Geography of Fane

Epic Path \ Fane \ Geography of Fane

Geography of Fane

The city of Fane sits in the northeast corner of the Reist continent, on the shore of a vast sea of silt, and is surrounded by a great iron wall over 50 miles long, with a height measuring anywhere from 50 feet to over 100 feet in some places. The city is massive, claiming an enclosed space of over 400 square miles, and the population within is measured in the millions.

Fane itself is a defiant remnant of civilization, a gauntleted challenge to the inevitability of entropy, struggling to hold out against the forces of a world turned hostile to it. Fane is cut off from any other civilizations (assuming there are any) by its geography:

• To the north of Fane is a vast, impenetrable mountain range called the Cea Dorsal.
• To the east of Fane is the great silt sea.
• To the south of Fane is the Black Stair, a huge staircase of black obsidian that leads down into a huge smoke-filled canyon called the Burning Mire.
• To the west of Fane is the Rot, an endless wasteland of pestilence, hostile wildlife and raiders called Wildlings, driven insane by the Rot's diseases.

Weather

In the summer, a high deck of thin white clouds covers the world from edge to edge, allowing enough of the binary star sunlight to penetrate that Fane is constantly sweltering at over 100° Fahrenheit (38° C) during the day, while allowing enough heat to escape that Fane dips down to around 40° Fahrenheit (4° C) at night. Rain is extremely uncommon; perhaps as much as 10 inches of rain per year fall in the area, usually in the form of about a few brief rainstorms each year, each of which is a deluge that begins and ends with little warning.

Very little wind blows within the city, both because the air is fairly still in this region, and because the city's walls block what little wind there is.

Fane's winters are the poorly-named 'dry season,' when no storms occur. The temperatures during the day still get above 80° F (27° C), and nights get down to about 20° F (-7° C). The high layer of thin white clouds remains, but occasionally breaks up or recedes altogether for weeks at a time. On clear nights, a single small moon (either further away or smaller than Earth's moon) softly illuminates the city, while a single river of stars which bisects the sky with a billion pinpricks of light flows west to east as the night progresses.

Foliage

Inside the city, foliage is hard to find. Naturally growing trees and plants have all long-since been harvested by opportunists looking for food, and only the wealthiest of Fane's citizens keep plants or trees in their yards or houses, as most breeds of foliage must be constantly tended to, and given a great deal of water, to survive Fane's climate.

A great deal of greenery can be found in the northern buroughs where the farming is done. These plants are hardy vegetables and grains, all bred over centuries of agriculture to prosper in bad soil with little water. Despite that, the farmlands are heavily protected against trespassers, as the water they are supplied is extremely precious.

One consequence of the paucity of greenery in Fane is that wood is a rare and precious commodity. Only the elite of Fane can afford wooden furniture, and most would only waste the material on such a mundane use if they were deliberately trying to provoke their peers into feeling inadequate. Wood, as a construction material, is usually reserved for use in the most precious of a nobleman's treasures, such as personal magic items or business ledger books.

Water

Water is in very limited supply in Fane, not because it is absent, but because it is carefully controlled. The Water Dukes hold a monopoly on Fane's water resources and guard them jealously, meting out enough water to ensure the populace survives, but at the cost of individual liberty.

There are no open sources of water in Fane, no rivers, streams, ponds or (working) fountains. There are no public services for drinking, and even ale is not served in public places without demonstrating one's fealty to a Water Duke. Agriculture is given a great deal of water to work with, but this resource is guarded as though it were wagonloads of gold, with trespassers and even onlookers aggressively repelled.

The citizens of Fane must request their daily allotments of water from the House to whom they have sworn fealty, proving their allegiance each day in exchange for another day's ration.

The Spire

The dominant feature of the city, even more so than the great wall, is the Spire. The Spire is a massive spike of iron which stretches upward beyond sight, taller than the high cirrus clouds which frequent the upper atmosphere. Attempts to excavate around the base of the Spire have been similarly unable to determine how deeply it penetrates the earth. The Spire is not smooth, but is scaled and segmented, like a human hair seen under a microscope, as though a thin sheet of iron was curled upon itself in a tight spiral, to form a long cylinder. The Spire appears to be solid iron to its core, and no purpose to the structure has been determined. It simply is.

The Spire, while ramrod straight, is not perpendicular to the ground. It leans about 5 degrees southwest of a perpendicular axis, a very noticeable and precarious-appearing tilt, its vast shadow drawing a black line over the great wall and into the wasteland beyond the city.

The Mad Palace of the Gris Varon

Clinging to the walls of the great Spire, at a height of over 100 yards off the ground, is a shifting, ramshackle treehouse of iron which makes up the mad palace of the Gris Varon. This warren of massive rooms, forgotten hallways and tunnels uses the Spire as a central support. Taken altogether, the environs of this palace are massive, over a hundred-thousand square feet of living space, spread across a mad maze of meaningless staircases, empty rooms and dizzying catwalks.

Most surprising is the complete lack of any means of getting into or out of the palace from the ground. No stairs, ladders or handholds exist between the ground and the palace a hundred yards above.

A central room, the size of an amphitheater, resides somewhere in the palace, and contains thousands, perhaps millions, of mirrors, each showing what a different Gardener is seeing at any given moment. The Gris Varon uses these mirrors to watch everything that happens in Fane, prying into the secrets of the powerful and the powerless alike.

Architectural Stylings

The buildings of Fane, while nearly all constructed of iron, are apparently exact replacements of buildings which once stood in that space. A huge variety of buildings is present, ranging from small, single-story shacks to huge 12-story high-rises. The old buildings that once stood were clearly made of many different materials, from dressed stone to brick to marble, and these materials are reflected in the texture of the iron which has replaced them. Formerly brick walls still appear to be textured like brick, with smooth mortar and abrasive bricks all made from shiny grey iron.

It should be noted that even the tall high-rise buildings are not modern, as we would describe them. These are massive once-stone works of gothic architecture, using heavy arches, ribbed vaults and massive buttresses to provide support for such heights. While this style of building dominates the city, other common building types used in traditional European settlements, such as half-timbering, wattle and daub and jettied stories are entirely absent, suggesting that wooden construction was unavailable even when the city was originally built.

Even the great wall which surrounds the city, stretching nearly 50 miles in length, shows its once-stone nature through its iron manufacture. The seams from the dressed stone, and the nearly-10-foot thickness of the wall's former materials have all been replaced with a solid mass of iron.

The iron of Fane is, in most places, untarnished by rust, as the Gardeners keep the buildings in pristine condition, replacing oxidized metal with fresh iron when the need arises.

Another common architectural feature of Fane is the prevalence of chains and grated walkways. An observer will quickly realize that, despite the complete absence of water in Fane, the city was clearly built to service an aquatic culture. The grated walkways allows water to run off easily into the subterranean waterways (now empty or silt-filled), while the chains allows cargo and boats to be maneuvered between channels or into loading areas and warehouses, or ship-works.

Finally, despite being reconstructed in iron, the city of Fane is heavily damaged in many areas. Buildings in most districts show signs of distress, ranging from blown-out windows (their iron frames showing bowing and scorching, despite being pristine iron; the scorches are carefully preserved in the iron's texture) to nearly complete collapse, also preserved in iron. It is unclear why the destroyed elements of the buildings have been preserved as destroyed, rather than rebuilt in their undamaged forms. Perhaps the Gardeners are working from a blueprint of the city which includes the destruction, having no idea how to rebuild to the original form.

Lower Fane

Beneath many of the iron grated streets of Fane, seen through the square holes of the grating, there exists an undercity. Lower Fane varies in design from silt-filled caverns to multi-storied subterranean cities, complete with the original stone, brick, glass and marble building materials. From within Upper Fane, sunlight illuminates only the top-most levels of Lower Fane, and only the most foolhardy of folks would ever venture into it, as the whole place is overrun with ghouls. See the Ghouls of Fane, for details.

The Boroughs

The 19 districts of Fane are called Boroughs, and are separated from each other with deep canals of silt. These canals appear to have once permitted people to travel about the city on small boats instead of by foot, though the waterways have long since gone dry. The canals seem sealed off from Lower Fane, as though the waterways were prevented from spilling into those developed areas which were built below ground level.

A number of areas in each borough offer stairways which lead down to what were presumably once embarkation areas, and small docks, where these small boats could accept or debark passengers. The canals are only sunlit during the middle hours of the day, and grow dark early in the afternoon, remaining so until late morning the following day. As a result, these deep canyons of the city are usually avoided by common folk, despite being a less-crowded means of moving around the outer edges of the boroughs, instead used by gangs and even more dangerous threats.

Spanning the canals at numerous places are dozens of bridges of various size, shape and construction. Nearly all of these bridges have towers on either bank, with excellent vantage for archers and crossbowmen to volley attacks against those who would cross. Some of the larger or longer bridges, such as the Great Span, have additional towers on the bridge itself, as well as gates to halt traffic altogether. Each tower is outfitted with between 2 and 4 alchemical signaling fires on their tops, allowing fast communications between the towers to their immediate sides along the canal. If Fane had a unified constabulary, it would be a simple matter for the boroughs to be sealed off from each other, presumably to quell unrest, isolate a threat, or quarantine a plague. Of course, the Water Dukes each have their own forces of 'police', derisively called 'Fetterers' by the common folk, who each operate under the orders of their respective Water Duke and his officers. As a result, such large-scale coordination is rarely as efficient as it might otherwise be.

The Harbor District

A huge ship-works along the shore of the Great Silt Sea, the Harbor District is now a meaningless iron statue to human endeavor. The skeletal hulls of several great ships are still dry-docked in various states of completion, their once-wooden double-hulls having long since been replaced with iron. The infrastructure of the harbor includes numerous cranes, catwalks, vast nets (once hempen rope, now iron), and a freight area, where even today, large sealed containers of iron await a customs inspection that will never come.

With the absence of waterways, the Harbor District's original purpose is lost, but its inhabitants have found some utility in its remains. Several thousand people call the Harbor District home, having scavenged living spaces within the overlooked infrastructure of the District. Additionally, a number of pubs and bars make a business here, offering gathering places for those who find the Chandlery unfit for their tastes. These bars are, to a building, all lower-class affairs, and can get fairly rowdy at times. It seems that, even without visiting sailors, the Harbor District's bars seem willing to play the part they've always held.

Magesteria Arcana

The Magesteria Arcana is a university which occupies a whole island borough all to itself. Only members of the Magesteria are permitted access to the island, and its students and staff can only see outsiders by leaving the island themselves. No one is altogether sure what goes on in the vast complex of gardens and low buildings, but the university is protected by a wall and armed guards at each bridge. Fifteen buildings, each no taller than four stories but quite large nonetheless, grace the grounds of the university.

The alchemical street lights and many of the more complex locks and mechanical devices used by the city's elite are manufactured in the Magesteria.

Another oddity of the Magesteria is that they owe no fealty to any of the great Houses of Fane, instead taking delivery of water from each of the Houses. Those Water Dukes who have tried to abstain from this apparent tax have found themselves harried by malfunctioning security mechanisms, unlit streets in their districts, and general nuisances which made it much easier for the Water Duke's many enemies to capitalize on the chaos and create larger nuisances. Such obstinacy rarely lasts long.

Chandlery

The Chandlery is a borough dedicated to mercantilism, street vendors, buyers, traders and a wide array of services ranging from practical to carnal. From edge to edge, the borough features shops, bars, restaurants, inns, brothels, alchemy shops, armories, and magic shops. On the streets during the day, hundreds of independent street vendors set up small carts or tents in the wide avenues or iron-cobblestone courts to hawk their wares, created or found, or sell baked treats, cooked meats or rare nuts or berries. Every sort of purse-lightening enticement can be found in the Chandlery.

Chandlery is also home to a great deal of the petty thievery in Fane, but if you think about it, that's just another form of purse-lightening.

Fallow's Watch

Just south of the Harbor District is the district of Fallow's Watch. This section of town was clearly the neighborhood of the poorest of Fane's residents, even before it was transformed to iron. The buildings here are small, huddled affairs of poor construction and even poorer ventilation. The district lies directly downwind of the Harbor, and must once have smelled like a fishery. Even now, the residents enjoy few amenities, such as a useful sewage system or even much direct sunlight. The ramshackle iron buildings all lean against each other, even those with multiple stories, causing all the streets to be alley-like and shadowed in most places, even during the day. The portion of Lower Fane which lies beneath Fallow's Watch is filled in or absent altogether, precluding the city's most convenient means of waste disposal for the people living here. As a result, sickness abounds.

The neighboring districts keep guards posted at every bridge leaving Fallow's Watch, to monitor for signs of plague. Plagues seem a nearly annual occurrence in Fallow's Watch, and the other Boroughs have become quite aggressive about enforcing quarantines when they're warranted (and sometimes when they're not). Fallowfolk who try to leave the borough under a quarantine are assured a crossbow bolt or worse for their efforts.

Despite this obvious hazard of living here, Fallow's Watch has a huge population of several million people. The community is strongly bonded together, and the folks seem to thrive somehow despite their destitute environs.

Pews

Pews is a borough near the center of Fane which features the Avenue of the Revered. More politely called the Holy District, the Pews is so-called because its buildings were once lined up in very even rows, resembling the pews of a church. Of course, the more banal-minded people of Fane call it pews because of the smell, an inexplicable formaldehyde stench that crops up in seemingly random areas of the borough. The source of these pockets of stench is entirely unknown, as there are no (known) activities in the area that might produce such a smell.

Outside of the Avenue of the Revered, the rest of the borough appears to have offered smaller temples, shrines and altars for the worship of lesser gods. Pews is also home to a rather sizable graveyard, filled with mausoleums and headstones, packed tightly together inside it's wrought-iron barred palisade. It is clear that the caretakers ran out of space long before they ran out of demand for final resting places, and did their best to accommodate. The cemetery lies mostly ruined, with numerous gaps in the iron fencing, and headstones overturned and shattered.

Nearly all of the buildings in Pews have been destroyed down to their foundations, with the notable exception of the temple of Thallengrym.

The Avenue of the Revered

This wide avenue of iron cobblestones features the ruins of five once-mighty temples and a sixth temple, the temple of Thallengrym, still intact. Oddly enough, while buildings in the rest of Fane which sustain damage are immediately repaired by the Gardeners, the ruined temples are persistently 'repaired' back to their present ruined state.

The temple of Thallengrym is a beautifully sculpted building which was clearly once made of stone. The temple is four stories tall, and features gothic arches and buttresses. The farmers of Fane always give a tithe of food to the temple, and this food is given to the needy and devout. The doors of the temple are enormous doors made of actual oak (despite the rarity of wood), banded in steel, and are probably too heavy for one person to move or open. Of course, the temple clerics take no issue with people combining their efforts to move the doors, since there is strength in numbers.

Of the other temples, little remains to suggest much of their former glory:

• The temple of Yllisond is the smallest of the ruins and its rubble is twisted and bent in a way that suggests the original building was also iron.
• The temple of Tressa is a mixture of many textures, suggesting stone, wood and various metals were used to construct it (though it's all iron now, of course).
• The temple of Ur'graxt has a once-brick chimney which appears to have survived the calamity which destroyed the temple itself, and the wreckage seems to indicate, unsurprisingly, that it once included a massive working smithy in its main hall.
• The ruins of the temple of Seshasa show a wave and maritime motif among its crumbled ruins. Seemingly out of place is a small plant growing out of the center of the pile of wreckage. Few dare to even look at this plant, much less harvest it for food. While some blasphemy occurred to destroy the temples on the Avenue, apparently, harming this plant is a heresy too great to attempt.
• The ruined temple of Graxt is unique in that its iron remains display a texture suggesting the building was once a great tent made of stretched leather with bone struts and supports. The iron shows stitching in the leather, suggesting it came from many sources rather than one, and the iron bones range in size from clearly humanoid to colossal beasts unheard of. These ruins crawl with insects and vermin at all times of the day, though it is difficult to imagine what foodstuffs they find to survive in there.

The Avenue of the Revered clearly never offered space for temples to the remaining gods: Liore and Haqq.

The Great Span

The Great Span is a huge bridge, 30-feet wide and around a half-mile long (~2600 feet), made of polished white stone. It is unusual in that it remains a stone bridge, and that it is one of the few bridges of Fane large enough to include twelve gatehouses along its length. At each end of the bridge, a pair of gatehouses straddle a massive iron portcullis, normally open to traffic. Each guardhouse is three stories of 15' x 15' rooms, featuring a narrow stair and slitted windows on all sides. The pair of gatehouses feature only a single door on the south tower, only accessible from the bridge-side of the portcullis. The single door allows access to the south tower, and the north tower can only be accessed via a bridge between the two towers, 30 feet above the portcullis.

The ground floor of both towers is without furniture and intended to allow guards with polearms to maneuver and fend off attackers from any direction through the slitted windows on each wall. The windows are barely wide enough to fit an arm through, and too narrow for any size-medium creatures to squeeze through (even a size-small creature would have to struggle). The door is solid iron, and is easily barred from the inside. The second story offers a crowded set of bunks for sleeping, but a walkway along the walls is kept clear for archers and crossbowmen to rain arrows and bolts on attackers. The third floor has a couple of tables, a larder and a small kitchen area. This floor offers only two walls with arrow-slits, east and west, facing the bridge and facing the shore. Finally, the roof offers crenelations to hide behind, and the walkway to the northern gatehouse, which is a mirror of the southern gatehouse, except that there is no door on the ground floor. The controls for the portcullis are operable from the ground floor of either tower, but the controls in the north tower always override any contradictory signals from the south tower.

Along the span of the bridge, four additional pairs of gatehouses, each set up like the gatehouses on the shores of the bridge offer additional layers of defense against any unwanted crossers. These gatehouses have solid stone foundations which reach all the way to the bottom of the canal, serving as massive foundations for the bridge's weight. The walls of the gatehouse are 5-foot thick solid white stone (making each gatehouse a 25' x 25' building) and the portcullis between the gates is 10 feet wide. The whole affair of two gatehouses and the portcullis is a total of 60-feet in width, much wider than the bridge itself. Only 10 feet of the gatehouses (5 of which is the stone wall) are actually on the bridge itself. The other half of each gatehouse is beyond the edge of the bridge's span.

The bridge's span is 20 feet wide, without railings, and somewhat slippery underfoot. However, since it almost never rains, this poses little risk for those crossing the bridge. Anyone unlucky enough to be knocked off the main span will fall 10 feet to a 5-foot catwalk which allows repairs to be performed on the bridge's sides if necessary. These catwalks are not easily visible from the bridge's span, and end at each gatehouse (they do not go around the gatehouses, or offer useful access to the gatehouses). The catwalks offer a railing made of chain to prevent anyone from falling the 100+ feet to the bottom of the canal. At each end of the catwalk, a 10-foot tall ladder is provided to allow an easy climb back to the bridge's main span.

Needless to say, there are no ladders allowing access to the Span from the canal.

Beyond the Wall

The Yard

In the immediate shadow of the Spire, just beyond the city wall is a vast scrapyard of iron and rust called the Yard. The Yard is a rust-filled decay-strewn shanty-town on the outskirts of Fane, where the unwanted people live. The Yard lies directly under the leaning shadow of the Spire, and huge flakes of iron fall onto it every day. Unlike the city inside the walls, the Gardeners do not go into the Yard, and rust abounds. The people of the Yard are even more desperately poor than many of the common folk inside the city. Many are unsworn to a House, leaving them without a means of getting water reliably, and also without the limited protections of law that the Houses provide.

The Yard is a place of lawlessness, a hideout from the oppression of the crushing indignities of the Houses, but due to that, it gives shelter to its own communities, organizations and warlords. The populace is a nearly even mix of desperate, malnourished and largely helpless people, and scavenging thugs, eager to find, steal or take anything of value that can be bartered for another day of food and water. A small few, often warlords who have accumulated a few dozen of these toughs to their cause, provide exchange services -- a focal point for bartering or finding something specific that is needed.

Unlike the citizens of Fallow's Watch, there is not much drug use in the Yard, since few here can afford such luxuries. The people are thickly arranged here, often a dozen or more to each shanty, forming loosely-knit cabals of non-aggression to try to hold onto what few possessions the cabal might have accumulated. Few notions of actual private property exist in the Yard, since so few possessions linger here. Instead, things of value are quickly traded away for food or water.

The people of the Yard are not welcome in Fane-proper, and if recognized as being 'yardies', are often pressganged into labor by the first Fetterer to spot them. Such yardies are seldom heard from again, either because the labor was too much for their malnourished bodies to handle, or because the availability of food and water after a day's labor was too good to give up for something as optional as freedom.

There are many hazards in the Yard, both from the native thugs, and from external sources. Ghouls crawl out of Lower Fane to steal the sickly, weak and dead, while Wildlings from the rot, or more terrible creatures, wander in to plunder the vast sea of flesh the Yard offers. No walls or fortifications protect the Yard from the Rot or from the creatures which sometimes boil out of the Great Stair or the Silt Sea. Life in the Yard is usually very short for those who can't build a community of like-minded people. Those who do find community, however, can sometimes prosper. Regardless, the people of the Yard have one thing the citizens of Fane do not: freedom.

The Playground

Even within the Yard, the Playground is considered a bad neighborhood. A densely-packed house-of-cards construction of shanties and rickety lean-to's, built from the sheets of iron fallen from the Spire, the Playground is home to a few hundred thousand people, crammed into less than a single mile of territory. Since there are no multiple-story buildings to support this population, much less any infrastructure, like sewage or food and water supplies, the people are packed together like sardines, and desperate beyond reason. However, they have become a unified community who savagely attacks anyone who comes into the Playground. This savagery is also accompanied by rumors of rampant cannibalism, though few are willing to investigate whether this is true or not.

The Playground lies directly in the shade of the Spire, which would seem like desirable territory, given the oppressive heat. However, scales of iron, sometimes the size of a sheet of paper, other times the size of a wagon, fall from the Spire every couple of hours, sometimes from tremendous heights. Anyone under one of these plummeting scythes is nearly always killed. Thus, living in the Playground carries a sort of grim lottery aspect to it. You never know when the sky will fall onto your head and slice you in half. Over the years, the Playground has ground into quite a mound of these fallen sheets of iron, looking very much like a junkyard.

Of course, these sheets of debris are also the walls of the shanties built in the Playground and elsewhere in the Yard, but despite all this industriousness, the never-ending supply of these sheets of iron has not reduced the size of the Playground's piles of iron.

It is rumored that there are tunnels and underground lairs built into these mounds of iron, but it is hard to imagine how such things could ever be built without the tools to lift large amounts of metal sheeting out of the way. Perhaps the tunnels are merely buried shanties from a few generations past, which failed to collapse from the added weight above them. In any case, such structures would be haphazard and dangerous, constantly at risk of cave in from the monstrous weight of the several feet of iron above them or the new iron plummeting onto them.

The Tannery

Another landmark of the Yard is the Tannery, though few citizens of Fane know of its existence, except maybe through hearsay. The Tannery is an actual tannery, operated by children, and overseen by a local warlord called "Mamma Sif". The children stretch the leather and skins, treat them with the nasty, caustic chemicals and salts used to preserve them, and then sun them until they are useful leather for tools, clothing, tents and other commodities. The Tannery also creates a few of these finished products when only simple tailoring is required, though complex items are only available from professionals, generally found inside Fane's walls.

However, even the simple leathers and skins which are produced at the Tannery are valuable goods, which are traded for food and water for the children, and quite a few other luxuries for the warlord running the Tannery and his employees. The Tannery's rules are strict, but simple. Any child under the age of 13 may work there for food and water, but if they cause trouble, steal anything or reach their 13th birthday, they are kicked out. Since few of the Yard's children have any real notion of their dates of birth, this is approximate, and based on the general look of the child. Once they start to look adolescent, they're evicted to go fend for themselves.

In truth, a lot of the children in the Tannery are too young to be very productive members of the team, but Mamma Sif keeps them, feeds them and gives them simple clothing, teaching them tanning and tailoring, until they can pull their own weight. While this may seem like a kind-hearted operation, those who have tried to muscle in on Mamma Sif, or bully her for a cut of her profits have found that she is a merciless foe who is not to be underestimated.

The Rot

The surrounding environs of Fane's western and southern borders are a seemingly endless wasteland of rocks, sand and rotting vegetation known as the Rot. Covering an unknown portion of the Reist continent, the Rot creates a barrier between Fane and any other lands that might be beyond. The festering wasteland, rather than some unending desert, is actually a variety of terrains, ranging from swampland to jungle to steppes. Though no ranges of mountains are visible from Fane, the Rot does feature a few individual peaks which can be seen on clear days, disrupting the horizon.

While the presence of water and plants and trees in the Rot might seem like a natural resource that the people of Fane could exploit, the Rot is not a place people go, as its name should perhaps indicate. The Rot is a filthy midden of disease, as well as a malevolent corrupting force which taints those who enter its borders. The Wildlings of the Rot, clearly once just regular people, are violent, pox-laden monsters that celebrate torment and butchery. They appear to be so rotted and diseased that their continued life is both surprising and abominable. Experts have speculated that they are a kind of undead, but powers of divine energy seem to have none of the efficacy they would have against actual undead.

Other creatures live within the Rot, including the Brood, as well as legions of vermin and oozes. Legends speak of a cancerous god who walks the Rot, spreading its disease and quietly worshiped by the Wildlings. However, the Wildlings are too far gone to speak any languages, or write any scripture, so no one is certain such a cult exists.

The Great Silt Sea

On Fane's eastern border, the great sea of silt shifts and eddies like an actual sea, though much slower. Tides of silt move like inevitable walls, sometimes 20 and 30 feet high and spanning miles, marching their way to shore over the course of weeks and months. Sometimes dissipated by wind, those that reach shore spread the edges of the sea like a slow-motion flood.

The silt is not bouyant like water, so swimming or even staying on the surface is much more difficult than one might expect. Even practiced swimmers have great difficulty staying "afloat" in silt, and all but the greatest swimmers find moving through the silt to be impossible.

Of course, the Silt Sea is not devoid of life, and many creatures have adapted to the silt quite well, able to move through it with ease. Most of these creatures resemble their aquatic ancestors, and very few have been known to come onto land. Sometimes a massive corpse of some terrible behemoth will be left ashore by a silt wave, or washed into one of Fane's canals. Such finds are valuable sources of bones, and sometimes even greater treasures, but they also speak to the truly alien wildlife that lives in the Silt Sea.

Some people still attempt to fish the Silt Sea, and this can be a useful and lucrative means of feeding oneself and one's family, but the hazards are abundant, and hard to spot until it is far too late. A few adventurous folks have attempted to build boats and skiffs which use sails to glide over the silt, but these vessels often get stuck away from shore when the wind dies, and no amount of paddling will bring them back.

On occasion, giants have been seen wandering the Silt Sea, wading through its waters on some mysterious pilgrimage.

Rezzic's Folly

A grim landmark in the Silt Sea is a small tidepool near the shore of the Yard, south of Fane, called Rezzic's Folly. Here, the silt is wet with water, making it cakey and almost mud-like. However, the water is cursed, permanently destroying the memories of any who touch it, but only after 3 days' time. (In game terms, the character is reduced to 1st level, and loses all memories except for languages and skills known at level 1). If caught within the 3 day period, it can be cured with a Remove Curse, but once the amnesia takes effect, it can only be cured with a Wish spell or divine intervention.

House Rezzic, as legend tells, is a House which fell from power in Fane. Once a powerful Great House, its water source was discovered by a rival household and were tainted with a curse. The curse stole the memories of anyone who touched or drank the water, but only after three days. By the time anyone in House Rezzic showed symptoms, it was too late. Without their memories, the sworn members of the House were quickly absorbed into new Houses or simply killed. The wellspring cistern was smashed, years later, and its waters now empty into the Silt Sea.

Needless to say, everyone knows about this hazard, and few go near it for fear of being stripped of their memories and then stripped of anything else they possess. Because of the spring waters leaking into the silt, it is visibly obvious to anyone looking where hazard lies within the Silt Sea. The Folly only reaches about 50 yards into the Sea from shore, after which the waters presumably have evaporated or become so dilute in the Silt that the curse poses no threat.

Cea Dorsal Mountains

Fane's northern border is a massive, ancient mountain range of jagged, snow-capped peaks. The Cea Dorsal mountains extend East to West as far as anyone has dared to travel, both into the Silt Sea in the East, and into the Rot in the West. There are no known passes through the mountains, though many have sought such a passage, looking for neighboring lands and the possibility of a better life. The mountains tumble down to foothills, and these foothills are where Fane's farmlands have been built. In addition, numerous copper, platinum and gem mines have been built by some of the Great Houses. These mines are operated by Fetterers, who oversee slaves and laborers doing the actual excavation. Stone, quartz and marble quarries are also abundant. There is also a much-contested Salt mine, currently held by House Constanzia.

Farms

Inside the city's walls, in the foothills of the Cea Dorsal mountains, farms are tended. The natural soil runoff from the mountains has left these foothills more fertile than the surrounding areas, and farmers have tended the lands carefully for generations. Leafy green vegetables, reedy grains and various livestock are all raised for the consumption of the people of Fane.

The farms have spread out to cover more than half of the enclosed space of Fane, over 200 square miles, and still the food is only minimally adequate to feed the population of the city. Unlike water, which is given to citizens for the low-low cost of their dignity and independence, food must be purchased, and many people in Fane lack any income other than scavenging for bartering materials. Jobs are rare and often dangerous or degrading, as slavery is fairly common and most of the 'good' jobs go to slaves.

Farmers themselves are a lower class of nobility in Fane, regarded in high esteem and always treated with the utmost politeness. While a noble would never get in trouble for mistreating a farmer, he might find his larders more difficult to fill with actually tasty food, once word got around of his impudence. Of course, if a commoner were to insult a farmer, the farmer would be fully justified in killing him for the insult.

Farmers tend to stick together in public, though centuries-long feuds over land boundaries or livestock ownership lead to constant bickering in private. While the actual land is all owned by the Water Dukes, the apportionment of each farm is rather arbitrarily handed out by those Water Dukes, which leads to confusion, frustration and bitter rivalries. Of course, the rivalries are all to the Water Dukes' benefit, keeping the farmers focused against each other instead of the Water Dukes, which is probably why their gifts of land are so arbitrary to begin with.

The Great Stair

To Fane's south, a jagged canyon cuts its way out of the ground like the remnants of an earthquake. At the northernmost edge of this massive crack in the earth is a set of black obsidian stairs, clearly sized for humanoids, each step only about 6 inches in height. The stairway proceeds down several miles into the thickly clouded valley revealed by this crack in the earth. Those brave souls who have made the march down have told of caves branching into the walls of the valley, a seemingly massive network of monster lairs, guarded treasures and terrible traps for the unwary.

Indeed, the Great Stair appears to be a massive dungeon, or perhaps several dungeons, quietly inviting adventurers to come unlock its secrets. The creator of these dungeons, and their reason for being created in the first place, have never been revealed, though quite a few adventurers have come back out, and appeared wealthier for the experience.

At the bottom of the stairs (for those single-minded enough to ignore the promises of hidden treasures and untold adventures in the caves) is a massive swampland called the Burning Mire.

The Burning Mire

The Burning Mire is a huge swamp, smoke-filled and thick with humidity and the methane stink of decaying vegetation. It takes its name from the areas within it which burst into flame, seemingly at random, presumably igniting pockets of gas which have boiled their way to the surface of the Mire's muck. These explosions sometimes catch the nearby tree and plants on fire, creating localized fires. The fires rarely spread too far, of course, since the whole mire is covered in water.

Numerous islands exist in the Mire, as well as large lakes. Some of the islands (and maybe even all of them) float in the water, rather than being part of the actual ground, moving in the slow, lazy currents of the swamp.

Of course, the Mire is home to many creatures, most of which are quite terrible to the inexperienced. But anyone who can make it down the Great Stair is probably powerful enough to at least survive the Burning Mire for a day or two.

No one in Fane is sure if a similar staircase leads back out of the Mire on the other side, and indeed, it's not clear that there is another side. Some have speculated that the Burning Mire is actually another Plane of existence, like an elemental plane of swamps, or something.