Beastlands

Littfeld
Roll with the Punches

Allemance


The caravan has rolled through pleasant weather for days. Judging by the blue sky and the soft breeze rolling across the hills ahead? Today will be just the same. You can hear distant laughter shouted by a gaggle of wolf pups playing in the field. The noonday sun warms your face, and the smell of pine and clean soil fills your nostrils. Welcome to Allemance.

The Lupine Kingdom of Allemance (ALLaymahnse or ALLehmanse) is the Beastlands’s green heart. Its plains are framed by mountains: the northern Mantle and the southern Bêtemère. These peaks have blessed the homeland with verdant pastures in a wide river basin. In the northeast, birches and elms cast gentle shade on the region of Glasrún for hundreds of miles.

Beasts know Allemance for its open vastness. Its domain covers a third of the Beastlands, around 360,000 square miles. Arneria’s Beylik and Bat’yan rival it in size, but the reason for the kingdom’s reputation is obvious when one stands at the Louvain Peninsula’s edge and takes in the pastoral expanse of farmland on the horizon.

The Allemagnian (or “Alley”) north has mild summers and long autumns, while the wineries in the south enjoy warm days well into October. Most towns see snow at least once a season, and occasional squalls drop on Alley northerners.

Almost 7 and a quarter million people reside in Allemance. Equines favor its open space and find peaceful work on angus farmlands. Bovine farmers live on fields and ranches passed down through countless generations. Canines, and principally wolves, are Allemance’s most common species. A wolf queen sits on its throne in the capital city of Louvain and they also make up most of its nobility.

Louvain
The road to Louvain climbs the stark cliff of a peninsula overlooking Allemance. The city stands at the cliff’s edge, and at the world’s center. People of every species live and work on its crowded streets, plying their craft in stylish boutiques and open-air bazaars. At the precipice, Louvain Palace is a towering symbol of the monarchy’s enduring legacy.

Patrie
Neat rows of terrace coffee farms surround the road into the valley. The stones in the road are new, especially compared to the well-loved trade routes they branch from. The city ahead is like a great wheel, with each of its spokes leading to the heart of the teeming urban center. A divine blueprint transformed this Broken World ruin into a home for the brethren.

Oria
The icy wind bites at you through four layers of wool. An expanse of gray mountains and white snow frame the aurora’s colorful ripples in the night sky. The lodge house ahead offers the promise of comfort and good company, safe from the mournful wind’s howling. Welcome to Oria. The Mantle’s frigid peaks stretch across the northern horizon of Allemance, a natural border spanning hundreds of miles. The houses of the alpine Beast World lie beyond these imposing cliffs. Harsh winters make for a hard life in the homeland of elk and bears. Comfort requires ingenuity and cooperation, but delvers who brave the snow will see a batko’s silhouette inviting them into the lodge.

Three and a half million beasts and brethren call themselves Orians. It’s a tough place with tougher inhabitants. 240,000 square miles lie north of the Mantle, but much of the terrain is impassable mountains. Only the Oric people have conquered these peaks, even digging a sixty-mile tunnel through the central Grensa mountains.

Jegervalt
Unless a crew fancies three weeks of inching along narrow, icy ledges in the Grensa mountains, the best way through Oria is the tunnel. At its west entrance, a colossal lodge house towers overhead. This is the House of Houses, the Gatehouse of Jegervalt.

Jegervalt is the largest Oric lodge house, both in size and population. Two towers flank the entrance to the tunnel, with a massive structure suspended over the arch between them. The three sections frame the tunnel’s mouth against the sheer face of Mount Roet. The stacked chambers of the two towers and skyway are spacious enough to house its twenty thousand Orians.

Vinyot
"A drum roll of fat raindrops patters against the roof ofthe wagon. The wheels jerk to a halt. You’ve arrived. You open the door to take a deep breath of salty air. Trade ships line the harbor on the horizon, with the glittering sea beyond. A dense mass of old stone buildings surrounds the dock, with a bethel’s spire pointing skyward in the west. The booming port city awaits, filled with busy foxes who talk fast and move faster. After all, there’s so much to do. Welcome to Vinyot."

The homeland of Vinyot sails fleets of trade ships to bring modern life and foreign goods throughout the world. It runs along the western and southern edges of the Beast World’s mainland, with cities at its river estuaries. Its eastern border follows the Allemagnian Bêtemère Mountains, with hilly and difficult terrain in its inland regions. Vinyot is smaller than Allemance, but its 8,000 miles of coastline has blessed it with a flourishing economy and unique identity. The climate is balmy most of the year. Sea winds carry humid weather and frequent summer rains.

5.5 million people live in Vinyot. The tradewind vulpine and human species make up most of its population. The majority of otter and ferret laetines, as well as the raccoon and possum tenebrines also call Vinyot their homeland.

Al'ar
"It’s another hot day under the sun, with nothing to dobut listen to sea birds chatter and waves clap against the ship. At long last, a mountaintop pokes up from beyond the glassy horizon you’ve been watching for weeks. The ship makes its way through a loose gathering of fishing boats with their captains sprawled out on the deck. The blazing colors of dock town banners are just beyond. Welcome to Al’ar." The Feline Isles of Al’ar are a remote archipelago of over three hundred volcanic islands. Al’ari are predominantly feline—most are cats, and the non-cats pick up some of their traits while living there. Deep green jungles and the dark blue sea give the homeland a natural beauty that is the envy of all the Beast World.

Untouched beaches and lively dock towns come to mind when the average person hears this homeland’s name. The temperature is warm year-round; the seasons are a cycle of dry sun and harsh storms. Hurricanes pass through the southern half of the archipelago in the wet season, high winds scattering the seeds of Al’ar’s fruit trees. They scatter any unprepared cats, too.

Al’ar is about 25,000 square miles in total land area (counting islands with at least one dock town). Just over one million people call themselves Al’ari, and they live along 2,600 miles of surrounding coastline. Species other than felines and humans are a tiny minority.

Arneria
A humid rainforest a thousand miles wide covers the west, teeming with life found nowhere else. In the east, burning sands are crowned by glittering mountains. The Attamek river bisects the continent, flowing out of the Bey’s Head mountains in the north, all the way to the southern Matansil Sea.

The Bat’yan and the Beylik of Arneria is one homeland with two identities. Its people are split by the geography and climate on either side of the river, but Arneria’s unity is a friendship that has stood for over a thousand years. The Bat’yan’s barangays and the bey’s subjects vowed never to take up arms again after two centuries of bloody war at the dawn of the Beast World.

A diverse blend of six million Arnerians live in the Bat’yan and Beylik. Murine mice are its emblematic species, the most common beast in both halves of Arneria. Ligonine sloths favor the Bat’yan, where they hang from dense foliage on hooked claws. Bison and desert vulpines dwell in the Beylik, where their species have lived and worked to form the caravanserai powering an economy of gem trade. Armadillos and donkeys roam the thousand-mile elevated Causeway that runs between the two sides.

Boughport
Two marble statues are all that decorate the modest dock of Boughport. They depict a mighty elk crouching to shake hands with a mouse. This monument commemorates the site of the first meeting between the people of Oria and the Beylik. The town is named after their initial writings about “great beasts whose heads have sprouted trees.” Its dock was later visited by the Orians again, to carry the rats who left their homeland for the north.

Boughport maintains a humble existence tucked away behind the Bey’s Head Mountains. The town’s strong connection to Oric culture is clear to any northerner who sees the shape of its buildings. Strannik lodge houses sail south in the summer to trade for vast quantities of the wild herbs unique to the island. These traders are received with an annual festival, treated as the direct descendents of the native rats who left more than a thousand years ago. This fragile little amalgam of a culture would be imperiled by a disruption to the traders’ journey, as they are a vital part of its food supply.

Glimmerpool
The ligonine capital of the Beast World is high in the northern Beylik. There’s no sign whatsoever that anything lies beneath this part of the Bey’s Head; the city of Glimmerpool is only accessible via the Loamlink. In the peculiar history of the ligonine species, Glimmerpool is cited as the place where the three disparate cousins met for the very first time. Despite its geography making this astoundingly unlikely, this is held as true by every ligonine.

Glimmerpool shares its name with the underground lake the city surrounds. This body of water is fed by a waterfall from the Bey’s Head mountains, continues under the cavern, and empties outside to become one of the main sources of the Attamek. The waters of the Glimmerpool are a sacred place to the ligonines, all of whom make an effort to visit the city at least once in their lives.

The stereotype of ligonines as good-natured weirdos marching to the beat of their own drum is absolutely fulfilled by this city. The architecture is a wild mishmash of every homeland’s and the armadillo-friendly streets dip and curve seemingly at random. The influence of moles’ love for tinkering and clockwork is everywhere. Most of the city is also accessible by hooks and hanging bars, to facilitate easy traversal by sloths.

Like the rest of the Loamlink, Glimmerpool is devoid of natural light. Ligonines nonetheless encourage outsiders to accompany them to the city, so long as they are prepared with a lamp and patient with the eccentricities of its people.

Harik
The god of knowledge Yttrus has few adherents among the Beast World’s mortals. The deity, whose avatar is a genderless mouse, is doomed to eternal melancholy by their perfect foreknowledge of the future. When there are no more surprises, existence itself becomes rote. Yttrus would be unknown to the beasts and brethren, were it not for their single place of worship: the Omniscient Temple in Harik.

At the birth of the Beast World, Harik was a desolate wasteland ignored by every bey. Scholars would travel to its seclusion to perform research that was unpopular with other academics. One group of these scholars used mathematics and deduction to prove that Yttrus must exist. They even calculated their most likely portfolio.

Yttrus spoke, giving them a reward for finding this spark of truth without the guidance of previous discoveries. The god gave them a relic they called the Vessel of Yttrus: a ceramic bowl inscribed in plain language with knowledge about important future events. Some believe this to be the birthplace of the Common tongue, but the Omniscient Temple keeps the purpose of the Vessel—and its location—a grave secret.

They used some of its knowledge to transform Harik into a natural paradise. They redirected mountain streams in the Bey’s Head to form the mighty Gizli river, flooding thousands of square miles with fertile soil. This was a compromise with the people of the Beast World, for keeping the Vessel of Yttrus closely among themselves.

Isla Adalar Islands
The tale is a warning to some, and a siren’s song to others.

Each year, a few Arnerian ships sail east, with the bodies of ships and sailors painted in vibrant colors. Audadian revelers voyage to the far-eastern Isla Adalar Islands, to be the first to see each sunrise. They are musicians and dancers, writers and artists, on the islands for the collective pursuit of sunblood.

Isla Adalar is a burning land of passion. Music and creation last from the moment the sun appears until its presence fades from the sky. Masterpieces are written and painted, danced and sung. None of them ever make it to the mainland. The colorful ships burn in the harbor on the day of their arrival. Those who depart for the Isla Adalar Islands stay for life.

Kavrama Mines
What’s an unmined gem worth? The bosses of the Kavrama Mines are learning. This sprawling excavation site has deteriorated from a lively and prosperous operation into a maze of empty tunnels with a skeleton crew. Entire wings are closed to head off unanswered Dungeon activity. Most miners won’t risk their lives confronting the distant, terrible roars that echo out every night.

The Kavrama Mines are operated for the bey by the esteemed Parlakaya family. These stubborn desert foxes have kept them producing precious stones for generations. They’re unwilling to evacuate the tunnels altogether, preferring to replace “disloyal” miners. Mercenaries, Vinyotian Sellswords, and even delving crews are hired as expendable stand-ins. Put simply, it hasn’t worked.

Mining mishaps, ruined tunnels, and outright theft plague Kavrama. Without intervention, the Parlakaya foxes are doomed to lose their claim forever to bandits and monsters.

Kazmak ve Küzmek
The Kazmak gem road is the chain of caravanserai that connects the Beylik half of the Causeway in the south with the mines of the north. Its intersection with the Causeway is the Sandstair, the widest descent to the ground from its heights. The Sandstair is a strategic checkpoint for the Beylik military overseen by an Aubadian mouse general named “Murad the Vast.” Murad is notorious for his fervor in enforcing the law and he has authority to forbid anyone but the bey from traversing the gem road.

Once one makes it past Murad and ventures north, the midpoint of the Kazmak is the Küzmek, an artificial aquifer river. Where these two meet is the largest of all the caravanserai cities: Kazmak ve Küzmek.

If a traveler is looking for Beylik hospitality, Kazmak ve Küzmek is the absolute pinnacle of affordable luxury. The central inn is a massive square courtyard with a hundred and one rooms. Rumor has it that it accommodates guests at a financial loss, subsidized by Bey Vartan’s personal fortune. There’s no other plausible explanation for how a guest can stay in such lush conditions for the pittance they charge.

A metropolis in the desert is only possible because of the endless water supply from the aquifer under Kazmak ve Küzmek. An incredible system of wells and gravity-powered pumps unearths the source of the Küzmek river. It pulls so much water from the earth that the river runs southeast, all the way to the east Matansil Sea.

The inn would be more than enough to justify the city of ten thousand Arnerians surrounding it. Knowledge is the other treasure drawing travelers to the middle of the desert—Broadgate University’s main campus is located in Kazmak ve Küzmek. Its hallowed halls contain the largest and most respected institution of science and magic. Here, scholars, delvers, and gem merchants walk side-by-side through the streets.

Kumluk ve Maden
The north end of the Kazmak sits in the cool shadow of the mountains. It is “The Glittering Inn,” Kumluk ve Maden. While smaller than its central counterpart on the gem road, the riches that flow from the mountains have filled the city with a dense concentration of fineries from everywhere in the world. Everything expensive can be found in Kumluk ve Maden.

At the back of the city, the Kazmak splits into a dozen mountain roads that climb up into the Bey’s Head. These have their own tiny offshoot towns formed by miners too poor to live in the caravanserai proper. They climb up into the tunnels they dig before dawn every morning, and early risers can see them lined up on the cliffside overlooking the inn, munching breakfast before a day’s work.

Land’s End
The end of the Causeway is a shallow ramp down to a quiet cliff overlooking the Matansil Sea. There is no town here, nor any grand monument. The end of the Causeway is a reminder of what the division of the bad old days accomplished for the people of Arneria: nothing.

Ghosts created by the churning and murderous machine of war gather here, and the Netherworld behind Land’s End is a haunted maelstrom. The most frequent visitors are witches, who travel here to have a nightly communion. These witches double as the quiet spot’s guardians from vandalism and desecration.

Sekiz Cliffs
Hundreds of miles of tall cliffs overlook the east side of the Attamek river in the Beylik. The harsh, hot winds of the desert are slowed by the rock face, making for a relatively calm and cool region. Dozens of peaceful villages dot the riverbanks here, populated by the People of the Morning Shadow.

Settlements in Sekiz are filled with mice known for a strange connection to magic. The gift of sorcery is more common in Sekiz than in other regions of the Beylik. This is attributed to some combination of an easy life giving one the opportunity to explore oneself, and the unknowable, fiddlesome Arcana.

Sun Bull Dunes
The hottest place in the Beast World burns in the heart of the Beylik desert. The winds whip dry sand into the face of any doomed wanderer. Sun ignites the fur in daylight and darkness freezes the night. No beast or brethren in their right mind would ever consider wandering so far from any source of water. So naturally, this is an important place in Aubadism.

Bull-headed Aubadians lower their heads and charge into the Sun Bull Dunes, carrying nothing but a warpick and morningstar. They seek a black shaft ramming into the sky, as obstinate as they are.

A pillar of black sapphire sits at the spot in the Beast World most like the sun itself. Those who reach it enter a trance of sunblood, hacking at the pillar with the weapons they carry. Aubadians who demonstrate themselves to their god return with a piece of the pillar. Everyone else fades away, leaving nothing behind but a sun-bleached skeleton to decorate the dunes for no one.

Tilkisan
Tilkisan is a beautiful Causeway city at the convergence of two tributaries of the Mavimar river. Life in Tilkisan isn’t beautiful for everyone, however. The city’s lower class lives on the Causeway’s roadside in packed, spartan homes overlooking the sprawl of Tilkisan wealth. Old mansions lie in verdant courtyards below, the homes of thousand-year old family lines whose ancestors once pleased some bey or another.

Silent dissent flashes between the faces of Tilkisan’s commoners. The wealth of travelers passing through has increased recently, as delver caravans display well-earned new wealth. The path to a better life is hope for a common beast, but bad news for a ruling class. They haven’t noticed yet.

The Causeway
The Causeway is an elevated stone road that runs for a thousand miles throughout Arneria. Its structure is a wall, a waterway, a haven from wildlife, and a bridge to the west. Entire cities exist on this monumental feat of Bat’yan and Beylik engineering.

The Causeway is the symbol of Arneria and the first thing about it that most people think of. Its western end joins Arneria with Allemance, as a 6-mile bridge across the Strait of Glass. It snakes through the Bat’yan rainforest, across the thundering Attamek river, and all the way through the Beylik desert in the east.

Monument to Collective Might
After the Attamek Wars ended in 212, beys who weren’t executed during the Blackwild Revolution combined their power to form a single Beylik. Meanwhile, Bat’yan datus were eager for an enduring symbol of peace. Both sides of the newly anointed Arneria sought a way to unite their people with collective effort.

The Causeway began construction around the end of the 200s. After decades of research into physics, magic, and logistics, the effort commenced to erect this road of lasting friendship. Every man, woman and child on the continent labored for over 60 years to make it real. By 366, the ones who drafted the original blueprints were all gone. Babies born at the start of its construction were old men and women. But a lifetime of collective tenacity had forged a bond between the Bat’yan and Beylik, and the Causeway would stand for over a thousand years.

Safe Above the Canopy
The road’s elevation varies in each region based on its purpose. Through most of the Bat’yan, The Causeway is one hundred feet high, peeking over the rainforest canopy. The top is accessible via staircases and ramps every few miles that climb up the side of the wall. Some larger towns even build cable elevators, which haul food from farmland below up to the towns on the side of the road.

The Bat’yan’s Causeway is covered in moss and foliage that covers the side of the ancient stone structure. Wide arches stretch across the horizon to allow rainforest herds to move underneath. The road bridges rivers and keeps the residents of Causeway towns safe from the predators lurking in the depths of the rainforest.

Water Highway
After crossing the waters of the Attamek, the Causeway drives through the southern desert of the Beylik. Here, it serves a crucial role in delivering water to towns in the south and central regions of the homeland. Without the Causeway, much more of the Beylik would be uninhabitable.

Within the stone columns of the structure, water is pumped from aquifers deep beneath the sands. It’s forced upward into an aqueduct made of white stone, constructed on a shady level underneath the main road. This engineered river runs all through the Beylik, replenished whenever the Causeway passes through a major underground source of water.

Cities of the Road
Settlements of every size are alongside wider stretches on the road. Every few miles, a cluster of houses forms a village around one of the Causeway’s stairways to the ground. Some of them never touch the ground at all, sustaining themselves with traded goods and complex hanging gardens. The Causeway is never a lonely walk.

A few locations on the Causeway’s structure support sprawling cities. The road splits into a ring that surrounds farmland, and the roadside is packed with structures. They take up every inch of allowed space, and angled wooden supports allow them to dangle past the edge of the stone wall. Buildings also scatter out under the structure and everywhere in between.

Causeway Culture
The thousand miles of road are how the Bat’yan and Beylik mix. The cultures blend on the road; some desert towns resemble barangays and some aghas oversee villages under rainforest canopy. The border of the Attamek isn’t as strict as it once was, and the two peoples are integrating more quickly than ever since the Pilgrimage.

The Causeway makes transit through Arneria possible for commoners who couldn’t make the journey otherwise. This freedom and mobility has made the towns and cities around the Causeway a third distinct culture from the rest of the Bat’yan and Beylik.

Arnerians on the Causeway have more interac�tions with Allemagnians and other foreigners. This worldly influence is distinguishes them from anyone from a Küzmek caravanserai or a barangay deep in the forest.

Pirhouanism in Arneria
A temple of thick stone built to last an eternity is the bethel of the Causeway and the lands below. Within these hallowed places, made of the same materials as their beloved sky-road, the people of Arneria pray diligently for guidance from their goddess. Rather than a place for chatter and congregation, the Arnerian bethel is a solemn hall of contemplation and rest after days of hard work.

Arnerian Pirhouanism emphasizes discipline and achievement over ease and pleasure. The Arnerian work ethic is both the cause and effect of these religious tenets. Here, Pirhoua is the goddess of discipline, order, and the pursuit of excellence.

Compared to other homelands, the divine charges of Pirhoua’s portfolio are more informed by power and state. The church of the Beast Mother is a useful way to manage the conflicts and friction that can arise from sharing a homeland between two disparate cultures. This straightening-out effort can create its own friction, however. While few would admit it openly, Arnerians bristle at the arduous labor of their religious duties.

The First Divine Charge: Service. Even before the construction of its thousand-mile Causeway, the people of Arneria were bringing fertile mulch from the rainforest and using it to enrich the sandy soil of its desert. Pirhouanism adopted this practice as a moral principle. A merciful world is one where deadly extremes are made into something beautiful and liveable. To achieve this end, one must be willing to sacrifice important things in service to their fellow beasts and brethren.

Arnerian Pirhouans strive to give the best service possible to one another. Arnerian clerics find serenity and a fulfillment by giving their best effort. They hone their own skills to the sharpest point they can be.

The Second Divine Charge: Unity. For an Arnerian, the Pirhouan ideal of community is applied to a much broader scope. To cooperate with one’s peers is the beginning of an Arnerian’s ideals, but this mindset also asks, what is best for my homeland? The lesson that many hands make great works begins from birth. Arnerians call themselves a “united people” with fiery pride, knowing they are pleasing the Beast Mother.

The Causeway is the ultimate expression of this charge. It stands as an ever present monument to the idea that the achievements of cooperation border on supernatural. This belief has also protected the people from the bey at certain points in history. Past rulers annoyed with the check of their opposite have flirted with the idea of establishing hard lines between the two sides of Arneria, but the risk of acting against the popular Pirhouan church has kept them in line.

The Third Divine Charge: Order. The third Divine Charge for an Arnerian Pirhouan is to strive for blessed serenity in life. Arnerian clerics teach children and adults that an orderly society is one where mercy and community can flourish. If all the beasts and brethren of Arneria pull their weight, no one needs to go hungry or forgotten.

The Sun Bull
The aforementioned bristling against the religious labor and stifling order of Pirhouanism has created a unique phenomenon of faith in the east. Friction between Arnerians and their church has ignited love for Aubade, the Sun Bull. The Bat’yan and Beylik have unusual tolerance for followers of the god of passion and self-expression. To fight the spread of his teachings would be too costly, and the bill would be paid in blood. The official attitude of the bey and raja of Arneria is that Aubadism is an alternative lifestyle, allowing good citizens a chance to blow off some steam. Never mind the occasional murders.

The Aubadian Chapel
In Arneria, the chapels of Aubade’s faithful are not required to hide. They are are open about their function, if somewhat off the beaten path. It’s common to find a chapel to the Sun Bull in any town with more than a few hundred people. Some small farming hamlets are even wholly devoted to his portfolio.

The chapels themselves are usually a tightly knit community of intense faithful. They eschew hierarchies of leadership; most understand their seat in the chapel is a place to temporarily cast off the restrictions of Arnerian society. Nonetheless, its members are usually in passionate fellowship. As an Arnerian spends time in the chapel, they almost always become fanatically loyal to the other members as much as their fire-eyed god.

Aubadian Art
As the epicenter of the Sun Bull’s scattered and disorganized chapels, Arneria is also where his followers create and perform their wild art. The practice of Aubade’s portfolio means living a hard, open, and audacious life whenever possible. The Arnerian sect of Aubadism is especially focused on performance art, preferring the chaos of noise and movement over the permanence of craft.

Music
Performing compositions by the Sun Bull’s faithful drives a voice hoarse and an instrument to its breaking point. This doesn’t always mean that their music is some abstract blast of noise. Some of the absolute masters of string music have plucked their fingers bloody with intense, captivating performances lasting 24 hours or more in the public square.

Dance
Arnerian Aubadians see the art of movement as so central to their religion that the motion of the sun and moon is considered to be the Sun Bull and Moon Wolf performing a dance of ardor for the world to see. Like everything else about them, Aubadian dancing is a heart-rending expression of raw soul, often at the cost of their bodies. The discipline of every step is flawless, as a dancer pours out their routine in sweat and tears. Their dance can also be a storm of stars colliding with the world as the performer’s spirit and body unravel for the audience.

Violence
The art of battle is the same as any other in Aubadism, and Arnerians who perform it are especially keen to combine dance with death. The blades of an eastern sunblood chaser flash like a corona across a body clad in silks. They are beautiful and vicious, and drive themselves into combat with a combination of grace and a total abandonment of safety.

Far'soro
"The city is everywhere ahead. It teems with the Bat’yanand Beylik, mice and sloths, donkeys and armadillos. The crowds are dense on the sandy-colored road, if it can even be called a road; the Causeway has widened to the size of a courtyard. Even more city cascades to the ground below in a zig-zag of flat rooftops. The route into the city wraps around the edge of an elliptical stadium big enough for ten thousand people.The Sapphire Palace crowns the city, tall enough to tower over the top of the Causeway. Its majestic elevated gardens and interconnected towers are at the center of all Arneria, where the bey and raja sit together at its head."

Culture Clash
Far’soro is the city where the Bat’yan and Beylik and Causeway all combine. With the Attamek river flowing underneath into the harbor below, culture and travel flow in from four directions. A quilt of farmland watered by the Attamek surrounds the city and pushes out to the horizon to feed its people.

The people of Far’soro are the true realization of the Arnerian cultural experiment. Their demeanor is a blend of the different hard-working, big personalities of east and west. Far’soro has a flexible urban rhythm to flow with the needs of its foreign visitors. However, the bey’s influence over the city gives it a strictness and traditionalism that capitals like Louvain let go of to sprint toward the future.

Passing Through
Far’soro draws influence from the caravanserai cities that lie beyond it. Converging trade routes crowd the city with temporary visitors, foreign travelers on their way elsewhere. If people are the blood of a metropolis, then Far’soro has a hammering heartbeat.

The city’s ever-changing faces reflect changing times. Inns and infrastructure have adapted to delvers and the Dungeon, easily accommodating large caravans. Delvers are common in the city, rolling into Far’soro to connect with scouts from both sides of the road. Rare medicines are available here, blended from herbs grown only in the most specific Bat’yan conditions. Affordable jewelry and magic-infused finery rides in from the desert, offered at every street corner and open courtyard.

Ptotection of the State
Bey Vartan rules his domain from the Sapphire Palace in Far’soro, so the Beylik infantry is a common sight. Pairs of soldiers patrol the street, carrying kilij swords and dressed in the uniform of the Arnerian military. Vartan’s forces keep the streets orderly and the bey safe from anyone wishing him harm.

Beylik soldiers are ill-humored, but most won’t harass a foreigner for no reason. Visitors should be prepared to answer questions and cooperate with their requests, but run-ins with the throne’s army are less common than with Vinyotian Sellswords or Alley Crown Guard.

Arnerian General Post Office
Wherever they are, donkeys are a temporary presence. The smaller equines aren’t the heroes of storybooks, or beys, or lords. Despite all this, their lasting impact on society is deeper than most others. Donkeys share a traditional profession that has spread to become their calling in every homeland: they are the deliverybeasts.

Donkeys living on the Causeway are especially proud of this reputation. The Arnerian General Post Office is a masterpiece of efficiency, a massive square building in the middle of Far’soro. Packages within its sorting library rush through an accurate, speedy process of sorting, stamping, and sending. The postal donkeys are always innovating ways to get things where they need to go even faster. One conspiracy theory even says a secret cabal of postal donkeys was behind the Causeway itself, pulling strings for a long road on which to run mail.

More donkeys live in Far’soro than the rest of the world combined; at least, by duly registered postal address. They swarm around the General Post Office, awaiting the next pack they’ll deliver to a remote corner of the world.

Sapphire Palace
The jewel of Far’soro, and all of Arneria, is the gleaming blue and white spire of the Sapphire Palace. It sits against the Causeway, overlooking the elevated road and the metropolis below. The wide Attamek flows to its east, framing every treasure of the homeland at once.

The bey’s wives lounge in his harem within the palace when they aren’t away on missions of diplomacy or economy. Each of Vartan’s wives is more cunning and beautiful than the last, and they often wander Far’soro’s streets to greet foreigners and stay in tune with the Beast World’s song.

Far’soro is the Bat’yan and Beylik’s centerpoint, and the pressure of two homelands leaning against each other peaks within the Sapphire Palace. Bey Vartan rules Arneria alongside the voice of the Bat’yan: the mouse Raja Hiraya. Hiraya has no direct power of her own, but she is the trusted voice of the datu collective throughout the rainforest. She governs from her own wing of the Sapphire Palace, but there’s no debating it: this is the bey’s house.

Vartan and Hiraya are the latest example of an old Arnerian tradition: they hate each other. Friction between the rulers of Bat’yan and Beylik is so historically vital to the Arnerian state, it is a law. Arnerians consider it dangerous for the raja and bey to be friends, as each one checks the other. If the viziers deem the pair to be getting on too well, it is their legal duty to report it to the datus so they can replace the raja immediately.

Moon Needle
An imposing, slender tower sits at the edge of the city’s outskirts. Dramphinians filter through its surrounding gates at all hours of the day, carrying out their lady’s justice. This tower is a base of Dramphinian activity known as the Moon Needle.

The paladins of Far’soro are rarely open about what goes on within their ivory tower. Citizens whisper rumors about its true purpose when they’re sure no paladins are around to scold them for speculating. Some believe the building itself is a listening device, used by paladins to monitor thoughts from inside its hollow core. In truth, the Moon Needle is a monument to their beloved Lantern Lady, and another of the judges’ meeting places.

Probably.

Attamek Harbor
Another ingredient in the chaotic mix of life in Far’soro is the riverside harbor beneath the Sapphire Palace. Attamek Harbor is a freshwater port desert vulpines use as an alternative to sending cargo on land along the Kazmak. The unpredictable river requires caution and an experienced captain. Swift currents make a trek upriver arduous, if not perilous.

Selling goods in the Attamek Harbor Market makes fighting the river worth it, though. Foreigners crowd the harbor, eager to buy from overwhelmed fennecs selling straight out of crates on the dock. Savvy shoppers use the market to cut out the middleman, as well as procure some unsavory wares that might hide in those crates.

Rooftop City
The moving parts of Arneria’s central city require thousands of laborers. Rooftop City is named after the stair-like pattern of shanty roofs adjacent to the Causeway. Their colorful structures crowd themselves over the side of the road and down, like a waterfall emptying into the ground level below.

Life in Rooftop City is crowded, noisy, and dangerous. The packed neighborhoods offer little privacy, and sometimes it’s a fifteen-minute walk to fresh water. Yet, Far’sorian commoners hold deep affection for their own box among the pile. They trade the personal space of a home under a barangay tree for the cosmopolitan bustle of the capital.

Far’soro Grand Arena
With a running jump, one could leap from the edge of the Causeway into the back row of the Far’soro Grand Arena. (This is not recommended, but Aubadians occasionally try it anyway.) A thousand shops, storehouses, and homes cluster around the edge of the stadium, and residents charge a copper to sit on their roof to watch big events. The view probably isn’t worth the price of admission, but everyone in Far’soro becomes a spectator.

Incredible public spectacles are a weekly occurrence on the arena floor below. The pinnacle of every pop-bard’s career is their Far’soro show. Aubadian theatrical masterpieces explode in color and power across the stage to the delight of thousands, and more cautious delight of bethelkeepers worried about their safety during the actual-steel duels their shows are known for.

The locals love all of this. Their true passion, however, is for something a little more flashy…

Storied Histories League
You see it as soon as you pass the gates into Far’soro. Every business has banners in the window or above their stand, each with the name of some stranger. Maybe this is how Far’soro gangs mark their turf? Down the main road, people suddenly explode in cheers. They’re crowding around a bison who’s dressed in chain mail and a tunic so pink, it’s hard to look directly at him.

The stranger is screaming in someone’s face. It’s a shorter man, a smirking rat who’s… dressed like a colorful garbage-picker. As you edge around the still-growing crowd, you see the knife behind the rat’s back. Right in front of your eyes, the argument breaks down, and the senseless tragedy of urban gang violence plays out before your eyes. The two beat each other senseless, each one trading blows that send the other reeling. The bison roars in agony. It escalates. Knives flash. Spells ignite in the square. This is a duel to the death.

The crowd backs up to make room for the flamboyant criminals to kill each other, and you see their faces. This carnage delights the crowd; they are enraptured. After flaunting with a gesture emulated by at least fifty beasts in the crowd, the bison casts a spell that completely engulfs the rat in flames. When the victim collapses, the flames go out. He’s somehow unburned. The poor soul must have succumbed to smoke inhalation instead…The crowd bursts into another pop of cheering! A third stranger raises the murderer’s right arm. The crowd chants.

“SHL! SHL! SHL!”

A Chronicle of the Blackwild Revolution
The following are excerpts from the Journal of Narek, a Dramphinian relic. The journal chronicles the end of the Attamek Wars, which lasted nearly two hundred years in the land that would become Arneria. Narek was the first paladin to take the Oath of Revolution.

February 8, 212 The datus and beys fight for this many-named city. These fields and houses have shared so many rulers’ names in my short life. It feels foolish to call it by any single one. Tonight was the thirtieth day of conflict. I face thirty more, and then thirty more. My hands are numb.

The datu who has ruled the city for the last three years wakes up every morning to rouse his boys for another day of battle. His commanders straighten them out, stand them up, close their fingers around dull kampilans. They inspect the boys’ eyes to ensure that their weariness is properly swallowed. They chant, and the boys chant along, until there’s enough energy to send them into the fight. I am watching them fan a cookfire in a monsoon.

A month ago, the boys’ eyes were changing. They were beginning to feel secure in this place, to smile again. All their lives, the boys have fought for promises. This city is their home forever, once they defend it from the Beylik’s “vermin horde.” The last home was promised to be a temporary solution, to losing the battle for the one before that.

I tend to any boys bleeding badly enough that it wouldn’t stop without my intervention. I am a tool, sent to stop a boy’s bleeding so he can go and bleed again. This is all I’ve known. There’s a rumor of a western place where they don’t carry weapons. I hope it is real. I hope there is a better place than this.

Carrying out the will of justice leaves me with a weary heart. All of me is weary. The datu promises reinforcements are coming. The other barangays will send more boys for me to stop from bleeding. He promises.I doubt Dramphine is in this forest at all. Narek

May 1, 212 The black mass broke the air with a hiss, and it spread with a shriek, like Nature itself crying out. The sound shakes a person, it makes their fur stand on end. That shrieking blackness spread faster than a fire. The boys helped others and we all ran together. With speed and luck, we outran it until the mover-sloths could whisk us away to a place that is safe for a while.

Everyone in the barangay escaped it. They moved together, rushing between the trees in harmony. I am proud of them. They are afraid, but there was also a feeling of purpose. I felt it fill me, then it filled them even more. A cycle of purpose and empowerment. I’ve never felt anything like it.

As we ran, I saw the bey’s boys running, too. I hope they got far enough back. I hear others saying the same thing. The datu stops them when he can. Sympathy for the “vermin” will not be tolerated, but I wonder if the boys still care.

I am looking into the valley where this began. I cannot see any of the city outside the black anymore. It creeps out, and trees fall away into it. Fields vanish. The boys watch their home swallowed, perhaps forever.

More paladins are coming. We must halt whatever this is. I am ashamed that this shadow might be our doing. Have we failed Dramphine forever?

When the boys helped the others to run, so many kampilans were left behind to be taken by that creeping shadow. Remembering that makes me hopeful. Narek

May 3, 212 We have stopped the advance of the black mass. It sits still and quiet now, like a missing piece of the world. A ring around the blackness is beginning to rot. We abandoned the border to cauterize the wound. I hope that the gods will forgive us for surrendering any part of their world to that darkness.

There are over a hundred Dramphinians here now. All of the faithful of the forest came to stop the black shadow, but the paladins from the desert also arrived yesterday. There are more of them than I expected. They eat with us and sleep in our camp. Even now, I can see one of them, talking with one of the datu’s boys. Neither of them look angry.

The panic from the black space’s appearance has broken something in the datu’s soldiers. They are talking amongst themselves, ignoring their orders to congregate. There are two or three officers still trying to rouse them, but I wonder if the fire burning down this beautiful world has finally gone as far as it will go.This afternoon, after another attempt to pull the boys into a drill, one of them approached me. His eyes were not afraid, not weary. He told me something I will not write here, in case their plan goes wrong.Dramphine is here, in them and in me. Narek

October 29th, 212 I have walked the rainforest and the desert, through every village and every beylik. The clouds of doubt have lifted and I have found my purpose in all of their hearts. I walked with the beylik paladins, and with their soldiers into their cities. We showed the soldiers the hole in the world, and asked if they would still fight. We asked them if the death of the world was worth a bey’s lust to hold one more river bend. Every link of every chain has shattered.

Dramphine grants them power through me. Justice has come to this place. The Moon Wolf would wait at the door no longer. The war is over. No one will fight if it means ripping the world at its seam, and those who would force their people against each other have been brought low.

The beylik’s rats are changed by the thing in the forest, which the people call Blackwild. Their speech is slow and stammering. As they move closer to the void, their words become mixed, guttural. Unnatural. The affliction seems to calm somewhat as a rat travels further from the void.

The beys insist that the datus hatched a plot to open the Blackwild. They presented us with forged evidence of a pact with some unknown force beyond everything that exists. They say that the datus traded their city to steal the rats’ silent speech. The datus make the same accu�sation in reverse. Their evidence is also a lie, conjured proof of a wicked conspiracy to give the unnatural force their voice, in exchange for a darkness that would rid the forest of their kind forever.

Dramphine herself cannot discern the truth of this. Our magic fails to ascertain it and their words are made somehow flat, unreadable. I suspect the truth itself is lost, fallen into that horrible void forever. If that black void can hide something from even the lady’s lantern…

The sentencing is tomorrow. The warmon�gers who stoked the flames for so long will answer for it. The horrors they forced on this place will be accounted for. Her great justice, that of her people, will be done. Narek

March 5, 213 This place is united under a name. Arneria. The relationship is uneasy, but the beginning of something. The people are eating together, discussing the future of the home they’ve snatched from the ripping jaws of war. Old wounds may take generations to heal, but Dramphine’s most faithful will keep the peace for now. It is their true will, untarnished by fits of pique. They want peace, and peace is a seed that takes time and care to grow.

Pirhouans have begun to resurface in the new barangays, mice who have hidden among the people during all this violence. Their bethels have never taken hold before now—the Beast Mother does not belong in a place where her children cut each other down. We guard their keepers as they foster good faith in this newborn union. Our people are learning quickly, and I hope they can find their own way to pay penance for the lives wasted in spite of her teachings.

The wounded minds of the rats have healed, but the Blackwild still claws at them. The stammering speech and lost words persist when they are close to that unnatural place, but they are no longer in pain from it, at least. Many have already left for the west to study the affliction, and more will soon follow. The rats grieve their lost home. I grieve with them. I will visit their new homes soon.Peace will take time. But we will protect it with unbreakable will. Narek