and did not mark the rising church of The Raven Queen as heretics, but instead welcomed them into his city and even donated money for them to build a temple of their own out into the Grimsby woods. When the builders started their work and quarries in the northwest, they caught the attention of a couple of passing dwarves who were banished from their keep and seeking a new home.

The Frostbeard Guild made their introduction when the Lizardfolk tried to attack once again and take the city. The guild's 4 members Harberk Frostbeard, Torvald Frostbeard, Hannah Stoneskin and Jimry Thunderhand single handedly defended the city from the attack and were honored before the king in his court. The king had ordered a guildhall be built and donated it to the dwarves as long as they agreed to be the king's personal special taskforce to be called on when danger was threatening the city and explained that his court wizard and primary defending hero Serenojen had abandoned the kingdom due to unknown circumstance.

The dwarves agreed happily and defended the city for the next 100 years until the guild was disbanded after the events of The Darkening.

The Darkening
The Darkening was the name given to a time period when a powerful necromancer Cain would be gaining notoriety and terrorize the western kingdoms with his killing spells that would absorb the victim's soul. He, much like devils, did not need worship to gain strength but started his path to becoming a demigod by merely accumulating a large amount of mortal souls. The Frostbeards were tasked in stopping his rise to power but unfortunately Torvald died due to a necrotic disease, but unbeknownst to his companions, was still operating the body as an undead pawn under Cain's control. Torvald became a very useful spy.

Cain used this information gathered from Torvald to avoid capture by the party, and even set up a trap to destroy him. Serenojen, also a powerful wizard, had been tracking Cain as soon as he heard word of his killing spell and consumption of mortal souls. Serenojen sought to destroy Cain before he grew too strong to be defeated. When he finally tracked Cain's hiding place and attacked him in a magical duel, Cain realized his killing spell did not work and that Serenojen had found some sort of secret against it. Knowing he could not kill him, Cain instead imprisoned Serenojen and put an curse in a rune on a cave wall and ordered his goblin mercenaries to guard the rune at all costs and fled to another plane. Unbeknownst to Serenojin, Cain also put a curse on him which would allow Cain to see and hear through Serenojin, so that Cain would know if he ever escaped. Cain would later use this curse to turn Serenojen into another spy.

When Serenojen was freed by the Frostbeard Guild, he was in shock and discouraged by Cain's escape. He aided the party. They returned to King Wen who demanded that Serenojen explain his absence. When the party explained that a dangerous necromancer was rising in power, the king set aside his anger and ordered the Frostbeard Guild to destroy Cain and bring back proof of his death.

Serenojen led the Frostbeard Guild to another power and old wizard named Fantasar who had unrivaled expertise in magical objects and how to track objects and people. After explaining that Cain was using anti-tracking magic, he would need away to counteract it by using a magical object. The Harmonic stone has some sort of connection to all tangible things across the planes and Fantasar explained that he can use this stone to track Cain to whatever plane he may have fled to. After learning of this, Cain channeled his form into a new self, disconnecting his old body with his new one. When the Frostbeard Guild eventually used the Harmonic Stone to track Cain, they instead tracked his double just as he had planned and his curse disallowed Serenojen from traveling to other planes, and when he attempted to leave the material plane, was instead imprisoned in the Astral Plane until he would eventually find his way out the until after the creation of the Deadlands.

As Cain's power grew, he was able to see weak points in planes and gained the ability to perceive leylines. He soon found that he could travel planes without the need for magical spells and could instead manipulate these weak points to travel planes freely. Satisfied with the turn of events, Cain returned to the material plane, gathered his followers and headed east to begin research on leyline interactions with the astral plane.

The Frostbeard Guild returned to the material plane after defeating Cain's false identity and reported to Wen that Cain was dead. Wen's wife Queen Erelith revealed herself to be an avatar of The Raven Queen and told the travelers that Cain was not dead as he had not entered Shadowfell. She instructed them to chase him East, resulting in the later formation of The Fellowship of The Spoon later in the series of events in Flint Jungle.