Ishya Bluff Steeps

Place

Place Name:

Ishya Bluff Steeps

Biome:

Bluff Steeps

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Most of the land of Ishya is in the form of grassy plains. Despite how many plains there are, there’s little to say about them, other than to bring up the history behind each one: here was where this village used to stand, here was where that army once encamped, here was where the lord of Ishya lost his head, here was where that particular battle was fought. The wars and battles and villages give the plains some significance, but they remain long, lonely fields of tall, lonely grass. There’s neither tall trees nor tall stones in the fields of Ishya, but there are occasionally bushes and pebbles.

The wide, open spaces of Ishya can be surprisingly treacherous: sudden giala holes grab your haar'al’s ankle and break it, sending both you and your haar'al to the ground — or, even worse, sudden chasms open up beneath you and your haar'al and throw both of you to — not exactly to your untimely demise, since there’s a good chance you’ll survive, but perhaps to your untimely month in bed, waiting for all your cracked bones to heal. These chasms with steep, grassy walls have rivers that now flow at their bottoms. The solution? Don’t ride too fast, or run too fast.

These chasms open up extremely suddenly. Or you can stay on the roads. The roads are tried and true paths that many men before you have travelled, and you can be sure that if the road crosses a chasm, there will be a bridge. These chasms are actually caused by the rivers. Many rivers flow through Ishya. Most of them rush through the land at such a speed that they’ve carved huge, grassy bluffs into its plains. These steep hills are perilous to climb and even more perilous to fall from: the longer the rivers flow, the steeper the bluffs will become and stonier their bottoms.

Despite their speed and their stoniness, these rivers are for the most part safe for a boat or a raft to glide down. They flow off into different lands, but a good many of them merge in the same land some hundred or so miles away from Ishya, into one larger and calmer river. That large river is a good place for trading, and also for piracy — there’s plenty of reason for a man to sail his raft down through one of the many rivers of Ishya. The rivers typically have numerous bridges spanning them in various places — these various places typically being along the main roads of Ishya.

Since it would be dreadfully inconvenient for the merchants who take these roads to have to cross both steep valleys and swift rivers when heading to and from the towns of Ishya. Not that there’s a lot of merchants going to and from the towns, since Ishya is perpetually at war. War tends to discourage business. War tends to discourage a lot of things, really — that’s probably the main reason for why Ishya has been so desolate for so long.

Plants

Trees don’t grow well in the soil of Ishya: the soil is too shallow. When it’s sunny, the soil is far too dry, and when it’s storming, which is fairly often, the soil is far too wet. Ishyan storms are quite the spectacle. Since the land isn’t that far from the sea, enormous clouds will soar across its sky, carrying enormous loads of water. More often than not, these clouds also carry thunder and lightning in addition to the water, and Ishya is one of the first lands in its path. (Do not carry anything metal during a storm. The lightning is looking for a place to strike the ground.

And there are no trees for miles around that would even think about hiding you or offering the lightning a better alternative for a landing spot, since, of course, there are no trees in Ishya.) The grain that the men of Ishya grow is of a particularly tough sort. The crust of certain kinds of bread made with it have been known to blunt swords — but fortunately, the inside is at least soft enough to be edible, though its texture is more akin to meat than bread. The men of Ishya say that a diet of this grain makes one grow tall and strong; if this claim was to be judged by the men themselves.

To assume that they were telling the truth would be a safe assumption to make. Almost all of them are strong and hardy fellows any general would be proud of, though there are very few of them left since the kin’tonis came and took over their land. The best haar'al of Ishya are also fed on this grain, and they too grow to become extremely strong. The grain takes two years to grow to maturity. It’s therefore necessary that it survives a winter, and it does this by drooping low to the ground when it gets cold and eventually burrowing underground when just before the ground freezes.

When spring comes around again, the grain rises up from the ground like the other seedling grains just planted that spring. However, it already has all its parts fully developed, and it soon grows back to its original height, to finish growing. The autumn of that second year, the grain turns a dark shade of brown. Now, it’s ready to be harvested. The farmer growing the grain usually has to sharpen his sickle or scythe a few times while going through his fields, as the stalks of the grain are as tough as the grain itself. So much work for such a tough grain.

Why do the Ishyans undergo it all? Well, no other grain that they know of will grow properly in the thin soil of Ishya. And on no other grain do the men and haar'al of Ishya grow better. Besides, the bread is surprisingly tasty, especially when served with apples and milk. Don’t break your teeth on it; that way you can have some more tomorrow.

Animals

The first haar'al the men of Ishya tamed killed two men before she would be saddled. They had an even rougher time with the male haar'al, but after some time, they had a full stable of haar'al that would murder every other haar'al in all Taerel in a race. As a matter of fact, the Ishyans soon gave up trying to keep them in stables, or even in paddocks: the haar'al were too strong to be contained by anything weaker than iron chains. Rather, they fostered a spirit of loyalty in their haar'al — a spirit of loyalty, as well as a spirit of hunger. Both kept the haar'al close to their masters, though neither individually was to be relied upon.

The Ishyans tried selling their haar'al to the merchants. That didn’t work; the haar'al kept leaving the merchants and coming back to their masters. Though this pleased certain untrustworthy men, others were not nearly so pleased. Still, the fame of the strength of the haar'al of Ishya spread abroad just as far as the fame of the trickery of the haar'al of Ishya; men of great importance began coming to see if they could buy a haar'al, or steal one. Eventually, the Ishyans began selling their year-old colts, since no older haar'al could be tamed to obey a particular master.

And no younger haar'al could be taken from its mother without throwing its mother into a murderous rage. (Several men died to furious mothers before this important age of a year had been precisely worked out.) Business finally being successful, the Ishyans began growing famous enough to attract the attention of men of even greater importance. The lord emperor of the zu’aan empire came himself to see if he could master one of the colts of Ishya. He couldn’t, but several men offered to return with him to his city with their own haar'al, to see if they could breed a gentler haar'al for him.

But the emperor declined, having been thrown into a foul mood by the foul-tempered haar'al that had refused to go with him. Business naturally went downhill when the zu’aan empire fell. And now that the Quaust kin’toni clan has come to stay, business has been even worse. The haar'al of Ishya flatly refuse to bear kin’toni riders, even ones taken from their mothers as soon as they were born. Many have immediately turned and slain the kin’tonis that even touched them. The Quaust clan would have exterminated the race of Ishyan haar'al for this insult.

But the farmers plead that they couldn’t possibly do nearly so much work without the haar'al. And besides, the haar'al still fetch an amazing price on the market. The Quaust clan begrudgingly let their vengeance drop. Thus the haar'al have been spared. There are gialas in Ishya; they exist mostly to annoy the haar'al and the men, and to dig giala holes. They have absolutely no other purpose — except maybe to keep the insect population down. Fortunately, there are also sha'as in Ishya. They’re quite happy to eat the gialas, and to thus keep the giala population down.

These sha'as aren’t poisonous; sometimes the men of Ishya will tame them, and give them to their children as pets.

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	Quaust Kin'toni Clan

Place

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Ishya Bluff Steeps

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

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