Sun Keld Rules v.3 : gazeteer

Ningaur's Steps

Keywords

Region

Ningaur's Steps is the name given to a road stretching from Last Home, in the Twilight Plateau, to Wind's Canyon, in the 3rd Aed of Nistray.

Last Home
Sirara
Shurruk	nearby
The Black Pits	nearby
Der-Maki
Awan Tower
Two Wells
Kutu
Enlak
Darkin
Mehune's Grave
Ea's Spire
River of Bones
Wind's Canyon

Last Home

Keywords

RoutesNingaur's Steps, Corn Road, Lion's Path, The Lesser Road

SizeLarge Town

RegionLast Home

Last Home sits on the edge of the Plateau of the Twilight Lands, overlooking the Drylands, at a point where the cliff down to the plains is particularly shallow. This is, naturally, the route that most travellers take down to the plains. Tax expeditions set out from here towards Darkin, Hellgrass Reach and Harradum. The town is heavily geared towards travellers, with many inns and corrals for Crdlu, as well as a thriving market where Twilight Merchant Satraps exchange goods with plains Caravans. The walls here are of earth reinforced with wood, forming a broad circle around the town. Gatehouses of dressed stone guard the roads in and out of town, while farmland presses close. The heart of the town is the crowded Suk, while temporary rulers and Bonded Ones make their home in the House of the Setting Sun.

Two main routes enter Last Home from the Nightwards, the Corn Road that leads across the plateau to Nistray and the Lion's Path that runs down into the forest and turn turns towards Ur. Ningaur's Steps run Counter-Daywards towards Darkin, while, The Lesser Road runs parallel to the One River, through the Plateau lands. Once The Reachway ran Turn-Daywards towards Hellgrass Reach, but most now join the road upriver at Sword Landing.

Last Home is the main gateway to the Drylands for most traffic from the river valley, and as such is ruled by the Orders of all four great cities. The town is overburdened with officials, Mages and Bonded-Ones, who devote far more time to jockeying for power with each other than they spend on running the town. So long as they do nothing to upset the public appearance of calm and the trade through the town the local Merchant Satraps can do much as they wish. Defence of the city is generally relegated to the town's own force of soldiers, distinctive with their white shields and capes, although armed forces from each of the Cities serve as a supplementary guard for the nobles and Mages. These out-town soldiers change every season, rotating through the four cities over the course of a Short Year.

North115

,

Turnwards-60

Sirara

KeywordsFarming, Spring, Cattle

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeVillage

RegionLast Home

Sirara is a thriving farming community set amongst the Dust Slopes near to Last Home. It is surrounded by a patchwork of stepped fields, bright bands of corn and chilli, dotted with Kail trees and dust slope blooms. The central village clusters around terracotta pipes where water channelled from nearby springs is drawn for drinking and irrigation. The largest buildings are quite grand, the stucco walls brightly painted, while smaller houses are scattered through the fields.

Sirara sits close to Ningaur's Steps, which is at this point a wide and irregularly paved avenue of ancient manufacture that runs between low stone walls down towards the Twilight forests, which are easily visible from Sirara. Dirt paths wind through the stepped fields, running from the avenue past small houses. Order Magi from Last Home visit Sirara once a year to renew it's warding spells.

North130

,

Turnwards-58

Shurruk

KeywordsBandit

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeHamlet

RegionLast Home

Shurruk is a scrappy and rag-tag settlement not far from The Black Pits. Subsisting mostly on animals that have been poisoned by the fumes rising from the Pits, the inhabitants of Shurruk are stained black with grime and tar. Water, metal, and crops are all in short supply here, and the people are ready to turn to Banditry if they can get away with it. A trail winds from Shurruk, past the Pits and eventually joins the Steps between Der-Maki and Sirara.

North163

,

Turnwards-29

The Black Pits

Keywords

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeFeature

RegionLast Home

This strange feature lies to the Turnwards of Ningaur's Steps, between Sirara and Der-Maki. Amidst a stony plain lie a series of depressions in which lakes of black tar well up. These expanses of shimmering hot tar are deadly to animals the venture close, scalding them with noxious steam, or collapsing under their weight and enclosing them in pitch. Some attempts have been made by both Derzak and Nistray to mine the tar in the past, and a scatter of abandoned buildings, little more than shells of rough stone and dried cactus, are found near the pools.

Exposure to the fumes from the pools for more than a few minutes inflicts fatigue. Any exposed person must make a Physical roll resisted by a 14, taking the margin of failure in fatigue. Roll again every quarter of an hour.

North165

,

Turnwards-30

Der-Maki

KeywordsHerding

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeHamlet

RegionDarkin

Der-maki is little more than a small collection of houses that marks the rough border between the lands of Darkin and Last Home. The buildings of Der-maki are set into the crumbling soil at the edge of a wadi, and are constructed of earth and mud-brick. Water is a constant issue, being stored in clay jars when the wadi floods and then conserved till the next storm. (Harshness 15)

North200

,

Turnwards-50

Awan Tower

KeywordsFort

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeFortification

RegionDarkin

Awan Tower is an isolated fortification that watches over Ningaur's Steps a little way Daywards from the border between Darkin and Last Home. A single stone tower set amongst fingers of grey stone overlooks the road. A small garrison of troops from Darkin is stationed here under the command of an Ugulagesh.

North215

,

Turnwards-51

Two Wells

Keywords

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeHamlet

RegionDarkin

A small village built in the shadow of a canyon wall Counter of Ningaur's Steps. The village has two large wells as a major feature, although one has now run dry. Houses are built of yellow-brown stone with Nishag Tree beams. The handful of families here hunt the surrounding plains, and cultivate Maugey Cactus along the road.

North250

,

Turnwards-65

Kutu

KeywordsRuin

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeVillage

RegionDarkin

Kutu was once a settlement built around an underground water source in the midst of a field of huge boulders tangled up with Razor Grass. The water source failed a Long Year ago, and the village was soon abandoned. Ruined structures, many built up against (or out of) boulders, still cluster close to the roadway, half buried in wind-blown sand. Searching the ruins turns up little more than the scattered bones of the last inhabitants. (Harshness 18)

North272

,

Turnwards-45

Enlak

Keywords

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeVillage

RegionDarkin

A small village built in the shell of an old fortress, with simple buildings of wood and grass sheltering amongst fallen heaps of mudstone bricks. The water source here is brackish.

North282

,

Turnwards-42

Darkin

Keywords

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeSmall Town

RegionDarkin

The town of Darkin is one of the principal administrative hubs of Nistray's Scion lands. Located about 10 days Nightwards and Turnwards of Wind's Canyon, and a Cycle Daywards of Last Home, Darkin is located in the midst of a fertile plain that is solidly cultivated and dotted with smaller villages and farms.

The town is located on a gentle rise in the middle of cornfields and cattle routes. Tall walls of mud-bricks and tapering square towers supported by wooden beams soar over the dusty grass, it has the clear look of a fortress, and any approaching traveller will be spotted by archers on the walls long before they reach either of the four gates. Inside the walls the town is a close-packed warren of passages, high-sided lanes, tunnels and caves that spiral down into the cooler earth. Narrow light-wells allow the sun to shine into Satvan-like shrines to Ningaur, but most of the town is always in semi-darkness. Covered Qanats funnel water from nearby bare stone flats into the town, where it is drawn up in well houses.

North300

,

Turnwards-40

Mehune's Grave

KeywordsGrave

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeFeature

RegionDarkin

Some little distance from Ningaur's Steps (at this point little more than a bare track through the Razor Grass), near to Ea's Spire a low hill is marked by a stand of Zerom Trees. At the foot of this grove lie a number of simple cairns, grave markers for an expedition lost to one of the fierce Sandstorms of the Drylands. A single marker stone, on which the name Mehune can be read, gives the place it's name. Sometimes Tornraits can be found here, though they are little but tatters of spirit and memory.

North318

,

Turnwards-102

Ea's Spire

KeywordsSpring

RoutesNingaur's Steps

SizeFeature

RegionWind's Canyon

A spire of red-grey rock jutting from a windswept plain of Razor Grass, Ea's Spire is one of few landmarks on the road from Wind's Canyon to Darkin. The spire marks the location of a low output spring, and is a place where tribesmen and hunters sometimes stop to take shelter or exchange news. The spring seeps into a scalloped stone basin, and then soaks into the soil. Small niches provide shelter, and faded rock paintings and votive offerings mark the people who pass by. The top of the spire is often used as a roost by Cudu'djell, who sometimes attack lone travellers visiting the spring.

North318

,

Turnwards-105

River of Bones

Keywords

RoutesNingaur's Steps, The Anvil's Way, Drover's Road

SizeFeature

RegionWind's Canyon

A wide expanse of cracked mud, as dry and hard as stone, the River of Bones runes Daywards to Nightwards through the lands of Wind's Canyon. Huge skeletons dot the river, giant rib cages emerging from the ground, with skulls as large as huts. These skeletons are as ossified as the ground beneath them, and do not resemble any living creature. Crossing the River takes at least a day, and there is not a single source of water or food from end to end.

North320

,

Turnwards-115

Wind's Canyon

KeywordsTax

RoutesNingaur's Steps, The Canyon Trail, The Anvil's Way, Drover's Road

SizeSmall Town

RegionWind's Canyon

Wind's Canyon is a complex maze of bazaars, lanes and houses dug into the caves and rock of a narrow point in the canyon. Walls block the approach from Turn, Counter and Sunwards, and the flat tops of the canyon are too high and fragmented for an attacker to use them for launching an effective attack on the town. Hedges of Marama Thorns block the main entry routes a little distance from the walls, funelling anyone approaching along the roads themselves. The gates are of Zerom wood, studded with copper bosses, and always guarded by a small group of Nistran soldiers operating from a fortified gatehouse.

Within the walls, mesas of rock break up the town into small sections, separated by narrow winding streets or passageways. Colourful awnings of dyed Maugey fibre add extra shade, and there are many Hunut and Ganam in the streets. Daybats and Brightflies zip and swoop overhead. People live close packed in Wind's Canyon, with families living together. The main market is near to the Drover's Gate. At the back of this market stands the Low House, where the Clerks are based, and the taxes are tabulated. A little way to the Counterturn and at a higher level is the High House the grander home of the Bonded Ones. A number of smaller districts, located in their own crevasses, surround the main part of the town.

Main routes leading from Wind's Canyon are: The Canyon Trail, leading to Kuthar and Urukag; Ningaur's Steps, leading to Darkin; The Anvil's Way, leading Sunwards across the Sun's Anvil; and Drover's Road, leading to hellgrass Reach.

North330

,

Turnwards-180

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15 entries found.