Thursday, February 28, 2008

Enduring Fall (Realm)

Enduring Fall (Everway Realm)

The land to the West of Fossil and Bamboo City is almost entirely uninhabited, and a most unique form of wilderness. Sheer rock cliff-faces rise up from the ground a few miles inside the border of the realm, and disappear into the clouds far above. An endless shower of dried leaves and flower petals drift down from the clouds, continually coating the base of the cliffs in sweet-smelling debris.

Usurper Force: Flower Drift
Normal: Gentle Descent
Inverted: Unexpected Impact

People: Only a few tiny villages and individual huts dot the base of the cliff. Those who choose to dwell here are typically allergy-free. When a child is born without such a blessing, it often means the entire family must migrate to Bamboo City . Those who stay grow to live with the constant floral “precipitation”. Other than that, it’s hard to summarize the people of this Realm. The culture of the various villages are throwbacks to the days centuries ago when Bamboo City was just Bamboo Village.

Military: Some of the villagers are peaceful and introspective, others are fiercely militant for fear of invasion from the East. It very much differs from one village to the next whether your reception will be warm and friendly or harshly isolationist. If the people of Bamboo City ever chose to invade in numbers, they would likely conquer Enduring Fall quickly.

Economy & Ecology: Much like the realm of Viridian, nearly everything the people of Enduring Fall need is provided by the Mountain whose base they occupy. Flowers, grains, even fruits drop from the sky with regularity, and it is an easy task to harvest them from the ground. The natives are quite accustomed to eating slightly bruised fruit. In addition, a spindly breed of mountain goat lives along the crags and cliffs, and are herded by the locals for milk, wool, and a bit of meat. What they can’t get from the sky, the locals travel to the edge of Bamboo City to buy. Some of the villages in the NorthWest also trade with Frostbridge during the colder months of the year.

The Driftbug Rose: Several varieties of Rose must grow amongst the clouds, and rain their petals down upon the populace. Most notable of these is the Driftbug Rose, which glides down from the mountain heights, looking like some colorful insect till it lands and the blossom unfolds.

The Dirt Storm: A few times a year each village experiences a day or two of minor rock and dirt showers, no more threatening than a typical hailstorm elsewhere. This debris comes from the same sky as the flowers and fruit do, so it’s taken in stride as just another part of nature’s bounty.

The Winter Sports: Each winter, a group of Giants from Frostbridge cross the icefloes to the NorthWest portions of Enduring Fall and attempt to climb the cliff-face. A popular explanation for this is that the top of mountain pillar hides a Paradise that the vain Giants once occupied. As the various incarnations of the story go, they were cast out of by either The Gods, a Dragon, or their own clumsiness.

Gates & Bordering Realms: Enduring Fall borders directly on Fossil and Bamboo City, and is across a short span of water from Frostbridge. Popular conjecture holds that some other realm resides atop the mountain in the clouds, but is unreachable to all but the strongest flyers.
Another popular belief is that the land known as SlideMount is a part of Enduring Fall, borders against it, or is nestled within it at a higher altitude. The colors of the rock in both Realms are very similar, and both experience showers of objects falling from thick banks of clouds. Their Usurper Forces are depicted differently by artists, but few risk dwelling long enough in SlideMount, perhaps the force in that tumultuous land has not been properly interpreted.

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