Aard is a landmass approximately three weeks by sailing vessel west of the Northern Continent. It was rediscovered by an Uruk trader in 1221 IE (Elven scholars found some cryptic references to it in some Slumbering Era works), setting off a mini land rush by the major powers. Once one empire declared their intention to colonize this new land, the others had to, just to save face. Aard is approximately half the size of Australia, with more climate zones than make sense, and an unimaginable bounty in animal, vegetable, and mineral resources.

Aard also wants to kill every person who sets foot on its shores.

Make no mistake, Aard is the Hard Mode zone of Lunistria. The predators are nightmarish, even by the standards of the most over the top fantasy battle games or the Cthorr genre. The plant eaters are enthusiastically opportunistic omnivores, and the plants that aren't merely poisonous or mobile probably do bizzare and unfortunate things to your mind or physical form. Any arthropods that aren't venomous or poisonous have probably come up with new and unique methods for killing you: the Sling-Beetle is a 2“ pill-bug like creature that squirts two chemicals under it's body which react explosively, and launch it in hopes of embedding it within it's prey.

The great empires managed to focus on Aard for about five years, and after insane fatalities amongst the military and adventurer populations, now only maintain outposts there out of sheer stubbornness. Yamato simply abandoned it's single town after two years, and there is no sign it ever existed. The Madarinate maintains a single trading port, while the Elves razed a peninsula to the bare rock and walled it off. The Fang and Asterian empires operate a few towns in adjacent coastal areas.

By universally accepted treaty, exporting any living plant or animal from Aard is punishable by death. Nine times out of ten, that is at the agency of your cargo as it has at least three weeks of bad weather sailing to escape confinement. The Elven navy has standing orders to burn any derelict ship covered in vegetation they encounter to the waterline, if not further. The most popular horror ballad of the last few decades, The Song of the Shrieksport Slasher, tells the tale of an Aard predator that escaped shortly after it's ship made port. For unknown reasons, quite possibly involving divine grace, nothing from Aard is wiling to cross salt water on it's own.

Lord Erlich's adventuring party, the Blackstone Company, spent two years in Aard, from 1223 to 1225 IE. The first was under contract to the Asterian military, the second just trying to find safe passage home. By the time Erlich's old girlfriend Princess Salissa or the Fang Empire sent a ship out to collect her favorite adventurers to do something only slightly impossible, the group was most of the way to convincing their Champion of the gods of War and Justice that piracy wasn't essentially evil if it served the greater good. As a side note, this trip explains why the company is collectively immune to poison and disease: Svall Svallson branded everyone with protection runes about two months in, in difficult-to-bite-off body locations.

Anyone suggesting to a survivor of the Blackstone Company expedition that they want to go to Aard will be sent on a “preparatory quest” that will be unexpectedly long, interesting, rewarding, and hopefully distracting enough you forget entirely about the trip. If you're still interested, you get sent on a shorter quest to get the materials Svall needs to brand you properly.