Elmatai Sullen Grove

Place

Place Name:

Elmatai Sullen Grove

Biome:

Sullen Grove

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

The Elmatai Sullen Grove is an unwelcoming, murky woodland, one with neither mountains nor hills, and where trees are the only objects of interest that one can see. Nevertheless, the densely growing vegetation proved itself to be perfect for the zu’aan, since it makes them a small and unlikely target. Even a large city may be hidden in plain sight due to it being obstructed and camouflaged by Elmatai’s flora. One might wonder as to why the zu’aan chose to settle in a place where lumber is nearly the only natural resource that the land has to offer, and admittedly a lot of it boils down to luck.

Kin’toni clans expect zu’aan to settle in open flatlands with little places to hide, not gloomy forests that suit kin’toni species way better. The zu’aan played with this expectation, and found the perfect hiding spot, one which ended up serving them quite well. Even though wood and fertile soil were plentiful in the Elmatai Sullen Grove, other resources were not. This led to two things, the first is of course the aforementioned wood being the main export from the zu’aan inhabiting the area, and the second being that the soil could allow the zu’aan to place all their eggs in one basket when it came to food and nutrition, focusing purely on agriculture instead of hunting or fishing.

Therefore, one of the first things that the Umvera kin’toni clan tried to do, was poison the soil and prevent edible plants from growing there. Their attempts did not grant them much success though, and they soon realized that hitting the export from the city wasn’t the right thing to do. The correct strategy would be to cut off as much of the imported goods as possible, because a zu’aan city needs certain resources to function, resources that the Elmatai region wasn’t exactly known for having. Coal and metal. These were the two main imports to the zu’aan city, and they were crucial for survival for a couple of reasons.

The Elmatai region is cold, its temperatures won’t freeze a zu’aan to the bone like they will in the far North of Taerel, but the weather is still notably chilly in the winter, especially so in recent years, where the entire world has seemingly been drained dry of warmth by an incoming ice age. In order for a zu’aan to make it through the winter, heat is required. The most reliable source of heat in the wilderness, and the forest especially, is fire. Fires started using only wood as fuel would work, yet not only do they burn slower and colder than fires with some coal mixed in.

But they also require a lot of wood to be chopped down if it is to sustain an entire nation. Between all of the zu’aan in the city needing a constant supply of trees, and the exact same thing being their primary source of money, the forest of Elmatai would simply not survive, and that’s not even speaking about metal, which was an absolutely critical material for a lot of things that the city required to prosper.

Plants

The Elmatai Sullen Grove is called a grove for a reason, pretty much the entire area is filled with trees, towering giants who have stood there in columns for centuries, and will likely stand for centuries to come. The tallest tree species of the bunch is the wal’kela, a tree that’s utilized very heavily by the zu’aan, it’s simply that useful. The wood of the wal’kela is rigid and reliable, making products crafted out of this wood difficult to break or even shatter. In fact, the wal’kela is so tough that the zu’aan used to create weapons out of it, ones that were surprisingly sharp and effective.

Some kin’toni clans who’ve used wood as their primary building material, especially those in the Northern Iawy Taiga, met a cruel and despicable fate because of its flammability, but the Umvera are fine… for now. The wal’kela trees are valuable for another reason; they grow fruit that’s both edible and quite easy to pick from the wooden brute’s thick branches. The wal’kela fruit are also known by a specific name among the zu’aan: wal’kir. Wal’kir are coloured with a bright orange hue that makes them stand out among all the greenery in Elmatai, which also makes the jobs of the zu’aan responsible for picking these fruits a lot easier.

The fruits are shaped like a sphere, yet not a perfectly round one, variations in form are common from tree to tree, and even on a per-fruit basis. For the zu’aan though, the ones that resemble a sphere the most are considered the most impressive, and as a consequence are valued at a higher price than others. Some farmers practice artificial selection when it comes to replanting the miniscule, also round seeds of the wal’kir, with the highest quality fruit getting the honour of being dug into the earth once more, while the notoriously low-quality ones are disposed of in the most efficient manner possible.

Surprisingly, undergrowth is scarce in the Elmatai woodland, so the area resembles an army of trees simply standing still on the almost-bare earth that is covered by a layer of short grass. Still, the grove does have some shrubs standing around. However, those shrubs are none other than the akhil, small bushes that provide no nutrition in the form of berries, and don’t have defensive value to the zu’aan due to their lack of thorns. They just look like clumps of leaves and branches on the forest floor, too organized for them to have been accidentally swept away into a corner.

But too messy for them to even be noticeable among the grass and the milky-white flowers that decorate the earth of the Elmatai Sullen Grove. The lack of other bush species actually means that the area provides minimal value to grazing animals, more on that in the next section.

Animals

Since the Elmatai Sullen Grove relies on trees and the fruit of said trees as its major source of nutrition for herbivorous species living there, animals that feed themselves on either grass or bushes are not attracted to the area. Of course, there is still a reasonable amount of grass, but bushes, flowers and other vegetation that grows on the ground is heavily limited. Lo’tu, an animal that’s not fortunate enough to be the owner of a long neck, can barely be found in the Elmatai region, even though it’s one of the most common mammals on the entirety of Taerel.

However, this doesn’t mean that the wildlife of the grove is boring or lacking, there are quite a few interesting species that inhabit this little corner of the world. Aumat are giant hulking brutes of the animal world, their mighty tusks make them feared by both kin’toni and zu’aan, giving these unyielding beasts uncontested control over their territory. Unlike the lo’tu, the aumat are incredibly tall, and they have no problems with reaching even the tallest branches of Taerel’s fruit trees, especially those in Elmatai, which aren’t known for their immense height, unlike the tree species further West.

Another thing that makes this area so attractive to aumat is the climate. It gets too chilly in the North from whence they come from, even more so due to the ice age. However, the South of Taerel is too hot for these creatures, as they’ve somewhat adapted to the sub-zero temperatures the North had to offer. The moderate climate of the Elmatai Sullen Grove is perfect for them, since it’s cold enough for them to come here during the winter, autumn and spring. The summer is admittedly a bit outside of the comfort zone for the aumat, which is the time they go back into the far North.

The azut, an animal known for inhabiting the Iawy Taiga Upland, may also sometimes be found here. It’s unknown how the current population started off, since the taiga is further North-East, but the accepted explanation is that a small group of them once got lost and wandered into this area, where they settled and reproduced, living in the Elmatai Sullen Grove ever since. Admittedly, the azut aren’t that well adapted to the area, being best built for grazing and picking bushes, but they are still capable of getting food from the branches of some of the shorter fruit trees in the grove, not every tree is a wal’kir after all.

A third type of animal that can be found here is the gaara, an animal that vaguely looks like something from a dream, since its proportions are so strange and alien to the zu’aan. The gaara have ridiculously long necks, which are perfect for picking the branches of wal’kir and other forest trees

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Umvera Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Elmatai Sullen Grove

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This article is written by piggytheastro. Copyright 2026 piggytheastro. All rights reserved.