Daztur
Hero
Hmmmmm, thinking it over another reason for keeping the hexes small is that unless the hexes are quite small the logistics of humans travelling into the Kingswood becomes almost impossible…
Now that’s a challenge. I was about to write a post about how the Grey Mountains function as a rain shadow when I got to thinking.
I searched the compilation for “rain” and the only mentions of it were talk about erosion, big jars to collect rainwater or talk about how rarely it rains in some place. Big jars to catch rainwater, how rarely it rains…
With Morning Comes Mistfall
In the Shrouded Lands it rains but once a year.
In the spring the black rainclouds known as the Drow’s Tears come boiling out of the south, quenching the fires of the Burning Lands for a time, awakening the frogs and giving rise to enough flowers to blanket that harsh land.
From there they blow north, often missing the thirsty sands of the Singing Wastes that ring Jahur entirely. Their rain pounds into the Keening Sea, flooding the Gardens of the Sea (29.15) and only the work of the dead who man the Waterworks keep the City of Shuttered Windows from sinking into the mire. From there, the Drow’s Tears water the lands of the Westmarches, Thring, the Freeholds and the Kingswood before being torn to pieces on the teeth of the Grey Mountains.
I travelled north to the Hermit of the Crag (09.01), gathering wyrmroot (10.01) as I walked, to ask him why it rains but once a year. After bedding down next the grizzled cow I had heard so much about, he called me to him to watch the morning mistfall from the crag.
It was a sight I shall never forget. The whole world was bathed in white from horizon to horizon. Only the peaks of the great mountains that ring the Giant’s Lake (07.01) rising above the mist reminded me that the world lay shrouded beneath me and that I and the hermit had not been cast into an astral sea. Slowly, slowly, the morning sun drove back the mists from the valleys that it had conquered during the night, the white pouring down the peaks in a hundred silky torrents leaving behind nothing but wet leaves and dewy grass.
After I asked him my question he turned to me with a senile grin and told me the story about how the Queen Sinister, who once had ruled at the left hand of the Bloodied King (29.07), cried as she bid farewell to her husband as she prepared to leave with the rest of the unseelie elves into the south after the sundering of the elven court, while only a single tear fell from the king’s eyes.
Such a torrent of tears fell from the eyes of the elf queen that her king jerked away from her, lest his robes be stained by her tears. Then her sadness was replaced with wrath and she strode out of the elven Holt, cursing the whole land that even as the Bloodied King had shed but a single tear, so should all of the Shrouded Lands feel rain but once a year.
It was the same story that I’d been told a thousand times before and I knew every word from the description of the queen’s dark beauty to how her gaze fell on the Rockery (31.07) and the rage in her heart was stilled so that the Pirate Kings were exempted from her curse so that even today rain falls freely from the clouds that bear the castles of the storm giants.
Having learned nothing, I set off to the south, my feet crunching on the bone meal that paves the White Road (26.13). I sought an audience with the Matriarch herself, the very bride of Alberon, to ask her why it rains but once a year. She granted it and told me that it was a miracle of Alberon to remind his children of the bounty of the fresh waters of the Keening Sea and to punish those who obeyed him not by leaving their lands in the hand of eternal drought.
Perhaps the Matriarch should have told that to a thousand glacier-fed streams that flow from the north or to the elves whose land is well-watered by the great geyser that bursts from the ground beside their Holt and waters the entire Kingswood with its spray or to the men of Thring who farm the lands along the River of Crystal Waters or to dwarves and orcs of the Grey Mountains whose lands are so thick with clouds that the trees extend their roots waving up the air so that they may drink from them.
I had no use for pious nonsense, so I set off into the east to the Weeper’s Tower (43.08), skirting so close to the World’s Edge that I could make out winged monkeys wheeling in the thick lowland air. I asked the wife elf why it rains but once a year but I spoke too much and when the words “Drow’s Tears” crossed my lips his wet eyes flashed with anger and he bit off the words, “Is there nothing you children have not forgotten of the doom that freed the tarrasque from Bergolast (38.28)?”
In an instant, I found myself transported by the elf’s magic to the waters of the Sunless Sea and my laughter echoed through its measureless caverns for the Weeper had shown me the answer that I had sought.
Hooks:
-What affects does this strange climate have on the land?
-What is the answer? Why does it rain but once a year? The narrator seems dismissive of the old story about the Queen Sinister and seems to have another answer in mind.
-The rain awakens the frogs of the Burning Lands? What frogs?
-What exactly was (is?) a Queen Sinister?
-Flying monkeys? Of course there are flying monkeys! Tell me about them.
-Who is the narrator of this piece?
Now that’s a challenge. I was about to write a post about how the Grey Mountains function as a rain shadow when I got to thinking.
I searched the compilation for “rain” and the only mentions of it were talk about erosion, big jars to collect rainwater or talk about how rarely it rains in some place. Big jars to catch rainwater, how rarely it rains…
With Morning Comes Mistfall
In the Shrouded Lands it rains but once a year.
In the spring the black rainclouds known as the Drow’s Tears come boiling out of the south, quenching the fires of the Burning Lands for a time, awakening the frogs and giving rise to enough flowers to blanket that harsh land.
From there they blow north, often missing the thirsty sands of the Singing Wastes that ring Jahur entirely. Their rain pounds into the Keening Sea, flooding the Gardens of the Sea (29.15) and only the work of the dead who man the Waterworks keep the City of Shuttered Windows from sinking into the mire. From there, the Drow’s Tears water the lands of the Westmarches, Thring, the Freeholds and the Kingswood before being torn to pieces on the teeth of the Grey Mountains.
I travelled north to the Hermit of the Crag (09.01), gathering wyrmroot (10.01) as I walked, to ask him why it rains but once a year. After bedding down next the grizzled cow I had heard so much about, he called me to him to watch the morning mistfall from the crag.
It was a sight I shall never forget. The whole world was bathed in white from horizon to horizon. Only the peaks of the great mountains that ring the Giant’s Lake (07.01) rising above the mist reminded me that the world lay shrouded beneath me and that I and the hermit had not been cast into an astral sea. Slowly, slowly, the morning sun drove back the mists from the valleys that it had conquered during the night, the white pouring down the peaks in a hundred silky torrents leaving behind nothing but wet leaves and dewy grass.
After I asked him my question he turned to me with a senile grin and told me the story about how the Queen Sinister, who once had ruled at the left hand of the Bloodied King (29.07), cried as she bid farewell to her husband as she prepared to leave with the rest of the unseelie elves into the south after the sundering of the elven court, while only a single tear fell from the king’s eyes.
Such a torrent of tears fell from the eyes of the elf queen that her king jerked away from her, lest his robes be stained by her tears. Then her sadness was replaced with wrath and she strode out of the elven Holt, cursing the whole land that even as the Bloodied King had shed but a single tear, so should all of the Shrouded Lands feel rain but once a year.
It was the same story that I’d been told a thousand times before and I knew every word from the description of the queen’s dark beauty to how her gaze fell on the Rockery (31.07) and the rage in her heart was stilled so that the Pirate Kings were exempted from her curse so that even today rain falls freely from the clouds that bear the castles of the storm giants.
Having learned nothing, I set off to the south, my feet crunching on the bone meal that paves the White Road (26.13). I sought an audience with the Matriarch herself, the very bride of Alberon, to ask her why it rains but once a year. She granted it and told me that it was a miracle of Alberon to remind his children of the bounty of the fresh waters of the Keening Sea and to punish those who obeyed him not by leaving their lands in the hand of eternal drought.
Perhaps the Matriarch should have told that to a thousand glacier-fed streams that flow from the north or to the elves whose land is well-watered by the great geyser that bursts from the ground beside their Holt and waters the entire Kingswood with its spray or to the men of Thring who farm the lands along the River of Crystal Waters or to dwarves and orcs of the Grey Mountains whose lands are so thick with clouds that the trees extend their roots waving up the air so that they may drink from them.
I had no use for pious nonsense, so I set off into the east to the Weeper’s Tower (43.08), skirting so close to the World’s Edge that I could make out winged monkeys wheeling in the thick lowland air. I asked the wife elf why it rains but once a year but I spoke too much and when the words “Drow’s Tears” crossed my lips his wet eyes flashed with anger and he bit off the words, “Is there nothing you children have not forgotten of the doom that freed the tarrasque from Bergolast (38.28)?”
In an instant, I found myself transported by the elf’s magic to the waters of the Sunless Sea and my laughter echoed through its measureless caverns for the Weeper had shown me the answer that I had sought.
Hooks:
-What affects does this strange climate have on the land?
-What is the answer? Why does it rain but once a year? The narrator seems dismissive of the old story about the Queen Sinister and seems to have another answer in mind.
-The rain awakens the frogs of the Burning Lands? What frogs?
-What exactly was (is?) a Queen Sinister?
-Flying monkeys? Of course there are flying monkeys! Tell me about them.
-Who is the narrator of this piece?
