Thundering Falls

The landscape of Thundering Falls is utterly unique within the isle.

Most of Dun Artan is well-watered throughout the year, though a large percentage of what precipitation falls does so in the form of snow and sleet, as the winter months last longer in the isle's lofty center than anywhere else. Due to the arrangement of the landscape within Caer Cathartha -- the highest point on Guardian -- most of the runoff of this perpetual snowfall finds its way down the slopes of dangerous mountainfaces and into Thundering Falls, carrying with it the detritus and die-off of Caer Cathartha's forests and inhabited areas.

The landscape that results from this process is riddled with moving water -- from gently-trickling streams and brooks to roaring, churning rapids and endless cascade falls -- and like all stony environs subjected to the powerful erosive force of running water, the mountains that harbor them are sliced by steep gorges and honeycombed with watery caves. Over time, accrual of the detritus has given Thundering Falls enough soft earth overlying its rocky foundations to support some evergreen growth and annual growth of grass and wildflowers, though it would be difficult to call these softer areas 'fields' -- the Falls is notoriously vertical, arranged on steep grades that keep the water moving, and it's extremely rare to find flat and open spaces. The most obvious exception to this general rule would be Cistern Lake, located near to the highest point of the lordship and slightly east of its largest (some would say only) settled area, Askival. It is in Askival that the physical seat of the Lordship -- Caer Calix -- is located.

People who live in Thundering Falls have a healthy appreciation for the unstoppable natural force of running water. It cannot be argued with or fought. It changes the landscape through which it flows, though it can sit gently in the cup of the hand when still, and brings -- and sustains -- life, though it can take life in the blink of an eye...and often does. In Thundering Falls, flash floods are not unheard-of events, and the occasional failure of a rock face or cave wall has resulted in the past in mudslides, avalanches, and other disasters that have claimed the lives of whole pockets of people living in its wilds.

While it's possible in some areas to build bridges over rivers with a history of more stable water volume, and in other places one can travel through refined tunnels in the stone, most of the lordship remains undeveloped...making for difficult travel.

In the winter -- the longest season of the year, for Dun Artan -- these liquid landscapes crystallize into fantastical structures and result in some of the most visually spectacular scenes to be found on Guardian. Many of the waterfalls are too immense to freeze, but even these monstrous falls spill into churning basins, producing a fine mist that accrues on everything it touches, coating the world in a sparkling layer of glass-like ice. Locals have long since developed boots and picks capable of making use of the frozen falls for the purposes of travel, but traveling in this way entails its own risks, and the waters of Thundering Falls claim lives throughout the frozen months as often as they do during the one or two months of true warmth that the region gets all year.

The few areas of settlement tend to be communities built from stone, arranged in clusters that climb the steep slopes along unrefined streets that wind in harrowing hatchback downward.

There are only three main settlements of note. The city with which visitors to Thundering Falls are most familiar is the city of Ard Nev, located in the far north of the lordship where it has its borders with Caer Cathartha and Smithfield's lordship of Oreann. Ard Nev is a critical installation within Thundering Falls; it's through Ard Nev that essential edible produce and other imported goods arrive to be bought or bartered for. For this reason Ard Nev stands out stylistically from its sister townships, with broad, cobbled streets, large warehouses, and more than just a few inns and other venues designed to accomodate travelers.

Askival is located high within the lordship's northeastern edge, where many large, deep bodies of water -- including Lake Cistern -- begin to gather together and gain momentum in their downward journey from Caer Cathartha, creating the largest, widest, most powerful waterfalls in Thundering Falls. The city itself is crafted from local stone and is, by all reports, astonishingly beautiful in its architecture. Thundering Falls isn't known for producing grandmaster stonemasons in the way that Boulder Heights or Rayder Pass are, but the lordship does produce some of the most talented artisans and small-scale crafters in the barony, and evidence of that artistic inclination can be found in even the most utilitarian of objects used by its residents -- as well as in the details of its architecture. While Boulder Heights and Rayder's Pass produce men capable of raising vaulted stone ceilings and joinless walls in truly incomparable feats of stonework, Thundering Falls has certainly produced more than just a few artisans capable of ornamentation and detail so delicate and exacting that it must be seen to be believed. Nowhere is this more clear than in Askival and, in particular, within Caer Calix, the lordship seat.

The third is Ainshval, the smallest of the three, located in the southwestern part of Thundering Falls. By the time the running water has reached Ainshval much of its ferocity has begun to ebb, creating slightly more fertile areas capable of sustaining a larger amount of pine forest, though even here the fight for life is often a bitter one for anything green and growing. Ainshval has its origins in the construction of a fortress and series of towers across the mountain's edges, all of which were designed to guard against hostile actions originating in Trebachas -- each of the towers has the ability to signal with fire from its height, providing an early warning to the inhabitants of the fortress some distance to the north. Its architecture is grim and utilitarian for the most part, though some influence from nearby Trebachas can be found. Less fortified structures have sprung up around the original fortress over time, leading to an unusual hodge-podge of styles and jumbled arrangements.

Askival and Calix

Thundering Falls has perhaps the most negligible economic impact on the duchy of all of its lordships (with the exception of some essentially uninhabited regions, such as Fen March in Trebachas). The people of Thundering Falls have yet to demonstrate any desire (or perhaps ability) to exploit its natural resources in bulk. They quarry some small amounts of raw and precious stone, sell some small quantities of precious metals (almost all of which are panned for in the streams rather than mined for), haul a large amount of very valuable salmon once a year, and contribute to this paltry amount of exported goods with hides, meats, and other things obtained through a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Almost all of the stone exchanged with the duchy's economy goes to purchasing grain, livestock and produce for the three settled townships; what goods remain are often bartered for raw materials rather than sold for coin, especially at the lowest levels, where independent families manage their own trading.

The raw goods for which people barter are used in the crafting of refined things of nearly every description -- weapons, jewelry, clothing -- which are usually exported again at a profit, and new materials acquired. This system of commerce means that the populace of Thundering Falls has very little in the way of minted wealth, though few of its settled citizens could be considered to be living in poverty -- a result of the communal attitudes of its people, supplemented by one's ability to extract necessities from the land. Matters are much more difficult for the portion of its population that has taken to living outside of the cities (a not-insignificant number of people).

Despite this trend of meager personal wealth, most of the citizens of the Falls appear quite well-off -- a result of the quality of the items retained by its people, and the amount of detail and artistry applied to even the most humble and simple of everyday objects. Items that most people throughout the Empire wouldn't necessarily consider beautiful are made thus by people who own little enough in the way of material goods that they take pride in the few things that they do own.

The culture in Thundering Falls is heavily communal. Driven together by the sparsity of its exploitable resources, by the lack of terrain well-suited for building, for the need for defense in times past against dangerous, raiding neighbors, and more recently by the need to live close to supply lines that provide essential access to imported food and other goods, its more civilized people are well-accustomed to living in close contact with one another. It isn't uncommon for several different, unrelated families to live within a single large stone keep, and even more common for families themselves to be large, with every extended branch of the family through multiple generations living together beneath the same roof. These communal units call themselves Clans -- a choice that the outside world of Guardian often confuses with the wilder 'tribes' that populate Dun Artan, an understandable mistake to make, as many of the traditions and ideals upheld by the clans of Thundering Falls no doubt have their origins in the days when they, too, were retreating into the hills to escape the heavy hand of Barca rule.

The center of communal clan culture is the Great Hall. Each clan maintains their own, and meetings within Great Halls are always conducted beneath a strict edict of honorable hospitality. To be offered hospitality affords a visitor certain protections, in theory -- and is offered with some discretion as a result -- though history is littered with long grudges and blood feuds that began when this tradition was violently broken.

Blood feuds are also a matter of old tradition within Thundering Falls. Where reputation is oft-times more important than personal knowledge and history is a well-preserved and deeply respected thing, preserved in bardic lore, it's inevitable that past actions between clans are remembered and accounted often, with exacting (and unforgiving) attention to detail. The rustic and sometimes rough-shod appearance of its people may lead one to believe that Thundering Falls is a haven for unsubtle barbarians, but nothing could be further from the truth -- the Falls has a long history of espionage, intrigue, and assassination within the halls of its major clans.

For the most part, the settling of these blood debts is an undercurrent beneath day to day life. The harsh environment and dependency of people upon one another requires that alliances need to remain fluid in order for the balance of power between clans to remain stable. That fluidity doesn't require its people to forget past ills, however -- it only requires that they remain vigilant in circumstances that force them to cooperate in close proximity with anyone who might have reason to attempt to settle old debts.

Violence is hardly the only means through which these issues are resolved. Arranged marriages and even exchanges of infants or children are as commonplace as more aggressive solutions.

The rest of the culture in Thundering Falls is unsurprisingly dictated by the emphasis on reputation and clan association. Marriages are never casually undertaken. Friendships are always carefully conducted. Public behavior is always beneath the lens of outside scrutiny, and opinions espoused in mixed company are never careless.

It may surprise some people to find that the people of the Falls are devout worshippers of Providence...though it may surprise them less to find that many the lordship's people could be considered polytheistic, having incorporated the more tribal veneration of one's ancestors and respect of certain manifestations of the natural world into their lives.

Tightly knit together in this clan culture, people rarely leave Thundering Falls for the wider Empire, and those who would no doubt leave if they could are often prohibited from doing so by the disparity between their lack of coin wealth and the cost of living beyond the lordship's borders. Those who do leave often travel only as far as the rest of the barony of Dun Artan, offering their services as artists in the embellishment of the raw goods produced by the rest of the quarries and mines, or -- less frequently -- becoming part of the merchant chain that ensures that Thundering Falls receives the bulk of goods that it requires for the feeding of the majority of its people.

This economic exchange serves as the primary source of contact between Thundering Falls and its neighbors, and through it the Falls has gained a reputation for its artistry. Its people take immense pride in their ability to craft beautiful and enduring objects of almost every description. The hallmark of Thundering Falls artistry is the level of detail applied, and the more delicate or technically demanding the work is, the more highly prized the piece becomes -- probably a natural result of the fact that people are rarely able to obtain materials in large quantities. Inlays, engravings and sculptural detail are often of spectacular intricacy. This approach to art has infiltrated the culture over time; its people find value in even the smallest things, and those things become significant, requiring that people conduct even their casual business with mindful attention to detail -- contributing in turn to the reputation-obsessed interactions between clans, certainly.

Due to its forbidding geography the Falls is a daunting destination for the casual visitor, but those who have business within the lordship or feel adventurous enough to make the journey will find its people welcoming of outsiders, for the valuable commodity of news of the duchy if for no other reason, and there are almost always guides in Ard Nev willing to offer their services to the intrepid in exchange for valuable coin.

The wildlife in Thundering Falls is approximate to what one would find in any number of various high-altitude mountain areas. Its vegetation consists mostly of evergreen growth, with a few scattered alpine meadows and lakes. Hardy hooved animals can live here in small numbers -- big-horn sheep and other croppers and grazers that are nimble enough to spend their time on the steep grades. There are a wide variety of rodents also able to eke out a living here. The largest predator is the bear, present in several different species and large numbers thanks to the yearly salmon run. There are mountain cats of varying kinds, any number of predatory birds, and smaller predators such as the fox and wolf also make their home in the Falls.