Tasper Brumal Wastes

Place

Place Name:

Tasper Brumal Wastes

Biome:

Brumal Wastes

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Tasper is located in the northern reaches of Taerel, on the western coast. Its edges are lined with fishing villages — sometimes quite large fishing villages — but its heart is comparatively unsettled. This is because most of the people of Tasper are superstitious sailors — they have all sorts of superstitions, such as it being unlucky for a man of the sea to stray out of sight of the sea, or for anyone to touch a crystal. It’s unknown why the people of Tasper have such an abhorrence of crystals, considering they live next to a forest full of them.

In some parts of the heart of Tasper, you can still find the blue and pathutetkl that so terrified most of the population of Tasper. Whole forests of these trees, in fact. More on them later. But let it be known that not all inhabitants of Tasper were terrified of these crystal trees, for whole villages were built in the crystal forests — they were just few in number when looked at in the light of the incredibly densely settled coast. When the heavier snowfalls came, the villages in the heart of Tasper were almost immediately buried, as were the crystal forests in general.

This only reinforced the superstitions surrounding them — and these villages were never resettled, since they had been farming villages, and farming was obviously not a good idea in Tasper anymore. Never resettled? Well… not by zu’aan, anyway. Enter Vyrmhelst. When the Sulcertia arrived, they dug up a fairly small village in the very center of Tasper to be their base of operations. Over time, this once-abandoned village grew, and received the name ‘Vyrmhelst’ — a bit of a pun, for in the Tasperian language, ‘vyrim helisit’ means ‘filthy lair’, while in the language of the Sulcertia, ‘Vyrmhelst’ means ‘Dragonheart’.

Kin’tonis were not the only inhabitants of Vyrmhelst; they also began searching for the strongest and most rebellious youths to imprison in the village of Vyrmhelst. They took the strong ones, because they wanted the strong ones to help in the construction of a fortress; they took the rebellious ones, to break the spirit of Tasper and render it much more pliable to their will. And of course they took both for dining purposes, as well. They couldn’t feast every day upon zu’aan blood, but they could taste it now and again without upsetting the balance of the population.

Just to sweeten the oily taste of fish blood. Vyrmhelst, under the guidance of the Sulcertia, grew to become a towering fortress of ice. It was built from a kind of ice devised by the current leader of the Sulcertia, which he had invented whilst watching the batrlaia. This ice is extremely hard, blunting iron tools, resisting cannonballs somewhat, and requiring so much heat to melt that you might as well build a full-on blacksmith’s smeltery at the gate, if you’re trying to melt it. On clear nights, on the tallest tower of Sulcertia, a fire shines bright as a star. The air is too cold for the ice surrounding it to melt.

Plants

It isn’t readily apparent, since there’s a couple thousand tons of snow on top of them, but the crystal forests of Tasper are still growing. Crystal trees are half plant and half rock, or so it seems. Maybe they’re all plant. In any case, their roots are wooden enough, but they have strains of crystal running through them. Even the youngest crystal tree saplings have crystals running through their roots — and all the rest of themselves, for that matter. Veins of crystal run through every part of a crystal tree, from their roots to their trunks to their branches — all the way to their leaves.

The leaves are where the nathutetkls and the pathutetkl differ. The leaves of pathutetkl are still at least partially leaf. The leaves of nathutetkls are entirely crystal. When the leaves of pathutetkl appear, they appear covered in a fine blueish dust. This dust soon becomes invisible as the leaf grows to full maturity and becomes about twice as green as a newly-grown leaf, but even to the casual leaf collector, these leaves will always seem stiffer than usual.

This dust and this stiffness is due to a thin layer of crystal growing on the leaf. This crystal seems to have preservative properties — even in the dead of winter, the leaves of pathutetkl will remain on their branches, just as green as ever, despite their deciduous appearance. The crystal also seems to allow the leaf to catch a lot more light at once, if the extraordinary greenness of the leaf is anything to go by. The leaves of nathutetkls grow much slower than the leaves of their green brethren. But since they’re made entirely of crystal, their slowness may possibly be excused.

Nathutetkl leaves begin their lives as tiny little blue buds on their parent branch. This bud slowly expands into a full leaf, the ends of the crystals growing bit by bit, every day. When it’s finished growing, the leaf has the appearance and texture of thin glass. Naturally, it also shares the brittleness of glass, and shatters quite easily — if you take a walk through a crystal forest, you’re almost certain to find some of this blue crystal glass littered somewhere. (pathutetkl leaves do not have this brittle quality.) What’s really interesting about the nathutetkl leaves is the way in which they absorb light.

Since they can’t actually absorb light. Instead, these leaf crystals are designed to reflect all the light they get into their bases — and the light that enters the base of these leaves is redirected into the vein of crystal inside the branch, and this vein of crystal goes all the way to the trunk — and inside of the trunk, at its base, is where the photosynthesis happens. Back in the days before the snow fell so heavily, woodsmen soon learned to cut down only the pathutetkl if it was a sunny day. If you cut down a nathutetkl on a sunny day.

All the light that the leaves are catching and pouring into the trunk will fly into your face and could possibly blind you.

Animals

The fish that the zu’aan catch off the coasts of Tasper — called, a little misleadingly, shaar'alais — they have one thing that sets them apart from the ordinary fish which fishermen catch, and it is not their teeth, which are perfectly ordinary. What sets the shaar'alais apart from lesser fish is the poison which they have in their spine. It is incredibly dangerous; a few drops of it could cripple a man for life or give a kin’toni severe stomach pains. And zu’aan, being the ingenious fellows they are, have figured out a way to distill this poison into a stronger poison.

Which is approximately a hundred times more potent. This potent poison has no name. And — perhaps because it has no name — the kin’tonis have not yet discovered that it exists. Not that the zu’aan of Tasper are in a position to do anything with it. But maybe others would find it useful. Out in the snow-covered wilds of Tasper, only the kinds of creatures that can cross deep snow without sinking into it were able to survive more than a couple years of the Tasperian winter. As a result, many heavier creatures went south or died out, while lighter and nimbler creatures multiplied for a short while.

And then began fading out likewise due to a severely reduced food supply. One creature who didn’t care about the reduced food supply was the gatarlai. These cheery little brown fellows burrow through snow like it’s water and dig themselves small caves in the snowdrifts, in which they grow their own mushrooms. These mushrooms they eat, and they start new gardens whenever they have time. Qatarlais aren’t above robbing zu'aan of their fish and fish scraps, since a rotting fish is a healthy thing for a mushroom garden — but theirs is a bit of an honest robbery.

Since they always plant mushrooms in the places where they take the fish from, as though to repay the people they steal from. They’re shy thieves, though — if you catch them dragging a fish from your pile, they’ll scamper away. Another bunch of creatures that doesn’t really care about the reduced food supply is the batrlaia. This is because there are still plenty of flowers on the crystal trees for them to drink the nectar from, and to build their hives with. Batrlaia are blue insects, and they have a nasty bite if you get too close to their hives.

These hives used to hang from the crystal trees, but now the batrlaia just build them on top of the snow, since there’s not many sturdy branches that hover above the snow level — though, if such a location exists, a queen Byreafly will still select that location to start building her hive. Unlike some other colony insects, batrlaia don’t perform much of a service to a zu’aan farming them. The only useful thing they make is their hive, which is made out of a mixture of ice and nectar. It is absurdly hard — harder than iron, in fact.

If you never leave the cold regions of the north, consider making your tools and weapons out of Byrea! (That’s what the hive material is called.)

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	Sulcertia Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Tasper Brumal Wastes

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