Not everything in Vashrath is open field. The portal did not swallow only loose monsters and exiles: it swallowed whole places. Complexes, forests and ruins were torn from their worlds and cast into the Forgotten Realms together with their guards, servants and inhabitants — and over the centuries, each became a closed, hostile ecosystem of its own.
Places the Portal Swallowed
The timelessness of Vashrath preserved these dominions even as it distorted them. Time destroyed the kingdoms they served, the families that built them and the histories that gave them meaning — but not the duty of their ancient inhabitants. Guards still hold posts for kings centuries dead. Servants still keep halls no master will ever walk again. Whatever waits inside a sealed dominion obeys orders given long ago by sovereigns the world has already forgotten.
That is what makes these places unlike anything in the open valleys. An expedition crosses lands that belong to Vashrath; an incursion crosses the threshold into a place that never stopped belonging to somewhere else.
Dominions of Legend
Among the dominions the awakened speak of, two names come up more than most:
- The Labyrinth of Cnossos — built in its original world to imprison a single creature, and banished with all its guard. Its corridors seem to shift on their own, and those who enter learn quickly that the labyrinth was designed so that nothing inside it could ever find the way out.
- The Black Forest — a wood where an ancient entity reigns over cursed creatures, and where the trees themselves seem to remember a world that no longer exists.
These are not the only sealed dominions in Vashrath — the valleys hold more, and the awakened keep finding them.
Venturing Inside
In the game, Incursions are your ventures into these sealed dominions — distinct from the open-air Expeditions. Where an expedition is a hunt across open ground, an incursion is a descent into a world within the world: an enclave with its own lords, wardens and monsters, isolated from the rest of the valleys.
What the visitor should know:
- You do not go alone. An incursion is undertaken by a band — your hero alongside companions recruited across the realms. The dominions were built to break individuals; they are answered by groups.
- You fight your way inward. Each dominion defends itself with the guardians and creatures it was banished with. Progress means cutting through them, chamber by chamber, toward whatever the place was made to protect.
- A master waits at the heart. Every sealed dominion has its lord — the figure whose will still binds the place together. Reaching them is the point of the whole venture, and overcoming them is the kind of deed that gets a name spoken in the taverns of five cities.
- The spoils match the danger. What the dominions guard, they have guarded for centuries. Those who make it out carry home rewards the open valleys rarely offer.
A World Within the World
One enters a sealed dominion by will and steel alone. No force compels the crossing, and none guarantees the return. That is precisely the appeal: in a land where every hero starts from nothing, the dominions are where the greatest stories are won — or end.
Tied to the Dominions
- Vashrath — the world that absorbed whole places along with its exiles.
- Cripta — the threshold from which the awakened set out toward these dominions.