So I was thinking about the game I run for
@Shyft,
Sunlit Sands, and specifically the Coxati territories in the Firepeaks immediately west of Gem that I, uh, swear I'll get around to writing up one of these decades, and due to Reasons involving some backroom tracking of what strategic actions Xandia was working on I wound up thinking "hey, so, the western side of the Firepeaks that's between the Coxati territories and the Silent Crescent/
Shaipres - what's going on there and why is it apparently causing my girl Xandia so many headaches?
I posed this question to
@EarthScorpion, who promptly looked at the map and was like "well if you will pay attention to the local geography, dear Aleph, that's pretty much where damn near every thunderstorm in the Anarchy is going to get funnelled into, which means that side of the mountain range is probably going to be a punishingly steep and treacherous godforsaken warzone of murderous rivers, avalanches, shifting terrain and probably local Earth and Water elementals trying to fucking kill each other".
To which I replied "... that sounds pretty metal actually, wanna storyboard some ideas with me?"
And then this happened.
Between the squabbling valleys of the mountainous Coxati nations and the vast, thick jungles of the Silent Crescent stretch the southern ranges of the Firepeaks, titanic mountains born of the volcanic blood that flows through Creation's fiery heart. This far south, their ice-capped peaks near scrape the vault of heaven; snow falls always on their highest summits despite the sweltering heat below, and a man must climb and climb and climb for miles to even reach the lowest of the perilous trails that cross them.
Such a man would need to be brave indeed, for the western slopes of the Firepeaks are a shifting, storm-wracked landscape caught in constant turmoil. These are the Thunderslate Mountains, and they host an elemental war that has been raging for an Age. Gods have little say over their cousins in this region, many of them usurped, enslaved or simply ignored. Still, Heaven does not intervene. The surging elemental energies of the Thunderslates form a valuable bulwark against Chaos, and many wyldstorms break against the clashing vital energies of Creation, sparing areas further from the edge of the world.
So intense are the dragon lines in the Thunderslates - so fierce the storms and rivers, so tall the mountains with their molten hearts, so thick and tangled the forested slopes - that jade deposits can be found from the top of frozen peaks to the foot of the jungle slopes. Blue, black, white, green and red - all five colours form from snarled dragon lines and pooling energy in the Thunderslates, and for lack of ability to mine in the tumultuous conditions, most remains in the nodes it forms in until erosion uncovers them. When they're found, some are crudely worked into weapons or traded to the Coxati or to Shaipres by the slatefolk. More often, discovered nodes are seized by the elemental courts, to become artefacts wielded against each other. But even jade deposits close to the surface often go for months or years without being exposed, and the majority lie buried and undiscovered; a bounty to build an empire upon should anyone find a way to claim them.
The inhabitants of this mountainous battleground think little of the lowlands they look out over, but the products of their fighting flow downstream to enrich great Shaipres and the Silent Crescent. In turn, the heights are viewed with fear and trepidation by those below who hear the distant sounds of violence echo down on nights when the wind blows from the peaks. Few would dare the ascent to trespass on a bitter conflict that has raged for centuries with no sign of ever stopping.
Still...
To try to describe the Thunderslate Mountains in fixed or stable terms would be pointless. The geography is ever-shifting, not through the mutability of the Wyld but from the sheer assault of the elements duelling over it. Amidst the chaos of this war-torn landscape are soaring basalt cliffs and vast granite batholiths, fragile pumice slopes and deep quartz-studded chasms. Caves and caverns run deep through the mountains, some of them breaking into ancient lava tubes long since cut off from magma - and others merely awaiting an eruption to be filled again.
Above ground, water rakes the landscape without remorse. Rivers spill down from snow-capped peaks and cut troughs and valleys through stony bluffs. Fast-flowing streams slice their way down steep slopes and grind through volcanic sills; waterfalls leap from arresting heights and plummet down to gouge fathomless plunge pools where they land. Every river at this altitude is a killer; some are freezing things fed by meltwater, others boil as they surface from coursing close to lava. The currents are swift and treacherous, the riverbeds rocky and unforgiving - it is easy to drown and impossible to sail. Even fording shallow streams can come with risks. Great lakes appear here and there; some are flooded valleys, others form on plateaus of flatter ground. None are stable forever. Some last a month, some a year, some a decade or a century - but eventually the land will shift, a dam will burst or a levee break, and millions of tonnes of water will go crashing downstream in a devastating flash flood. When a lake disappears overnight or a landslide blocks a valley mouth and starts to flood it, the natives have learned not to linger. Kick the ground, spit in the water and move on to find somewhere new. It's the only way to survive.
There are a few exceptions to the impermanence of the map; rare points of consistent order that stand out among the chaos. The great strongholds of the elemental courts are too well-fortified to change, but between them, scattered irregularly along the thousand-mile expanse of the Thunderslates, are the last remnants of an ancient past. Built of white stone that muck and mire slide off like glass, twenty one ancient cities remain in varying degrees of ruin, enormous fortress-structures that jut out of the landscape like pillars. They alone are immune to the wrath of the elements; earthquakes and landslides fail to shift them, raging rivers find no purchase to erode their bases. Volcanic eruptions part against their bulk and the old magics lingering in their walls earth the power of stampeding sky-spirits. Though their skeletons have stood the test of time, little remains of what these relics of a bygone age once held; their rooms and halls are often more cave than building. Still, some natives have made homes of them, and they are the only permanent settlements in a fickle and capricious region - a safety afforded to few and viciously fought over.
Few who live there know it, but a fortune flows from the Thunderslates. Every year, thousands of tonnes of rock and silt are swept downriver, piling up against dams until they break or breach. This rich bounty of volcanic soil, along with fragments of jade, precious metals and gems that trepanners and river-dredgers vie fiercely for, is ferried along countless rivers into the trackless depths of the Silent Crescent. Much flows into Shaipres and feeds abundant crop yields along the Shai. So high are the mountains and so furious the battering of rain and storm that the mineral wealth carried along by the water seems limitless. The bodies of slain elementals dissolving into the rivers to be ferried downstream as essence only adds to nature's bounty. The water carried off the peaks isn't the end of the wealth to be found in the Thunderslates, either. Gems glimmer in the depths of volcanic rock, and it's known that trepanners on the lower slopes will sometimes find diamonds or other jewels washed downstream after the flooding of a chasm or the collapse of a dam. Far more remain in the chasms and caves - though most would say that to mine them in an environment at war with itself is a fool's errand.
The geography of the Thunderslate Mountains is a battlefield. The armies are the elemental courts, and in emulation of the landscape, Earth and Water have long been at war on these slopes. The Earth courts rule the buried caverns and rocky strongholds, solid garrisons that are rarely breached. They sally out from their impregnable fortresses when their foes are weak and fall back to them when pressed; stoic soldiers with impeccable discipline under the conservative rule of their king. They dam rivers and drain lakes, drag streams underground and stifle springs. Had they their way, no water would flow down their slopes unchecked or unchanneled. The courts of Water wax and wane across the year; strongest in Air and Water when the ice caps on the peaks are at their thickest and the rivers swell with snowmelt. In these months they rule the landscape, conquering and claiming territory and washing away all opposition. Earth and Wood bring hotter weather and force them back, retreating to the widest rivers, the highest waterfalls and the icy palaces they hold atop dormant peaks.
Ancient and sullen, Lord Kaliodhunga remembers when these slopes were but a gentle rise, where many great and beautiful cities sat beside the bountiful rivers. Back in those days he swore an oath etched into his very bones to care for this land, and he holds to it even knowing in his moments of black depression that the land is long gone. He is a junior censor in the South, but everyone he reports to knows that the divine courts are scattered and this is a nesting ground of elementals. He holds his title because no one wants to risk his ire in trying to usurp him - and no one wants responsibility for this fractured land.
An arch-conservative, the dragon brings his crushing might to bear both on the upstarts of the water elementals who despoil the land and on any god or demon who thinks to rule here. He is fortified in this by his brood; hulking pink salt markhors born to smite evil and the Dead, stone eagles whose feathers are as sharp as the flecks of stone cast up by lightning, and the throne lizards born from the immutable old cities. He does not want to admit that the ranks of his forces are long-depleted by water's attrition, and he has driven young and ambitious elementals away who now lurk on the edges of his domain, building up their cults - especially among the warriors of Kulharid of the many axes.
He holds firm to his oaths, and thus there are secret rites and ways that the inhabitants of this land may call on him or his servants. He holds this practice with barely veiled disdain, for the cave-dwelling wretches and city-squatting fools are nothing like the brilliant humans he once loved, but he answers their pleas and holds to the exact letter of the old ways. To do otherwise would be to abandon that which he loved, and he will never do it.
Lord Kaliodhunga can take the form of any creature that walks, crawls or slithers upon the Thunderslate Mountains, though he can mimic only their shape. Whether in a borrowed skin or his native form, a hulking rough-featured dragon with eight goat-like horns, his colour is always a dull grey that sparkles like greywracke from the right angle. His shaggy mane is a shocking contrast to that, a bright pale pink like that of rocksalt.
Centuries ago, in the early days of the Scarlet Realm, Sabrang Rivercarver was born a simple raindancer; a sweet-faced little sylph who danced under the rainbows thrown by sunlight shining through spray, as ephemeral and beautiful as the colours seen through the mist. Alone of her kin, she did not die as monsoon season ended, but found her way by chance to the base of the great Dashi Falls, where a great river cascades three thousand feet down onto rock and fills the lower valley with mist. Here she danced the year round under eternal rainbows, waiting for the wet season to come again.
It did, just as expected. But this time, the rains never stopped. It rained and rained and rained without end, and Sabrang Raindancer grew strong. The rain hammered the mountains, cut rivers and valleys through rock, and as lesser raindancers were born - and all manner of water elementals along with them - she took charge and set them to order as they dominated the land. Her power is no longer the rain alone, it is the water cycle from rain to river and everything between.
Sabrang Rivercutter, as she is nowadays known, is sweet-faced still, but with an empress's haughty arrogance. She mimics the styles of the nobility of Shaipres, but her upstart nature makes itself clear in her modifications to their formal garb and her aristocratic speech cannot disguise her obstinate, disrespectful nature. Her hair is long and wreathed in rainbows, tied at its end with a fallen comet that she uses as a meteor hammer, while her nails are twice as long as her fingers, thin torrents of water that can cut through stone. When she wishes, she can stand high enough that her head brushes the clouds and crowns her in rainbows, her nails long enough to carve whole new valleys out of the mountain slopes. More often, she stands tall and arrogant on heels of ice, her blue eyes looking down imperiously at her court of elementals and demanding domination of the Thunderslates without regard for collateral or compromise.
Her favourites among her court are the lesser raindancers who form her honour guard, their hair tied high by rainbow ribbons, their claws shorter but no less sharp than their princess's. She remembers her origins fondly, and sometimes misses the simpler days of dancing for the colours shining through the mist. Should a human who shone like the sun visit her court, they would find her friendly and welcoming, delighted by a living light to cast rainbows through her spray.
At least, that is, until they tried to leave.
Once a year, the rains come. It sounds innocuous. It isn't.
The storms that whip the mountains never really stop, but monsoon season on the Thunderslates is the time of year everyone dreads. The seasonal winds drive rainclouds up from the ocean and onto the coast, where they pile up into miles-high thunderheads that sweep over the Silent Crescent and crash against the impassable wall of the mountains. Crushed by the winds against stone bulwarks, the water is wrung from them like a twisted rag and poured down in torrents on the slopes below. Landslides and avalanches careen down steep slopes, crushing everything in their path. Lakes and caverns flood, canyons drain as dams are breached. Rivers break their banks and run wild, their courses sometimes changing by hundreds of miles. Lightning walks blinding fingers across the mountainsides and gale-force winds seek to flatten anything standing upright.
The herders of these cataclysmic storms are the
monsoon elephants, and the Thunderslates are their mating grounds. Few of these rampaging elementals of air die pulling their clouds up to the mountains, driven all the way by the strong winds off the Southwestern sea, and so they arrive in great herds at the western Firepeaks with thunderous trumpeting and rumbling tread. The females are bad enough, tasking themselves with trampling every drop of moisture from their clouds, heedless of how it washes away the land below. The bulls are a far more pressing threat as they compete in sky-rending clashes for the right to mate, or seek trophies to woo females to their side. Even a fortress of thick stone walls and earthen bulwarks that can stand against the warring earth and water courts can do little against a billowing pachyderm whose tusks are lightning and whose footsteps shed downpours falling on it from above in the grip of musth, certain there is something of value within.
Monsoon season is the only time of year the war between Earth and Water stops. Sometimes the two unite to fight a holding action against the tyranny of the visiting Air elementals, more often they exist in an uneasy truce as each defends their own territory. Mortals shelter where they can and flee where they can't as rampaging bulls slash the land with lightning or set off landslides under the impact of their crashing bulk. In the aftermath, the elephants and their lesser attendants retreat to the mountaintops to rest and bathe in the snow before starting the long drifting journey back to the sea, leaving a scarred and sundered landscape behind them.
Some don't. Young bulls who lose the mating battles often turn their attention to mortals as a compensation prize, and more than one tribe of elephant-headed thunderfolk live on the Thunderslate slopes. These descendants of the devastating annual stampedes are widely loathed by the victims of their elemental kin, but even the watered-down blood of a monsoon elephant is mighty, and thunderfolk are no easy prey for revenge. Sometimes these affairs last through the generations, and the annual visit for some elephants is as much to visit their descendants as to herd the clouds and mate. A bull that tarries too long with their mortal family should beware though, for if they miss the winds that buoy them back over the ocean, they will be stranded through the year. This can be a death sentence for the elemental as the lack of warm, humid air through the colder months withers them away. Only prayer from a devoted cult can save them from a slow doom - and so do many tribes of thunderfolk acquire new patrons.
Despite the endless elemental war, humans survive in the Thunderslates. It is not a place of industry or settled agriculture; no farm, field or forge is sturdy enough to survive a landscape constantly being washed away. Literacy is scarce to non-existent, and extensive oral traditions keep the histories and pass down knowledge from generation to generation. Slatefolk are a hardy people by necessity; survival here balances on the edge of a knife, and every group has found different ways to keep themselves safe and avoid being washed away. Some join in the battle of the elementals, siding with Earth or Water and fighting fiercely against their chosen side's foes. Most concentrate on their own survival and leave the spirits to fight out their wars among themselves.
While there are few universal traits in the scattered bands and settlements spread out across more than a thousand kilometres of mountainside, some consistencies hold true. Slatefolk can be broadly divided into two categories; uplanders live on the high slopes towards the mountain peaks, subjected to freezing temperatures, fierce winds and tumultuous weather. Canyonfolk spend their lives on the lower slopes closer to Shaipres and the Silent Crescent, caught in the thick of a changing landscape full of treacherous rivers and chasms. Relationships between the two broad groups depend wholly on the subculture. Some groups have forged relatively strong links of trade and cooperation between the upper and lower altitudes; others hold dismissive or hostile attitudes towards their neighbours, while yet more know next to nothing of their peers' existence.
Subcultures within the two altitudes of the Thunderslates can vary dramatically in their way of life and the methods they have adopted to survive their hostile environment. Some examples follow, but many more exist alongside and around them:
- The puna tribes are kin to the westernmost Coxati states; nomadic llama-herders who migrate across the high-altitude puna grasslands that lie just below the permafrost. No small presence of elemental blood runs through their veins, and they bury the bones of their livestock in the meadows to earn the favour of the travelling Wood elemental courts who hold the soil together and keep the grass growing quickly. Coxati mountain lords sometimes hire them as disreputable mercenaries, though only ever with distaste and at arm's length - while the Coxati belief that the puna tribes are made up of criminals and outcasts who fled the more settled valleys is an uncharitable stereotype, their periodic raiding of valleyfolk during harsh seasons does little to help mend fences between the two peoples.
- Deep within the mountains, the covenant clans hold to pacts with the Earth courts - some ancient contracts that date back to a lost Age, some negotiated by brave or desperate heroes. Few are wholly confined to the caves; rather they use the earth spirits' protection as a safe refuge from which to venture out in search of resources. Those with more recent pacts still have the look of normal men, but the older clans have become cavefolk who have adapted to their subterranean homes with pale skin and weak eyesight, shunning the day and emerging at night to hunt or gather. While their pacts grant them safety, they come with complex bans that the clans must hold to or be expelled from the sanctuary of the caverns, and cavefolk societies are universally deeply conservative as a result.
- The vulturekin are beastmen who inhabit the very highest peaks, far above the permafrost and the monsoon clouds that batter the slopes each year. Swaddled in thick furs to keep their light-boned bodies and characteristic bald heads warm, these condorfolk and vulturekin survive by scavenging the mountains for the offpicks of large prey and occasionally trading with the nearer Coxati valleys. They avoid conflict they are ill-suited for, taking to the air whenever predators or groundfolk draw near. Their extensive knowledge of the high peak winds and the sheer altitude they live at allow them to navigate the tumultuous weather of the Thunderslates relatively safely, but knowledge grants little protection from hostile sky-spirits, and they festoon themselves with carved bone charms to slip under the notice of such beings and deflect their ire.
- Yeddim are native to the lower slopes of the Thunderslates, and the yeddimrya spend their lives herding the great beasts, living on their backs in elaborate howdahs and migrating with the weather. Fording even the swiftest rivers is no challenge to their steeds' sheer size and bulk, but they are not invincible - when monsoon season comes and the storms arrive, the yeddimrya head down into the lowlands on the eastern edge of Shaipres and sell their services there, pulling riverboats, aiding with the late-Fire harvests and doing other such menial tasks. Some would prefer to stay in safer climes year-round, but yeddim do not breed in captivity, so the herders must always return to the Thunderslates to capture and train new calves. Others are too proud to endure being looked down on as ignorant savages fit only for brute labour, and would rather die than relinquish their ancestral homeland - wild and perilous though it may be.
- Lakemen can be found in varied groups throughout the lower slopes, a mixed subculture of water shrewmen and bearfolk who live in and around the great lakes and flooded canyons of the lower Thunderslates, spear-fishing and trapping for meat and furs. They exist in uneasy tension with the Water courts they live alongside and have lower levels of elemental blood than might be expected, preferring appeasement through prayer and skirting under notice to the dangers of courting the fickle tempers of the water spirits. Though resourceful, their lifestyle is completely dependent on the lakes they occupy, and it is not uncommon for a dam to breach or a canyon to drain as the war rages. When such catastrophes strike, all the lakemen can do is kick the ground, spit in the rushing waters and move on to rebuild their lives elsewhere.
- Not all caverns are held by the earth courts, and in those that suffer annual floods, the cavedwellers are the only true farmers in the Thunderslates. Their caves are carefully chosen - damp and moist with underground streams running through them, but not prone to flooding completely. There they tend huge mushroom colonies with the quiet Wood courts, living above them where the floodwaters don't reach. Their self-sufficiency means they need never see the sun, and over the years they have become troglobitic; pallid and often blind, with sensitive antennae to navigate their pitch-black caves. Others have come to resemble the fungi they harvest, almost as much mushroom as man. They are among the most secretive subcultures of the mountains, and few above their quiet, dark homes even know of their slow and sedate existence.
All twenty one of the great ruined cities that dot the Thunderslates are used by humans, but the commonalities stop there. Three are held by the thunderfolk, who through long effort have subverted or destroyed the wards that keep sky-spirits at bay. These storm cities - two in the uplands, one among the canyons - welcome the monsoon elephants each year, and have great shrines to their glory built atop them. Their gods are long dead, and their defences remain impregnable to the earth and water courts - and those human tribes who would wish harm to the thunderbringers' kin.
Whether through barren surroundings that offer little to hunt or forage, ruined interiors choked with too much rubble to dig out or in one case lingering spell effects from the cataclysmic wars of past Ages, eight of the great cities are not suitable for long-term inhabitation. They serve instead as bunkers that the surrounding peoples take shelter in during monsoon season, and sacred neutral ground upon which no blood may be shed or rivalries pursued. Only one of the eight has seen these peace treaties broken, and the tribes that still shelter there do so uneasily, knowing that it is cursed and brings bad luck to those who step within its walls.
The remaining ten cities are all permanently settled, and from their high walls their inhabitants rule as lords of their local areas, each favoured by a surviving city-god whose powers are bolstered by prayer. Though they are spread across both altitudes of the Thunderslates, the city lords are neither uplander nor canyonfolk in culture. The ancient overgrown city gardens give them access to a constant food supply, but they have lost the ways of agriculture and are yet to fully reinvent them, letting the gardens grow wild and finding ways to eat everything they forage from them. They supplement this diet with hunting and by raiding the surrounding tribes for resources. If this often leads to their neighbours dying out, it is no matter - new targets will be driven into proximity soon enough.
- No fewer than three grandsons of the venerable monsoon elephant matriarch Billowing Nimbus have taken lovers among the Three Thunders clan, and with the strength of their sires' blood the elephant-headed thunderfolk seized one of the upland great cities forty years ago in a violent coup. Now the Three Thunder Temple boasts a great stone statue of Billowing Nimbus atop its highest tower and welcomes the herds each storm season with grand celebrations and mighty sacrifices - which they collect through raiding and pillaging throughout the rest of the year. Divisions between the three cousin-lines are starting to appear, though, and with their matriarch absent for most of the year and unable to quell their bickering, the Three Thunders may fall to infighting before their ancestor-spirits' next visit .
- A cataclysmic battle raged through the ruin now named Fellwrack in a bygone Age, and the echoes still linger. A cursed miasma pervades the citadel, and those who breathe it dream of war and festering wounds, acid mist and burning bones. Those who die within the walls rise as nightmare-wracked hungry ghosts. Many take shelter within the wards during monsoon season, preferring ill dreams to devastating storms, but even these brave souls spend their weeks of refuse counting the days until they can leave, and throw the bodies of their dead over the walls before they rise. Strangely, infants born within Fellwrack's walls are prone to developing uncanny powers over minds and dreams. Some with more avarice than sense might try to exploit such eerie blessings for ambitious ends.
- The towering structure called Highcavern stands on the steep slopes that lie just above the misty, humid expanse of the Silent Crescent. The inner bailey is flooded, and shelf mushrooms cover the white stone walls; fungal beds have overtaken the old gardens and clouds of spores drift out to settle on trees and rock faces for miles around. A colony of cavedwellers owns this place; the only group of their kind to live above-ground in the entire mountain range. They farm and cultivate the mushrooms, spreading them further and further from the subterranean cavern that breached into the citadel's cellars fifteen years ago. Each year, the monsoon storms scour the land around Highcavern of the fungi that spread outward from it - and each year, they grow back faster.
- Rising above the dark waters of a deep mountain lake are the Midnight Towers, all that remains of a once-great city. Ruled by the undying sorcerer Yuvan Song, the ancient mechanisms of the city provide a measure of food and comfort - but only a little. Those who live down in the cold, dank depths of the city barely above the waterline must live on a pittance and what they can catch from the lake, but those who serve their master well live in moderate comfort in the middle layers and at the top the sorcerer and his favoured functionaries and confidents dwell. The way to advance through the levels are to excel in the exams and tests the master puts his people through, which are arbitrary and reward loyalty above all, but most in the city play along - seeking the dream of comfort or dwelling with their lord forever, their souls bound to one of his black steel automata. Yet some flee this place, dwelling on the lakeshore around, and others still plot against him, seeking the rumoured cursed blade that will be the undoing of his immortality.
Earth and Water wage war over the Thunderslates, and each year the Air spirits bring catastrophe and ruin. Between the clashing sides are caught the remainder, and the courts of Wood and Fire take diametrically different stances on their cousins' endless conflict.
The Wood courts choose neutrality. They have no great champion like Lord Kaliodhunga or Sabrang Rivercutter, and while they are far from cowardly, they avoid the wars and battles of their kin. As the tree bends to the storm without breaking, so do the Wood courts adapt themselves to the changing fortunes of their environment. They coax the forests to regrow after the monsoon lightning and howling winds shatter trunks and uproot trees. They coax grass and scrub to reclaim drained valleys and cultivate water flowers and wetland plants in newly-flooded regions. The warring courts tolerate this, for the roots of the Thunderslate flora hold the soil together and stop it from washing away altogether, a clearing of the board that neither court wishes. As the least invested in the war, the Wood courts are to a certain kind of slatefolk the most desirable spirit-allies to form pacts with - to say nothing of their ability to help keep hungry mouths fed.
The highest slopes below the snowline are cool, wet puna grass and shrublands; open plains of high-altitude grasses that hide herbs, lichens, mosses and ferns, with sedges and rushes around the rivers, lakes and streams. These areas boast a rich organic soil, and the Wood spirits of the region are generally subterranean, focusing on the deep roots of the relatively low-lying vegetation. Llama and alpaca make their homes here, along with wild foxes and cats, mountain lions and the occasional bear. Below the puna are the cloud and river yungas, a transitional band of diverse forests that range from broadleaf and evergreen alpine woodlands to ecosystems of tree ferns, orchids and mosses that grow in dense year-round mists. The yungas boast enormous biodiversity in both their fauna and their elementals, with every breed from orchid-lures to stick people represented and many sub-species of beast that only exist in narrow altitude bands or a few specific valleys.
Where the Thunderslates begin to blend into the upper reaches of Shaipres and the Silent Crescent, the rupa highland rainforests take over. Here the tropical climate is sweltering and humid, the rain ever-present and the space beneath the dense foliage full of mist and steam. Hot springs are common at this altitude, many of them dangerously near boiling, and the mountainside is divided into long, narrow valleys. Jaguar hunt chattering monkeys and lowing tapir through the canopy and on the jungle floor, and Wood spirits copy their forms to tend the thick vines, dense jungle trees and innumerable tropical flowers. Powerful things grow in the rupa; herbs, flowers and mosses that hold potent medicines and lethal poisons. The slatefolk who live among them know how to find and harvest them - but they do not share their knowledge lightly, or for free.
The courts of Fire, by contrast, have long taken on themselves the role of mediating the war and brokering peace. They cannot stop the fighting entirely, but wherever possible they arrange truces, arbitrate prisoner exchanges and even intercede directly to end particularly destructive battles by force. They attempt to rally the local courts against the rampaging sky-spirits each monsoon season, and while their attempts to stand between the two rival factions make them sometimes-enemies of both sides, their strength and honour earns them widespread (if grudging) respect.
The Fire courts' ancient territories are the high calderas and volcanic mountaintops, where smoke rises from the dormant Firepeaks and lava lakes can be found here and there at high altitude. It is an ancient insult to the spirits of ice and snow that they are kept from many of the glittering frozen palaces above the permafrost by the strength of the fire elementals that dwell nearby, unwilling to risk conflict with flame duck flocks, lava worms or the nests of larval ash grubs they keep dormant. Water, earth and fire can combine to create explosive eruptions that threaten all life in their path; mortal and spirit alike are prey to the superheated buzzing swarms that ride the burning clouds when the wasp grubs moult and release a lahars or a pyroclastic surge. The Fire courts' self-appointed duty is to quell the violence of the mountain hearts and prevent the pressure within from ever building to the point of such destruction - but to stop eruptions entirely would be to guarantee them in the long term, and so they carefully vent internal gases and allow the occasional rumbling effusive lava flow.
At lower altitudes, fire spirits are most often found around geothermal activity, where they serve a less essential role in securing the safety of the region and a more political one in mediating between their earth and water cousins. Many Fire-aspected demesnes among the canyons are neutral ground where truces are held between the spirits, overseen by oni that hold to their oaths of honour and discipline. Not all of their kin have sworn fealty to the Fire courts, though, and some are disreputable thugs, indolent drunks or passionate revellers who carouse around hot springs or geysers and raid nearby settlements to sate their prodigious appetites for meat and alcohol. It is not unknown for slatefolk to find sharp-fanged, grinning red-skinned women or muscular ash-horned men relaxing in brightly coloured pools too hot for a mortal to touch without the flesh sloughing from their hand. If their gourds and bellies are full, they may even make wagers with mortals who stumble across them. Gamblers should beware of playing too well, however - should an oni lose, the odds between waving the mortal off with their winnings or devouring them often come down to how hot their temper runs.
High in the southern Thunderslates, on an uninhabited peak that looms head and shoulders above even its mighty neighbours, a quiet fire burns. Ancient beyond reckoning, the pillar of flame stretches three miles into the sky and burns so furiously that none save those born of fire themselves dare approach it. Huge swarms of flame butterflies circle it in lazy orbits, and need fires spit from its incandescent heart; a pocket of green phlogiston that howls with the rage of the original Great Garda.
This is the home of the garda bird Arsino, whom other gardas shun. It is an unnatural being; the result of a forced merging between two garda birds who did not wish it. The being responsible was named Kalathais, an ancient Dragon King deep within the Silent Crescent who wished to study the immortality, fusion and division of the garda birds in hopes of creating more of its own kind. Arsino's first years were spent in the living stone cells of Manath Kule, subject to intensive experimentation and study from its inhuman captor.
Some might have gone mad, or been traumatised beyond recovery. But Arsino hatched a blank slate, with feathers of Dragon King gold among its flaming feathers, and instead came to mimic its creator's clinical obsessions and take up its own strange studies. When it left Manuth Kule as the Shogunate began its slow decline, it did so armed with the arts of sorcery, and when it settled in the Thunderslates it was to pursue ambitious occult ends. Around the quiet fire called Sunset Spear lie hundreds of broken eggshells - eggs of basalt and obsidian, of ruby and red jade, of gold and steel and a hundred more materials beside. Rather than unity and combination back to the original Great Garda, Arsino seeks instead to bear young through division, hatching a new generation of garda birds that take after itself in nature. It has not yet succeeded, but its efforts have created other unique and powerful fire elementals that it counts as its foremost servants. The warring of the other courts disturbs the delicate balance of energies in its volcano-nests, and so from time to time it descends to rally the Fire courts to mediate between them - yet the tumultuous conflict also keeps Heaven's eyes turned away from the region, and so it never interferes decisively enough to end the war for good.
In manner, Arsino is cryptic and rarely seen, not given to explaining itself and concerned largely with its experiments and the brooding of new eggs. Twice it has appeared in its phoenix form to intervene in battles between Sabrang and Kaliodhunga, but only once has it spread its wings against the monsoon elephants, a century ago when the storms raged so violently as to reach even the lofty peak of Sunset Spear. If it had its way, the Thunderslates would stay turbulent enough to deter the gaze of outsiders yet stable enough for its nest. Any force that perturbs the balance of the region too far will draw it out - and yet a canny and powerful sorcerer might find a patron or ally in its obsessive quest to reproduce.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
