Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

==Zhatan and the Great Cliff==

During the latter stages of the Dawn Era, the Elder God Gilam tore the once-unified Great Plain of Huron into two.  The Leviathan of Flame and Scale shattered the ground at the centre of the Plain, causing a vast cliff to rise up and seperate it into what is now known as the Great Eastern Plains and the Great Western Plains.

Now, the Great Cliff serves as the bulwark between Huron and the Wasteland, serving as an eternal wall against the beasts of the wastes.

The Cliff runs hundreds of miles, stretching from Carthagia in the south all the way to Myrmec in the north.  It is by no means impassable - many gullies, ravines and valleys pierce its barrier - but the massive height of the cliff face does mean that anyone wanting to enter Huron from the west must travel through these passes - and most of the major ones have Huronese watchtowers overseeing them.  These watchtowers, perched atop the Great Cliff, can see for leagues out across the desolate landscape beyond.  Unfortunately, there are also cave networks that run into and through the system of cliffs; there is no way for Huron to fully plug every gap in this natural defence.

The landscape of western Huron, east of the Great Cliff, is extremely rugged and broken, far wilder than the heartlands of the Eastern Plain; this is dangerous country where the threat of Wasteland intrusions is a regular worry.  The provinces of Jaghatun and Oghatan also serve as home to many clans and families that still remember their traditional Western Plain roots, and desire for a Pilgrimage to retake the Wasteland is higher here than in other regions of Huron.  In a culture where a military hierarchy and tendency towards authoritarianism only goes so far to counter a tradition of independent clans and internal conflict, the western reaches are also one of the most troublesome and unsettled areas of the Huronese people.

The apogee of this can be seen in the great fortress of the Black Tower of Zhatan - both it and the surrounding city are commonly just referred to as Zhatan - which dominates the surrounding region and stands in defiance of the Lord Commander's authority.  Some say the Black Tower is the greatest fortress of this age, standing tall at the edge of the Great Cliff; the surrounding landscape is made up of broken terrain and twisting ravines, while the Tower itself is a marvel of engineering and defensive architecture.  Even the city that has grown up in its shadow would be a challenge for any attackers, made of cramped, twisting streets and sloping terraces.  Apart from its reputation as a bastion, though, Zhatan also serves as a centre of trade for those caravans skirting the Wasteland, and its Silk-Hooded Markets are notorious as places where almost anything can be had for a price.  Zhatan has actually started minting its own currency, based on the old Western Huronese trade-coins.

The Tower is also famous for the thaumineering that has gone into its structure and, most of all, for the Black Knights, the Urazeli templars whose arms and armour are works of incredible arcanomechanical artifice.  The Tower has stood watch over the largest breach in the Great Cliff for centuries, and is actually named after the Dragon-Saint Zhatan, First of the Disciples of Urazel, who commanded its creation in the Dawn War to protect against the servitors of the Elder Gods.  The Black Knight Commander is the absolute authority in this city; a predecessor in her role, several generations ago, took advantage of weak Lord Commanders who could not enforce their own control of the area to break Zhatan away into an independent state.  The secession was fuelled by the old rift between Easterners and Westerners; the templars of the Tower see it as the holy duty of the Huronese to retake the Wasteland and finally tear down Baalshegarath, and see the ongoing obsession of the Lord Commanders with becoming new Emperors as a diversion from their true duty.