Belurnad Pillar Valley

Place

Place Name:

Belurnad Pillar Valley

Biome:

Pillar Valley

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

History

Historical Overview

Western Taerel has seemingly always been filled with a variety of mountains, cliffs and crevasses. It’s only natural that where there are mountains, there are also valleys, and the largest of these is placed between the two largest mountains of Belurnad, the Two Pillars, as the kin’toni call them. That’s how the valley received its name: the Belurnad Pillar Valley. It’s crucial to remember that this valley hasn’t always been there since the dawn of time, it has gone through some absolutely gigantic changes during its lengthy lifetime.

The two Belurnad Pillars weren’t even there until quite recently (relative to the age of Taerel as a whole, not the kin’toni). At first, there was only one Belurnad mountain, notable not simply because of its size, but because it was one of the few mountains with a double summit, giving it the title of being the tallest twin peak mountain on Taerel. As centuries and millenia passed, the process of erosion separated the two mountains, and those were the mountains that the zu’aan have always known. The Belurnad Brothers, The Belurnad Pillars, this wonder had many more names than one, yet no one was aware of its past.

Now, as the two mountains were separated, a valley was carved out between them by a river flowing close by. The zu’aan named it the river of Bo’ela, and it took an important spot in their mythology and storytelling. To be fair, the tale of the Belurnad mountain is quite dramatic. Two brothers separated by an enormous river too wide to cross, so they remained in place and froze to stone, not wishing to leave each other. This is the story that the zu’aan told about the origin of the two mountains and the body of water between them.

Before the Awakening Age, the river in question was used as a shortcut to get to the other side of the Belurnad Pillars, instead of having to ascend up one of them or take a route around, until something happened. Drought struck the West of Taerel without mercy, and the river dried up completely, leaving a beautiful path between the two mountains to take its place. Since the valley was dry, both zu’aan and kin’toni could walk through it and even build houses inside the valley. The towering mountains looked like cliffs to the eyes of the kin’toni of the valley, as if there used to be one mountain and it got split up in the middle.

However, the Dahinbel tribal zu'aan, being the tribe which took full control of the place and built a small town there, made an absolutely grave mistake in doing so. Taerel will be hit with an unyielding ice age before long, the effects of it can already be seen everywhere. The terrifying thing about this, is that a river will flow through the Belurnad Valley once again, just as aggressive and powerful as it was before. It will sweep away all of the zu'aan houses, flood and drown the town they have raised from the earth, and ultimately push the Dahinbel out of the valley for good.

Geography

To summarize, the Belurnad valley is one that lies right between the twin peak Belurnad mountain, which was separated and split in two by erosion and the Bo’ela river flowing through it. The two resulting mountains are called the Belurnad Pillars for a reason. They are abnormally steep and very tall compared to any other mountains that you can find in the West. While the Belurnad would likely not impress some of the clans up North due to that region having some absolutely massive mountains, it certainly is impressive to the Dahinbel clan, who are used to the small hills and cliffs that the South-West possesses.

Since rivers always flow down, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Bo’ela river flows down from an even taller mountain up towards the North, though it’s one that the Dahinbel have not ever come close to, since the climate is much more hostile up there. The sheer speed at which the Bo’ela travelled through the land is horrifying. Even the most skilled kin’toni swimmers struggled not to be swept away with the stream. However, since the river has completely dried up, there is nothing for the kin’toni to fear… for now. Much like a lot of Taerel’s mountains, the Belurnad Pillars contain raw treasure in the form of valuable metals and coal.

The Dahinbel aren’t a huge mining zu'aan tribe, yet they still require basic minerals to function well as a tribe. Fire is obviously needed for a lot of things and wood isn’t the easiest resource to obtain, so coal is definitely a blessing for them. Since the valley is a pretty highly contested territory, and starting a settlement on low ground already gives the tribe a disadvantage, they are forced to have a strong industry for the creation of armor and weapons of war. Iron isn’t what other tribes and clans are looking for in the Belurnad Pillar Valley.

There is a very specific metal which other kin’toni value, that can also be mined out of the Belurnad mountains. This metal is none other than gold. The Dahinbel themselves do not care much about it, because gold isn’t very functional for the crafting of functional weapons. The problem is that gold is an incredibly rare metal on Taerel, so it’s viewed as something that separates the rich zu'aan from the poor by other zu'an tribes and the kin’toni clans. Alas, the Dahinbel are forced into conflict with other tribes and the kin'toni clans over something that they have no control over, as the area was settled before the gold inside the mountains was discovered.

The Dahinbel are attempting to change the geography of the Belurnad Valley. While they don’t know that the Bo’ela river won’t stay dry for long, there is still a fear among the tribes’s members. Therefore, the zu'aan have planned to build a huge dam, one that will be enough to completely stop the river in its tracks, perhaps even redirecting it to somewhere else. They don’t consider the raising of the dam to be an urgent thing which requires a lot of resources, but the zu'aan will work much harder once the water actually starts flowing.

Plants

The rock of the two Belurnad Pillars is dry and bare, its robust, jagged edges are free from vegetation and other plant life. The valley, too, is completely dry, disallowing plants to grow on it. One might ask if you can find any flora at all on this dead land. However, there are plants that grow and prosper here in the Belurnad region, and even though their numbers aren’t huge by any means, they certainly adorn the area in their bright greens that stand out among the mountain rock. The Belurnad Pillar Valley has a lot of the same plants as Taerel’s deserts, so the presence of the lazundra flowers is one that should not surprise.

A flower coloured hot pink sitting on top of an emerald green stem, with its leaves also being a lively green colour. The lazundra can be pretty big, the flower itself may reach up to thirty centimeters in radius sometimes, and the ones in Belurnad tend to be much larger on average than their desert cousins further South. There is one property of the lazundra which makes them stand out though, the flowers are bioluminescent and glow in the dark, allowing the kin’toni to use them as torches, and to easily spot fellow clanmates when out hunting during nighttime.

It’s not typical for trees to grow on mountains, yet there is one tree species which a climber may periodically stumble upon while ascending the Belurnad Pillars. This tree is called the beala, often nicknamed “The Mountain’s Hair” because it’s common for it to lie in fields at the top of the twin mountains in Belurnad, almost making it look like the mountain has a head full of hair. The beala are thin trees with stretchy bark of an inky black colour, giving them the appearance of saplings for some larger tree. They are the true survivalists of Taerel.

Being able to survive temperatures that go from frozen cold to unbearably hot, even if the change happens in the span of a few hours, as they often do in the South-West. Something else that may be found throughout the region is a vast number of bush species. It seems like shrubs thrive in the Belurnad valley, being able to prosper without a ton of water and nutrients. The olket is a bush that’s heavily utilized by the zu'aan, especially the Dahinbel clan, because it has amazingly sharp thorns that also get lubricated in the plant’s poison, making it the perfect defensive fortification, and one that can simply be found in nature.

The result is that the Dahinbel try to cultivate this bush around their territory, then cutting it off the ground once it has fully grown (with gloves of course) and replanting it somewhere else to create a living wall around their territory, a practice that has seemingly served them well, because the Dahinbel are still in control of the region and aren’t getting invaded anytime soon.

Animals

Even though the Belurnad Pillars lack in plant life, they absolutely do not lack when it comes to their fauna. The most notable animal that inhabits the valley and the mountains themselves is the azul, a mountain-dwelling herbivorous mammal known for both its appearance and fierceness. These majestic beasts possess two large horns that curve back in a spiral-like fashion, their chins end in wisps of hair that are reminiscent of beards, and their eyes allow them to have a wide field of view due to them being placed at the sides of an azul’s head.

While this does mean that azul are poor at determining depth and distance between objects, they are able to spot any predators looking to ambush them immediately. Another impressive fact about the azul eyes, is that they can rotate independently from each other, making an azul able to look forwards and backwards at the same time. The horns of an azul aren’t just for decoration, they are a critical weapon and tool for self-defence, making a lot of Taerel’s predators not even dare mess with a fully-grown azul, who can kill a dangerous predator like the sa’zar with a single well-placed blow to the treacherous reptile’s head.

The horns of an azul also serve as something to brag about to other azul. It’s very common for two males to get into a non-lethal fight with each other where they will interlock horns and push against each other, with the first animal down being disgraced, and the second gaining attention from the female azul. Creatures somewhat similar to the azul can be found all over Taerel, and it’s speculated that all of these powerful herbivores with curved horns share a prehistoric common ancestor. The deadliest predator of the entire region is the sa’zar, the closest creature that Taerel has to a wyrm.

A sa’zar is a serpent that can grow multiple meters in length, while still preserving its ability to move with utterly insane agility and speed. This snake doesn’t chase down its prey, instead it employs a tactic much more horrifying and sneakier, it lies in an ambush as it blends in with the bushes of Belurnad, waiting for a suitable target to walk by. After an unfortunate azul or even a zu'aan or kin’toni walks into a sa’zar’s trap, it pounces at its foe with the speed of lighting, leaving a fatal bite that cannot be cured by any known means.

This bite will slow down the target at first, letting the reptile catch up if the prey chooses to flee, but it ultimately does not matter, as the sa’zar’s venom can kill almost every type of creature on Taerel within the span of an hour. Not even behemoths like the aumat (not that they live in the Belurnad valley anyway) can withstand this lethal toxin. Some kin’toni clans have taken to dipping their arrows in the venom extracted from a sa’zar, making each arrow they shoot a definite death sentence for the target.

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	Dahinbel Tribal Zu'aan

Place

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Belurnad Pillar Valley

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