"How wide and fair this valley be - and yet watered through millennia by the blood of patriots, heroes, villains, and many more besides."

-- Eggbrand Tillfind, unpopular gnomish bard

The Valley of Endon, also known in the old tales of the goliaths as the Embrace, is the wide gentle valley between the peaks of the Iron Mountains. Bordered to the north by the Shallow Bay, and by the mountains to the west, south, and east, the Valley has a long history of wars and invasion because of its protected nature.

Its climate is temperate and warmer than the lands outside the mountains, and the winters and summers alike are mild.

History

According to the tales of old, the Elder Giants were the first inhabitants of the valley, when they called it the Embrace and created the first of the Giants and the goliaths. It was they who raised the Henges, the Agdu, and the Towers which stand watch over the Kingdom of Endon even now.

When the Goliath Dominion ruled the Embrace, they maintained a light footprint on the earth, building no roads and few buildings. However, the Ssthessic Vrasa, which invaded the Embrace some two and a half thousand years ago, were taken with the land and used an alchemical concrete to make roads and buildings of sheer white marbline stone. Many of their ruins stand today.

But when one speaks of the Valley of Endon, one is talking about the natural world that still encroaches upon the civilised farmland of the Kingdom. The woods, the marshlands, the hills and dales all remember a time when the lands were theirs.