Stevie Lambert: (via JWB)

2026-05-20T13:23:59Z

(via JWB)

New page

{{Infobox Region
|Name = Iawy Taiga Upland
|Other Names = Unknown
|Biome = Taiga Upland
|Size = Unknown
|Continent = Unknown
|Subcontinent = Unknown
}}

==History==
===Historical Overview===
===History by Age===

====Stone Age: Before 1E 0====

====Copper Age: 1E 1-1E 2200====

====Bronze Age: 1E 2200-1E 4400====

====Iron Age: 2E 0-2E 700====

====Ancient Age: 2E 700-2E 2200====

====Middle Ages: 3E 0-3E 2050====

====Early Modern Age: 3E 2050-3E 2600====

====Industrial Age: 3E 2600-3E 2700====

====Machine Age: 3E 2700-3E 2800====

====Atomic Age: 3E 2800-3E 2850====

====Space Age: 3E 2850-3E 2875====

====Information Age: 3E 2875-3E 2900====

====Genetic Age: 3E 2950-3E 3000====

====Awakening Age: 3E 3000-3E 3415====

====Twilight Age: 4E 0-4E 500====

==Geography==

The Taiga consists of gloomy snow-covered forests. The trees which grow in the Iawy region are ancient and gigantic, their dense leaves blocking out the sun from the forest floor. The Iawy Taiga Upland, much like the name suggests, is at an elevated level compared to the rest of the Iawy region. Mountains and hills are nothing rare in Taerel’s North, and the Iawy Taiga is placed along a range of mountains flattened by the hand of time. There was once a river that flowed from the upland and brought water down to the equator of Taerel. The river is there no more, since the climate changes starting in the North froze it solid.

Turning it into a bridge of ice, a glacier that bears a sorrowful reminder of the age when the North was still a place sprawling with life and energy. The amount of cold needed to freeze a flowing river is overwhelming, so it’s only natural that the lakes once filled with clear sky-blue water have also completely frozen. At the very start, the ice sheet was still thin enough to be broken through, and the few zu’aan that lived in the taiga used to break the ice with a hammer and start fishing through the hole they have created. Over the years, the ice became thicker and harder to break, until it could not be shattered even with a heavy metal sledgehammer.

Just like that, fishing, which was the primary way for the zu’aan to supply themselves with nutrition in the Iawy Taiga, became completely impossible. Kin’toni clans still live in the Iawy Taiga and refuse to migrate to the South for one reason: this is an area filled to the brim with resources. It’s impossible to find more wood anywhere else in Taerel, and wood can be both used as timber, as a material, or heated into charcoal. Charcoal became a sustainable resource that would serve as fuel for the kin’toni clans, but there are so many more treasures hiding in the Iawy Taiga Uplands than just trees.

Iron, copper, bronze. Like most mountainous regions in the North of Taerel, the ground of the taiga is a graveyard of buried metals just beneath the surface. Metal has been employed for a variety of uses, especially so after The Great Fire happened, as wood isn’t viewed as quite the same anymore. Iron is turned into blades for axes that are finally able to penetrate the thick bark of the largest trees inhabiting the Iawy area. It must be admitted that the craftsmen of the kin’toni in the taiga aren’t the best. Their skills is nothing when compared to the exceptional craft that the Orm’kela kin’toni clan polishes even more year after year, but what really matters is that it’s functional.

Few metals can resist the process of weathering over time, but there is one metal found in the upland which is loved by the kin’toni and rare in the rest of Taerel. This metal is gold. While gold may not be the toughest or the easiest to find, both zu’aan and kin’toni consider this material to be incredibly beautiful. Being in the possession of gold, especially if it is incorporated into one’s clothing or adornments, is considered a sign of great status. Whoever has control of the Iawy Taiga has control over one of the largest sources to mine gold from.

The elevation and the temperature make the place a pain for other kin’toni clans to invade, so the Kel’raku can enjoy the ability to trade with neighbouring clans and make a profit without having to on guard for potential invasions.

==Plants==

Ultimately, the flora of the Iawy Taiga Upland is really what sets it apart from any other place in Taerel. Wherever you go, you will find murky forests of olden trees, towering over the land they had known for centuries. The most common tree is the wy’il (pronounced why-eel), an age-old monumental colossus that requires hours’ worth of work to chop down. Even kin’toni armed with brute strength and razor-sharp iron axes often get exhausted before they can take down a wy’il. The risk is absolutely worth the reward though, because one of those sky-scraping trees can supply a week’s worth of wood for all of Iawy’s kin’toni clans combined, and they are the ones who tend to use the most.

A weakness that the wy’ils exhibit is the time it takes for one of them to grow to full height. Actually, it takes such a long time that not a single kin’toni has managed to observe the entire process of a wy’il seed turning into a fully-grown tree. Not all of the taiga’s trees are as old and mighty as the great wy’il though. The illasi is a thinner, bendier tree with white bark that’s also much softer than the wy’il. Since one of those can be cut down in less than ten minutes, they are the ones that kin’toni and zu’aan lumberjacks spend the majority of their time on, especially when they have to start a quick fire.

The illasi is a relatively small tree compared to a lot of other tree species that dwell in the taiga, and there are a ton of those. The variety is so amazingly massive that there has not been even one kin’toni clan who have named every single tree specie that they have found in the forest. Trees aren’t all there is to the Iawy Upland. Bushes and berries decorate the landscape all around, but one must be very careful with which of those berries they consume. The alsula, also known by the dramatic, albeit fitting title: “The Forester’s Bane”.

Alsula berries are awfully poisonous, and consumption of them leads to a certain death. That isn’t what makes them so horrifying though, not even close. Alsula berries look identical to a berry called the kai’ril, which roughly translates as “heaven’s honey”. Kai’ril berries are renowned for their irresistible syrupy taste, and their soft silky texture. One might quickly recognize what the problem here is. The kai’ril taste amazing, but anyone who puts one in their mouth risks to eat alsula instead, and since the two look exactly the same, you can’t do anything until it’s already too late.

It seems like the azut have some way to separate the two types from each other, so the widely accepted way among the kin’toni to check whether a berry found in the forest is edible or not, is to lead an azut to it and check whether they accept the gift. If they do, everything on the berry bush is safe for consumption. If they don’t, just hope you didn’t do a taste test first.

==Animals==

The Iawy Taiga is unique because it doesn’t have a lot of the wildlife you’d find further up North, and the climate is too harsh for those from warmer areas of Taerel. Aumat are simply too huge to be able to comfortably live in the dense forests of the taiga. Lo’tu dislike the cold climate and lack of nutrition that the Iawy region offers. However, this doesn’t mean that the area is empty and that no animals settle themselves there. The herbivorous azut are the first animal species that are known for occupying the taiga. Azut are powerfully built creatures with two horns sprawling out of their heads, which then branch out into multiple pointy ends.

The ends of these horns curve back towards the azut, because otherwise they’d get easily tangled in the vegetation of the Iawy Taiga Uplands. The azut themselves are peaceful and spend their time grazing on the taiga’s grass, as well as picking the sugary berry bushes of the forest clean. They are peaceful and uncaring towards both zu’aan and kin’toni, unless they are injured or otherwise threatened. When these things do happen, the azut can fiercely fight back, goring the assailant on their mighty horns. Before the waters of the Iawy Taiga froze over, the lakes and rivers housed both peculiar and utterly horrifying creatures.

There was an instance where a gigantic leviathan of a fish ended up on the river’s shore. This dreadful creature was over 8 meters long, and the kin’toni took this as an omen of evil things to come. The mysterious animal was actually an usa’rot, and it was a whale instead of a fish like the kin’toni thought. How such a behemoth could have ended up in a place so far away from its home remains a mystery. The usa’rot are a species completely undocumented among the taiga’s clans because they inhabit the ocean even further up North of Taerel. Not every fish that has lived in Iawy’s lakes and rivers is a monster though.

The zu’aan who settled in the taiga had fishing as their main method of finding food. From the tiny wooden looking plankfish and the plentiful yet delicious istusal, to the bulky artena and the fisherman’s dream: intarna. In fact, the intarna were called “the fisherman’s dream” for a good reason, not only is one of them enough to feed an entire family of zu’aan, but they also taste absolutely delicious and are surprisingly easy to cook. Sadly for the zu’aan, the intarna were becoming increasingly rare as time went on, due to them preferring warmer water to the one in the rapidly-chilling taiga.

Unfortunately, as temperatures dwindle all around Taerel, it’s very much likely that the intarna will go extinct, and their presence will only be remembered in ancient tales told by the elder zu’aan.

{{Template:Controllers
|Stone Age = Unknown
|Copper Age = Unknown
|Bronze Age = Unknown
|Iron Age = Unknown
|Ancient Age = Unknown
|Middle Age = Unknown
|Early Modern Age = Unknown
|Industrial Age = Unknown
|Machine Age = Unknown
|Atomic Age = Unknown
|Space Age = Unknown
|Information Age = Unknown
|Genetic Age = Unknown
|Awakening Age = Unknown
|Twilight Age = [[Kel'raku Kin'toni Clan]]
}}

{{NeartoDesktop
| Centre = {{PAGENAME}}
| North = Unknown
| Northeast = Unknown
| East = Unknown
| Southeast = Unknown
| South = Unknown
| Southwest = Unknown
| West = Unknown
| Northwest = Unknown
}}

{{CrossSiteAttribution
| User = [https://www.fiverr.com/piggytheastro piggytheastro]
| Holder = piggytheastro
}}

[[Category:Places]]
[[Category:piggytheastro's contributions]]

Iawy Taiga Upland - Revision history

Stevie Lambert: (via JWB)