Everdark

Everdark

Connects to: 16.16.09, 29.14 and 29.14.50.

Overview

If one travels north along the cliffs from the Bitter Coast, one comes to a fog-shrouded place where the mountains drop precipitously into the sea. Here, the Road River flows out of a narrow mountain pass before cascading over the cliffs and into the ocean. If one were to follow the beaten road through the trees up to this pass and travel east along the bank of the river into the mountains, under the steadily thickening cloud cover they would find the monolithic Giant’s Bane Wall. Manned by a garrison of the dead and a few cheerful, pleasant men with strange eyes, this wall guards the pass into the Everdark.

The Everdark is a steep, narrow valley, its mountains tall and impassible from every side but the west, where the Road River carved a pass through the mountains eons ago. The river originates in a small, spring-fed lake at the end of the valley and then cuts a straight line through the middle. With towering mountains on all sides, and thick, ever-present storm clouds churning above, the entire valley is covered in eternal shadow, hence the name, Everdark. Everdark is a shadowy, mist-shrowded land of giant conifers, flourishing ferns and creeping blood mosses quiet reigns but for the song of birds and the chilling, distant shriek of mandrakes. In the center of the valley is the curious Borough of Everdark. A walled town of crimson stone; it stands astride the Road River, which is made into a canal as it enters the city; with its two halves clinging to the steep northern and southern slopes of the valley. Here live the strange and kind folk of Everdark, known for their eyes of black sclera and amber iris, and cat-like slit pupils; their stories of orcish ancestors; their claim to be an ancient borough of the City of Shuttered Windows; the strange Earless Hounds whom they use to hunt the deadly mandrakes with; and the town’s prodigal son, arch-mage Vilenius Arkhaus, the Wizard-Architect and Lord-Elect of Everdark.

Connections

• In times long past, Vilenius Arkhaus built the Sealed Library (29.14.50) in the Steeple of the Temple Indivisible and called upon the lords that ruled before the Dukes of Thring (16.16.09).

Hooks

• Why do the dead guard the Giant’s Bane Wall?
  -Where did the perpetual cloud cover come from?
  -Blood mosses?
  -Mandrakes?!
  -How did the folk of Everdark come to live with orc eyes and orc blood?
  -From whence comes the red stone of the Borough?
  -How in the world did a Borough of the Shuttered City end up on the Bitter Coast?
  -Earless Hounds?
  -Surely there’s more to Vilenius Arkhaus. And why do they call him Lord-Elect?

The Black Robes of the Everdark

Like so much else about the people of the borough of Everdark their clothes are not like those of other men. They wear black robes woven from the long vanes of the feathers of great rocs (01.01) which are not only waterproof but quite warm and comfortable.

Hooks:

• -Any living rocs about?
• -Do roc robes have another other useful properties?

Shrine of the Hilt

The Knife of Jarmond’s hilt lies in a small shrine atop Mount Lorca, one of the clouded mountains surrounding Everdark. Alberon, in the form of a squire, commanded the archmage Vilenius Arkhouse to keep the hilt of the prophet’s knife in a place shrouded by perpetual clouds. After extensive research, he found Everdark’s current location to be the cloudiest place in the Shrouded Lands, and built a shrine to house the hilt. It is said that when sunlight touches the hilt again, it must be reunited with the blade and given to Alberon’s new prophet.

The Temple Indivisible has made a plausible claim that the Knife of Jarmond contains some of Alberon’s life. Therefore, it is a pseudo-form of Alberon. Since Alberon cannot leave the Shuttered City, they have declared Everdark to be a distant borough of Shuttered.

Every year on The Youth’s Day, four young men from Everdark place the hilt in a ceremonial ark and carry it down Mount Lorca’s treacherous paths to the town square. When it arrives, a festival begins. The King of Dogs is crowned at the end of the festival, and the four young men are sent off to find wives. After the farewell, four silent, cloaked figures appear and carry the ark back to the shrine.

Hooks

• Why was the Knife separated? Where is the blade?
• What will happen when Alberon has a new prophet?
• Has Vilenius Arkhouse “retired” from wizardry, or is the powerful archmage still meddling in world affairs?
• Has Alberon ever appeared in Everdark?
• What duties and privileges does the King of Dogs have?
• How often do the young men in the ceremony return to Everdark?
• Who are the cloaked figures that carry the ark back to shrine?