The Knights of the Sword Coast, Odin and the dwarven pantheon are among the few entities which know that the ghost of the dead god Badir used the First of the True Words to both heal the Blacklands and to restore himself to life as Badir Twice-Born of the dwarves.
In fact, the First Word created even more life and vitality than the region had known before the coming of Entropy. When the life-giving energies finally settled and humans and dwarves were able to survey the area, they found it covered in rivers and streams. Mighty waterfalls thundered down thousand foot mountain cliffs, and tens of thousands of small streams crisscrossed the hills and mountain plateaus. Within days, new grass was springing up in soft, fertile earth. Although towering mountains littered the horizon, the first explorers found sheltered valleys hidden between them which remain relatively mild even in the winter.
Within weeks, druids and priests of Shaundakul, Lathander, the dwarven pantheon, and other gods declared a crusade to preserve these lands against invasion from the minions of Entropy which surrounded it. Gathering the Seeds of Persephone, they set out to plant a broad barrier of trees and bushes that are resistant to the corrupting powers of Entropy. Many of these pilgrims and crusaders find passage to edge of the Korren-Badir at Blue Snows or Caer Trildane. Others find different means. Many must still contend with twisted creatures and other malevolent beings which lurk at the newly drawn border, but the forces of the Dark God appear too stunned by this sudden blow to react decisively.
Nothing has been decided about who owns these new lands. While the dwarves generally claim it as a gift of their god, they have not moved to exclude the handful of settlers who have found their way there. The very first settlers generally consisted of young and adventurous dwarves and Northmen warriors who seek to return to their ancestral lands. A strange friendship, perhaps even an alliance, seems to have formed between these erstwhile enemies.
This lake was once the Spiral of Chaos, a great dry crater located in the northern edge of the Storm Mountains. The Spiral marked the spot where the shadowstone asteroid which ripped a hole into Astral space impacted on Landreth. It was a place of tremendous destructive energy and warped magic. The entire area was under an effect similar to the priest spell Spiral of Degeneration, and no magic functioned within its boundaries save that of artifacts, deities, and the priests of the Dark God himself. Few things which entered this area left again, and those few who did bore Entropy's "gifts" upon their bodies, minds, and souls.
It is said that a great wealth in shadowstone was found in fragments around the crater's edge. While the Talonmists harvested the smaller fragments of the asteroid which landed safely in the south, no one dared to retrieve the shadowstone of the Spiral of Chaos. While most of the asteroid exploded on impact, some reasonably large fragments remained. Some of the larger pieces were gathered together by Entropy's minions and used to build a small, ebony altar in the center of the pit. While the alter was barely large enough to lash down a smallish human for sacrifice, it represented a vast wealth of shadowstone which warped reality around it by its very presence.
The Spiral of Chaos was a place of unholy power matched nowhere else on Eldreth, save perhaps by the Island of Ghosts and the Castle of Liquid Night. Dark Prophets sometimes made dangerous pilgrimages to this place, seeking gifts of power and insight from their god. Sometimes they were rewarded, but often Entropy consumed their souls instead.
In the beginning of 1373 DR, Badir Twice-Born ended the curse of Entropy upon the Blacklands at the very site of its beginning. The deity-ghost Badir unleashed the power of the First Word at the Spiral of Chaos itself. The First Word washed across a huge area of land, restoring it to health and vitality. At the center of this area, where the crater of evil had rested, the essential energies of the Word solidified into water and formed a great lake. Deep within the lake, at its underwater center, where an altar to Entropy once stood, now stands an altar to Badir Twice-Born. Dwarves who pray to Badir at the edge of the lake are granted the power to breathe the lake's water so that they might venture beneath the lake and offer thanks and prayer at the altar. This gift lasts for the duration of their stay.
The entire lake remains intensely magical. Water from the lake is said to bring hundred year old seeds back to fertile life. The lake is commonly covered in thick fogs and pilgrims are often rained upon, yet no peaceful creature ever suffers from exposure or succumbs to illness from the dampness. Healing spells cast on targets drinking from the lake commonly function at enhanced effectiveness, and bathing in the lake's waters is said to cure otherwise untreatable ailments.
During the first years of the Blackland's existence, Entropy had commanded his minions to dig a vast dungeon into the side of the towering peak of Mount Angrad. There he gathered his servants and commanded them to draw iron from the mountain and smelt it in the lava pits of the mountain's core. In these forges, terrible weapons of war and battle platforms for Entropy's juggernauts were constructed. Elsewhere in the pit of the mountain's core, the minions of Entropy built dungeons and torture chambers where they bred some of their most deadly darkenbeasts, which later served in the Army of the Blacklands. These dungeons came to be called the Ebony Inferno, and it was in the deepest pits of this hellish place that the Queen of Air and Darkness summoned a True Facet of the Black Gem by means of terrible sacrifices, and restored the Black Angel (who had been banished in the Entropy War of 1371 DR) to serve as the commander of the Army of the Blacklands and as a direct emissary capable of drawing on the Gem to transform clean lands into Blacklands, thus excluding from them the Powers of Landreth.
After the Battle of Blue snows in 1372 DR, the Ebony Inferno was transformed into a huge crater, angrily spewing lava forth from the bowels of Eldreth to cauterize and cleanse itself and the area around it. For Mount Angrad was where Lady Aenwyr of the eladrin fell upon Eobryn's sword and spilled her blood and soul on the True Facet of the Black Gem, even as Tyrol of the Knights of the Sword Coast simultaneously disrupted the Black Angel with DawnBringer at the far-off Battle of Blue Snows. Lady Aenwyr's act of supreme sacrifice forever destroyed the corrupted solar, and the explosion of the shattering Facet obliterated the mountain, the servants of Entropy, and all their works. Only a few of the first of Entropy's minions, the vessels into which the Dark God poured his greatest power, were said to have survived to flee into the Blacklands.
Early in 1373 DR, Badir Twice-Born unleashed the power of the First
Word at the site of the Spiral of Chaos. The power of the Word swept
across the center of the Blacklands, turning desert into fertile
plateaus, restoring the integrity of the ancient stone, and even
purifying many of the natural and faerie creatures which dwelt therein.
The newly restored Mount Angrad now marks the southwestern border of the
restored area, and is the highest mountain in the vicinity. The
mountain still lacks a peak. Instead, it is capped by a two mile wide
crater of basalt and obsidian, rich in mineral wealth from the bowels of
Landreth. At the center of the crater is small, but very deep, lake of
purest water, so clear that one can see down nearly a hundred fathoms on
a bright day. At the center of the lake rises a tiny island which is
said to mark the grave of Lady Aenwyn. One legend even claims
that her face can be seen in the rocky lines of the island's southern
cliff face, which is sheltered from the harsh northern winds. The
island is reputed to have many magical powers.