Urn'em Autumnal Valley

Place

Place Name:

Urn'em Autumnal Valley

Biome:

Autumnal Valley

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

There are only two cities in all of Urn’em, the others having been demolished some time ago. These two cities are the hidden city of Gahar’lo, which is the fortress and dwelling place of the On’iss clan, and Luxur, the great palace and shopping hall of the goddesses. The experience of controlling a whole civilization is unrivalled, but the experience of actually living in such a civilization, one of pure lust, envy, stupidity, and greed, it swiftly grows to be extremely dull if you know and remember what a civilization looks like that was built on things like honour, bravery, love, or intelligence.

The On’iss clan has accordingly build Gahar’lo, where they can enjoy each other’s company, which they find to be far superior to the company of the zu’aan whose minds they have twisted to nothing but senseless emotion. Gahar’lo isn’t as impressive as the other city, Luxur, but those few ambassadors whom the On’iss clan lets into Urn’em generally feel more at home in Gahar’lo. There’s something about its thick, autumn forests and its crystal pathways, and about the height at which the city is built. Luxur is built — but first I should describe the terrain of Urn’em.

If you want to get into Urn’em, the land bridge connecting it to the mainland is the only feasible way of doing so. The peninsula has no shores safe to land on, if you were thinking of sailing to it. When you cross the land bridge, you’ll come to a wall of mountains and towers which the On’iss have erected — there is a gate in this wall, and a small village of soldiers guarding the gate. If you’re let through, a few hours’ walk will bring you to the city of Gahar’lo. Thus far, you might be wondering why Urn’em is called a valley. Well, if you pass Gahar’lo, now is when you come to the valley.

The coasts of Urn’em, the land bridge, and the city of Gahar’lo, are the few things in Urn’em built above sea level. The rest of Urn’em is beneath it, and you have to descend quite the number of steps to get to the squalid villages where the male zu’aan live. It’s a few days’ journey to get to Luxur from Gahar’lo. So, as I was saying, Luxur is built in the middle of the valley of Urn’em. A large freshwater river runs out of it, for the city is built on a freshwater spring. The city is rebuilt every few years to be bigger and better and newer.

But the following description of its gaudy streets is generally true regardless of whatever redesign it’s just undergone. The streets of Luxur are a riot of colours that wear out the eye with their tasteless brightness — all the colours of the rainbow and then some fifty thousand more, or so it seems, can be picked out on a single street. Fires and out-of-tune music blast out into the sky at all times, blocking out the light of the stars and the sound of the wind. Here in Luxur are the schools, the hospitals, and the temples of the goddesses (and one temple for the Kind Pale Titans).

The temples of the goddesses are where a female zu’aan can try to stir up the lusts of the male masses, so that they’ll give her money to continue her reckless, spendthrift, and immensely fashionable life. The most successful goddesses have temples just for themselves and their patrons — and of course these temples have to be rebuilt every few years lest they grow unfashionable.

Plants

The On’iss clan recognized the beauty in the trees of the valley of Urn’em. It far surpasses the beauty they’ve tried to create in the city of Luxur, so they’ve removed these pretty trees from the villages and inhabited forests of Urn’em, and replaced them with dead, evil-looking trees instead. This way, the lights and the music of Luxur seem more beautiful when contrasted with its dead surroundings. But there were other reasons for replacing half the living trees in Urn’em with dead trees. These dead trees — which shall henceforth be referred to as ithukoras, for that is their proper name — are as useful as other trees if not more so.

Few other trees in all Taerel produce a wood which burns quite as hot or efficiently as the timber of the ithukora, for example. And few other trees grow quite as quick as a ithukora planted in ash-fertilized soil. Their ugliness, burning efficiency, and swift growth made the ithukora ideal for the On’iss clan’s schemes. It allows them to set more male zu’aan to work without their actually producing anything, and it allows them to demand that all zu’aan stay inside their windowless houses during the day, and work at night, by firelight.

The bright fires keep the zu’aan working outside from seeing the stars, and the night work prevents them from seeing the sun or the radiant blue sky. (The moon is the only thing left for them to see, so naturally the zu’aan mark the passage of time by the moon, as does the On’iss clan.) Still, there are many places in Urn’em where the normal trees grow — but, ostensibly for the dangers of wild animals, it is forbidden for the zu’aan to go to these places. And Gahar’lo is one of these places with trees, of course. The forbidden beauty of Urn’em’s trees, the leaves of which maintain a reddish hue even in spring, is a sight to behold.

Their beauty is enhanced by the scarlet crystals that seem to like growing at the bases of these red trees — when the sunlight shines down onto the crystalline ground and bounces back up to illumine the undersides of a tree’s leaves, it makes for a sight which many an artist would die to get a glance of. These other trees, if grown next to a ithukora tree, exhibit well one of the few weaknesses of the ithukora — that it cannot grow in the presence of a other tree. The other tree saps all the nutrients out of the ground before the ithukora can get to them.

This interaction between the other trees and the ithukora ones the On’iss clan found useful, actually, since it sometimes happens that a other tree will grow within the lands where it is not supposed to grow. This happened so often that the On’iss clan grew tired of cutting them down, but all they had to do to stop them from growing was teach their zu’aan to cut them down, because they kill the ithukora trees.

Animals

There are no tame animals in Urn’em. The only livestock are the zu’aan themselves. But the On’iss clan isn’t lying when they say that there are dangerous animals in the wilds of Urn’em. Because there are. Fortunately for the zu’aan of Urn’em, their Kind Pale Titans have dug almost impassable ditches and built hard to scale walls to protect their people from the dangerous outside world. Many a tale the Kind Pale Titans tell to the infant children they teach, of foolish adventurers who tried to see the savage animals of the outside world, and were torn to pieces.

Even worse, the friends of these adventurers, back in the most glorious civilization of Urn’em, deemed these unorthodox actions to be ‘unfashionable’ and ‘cringe’. (As a side note, there are also ordinary, non-dangerous critters in the forests, since the dangerous creatures need something other than zu’aan to eat.) glassropes are one of these dangerous creatures. Every inch of these limbless, crawling serpents, is transparent. It’s very easy to step on one accidentally, or bump into one hanging off a tree accidentally. That is, unless they’ve recently eaten something.

In which case you’ll see the corpse of the thing they ate inside their transparent bodies. A glassrope isn’t an entirely antisocial creature, either, so occasionally you’ll see a whole row of dead creatures levitating a few inches beneath a thick branch — a whole row of glassropes who have recently eaten. glassropes are surprisingly strong, considering all their muscles are completely transparent. They’re constrictors, choking their prey to death before swallowing it whole. When they’re not hunting or hanging down from trees with their friends.

They’re generally basking in the sun, generally on the crystals that grow in the forests. When glassropes first hatch, they’re pink. (Fun facts.) While the On’iss clan was busy at work turning the civilization of Urn’em into what it is today, the vaars of the province seemed to sense that something was going wrong. On the third day of the fourth month in the sixtieth year of the Third Era, every vaar in Urn’em disappeared, simultaneously. The On’iss clan was confused but not displeased, as they had planned to get rid of the vaars anyway.

These vaars all dashed into the forests of Urn’em. After a dozen years or so, the genes and traits of their wild ancestors began reappearing, and eventually a vaar called the fayraywr became the only canine in Urn’em — because it killed off all the other vaars. fayraywrs are strong, fast, and intelligent. Their teeth are small, however, as are their claws. How then were they able to become the dominant force in the wilds of Urn’em, killing off all other canines? Simple. They figured out how to get glassropes to attack their enemies. fayraywrs and glassropes have a symbiotic relationship.

The fayraywr tracks prey, chases it, and brings it down, while the glassrope — which can’t do any of the previous three things all that well — rides on the fayraywr, and actually kills the creature it brings down. Ever seen a pack of fayraywrs charge a pack of lesser vaars and tackle them, and suddenly, while the lesser vaars struggle, nearly-invisible things slip off the backs of the fayraywrs and deliver the kills? Yeah, I haven’t either. Only one man has, and he’s dead now — but rest assured that it was a sight worth seeing.

Place

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Urn'em Autumnal Valley

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This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.