The magi set sail for the northern reaches of the known world, bound for lands already whispered of in saga and legend—a land of fire and ice. Instead, a storm drives them farther than any chart records—beyond familiar coasts, beyond the reach of the Order, beyond even the certainty that they remain within Midgard itself.
They make landfall upon the western shores of Lake Melville, where the forest presses close against the water and the silence hangs heavy. There, half-swallowed by earth and root, lie the ruins of an earlier Norse settlement—long abandoned, and not entirely at rest.
The land is rich, but strange. It watches. Its people are not those of Europe, and its magic does not always bend to Hermetic understanding.
Here, at what may be the very edge of the human world, the magi must endure without support, without certainty, and without the comforting structure of the Order of Hermes. No Redcaps will come. No Tribunal will answer. They are alone—six magi in a place that may have given rise to the oldest tales of realms beyond Midgard, lands of spirits, fae, or something stranger still.
Whether this is yet the world of men, or the threshold of something greater, remains uncertain.
But whatever this land is, it was not meant to be found.