Galdua Jendea · The Rocks of the Dune Sea →
The Court Tongue: the lost people; the older chronicles read the Place of Many Waters
The great dune sea at Lioaru's heart, the sand-whales' range and Valreka's home ground, and Azrar, the Necklace: nineteen rock massifs standing out of the sand, each a night's sandsail run from the next. Seventeen live, their cities hung on the shaded faces of the rock and fed by the springs inside it; two are lost. The Galduans are the people who stayed on the rock when the faithful took to the whales, and the springs water the herd at every watering, given and never sold. Yemmazru, the great rock, holds its eight daughter rocks by the debt, beside eight unfallen rocks, under the sunrise law. Sandsails cross the sand by night with the salt; wings ride the noon. The Ghoran's fullest home on Talan, and the only source of tagnit, the sand that keeps things from aging.
Houses ValrekaGhoran heartlandThe Necklace
Lost Kingdom · The Blackened Lands →
Plain Talanese; folk name the black spot on the map
The south-west coast where Tani was struck down: black ground under a standing haze, time-warped strata, ruins that read newer than they should, the dead rising unbidden, and the ruined city of Vardana inside the gods' ring of stones. About 30,000 live there, half in Ida on the south coast: the risen, the warped and the kept, ruled by the Daraya, whoever has done the greatest holding against what comes out of the ground. The Rot-Tyrant's legions come up out of the Dakhma, the bone-halls under Vardana. Origin of the Fleshwarp and Skeleton ancestries. The Adventurers' Guild posts its one perpetual standing warning.
Cursed groundIdaFleshwarp + Skeleton origin
Auran · The Isle of the Three Rains →
Hauri: the rains; the craters in the Silent Tongue
The outermost land of the south-western Hafra, two days' sail from any coast. Three old craters inland each rain their own rain, gold at Gulgir, starlight at Storngir, silver at Silfgir, and the colour goes out of the water by sundown unless it is drawn out: at every rain a bell rings from the rim and the whole town works its roofs and channels until dark. Gold makes an ink that reads easier in poor light; starlight is a reagent for every school; silver, the thinnest, is distilled through the night, and every cloudship built on Talan carries it. The rain belongs to the island: it is sold at the one quay, at Siyabask, and the rest after the catchers' third and the island's tenth is the rain-share, paid once a year to every household. The Tolwaja keeps the quay and answers on its steps every sundown.
Azarketi heartlandThe three rainsCloudship silver
River Duchies · The Quick Valley →
Plain Talanese: the Golden Empire's duchies of its granary province
The slowest rivers on Talan through its fastest ground: one great river from Emarrea's highlands spreads into a fan of lazy channels, and everything in the valley grows in a week and rots in the next. The Duchy folk turn what they cannot eat into date wine reckoned in floods, river vinegar, fish sauce and black earth. Once a year the Hemmal floods the whole valley and lays new silt. Lost to its own green in the Dark Era and cut back at the return, the valley is held by eleven dukes under the cut law, sitting together as the Mida at Lemersa. Off the coast the quickening stops: the slow isles keep the valley's seed and age its wine, and beyond them in the fog lies Agu.
The quick valleyThe cut lawLemersa
Hareaveldi · The Sand Realm →
Silent Tongue veldi (realm) and Court Tongue harea (sand): Elden ground the gods renamed
The Nagaji heartland. A dune sea scattered with about fifty oases, each giving its own colour, and three islands where the Azarketi dive for arghavan, the purple the sand cannot take. Everyone paints: doors, bowls, the wall around every window as far as its resident can reach. Each finished self is painted one last time and carried out to the rangzar, the field of boards, for the sand to scour blank. Now and then the elham takes a painter and the painting is true. Ruled by the Tajvar, who holds the shed crown for one self; the five houses of Panjrang, the five-oasis capital, choose the next.
Nagaji HeartlandEveryone PaintsThe Shed Crown