Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

=Geography of the Drakkath=

This gazetteer addresses the lands of the Drakkath along broad divisions - the Huronese provinces of the north, the three nations of Carthagia, Naseria and Grum-Tarath in the West, the vast swathe of the Drakkath heartlands, and finally the borderlands to the south where can be found High Kyros and Ascaria.

In broad strokes, it is accurate to speak of the Drakkath as a very varied landscape.  The region discussed stretches for hundreds of miles from the frigid mountains of High Kyros to the arid Myrmec.  Several great mountain ranges split the region apart, and the great Marble Sea serves as an eastern border.

The mighty Storm mountains and their lesser fingers of crag and peak serve as a southern border to much of the Drakkath. High Kyros itself, huddled on the coast of the Marble Sea, sits amongst the valleys of the Storms; to its west, the mountains eventually level out into the taiga of the southern Drakkath and the rolling Ascarian tundra.  Here, lesser mountain ranges wind through the tundra, as well as many terrible scars and canyons torn by Dawn War weaponry.

The White Bay serves as the heart of the coastal Drakkath regions, a great gouge into the continent around which several city-states cling to the water's edge.  The sea itself is pockmarked with islands around this region.  Around the Bay stretch the Western Drakkath Plains, turning hilly to the north and south while eventually reaching the Central Drakkath Basin to the east; here, marshlands and fens dominate.  Farther east and the Drakkath is greatly forested and hilly, with sporadic mountainous regions; to the south, where the Storm and Sarokean mountains sweep away, the landscape eventually becomes taiga.  To the east, the way is blocked by the Sarokean mountains themselves.

The northern Drakkath is low hills split apart with regular crags and badlands, as well as great forests that spill on for leagues.  Sukumvarang is a peninsula that forms the northern limit of the White Bay, extremely hilly and mountainous where it meets the mainland but rolling down to flat coastal regions.

Eventually, continuing north, the northern Drakkath accedes to the Eastern Huron Plains, the great swathe of land where the Huronese people live.  This land is, broadly speaking, plains and forests with several mountains jutting up throughout its length; unlike the Central Drakkath Basin and Western Drakkath Plains, the Huronese Plains are split with few rivers, serving that peoples' reliance on their horses well.  To the east, the Great Cliffs mark the border between Eastern and Western Huron Plains, although the Western Plains are more commonly known by the Huronese as the Wasteland in this day and age.  Further north from Huron, the land becomes more arid, eventually turning to the Myrmec itself.  The desert here is so wide and inhospitable that it is effectively a barrier; instead, land trade comes down the Marble Sea coast, where a series of small autonomous provinces are shielded from the worst of the Myrmec by the Longfang Mountains.

To the west of the Drakkath itself, over the Sarokean mountains, the rolling plains of Naseria stretch from mountain range to the edge of the Malachite Sea.  North of Naseria, the Carthagian mountains and highlands rise; to their west, a thin strip of forests and hills edges the south of the Wasteland and the Malachite Sea's north coast.


==Beyond the Drakkath==

The world is a vast place, even in the scope of mighty empires such as the Drakkath.  The nations of this region would fare poorly without trade and migration from farther lands.

Across the Marble Sea to the east, there lies a continent known as Ara.  Little is known for certain of most of Ara, although you can find any number of scholarly ''hypotheses'' on such things based on rumours and travellers' tales.  The northern coastal regions are the home of a clannish people known as the Ironjacks, thaumaturgical engineers who dwell upon strange, Dawn-era rigs in the shallow waters; beyond the coastal regions it is said that there are several sorcerous magocracies.  Most importantly, the southerly reaches of Ara are the lands of the Kamuri Conglomerate, a powerful trading polity whose ports play host to innumerable merchant vessels from lands both western and eastern.  Beyond Ara is the archipelago nation of Great Amun and the coast of the small continent known as Vekath, where the Bright Empire and the Storm Clans dwell.

In the Marble Sea itself, the Rift Islands are a snaking chain of volcanic lands that play host to a few small ports and that sit adjacent to the Rift itself, a strange mid-sea phenomena created by Ishrak during the Dawn War.

The northerly lands of the same immense continent which the Drakkath is part of are largely inhospitable; beyond the Myrmec, there are mountainous plateaus and blasted lands that may have been the original Carthagian homelands.  Civilisation keeps to the coast before eventually reaching the verdant northern coastal plains where several states hold sway including the marvellous Scriptorium of Ashenay, the Librarian-Republic; beyond them, an arid peninsula connects north to the mountainous southern reaches of Lower Hunam, where the great towers of the chitinous Eretreni are said to stand, the Hive-Kingdom of the Anansi.  Little is known of northern Hunam.

West, the Malachite Sea is a great many-tongued expanse of waters that reaches deep into the continent, both north and south.  The Ascarian tundra eventually accedes to the Munerik tundra, sparsely populated with a different people with different traditions; north of the Munerik, the Masked Kateni people host several city-state republics along the southern edge of the Malachite Sea, practicing strange rites and politics that are said to be unfathomable to outsiders.  West and north of the Wasteland lies the greater Ashen Desolation of Gilam, and the fell city of Baalshegarath is said to survive at its heart still.  Beyond the Desolation lie the mighty many-rivered kingdom of Irgut, where men and women dye their skin strange colours, and the mountainous Tavashti lands where the Zenith Union rule. Beyond even they are the patchwork nations of the Irminsa, and the great and terrible Steel Consulate that is said to still hold to worship of the Elder Gods and provide many and potent biothaumaturgists.

Beyond these lands, even less is known amongst the common people of the Drakkath, although scholarly works and travellers' texts can be fine sources of greater enlightenment.