Umbra Sokhar and the Moloth Khammothul Mountains
Umbra Sokhar low-res.jpg FACT BOX Umbra Sokhar.jpg
here's a key to the map
HISTORY OF SOKHARA
The Umbra Sokhar is a region on the fringes of two different worlds. To the north are nations bordering the Inner Sea, whose histories have been shaped by the monolithic entity that is the High-empire of Korachan, and to the south is the Atramentally-tainted Kharkharadontid desert that dominate the centre of the Sammaean continent.
Geographically, the Umbra Sokhar is a great endorheic basin bordered by great mountains, the largest of which is the Moloth Khammothul mountain which stretches for 3,000-miles to the south of the Umbra Sokhar, serving as a natural barrier against the worst of the Atramental taint that afflicts the deserts of Kharkharadontis.Without this mountain range to protect it from the perversions of the Black Fountain, the Umbra Sokhar basin would be far less hospitable to mortal life.
Today, the Umbra Sokhar is inhabited by two distinct groups of mortals - etheri nomads and a mix of various different mortal races, including humans, keratin, plagi, shie and dverg, making it one of the more metropolitan regions in Elyden. Most of these non-human mortals were displaced in the early Fifth Age from the south east in what is known as the Kharkharadontid Exodus.
This occured in the early in the Fifth Age, between around -550 and -350 RM, following a long period of Atramental flux around the Black Fountain and the Kharkharadontid desert, that led to an increase in corruption in the region, displacing many native cultures and people that called the place home.
It is difficult to imagine Kharkharadontis as a habitable place to mortals, though forty-five hundred years ago it was more hospitable than the Umbra Sokhra is today, though it was arid due to its distance from the coast and the many rain-shadows shielding its interior from moist oceanic air. The area immediately surrounding the Black Fountain was inimical to life, to a radius of 100 - 200 miles, with the effects of the Atramenta waning farther from the Fountain, though that still left an immense swathe of land open to mortal use.
Mortals and fauna alike fled Kharkharadontis during this time, which today is known as the Shadow in the Desert. Many found their way north of the Moloth Khammothul mountains via the pass known as the Gap of Shadows.
During this time, the Umbra Sokhar was a fertile endorheic basin, fertile thanks to the many rivers that flowed through it, merging into a small inland sea known as Numinia, which had disappeared entirely some three millennia after the first exodus from Kharkharadontis.
The Umbra Sokhar was populated by this influx of refugees, and what began as individual settlements became city-states by around -200 RM. Over the next 200-years the city-states coalesced into Sokhara, a powerful metropolitan inland empire. It was arid, though gifted with great rivers and deep reservoirs of water, plentiful resources and natural protection from outside influence.
The empire prospered and grew until around 290 RM, when people to its north had begun to settle the lands south of the Inner Sea, claiming territories that pushed south against the borders of Sokhara. This led to increased tensions, with border skirmishes becoming common. This political pressure increased greatly following Korachani influence in Karakhas, and its expansionist actions brought war to Sokhara by 300 RM.
As war embroiled Sokhara’s northern borders, its south became subjected to another mass exodus of refugees from Kharkharadonts, following an increase in Atramental activity in the southern wastes, which turned it into the wasteland we now recognise today. The people of Sokhara took in what refugees they could, and put them to use in the war against Korachan, which had encompassed all life in Sokhara by 340 RM.
By then its royal household had grown decadent and tyrannical, ruling over a nation that was made up of slaves that knew nothing but war. Amid the war with Korachan the slaves revolted, overrunning the palaces of the ruling dynasty. The empire crumbled in 348 RM, allowing Korachani armies to march south, expanding their territories. Unease in Karakhas however made this Korachani victory short-lived, and its new territories were lost over the next 100-years as its armies were forced into the heartland of Karakhas to quell unrest.
During this time different branches of the Sokharan dynastic family would vie for control as degenerates continued pouring into Sokhara from the south and freed slaves caused havoc, reducing once-proud cities to rubble even as the corruption of Kharkharadontis began to expand north into Sokhara itself. It is around this time that the Korachani empire began to refer to the region as the Umbra Sokhar - the Shadow over Sokhar.
In around 580 the so-called Horde-King emerged, bringing together hundreds of disparate tribes under his banner. He rolled across the remnants of Sokhara from east to west, destroying all in his wake, wiping the last traces of civilisation from the basin before dying to aepathy a few years later. The power vacuum left by his death led to the fragmentation of the horde, which would consume itself over the next decades.
This allowed the remnants of the Sokharan people, most of which were the descendants of freed slaves, nobles, and refugees from the south, to rebuild. They scattered, founding what would later become the major cities of the Umbra Sokhar - Cataflaque, Kadota, and Tlathat.
As these cities flourished and established their rule over the Umbra Sokhar, etheri nomads came to call the region home, using their extensive skills at navigating and surviving the Atramenta to their advantage, and they remain a major cultural force in the region, and are the best guides south into Karkharadontis to this day.
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Originally Posted by Arimel
I started out about 15 years ago with a pretty crude map of the inner sea, that i based my first forays into worldbuilding around. I slowly expanded from there, and started making the atlas maps about 3-years ago, adding topographical details as I need to, to make new maps. I try to make sure that anything new is retroactively added to older maps, to keep everything consistent with itself, but it can be a bit difficult to keep up at times. 
