Atrkin Autumnal Boreal Grove

Place

Place Name:

Atrkin Autumnal Boreal Grove

Biome:

Autumnal Boreal Grove

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

The geographical placement of the Atrkin Autumnal Grove is what makes it so attractive to both kin’toni and zu’aan, as the climate that this placement on Taerel ends up creating is very unique. The reason for the strange way the seasons are flipped in actually quite simple. The Atrkin region gets incredibly dry in the summer, sometimes there is not a single drop of rain in the whole three months that the drought lasts for. As a result, nearly all of the flora that inhabits and prospers in the grove during the rest of the year dies, leaving the entire area looking like the rotting corpse of a forest, one that is about to become a desert.

The animals leave the Atrkin Autumnal Grove as well, as the region becomes lacking in both food and water for them, and what is the purpose of having a home if this home is as risky and unsafe as the outside world? Suddenly, the drought passes, the dying landscape springs to life as the heart of the woodland starts beating once more. This is the autumn in the Atrkin grove, a time when joy finally fills the faces of both the animals and the kin’toni, as the rotten carcass that the summer left actually turns into something… beautiful. Lakes such as the Ormel and the Kin’anna are once again filled with magnificent azure water, and the Cheyckmor kin’toni rush to them, able to get a good drink of their clan’s own water, at last.

Animals return to the Atrkin Autumnal Grove, and the painful lull of the summer gets replaced by the joyful wails of beast and fowl. That’s what the fall season looks like in the grove, and it’s truly a time to live for. The temperatures and precipitation remain stable in both the winter and spring. Admittedly, the winters in the Atrkin region are a bit chilly, but nothing that the flora and fauna can’t handle. Once every few years, it’s possible to spot some snowflakes sluggishly falling down to the blessed earth, frozen crystals that awaken a sense of wonder in the Cheyckmor kin’toni, for a lot of the younger ones have never seen snow.

Spring is the season when the incoming warmth is clearly felt by the kin’toni. While the sunshine grants the dwellers of the Atrkin grove both happiness and pleasure, the atmosphere is only bittersweet, and the drought that’s about to drain the region of energy is discussed about with a hint of sorrow. Since both water and food are at risk of running out, it’s somewhat common for the Cheyckmor to wander off to other clans to trade, stockpiling as much as they can the second they get home. Outside of resources with an organic origin, the natural resources that the region provides aren’t scarce.

The Cheyckmor tend to exchange the coal, gems and metal that they mine out of the earth in Atrkin for the water that they will lack in a long period of time. Nevertheless, the home of these kin’toni is in the Atrkin Autumnal Grove, and they have never left it permanently since the first settlers claimed the land for themselves.

Plants

The area is surprisingly rich in plant life for a place that’s located in Taerel’s South. One of the most common trees found in the Atrkin Autumnal Grove is the wal’kela, a tree that’s known among the kin’toni for how ridiculously tough its wood is. It also has a couple of related qualities that make the wal’kela great for building, namely how rigid and difficult to bend it is. While the trees that have softer and bendier wood are known for being hard to shatter, the wal’kela doesn’t even need that, its sheer density and might is all it needs to become the dominant tree that the Cheyckmor kin’toni utilize for various purposes.

Besides all this, the wal’kela is also useful because it’s a fruit tree, one that has fruit which are incredibly nutritious for the inhabitants of the Atrkin Autumnal Grove. They have even been given a specific name by zu’aan who encountered these trees in other regions of the wal’kir. Another type of fruit tree that makes this area so attractive (when it isn’t summer and the trees are struggling to survive because of dehydration) is the ulatur. While the wal’kir are coloured a bright orange, the fruit found on the ulatur tree stand right out, as they’re of a lively saturated purple hue.

The fruit of the ulatur is also considered to taste better than the wal’kir, but only slightly, to the point where choosing between the two is a matter of nothing but personal taste. Unfortunately, all the trees, shrubs and miscellaneous vegetation that can be found in the Atrkin area are forced into a state of decay when the dreaded summer comes. Indeed, it’s shocking how a place that was sprawling with dozens of species of flora during the rest of the year is suddenly sapped of it all. However, there are a couple of plants that not only survive, but thrive in this cursed drought.

Most of these are desert plants that also live on further South, and the most common out of them all is the lazundra. Picture a flower that’s completely green, almost as if trying to camouflage itself with the grass, before the latter got coloured an unsightly yellow from the lack of rain, and with unbelievably bright pink flower buds at the center of it. Sometimes, it almost seems like it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the atmosphere and the colors of the Atrkin flora, but when other plants wither and struggle to survive, the presence of a lazundra is a speck of hope in a dead wasteland.

Something else that’s quite unique about the lazundra flower, is the fact that it glows in the dark. Its bioluminescence is mysterious to the kin’toni, some of which have not seen a single other plant that’s equipped with this alien skill, but the Cheyckmor clan members manage to make great use of it to light up the darker, moody areas of their dwellings.

Animals

It seems that one cannot talk about the fauna in Taerel without mentioning the lo’tu. During the autumn, winter and spring, it’s quite common to see herds of these majestic animals peacefully grazing on the vegetation that this place is home to. The autumn in the parts of Taerel further up towards the North is harsh and hostile, so it’s not surprising that the vast emerald-green fields of the Atrkin Autumnal Grove are so alluring to these grazing creatures. However, the lo’tu are in a slight disadvantage, as the most delicious food one can get in the grove is found up on the trees, where the short quadrupedal lo’tu are unable to reach them.

One animal that can reach them though, is the gaara. The gaara can mostly be found further South, as they prefer warmer temperatures to the ones that most of Taerel has, but the Atrkin region houses a huge chunk of them. This is an animal that looks completely alien to both kin’toni and zu’aan, mostly because of its absurdly long neck, an adaptation which allows them to effortlessly pick saccharine fruit off some of the tallest trees that can be found, not only in the Atrkin Autumnal Grove, but in Taerel as a whole. Another adaptation that the gaara possess is their bodies’ ability to store water for long periods of time.

Which is something that means that they can actually stay in the Atrkin Grove in the summer, instead of going further North like the majority of the area’s inhabitants. This means that they have a lot less competition for the fruit of the wal’kela and the ulatur, because they are faced with one major rival for the rest of the year. This rival is a mammal too, but one that has found a different way to pick delicious food off trees. The nourin is a tiny critter compared to the towering gaara, and its miniscule size means that it has the ability to climb trees instead.

Penetrating the bark of a wal’kela tree is anything but an easy task, so the nourin are equipped with razor-sharp claws that make this job a lot easier. Besides, the claws also serve as a self-defence mechanism that can repel some of Taerel’s fiercest predators, and even terrify the kin’toni clans living next to them. Some have gone as far as to create tales around feral nourin who climb up into the houses of the kin’toni and slit their throats at night. Of course, they’re merely folk legends, with no real basis in reality except that the claws of a nourin are really painful to be stabbed with.

These peculiar creatures are coated with a layer of thick, warm fur, and that’s something that poses a heavy problem if they’re to remain in the Atrkin area. Unlike the gaara, their little bodies aren’t made for survival during long periods of dehydration. This means that the gaara migrate further North during the annual drought that strikes the Atrkin Autumnal Grove in the summer, and then come back during the fall.

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	Cheyckmor Tribal Zu'aan

Place

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Atrkin Autumnal Boreal Grove

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

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