Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

==The Great Sarok Expanse==

Where the Storm mountains turn southwestwards and the Sarokeans curve aside, the Great Sarok Expanse is the wide corridor between the two mountain ranges that opens out into the Ascarian tundra.  The landscape here is a mixture of taiga, steppe and the occasional outbreak of rugged, geologically active hills that vent acrid steam and rumble with the underlying mutters of Grumand.  It is a colder land than the rest of the Drakkath, and wilder still than the Western Reaches; the Expanse remained an unconquered region when the Drakkath Empire still faced the full fury of the old Ascarian civilisation.

Now, the shattered wreckage of the Obsidian Wall crops up across the landscape here and there, the vast warding sigils mostly obliterated by the passage of time.  The crumbling wall is a mess of shattered pieces of volcanic glass, marking the perimeter of a dead Empire against a foe that has been equally reduced by the passing of the ages.  The northmost of the Great Wolf's Scars break into the Expanse - the thrashing, wounded rents torn by the Younger God when vile Shauku shattered its back, quenched its flames and threw it to earth to suffer and die.  The ground still rebels at memories of that catastrophic event, burbling lava out in viscous streams that soon cool and mark the landscape with another eerie dribble of solidified rock.  Sometimes, the smoky plumes that emerge from the vents have other, stranger properties, forming into cloudy wolf-daemons that howl and hunt, or turning what the agonising chemical mists touch into raw iron.

There are a few regular inhabitants of this remote land; the south-westernmost Drakkath settlements cling to an existence, hardy men and women who live here because their fathers and their forefathers before them did.  More than a few mines pockmark the landscape, digging mineral treasure from the earth.  Further south, the northern of the Ascari tribes dwell, the tough folk of the tundra who have themselves lived for long generations in this region.  Under usual circumstances, the two cultures here rarely clash; the landscape's harsh nature inspires co-operation more than conflict, and both have goods to trade that the others want; Ascari and Drakkath merchants trading ivory, herbs and furs need safe passage throug the region.

Unfortunately, times are no longer normal.  The growing wrath of the Ascarian people is being encouraged under the Wolf-Chosen's guidance and thus, for the hapless men and women of both sides in the Great Sarokean Expanse, life has just gotten far more interesting.  Already raider-bands have crossed the Expanse to plunge into the Western Reaches and Central Basin; they've mostly left the people of the Expanse alone, but two warlords under the Wolf-Chosen's command have moved into the region to fortify Ascari power there, and have taken to using local labour to create their fortifications - labour that is not always willingly given.


===The City of the Hekatonchiere===

There is one power in the Great Sarok Expanse that is unmoved by all that goes on around it - the hekatonchiere.  An enclave of these ancient servitors survived the Dawn War when the hundred-handed ones retreated to their bastions and waited out the conflict.  With the War past, little changed; from time to time, their towering figures can be seen striding across the Expanse either north or south, off to make bizarre demands, give strange gifts or just travel through the lands of the nations under an unknowable agenda.

For the people of the Expanse, it is considered unwise to bother the hekatonchiere and instead one should avoid their settlement at all costs; the strange beings are sometimes serene and peaceful but can become enraged or violent without any apparently cause, so best not to take any risks.  The Expanse-folk often entreat the gods at small shrines to keep the eye of the hekatonchiere away, but they also wear amulets in the servitors' likeness to ward off beasts and evil magic, and most families make a pilgrimage at least once a decade to leave offerings at one of the high ridge-temples that they have established to the hekatonchiere themselves.  What the hundred-handed ones think of this fearful reverence, if they notice it at all, is unknown.

The City, as it is known, is an odd sight; a cluster of hemispheres that themselves bulge more spheres out like metallic blisters.  Regardless of the scourging elements, the entire structure possesses a faintly red cast, like rusted iron, although close inspection reveals this to only be the natural colour of the metal itself.  More than this is hard to ascertain since so few people have ever approached the hekatonchiere settlement, but these accounts do match with reports of other hekatonchiere architecture elsewhere in the world.

The City does have one export, although probably not a purposeful one.  Every year, one or two hekatonchiere emerge from their home and deposit large pieces of metal in the surrounding landscape.  These chunks of discarded metal are not simply rubbish, however - they are (to human eyes at least) incredible works of art, wonderful mixtures of irridescent metallic alloys wrought into three-dimensional patterns.  It's abstract work, not imagery but impression, warped and shaped into intriguing forms that vibrate with fluting music whenever the wind blows through the tunnels and hollows of the object.  Locals retrieve those of the objects that they can (some are too large and heavy to move easily) and sell them on; hekatonchiere 'art' has pride of place in many an eastern merchant's or noble's hall.