Orlake Pass

Géographie

The region lies between the Falwind mountains and the Ameagari mountains. The main feature of the Orlake Pass is its unique in the world floating rocks forming islands in the sky. These floating islands range in size from mere pebbles to massive Dewal long rock. The largest and most stabble islands carries on them unique ecosystems. The climate of the region is quickly changing multiple times per day. Each island has unique conditions, varying from lush wet when high enough to crash into clouds and their moistures, or dry and cold for others that can't retain water on their surface.


The islands are not forever stables and all eventually comes crashing back down to the surface. This causes the ground level to often be bombarded with massive impacts strong enough to melt the stone into glass at the point of impact. The land is riddled with craters and fissures where new islands rise back up to the sky. The ground is thus mostly looking desertic, but has in fact lots of water reaching it. This creates dangerous mud beds and temporary raging rivers.


Storms are frequent and winds extremely difficult to predict to even the most experience sailors. Tempest are fueled by the descending cold air of the Falwind meeting with warm northward winds from the Aelbarrow valley. The strong resulting winds often drifts the smaller islands north, with some observation of crash sites being discovered even up to Varsenne.

Ecosystem

Life found very unique ways to adapt to the Orlake environment. Creatures here are adaptable and sturdy. Birds and other flyers are at a great advantage on the islands. When different species have adapted wings or other flotation methods. The biology departement of the Dominion of Magic had identified over 20 000 species of birds and they had estimated to have only found two thirds at best. There exists two completely unique clades of flying animals endemic to this region. The floating sky whales (Aediscopeia) and the giant rock gliders (Geostorea). The sky whales maintains altitude by warming special gases their body produces in a giant pouch. They drift with the winds, eating vegetal derbis caught like leaves and pollen flying in the breeze. Their size seem immense, but more then 95% of their body volumes is just the gas pouch. For the truly massive creatures, we must look at the rock gliders. This clade has many varieties of species, some predators and others falling more on the prey side. What keeps them in common is their body adapted to ingest small floating stones and incorporating them into their bodies to float like the islands do. The hunter variety of this specie often roams wide around the region, hunting the cattle of the nearby farms. A few species of this clade are also very notable for blurring the line between organisms and ecosystems as they don't feed on anything and instead have a symbiotic relations with a few varieties of plants growing on their bodies and feeding nutriants to them. In exchange, these enormous beings create more stable environment for the plants then the normal floating islands and can direct themselves to keep in a maximum amount of sunlight.

Localized Phenomena

The unique anomaly allowing earth to rise in the sky has been studied throughout history by all the societies that gazed on it. Naturally, like many other inquiries into nature and magic, the Dominion was the most successful one in their attempt to pierce the mysterious veil of the effect. It is known that leylines in the area are bent in strange ways, directing magic toward the surface. Details partaining to the reason why it occurs like this or why it then manifests as levitating magic were never confirmed. Geologists were able to confirm that the Orlake pass would not exist at all without this anomaly and instead would just be mountains linking the Falwind and Ameagaris into a single chain.

Autre(s) Nom(s)

Heaven's Stairs

Sous-localisation

Amana

Organisation Dirigeante

Caïran Republic

Contested By

• Abarlelle United Kingdoms