Nor Cened

After losing the war, the elves limped across the sea to the unsettled land south of the Lyric Empire, which they claimed and renamed Nor Cened (Home of the People). As the elves lacked the navy to cross the sea themselves, they were helped by a Halfling trading cartel the Halfpennys. Currently, the elves are mostly either in the initial mainland camp of Thyle Lenora, on the edge of the Lizard Tongue peninsula, or at Imlin, a larger settlement where the river Shanning meets the sea in Bottomless Bay.

History
Prior to being settled by the elves, the southern continent was a vaguely mythical land which people knew existed but which no-one had successfully colonised. There are stories all throughout history, going back to the Age of Heroes and beyond, of travellers coming to and from this distant land. As a general rule, the stories describe a harsh, forbidding place, filled with dangerous wildlife and inimical to sentient life. In the legends, heroes went there to find a magic artifact, or to bury a cursed item in its cursed soil.

Since the formation of the Empire, several attempts had been made to tame the wild land, as stories abounded of the riches that could be found there. To a one, they were unsuccessful. Some spoke of ghosts, others of monsters - but the most common story was that the land was teeming with dragons. As the winged behemoths became rarer and rarer on the mainland, the stories of a country where any would-be conquerors would have to wipe out the dragons again became most unpalatable. There was a brief resurgence of interest with the first Halfpenny fleet, but since their failure most civilised citizens realised that the land was not going to be conquered quickly or easily, and quietly forgot about it.

Founding of the Elven Nation
After the war and their subsequent disenfranchisement, the elven people took the Halfpenny's up on their offer and moved to Nor Cened en masse. After a rough six weeks at sea, the elves initially landed on Leva Esari, a small island. It served as a first staging post for battered ships coming across the sea, as it was thickly forested with good material for restoring ships. However, the lack of a steady fresh water source meant it wouldn’t do for long term settlement. The elves set sail again, this time landing on Nor Cened proper, at the mouth of a river.

Thyle Lenora was the first city founded on the mainland, and acted as a port town for incoming elves and traders. Again though, fresh water was a problem - so a second town, Imlin, was founded over the mouth of the River Shanning. Due to the site, Imlin quickly grew larger than Thyle Lenora and was named as the capital.

Moving inland along the river, a number of small farming communities sprung up to feed the hungry people. The largest of these became known as Isallion. The halflings also spread out, although they went East, founding the town of Crichton on the other side of the Bottomless Bay.

Leva Esari (West Tear)
When the elves first came south, they initially landed on Leva Esari, a small island. It served as a first staging post for battered ships coming across the sea, as it is thickly forested with good material for restoring ships. However, the lack of a steady fresh water source meant it wouldn’t do for long term settlement. A group of settlers stayed there in the makeshift town, called Ijos, to act as the first stop for new ships. However, at a week’s travel away from the mainland even in good weather, Ijos quickly became cut off from the rest of the population. Leva Esari itself is thickly forested and temperate. The shore is entirely fringed with mangroves. There is a healthy population of lizards and small dinosaurs, though nothing larger has been reported.

Leva Taesi (North Tear)
Similar in size to Esari, Taesi seems to be in an earlier geological stage of development. A relatively new island, Taesi still has an active volcano and its soil is black and ashy. Some plant life has already started to grow, but mostly Taesi empty and home to little advanced life. The plume of smoke coming from Mount Aerhalon is usually the first sight a ship has that it’s approaching the continent.

Kelpie's Head
Kelpie’s Head is both the name of the island and the name of the large mountain/rock face in the middle – potentially an extinct volcano. Like Esari, Kelpie’s Head is thickly forested and ridged with mangrove forests. However, initial foraging parties into Kelpie’s Head kept going missing, and the settlers decided to move onto the continent rather than risk losing more people. When going past the island, roars and screams can be heard like huge beasts, and most people believe the island to be home to huge dinosaurs or dire monsters, or even dragons. They therefore give it a large berth, at least until they can explore with more of a force. In reality, Kelpie’s Head is home to a large band of pirates. Based out of Kilpikonna, a hidden city on the Eastern edge of the island, the Blue Moon Raiders, as they call themselves, are a rag-tag group of freebooters and pirates. Many were previously shipwrecked on the island, and left for dead. With an ample supply of fresh water from the river (called The Slit) the pirates have been able to carve a good life out of raiding ships as well as trading them raw silver ore from their silver shaft, buried into the side of the Kelpie’s Head Mountain.

The Red God’s Trident
Actually a series of sharp rocks and jagged edges, but the only part you can see on the surface are three sharp tooth like protrusions, called The Trident. Over the last three thousand years, many ships have been wrecked here or washed up here and it has become a ship graveyard. Legends say that some of the most precious missing artefacts of the Empire lie sunk at the hilt of the Red God’s Trident. Monsters lurk between the spines of rock, and in order to continue to the eastern side of the island, ships must tack north around Leva Taesi. A thin strip of safe, deep water runs between the rocks of The Trident and the eastern edge of Comma Reef. Without the navigators provided by the Halfpenny’s, it’s unlikely the elves would have made it through.

The Comma Reef / The Mourning Reef
The reef to the west has two names, depending on who you talk to. On the maps it is recorded as Comma Reef due to its shape. But sailors know it as Mourning Reef, because of the numbers of ships that have gone aground there and then been smashed on the Trident.

While it is dangerous, the reef is also extraordinarily beautiful, home to a massive array of fish and other aquatic creatures. Deep inside the tail of the comma, at the bottom of huge stacks of ancient coral, there is a city of merpersons. Called ‘Whale’ by the mersons due to the fact it’s built in the calcified skull and bones of an enormous dead whale, the city is home to around 300 individuals, living off the larger sea life on the reef.

The Throat
The area of land running from the northern top of the Mallenor Foothills over to the first western reaches of the desert is called The Throat. This encompasses the three named peninsulas (Rattle, Lizard Tongue and Ishva Staetas) as well as the Bottomless Bay, River Shanning and Lake Tyshall. The Throat is temperate grassland – scrubby brush and low undergrowth with sandy soil. It is the only discovered part of Nor Cened to have access to a steady supply of fresh water. Outside of The Throat, civilised existence is nearly impossible.

Rattle Lighthouse
This unusually named lighthouse was almost the first construction in the new land, as without it ships wouldn’t be able to navigate the sea road to the mainland. The mages raised a 10 meter stone tower, and craftsmen attached a wooden scaffold and set of spiral stairs. The flame is kept lit at all times, with a team of two or three elves working on shifts constantly. The name is ostensibly because the lighthouse is on the Rattle peninsula, but the common joke is it’s named because the craftsmen didn’t have time to do a thorough job with their scaffolding. Manning the lighthouse is a military duty.

Bottomless Bay
This bay is so called as an ironic joke, as the first ships to sail here were deceived by its seeming depth and ran aground at the end of the bay. While the bay looks deep, it’s actually alarmingly shallow. Deep keeled ocean-going vessels must dock at the tip of Lizard Tongue, in Thyle Lenora, or face a similar fate. Worryingly, the bay seems to be popular with the local Copper Dragon population, who like to bask in the shallow waters. So far, this hasn’t led to any incidents, but it’s really a matter of time.

Thyle Lenora (New Home)
See separate page.

Cae Alari (Coastal Road)
As goods and people must dock at Thyle Lenora, there is a steady stream of caravans from there to Imlin. The wide, dusty road is called Cae Alari, and there are people travelling it constantly throughout the day. Horses aren’t common as they’re very difficult to transport across the sea, and there appear to be none native to this continent. Carts are pulled either by their owners or rarely by camels, though they are slowly becoming more common. At such a slow pace, the trip typically takes over a week, more if there are storms blowing in from the ocean. While banditry isn’t a large problem, caravans are still lost to bad weather, landslides and wild beasts – this means travelling in larger groups and hiring an escort is de rigueur.

Imlin (Light)
Thyle Lenora may be where a traveller first lands in Nor Cened, but Imlin is almost always where they end up. A huge bustling metropolis containing almost the entire elven nation, Imlin is Nor Cened's capital city. Coming from Thyle Lenora, the first thing visitors notice is the bridge across the Shanning Gorge, which is constructed from the first ships which came to ground in the bay. In many ways, Imlin looks like Thyle Lenora writ large. Huge stone edifices dominate the skyline, mostly filled with military or government officials, but also huge stone warehouses, marketplaces and towers. The majority of people still live in tents, but the tents are usually more ornate and permanent, with some tents standing taller than the stone buildings they surround. A bustling sea of canvas, stone and dust.

At the centre of the town is the Hall of Governance, a circular stone building with a roof shaped like a blooming rose. Lines of bureaucrats, diplomats and petitioners stream in and out like ants during the day. Imlin is also home to the bulk of the military’s leadership, and it’s the home base which all military units and patrols return to. The barracks are a long, low stone building surrounded by drill grounds at the very easternmost edge of the city.

Unlike Thyle Lenora which feels more like a cosmopolitan, if questionably legal, place to stay, Imlin is slightly more staid, slightly more planned and controlled. There is just as much wealth here, but it’s distilled and concentrated rather than paraded in markets. There are guards on the streets, and criminals are punished harshly. The sky burial towers to the north-east are glutted with the bodies of elves and other races who couldn’t keep their hands in their own pockets, and the circle of vultures above them can be seen from miles away.

In order to access their supply of fresh water, Imlin has stone steps rough-hewn into the side of the gorge which lead down to a series of docks at the side of the river. River boats coming down from Isallion resupply here and drop off needed food. Some residents have even begin carving out warehouses and homes into the gorge-side itself. It’s here that visitors can find Imlin’s only church, a unity faith building rudely hewn from the rock and mostly visited by the non-elves that were caught up in the Migration.

River Shanning
The Shanning is deep and clear, cutting itself a gorge in order to reach the sea. Its source is at Lake Tyshall, far to the south, though the River Taupe also runs into it from the mountains. River boats ply their trade taking goods to and from the fledgling farms in the south. The rich land around parts of the river imply that at some point in the past it flooded and spread river silt, but it hasn’t done this in the time the elves have been on the island.

Isallion (Growth)
To the south of Imlin along the River Shanning, a number of small farming towns have cropped up. Most of these are individual family concerns which don’t have names beyond ‘So-and-so’s farm’, but Isallion is the exception due to both its size and the scope of its agriculture. A bustling farming town where elves are working together to figure out what might grow well in the soil of their new homeland, Isallion feels optimistic.

The town is still mostly tents, but large wooden barns have been erected using wood ferried down the river from Leva Esari. It also has a dock into the river, also built of wood, as well as a number of wooden fenced corrals.

Isallion is unique for being the largest concerted effort to domesticate and breed camels. Fully one half of the town is set aside for livestock and barns for their feed. A curious mix of biologists, farmers and mages works together to tame the camel to provide a desperately needed beast of burden. Until camels become commonplace, it will be impossible for the elven people as a whole to really break away from the rivers and into the Trackless Wastes.

Crichton
Halfway down the Bottomless Bay is an outcropping of rock encircling a sheltered bay. While too shallow for most ships, the shallow bottomed Halfling ships of the Halfpenny cartel can nip in and out with relative ease. Up the gorge from Smugglers Cove (as the Halflings call it) the Halflings have founded the town of Crichton. Catering almost entirely to Halflings, it’s generally a home for the families of the Halfpenny traders, as well as the more experimental members of the Halfpenny clan. Very little is known about Crichton, and few non-halflings can say they've been there.

Watcher's Spine
The entire west side of the island, as far as any ships have sailed, is covered in mountains which are collectively known as the Watcher's Spine. The eastern most mountains, closest to Thyle Lenora, are called the Mallenor Foothills. Jutting out from the vast open plains, the Mallenor Foothills are relatively easy to climb, covered in tough grasses and riddled with small fresh water streams. Despite this, there is a distinct lack of the animals one would expect to find in such an environment, and any animals that are there tend to be small and fast. As the mountains continue west, they get larger and more unforgiving. In the very centre of this section of mountains is Mount Omikadi - a huge peak likely created by an earth rune of monumental power and size. Some geologists have theorised that the rest of the Watcher's Spine might just be echoes coming from Mount Omikadi.

As a general rule, the Watcher's Spine is unexplored virgin territory. The only thing that is known for certain at this point is that people who search it tend to go missing.