All right! I did manage to get a few more embellishments done today!
### Latest WIP ###
Elion-Fin2.jpg
I'd originally wanted to do a fancier border, but I've gotten a bit exhausted with this map and had some aggravation trying to make my vaguely-bone-like relief-style border blocks tile how I wanted it to, so just did a simple wooden frame with a silver inner rim. Also added a compass rose and some simple arts to the legend!
And now, for lore. I think I already gave an overview of what's unique about Torventhal, so here's the last two:
Kingdom of Nelska
- Wardens of Shadow -
The Kingdom of Nelska was formed by apportionment by an ancient kingdom, a permanent march whose lords were tasked with ensuring the Darkness never progressed south (not that there’s anything known that could actually do something about that) and that nothing from it came down into the rest of Elion either (more potentially doable). When that former kingdom fell Nelska was spared the destruction, and since that time few have attempted to retake the kingdom as few want to take up its task as well.
The Darkwood, the name for the dense forests in northern Nelska that extend into the Darkness, is known for devouring people. Those who venture too far into it never return, those who spend too much time in or near “not too far into it” often become shades, and things that actually come out of the deeper Darkness are generally quite dangerous and almost universally hostile. In most years Nelska’s charge of being the bastion against the Darkness is a routine duty with occasional dangers when the odd shadowy monster emerges; the exceptions are when many or bigger ones come out. Historically, however, there has never been a real emergency situation (aside from whatever lost-to-history event prompted Nelska’s founding) and the Darkness is usually only a real concern for Nelska itself. This has been some source of resentment coloring its international relations.
Shades are rather similar to humans - to the surprise of many, they apparently are even still alive, rather than undead - but are eerie nonetheless. Their skin always has an odd cast, as if it is either constantly in shadow even when it isn’t, or as if it were softly illuminated by a distant glow of some strange color. Their eyes glow yellow, a trait shared with many of the more monstrous things that come out of the Darkness. For others interacting with shades there always seems to be this skin-crawling sense that the shade or shades are party to some great secret that no others know; every shade’s grin seems knowing, every glance either distant or calculating, every movement furtive. And those who were once human (as opposed to those shades born to shades) say nothing of what they experienced within the Darkness that changed them. Most of the shades of Nelska still live on the fringes of the Darkness, within the less deep and eerie (relatively speaking!) parts of the wood; as they tend to unsettle others shades tend to form rather insular communities. In Skand, for example, though there’s never been any formal act to make it so there’s a distinct ‘shade quarter’ in the city, where the vast majority of its shades choose to reside. People are especially nervous about shades in Nelska; in other nations where most folk are less concerned about the Darkness there’s less conscious reason to fear them, though they retain all their other unsettling qualities.
Aside from forbidding mountains Nelska only shares one tiny oceanside cliff as a land border, with Vleoh. Most of its interaction with other powers is via seagoing trade, and that mostly across the Vlochen Sea. They import silver from Symurth: although Nelska has some silver mines of their own, they’re not the most productive and worryingly close to the edge of the Darkness to boot. There are some small populations nominally a part of Nelska on the Eastern Isles - mostly the southern one as settlements on the northern one, under the shadows of the titanic megalith circles on the central hills of the landscape, have a bad habit of going missing.
Ulsk
- Realm of the Hollow People -
The land of Ulsk is something of a large city-state; other than Port Blady there’s only really one major city that dominates the region, which is otherwise dotted with villages (including throughout the Ulskenwood that occupies much of Ulsk’s land area). All of the inhabitants of Ulsk are Hollow People; it is really far too dangerous for anyone else to live there. This is because the Hollow People, it is said, are literally hollow, empty when viewed from the back. One wonders who said this originally, since anyone who actually sees the back of a Hollow Person turns to stone (or is sucked inside and presumably consumed, for the immaterial ghosts of Vleoh). As this means the end for living and undead alike, the Hollow People are feared throughout Elion. It doesn’t help that their culture is quite foreign to most Elionese ones, and whatever social rules they operate by make them seem capricious and treacherous. Other than this very notable trait, the Hollow People look somewhat human, though they have long, thin ears and are pale, slightly grayish, and more slender than humans on average.
From an out-of-universe perspective one might say that the Elionese view the Hollow People much akin to other worlds’ mythological Fair Folk: possessed of strange magics but dangerous, tricky, and inscrutable. Despite their terrifying reputation however, there are only two times in history where the Hollow People have really posed an active threat themselves; one attempted invasion long lost to history beyond any hope of putting a date to it and one other, a bit over 130 years ago. In the latter, they were fended off desperately by Evanth, which has dedicated its primary focus to preparing to fight the Hollow People ever since (to an almost paranoid level; indeed it has been Evanth that has started numerous smaller conflicts with them since then). The cause for either invasion is unknown; the most that the Hollow People have consistently said about the more recent one was that it was evidently started over “an amount of the green stone” and that further fighting for the same reason is “unlikely." No one among the Elionese has yet determined precisely what material “the green stone” is.
Some trade does go on with the Hollow People, by the brave or foolhardy (or very rarely by the Hollow People making their own trade caravan to neighbors that receive them like one might a live explosive). Most often this is through Vleoh, the land-bordering neighbor that hasn’t dedicated most of its military capacity to potential fighting with Ulsk. Particularly adventurous sailors are welcome to make port in Port Blady (though the Hollow People use a different name for it) on the northern coast, a city inhabited by the Hollow People filled with markets and bazaars of things esoteric and bizarre.
For all their fey strangeness and danger, however, a more neutral mind might note that the Hollow People do share many of the traits of a human society. They have some measure of government and a centralized hierarchy of power (though one rather inscrutable to outsiders) and they farm and hunt and trade and smith tools (not that anyone knows what all of the common tools of the Hollow People are for) and form villages, have families, and so on.
