Beyond the Ice Wall—known to mages as the Auric Threshold—lies Outer Aegisguard, the world’s most perilous and least understood region. Spanning an estimated third of the planet’s surface, it is a wasteland of fractured leylines, erratic climates, and untamed ethos currents that warp both matter and mind. The land itself is in constant flux: rivers freeze solid in an instant, mountains shift overnight, and entire forests burn blue with spontaneous magic ignition.
No stable maps exist. Each expedition that attempts to chart it returns with conflicting accounts—if they return at all. Instruments malfunction, compasses spin endlessly, and even memory becomes unreliable beneath the region’s chaotic influence. The few surviving reports agree only on one thing: nothing in Outer Aegisguard stays the same twice.
It is home to countless unnamed monsters and entities collectively referred to as the Unrecorded. Some are remnants of early creation, others mutations born from corrupted ley surges. Among them dwell the Primavores—ancient, near-mythical beings believed to consume raw ethos and reshape reality around themselves. Their presence distorts weather, terrain, and time, creating zones of lethal instability.
Mages who study the region consider Outer Aegisguard a “living wound” on the world’s surface—a place where the laws of magic and nature blur into one. Even the strongest protection wards weaken under the region’s volatile resonance, forcing most explorers to abandon their missions long before reaching the horizon that leads to the Eidolon Wall and the void beyond.
Because of these dangers, Outer Aegisguard remains almost entirely undocumented. What knowledge exists is drawn from fragmented field logs, corrupted recordings, and the accounts of those who escaped—scarred, frostbitten, and forever changed.
The Ice Wall
Referred to by mages as The Auric Threshold
Known to most as The Ice Wall, this colossal ring of gold-veined glacial crystal divides the settled continents of Aegisguard from the wild, unstable lands beyond.
To the untrained eye, The Ice Wall appears to be a natural wonder, a jagged mountain range cast entirely in ice, but to those who can sense it, the hum of ethos is unmistakable. Beneath its surface flows a network of molten-gold channels, each one pulsing faintly with aetheric light. These 'auric veins' act as conduits, absorbing and redirecting raw ethos from the Leyhollow’s outer currents before it can corrupt the inner lands.
It is smaller than the Eidolon Wall but no less perilous. Mages describe it as a younger sibling to a god, still growing and shifting. Occasionally, the surface rearranges overnight—peaks change shape, fissures seal themselves, and strange sigils surface.
The Eidolon Wall
Referred to by mages as The Argent Expanse
Encircling the entire circumference of Aegisguard, the Eidolon Wall marks the final horizon before reality fractures into the Leyhollow and the void.
To the eye, it appears as an unending bulwark of glacial peaks and frost plains, luminous with trapped light and ethereal vapour. Beneath that frozen surface, however, lies an intricate lattice of crystallized ethos, a vast, living enchantment older than written history. The wall is said to breathe, exhaling storms and drawing in the heat of the sun to sustain its eternal frost.
From afar, the barrier looks motionless, but those who have approached it tell of subtle movement beneath the ice; ancient writings mention twisting figures and shadows walking within the translucent depths. Scholars now know these shapes to be eidolons, bound spirits and ancient guardians sealed into the ice to maintain the spellwork of the wall itself. Their constant, inaudible hum reinforces the barrier’s resonance, keeping the gateways of the Leyhollow from breaching the mortal plane.
