A History of the Nentir Vale

When the human empire of Nerath was at its height about three hundred years ago, the Nentir Vale stood as the northernmost extension of that great realm.  Would-be settlers navigated the Nentir River through a trackless swamp or forged their way through a thick forest that separated this area from the rest of Nerath.  At the end of their journey, they came upon a pocket of rolling grassland and light woods more than a hundred miles wide and ringed by mountains and forests--a frontier area that held both promise and peril for those who braved it.  Several settlements sprang up, roads were developed, and towns eventually flourished over the next to hundred years or so.  Then, nearly a century ago, chaos returned to the Nentir Vale when an orc horde called Clan Bloodspear swarmed down the mountains to the northwest.  By this time, the empire of Nerath had begun to crumble, and the hardy souls of the vale got no help from the south.  Before the Bloodspear War was over, much of the Nentir Vale had been overrun and almost as quickly abandoned.  Now Nentir Vale is once again a destination for hardy souls seeking adventure or a new life.  Small communities are growing again, but the area still has more than its share of monsters, evil gangs and otherworldly dangers.  Fallcrest, the biggest town in the center of Nentir Vale, is a hub of travel at the intersection of the Nentir River, the Trade Road, and the King's Road.  The town's guard does a capable job of protecting the populace from raiders that emerge from the surrounding wilderness, but it is little more than a dim point of light in the middle of vast tracts of untamed land ruined outposts of the faded empire.