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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DMMo" data-source="post: 4146143" data-attributes="member: 62876">Ildur: "There is nothing that glitters in this house..."Over in the Plots & Places section of the Boards, I'm developing a PoL homebase on an island chain based on the real-world Faroe Islands. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=221782" target="_blank">Thread here.</a> Here's a thumbnail sketch:Ildur is a roughly arrowhead shaped archipelago of 18 upthrust hunks of igneous rock in the middle of precisely nowhere. It is oddly temperate, thanks to the mysterious currents of the Soulsea, and oddly green, thanks in part to the millions of seabirds that carpet the islands in guano each breeding season. Ildur is a moodily beautiful place, each island a giant slice of elaborately tiered basalt, tilted to one side and covered in green, tussocky felt. Streamer clouds, almost mannered in their perfection, encircle the mountains. Rocky cliffs, topped in arêtes and tarns, plunge into the sea, while up from the water jut massive, looming sea stacks. It rains here a lot, and waterfalls flow pretty much continuously. Some days, the only thing one can make out through the mist is the low gleam of the rills, dozens of them, snaking their way down the sides of the mountains.The coastal village of Tanavik, a small cluster of timber houses with a population of about 70, lies snugly slotted in the hollow of a massive glacial bowl, facing an equally massive ocean channel formed out of an ancient fjord. Hulking mountains shelter the channel, which funnels a roaring surf right up to the village's front edge. In choral reply, waterfalls cascade down from the high escarpment behind the village. Out in the distance loom Karis and Kellingin, the two most iconic sea stacks in the islands, known to the Venidur as "the witch" and "the giant." (As legend has it, dwarves drove the two ne'er-do-wells into the surf just as the sun came up, and they turned to stone.)The Venidur settled the islands several hundred years ago. Their icon remains the turf-roofed house. With no trees to be found (hard basalt lies too close to the surface of the soil), when the Venidur first arrived they made rock foundations in the shapes of their boats, turned the boats over on top of the rocks and then, to stabilize and insulate these makeshift houses, put sod on the hulls of the boats. All structures of more recent vintage are built out of driftwood.The very first Venidur sod-roof farmhouse still stands in Tanavik, though it has long since been converted into a claustrophobic tavern and gathering hall known as the Smoke House. Here, more than anywhere, one feels the spirit of Ildur. Though travelers are uncommon, the proprietor, old Ove, is quick to inform those who come that their coin is worthless here. "This is not a place for gold and silver," he says pointedly. "There is nothing that glitters in this house." It is in this ancient farmhouse, beneath its hulking, fire-singed beams, that our saga begins.</blockquote>

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