Aschar

This land has a terrible temper. Try not to provoke it.

— Sencha, Blight-Tracker

With mountains that rise to pierce the clouds and valleys that cut deep into the earth, Aschar is a land of extremes and contrast. It is a land that shakes with anger, split apart by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, storms of ash and smoke cloud the skies into a near-eternal murky gloom. Rare is the day when Aschar is silent, when the mountains does not shake and stone does. Despite the dangers, Aschar has much to tempt the brave and foolish - the hidden glens fed to bloating by volcanic soil, monsters to fell by blade or bolt, and the ash itself, unrivaled in its ability to bring life to almost any farmland.
For these treasures and many besides, settlers and pioneers risk the long overland journey to see Aschar for themselves and test their mettle against its anger.

Geography

Mountains so tall, they might be able to touch the sky and grasp the stars.

— Sencha, Blight-Tracker

Aschar is broadly divided into three realms - the lowlands outside its imperious mountains, the mountains themselves, and Aschar's interior - highlands and valleys nestled between mountains. Something may lie beyond Aschar, but no one has yet managed the journey to say for certain. Snow and ice cap the highest mountain peaks, while smoke rises to the skies from volcanoes across the region. Ash and smoke are everywhere in Aschar, cast into the air and carried by raging winds by frequent eruptions, painting even distant lowlands with streaks of black and grey or furious still-burning embers. Clear skies are a rare omen in Aschar, with smog and soot choking the heavens inside Aschar to a constant gloom.

To see the sun in Aschar is an ill-omen; like the eye of some vast and terrible beast, its bright and piercing light is unwelcomed by the cave-living Araeans.

Each part of Aschar is a vast domain, with much yet unexplored and unseen. Together, Aschar and the caverns bound the exist beneath it hold the promise of a whole new world, waiting to be discovered.

The Lowlands

Before Aschar's mountains rise into the air and claw at the skies, its lowlands stretch out for miles towards Kagarai and Hela. To the east and Kagarai, the lowlands are barren and broken, pockmarked by countless meteorite craters, and scarred by ancient eruptions. Ash carried from more recent blasts coats everything in a sticky, invasive film that gets everywhere and into everything - or becomes whipped up into terrifying storms of swirling, choking darkness. Rocky outcroppings litter the eastern lowlands, remnants of once towering hills and mesas now reduced to skeletal bones that reach for the sky. Mounds of rubble stand like cairns to what may in ages past have been mountains. It is a hot, desiccated land that stinks of distant ash and a whiff of sulfur. There is little to find here but death.

Little grows these Lowlands, and few beasts roam here, something that is both a blessing and a curse.

The closest path from the underworld into the eastern Lowlands is still miles from Aschar proper, and explorers who make the journey do well to prepare. It is a grueling trek with no water or food to take from the land, best done in a hurry.
Beyond thirst and hunger, the howling winds are the most common threat, carrying ash and smoke from Aschar into the lowlands or Blight from the surrounding Shrouded Lands.
Such storms can last for days before their fury is spent, and the eastern Lowlands remain blighted for weeks until the wind carries away the venom once more.

Blight-trackers who make the trip must become experts in reading the weather, able to tell when even a faint stirring will turn into a tempest, lest they get lost in one. Arrogance and carelessness have killed just as many would-be explorers as have fang, bite, or blade.

Meteorites still fall on the Aschar Lowlands frequently enough to remain a hazard; one that attracts Star-Chasers in its wake.

Far to the south and separated by miles of the impassable, blight-tainted land, the ground becomes hard with frost where Aschar's lowlands begin to meet Hela's endless tundras. As the wind blows, the borders between Aschar and Hela change, dictated by where the ash ends and the permafrost begins in earnest. Unlike the path to Kagarai, the cold borderlands of Aschar's south are home to stubborn, tenacious life. Herds of furry centipedes feed on the frost and the tough briar thorns that grow from there, while clumps of moss and lichen unevenly paint the landscape in hues of green, grey, red, and shining blue. Thin, cancerous weeds cover entire stretches of land like hook-needle fuzz. Beasts from deep within Hela escape to the Lowlands during seasons too cold for even them to survive, bringing life to the borders between the two regions... And with them, danger and opportunity.

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The Lowlands to the north are called 'the Soup' - a marshy quagmire of mud, ash, and Blight formed from the run-off by Bhaata and the Mud Ocean. Things both dead and living conglamorate in the poison, forming islands of bone, flesh, and mold. With so little solid land, every island is overgrown with ropey, slimey foliage that sup from the drink around them. In places, these islands rise above the water on tall trunks of tough, spongey fiber, often pock-marked by blooms of mold, parasitic flowers, or the nest of insects. Bulbous domes sprout here and there, shielding colonies of tiny but frenzied and colorful lifeforms that give the domes the appearance of eyes in a wild twitch.

Sunlight seldom trouble explorers in the Soup, with the skies shrouded in a mix of bright spores, dark smoke, and impenetrable swarms of buzzing insects.

More than anything, the Soup is foul - the stink is enough to deter all but the most tenacious explorers, and those who still brave it must do so in with faces wrapped and covered. Vile Mold Hives float among the boiling water here, sometimes the size of fuzzy leviathans, and the air is abuzz with chittering insects that swarm around fungal spires that jut from the water and from bloated anchors. Entire reef lines of fungi, mold, and bones break the lies of the water, even creating shallow pools above the rest of the Soup. Stilt-legged monsters stalk above the water and terrors swim beneath - without a boat, any venture into the Soup is a death sentence. The shroud of Blight regularly closes like a noose around the Soup, cutting it off from Aschar proper and flood the marshlands with venom, causing both great carnage and blooms of life that feast upon the doom.

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The Surface
Blighted and barren, the Surface of Araea is a hostile and alien world in which mankind are only visitors. There are many ways to die on the Surface, and none are pleasant. The beasts fear neither sword nor spear, while the poison of Blight shrouds entire continents with choking venom.
Were it not for the fame and fortune to be found here, mankind would likely never visit.
Read more about the Surface

Changing Seasons

The idea of seasons remains poorly understood among explorers, and their comings are as unpredictable as Aschar itself. On the Surface, with humans as newly arrived and unwanted guests, seasons are less defined by time and more by their consequences. With Aschar so vast and divided by impenetrable obstacles, it's possible for different parts of Aschar to be viewed as being in different seasons by the explorers.

Earth

Rare and precious, the seasons of Earth arrive when Aschar's anger is stilled, and its fury spent. The volcanoes of Aschar only smolder, and though no less frequent, the earthquakes that tear at the region are quiet rumblings. These seasons are the windows when expeditions are launched, projects begun, and hope for an Aschar conquered by mankind rekindled, however short-lived.
Unfortunately for such ambitions, the beasts that inhabit it become more active as the land goes dormant. Many creatures hunt, mate, or fight for domain during the respite, and explorers trade one danger for another.

Fire

When temperatures rise and the mountains thaw, Aschar changes from cold and dry to warm, humid and unpleasant. Most explorers to Aschar believe that the rising heat must come from more frequent and vicious eruptions, but it is folklore rather than fact.
In the north, the banks of Bhaata and the Mud Ocean retreat, drying to a lower point and to a thick, sludge-like consistency that is even more difficult to traverse than usual.

Scavengers, human and animal both, use the low tide to pick over whatever the receding waters reveal, from masses of mud-crawling crustaceans to old, sunken treasure.

To the South, the frozen tundra of Hela melts and briefly blooms, drawing great migrations of animals from Aschar to exploit the heat. It is a season of great change, burning away anything that can't adapt to leave place for those who can.

Dark

During the season of Dark, temperatures plunge, and Aschar freezes over. What water there is becomes trapped in thick slabs of ice, denied to all but the most persistent. In the shielded valleys, the cold is harsh - but on the exposed highlands and mountain paths, the howling winds can freeze flesh to the bone. The Mud Ocean swells during the Dark, with all the charm and viscosity of rot.
Where migrating beasts travel south towards Hela during Seasons of Fire, the reverse is true during the Dark. Animals and humans flee Hela as it becomes so cold as to freeze even hope, for these is none in the dark.

Storm

Unlike all others, the season of Storm arrives to shroud the whole world in its poisonous haze, rivaling even Aschar's anger. Thunder and lightning clash in the ashen clouds above Aschar and falling fires from the star scorch their way through it. The skies turn purple and heavy, and all but the most powerful (or hungry) beasts hide.
It is a time of disasters and furious heavens, as devastating as it is rare.

The Mountains

Past the Lowlands, the mountains of Aschar rise towards the stars and cleaves the Surface world apart as an impenetrable wall. Millenia of abuse have carved the mountains into uncertain shapes, half-melted in some places and dagger-like in others. Soft, sweeping curves make some mountains seem more like the nest crafted by some titanic beast; or more a living creature in itself than just stone. Others are shot through with honeycomb from centuries of burrowing, or gnawed by impact or fang into open wounds on the mountain sides. Here and there, the corpse of a mountain stick out between their taller kin like broken teeth, their stubby ends infested with crawling polyps and moldy fungi, long since butchered by any one of Aschar's many looming disasters. Titanic ropes of fungi stretch between mountains like moldy spiderweb, sometimes across miles of mountain, guiding both beast and voracious flora to different parts of Aschar.

Some mountains become so overgrown by the hungry flora of Aschar that they resemble vast, cancerous lumps of uncertain vegetation.

Columns of smoke rise from every part of Aschar from a multitude of volcanoes and open calderas, shrouding the sky in a sun-dimming haze. Magma burn like bright blood through stones and valleys as they spill from frequent eruptions in either sluggish streams or rush like water. They leave great trails of black stone and obsidian where they cool, or cut whole new paths through Aschar, soon filled with ash and rubble. Along with smoke, plumes of gas shimmer like oil on water as it rise through the air, with some deadly enough to kill a man before he's finished breathing it in.
In some parts of Aschar, where the mountains are stained with vivid splotches of metal, of green, yellow, or angry red, or dull crystal of black and deep purple, the flow of magma changes. It glows green, blue, and bright yellow depending on the region - something experienced prospectors both to navigate and to guide them to riches to exploit.
On occasion, the volcanoes spews forth slow-moving rivers of fire, bleeding from the core of the earth in steady exsanguination rather than instantaneous ruin. These course through the cracks and gaps between mountains before disappearing down into the earth again, or to overflow some valley below.
A few continue to burn for years or even centuries, creating lakes of bubbling fire that slowly solidify into obsidian that is inevitably shook apart by quakes, meteorites or eruptions, and the cycle - played out over aeons - continue.

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At the center of Aschar, the Mother of All Mountains tower above all else, more myth than mere mountain. Now called Mattarahkka, it is believed that she has given birth to all other mountains on the Surface by shedding parts of her form like seeds and scattering them across the world. It is believed that Mattarahkka is the single largest thing in world - save, perhaps, for the ego of those convinced they can conquer her.

Highlands

Beyond the wall of mountains, the Highlands rise behind and between the cliffs of Aschar in grand, sweeping vistas and crumbling platforms. Tortured by centuries of Aschar's fury, these highlands are tough, misshapen places, gouged by fire and mangled by tectonic shifts. Twisted patches of hardy vegetation swell on crags and over craters or connect dismembered parts of stone like lingering connective tissue. Only parts of the Highlands are stable enough to be considered safe, and these are home to lakes, pools, and even rivers. Some of those lakes are vast enough to hold small islands among them, created either by nesting beasts or discharged stone from some distant catastrophe.

'The Skyway Road' is a stretch of reasonably stable and winding Highland that twists and arcs through Aschar, connecting to many other parts of the Highlands. It is as favored by explorers as by predators who delight in fresh visitors.

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Other parts of the Highlands are little more than withered husks clinging to the side and bases of the mountains. Eroded by time and cataclysmic impact, these jagged plateaus stand out like claws over ravines filled with rubble and ash. Every so often, one eruption will be the last, and another part of the highlands will collapse to the valleys between mountains in a great avalanche of stone - taking whatever has taken to root there with it.
Most Highlands fall somewhere in between the two extremes - wounded by impact and eruption but stable enough to withstand them. Shielded from Blight by the mountains around them, these Highlands are as close to teeming with life as the Surface can be, home to all manner of crawling horrors and fetid, swarming flora. Some parts of the highlands are divided by only a stone's throw in places where the mountains crowd close together, or some spans of land have at some point been shattered in two. Vast gulfs and canyons divide others, crossed only by flight or rare strands of gargantuan vines. In these chasms, Aschar hides its valleys and ash-choked heaps.

The Valleys

Like rotting wounds cut deep into the land, the valleys and dales of Aschar are pockets of disfiguring color among the stone and ash. Even the smallest dale is an oasis for life, sheltered by the massive mountains and highlands on all sides but beyond reach of their explosive temper tantrums. In them, plants crawl up the sides of the stone or cover the bottom of the vale in pulsating, bulbous heaps. In some valleys, moss in green, rot grey, red, and ivory grow so tall that a man might disappear if he stepped foot on its surface.
Occasionally, some cataclysm changes the face of Aschar, and a dale once sheltered becomes exposed. These remnant valleys are only hardened shadows of what once was, home now only to the hardiest of its inhabitants - contorted, geometric growths of briar and thorn, rugged clinging brush, and stubbly fungi.

The Heaps
Without the sheltering shadow of dormant mountains, some valleys and chasms in Aschar become choked with ash. These heaps are drowned abysses of ash and volcanic debris, sometimes piled all the way to the edge of the Highlands. Some boil from some great stream of magma underneath, becoming vast lakes of tar.

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Flora & Fauna

The inhabitants are no kinder than the land itself, and much more hungry.

— Senchai, Blight-Tracker

Like Aschar, life in the region is vast and diverse. In the lowlands, swimming worms and long-legged stalkers make their home in the Soup, and hardy, ornery beasts like the Armara lumber through the desolate lowlands towards Kagarai. To the far, cold south, where Aschar touches the endless cold of Hela, creatures like the Pahü Worms venture to the borderlands in great, short-lived migrations. Stranger things visit Aschar from the skies. Meteorite Ticks ride the asteroids that impact with the Lowlands or crash into mountains, haunting the mountains like star-born ghouls.

But the skies of Aschar are home to more than just aliens. Among the mountain peaks and stone aeries, the region is home to a host of flying beasts who roam among the clouds of ash, from the Watchers to the small, tenacious Ash Dart.
Some of these creatures range across the whole of Aschar, as likely to appear above the foul-smelling Soup as they are in the desolate Kagarai borderlands. An equal lot have preferred habitats among Aschars spires, using the thermal draft of the many volcanoes to launch themselves skywards. It makes the skies of Aschar a dangerous place, and many predatory fliers use the near-constant cover of smog to dive down to catch unaware prey.

On the highlands, both flora and fauna find dubious sanctuary from the treacherous peaks above and the fierce competition below. Animals make nests on the highlands or clinging to their sides, overlooking the valleys and heaps beneath burrows and nests. Where there is water, vegetation like moss, bulbous tumorous trunks, and coiling vines spread across the plateaus in rare abundance, attracting thirsty animals. Very rarely, the waters themselves are populated by hard-shelled isopods and crabs, even the occasional school of fish. Other lakes and rivers are colored an inky black from Aschar's ash and breed only small, swarming things that eat the ashes in the water.

Every now and then, things from beyond the Shrouded Lands will creep or smash into Aschar. Even the terrors of Aschar cower when the creatures from those blight-riddled lands emerge, for few things that live can compete with a Mahu'ca.

Below the highlands, sheltered from the worst of Aschars fury, life grows with desperate vitality in the valleys and dales. From afar, the different streaks of fungi, moss, lichen, and teeming buds of vegetation paint the cliffs in vivid hues of color, from angry red to prismatic purple. Barbed spikes jut out among the plenty like quills, occasionally topped by a bioluminescent bulb or broad tongue-like protrusions that lap at the air.
Skittish, hydra-headed worms with thick black hides, riddled with the pockmarks of a dozen carried parasites and fungal infections, gnaw at the roots of all that abundance. They are hunted by long-jawed beetles or quick-moving tendrils of something not quite plant and not quite animal. Everywhere, the air is alight with the buzz of insects, crawling in the damp soil and scarring the vegetation like a living, squirming wound.

Every now and then, something from Atharkam beneath Aschar will find its way to the Surface, either by accident or driven by hunger.

In the valleys claimed by Ascher's furious nature, all this life is buried and drowned beneath an endless weight of ash and rubble. Tiny, tar-skinned lampreys feast on anything unfortunate enough to fall into the Heaps, while pebble-like scarabs leisurely consume any waste left behind or the ash itself. Even the volcanoes hold life - cyst-like growths more like rock or metal that gnaw on the heated stone.

Fire and Ash

The longer the climb, the more difficult the summit, the more goading the goal, the more of us will come to have a crack at it.

— Senchai, Blight-Tracker

Despite the dangers, many explorers and settlers make the long trek to Aschar. Among earthquakes and eruptions, dangerous skies, and unsteady ground, Aschar holds riches and opportunities - some of which can be found nowhere else in Araea. Most come from Kagarai, with smaller expeditions from the north and Bhaata or the south and Hela. Settlers from Kagarai and Bhaata sometimes meet and compete, while Hela is sufficiently far away that they only have to worry about each other.

Such competition, either in the north or south, is deadly enough to rival the beasts of Aschar in the number of corpses.

No matter where they are from, their reasons for coming are similar - either to exploit the sources available in Aschar and cart them back to their home or settle in Aschar's verdant valleys and highlands. Small farms cluster at the far ends of fertile dale, hoping to stay far enough away to avoid its voracious inhabitants while tilling the soil.
Hunters venture into the highlands and highlands to challenge the beasts there to claim a rich harvest of flesh, bone, carapace, and other, more exotic material for Cadaverurgy. Others forage, creeping further into Aschar's unknown land to collect what they can before retreating and doing it all over again once out of coin or food. Water, always in short supply, is a precious commodity to be captured from the lakes and rivers of Aschar's highlands.

Aschar has much to offer, though every inch of land is hard-fought to claim and to keep, both from monster and man.

Some never venture into Aschar to farm or forage but squat on gates and vital junctions to demand tribute from any who wish to pass. The notorious Gatekeepers occupies several mountain passes into Aschar, extracting wealth from the hard work of others and outright banditry when even that is insufficient. Although Aschar is vast, safe and stable ways into its interior world are still few. With every new path found, tensions blossom into another bloody skirmish for control.

Beyond food, Aschar is rich in metal and gemstones. The same eruptions that make Aschar a dangerous place have made obsidian plentiful and a popular export back out of Aschar for use in tools, weapons, jewelry, and decor. The mountains are rich with gold, copper, lead, and diamond, though mining them is a risky affair.
Most such ventures in Aschar are small, exploiting open seams on the mountains or exposed by quakes. Miners work in a hurry to extract what they can under grueling conditions, where every delay increases the danger of being buried by some eruption or avalanche, or found by Aschar's hungry inhabitants.

Others focus on the meteorites that fall on Aschar and its surrounding lowlands, all hoping beyond hope to see the glint of Starsteel but most finding more conventional metals instead.

On the muddy shores of the Soup, the town Hyx serves as a hub for miners and their mercenary guards coming from the north. Though there is no love lost between rivals and competitors, Hyx is a place of order and comradery enforced by its ruling merchant class in what most consider a doomed attempt to stem the lawless savagery often seen in Aschar. Murder and treachery had once reached such an epidemic point that Hyx was threatened by desolation and its investors by financial ruin, so had to cease. That its decree is even remotely possible comes down to the fact that the Ferrymen, experienced navigators of the Mud Ocean, threw their lot in with the merchants. Together, they control the only way in - and out - of Hyx and charge handsomely for the privilege.

Its laws are simple - claims are respected, and that death comes first to vultures.

Through trial and error, explorers found that the volcanic ash of Aschar works as an exceptionally effective fertilizer. It has become one of the most valuable exports out of Aschar, most of it going to Kagarai, Bhaata, and the Outer Shell settlements just below them, where it commands a high price.
The city of Cha'im survives by harvesting ash, tar, and pitch from the heaps through its legions of slaves and serfs. Its rulers grow fat while their workers drown in smoke and ash, making it one of the most miserable places in Aschar, made so by human hands. Bands of roving slavers from Cha'im are a growing threat to explorers and settlers, willing to kidnap anyone to reach their quota. In many places, they're no better than bandits and are treated no better. Any slaver who finds themselves trouble or even just outnumbered can expect no quarter or mercy.

Last of all, Aschar is the only path to Atharkam, an unexplored region of the depths. There, in the dark and away from the hungry sun and malignant stars, humanity hopes to find a permanent foothold in the region.