Vangolia. The Eastern Continent.
The home of lesser giants,
Gnoll - Yeenoghu,
Minotaur,
Orc,
Feral Tiefling and zealous
Aasimar. An inhospitable landscape broken and raging with constant storms, terrible winds, earthquakes and seasonal floods and droughts. Those who claim this land as their home, are the hardiest and most brutal people of the world. The weak do not last long in this region - rogue and individual demons appear and hunt across this landscape, the remains of the original demonic hordes that poured through into the world from this region. Food here is not sweet, nor abundant, but hard won and hard fought for. Water can quickly spoil and become too salted or even poisoned by contact with the desecrated grounds of this land - the purest waters can only be found from the melting glaciers within the large mountain range of Vangolia, the
Mor'Goron Mountains, haunted and home to Bheir Hags, Yetis and even roving bands of
Goliath. Stretching far and wide amongst the regions.
GEOGRAPHY
WEATHER & SEASONS
The Continent of Vangolia is split between three different season weathers across the north, central and southern halves of the continent.
NORTHERN - ARCTIC/ TEMPERATE
Whereas the North resides to have longer days and longer nights, being closer to the northern Pole.
Still following the typical four seasons: summer, autumn, winter and spring. But this region is dominated by a series of fronts, where weather turns fine under manifesting thick decks of fog, low clouds and unceasing drizzles, or none at all. Spring and Autumn come with cold fronts, and Summer and Winter come with warm fronts. With prevailing winds being westerly, moving from west to east. Frequently changing to cold and warm fronts, where cooler air comes behind and warmer air in front. As fronts pass, they tend to leave clear skies dotted by clouds that can grow into a storm almost instantly. Thus, the winds begin to weaken and change direction as these fronts pass.
The most fascinating aspect is that in this region is the daylight extremes. During Summer, daylight hours increase dramatically, culminating in 24 hours of daylight at summer solstice. At this time, the sun, instead of rising and setting, slightly appears to move in more of a circle. Conversely, there is endless night at the winter solstice, where the sun seems more diametically opposite to the arctic regions.
In the winter, the winds become more cooled and accelerated - resulting in greater snow storms and blizzards across the lands here.
Despite this, this region always remains cold - as the seabreeze in summer brings cool air and thick frosting fog from the west.
CENTRAL - TROPICAL
As the central half of the continent is troubled by a Monsoon/ Dry Season, but much cooler and more humid than that of the tropics. During the Monsoon season, the mountains have a rain shadow on its eastern side and receives less rainfall and snow, blowing with a western wind. The western edges of the continent receives the onshore winds. Where the air is carried up the mountains and form clouds, depositing moisture. But this passes greatly over the Gammordah desert, leaving it dry and warm, raging with potential sandstorms and perpetual seasons of cyclones and sandstorms. Passing through towards the west in gathering storm, raining and raging in terrible storms as it reaches the Korognos Mountain Range. Then the dry humid air is carried and the Nepoltic Ocean becomes filled with severe winds and storms. The winds that pick up and gain speed over the Clawsedge Range, then ravage the Blightholme, spreading quick fog and clouds and vast rainfall, but also warm strong winds but as it quickly cools across the land, it rains and has present hailstorms. Then as it passess over the more northern Korognos Mountains, the winds become hot and feed further into the Nepoltic Storms.
During the Dry Season, the wind changes direction to the east. The cold Nepoltic Ocean breezes pass over the Korognos Mountain Range, and as the winter comes, there is no rainfall but a great sweeping frost in the mountains, clouded by snowstorms. Though weather seems calmer and less chaotic as it reaches over Blightholme and toward Breakfront. Though the clouds dissipate before they cover past the Gammordah Desert and offer shade from the glaring sun, the land suffers a great dry period of drought, and buffeted by blistering warm arid winds.
SOUTH - TEMPERATE
Operating under the normal four seasons cycle: the regions warm in the summer and autumn, and cool during the autumn and spring. With more daylight from the winter equinox, and less daylight from the summer equinox.
The winds blow in a western direction in summer, and in an eastern direction in winter. Resulting in quiet periods of weather during winter, with the occasional rainfall - and the more humid seasons come in the summer, as the air warms and cools across the land.
The northern region of Vangolia is known as the
Anga-Volka, a frigid cold region of steeped mountain valleys, near permanent winter and running glaciers - with snow-capped pine forests and rocky hills. Once there was a land-bridge that connected to the mainland continent to the west - but this has since crumbled and been destroyed, no longer the '
Arm of the West'. Now it's reserved as the
Cripples Stretch and the
Isles of Lame. The only province of established and ancient civilisation that has endured since the Arcanum Era, the home of the 'true Vangolians' - a deeply zealous theocratic-totalitarian society of Aasimar, humans and Dragonborn, ruled by the imperial
Tsarina and the
Dauntless Church. It's capital known as
Deogracias, a winter city formed from the ruin of an old arcane-city (
Venatorus) that has since been transformed into a pious society of numerous churches and shrines. Worshipping the Prime Deities, forming public worship and forcing all members of society to contribute to the community in order to survive the terrible regions - sacrificing freedom and liberty to ensure prosperity for the people as a whole; working in worship of a heroic being known as the
Dauntless Angel that sealed the hordes of Abyssal demons long ago in Vangolia and stopping the tide that nearly destroyed the world. Any that deny the command of the Tsarina or the Dauntless Church and excommunicated and exiled to the south, where they may face the barbarians that call it home and flee from the terrors that haunt the night.
Gammordah Desert
The central region is split between the great western desert of Gammordah, and its extended borders known as the Dismembered Sea, a dead waste of upheaved ocean floor that broke ground level after a terrible quaking disaster centuries ago that permanently slanted the land - revealing coral reef-beds, rockpools and coral forests up to the surface that have since died, baked in the sun and its earth salted and sandy. The smell of rotten kelp, dead fish and saltwater permeates the still air here; with briny pools and lakes dotted across its surface. Gammordah is a dead savannah region, with fairly divided trees and red-black sands filled with the bones of abandoned giants and dead mammoths, likened to a graveyard blanketed by an ever-present hurricane wind that travels and lifts the sands in the sky for miles around all across Vangolia. Here the roving bands of Gnolls hunt and ravage the countryside and the dunes, giving offerings to their great Demon Prince Yeenoghu - in a never-ending war with their nemesis, the Minotaurs to the East.
To the mid north-east, resides the mountainous cover of the
Mor'Goron Mountains, the little cousins compared to its northern range - where the savannah thickens to a thicker deadwood of pines and coniferous trees, weaved over a still tide of broken hills and mesa rocks, bent and leaning away from the rushing storms, thickened in mud by the rushing and violent rains that come about the region, filling into quagmires and lakes of mud and diseased sickly brown-yellow waters. The region known as
Blightholme. This region often changes and warps in strange and unpredictable ways, some reckoning it to hallucinations, to the madness whispered in the winds - but this is the work of the Minotaurs that call this region home. Their great hold is hidden deep beneath the ground, and its entrance is a mortally guarded secret - yet all have heard tale of the hidden maze city of
Ivogorot, the labyrinthine dwelling of the Minotaur, the stronghold built in honour of the Prince of Beasts, Baphomet. Some hear tale that the Minotaur stand divided, some embracing the natural ways of Melora - others still retain the honour and privilege of being subjects to their Abyssal progenitor. Here it is believed that the monsters of Vangolia are bred and born, let loose to feed upon the unwary, or so chaotic than not even the Minotaur can break them into livestock. Nevertheless ruled by a proud and long-lived line of prime kings, known as the Longhorns (Dholhirok in Minotaur), the strongest and most dangerous of their kin. Launching each autumn season a great stampeding raid across the regions, seeking to destroy their enemies and gain new riches, before returning to their home within the Underdark.
Further south, is a more open range of warmer landscapes and flood-lands, with the quakes more frequent in this region, and the land split and divided - not much vegetation grows here except for resilient and deadly flora and desperate scavenger beasts; the
Breakfront. All that is known in this area is that it is the home of many banished and divided Feral Tieflings that hunt, gather and take shelter in these regions - most suffering from a great madness, preaching to the old banished gods, worshipping in the dark, riding horrid beasts and taking what they want wherever they can. They cross into the lands of others, more so the Orcs than any other to do trade, become mercenaries, or simply survive the badlands. Most believe that they are the descendants of the fallen magocracy that crashed into the continent, and have had to fend off the wilds for hundreds of years, devolving into their primitive barbaric state.
In the southern-most portion of the land of Vangolia, are a series of flood-land valleys, steeped hill-tables and shorter mountains that seed seasonally frozen and melted glaciers across to freshwater springs into salt-lakes - a more fertile zone amongst Vangolia, warmer and less agitated, bar the great winds that kick up violent thunderstorms that bolt into these regions and its sparse woodlands. Otherwise known as
Avengirr, or more commonly known by its local Orcs,
Czeloné (Polish: Zielony for 'Green';
Che-lon-ya). Ruled by a proud Orc leader, given the title of '
Viragon', who in the past has been able to summon and control the storms to their whim and master the arts of lightning. The Orcs here carry sacred idols that they carry with them in their roving bands, that siphon the strength of their enemies and steal it for themselves to become more powerful - a black witchcraft that has kept them alive against the many threats of the land. Surrounded by the Nepoltic and Kometic Seas, the southern fringes of Czeloné hold a series of broken islands that once formed a land bridge to the southern region - devastated and destroyed by a terrible disaster centuries before; known as the "
Knife-Ear Bridge", as it connected to the elven nation of
Gwynngilliad, a home of swarming insects, dark elves and wood elves. The site of many border wars between Orcs and Elves. Both sides have both won and lost a great number of their people to this unending conflict... and both have maintained their distance when necessary, both swearing to be the last ones standing.
