Talabrae’s Deep (Tala-Brays Deep)
It’s such a nice, quiet little mining town… who would have guessed?
There are quiet, rural mining towns, then there is the town at the end of the world. The bulwark against the eternal darkness. A little place on the edge of the Great Chasm called Talabrae’s Deep; the most well-defended settlement in all of Planus. Especially against invasions from the Deepland caverns below ground.
Fragile Foundations
Talabrae’s Deep stands atop the ruins of an Ancient Order outpost. A lone way station that survived the collapse of the Ancient Order and the mysterious calamities that shook the world. The first inhabitants of the fledgling town were a rag-tag group of dark elves and dwarves. They had been enemies for generations, but the moment they reached the surface, they shared a common goal.
Survive.
The dwarves and dark elves had been fleeing their ancestral homes in the vast, dark caverns of the Deepland below Awldor. The Great Collapse shattered Awldor. That calamity didn’t stop at the surface.
There aren’t many records to describe what happened. Most of the details come from stories handed down over the generations. They describe how those great underground empires fell to the hordes of twisted, mutated creatures. Nightmarish monstrosities that were living engines of destruction, bent on eliminating the dark elves and dwarves from existence.
Talabrae's Deep by CB Ash with Midjourney AI
Were those creatures caused by the Great Collapse? No one knows, but the survivors and their descendants believe they were.
The refugees from both cultures arrived above ground, only a day ahead of their pursuers. The two peoples had generations of animosity but they were able to set that aside and work together for their common defense.
Dark elf cunning combined with the pragmatic dwarven approach prevailed. The survivors, now calling themselves Talabreans, maintained detailed records of what they encountered from that day forward. They studied the mutated beasts, the diseased undead, and other horrors that crawled out of the depths. Slowly, they assembled a library.
The survivors studied. Learned. Soon they became the foremost experts on dealing with undead and magically mutated beasts that populate the underground realms of Awldor.
They have the most complete collection of undead and ‘monster’ research I’ve ever seen. Including samples!
Strong As Stone
It’s like living on the edge of a knife. One side? A sprawling stretch of prairie with a sea of grass and more than its fair share of bandits. The other? A fog-choked chasm that runs the length of the Planus Continent and is so deep you can’t hear anything hit bottom. That’s before you consider the tentacled whatever that keeps crawling out of the Deepland caverns to eat people.
The early days were harsh. Monster, possibly even demon, attacks came almost weekly; but the settlers survived. Talabrae’s Deep expanded, and they bolstered its defenses. But to ‘survive’ wasn’t enough. To truly beat back the Deepland darkness, they needed to thrive. So the town turned to what was available. Which turned out to be mining ore.
Talabrae’s Deep rests in an area called the Bonagrave Hills. These folds of land are considered the product of what created the Great Chasm centuries or longer ago. The land is fertile, good for crops, but also rich in minerals and building stone. Especially the blue-gray rock called briskstone.
This unusual, and chilly to the touch, granite, once heated to a specific temperature using a salt bath, can be shaped like clay. But once cooled, it becomes as hard as steel. Early settlers mined the stone, then learned to work with it. This became their primary building material, then soon one of their primary trade exports to nearby settlements.
Since those early days, Talabrae’s Deep has flourished as a mining town. Mineral ore, and briskstone, is mined and processed before being used or traded. Attacks from the Deepland creatures continue seasonally, if not monthly. But as the town thrived and studied their adversaries, they built a deep wealth of knowledge. That knowledge has what helped the town become what it is today.
Outside Talabrae’s Deep
Leapport
The Leapport district sits where Talabrae’s Deep runs up against the edge of the Great Chasm itself. True to the name, Leapport serves as a port, but it doesn’t service ships or windwagons as found elsewhere across the Planus continent. Instead, it’s focused on the catamaran-like ‘cloudgliders’ that sail on the Great Chasm winds between Talabrae’s Deep and other settlements along the Chasm.
This is also where the town’s primary storehouses are located. Those buildings contain both trade goods to be delivered, and those just arrived from the few other Chasm settlements in the region. There are several small merchant and craft guilds that maintain a hall here. Most of these are focused around the cloudgliders and shipping goods to and from Talabrae’s Deep.
Still Waters Run
This large stream runs from the higher hills to the north of town to the south. It’s the primary water source for the town, with aqueducts and artificial tributaries that branch water out to farms and mines.
The name comes from the appearance of the stream itself. Other than a few turns over large rocks or small waterfalls, the surface of the stream appears to be smooth. Barely any ripples disturb the surface to show just how fast the water is flowing out of the hills. But the undertow is strong enough to take a full-grown person off their feet occasionally.
To warn travelers, or the unprepared, the Talabreans have placed stone markers near the stream’s shorelines. Brightly colored pieces of cloth that glows at night extend out from the stones into the water. A fishing weight provides enough drag to pull the cloth below the surface. The current tugs at the glowing material showing the current’s direction, and act as a warning.
Direnight Passage
Direnight Passage by CB Ash with Midjourney AI
These wide cavern openings to the north of Talabrae’s Deep are the original locations where the first refugees emerged from the Deeplands generations ago. The stone formations are unique in that they aren’t the same briskstone as found elsewhere. Instead, the rock is a charcoal black, streaked with sporadic veins of a mysterious deep red mineral.
No one has identified the red mineral. Part of the trouble is that mining it causes the material to crumble into dust. Magic is no more reliable, as the mineral has a violent reaction to spellcasting; often bursting into flame, exploding, or turning into a foul gas.
The caves are also the primary way that the mutated creatures and demons arrive from the Deepland caverns. Talabrae’s Deep has tried several methods to deal with that, from magic to sealing the caves closed. But magic, and even attempts to collapse the caves, met with no success.
Today, a set of briskstone and metal gates keep the caves closed. The Churlgrave Gates. Members of the Slate Watch Order operate and guard them. The Slate Watch are both professional monster hunters and town guard combined.
I’ve heard a few rumors that the charcoal stone and red mineral is where the rocks are contaminated by magical or demonic radiation from all the incursions over the years. Probably explains why sealing the caves with magic didn’t work.
Founding Date
101 AGC
Founders
Type
Large town
Population
~ 19,855
Related Ethnicities
Inhabitant Demonym
Talabreans
Location under
Included Locations
Owning Organization
Characters in Location
Related Materials
I had an immature moment reading about the mysterious red mineral that reacts via flames, explosions, and foul gas. Honestly, it reminded me of a time one of my friends set off a fart bomb in the boys room near the largest locker bay. It stunk for a couple of days...ah, high school, a bastion of higher learning and exploration.
LOL. Ah, yes, those were the days! :D