Variflame Plateau
Infusions: alkali metals & their salts.
A high-sided plateau, relatively flat on top and thousands of square miles in area, surrounded by precipitous cliffs hundreds of metres high. It is infused with strange metals and salts, and is lit here and there with eternally-burning flames in strange colours. The locals have developed their own complex and powerful magical systems, and were long holdouts again the Caracaran Supplicancy before eventually being conquered and subsumed.
conquest reduced the population of the area somewhat, but otherwise didn't change the natives' way of life; small tribes of a few hundred (or smaller?) Halites , generally focused around a few individuals who are masters of magic, who move yearly with their herds (or without domestication?) between a few set encampments, supplementing their diet with gathered roots and the like and collecting nodules of salts to use and trade. In times of emergency, the tribes may come together to defend their homeland, often led by a leader selected from among the tribal chiefs. Fiercely isolationist since its settlement during the Great Essence Shift, the conquest hit the soul of the Plateau hard.
over the ensuing centuries, however, the value of the magics of the plateau was realised by the outside world, and the Plateauans saw the benefit of external trade. As such, trading communities grew up at various sites around the periphery of the Plateau, swapping salt nodules and specialist products and services such as Blueflame glass and Redflame blanks in exchange for luxury goods from the wider world. It is now common for talented young Plateauan mages to leave to seek their fortune in the wider world, and for outsiders to pay handsomely to acquire these skills from the native tribes.
questions:
- hunter-gatherer more than pastoralists?
Geography
the Plateau is large, around 40,000 square kilometres, but as it has very poor soil fertility and relatively little fresh water, the total population of this area is around 20,000 - though there is evidence that it was considerably higher before its conquest by Caracar.
The steep escarpment around the plateau is hundreds of metres high, and varies between totally sheer cliffs and loose scree slopes of greater that 70 degree steepness. Only at one point, to the west, is the high cliff broken into an easily-accessible ramp; this is where Caracar gained entrance to the plateau when it conquered it, hundreds of years ago.
internally, there are deep crevices that break the landscape up into a dozen or so rough regions, crossed here and there with bridges both natural and artificial. there are a few forests, but the Plateau is mostly low and rocky scrubland.
specific locations:
- Great Rampart: where Caracar broke onto the plateau.
- East Stairs: the easternmost trading settlement, built at the bottom of a long and precipitous stepped mule-track that winds up the cliffside.
Natural Resources
Several varieties of coloured salts, mostly useless except for Variflame Magic.
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