The Great Scarp

The Great Scarp

A Wound That Watches Still

The Great Scarp

North of Coraniz, the land breaks.

It doesn’t slope. It doesn’t roll. It drops—eight hundred feet from base to edge, a sheer cliff line marking the collapse of the northern lands after Zagrath’s fall. The ground northward rises again, slowly, over nearly a hundred miles. But the Scarp remains: a wound, a wall, a threshold.

Visible for leagues.
Felt in the bones.

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Geography and Resonance

The Scarp divides Coraniz from the lands of Zagrath’s fall. It is said the land itself bowed under the weight of his defeat, collapsing in grief. To stand at the edge is to witness the scale of ruin—and the endurance of those who survived.

Among the Corani:
“The Scarp is our wound, and our wall.”

Among Preceptors:
“The ruins watch still, though no men stand within them.”

Among storytellers:
“The Scarp is where the land itself remembers Zagrath’s fall.”

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Fortifications and Vigilance

The Corani once maintained a string of watch-posts and fortresses along the edge. Strongpoints against northern incursions. Beacons of vigilance. Many now lie in ruin, abandoned as the threat waned or resources dwindled. Some remain as haunted shells, their stones echoing with the memory of watchmen long gone.

The Scarp is both a geographic barrier and a mythic testimony.
Its fortifications mark the tension between vigilance and decay.
It remains a place of pilgrimage, ruin-delving, and remembrance.

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Baluarte Sangraval

Baluarte Sangraval

The Ruin That Refused to Bow

Built directly into the cliff edge at the eastern narrows of Coraniz, Sangraval’s towers once gleamed white against the red dusk. A stair of 300 steps climbed from the base to the fortress gate—a pilgrimage of vigilance. From its battlements, one could see leagues northward across the collapsed lands.

Sangraval was flamboyant.
Scarlet and gold banners streaming in the wind.
Corani captains swore oaths here, calling themselves Los Ojos de Sangraval (The Eyes of Sangraval).

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Reputation and Testimony

Among Corani storytellers:
“Sangraval fell, but its banners never lowered.”

Among frontier folk:
“The ruin still watches, though no men stand within.”

Among pilgrims:
“To climb the steps is to feel the weight of vigilance.”

Sangraval’s last captain, Don Alvaro de Maestre, refused to abandon the fortress. He and his men fought until the walls cracked, their banners burning in the wind, finally repelling the invaders. The ruin is said to echo with their voices—proud, defiant, unyielding. No Zagrathi force has assaulted Coraniz since.

Shrines at the stair’s base mark the courage of those who climbed, and those who fell.

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Final Thoughts

Looking northeastward across
the Zagathi Wastes

Sangraval is a ruin.

But its testimony endures.

Some say the fortress could be rebuilt, its banners raised again.
Others say it should remain a shrine—a scar that remembers.

The Scarp watches still.
And Sangraval sings in silence.

The East-march and the Glittering Hills

 

The Glittering Hills

Beauty, Burden, and the Fire Beneath

There’s a stretch of land along Aranor’s eastern coast that the Chourdavian crown calls the East-march. Locals call it the Glittering Hills. The name is hopeful—maybe even cruelly so. It evokes light, promise, and wealth. But the truth of the land is toil, silence, and the slow, grinding erosion of order.

The terrain is hilly and scrub-choked, carved with ravines that twist like old scars. The soil is poor. The wind is sharp. The roads are barely roads at all. The region produces a modest yield of gemstones—just enough to tempt miners, not enough to justify civic investment. The crown treats it like a buffer zone. A frontier. A place to tax, not to see.

And lately, something has begun to stir.

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The Chaos Men

They aren’t coming from the north. They aren’t marching from some distant border. They’re emerging—from within. From the Fell Temple of Zagrath, erected over the broken remains of the Broken God. It lies roughly 500 miles south of the Glittering Hills. The temple was constructed by Zagrathi cultists who seek to unmake the world through entropy—to break it as their dark god is broken.

Now, they’re loosed.

The chaos men are former cultists, twisted by ritual and mythic entropy. Horned, hooved, and marked by mutation. Some bear extra limbs. Some speak in reversed tongues. They don’t conquer. They dissolve. They spread strife, desecrate thresholds, and unravel the quiet testimony of the land.

They call themselves the Unmakers. And they speak of a coming Sundering.

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Signs in the Hills

It started small. A miner vanished. Shadowy silhouettes cast on ravine walls. A ruined shrine began to glow at dusk. A Preceptor sent to investigate returned silent, then disappeared.

Now, the sightings are growing. The ravines feel older. The wind carries whispers. The hills glitter—but they do not give.

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The Stones

The gemstones of the Glittering Hills aren’t valuable in bulk. They’re small, flawed, and difficult to extract. But they carry ritual potency. Hedge-workers and itinerant scholars use them in rites of necessity. These aren’t treasures. They’re tools. Testimony. Fragments of a land trying to hold itself together.

Name	Appearance	Use in Magic or Rites
Veilshard	Pale to smoky violet quartz	Used in concealment, dream-walking, or veiling presence. Blurs perception.
Sunderviolet	Deep red garnet with fractures	Burned in severance rituals. Cuts metaphysical ties.
Witchglass	Opaque black tourmaline	Ground for protective circles or entropy-binding. Brittle but potent.
Saltfire	Pale amber citrine	Heated in purification rites. Emits faint light when warmed.
Ravencleft	Iridescent black with blue sheen	Used in shadow-walking or masking magical signatures.
Shardmilk	Translucent white quartz	Dissolved for memory rites or pain-dulling. Ineffective in sunlight.
Graveflint	Ash-grey quartz or spinel	Anchors spirits, binds echoes, stills movement. Cracks render it inert.

Extraction is mostly panning and sifting. Tunnel mining is rare and dangerous. The yield is low. The stones are not wealth—they are witness.

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Final Thoughts

The Glittering Hills are a threshold. Not between nations, but between states of being. They glitter, yes—but the light is thin. The chaos men seep up from the south, and the land itself seems to hold its breath.

“They do not march. They seep.”
— Carved into the walls of an abandoned mine

Half‑face: Art, Obscurity, and the Veil of Testimony

There’s a movement spreading through Aranor’s noble courts. You’ll find it in tapestries, in portraiture, even in jewelry. It’s called Half‑face—a style, a statement, a quiet obsession.

It began as a gimmick.    

The Wave of Selenna

Now it’s canon.

Form and Style

Half‑face is simple in concept, intricate in execution. A face—typically female—rendered with playing-card symmetry, but far more detailed. One half revealed. The other veiled.

Not silhouetted.

Not erased.

Obscured.

The obscuring motifs vary:

• Natural: waves, leaves, feathers, flowing hair

• Abstract: curves, spirals, geometric shadows

• Man‑made: arches, columns, latticework

Color breaks the austerity—splashes of scarlet, gold, indigo—each chosen to disrupt and draw.

Resonance

Half‑face thrives on tension: seen vs unseen, revelation vs concealment. Nobles debate what the hidden half means. Is it lost memory? Hidden truth? The burden of legacy?

It’s become fashion.

It’s become philosophy.

Portraits, tapestries, and court jewelry adopt the motif. To commission a Half‑face is to declare your court enlightened. To wear one is to suggest you carry secrets worth veiling.

Among common folk:

“Half a face, half a truth.”

Among artists:

“The obscuring form is the true subject. The face is only the canvas.”

Testimony and Transformation

Half‑face works are canonized in shrines, galleries, and court halls. Some courts compete to host the most daring obscuring motif—waves that crash across the face, arches that split it in stone.

A few radical artists invert the tradition: obscuring the “revealed” half, leaving only the veil visible.

The movement is still evolving. Its origin is debated. Its meaning is contested. And that’s part of the appeal.

Selenna Reimagined

Origin Testimony

The truth? The originator—whose name may or may not be remembered in canon—wasn’t chasing mystery. He was chasing market.

He wanted something bold. Recognizable. Saleable.

Half‑face was conceived as a gimmick with flair. Not a grand philosophy.

But nobles seized on it. Artists claimed it. Meaning was layered, twisted, reframed. What began as a practical innovation became a movement of mystery—divorced from its humble intent.

Final Thoughts

Half‑face is both commerce and canon. Born of necessity. Elevated by fashion. The truth of its origin is obscured—just like the faces themselves.

In Aranor, that irony is part of the testimony.

Art that began as survival now thrives as philosophy.

Aronori Lore

 I've hinted at my world of Aranor before. I've done more than hint. Now, at last, I'm going to begin an earnest attempt to share it. I'll be making encyclopedic entries of lore drops, and occasional posts touching on integration with Mythras. I know what you're thinking. I've teased stuff before and didn't deliver. Only time will tell, but I'm sincerely hoping it will be different. My past modus operandi has been to have an overarching idea and piecemeal it out to establish a publishing cadence. This time I'm going to release it all as soon as it's ready. It may be more erratic, but hopefully it will be more material.

Without further ado, I give you Half-face