Keltin Dry River

Place

Place Name:

Keltin Dry River

Biome:

Dry River

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

The whole dry river region had once been a lush forest areas as the likes of the Nakeg Dense Forest found in Zelan, and the rainforest of the Iturn Dead Swamp, but in the past millennia, this has changed and the lush greenery has faded and given way to sparse vegetation. The reason for the drying up of the region is said to be due to the advancing of the Ice age, in the past the river that ran through this region was fed by the melting of glaciers found way in the north of the continent, but as the Ice age advances further south and the cold grips the landmass.

The ice water has been melting ever more slowly, and the water that does come down from the mountains ends up being diverted to the the wetlands that are found in the northern plains of Nara. When the region was supplied with a perennial river, the vegetation had plenty of water to keep them fed throughout the year. However, as the volume of water decreased the vegetation began to change and since the change was very gradual most of the animals were able to adapt to the changing atmosphere and either evolved to live with less moisture or learned to accumulate moisture in other ways.

This unique fauna is where the name originates from, the dry river is indeed dry but has several species that one would find in a river, and these are completely endemic to the region and are found nowhere else. The novelty of the animals is something that is in high demand among the rich merchants of Zelan who are known to pay large sums for live specimens of the dry river. And this means that a growing number of kin'toni can be found hunting through the dry river for animals.

However, taking these captured animals across the borders to Zelan however is a challenge not only due to the illegal nature of the action but also because of the animals are connected strangely to the land in which they live, and those that have managed to successfully take the animals out of the region have only done so in large containers that contained vegetations and soil from the dry river itself. Although there is very little water in the river bed that once kept the region green and lush, the area is not completely devoid of precipitation.

The region has a very wet season in the middle of summer, but this rainy season is more harmful than beneficial for plant life, for the rainfall is a deluge. It rains in huge proportions and causes the flooding of the whole region, and surprisingly though animals and plants have adapted to the dry atmosphere they have been unable to deal with the floods that are brought by the rains of the summer season, several animals and plants die during the rain storms, as such only the most stable plants are able to grow in the region and only the most sturdy animals are able to build a future in the dry river.

Plants

The plants of the dry river are evergreen, even though they are strangely not provided the kind of moisture that plants of a similar size require that are evergreen. The secret to these plants is the deep and extensive root system which they have developed, often called the tap root system, it involves the growth of a trunk like root that slowly tapers and goes deep into the ground. This root then has smaller root hairs that trap moisture from the soil which holds the water that percolates to the bottom layers of the ground during the rainy season.

And does not get evaporated from the soil no matter how strenuous the pressure of the evaporating sun. The tap root system developed by the plants in the region is the reason the plants are able to survive during the harsh summer and are also able to remain upright during the powerful summer rainstorms that build in the region, among the plants that grow here is the delicious xaer fruit, a fruit that is known to bloom only in the dry river region once in a decade and that too only on a few of the trees of the species.

The xaer fruit is one of the most delicious natural foods that the kin'toni actually enjoy eating, the fruit is highly sought after, and during the summer of the year of the bloom several thousand kin'toni descend upon the drylands in order to try and secure the fruit. The local and now weakened tribes that trace their history to the times when the dry river was actually a lush forest claim that at the time the fruit grew in abundance all year round, and was not as widely appreciated as it is today.

They also claim that although very delicious and appetising the xaer fruit is not safe for consumption as a large part of the diet, it is claimed that the zu'aan passed along tales of the problems with the consumption of the fruit and avoided eating unless not able to find an alternate source of sustenance. From these songs we are able to trace that those who consumed large quantitates of the fruit developed a sickness that travelled to their heads and caused an unbreakable fever, although death did not generally accompany the disease that was brought on by the xaer fruit.

It wasn’t a sickness that would leave no lasting effect and many an zu'aan were known to be slower of mind after having consumed the fruit and become sick from it. This has not been observed among the kin'toni that have lived in thre region, and it is now believed that the disease was unique to the zu'aan due to the fact that they were not able to live in harmony with nature and were instead bent upon modifying it and altering it. Diseases like the one stemming form the xaer fruit seem to be creations of nature meant to decrease the damage the zu'aan were carrying out.

Animals

The animals that live in the dry river are perhaps the most unique in the world they are a strange hybrid from of live that has evolved to live in the water just as well as on dry land, most of the animals that can be found in the dry river are those that had once lived as fish in the river that once ran through the region. The retain their scales but have adopted very dull colours in order to blend in better with their surroundings, and although they retain miniature gills that continue to allow them to breathe underwater when the rainwater of the high rains of the summer season builds.

The gills do not provide the main source of their oxygen supply, for that purpose the animals have developed expanding lungs that are generally found right below the surface of the skin, as they breathe in air, the lungs expand along with the scaly skin making it translucent and giving the animals a truly alien look that some of the merchants seem to really appreciate, the Zelan kin'toni traders are really fond of keeping these aline creatures as pets that they display along with all the other novelties that they collect from all across the Taerel.

The most notable of the animals even among the alien creatures of the dry river is the leaping tayla, this leaping tayla is a carnivorous animal that moves primarily by jumping on its hind legs, its skin is known to produce a toxin that when touched can numb even the superior sent of touch that the kin'toni have developed. The large animal has beady eyes with rectangular pupils that observe the world with an air of haughtiness, being the largest predator in the region, the animal does not scare easy.

Pair that with the presence of the toxin that most kin'toni would not like to be affected by and we are left with an animal that interrupts the activities of the residing kin'toni on a regular basis. The leaping tayla can be found to place itself in places of general importance and chasing after those kin'toni that choose to ignore its presence. For the purpose of dealing with the leaping tayla, the kin'toni have developed special long handled swords that they use to attack and kill the animal without ever having to make any contact with the animal.

This has been a successful mode of attack and the leaping tayla are becoming less of a menace. The animals are killed and left to rot as they die for no kin'toni want to touch the decaying bodies of the leaping tayla due to how much more powerful the toxin becomes in death than it is when the animal is alive. There has been talk of developing a weaponised form of the toxin from the animal but the toxin has not yet been successfully extracted from dead animals in enough quantity to allow its experimentation with weapons and other modes that may be useful for the Nara authorities.

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	Aere Kin'toni Clan

Place

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Keltin Dry River

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

This article is written by https://www.freelancer.in/u/anmoldkaushal Anmold Kaushal]. Copyright 2026 Anmold Kaushal. All rights reserved.