Draight Snowy Blue Taiga

Place

Place Name:

Draight Snowy Blue Taiga

Biome:

Snowy Blue Taiga

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Draight can be divided into two sections: the Plateaus and the Passages. The Passages are by far the more interesting of the two. Travelers to Draight see the Plateaus straight away, because they’re standing on them — the Plateaus are at ordinary ground level. Well, then why are they called the Plateaus? Glad you asked. It’s because of how tall they are, relative to the Passages. Unlike the Plateaus, travelers typically don’t see the Passages. Or at least, not until they fall into them. For the Passages are great fissures in the earth that break up the land into many Plateaus.

The grass has this annoying trick of growing sideways at the cliffs’ edges and concealing the Passages, and this deception grows even stronger if you travel during the nine months of cold, wet weather that Draight gets, since the grass is strong and can hold up a fair amount of snow. If the grass gets covered in snow, it’s basically impossible to see where the Passages lie. So, if you want to avoid a nasty fall — bring a walking stick, tread carefully, and trust not the earth in this place. The bottoms of the Passages are covered in a squishy moss (and usually snow as well).

If you do fall into one, you probably won’t injure yourself too badly, but you may not be able to get out again, unless you’re an extremely skilled climber. In the summer, the Passages are almost always flooded to some extent — that might hinder your escape further, but at least it’ll break your fall further as well. Almost all of the Passages connect to each other — the exceptions forming a small loop in the south that has come to be known as the Lunatic’s Promenade — and together, these Passages form an enormous maze called the Enchantment of Draight. Many men have fallen and lost themselves in this labyrinth.

Hoping to find one of its three exits, but these exits are by no means easy to find. At the heart of the labyrinth — and in various other places within it — there are old structures that seem to have been some sort of outposts. In one of the largest ones, there’s a map of the Passages carved into a stone pillar, but, unfortunately, some of it is damaged and illegible. No one has yet restored it. The water that floods the Enchantment of Draight every summer drains out through a lattice on its eastern edge. The lattice seems to be made from some kind of metal that doesn’t rust and is too heat-resistant to be melted and made into weapons.

Though it definitely seems like it’s weapon-grade material. This lattice was probably made by the old zu’aan empire. Perhaps the Passages themselves were man-made? But then what were they for? To guard something? Two rivers flow through Draight; they mark its western and southern borders. They merge together into one river in the south-western corner. There’s enough fish in each of them to sustain a whole tribe, if it dedicated itself just to fishing.

Plants

Draight is a fertile land; you can find all the common herbs, flowers, and trees growing here in some place or other, so long as they can normally be found in such a cool climate. It rains a lot in Draight, since the mountains to the east keep all the water from crossing over to the lands beyond. The clouds almost get trapped above Draight. And of course, there are small springs in the mountains which also send water down. The end result is much precipitation, which is good for the plants here. Many trees grow here, but the most common tree is the common pine, which seems to like the soil of this land so much that it grows about half as tall again as it would in any other land.

There are large sections of the taiga, especially on the west side, that are basically fields of stumps, these trees having been cut down at some point in recent memory. But already there are pines and other conifers growing there that are almost worth cutting down again, so quickly have they grown. The grass that disguises most of the ‘entrances’ to the Enchantment of Draight is unique and interesting. It’s akin to bamboo: it grows quickly, it’s very tough, and it’s surprisingly strong. It differs from bamboo in terms of the kind of climate that it will grow in and also in terms of flexibility.

These grasses are a good choice if you’re trying to decide on what to make your ropes out of, or your sails, or your clothes, or your hammock, or your tent, or your string. Its fibers lend themselves well to those sorts of things, and since it grows quickly and plentifully and is easy to farm… why wouldn’t you choose it? Well… it’s itchy, it burns easily, it stiffens up a lot when it’s cold, and it droops a lot when it’s hot. Still, even taking all those things into account, it almost seems worthwhile to farm this grass. Maybe even worthwhile to sell it. Occasionally, in the brightest corners of trees, you can find a special herb growing.

It’s native to Draight, and only grows well in climates like its homeland. Named ‘foryn’, it can be recognized by its needle-like leaves and repelling odor. When crushed, however, its fragrance greatly improves. Foryn is a minor poison, lethal in large amounts but just very nauseating in lesser amounts. When ingested, its dominating characteristics have the strange effect of neutralizing most other poisons entirely in order to fully exert its own poison, which, as has been stated, is more or less harmless in small doses. Approximately half of the men who ingest foryn shake off all effects within twenty-four hours.

The other half experience a side effect of foryn and feel extremely healthy within twenty-four hours. And then, half of those men who feel extremely healthy feel terrible after another twenty-four hours. This constant shift from extreme nausea to extreme healthiness seems to be more common in persons with weak immune systems, but the extremities undergo diminishing returns and eventually vanish entirely.

Animals

The wytra population in Draight is one of the world’s largest, since the dyal population in Draight is also one of the world’s largest. There’s also a healthy population of cwaes, responsible for cleaning up the corpses. The species of dyal that lives here is known as the Bladeskull. The males sharpen their antlers on the stones in the ground, fashioning them into dangerous weapons. The greatest bucks will kill about five wytra and five other bucks in their lifetimes with these antlers, and injure another dozen or so bucks. They don’t always fight to the death when fighting for mates.

Occasionally the does will intervene on behalf of the losing buck, and the bucks refuse to even scratch the does. Bucks never walk away from a fight from a wytra, however. Not until either the wytra is dead, or the wytra calls for reinforcements like the treacherous coward he is. Bladeskull bucks never call for reinforcements, but will gladly fight alongside their brethren if they see a fight raging. Nevertheless, Bladeskull bucks do not actively seek out combat with anyone but other bucks. Their tempers do not go easy on hunters: they will turn and attack even a large party of kin’toni or zu’aan hunters if not killed by the first arrow.

Watch out. Wytra hunt both alone and in packs. A lone wytra is under exile from his or her pack, though sometimes, that exile is self-imposed. Males go out alone to become stronger — they become stronger when alone because their leaders don’t come in and take the lion’s share of whatever food is hunted. No, lone wytra get to keep all of what they kill. But females usually don’t mean to hunt when they leave their pack — they’re off to find some nice warm place to give birth to a nice healthy litter of four or five puppies. If one of these puppies ever becomes the leader of a wytra pack.

He’ll remember his mother and keep her a place within the pack even when she grows old and useless. A single wytra alone is already enough of a challenge to fight. But a pack of wytra is an extremely formidable enemy. Even the angriest of Bladeskull bucks will flee if faced with more than three of these enemies, and for good reason. wytra are fast and strong. But their loyalty is by far their most terrifying characteristic, since it means there will be a dozen other wytra backing them, each one equally fast, strong, and loyal. Between all the fighting between wytra and dyal, and the death trap of the passages

(which the wytra and dyal do fall into by accident on occasion), there are a significant amount of corpses lying around. Cwaes help clean that up. The cwaes in Draight usually nest in the Passages, near the top, where it’s both safer and slightly dryer. It’s a common but somewhat startling sight to see a cwae or even a flock of cwaes fly out of seemingly solid ground.

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	Rirrskel Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Draight Snowy Blue Taiga

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