The Gardens of Drevia lay sprawling between the southern Frontier Towns of Xrz and Yeck. The Gardens became, for each of these towns, a rhetorical commonplace for use in defending various mysticist heresies that sprang up in the Southland.

The Gardens spontaneously appeared out of the wasteland of Drevia created by the Kellna Catastrophe of 279 UE. In response to the catastophe, which left the ancient cities of Xrz and Yeck laid bare of human, animal, and vegetable life, the aged and disillusioned Emperor Devon-Lars I was heard to whisper that the Great God always hated the Frontier, and had abandoned it long ago. As the Frontier was almost entirely inaccessible due to the poisonous dust left by the Catastrophe and the terrible hurricanes that plagued the region, the land was left empty for over a hundred years, by imperial decree.

In the year 400, when Drevis III declared the Southland safe for habitation, there had been no expeditions yet to ensure that any part of the Southland was indeed not ravaged by winds full of poisonous dust. No evidence existed that any food could be brought out of the land without it poisoning the inhabitants. The first group of Southland settlers, hand-picked by Drevis III, were a band of particularly irritating heretics and borrits whom the Emperor was glad to rid himself of.

Miraculously, the sea voyage to the Southland was successful. Sustaining themselves on fish, despite the religious, legal, and social taboos against eating their flesh, the band of settlers came to recognize that nothing that humans declare blasted is truly cursed by the gods, who live even in the filthy bowels of fish.

Upon arriving in Drevia, named so by Devon-Lars I on his deathbed "Because it will never again see life," the settlers were surprised to find a span of twelve dozen acres of land crawling with fluorescent worms. The vast expanse of poisonous dust lay further on to the north, where the mountains created an impasse to Uzdumalia, but closer to the ocean, the settlers had no problem breathing the air, and, in fact, felt better than they had in years, especially while standing near the plain of fluorescent creatures, whose bodies pulsated with bright colors and lights. Although their forms were disgusting to look at--several inches long, bulbous, and coated with slime--they were exquisitely beautiful from a hundred or so yards off, from which distance one could see that their colors moved in breathtaking patterns and with thrilling speed. Their bodies piled up here and there in recognizable forms, like fish and people and mountains, leading the settlers to believe the Gardens of Drevia were indeed the residence of the Great God in Uzdumalia, where his little assistants ate the poison out of the earth and cleared the air for Uzda's rejected sons and daughters.

The settlers broke off into two camps, due to the violent aversion the heretics had toward the borrits, and they went their separate ways. The heretics, who argued loudly among themselves at all times, went to the west of the Gardens, to the remains of the town of Xrz, and the borrits went east to the town of Yeck. For both groups, the worms of the Gardens served as constant reminders of the surprising ways of the Great God, who could not be trapped by any dogma. For the residents of Xrz, the ever-shifting shapes and colors of the Gardens stood as a defense for their constant argumentation and violent clashes over beliefs that they would hold for only a few hours at a time before giving over to new ideas. For the residents of Yeck, the Gardens represented the global good that comes out of consuming the poisonous sin of others.

Over time, the residents of Xrz and Yeck would intermarry, creating new family groups that required new housing, which was often built at other points around the Gardens. (It was suspected that moving far away from the edges of the Gardens would prove fatal, and indeed no one who wandered off into the Drevian landscape ever returned alive.) Thus, the twelve Frontier Towns were founded. Although the many different lifestyles and belief systems that were perpetuated in the Frontier Towns greatly annoyed the emperors of Uzdumalia, the Frontier was maintained as a place where crimes against the Great God could be perpetrated in public and shamelessly, so that the rest of the people might be saved--a sort of geographical borritry. Understandably, this geographical isolation proved a great challenge to the Targhandan evangelists, for whom mystical visions and the idea of "difference" could hold no value.

Heretical Sects of Uzda

Color

Borrits

Hurricanes

Fish

Family

Kellna Catastrophe

Frontier Towns

Xrz

Yeck