Sarpadia

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Sarpadia
Information
Plane	Dominaria
Status	Unknown
Card art	art:"Sarpadia"

Sarpadia (sar-PAY-dee-uh) is a remote continent in Dominaria's southern hemisphere that was ravaged by warfare during the period between the Brothers' War and the Ice Age.

Description

Sarpadia is isolated from other landmasses and little is known about its denizens and history. What is known is that the five major cultures around 170 AR were destroyed by invading forces and internal strife. Most races were entirely wiped out, and others escaped to other parts of the world, leaving the creatures known as thrulls with dominion over the entire continent. Most of Sarpadia's story is told through the Fallen Empires expansion.

Locations

• Crimson Peaks - a huge mountain range in the south of the continent
  • The Brave Rabbit - an inn in an unnamed village in the northern part of the mountains
  • Gurn Keep - a dwarven stronghold, destroyed by orcs and goblins
  • Kalitas - a dwarven town, destroyed by orcs
  • Scarza - a settlement presumably named after Sivitri Scarzam, where there used to live a full-sized dragon at some point before 170 AR.
  • Shanin - The northernmost mountain of the Crimson Peaks, not particularly tall
  • Teedmar - a dwarven mining town, destroyed by a volcanic eruption triggered by the Order of the Ebon Hand
  • Tigaden - an isolated dwarven village
    • The Squat Duck - the village's inn
• Havenwood - a tremendous forest in the north, home to the elves. Fell to thallids
  • Hightrunk Chamber - capital of the elven empire
• Icatia - the human nation, destroyed by orcs and goblins
  • Montford - an outpost town to the north, bordering Havenwood
  • Trokair - a city that fell to orcs and goblins
  • Windenby - capital of Icatia
• Rainbow Vale - a mythical place of secret location
• Sarpadian Mountains - home to a dwarven empire, destroyed by orcs and goblins
• Old Voda Sea - home to the Vodalian merfolk, taken over by homarids
  • Deep-sea trench - a seabottom ravine that leads all the way to the Terisian Isles
    • Dromar's Cavern - an ancient merfolk tomb that once housed the blue primeval dragon Dromar.
  • Svyelunite Temple - a temple of the goddess Svyelun, ruined in the fall of Vodalia
• Western Swamps - former home to the Order of the Ebon Hand, now a thrull breeding ground
  • Achtep Keep - the Citadel of the Ebon Hand, fallen in the thrull rebellion

History

Before the Empires

Long before the time of the Brothers, Sarpadia was ruled by the Tchokta empire, which used its subject peoples to feed an unending need for sapient sacrifices. The last of their war priests, called N'ciczli (a word meaning "inhuman") by the early Sarpadians, was summoned away by planeswalkers occasionally. He came back telling of grand battles he saw and fought in when the gods called him, using these tales as inspiration for his battles, and supposedly he was never defeated. The last time he was summoned away, he didn't come back. His people believed the gods had made N'ciczli a god and started creating cameos to represent his ascension. The Tchokta, however, were ripped apart by the progenitors of the Sarpadian empires, which killed outright whoever had ties to the old Tchokta religion.

Climate Change

After Urza activated the Golgothian Sylex, the climate of the entire world rapidly cooled. As a result, crops failed, and many lands became uninhabitable. This constrains resources such as food stocks, iron, and wood. Increased need and decreased supply sparked strife between cultures that had once been allies. While the resource shortage primarily affected the empires on land, the merfolk faced attrition from an antarctic race of crustaceans called homarids that began to encroach on their territory as the waters cooled.

Fall of the Empires

Sarpadia was the setting of the Fallen Empires expansion. An isolated island continent, there were five major cultures, one for each color of magic: the humans of Icatia (white) and the Order of the Ebon Hand (black), the merfolk of Vodalia (blue), the elves (green), and the dwarves of the Crimson Peaks (red). Traditional lines of enemies and allies existed along color lines, but the recent climate changes and increasing internal strife led to conflict and isolationist policy. The tome titled Sarpadian Empires chronicled the rise and fall of these empires, starting with the fall of the dwarven kingdom to a chaos-driven army of orcs and goblins. This was followed by the fall of the Ebon Hand at the hands of their creations, the thrulls, and similarly the elves by their thallid creations.

The last empire to fall was Icatia, which repelled the orcs and goblins for some time before succumbing to a combined force of orcs and goblins (aided by the planeswalker Tevesh Szat), thrulls, and thallids. Icatia was also weakened before these attacks by the subterfuge of the Farrelite Cult. Sometime during this period, the whole of the Vodalian empire was conquered by homarid forces invading from the Frozen Reaches.

Rise of the Thrulls

Nothing is known of Sarpadia's history after the fall of the empire. Sometime after Icatia toppled, the goblins were destroyed by the thrulls, and the orcs took to hiding in caves. The thrulls learned to evolve themselves, created variants adept at hunting in the caves, and finally wiped out the last of the orcs. The thrulls would continue to evolve over the centuries, becoming more and more powerful. Luckily, they lacked the imagination to realize that there was anything in the world beyond Sarpadia and remained content with their solitary existence. The thallids continued to flourish as well but never advanced beyond shambling brutes.

The Flood Age

Not much is known about the Sarpadian mainland from this period, but the Voda Sea continued to be dominated by homarids. It is unknown when they migrated to Terisiare through a deep continental rift, but the humans of Kjeldor referred to them as viscerids. Here the homarids caused even more flooding problems on Terisiare. Homarids as a whole would be unheard of after this age save for a few specimens that found their way into the future through time rifts. The warming climate likely weakened their birth rate and pushed them back south.

Phyrexian Invasion

Thousands of years later, during the Phyrexian Invasion of Dominaria, it was rumored that the metal demons of Phyrexia met insurmountable resistance from the thrulls in Sarpadia. The Phyrexians, soundly defeated, believed that if the thrulls ever fully realized there is life beyond Sarpadia, Dominaria - and indeed the Multiverse - may be in imminent danger. Around the same time, some thrulls begin to appear on Phyrexia and Rath, though these were far more docile than the Order's variants, suggesting that Yawgmoth and/or the Evincars managed to perfect the secret of their creation.

Maps of Sarpadia

• 
  Sarpadia fan-map by Varghedin

In-game references

Associated cards:

• Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII
• Sarpadian Simulacrum

Quoted or referred to:

• Brassclaw Orcs (Fifth Edition)
• Dwarven Soldier (Fallen Empires)
• Ghazbàn Ogre (Fifth Edition)
• Homarid Explorer

See also

• Sarpadian Empires