Far, far away, jutting out into the emptiness beyond, like the figurehead of a mighty stone ship, is the Edge...
From this point - where the Edgewater river pours over the lip of the land - through to the river's source at Riverrise, the Edgeworld is home to a host of creatures and tribes. Behind each place-name lie a thousand tales which have been recorded in ancient scrolls and passed down the generations by word of mouth. To many in the Edgeworld, who live and die without ever leaving their home territory, places like Undertown and Sanctaphrax have always just been that - names. For others, however, lured by the promise of better lives for themselves and their families, their travels have not only brought them to these cities, but also forced them to face the perilds of the Mire, the Twilight Woods and elsewhere - often at the mercy of unscrupulous guides.
Above the land, sky ships criss-cross the skies, carrying trade goods - and creatures - from market to market. The crews of both the league ships and the sky pirate ships include an assortment of different creatures, from goblins to waifs.
A map will be coming, but from open sky in the west to Riverrise in the east, the key regions of the Edgeworld are:
Sanctaphrax
In the center of Undertown is a great iron ring, to which a long and heavy chain - the Anchor Chain - extends up into the sky. Fashioned by the Glade Dwarves before the first era, it is a metalsmithing feat that has never been repeated, nor have the metals used even been identified, despite the many scholars who have dedicated their whole lives to studying it. At the Anchor Chain's end is an immense floating rock upon which is built the city of Sanctaphrax. Home to academics, scholars, astronomers, anthropologists, alchemists, librarians, and all matter of spell casters, Sanctaphrax is a city of magnificent, ornate towers. These are connected by viaducts and walkways, the most magnificent of which - the Central Viaduct - spans the air between the Loftus Observatory and the Great Hall. From this lofty view of open sky, Sanctaphrax's scholars are ever watchful for the Motherstorms which deposit their invaluable stormphrax in the Twilight Woods and seed Riverrise, the lifegiving source of the Edgewater River, known variously as the Stone Carver River, the Mother's Jatta, along with many other names too many to mention, and as simply "the river" elsewhere.
The buoyant rock is honeycombed with a vast network of tunnels, caves and cavities which are everchanging, like the streams in a marsh. Tales tell of how the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax, Linius Pallitax, once ventured deep into the stonecomb to explore the mysteries of the First Scholars and their long-lost libraries. Despite its splendor, Sanctaphrax is a center of intrigue, espionage and jealous infighting where underlings vie for their masters favor.
While many residents of Undertown ply their trades in Sanctaphrax, its academics come from the privileged homes of the leaguesmen and merchants of Undertown, their family names (and wealth) weighing heavily in the admission to one of its many colleges.
Stone Garden
The Sanctaphrax rock began life as all other buoyant rocks in the Edge - the the Stone Gardens. A cold, ghostly place, nothing grows there except the buoyant rocks, which form stacks and towering silhouettes as new rocks appear beneath the old ones, forcing their way up from the ground with eerie groans and sonorous underground rumblings. The only life there is a colony of white ravens, which has roosted in the stone stacks for centuries.
When the uppermost rocks become so buoyant that they are about to break free and sail upwards into the sky, the ravens take to the skies and signal to the academics in Sanctaphrax that the rock harvest should begin. The ghoulish clamor of the ravens and the howling rocks is known as the
chorus of the dead.
The flight rocks are captured with heavy iron nets and sky barges. All the flight-rocks necessary for sky flight are gathered in this way and their harvesting is closely monitored and licensed by the leaguesmen and competing merchants of Undertown.
The Stone Garden is also where the dead of Undertown are skyfired (tied to a burning log and released into open sky). There is a complex network of Stone Garden monks who provide this service as well as final prayers and they are revered for their piety and sanctity as well as their fearlessness to live among the ravens and the dead. The ravens eat the remains of those who cannot afford the elaborate ceremonies. Families who can not afford or make the trek to the Stone Gardens, will skyfire their dead into open sky without the blessings of the monks and it is not uncommon to see these burning embers streaking through the dark night sky from the Deepwoods and over the Mire. Those condemned to death by the courts of Sanctaphrax and Undertown are likewise skyfired from the Stone Garden, but without prayers.
Undertown
Straddling the oozing Edgewater River is Undertown, the center of all economic activity in the Edge. Home to numerous creatures, peoples and tribes from all over the Edgeworld, its population is bound together by one clear principle: freedom. For Undertown developed as a haven for those who had escaped a life of servitude or slavery in the Deepwoods during the second Great Migration, and the founders of the city made it a crime to enslave an Undertowner (and in theory, anyone else).
Click for Dirty Old Town (for Jeff & Mara)
Dirty, over-crowded and often violent, Undertown's streets, squares and alleys throb with energy and excitement as leaguesmen, merchants and others squabble, deal and look for bargains everywhere.
The filth of the city does not reach all. It is segregated literally by gates and figuratively by status and wealth. The wealthy live high on the hilltops on either side of the river, while those who struggle day to day live along the crowded streets, "bridge towns," even in the sprawling sewers.
The Green
Sandwiched between Undertown and the Mire, is The Green, a vast area of rolling hills, small towns and farms. The Green produces most of the food and natural resources consumed in the city and it also provides an invaluable break, holding the Mire at bay.
Mire
The Mire is the result of over foresting during the First Age of Flight, when the inhabitants of Undertown, namely the merchants and leaguesmen, devastated the land in their hunger for the varied woods used to heat the flight rocks, enabling stone pilots to control skyships' altitude and even speed and complex flight maneuvers, in the hands of the most experienced.
The goblinoids that reside in the mire are resistant to becoming part of the changing world and are often hostile to those who pass through their lands. While most view them as dangerous and uncivilized, a minority view them as indigenous peoples and respect their commitment to their culture.
The Mire is now further polluted with the slurry from Undertown's factories and foundries. A bleached wasteland that takes many days to travel across on foot, it is a place of enormous peril with endless stretches of stinking mud and breath snatching stench. Without any warning, a scalding blow hole can erupt, shooting a thick column of seething mud high into the air before, with a loud roar, folding over on itself and tumbling back to earth in a shower of life taking mud and rock.
However, the Mire is not without life. It is home to the many goblinoid tribes, most of which prefer these wilds to the loud and busy life of Undertown and under the perpetual watch of the academics of Sanctaphrax. Here and there, the landscape is dotted with the remains of wrecked sky ships or carts from travelers who have been forced to continue on foot (or were haplessly raided, robbed, and left for dead, their bleached bones a warning to all who pass through this merciless landscape).
The Deepwoods
While a stark, and welcome, contrast to the Mire, the dark and deeply mysterious Deepwoods are an equally dangerous place for those who call it home. Massive, ancient trees rises up out of the forest floor like great pillars - reaching up through the green, shadowy air to find light above the dense canopy of leaves. Occasionally the trees thin out, allowing dazzling shafts of sunlight o slice down through the air and encouraging shrubs and bushes to grow below: combbushes, clamshrubs, weeping willowsage, brakenpines and many other plants and trees. But here are also dangers: flesh eating trees like the bloodoak and its parasitic tarry vine, the ferocious logworms, patrolling bands of shrykes, and innumerable poisonous plants.
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Communities of slaughterers, woodtrolls and others scratch out a living in the Deepwoods, always aware of the dangers. Yet there are profits too, for the buoyant woods which grow there are highly valued, especially the wood of the treacherous bloodoak tree.
Also within the Deepwoods is the the Great Shryke Market which moves like one huge living organism across the Deepwoods.
shrykes
Found in undisturbed and ancient corners of the Deepwoods are regions known as Nightwoods, where the undergrowth becomes thornier, with barbs the size of daggers protruding from the brambles. These are the homes of the waifs, who are attracted to fearful thoughts and will attack without warning.
Twilight Woods
Beyond the Deepwoods lies the Twilight Woods. Bathed in never ending golden half-light, the Twilight Woods is an enchanting place - but extremely treacherous. Time has no meaning in the Twilight Woods, for its heady and intoxicating air draws all reason from those who breathe it for too long. Ancient trees with their gnarled trunks and twisted branches seem to writhe in the liquid air, sparkling with sepia dust, creaking and groaning with age - whispering, echoing, enticing. As the woods close in around the unwary, their minds drift away and it is possible to spend an eternity simply wandering, robbed of one's senses, wits and reason, yet doomed never to die. Only shrykes and the Fey creatures are immune to the effect of the Twilight Woods.
The heavy stillness of the Woods is disturbed at times by violent storms which are drawn there like iron filings to a magnet. The Knights Academic who chase the Great Storms can often be trapped within the Twilight Woods, endlessly pursuing a quest they have long forgotten. It is common for those who live or work near (or under) the Twilight Woods to constantly repeat their personal details out of fear of forgetting them.
Deep mine shafts have been dug from the edges of the Deepwoods under the Twilight Woods to harvest the valuable stromphrax, which not only is the source of energy in the Edgeworld enabling the creation of deadly phrax pistols, but also purifying the putrid water of Undertown. Most importantly to the academics, stormphrax keeps Sanctaphrax from floating away into open sky. In bright light, stormphrax is very volatile and explosive, yet incredibly heavy in darkness, burying itself deep in the ground. Even working at great depths, those who stay too long in the mines, are subject to the effects of the Twilight Woods above and the phraxlung.
Riverrise
Past wait territory lies the source of the Edgewarer River - and the origin of all life in the Edge. The annual, sky willing, Mother Storm sweeps in from open sky and unleashes its energy here, reseeding Riverrise and perpetuating life.
Riverrise is not marked on any maps as few have ever witnessed its glories as it lies at the far reaches of the Edgeworld. Its description comes from myths and legend and, more recently, the eye-witness accounts transcribed into scrolls by Cowlquape Penetphraxis, after his epic journey their with the sky pirate, Arborinus Vergenix.
Open Sky/Skyships
Open Sky is unexplored. While many stories, mostly passed on from sky pirates, tell tales of other worlds and strange creatures, the Edgeworld folk are superstitious about exploring Open Sky or the Edge.
Skyflight is essential to the economic success of the Edgeworld. With the buoyant flight-rock held in a cage and carefully tended by a stone pilot, the might sky ships soar high over the earthbound perils to carry cargoes from the Deepwoods on to the markets in Undertown and elsewhere.
Although all sky ships follow the same principles for flight, their designs vary and many take their names from the way in which they have been built or the special weapons they have. For example, the Cloudbreaker has two masts and a harpoon at the prow, and the Forscythe has curved fore-blades to cut through the fog and attack enemies. Some ships were constructed especially to chase the Great Storms that sweep in over the Edge and unleash their power over the Twilight Woods. The most skillful students from the Knights' Academy in Sanctaphrax are chosen to sail these storm chasers.
Skyship captains and their crews are skilled and brave adventurers, apprenticed in Undertown for several span. Ships are often handed down from parent to child. Although, many skypirates have acquired their ships through less honorable means.
Stormphrax, under the careful study of academics, has recently been harnessed for personal flight... for those who can afford it... and are brave enough to attempt to master it.
(
From The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell; adapted by your DM)
