Orton's Belt

"While only two moons now grace the sky, once the heavens above us must have contained many more. Legend tells us that they bashed against each other, fighting and fighting, only to obliterate themselves in the process. Leaving behind Orton's belt, that beauty of the sky. The necklace of our world." - Cramus Wrenth
There is no place on the surface of Amerielle that does not sit below Orton's Belt. The bright silver line runs across Amerielle's sky from East to West and shines with the light of a moon. The thin ring that circles the planet can be see from anywhere on the planet and is the most consistent and defining feature of the Heaven's. When one is at the centre of the world it is a thin line directly overhead, but as one travels closer to the poles the line slips toward the horizon.
While most of the Belt appears to silver and glows at night with the intensity of a moon, little specks of green jade can be seen intermixed giving the night sky a jeweled feel. Many a mage has spent a lifetime studying the constellation and trying to understand the magical properties that emanate from it and how it interacts with the rest of the sky. Those who worship Orla often draw on the power of the ring that circles to cast spells. They believe that the Belt itself provides greater power when the day is clear and when it is the only heavenly body visible. 

Legend

The Legend is that in a time before elves there were two additional moons, the realms of the sibling gods, Orla and Orton. They became enraged at one another and a bitter war broke out between them. They desired their worlds to occupy the same space above the young planet and as a result their moons bashed against one another in the sky until they were broken up into fragments. Yet even with their world in tatters they continued fighting until the rocks themselves were nothing more than little tiny stones. The story often leads that this was the birth of the Chromatic dragons and of Tiamot who descended on the land in the wake of this war. Most traditions hold that when the fragments first appeared and before they settled in a ring around the world they began to fall to the planet crushing those who lived on the surface, so Orla, seeing the destruction she begat sent her angelic elves to protect those that walked the surface. It's often this act that is seen as the creation of the High Elves. The High Elves used their angelic magic to push the debris out and shape it into a little halo that ringed the entire planet.
Orton, however, stood in the sky hurling little pieces of jagged rocks down from the sky onto his sister's subjects and so while born of both Orla and Orton it was Orton's name that stuck to the dangerous and beautiful feature that cannot, except by the contempt of familiarity be forgotten.
The war and the turmoil around its creation have often made Orton's Belt the subject of many cults. Those who focus on its creature often find themselves intertwined with stories of evil dragons and apocalyptic stories and prophecies where the ring and the magic that hold it in the sky will some day fade and the pieces of the old moons will come crashing into the planet destroying all life above the surface. There are nearly a dozen known Drow cults that foretell this as the event that allows the Drow to rise and take their rightful place over Amerielle.

Navigation & Impact

Orton's Belt drives navigation in the world as its fixed position in the sky always allows an adventurer the ability know North and South with little needed training. When the sky is covered in cloud young sailors can become immediately disoriented. It is this feature that drives most but the insane to believe they live on a circular world. Sailors in particular use it as a guide when moving across the vast open seas that separate the continents. Without this marvel in the sky, travel between the continents would have been significantly more difficult and with it, trade flows freely.

Alternative Name(s)

Orla's Halo