Bosul Ashland

Place

Place Name:

Bosul Ashland

Biome:

Ashland

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Bosul has some hundred islands, but only twenty were made by the volcanoes at their cores. The other eighty or so are mostly of no importance, though nearly all of them have secret gold mines and secret watchtowers, and nearly all of them are connected to the highways deep underground that all lead to the city of Byro. Oxygen is an issue for those travelling through these roads through the bowels of the earth, if they happen to need it — the Mos'vor need less than most, but the zu'aan that they have dominion over do still breathe, like the ordinary humans they are.

Fortunately, some volcanoes erupt like clockwork, and the caverns connected to them draw oxygen from the Taerel’s surface whenever they do erupt. These caverns are always full of fresh air and therefore always safe to travel through — although, admittedly, they can be extremely hot at times, but can’t that be said about every tunnel? It’s unknown how exactly this ventilation system works, and whether it’s a natural phenomenon, or a trick carefully engineered by the men of the old zu’aan empire. There’s evidence for both views, but ordinary men don’t really care how the system really came about.

Just so long as it doesn’t suddenly stop working while they’re passing through the tunnels. Due to this system, some tunnels are always safe. Others, connected to volcanoes that erupt less regularly, are occasionally safe. Still others are safe at certain times of year. And still others could be safe one moment and deadly the next. And of course, some are never safe, whether because of low oxygen, or because of the magma and scorching gasses that might suddenly flash through them like a whirlwind. The deepest and most dangerous tunnels are usually filled with gold and jewels to reward those adventurers with a death wish.

Some say that there are dragons and fell beasts that also live in those deep caves, but no one has ever seen one and lived to tell the tale, though a few have come back with tales of jewels as big as their heads, trapped in some far wall which they could not reach. Returning to the surface of Bosul… in the sea there are many reefs of coral, grey as the ashes that cover the islands, and many rocks. Many ships not made of the black wood have crashed on these reefs and rocks and sunk. Some of those ships carried gold, if you care to look for it in these boiling waters. A couple landmarks stand out to the casual visitor.

The main one is the largest volcano, a dormant one, on which and under which and even in which the city of Byro is built. This volcano is named Hefast. Another landmark is the only partially green island left, which is simply called Green Island. It has some birds still living in it, though they’re mostly of the migratory sort. And of course, there’s the infamous Maw of the Sea, an enormous whirlpool to the west of these islands.

Plants

The black trees that grow in the ashes of Bosul — sometimes wittily referred to as ‘banyogas’ — defy classification, and no proper scientific name has been applied to them, though many have tried to call it the ‘Iktikyk’ or some other name blander than ‘makthivanyya’. Nothing stuck but ‘banyogas’, but, ‘banyogas’ being primarily a slang term, most just call the black trees what they are — makthivanyyas. It’s not like they’ll be mixed up with some other tree in Taerel. As previously stated, the wood of the makthivanyya is extremely hard and surprisingly beautiful when well-polished.

It thus has many uses, and it’s how the men of Bosul pretend they get most of their wealth. Farming the black tree is a tricky business, since it’s almost a dead tree — saplings require constant tending for a year before they’re stable enough to grow on their own. The crops grown in the depths of Byro were generally selected because they needed little light. Many of them are mushrooms of some sort or other; most notable of these mushrooms is the hemacap, which is deadly to zu'aan, but the Mos’vor find quite tasty and can live off of, if they have absolutely nothing else.

Other notable mushrooms include the cris’thol, which grows near magma and can survive complete submersion for more than twenty-four minutes, the carbonsla, which is enormous and nourishing, if a bit foul to the taste, and the Murfloss, which grows extremely quickly and is a simple way to sustain large herds of livestock. Cave strawberries are also grown in the depths: their taste is poor, compared to the ordinary kind, but they don’t need light to grow and also grow quite large. Some other fruits are grown in the darkness, in a similar manner with similar disadvantages compared to the original fruits which they imitate.

As for grains, the farmers of Bosul are trying to develop a strain of rye that can grow in the darkness, or at least in the light of lava. They have not yet succeeded, but some still remember the days of the zu’aan empire and swear that such a thing is possible. The plants that grow on the Green Island seem to have survived the storm of ashes and earthquakes that plagued the Bosul Archipelago during the beginning of the Third Era. The plants are mostly in the form of a kind of tree which is similar to the black tree. Though not nearly as hard or hardy, and in ferns which smell sweet when crushed, and in ordinary grass and moss.

The aquatic plant life, like the terrestrial plant life, seems to have had better days. The sea floor is full of ashes and the water is for the most part too hot for men to swim in comfortably. A grey seagrass is about as vibrant as the sea of Bosul gets. Some men tried to classify coral as a plant but they were laughed out of the room.

Animals

Considering the barrenness of the lands and sea, there are a surprising amount of animals that live in the Ashlands of the Bosul Archipelago, on land, and on sea. The most ordinary are the livestock — which the farmers keep, and feed for the most part on mushrooms. Also of the ordinary class, voharla come and go and lay their eggs in the ashy sands of certain islands. They don’t like mushrooms, but the fish caught by fishermen they adore. Fishermen hate the voharla. Then there are the birds of the Green Island — they are aggressive and territorial.

They don’t seem to mind zu'aan or kin’toni setting foot on their island, and, so long as you don’t touch their eggs, they sometimes even let themselves be petted. But they have been witnessed tearing seagull egg-thieves to pieces and then dropping the pieces to the shaes. These birds have accordingly been named shae fohan. shae fohan are only slightly larger than hummingbirds, but they hunt in large packs. They can both fly and swim. Their beaks are long and sharp, their talons are long and delicate, and their wings are long and lightning quick.

They come in all sorts of colours, but are mostly black and yellow and blue, with white marks on their wings. Though the shae fohan also prey on the fish that the fishermen catch, they are much more beloved that the seagulls, due to their preference for the offal that the fishermen need to get rid of anyway, and their hatred of seagulls, and their bright colours and cheerful personalities. Attempts have been made to domesticate shae fohan, but their pack instinct makes it tricker, since it is difficult to train a few dozen of them at once. shae fohan have never been an endangered species despite their small numbers.

Some men tried multiple times to wipe them out so that they could build a gold mine on the Green Island, but they always reappeared in their ordinary numbers and began feeding the men to the shaes. It’s suggested that even if there were only two shae fohan left in the whole world, they could still lay over a hundred eggs in their lifetimes, which seem to be surprisingly long, though nobody has measured how long it actually is. The seas of Bosul are filled with numerous amounts of tiny fish not really worth catching unless you catch a hundred of them at once.

The shaes, however, are most definitely worth catching, if you can. Perhaps due to some property of the tiny fish, the shaes that feed on them are, in contrast to the shaes of the rest of the world, exceptionally tasty. shaes and shae fohan do not attack each other. Some fish of the more tropical varieties live in the ashy coral reefs of Bosul, but they are seldom seen and seldom caught. There seems to be a small colony of water rats somewhere on one of these islands that hunt down bird eggs, but nobody has found that colony.

Finally, there are some daredevil chlas that risk incineration to feed on the insects that live in the deep caverns.

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	Mos'vor Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Bosul Ashland

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